Perfect Moments and Plans Gone Awry, Social Media and Promoting Poetry Now, The Jobs that AI Can’t Do, Spooky Season

Perfect Moments and Plans Gone Awry

Perfect moments—Sunset, Mt Rainier, Hot Air Balloon (from a pumpkin farm)

This photo on the left was the result of a perfect photo moment that started at one pumpkin farm (McMurtrey Farm) as I watched a distant hot air balloon draw closer. After that farm closed, we crossed the Sammamish to see the progress of the Sunflower Maze at JB Family Growers Pumpkin Farm a mile or so away, where, as we pulled in, the hot air balloon lit up in the sun with Mt. Rainier in the background. I have had some great sunset shots of Rainier at JBs, but this one is maybe my favorite.

Double rainbow at the start of the storm

But speaking of unperfect moments…I had planned to take my poetry group this weekend to a pumpkin farm, for writing and fall inspo, which was foiled by a sudden thunderstorm, but we instead managed to write and enjoy pumpkin-themed treats cooked up by Glenn and get caught up on life. We talked about the state of publishing, the job market, and our ambitions as writers. It was a good reminder to the thankful for the good things, that we can remain optimistic about changes for the good for the arts and our country even in the face of drastically reduced funding and fewer opportunities.

Social Media and Promoting Poetry

Patches the kitten in pumpkin patch, McMurtrey’s Farm

Another thing I’ve talked about with writer friends recently is how much less time we’re spending on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Sometimes the interface changes, or the ownership, or the ease of use, or the tenor of the conversations. In the beginning of social media times, I found a great writing community on all of those platforms. Now? I think it’s better for my mental health to see friends in real life or talk on the telephone (a friend who lives across country and I had a great catch-up talk this afternoon, and I am so grateful for that friendship—and that the phone is just better than Facebook or e-mail for some things). Or spending time in nature, with kittens, pumpkins, sunsets—especially as the days grow shorter, those chances to spend time outdoors become fewer and farther between. What about you?

Posing with farm kitten Mittens, McMurtrey’s

I’ve also noticed that social media’s not as good a place to promote poetry as it used to be. Do you find that to be true too? I still buy books from reviews I read on blogs (thanks to Dave Bonta’s blog roundup, I found a new poet to love in England from a review someone write—mini-review to come soon). But either all my feeds are skewed, and poetry books aren’t coming up, or they have become less useful for selling books. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

The Jobs that AI Can’t Do

Me in dahlias

Meanwhile, while AI is threatening all mankind and jobs, I’d like to point out that AI is not yet able to give us a diagnosis, give us good legal advice, help us recover from an injury (physical therapy), help us recover our mental health (regular therapy), I don’t want to buy a lipstick or a pair of shoes from AI, and I don’t want to read books written by AI. I wouldn’t want my kids taught by AI, either. Robots aren’t really that good at things that require a human touch—including fixing a hot water heater, helping a kid who’s broken their arm, or creating art.

With pumpkins, McMurtrey Farm sign

In fact, I’ll say right here that AI will never take all the jobs, as AI CEO’s keep claiming, and yes, they may cause great harm (more than any benefit) but will probably not by the end of humanity as we know it, I mean, not any greater risk than nuclear war or an asteroid hitting earth or any other number of possible calamities. (Although, I would really like mandatory implementation for Asimov’s Laws of Robotics—geeze, have these AI CEO geniuses never read Asimov? Get educated, dudes!) Also, comedy—AI can’t write jokes to save their virtual lives.

Spooky Season is Great for Poetry

Glenn and I at sunset, with pumpkins and dahlias

I’m teaching a class at the upcoming Skagit Poetry Festival, a class titled Thinning Veil and Poems inspired by the Spooky Season. I’d taught a smaller version of the class, but now I’m expanding it, and I find this season to be so inspirational—Edgar Allen Poe, sure, but I’m also featuring early poems by Sylvia Plath and Louise Gluck. Some of you may know that some consider me a writer of horror poetry—it may not be the main thing I’m known for, but I’ve done it enough to be in some anthologies.

