- At December 31, 2008
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In 2009, hopeful
8
So long, 2008! Here’s wishing you (and myself) a happier, brighter, healthier, and generally more magical New Year in 2009, despite the news reports, the economics experts, the naysayers.
We’re going to go watch some fireworks, eat some appetizers in La Jolla, and visit the seal beach before we ring in 2009. Hooray for warmer climates, for palm trees instead of evergreens, for dolphins off the coast, for scrub and cacti and hummingbirds sitting on bird-of-paradise leaves next to the highway. This is the first time in, I think, five years that I haven’t been seriously sick on New Year’s Eve, and I am going to go enjoy it!
Blessings and happiness and wishes granted…
Too many movies?
This is not the inspirational blog post about 2009 because I don’t have the mental energy for that yet. It is a list of movies I have watched in the last seven days, mostly on those “old movies” channels like AMC or TCM:
–Casablanca
–The Big Sleep
–The Maltese Falcon
–Annie Hall
–Teacher’s Pet
–Christmas in Connecticut
–Remember the Night
–A Christmas Story
–House Bunny
That’s an overdose of movies, because we had a lot of rain around Christmas and San Diego isn’t exactly thriving with indoor activity options. A lot of them were very good (sadly, not House Bunny. I was expecting better from the Legally Blonde screenwriters, but alas, I’m afraid all the good stuff in that script was from the book it was based on.) I had never seen Annie Hall before, or Christmas in Connecticut, both of which I liked very much. I never really liked anything of Woody Allen’s before except Bullets Over Broadway. The Big Sleep has great scenes in it, especially towards the beginning, some of them written by William Faulkner, I think, which makes me like him better. I read something about how the screenwriters had to write to Raymond Chandler (the book’s author) to find out who had killed the chauffer, but even he didn’t know.
- At December 24, 2008
- By Jeannine Gailey
- In happy holidays
- 5
Merry Christmas Eve!
Well, the shortest day of the year is behind us. I’ll remember 2008 mostly for the weirdness, the combination of dramatically good with dramatically (and sometimes comically) bad.
For instance, the day in the middle of a Northwest cold snap I found out Kelli and I had won the Dorothy Prize (a hugely helpful poetry phenomenon in a financially tight year) I was also hospitalized for breathing trouble (a combo of asthma and bronchitis) and the propane tank of the cabin we were renting in PT (our source of heat and hot water) was repossessed because our landlord had some complicated problem with his bills.
It was really hard to celebrate that day, but that is something I’m coming to learn – you have to celebrate the good things when they come along, even if it’s hard to appreciate all that wonderful. To be happy despite. To count blessings instead of curses, even while you’re cursing.
In the last year, I’ve seen white deer in the woods, watched orcas and sea otters, taught marvelously talented high school kids about poetry and comic book heroines, finished writing a new manuscript, read hundreds of wonderful books, learned new poems by heart. In my new town, yesterday, in between rainy spells during which I was thinking about how I missed my Seattle friends and my family back in the Midwest, I saw whales from the shore, jumping around in the blue ocean. I watched egrets and phoebes and hummingbirds. My sweet husband baked cupcakes. I am breathing. These things make me thankful.
Here’s wishing you all a happy, healthy, bright 2009! Don’t forget to celebrate!
Tis the Season…
For interviews? Here’s an interview with me (where we talk about fairy tale influences, Cinderella, and other various and sundry details) posted at the online fairy tale lit site, Les Bonnes Fees:
Interview with Jeannine at Les Bonnes Fees
In the Christmas Spirit…
Well, you know, living in Seattle for so long made me realize the grave importance of celebrating around the solstice, whatever religion you might follow, because the short short days, the absence of sunlight, absolutely demands that you throw yourself into a frenzy of sugar and caffeine and general merrymaking of some kind. I never went to one of those naked-dancing solstice party things, I’m more of a church-on-Christmas Eve-with candles-and-carols kind of girl, but you know, I’m happy I was invited to some. Yesterday there was snow in Seattle and I felt sad I missed it.
Yesterday was huge winds and driving rain for 24 hours here in SoCal; weirdly, it was warmer in Boston than San Diego. We could barely drive our little Honda CRV over the flooded highways. So we mostly stayed in and decorated our little three-foot tree (perfect size for a little apartment, by the way) and Glenn made homemade tamales with masa and pork slow-cooked in orange juice and apple cider. They took forever to make but were really good. Here tamales are a Christmas food; they show up at the fast-food Mexican restaurants around Thanksgiving. I’m down with this tradition.
So, I’m writing Christmas cards and putting together presents to ship out. I should also maybe put together some poetry subs to send out, but who is really reading this time of year? We’re also thinking of going out to see some of those holiday lights. It’s been too cloudy for several days in a row. I can even wear my coat!
I’m feeling very blessed and content this year. Thanks to all my friends and family and everyone for their encouragement, their love, and the little (and big) things.
