Thanksgiving, Holiday Times at The Nutcracker, Local Wineries, Mt Rainier and the Writing Life Holiday Edition

Glenn and I at the Nutcracker at McCaw Hall, Seattle

Thanksgiving, Holiday Times at the Nutcracker

Hello! Hope you had a good Thanksgiving weekend with a minimum of friction, family, travel, or otherwise.

We had a quiet Thanksgiving with my little brother—Glenn made a duck dinner with sweet potato and cranberry pies. A low-key affair, but nice. It’s always good to have some downtime catching up with family. It was my older brother’s birthday, too, and my grandmother’s (who passed away a few years ago). My little brother Mike told a funny story about finding a book of Grandma Opal’s recipes, trying them out, and finding that he didn’t like them at all. Well, neither of my grandmothers were really the cooking types, although I do remember her making divinity from scratch once.

Glenn, me and Mike

After Thanksgiving, I decided we should go see The Nutcracker, which Glenn had never seen before. My mother took me when I was a kid, and I had a ballerina classmate who got us free tickets in high school, but I hadn’t seen it in a long time. I was surprised by some of the changes—this was Balanchine’s Nutcracker, a version which I guess I hadn’t seen before—and the while the costumes and sets were beautiful, I didn’t like some of the changes to the music or the decision to take away Clara and the Prince’s Pas de Deux. There were lots of kids—some of them screaming or crying—not ballet fans, I guess—some of them dressed in ballerina outfits and snapping pictures everywhere, which was cute. Even now, Tchaikovsky can make me get up and want to dance around the room. I learned that the Dance of the Sugar Plum fairies used an instrument brand new to the world when he wrote the songs—the celesta, which most of you might know from John Williams’ “Hedwig’s Theme”—and that his younger sister died while he was writing the ballet, which might have made it more melancholy in nature than it might have been.

Mt Rainier, winter trees

Holiday Wineries and Mt Rainier

Today we stopped off to see the wineries and drop off a toy at J. Bookwalter’s Toys for Tots drive (’til Dec 7th and they give you a free tasting if you’re not already a member!) We walked around Chateau Ste Michelle and though there weren’t as many decorations or gifts as seasons past (they’ve had several changes of ownership, and it doesn’t feel as warm or festive as it once did) it was still nice to have the holiday feeling. It was super cold (got our first frost last night, much to our hummingbirds’ disapproval) but sunny, and we got to see the mountain, which even against a wintry backdrop is beautiful. We also put up our tree, which makes the house seem a little warmer and brighter. I did zero Christmas shopping this weekend, which may be a reaction to all the “spend spend spend” commercials and e-mails.

The Writer’s Life (Holiday Edition)

And how does the writer’s life change during the holiday season? Do you find yourself writing more or less? Is shopping or holiday card sending taking up time you would usually spend investigating journals or publishers? I haven’t been writing as much as I would like lately, holiday or no holiday, but I did manage to get a few submissions out after a pretty brutal book rejection the day before Thanksgiving (kept for more than a year with a “sorry it took so long” message after I’d been a finalist there multiple times. Ouch.) I’m starting to feel less sure about this book, which I used to have so much confidence in, my best book yet (I thought), fun and maybe even necessary. It’s also a little feminist, a little speculative, and more open about disability, which may mean it doesn’t appeal to everyone, especially in these “risk-averse” times. Anyway, think good thoughts as I send the manuscript out yet again, along with some poems. It is a good season for reading, and I’ve got a stack of books to read for the winery book club (trying to pick a literary art mystery for January). I’m doing more social things this December too—if I can avoid covid or pneumonia which a bunch of people I know have picked up recently—and one more Writer’s Digest tutorial—as well as some end of the year medical testing I have to get done before my deductible rolls over, so maybe I shouldn’t be too ambitious. But spending time being creative can be a good reminder to us during a hectic time of our true selves, and the things we truly value. Even if it’s just a sketch, a poem, a few photographs—I encourage you too to spend a little time doing something that inspires and energizes you. Happy almost-December to you all!

How to Give a Little, Making the Holidays Brighter…Literally

Amanita mushroom, or Alice in Wonderland mushroom

How to Give a Little, Making the Holidays Brighter…Literally

Ah, November in Seattle. I found myself humming “In the Bleak Midwinter”—a Christmas song I never heard or even thought about before moving here, but it seems very appropriate right now. I can feel the English melancholy in the gray rain of our winters.