And let’s face it, mythology and fairy tales and pop culture are full of terrific and terrifying tropes perfect for the seasonal poetry. Persephone in the underworld? Check. Cinderella and those bloody shoes? Yes. Children being tossed into the woods to die? Absolutely. In the pop culture world, shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, X-Files, Twin Peaks, and even lesser-known jewels like Reaper and People of Earth, as well as movie franchises and the tropes they’ve created, like the Final Girl.

A rare (for me) Gray Jay

Anyway, in this class I challenge you to try to write a spooky season poem of your own—you may already have written some great horror poetry and not realized it. Anyway, as the sunsets come earlier, you start to crave dishes and apples, pumpkin, and corn (corn pizza anyone? A pumpkin farm treat that we adapted at home—based on street corn. Delicious! Pumpkin creme caramel or pumpkin flan – also amazing!) You may be sleeping more, looking with trepidation each morning at the weather forecast, and digging out throw blankets and sweaters you’d put away months ago. Just remember fall is a great time for inspiration, reinvention, and retreating into a great book.

Skagit Weekend with Pumpkins, Gardens, and Amazing Light, Owls and Coyotes for Spooky Season, October Moods

Glenn and I in sunbeam at Roozengaarde

Happy October! A Trip to Skagit with Bulbs, Pumpkins, and Perfect Light

Well, another October is here! We took a trip up to the Skagit Valley and it was wonderful and gave us all the fall feels. The perfect golden light! Cute kids and cute dogs at the pumpkin farms! A gardening wonderland at Roozengaarde (giving me spring ideas—pink daffodils, pink frilled tulip bulbs—now for some digging lol!) The changing leaves on the drive up! Herons, owls and snow geese! Not to mention opening our door at night to hear coyotes yipping it up! Spooky Season indeed!

Gordon’s Farm Fox Sign

We stopped by a produce stand (and got Italian plums, which I love) and at Roozengaarde with its amazing fall dahlias and tremendous daffodil and tulip bulbs (all pink this time!) and enjoyed strolling around—it’s free this time of year, as opposed to April when there are lines of tourists, and we had a seventy-degree sunny day, also rare in April.

Down the street is the working farm, Gordon Skagit Farms, which during October, becomes an out-of-control pumpkin farm. Old farm equipment? Check. Produce from their orchards and farm? Kettle corn? Fox signs? Check, check, check. And an amazing array of pumpkins. We had a great time walking around, we saw a barn owl in the barn (I know! Its natural habitat—but still, pretty cool!) And we got armfuls of orange tulips to take home.

Migrating Snow Geese on Fir Island

Random dahlias behind a church in Skagit

October Moods

What is your mood going into October? Right now, I’m cooking pumpkin goat cheese pasta and Glenn is putting up Halloween lights (he goes all out for Halloween decor!)

Since I was sick for several days last week it was nice to get out on a really perfect fall day (not too hot, blue sky, a chance to enjoy the fall leaves and flowers before they’re all knocked out by our usual October wind/rain storm).

I also am happy to report I have a poem upcoming in Uncanny, which is a really cool magazine I had never submitted to because of its “hard sci fi” reputation. I spent September sending out work, and I’ve already had a couple of acceptances and rejections from that. October is seeming a little more productive, with me finally thinking about the next book after Fireproof, writing new work in a little but more of a playful vein instead of sticking to a theme or pattern. I’m also thinking about writing in other genres a little bit more—there’s no rule that poets can’t try other genres, and I think I like the challenge that other shapes and rules give me.