Nothing to get you in the Christmas spirit like a nice cold MRI in the morning. Brrr…A lot of doctor appointments this last week, which means we have postponed getting our tree. Honestly, our new apartment is so small, we’ll probably just get one of those tiny decorative trees. Like a toy. A toy tree for our toy apartment. It’s supposed to turn cold here after tomorrow. I heard Seattle was having a winter storm warning!
Some of my e-mails seem to having some problems – so if you haven’t heard from me or I haven’t responded to something and you need something urgently, please comment here!
Good news for Aimee Nezhukumatathil and C. Dale Young on the NEA grants! (Sure, it would have been nice to get one those this year, but at least applying was good practice…for applying next time.) And also, my friend Natasha M. just got her first piece of fiction published here. I’m always excited (and jealous) when poets publish fiction.
Lots of waiting rooms mean lots of reading…finished The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which was a little difficult because it was full of Spanish slang (really I need to pick up some Spanish!) and was pretty brutal in its depiction of atrocities committed in the Dominican Republic by various despots and thugs. Started All the Sad Young Literary Men. Got my contributor’s copy finally of American Poetry Journal, which is now beautifully perfect-bound and full of blogger poetry – and it has a review and a poem in it from little old me. Appropriately, there was a series of three poems called “MRI.”
Thanks for all your inquiries. Yes, Glenn and I are safe after the jet crash. The crash happened about fifteen minutes away from where we live. The sad news is I believe the jet crashed into a house where there was a grandmother, a mother, and two children at home; two are dead and two are missing.
What do you do for inspiration? I’ve been so stressed out over end-of-quarter grading and other commitments I haven’t had much time or energy for writing, submitting, reviewing, etc. (Plus, learning to live in a tiny apartment with my husband and I both working from home has made it a little bit harder to get into the mental writing space.)
So, in order to combat my lack of inspiration and mental energy, a couple of days ago Glenn and I went to a bunch of galleries in La Jolla, which were mostly more mainstream and bland-y than Seattle’s gallery scene, but I did find some interesting work among the landscapes and sailboats – a glass artist who pours molten glass over stainless steel wire, a portrait of a sleeping girl on a pillow with teeth, a red riding hood figure with a butterfly painted onto the canvas.
Tonight we went to Aimee Mann’s Holiday concert at Solana Beach’s Bottoms Up Tavern, which is a nice intimate venue compared to the other places I’ve seen her play. Grant Lee Philips was there and did a hilarious version of “Voices Carry” as a fake Willie Nelson. The Grinch theme song was played. There was a film parody of A Christmas Carol. She’s hilarious and talks a lot like my artist friend Michaela Eaves. (See Broadside art below for reference.) I am also totally inspired that this punky chick who I was listening to when I was twelve is still rocking out and goofy at 48, looking fantastic and cool.
A little music, a little visual art, and tomorrow maybe even a little bit of free time to work on my own work… What’s your recipe for inspiration?
Look for Suzanne Frischkorn and Tom Hunley on Verse Daily this week!
And, since it’s “Cyber Monday” and you’re all shopping for Christmas presents, did I mention poetry books make a great holiday gift? I am going to put on my winter special and offer this limited-edition, beautiful broadside of “The Snow Queen Explains” for free to anyone who buys a copy of Becoming the Villainess from me between now and Christmas. The art work on the broadside was done by the lovely and talented Michaela Eaves, who also did the cover art of my book. I only have a few copies around, so this offer won’t last 🙂
Here’s the link to order the book:
https://webbish6.com/orderform.htm
or you can e-mail me at jeannine dot gailey at live dot com.
All I want for Christmas is an enthusiastic publisher for my second book manuscript. And total financial security. And shiny happy healthiness. And, well, some world peace would be nice, too. Come on, Santa!
Still up to my ears in essays I need to grade, but managed to sneak some fun into this weekend anyway (in between worrying about finances and spending time on the phone with our families in Cincinnati and Knoxville.) Yesterday we went driving down the 101 looking at the coastlines of neighborhoods – Del Mar, Solana Beach. We stopped in at a “health food” restaurant and had wonderful mahimahi with avocado, black beans, rice, and handmade corn tortillas. Besides the lack of salt, it was all very tasty. Then we went to a park that overlooked the ocean. While we were strolling around, it was very unnerving to think that it was close to December, but we were outside, there were palm trees, and the blue ocean curling away in the distance. Incongruous with my more familiar Christmas-type landscapes, despite the fact that they were offering horse-drawn carraige rides decked with lights last night around the outdoor mall by my house and lighting a huge Christmas tree up (I assume to encourage holiday-type spending 🙂
In fact I really enjoyed being outside yesterday because it was finally down to around 65 degrees, much more comfortable to me than all those eighty-degree days we’ve been having.
Don’t throw snowballs at me, friends in the rest of the country!
I’m worried that I’ve fallen behind in writing and submitting my own poetry, as well as my book reviewing. I don’t know how people who teach four classes do it! Once I’m done grading, I have two freelance articles to finish and a new class to design!
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