I’m trying to find ways to brighten the days, literally and figuratively. For instance, here’s a beautiful amanita (or fairy agaric, or Alice in Wonderland) mushroom from our yard—something you’ll only see in November. We’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving with my little brother on Wednesday, a little untraditional with duck and broccolini but also cornbread stuffing and sweet potato pie (my Southern heritage peeks out a little here!) And we got tickets to see the Nutcracker—a little ballet in the holiday, since we have Thursday as down time. My husband Glenn has never seen it! We’re also planning a little Twin Peaks themed getaway in late December, so, our holidays are always a little weirder than most people.

Kitten Charlotte enjoys fighting the mushrooms under our solstice/Christmas tree. Her birthday is Christmas eve!

I was thinking about how to make this season brighter—with all the political ugliness and Trump and his horrid party boys trying to kill the arts (defunding the NEA means a lot of presses and lit mags shutting down and struggling)—and I came upon this idea. If you have a favorite press or literary magazine—we may not be able to replace a $25K grant from the government, but maybe we can give a little and if it happens from many of us, it will be enough to count. I know a lot of us are struggling with money these days—more than usual, given the layoffs and the inflation—but giving during the holidays has always been a tradition that usually comes—not from the wealthy, not from the billionaires—but from the little people, from the middle class. There are a lot of people who don’t have enough to eat. Animal shelters need donations of pet food. Even cleaning out and donating from your pantry may do more good than you know.

Also, little things, like getting out your sparkly tops, just dyeing your hair a different color (yes, I did it again—now it’s cranberry for the holidays!) and putting out candles or extra lights—can up your mood. It is dark here by 4 PM—and it’s natural to want to curl up and escape reality by staying in bed and binging Netflix. But trying a new place to look at holiday lights or adopting a new tradition (whether Ballet or Twin Peaks related) can help us out of our normal ruts. I got together with a few poet friends this week, and talking over sparkling cider and gingerbread cookies (and I swear there was healthy food too) made writing and submitting for another month of 2025 seem a little less intimidating (or exhausting.) I also realized I’d been writing an awful lot about death recently—even when I didn’t think I was! That’s what having other writers look at your work helps with—sometimes we can’t see our own obsessions, or we try to hide them from ourselves. Encouraging others often leads to feeling more encouraged ourselves. So, get together for cider or hot chocolate, put some lights up for elderly neighbors, drop some flowers off for someone who’s down—but try to offer up a little kindness and brightness in a world—and a season—that can feel awfully dark.

Wishing you a happy and untraditional-as-you-like Thanksgiving holiday!

Northern Lights, Book Club Revelations, Winter Blues and Winter Holiday

Northern Lights and Book Club Revelations

Most of the week was dark, windy, and rainy, but for fifteen minutes we got to see the Northern Lights! I only got a couple of quick cell phone pictures because the clouds came in so quickly. My brother on the other side of town couldn’t see them at all.

Here is a poem I wrote the last time the Northern Lights appeared, which was published in The Normal School,  “Aurora, or When Firefoxes Spark the Sky.”

Sylvia with Terminal Surreal

We also discussed my late friend Martha Silano’s incredible book of poetry, Terminal Surreal. And the discussion was really amazing. An engineer in the group mapped the sections of the book to the five stages of grief, and someone talked about the idea of knowing something of the author’s life and how that can enhance the reading of the book. When I was in graduate school, biographical readings were very out of style, but I always talk about the culture, the time of the writing, some details of the author’s life—for instance, when we read Osamu Dazai’s Blue Bamboo, we talked about Japan in the 30s and the incredible stardom of Dazai in Japan. I only teared up once talking about Martha, and Glenn said he also teared up once. We still miss her! I had never thought about whether or not to discuss the context of the book and author at the book club, but I’ve always found that knowing more about the author enhanced, rather than hurt, my own readings. We’ve read poetry books several times now, but this was the first time we read poems out loud at the club, including poems that were referenced in the book (Stephen Crane’s “In the Desert” and Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”). I think we’ll try that again—hearing a poem out loud is a great way to really get a different dimension of the book. For December, we’re reading Octavia Butler’s terrific Parable of the Sower. I discovered Butler’s writing only a few years ago, despite the fact that she was a Seattle-lite and is a first-rate science fiction writer.