Our porch with pumpkins and zinnia

I’m also looking forward to more friend and family gatherings as the holidays are getting closer. (Remember to get your flu and covid shots—those illness levels are already going up in my area—never a fun takeaway from a gathering.) I hope to gather with friends at a local pumpkin farm, maybe getting together for a movie, and of course Halloween is always fun—we have one of those neighborhoods kids love to trick or treat in and the neighbors tend to gather and catch up that night as well. I’m picking up the house (which honestly gets more neglected in the frantic summertime) and putting up some cozy autumn decor (mostly glass pumpkins and throw blankets) but I’m not Martha Stewart. I hope that whether you celebrate Halloween, the Harvest Festival, Samhain, or any other rituals of the season, you give yourself some rest and comfort, open the door and listen to the coyotes, and check out the night sky on a clear night, maybe some apple cider or hot chocolate. Fall’s beauties are different than the spring, with its feeling of renewal, instead of moving into a season of more darkness and cold, but cozy, days ahead. It’s a good season for reading, too—I just got a couple of new books, Sophie, Standing There and Exit Party, to start after finishing The Witches of Cambridge, which was our wine and book club pick. It’s also a good time to give yourself some writing goals, like writing fifteen minutes a day before sleep, or sketching, or whatever feels creative and restorative to you. Wishing you a good spooky season!

Adventures at the Ballet and Some Over the Top Pumpkin Harvest Fairs, the Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay, Harvest Moons and Looking Forward

Glenn and I with pumpkins

Adventures: the Ballet and Some Over the Top Pumpkin Fairs

This week brought some adventures with it. We were given tickets to the opening night of the Pacific Northwest Ballet, three short ballets separated by long intermissions. The first was Serenade, a kind of monotonal, plotless group dance with blue costumes and blue background, with music by Tchaikovsky (Serenade for Strings in C Major, Op. 48). The second was a premiere of a pretty grating piece called Pages, with atonal repetition of terrible performance poetry, followed by equally grating sound (non-music), and the poor dancers having to wander around stage with a chair suspended over them. I started to wonder if I actually hated ballet! Then the third piece was charming: Pictures at an Exhibition was based on the original piano-solo concerto by Mussorgsky, with the dancers dressed in color block, which I believe was supposed to represent the joy of painting?

Me at Swan’s Pumpkin Farm

Then Saturday we decided to try a new pumpkin farm. We drove way out along the Snohomish River, along the beautiful Cascade mountains, past three gigantic fairs with slides and carnival tents, horse farms, and we even saw skydivers! Then, finally, Swan’s Trail [Pumpkin] Farms, which was enormous and swamped with people—and this is still October. There was an animal barn area, which didn’t seem to be well-supervised, a gigantic trampoline area, a bubble area, huge lines for cider doughnuts—and U-pick apples and corn which required a tractor ride to get to. So, we quickly decided this was definitely a place for kids, not kidless adults, went swiftly into the Country Store and bought a candle, missed the last bit of corn, got run into by a very rude but sizeable young boy. We sped the twenty-minutes back to the much-more our speed Bob’s Corn and Pumpkin Farm, where the employees are all friendly, the children adorable and angelic, plenty of Pazazz apples and new sweet corn, and we bought another pumpkin.

Pumpkins at Bob’s

Harvest Moon and Looking Forward

We wanted to explore further on Sunday but one of the pumpkin farms isn’t open ’til October 3rd and the other closed early on Sunday, so we just toured our local farms again (JB Family Growers and McMurtrey Farm), bought some kettle corn and a gourd or two and went home and made roast chicken with autumn vegetables and apples.

The Harvest Season naturally makes us think about the changing of time and seasons, what we want to learn, what we want to leave behind, what we want more of in our life.

This season I am looking forward to working more (and hopefully making a little more money to cover my expensive hobbies, like poetry and having MS,) to making more friends, to being a little more adventurous—although with the time change, we often start spending more time indoors and less time meandering around outside. Here’s to a fun and productive fall/winter season, with more reading, writing, and more time with friends around coffee and cake. (And yes, I still can’t share my good news with you yet, soon though!)

Literary Kitten Charlotte with The Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay

Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay

Very happy to say I am honored to have an essay in Field Guide to Writing the Lyric Essay, with some powerhouses, like Diane Seuss, Brian Turner, Kimiko Hahn, and also some friends (who are also powerhouses), like Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Oliver de la Paz, and Julie Marie Wade. I am looking forward to reading all the essays because the form is very interesting to me, and I like the idea that writing essays can follow the body or breath as form, that it can be experimental or traditional, that it does some things that poetry cannot do. My essay is called “When Poetry Gets Mutated: Writing Lyric Essays, Haibun, and Other Hybrids.” (Gotta represent the mutants!) Each essay also has a prompt, so it lends itself to teaching as well as just personal education. Check it out from Rose Metal Press! Also shout-out to the editors, Lee Horikashi Roripaugh and Heidi Czerwiec.

Wishing you all a good Harvest Moon Week!

Happy Fall! And How Many Pumpkin Farms, Social Week, and Good News to Come!

Kitten with Pumpkins, McMurtrey’s

How Many Pumpkin Farms

Hello and Happy Fall, everyone! It’s almost the Fall Equinox and I am here for it. How many pumpkin farms can you visit in two days? How many is too many? I don’t think there is such a thing! In the last several days we visited Bob’s Corn and Pumpkin Farm in Snohomish (from which we brought home caramel apples and fresh corn as well as yes, a pumpkin—I also recommend the frozen apple slushies, though I didn’t get one this time around) and then went the opening day of JB Family Grower’s Pumpkin Farm and Puzzle Patch, down the street from our house, where the sunflower maze wasn’t quite in bloom yet, but the corn maze was very high and we also took home a few pumpkins.

Sunflowers and Blue sky

On Sunday, we visited with my little brother and went to McMurtrey Farm, where we visited with Jana and her farm kittens (there were two, but only one was camera-cooperative) and checked out the beautiful pumpkin displays under construction, and still gorgeous sunflowers and dahlias. It was a perfect bluebird day.

Then we came home for a roast duck dinner with veggie rice pilaf and new sweet corn from Bob and the caramel apple we saved (enormous perfect apple FYI). Pretty fun! It was even more fun walking around the pumpkin field when I got good news that I can’t share yet…

Find the kitten!

Social Week with Book Group and Poetry Group

I had just been talking to a friend about how our social habits changed during the pandemic, and how I was so much less social than I used to be. Well not this week! Besides visiting with my farmer friends at the various pumpkin farms, we also had our J Bookwalter Read Between the Wines book club, where we discussed Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars. People were really taken by it, and I noticed this time around (I hadn’t re-read in a little while) the huge Bowie connection in the poems and listened to the songs that were referenced. I was aware of Bowie as a kid, but I think I mostly remember a couple of his later songs, but of course my main crush was Prince, who wasn’t quite as interested in space. Then the next day we had our poetry group, which was wonderful as usual and we talked about submission opportunities and shared poems and Glenn’s gluten-free red pepper and goat cheese pizza, and pumpkin cheesecake, and I ate more than my share of Witch’s Finger grapes (another seasonal favorite!), and we’re even coordinating a pumpkin farm visit and maybe movie get-together. After being so sick back in 2016-17 and then the pandemic, this feels more like my life used to be. Did I mention I have updated my resume and will be job hunting as well?

Good News to Share…Soon

Do you hate when people in the writing world tease good news they can’t share? Me too. That’s why I’m definitely not saying that I got good news that I can share soon, and I have to say that after a period of discouragement with the poetry world, it’s nice to have a little good news in a while, right?

I’ve also been writing more poems and sending out more work. That’s September’s magic—unwrapping new pens, setting up new spreadsheets, a little more motivation to keep going, especially on the days when it’s in the sixties and sunny and the hummingbirds are still busy at the last burst of September blooms. Anyway, happy Equinox and Fall to you! I encourage you to take advantage of the nice weather when you have it, because there’s really nothing better than a day with sunshine and apple trees, not too hot, seeing friends and family. It’s a good time to jump start your writing, submitting, and socializing!