Deer visitor

Winter Blues (and Winter Holiday)

It was a tough week for me physically—I recorded a tutorial on Monday and then the book club on Wednesday, and by Thursday I was run down and spent almost the whole day in bed. The weather’s been dreary—so much rain, wind, chill—that I haven’t been able to do much outside, and I feel like I have a head cold all the time, which is super fun, lol. I remembered that I always struggle—emotionally and health-wise—around this time of year. What do I do to help cope?

Candle lights at Redmond Town Center

A couple of things that help—scheduling something to look forward to, looking at the holiday decorations around town (see last week’s post for the Woodland Park Zoo’s beautiful holiday lanterns) and deliberately doing cozy things. I watched several film noirs (my favorite genre of movie, I think), read for fun, and since Glenn had never seen the Nutcracker, we got tickets to go see it after Thanksgiving. My mother used to play the Nutcracker Suite on a record player when I was a kid (along with other classics such as Jimi Hendrix and Jesus Christ Superstar—a diverse musical upbringing, really), and we went to see it when my brother and I were little so I have a sentimental place in my heart for it, hallucination-induced rat king and all.

Despite the rain, dark and cold, Glenn put up the holiday lights around the house. Too early, you say? Well, when it’s dark by four PM, it’s literally a safety hazard, and the lights help! Never too early for lights the Pacific Northwest—and we weren’t the first house on our street, either.

Sharp-Shinned Hawk

I feel like I should be more productive at this time of year, but maybe it’s okay to take a break from being productive and hibernate a little. I feel impatient, a bit, about getting my next book into the world. I’ve sent it out to a few places—it’s possible I’m a bit pickier than I was when I was younger—and have already waited over a year to hear back from most of them. So much of the poetry life is waiting, and I’m impatient by nature. And if you are feeling a little under the weather or depressed, remember the time change and lack of sunlight can cause a lot of emotional turmoil and immune system problems, not to mention the news and the economy and politics, so take your extra vitamins and don’t beat yourself up for not being Little Miss Sunshine all the time. (A great film to watch, by the way, when you’re under the weather—a little offbeat but I remember laughing so hard in the theater when I saw it, I almost fell out of my chair. I got a lot of strange looks that day…)

November Chill, Book Publishing and PR Questions, and Trip to the Woodland Park Zoo

typewriter and fall leaves

November Chill, Book Publishing Biz and PR Questions

The dark, cold, rain has definitely set in here, as darkness starts about 4:00 PM now. I’ve been working more indoors, reading, and sending work out. But not just sending work out—thinking about the machinations of the publishing world, thinking about PR and what we can expect from our books and our publishers, especially because tomorrow I’m recording a tutorial on PR for Poets for Writer’s Digest and I did a talk last week on the subject.

Typewriter with mushrooms

Book publishing itself has changed so much since I started in publishing, working at Microsoft Press in 2000 as an Acquisitions Editor. Now Microsoft Press no longer exists, and books on technology are considered obsolete. People are reading less, reversing the trend of reading more during the pandemic. Books are selling fewer copies, publishing continues to encounter problems of plagiarism in AI, it’s harder to get the word out about individual books from small presses now than maybe ever in my life, and I don’t want to lie about how challenging it is now to younger writers. I am sending out my own seventh (!) manuscript and the landscape is more expensive (those fees aren’t getting cheaper, and you’re less likely to get a book or subscription than you used to be) and more challenging than it was back in 2003, when I sent out my first poetry book manuscript. Social media doesn’t seem easy to navigate right now, with more and more people totally stopping posting or just getting off of socials altogether (for their mental health, or just because socials have become more annoying). There are still people going on book tours and doing readings online and in person, there are still people buying and reviewing books. there are still people that care. That’s what we have to remember.

Glenn and I with fox lantern

Woodland Park Zoo in Winter with Lanterns

It’s usual for us to take a chance on a sunny day and try to go to the Woodland Park Zoo before their Zoo Lanterns lights are completely up—we like to see the animals more than we like the illuminated lanterns—so we took advantage of a rare sunny Sunday and visited some of our favorite animals, including the jaguar, the snow leopards, and of course, the red panda (and we heard the zoo is getting two more red pandas in 2026 with an expanded forest feature). The antique carousel is sentimental for us because we rode the carousel when the same carousel (!) lived in Cincinnati back when we were teenagers, and my mother loves carousel horse art.

With wings

We learned the zoo, after losing its last Northern gray wolf, took in endangered Mexican gray wolves, which are rare, and are helping with reintroducing cubs into the wild in Arizona and New Mexico. We also learned the beautiful mother the snow leopard cubs—you can see her in my previous posts about the cubs had passed away at the age of 20. I wonder if the bird flu is still endangering big cats—I heard recently it has been decimating populations of elephant seals in the wild—because it’s hard to keep wild birds, squirrels, and rats totally out of habitats. Anyway, there were lots of foxes represented among the lanterns this year—as well as an absolutely terrifying giant centipede—why? It did get us a bit in the holiday spirit too—we used to shop every year at the zoo’s gift shop for gifts for our young nieces and nephews for Christmas—now they’re too old for most of it (although I’m not!) Here’s wishing you a day or two of brightness during your November dark and remember to acknowledge the hard parts of life while still trying to celebrate the good. And best of luck with your writing and publishing journeys.

Beginning November: Time Changes, Halloween and Talking with Poetry Students

Bob’s Pumpkin Farm with Moon

Beginning November: Time Changes, Halloween, and Talking with Poetry Students

The time change is always rough here, but at least after two days of storm and rain, we had sunshine today and enough autumn leaves left after the storm to actually admire.

I love Halloween, the kids are always adorable and we had neighbors over pre-trick-or-treating for wine and appetizers, which reminded me of pre-pandemic days, when we’d have tons of neighbors in the driveway for drinks and food and the kids would run around like crazy.  We made one last visit to Bob’s Pumpkin Farm the night before Halloween, when it was clear and cold and the moon shone down. Farms at night are really beautiful.

Goldfinch on spent sunflower

Also this week I had a chance to talk to students at the University of New Orleans. The students were uniformly intelligent and asked great questions, questions that took on the difficulties of publishing, the state of the world of poetry, questions that were larger than perhaps I could answer. It reminded me to be hopeful, because the world is going to be in their hands soon, and perhaps they will do better than my own generation, or the one before that. Do I sound old when I say that? Perhaps.

Anna’s hummingbird with (still blooming) fuchsia

How are you doing, my friends? November can be a tough month of shadows. Remember to donate to your local food banks as they are stretched thin with the end of SNAP benefits, and maybe invite someone you think is struggling over. It feels like a month to be kind, when the government is failing to do its job and the false king is building a guilded ballroom while people in his country go hungry and while the GOP doubles people’s health insurance premiums. I am angry, yes, but also I remember that we each have a responsibility to vote, yes, and also to our neighbors, and the community. How can poetry make this better? I don’t have the resources the tech billionaires do, and making a living as an artist or writer in this country is harder than ever. But I can still do something. It’s good to remember. I will leave you with a few images of nature at her most beautiful, even at the end of the harvest season, as we turn to winter.

A Week of Poetry Friends and Readings, Horror Poetry, Halloween/Samhain and Some Real Life Scares

Lesley Wheeler, J.T. Manning and myself at J. Bookwalter’s Poetry Reading

A Week of Poetry Friends and Readings

This week was a riot of activity in my relatively quiet life – my friend Lesley Wheeler, at the end of a massive two-week book tour in the Pacific Northwest. She visited the Hoh Rainforest, did readings in Port Angeles and Bainbridge libraries, and toured the region’s lakes and visited a mushroom conference as a guest of honor. Then did readings in Kirkland and Woodinville. I get tired just thinking about it!

It was good to spend some downtime with Lesley—in between events, we even got to take her to McMurtrey’s pumpkin farm, where we took a tractor tour of the farm, and caught up on life, books, and news. You can watch a bit of the reading, with me reading a few introductory spooky poems and Lesley reading from Mycocosmic and Unbecoming, plus a Q&A. Lesley shines like the professional she is.