Submissions, September 11, Setbacks, and the DMV

Submissions, September 11th, and the DMV

Hello friends! I hope your week was productive and full of good moments. I usually love when September arrives, but this week has been challenging, because of a couple of injuries (throwing out a rib and spraining a toe (?) which who even knew you could do that?) I’m covered in medical tape now and been sternly told to rest.

Before the injuries I had a visit to the DMV for one of the updated driver’s licenses, which require more than a normal share of paperwork—I brought a passport, my birth certificate, my wedding certificate (because my legal name is not my birth name, ugh), several other documents, but didn’t have my tax return, a mortgage payment or a bill that proves I live where I live. Ridiculous? Absolutely. Did I have a panic attack and never want to return to the DMV again? That’s right. I updated my driver’s license without the new whatever proving I’m who I say I am, just a regular one, and left thinking about how some of our government’s forcing of security over freedom really impacts each of us in weird ways. Trump wants us to have to bring all those documents for women just to vote, FYI. Another reason to vote Republicans out in the midterms!

One of my injuries I got because I have been hiking around local farms, and I wore skimpy shoes to a big farm full of loose gravel in the rain, and that’s how I got hurt. Watch the loose wet gravel, kids! Otherwise you, like me, will spend four hours in an urgent care getting xrays because you can’t move your toes.

Submissions this September Have Been Frustrating…

If you, like me, have been saving up poems to send out in September when lit mags tend to open, albeit briefly (onto that in a second), you may have noticed a frustrating trend: the day the magazine opens for submissions, it hits its whatever cap on Submittable—and closes the same day. I spent two hours this week trying to submit but finding every place that advertised being open actually closed because of this “cap.” A terrible way to run a lit mag, and an institutionalized way of making writers feel powerless and worthless—and believe me, we already feel that way without lit mags charging $5 to reject us after six months if we are lucky enough to get in the three-hour window (East Coast time, of course). I almost gave up submitting poetry for good. I know I get discouraged with the poetry world, the lack of acclaim, money, respect, etc.—but this new hurdle is so rotten for any working person, caregiver, or West Coast person, honestly, I thought I needed to raise the issue.

The Negative Repercussions of September 11 on Our Country

This is a post that I put up on Facebook.

Next Week Will Be Brighter (Probably)

September Submissions with Stressful Intervals, Storms, and Late Summer Sights

Hot Air Balloon with trees

September Submissions with Stressful Intervals

Well, this week was exciting—and mostly not in a great way. My dad got sick with pneumonia and wound up in the ICU, we were so worried. He’s back home safe tonight, thank goodness. Then Friday, I meant to go to a Woodinville farm, cut some flowers, and go downtown to a poetry reading. Unfortunately, instead of any of that, Glenn and I got stuck in a bizarrely strong lightning and rainstorm and ended up having to go back home. (The one day the weather forecasters had said we wouldn’t have rain, we had the storm—the other days the weathermen swore would be wet were dry and sunny, so ?? Don’t trust Seattle weather!) Not as stressful as family being in the hospital, but still a bummer.

Orange rose

Late Summer Sights

The rest of the week was spent updating my resume (I’m tentatively looking for work again), writing poems, submitting poems (although not to Cincinnati Review or Prairie Schooner, which both closed in under a day, before I got in a submission, whew! Crazy! Submitting is an adventure sport these days.) Also, re-reading Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars for book club.

On the days without thunderstorms, Glenn and I spend time at the Chateau Ste Michelle rose garden, getting corn and apples at Bob’s Corn and Pumpkin Farm, and cutting flowers and cuddling farm kittens at McMurtrey Farm. Late summer all around—hot air balloons going up and down, hummingbirds at the final blooms of summer flowers, and earlier sunsets.