Here’s the reading:

Here’s the Q&A session:

The day Lesley left, Kelli Russell Agodon was the featured reader at the Copper Canyon fall fundraiser, so we tried to make it on time (despite massive rainstorms and equally massive traffic)—arrived an hour late at the spooky historical mansion (only accessible by tons of stairs—not so great for the handicapped among us) but it was nice to meet some of the new folks at Copper Canyon and it’s always a pleasure to see Kelli read. Kelli read from Dialogues with Rising Tides and from her upcoming book too.  I also got to see my old friend, poet Elizabeth Austen, which was really fun. Elizabeth helped me a lot when I was a Jack Straw poet and gave me so many good tips about reading on the radio.

Red finches

Horror Poetry, PR for Poets, and Real-Life Scares

Tomorrow I’m recording a tutorial on Horror Poetry for Writer’s Digest and the 30th I’m talking to a class at University of New Orleans about publicity and poetry. Doing the tutorial was an opportunity for me to do more in-depth thinking about what makes a horror poem a horror poem—does Sylvia Plath count? Louise Gluck? Am I a horror poet?

But real life threw in a real scare in the middle of spooky season—my father went into the hospital last night with a serious illness, so we’ve been texting and talking to mom and dad back in Ohio. Hopefully he’s in recovery by Halloween.

Yes, Halloween is Friday, so going about my normal routine (besides the tutorial and the speaking engagement) and decorating, buying candy, etc. This is the time of the “thinning veil”—the time of year when the membrane between the living world and the afterworld becomes more porous, a holiday celebrated long before All Hallow’s Eve, Samhain. Samhain (practiced by my mostly Celtic ancestors) was a time to light fires and much like today’s Day of the Dead (which originated in Mexico and Central America), remember loved ones who had passed and set a table setting for them at feasts.

A storm has blown down a lot of our leaves and branches around town, but here’s a photo of one of our maples before the storm. When the regular news is horrifying, and things in our personal lives are in turmoil, it’s a time to consider the blessings of autumn – how the death of our flowers and our long sunny afternoons just means rebirth in the spring, that this is the time of year to think about the ones we have lost and celebrate the good things we have. Time to rid yourself of bad habits and doubts. I am thankful for the friends I have, the consolations of reading, for my family, my home. I am thankful for you, readers. I hope you light a candle and celebrate this season in a way that brings a new hope (and not just the Star Wars kind). Happy Samhain, Day of the Dead, and Halloween to you all!

Upcoming Appearances and Poet Friend Visits to Woodinville, Halloween and Horror Poetry, and The Big Dark Begins

Me at JB Family’s Pumpkin Farm in Woodinville

Halloween and Horror Poetry, Plus the Big Dark Begins

The days are getting darker, the rain and wind have arrived, and the big dark has truly begun—waking up in the dark, coming home in the dark. A freeze overnight took care of all the area’s beautiful dahlias and sunflowers in a flash. I was happy we got to spend some time with the sunflowers before their disappearance. Still, plenty of pumpkins everywhere, though, as my sweater indicates.

Glenn as evil cyberpunk scientist, me as cyberpunk replicant

This week at Book Club we discussed early cyberpunk and the newly translated Japanese classic short story collection Terminal Boredom and had a costume contest with a cyberpunk theme. We’re reading poetry—Martha Silano’s Terminal Surreal—for November, meeting on the 12th at J. Bookwalter’s Woodinville Tasting Studio, if you want to attend. Then we’ll be reading Solarpunk—Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower—in December.

I’m doing a tutorial for Writer’s Digest next week on the history and practice of horror poetry, which seems appropriate for spooky season (and also, you know, the political atmosphere these days). It’s been fun seeking out older horror poems as well as thinking about what makes a poem technically a horror poem. I’m also doing a talk the day before Halloween at the University of New Orleans about publicity and poetry, which is its own kind of horror, right?

Me in Halloween sweater at McMurtrey’s

Upcoming Appearances and Poet Friend Readings in Woodinville

Speaking of appearances, my friend, excellent poet and fiction writer Lesley Wheeler is in town and doing a reading and Q&A with us at J. Bookwalter’s Winery this Thursday at 6:30, followed by an open mic. I’ll be introducing her and reading a few spooky poems to get us in the mood for the season. Then Lesley will read from her new book about the underworld of mushrooms, Mycocosmic. Our Q&A will feature both Mycocosmic and her novel Unbecoming. It’ll be worth your time to come out, because Lesley doesn’t make it often to the West Coast, as she lives in Virginia, where she teaches at Washington and Lee and is the editor of Shenandoah Literary Magazine.

I’m excited to see one of my old friends in person—it’s always great to catch up with Lesley—and she’s been on a whirlwind tour of the area, doing readings all over the place, and she’s also reading this Wednesday at Booktree in Kirkland.

I am wishing you all a good week. I am going to try not to pick up any bugs with all the things going on. Wish me luck! And No Kings!

October – Trip to Skagit, Application Anxieties and the Mid-Career Writer, Reading Early Cyberpunk

Roozengaarde’s Dahlias and Sky

October Trip to Skagit Valley

We had one day of warm sun and seventy-degree weather so we took a quick day trip up to Skagit Valley, where we stopped into the Northwest Museum of Art, Roozengaarde’s gardens to pick up our daffodil and tulip bulbs, and Gordon’s Pumpkin Farm, where, fun fact, a small black kitten walked up to me and meowed while I was looking at pumpkins, which seems like the most Halloween thing ever. We also saw eagles, herons, a seal, pelicans we mistook for snow geese, basically all the wildlife you could hope to see in October.

Pumpkins at Gordon’s Pumpkin Farm

I immediately feel physically better when I go up to Skagit Valley – less traffic? Cleaner air? Friendlier people? Abundant wildlife? Whatever it is, it just feels as if I literally breathe easier an hour north. I also found a dress with a book print that’s perfect for readings. It’s the little things.

Anyway, if you get a sunny day in fall in the Pacific Northwest, it’s worth the side trip to Skagit Valley. It’s no substitute for my missed trip to San Juan Island, but it did put me in better spirits.

At McMurtrey’s Farm with dahlias during sunbreak

Application Anxieties and Reading Early Cyberpunk

When I got back, I had more mental energy and took on two tasks I’d been putting off – applying to residencies and fellowships. I also looked around at who to send my current book-in-progress to, thinking about where I am in my writing life (what do I actually want at this point? What am I aiming for? Are people reading poetry right now?) As a midlife, mid-career writer, it seems like a good time to take a moment and think about the habits and goals I’ve become accustomed to since starting to write and submit in my teens. Am I trying to support myself with my writing (and if so, how do I do that better than I’m doing it now?) Am I trying to reach the right audiences? How do I determine whether I say yes or no to an assignment or request? How do I find the right publisher (because it would be nice to find the right publisher that I could stay with the rest of my writing career?) Here’s more pics from local pumpkin farms:

Harvest Supermoon

Our J. Bookwalter’s book club is reading a book that just came out in English translation (but the stories were written and published in the seventies and eighties in Japan,) Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki. It made me think about Philip K. Dick’s sixties-era Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep in that it plumbs strangely prescient subject matter – population collapse vs overpopulation, teens obsessed with screens to the point of violence, and a very 2020’s kind of detachment and way of examining gender and class. It also has things in common with Yoko Ogawa, a Japanese writer I very much admire, and Osamu Dazai’s whose ironic detachment in his many books the 1930s set a standard for Japanese literature. It’s interesting to think what people in the past thought the future would be like – and how much they got right or wrong. I’ve been investigating Solarpunk over the past year, partially because I believe if you can’t imagine a better future, you won’t get one, and the relentless oppressiveness of recent dystopian writings, I’m trying to think of how to write a way to a better future for people and nature. I’m trying to be brave and face some things – like disability and chronic illness – more directly in my writing, and in doing that, to maybe make things better (?)

Happy Fall! Pumpkin Season Arrives Along with Early Sunsets, Supermoons, Health Stuff and Missed Opportunities

Sign at JB’s Pumpkin Farm in Woodinville

Happy Fall! October and Pumpkin Season Arrives with Earlier Dark, Supermoons…

Welcome to October! I’m writing this with blue sky outside my window, though it will soon be dark. Pumpkin Season has officially arrived—we’ve put out our October lights, and our porch is covered in a variety of pumpkins from our several local farms.