Tomorrow we’ll have my little brother and my nephew over for a barbeque, rain or shine (as long as there’s no lightning), and we’ll grill some of that new farm corn from Bob’s. The last days of sunshine and temperatures in the seventies may be nigh. I do love the fall here, however brief and unpredictable—when the sky is blue and the air is a little bit chilly. Wishing you all a happy and safe holiday weekend.

Lunar Eclipses, Losing Dolly, and Welcoming September

Cell phone photo of this week’s lunar eclipse

Lunar Eclipses and Energy Shifts

So this week was a lunar eclipse, which can always bring about weird shifts in energy—and this one was about letting things go. We went to the lavender garden and waited ’til sundown, then went around town trying to get a view that wasn’t blocked by clouds (space weather and Pacific Northwest weather are often at offs.) But we finally got about 45-minutes of visible eclipsing. It was a lovely night. I tried to spend time outdoors in fresh air this week, to keep the stress from lack of sleep and everything else in the world from rocking me too much.

I’m trying to take care of my health this week, have several appointments that I’ve been putting off, and I hope that this persistent insomnia is something that hopefully will be over soon. Yesterday, I woke up to the sound of rain, and it was cool enough to wear pants and a sweater last night! The change in weather definitely has a positive effect on my mood.

Sunflowers and Barn

Losing Dolly

This week was hard, too, because of the loss of Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and artist Yayoi Kusama. Dolly, in particular, who was such a role model for me as a young girl growing up in Tennessee—the way she dealt with snobbery about her accent and upbringing (I had a pretty severe Southern accent that brought on some merciless teasing when we moved to Ohio)—the way she gave so much to charities, from literacy to vaccines, and the way she supported things she loved, like being an invisible producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. How generous and gracious she was to others but also didn’t allow herself to be pushed around. Even gone, she will continue to be an inspiration.

Lunar eclipse, fancy camera

Welcoming September

September is almost here, and with it, submission season! (…and sweater weather, and pumpkin farms, and corn mazes, and earlier sunsets…) I’m trying to increase my time reading, writing, and yes, setting up my Excel spreadsheet for submissions. I’m trying to set realistic goals but also increase my focus. Things can be hazy in summer, but fall brings things into focus, I find. Just like that eclipse—clearing the air, losing the things that hold us back.

I was talking to a friend about thinking positively about his future—thinking not about your worries and anxieties, but about the good things you can envision, the hopes and dreams you maybe have been afraid to express. At this stage of life—it is hard sometimes to not worry about aging relatives, our own fragile bodies, paying bills, winding through terrible traffic—but it’s absolutely essential to keep the long view in mind—that we can’t control everything, we can’t dodge loss—but that maybe better days are ahead. That certain parts of our life WILL get easier. I am by nature an anxious person, so making myself believe this as I’m writing it is hard. Julia Roberts told a great story about Dolly, about their days filming Steel Magnolias, that Julia as a young actress was asking for water, complaining about the heat, about the length of the hours, and she asked Dolly, with your wig and your makeup, you must be uncomfortable—why aren’t you saying anything? And she said something to the effect of, when I was young, I asked to be rich and famous, so I am not going to complain about it now that I’m here.

A Practically Perfect Summer Day with Goldfinches and Dahlias, Sleepwrecked, and Writing as a Waiting Game

McMurtrey’s barn and orange dahlias

A Practically Perfect Summer Day with Goldfinches and Dahlias

Yesterday was the kind of Pacific Northwest Day people dream about—no smoke, 75°F, a light breeze. I decided to push my MS-tired self to go visit a couple of places so I could soak up the outdoors—the first was McMurtrey Farm, to gather a bouquet of dahlias and zinnias, cuddle farm kittens, get gardening inspiration, and listen to the finches singing in the sunflowers. Then our Lavender Farm (next weekend is the last of this season) and spent some time watching the sunset from the lavender field. Sunset now is earlier—closer to eight than nine—than it was just a couple of weeks ago. Anyway, a dreamy day to get some Vitamin D without wildfire smoke or too-high temperatures driving us indoors. Sunday was a little cooler and cloudier, but we still made an outing to another farm (this time, Bob’s Corn and Pumpkin Farm) to pick up some necessities and check out how the pumpkin and sunflowers were doing.

Glenn and I at JB’s Lavender Farm

Sleepwrecked!

Ironically for someone who has been walking in lavender fields, I have had terrible times recently trying to sleep. And when I mentioned this to a couple of friends, they also talked about having terrible sleep. Every health article in the world tells people with health issues like MS (and women over a certain age) to get enough sleep, but if you are already following the rules and sleep is just not happening, what do you do? I should say I follow all the sleep hygiene rules already, and have tried melatonin and Benadryl, and even prescriptions like Ambien and Gabapentin and nothing has helped. (And I was fired by the UW sleep study director because I tear off everything that traces sleep, multiple tests in a row.) So, if any of you have any advice, drop it in the comments! I’m hoping as the weather gets cooler and the sun sets earlier (two days in a row in the seventies, yay!), maybe it will just happen naturally? I’ve added the Calm app and the Finch app (which was supposed to be for the husband’s ADHD, but I ended up using it more than he did) and all the sleep stories and breathing exercises…again, did nothing. So, if you meet me and I’m less than coherent and have bags under my eyes, now you know.

Glenn and I at Bob’s with red tractor

The Waiting Game and Gearing Up for Fall

How much of writing and submitting are just…waiting? Far too much. I write a lot, way more than I publish, and I submit I would say a fair amount (like between a couple and a dozen submissions per month, I’d say). I’m right now trying to find a place that will publish my next book as well as individual poems. But how powerless are writers like me? Unless you’re one of the chosen (ie, you’re friends with the editor of Paris Review, or got an NEA grant when they still existed, or a supergenius grant, etc,) you’re playing a waiting game. Sending out your work, then waiting sometimes over a year for a rejection.

Female goldfinch and sunflower

Sometimes the name of the game is empowering yourself by staying proactive in sending out your work or distracting yourself with other hobbies or work. Distraction isn’t a bad idea if you’re worrying about your work and writing something else—an essay or short fiction if you’re a poet or sketching a local scene or taking photos—something else creative—is a good way to help. And sometimes talking to other writers and encouraging them (or listening to their worries) is helpful too.

A Zoo Visit, Flower Farms, and How to Have Optimism in Hard Times (for Us, and for the Arts)

McMurtrey’s Flowers with late sun

Flower Farms and August Slips Away

It’s the time when every day that’s not too hot and too smoke-filled has to be celebrated before, in Taylor Swift’s immortal words, it “slips away like a bottle of wine.” So we took a trip to our local u-pic flower farm, McMurtrey’s, and gathered a big bouquet of sunflower, dahlias, and zinnias, and a trip to the zoo, among other things. Tonight we’re going back to Bob’s Corn and Pumpkin Farm. I’ve gotten overheated and probably breathed too much smoke in the process for an asthmatic, but it just feels like we need to get out while we can.

Lion cub and dozing mother at Woodland Park Zoo

Zoo Visit to Woodland Park Zoo

Our first visit to the Woodland Park Zoo in some time, and there were a lot of changes! There is now a raised walkway through a forest-dwelling center, with bigger enclosures for the red panda and a new red tree kangaroo. There’s a new Pallas Cat, which did not appear, two new lion cubs, a baby giraffe, and not new but seasonal, the butterfly house. So, we spent more time than usual and really had a good time. I’m a little jealous of the Cincinnati Zoo, which just got a new fennec fox baby.