Tiny squirrel

You may have seen from last week’s post that I’d been in the hospital, and then spent a whole week sick, which has me so backed up on work and e-mails (more about this later), plus I missed going to my writing residency (which could not be rescheduled). So, boo! Not the end of the world, but a little discouraging. (More about this later.) Also, my garden has been invaded by a tiny kind of squirrel. This guy at left is barely as big as my hand, but very unafraid and digs up my planter boxes for fun.

Me at McMurtrey’s Pumpkin Farm

Nevertheless, because in October you can’t take sunshine for granted, I tried to get out on the warmer days to check on my garden and the local pumpkin farms. The flowers—sunflowers and dahlias—are still blooming as the pumpkins keep showing up in various colors and sizes. We had a lot of rain this week, reminding us we are in the rainy season, but we had some nice breaks of sunshine too.

I’m trying to get outside and do a little activity every day, but the virus made my MS act up and I’m still feeling the aftereffects. As for the residency, well, my plan was to hole up and write, but I’m trying to do some writing and submitting anyway this week.

Health Challenges and Missed Opportunities: A Story about Trying to Live a Larger Life (in a Disabled and Chronically Ill Body)

After I lost two friends this year, I made a vow to try to live a bigger life—I feared the pandemic had made me shrink not just my daily routines but my goals and dreams too, that my circles had shrunk and shrunk. The impact of that has maybe made my health a little worse—you may have noticed I’ve been struggling since August first with one thing, then another, and bam, I wound up in the hospital last week with life-threatening stuff. If I ignore my body and try to push through, I inevitably pay a price—but I said yes to maybe too much and as a result had to miss several things—readings with friends, a residency, celebrations—I had really looked forward to and had to dial down all my activities for at least two weeks. Living with MS AND a primary immune system problem AND a bleeding disorder—all things that prove challenging on their own—can be like playing a video game where, when you beat or evade one boss, you just end up downed by another you weren’t even looking for. As a result, I am reevaluating how much I say yes to, and the life goals that are really worth fighting for. Is it worth it to say yes to travel if I’m sick for weeks afterwards, or socializing if I pick up a virus every time I go in public? I don’t want to live in fear, but I also don’t want to be stupid. I am just a writer, which is not a super high-risk job, but I still have to be careful what I say yes and no to. I’m still trying to figure out a balance in the health vs everything else in my life. As we get into the wetter, colder months, or “the big dark” as they say out here, I’m going to try to dial down a bit, spend some more time reading and writing, not pushing my body quite as hard. I have already ordered pens – don’t new pens feel more necessary in fall?

The Harvest Supermoon is tomorrow night. I wish you all balance AND peace as we switch seasons.

A Tribute to Martha Silano Up at the Poetry Foundation

Martha and I with pumpkin display in 2022

A Tribute to Martha Silano at the Poetry Foundation

Hello friends! I would have posted this earlier but had a bit of a health challenge and ended up in the hospital and then have been catching up on rest.

But I wrote a tribute to my long-time poet friend, Martha Silano, that went up on the Poetry Foundation web site (and was in the newsletter), and I was very happy and hope this helps people remember her and her writing. Marty passed away of ALS in May of this year. Her last book, Terminal Surreal, just came out from Acre Books. I hope you will look up her work as it is very worth reading.

Here’s a link to the article: An Oracular Voice: Remembering Martha Silano | The Poetry Foundation

And here is a sample from the article:

Sharing cocktails outdoors during 2023

The last time I saw Marty—Martha Silano—in person, it was fall during a week of wildfire smoke and we decided to visit a local sunflower farm in my neighborhood of Woodinville, Washington. We got lucky—the haze lifted for a few hours, the air quality wasn’t too terrible, and the temperatures had dropped enough for us to be comfortable outside. We met at my house for a quick catch-up chat, snacks, and wine, and I noticed that she hadn’t eaten or drunk very much. I think the beginnings of her swallowing problems—her first ALS symptom—were already happening, though she didn’t complain about a thing that day. I have a picture of us smiling among red and yellow sunflowers, the sky blue but slightly hazy above us. She told me how glad she was to be able to get out into nature again, without the pervasive wildfire smoke. Soon afterward, she was diagnosed with ALS and such outings would become impossible. I am so glad to have the memory of that day, now.”

I wish you all a healthy and happy week and be sure to find a way to tell your friends how much they mean to you.