Glenn and I in the Zoo’s rose garden, pink roses

How to Have Optimism in Hard Times (for Ourselves and the Arts)

I had the privilege of spending time this week with a couple of younger poets, and one of the subjects was the feelings of despair and anxiety these times have brought on, for ourselves as women and individuals, for America, specifically for the arts in America and the environment. I was born in a pessimistic decade, when the economy, the music, the fashion, the President—basically everything sucked. (The brown and orange polyester alone gives me PSTD.) When I was born, people were standing in line at gas stations. Stagflation had arrived, with its high unemployment. We were just getting out of an unpopular war. The year I was born, Roe v. Wade was decided, and with it, a sigh of relief for women’s rights. Flash forward to now—gas is crazy expensive, interest rates are up, Roe v. Wade was repealed leaving women having miscarriages to be imprisoned (depending on your state’s level of crazy), jobs are getting harder to find (especially ones NOT training AI to replace humans), our President sucks, and the music and fashion are okay but remind me vaguely of the more optimistic decade, the nineties. As someone who has experienced more than five decades, I will say that this will not last forever, and though it feels like the end times now, things can get better.

Not without everyone’s help, of course. People need to take the lead in voicing courage, support of women, the arts, and the environment, creating new jobs and demanding better support for science and medicine. We can vote and use our dollars not to support billionaires (ahem, Bezos and Musk) or corrupt politicians. We can also use hope as a weapon—to envision a better future is an act of rebellion against what currently is. It’s what science fiction writers like Octavia Butler dared to do decades ago—the Parable of the Sower, for instance, imagined a world that empowered empathy, love of nature, and cooperation. We can memorize poems, buy books and art, patronize museums and libraries, refuse to give in to the people that say National Parks, Poetry, and Art are worthless (the current administration, for instance). Did you know America spends the least on the arts per capita compared to the rest of the world? Here’s the breakdown:

Federal, state, and local governments in the U.S. combine to spend roughly $7 per capita annually on the arts, compared to $47 in Japan, over $50 in China and Australia, and upwards of $218 to $246+ per person across the United Kingdom and Western/Northern Europe.” (latentviews.substack.com)

When governments spend more on the arts, not only do artists benefit, but the community, and it actually creates jobs! (Check out Ireland’s experiment giving money to artists in the last few years.) We need to not just ask for, but demand better of our local, state and federal governments on protecting air and water, the rights of women and children and immigrants, the support for scientific study and the arts. We need to get louder about this, not give up. Because things can change rapidly. Hope can start out of small local attention and grow. I’m not giving up, and I’m still working in perhaps the most American-despised art form, the poem. I still plant flowers and trees, and donate to causes that protect animals, trees, women, and yes, poetry. I’m not making much money but even a small amount counts. Not becoming paralyzed by fear and anxiety—which is what oppressive governments and billionaires would like for us, in order to continue doing evil on the planet—is imperative. 

Anyway, September, a month of new beginnings, is almost here. I have felt an almost unreasonable optimism ever since the day of the solar eclipse (solar weather absolutely has an impact on my mental health, what about yours?) What can you hope for that feels almost unreasonable—a better relationship, a better job, better health, more safety and joy for you and your loved ones? Maybe there are small steps right in front of you that will lead to a better future. I’m just one woman (an over-fifty, disabled one at that) but I do feel like better times are ahead, as long as we take action and don’t give up. There’s a Buffy quote I love: Anya (as the vengeance demon Anyanka) says, “You trusting fool! How do you know the other world is any better than this?” Rupert Giles replies, “Because it has to be.” My other favorite quote is, in the time of pagers, “If the apocalypse comes, beep me!”

Anyway, envisioning the world you want isn’t just the mantra of phonies trying to sell you phony manifestations—it is really a first step in making the world into what you want. Hope is powerful, even more powerful than hate.

Escaping Heat Waves and Wildfire Smoke, Local Farms in Bloom, And Backyard Wildlife: deer, butterflies, birds

Me with farm kitten and dahlias @ McMurtrey’s

Escaping Heat Waves and Wildfire Smoke with Local Farms in Bloom

Well, I nearly went nuts trapped inside all week, with ninety degree temperatures and AQIs above 150. (Meanwhile, so many news updates from friends over the mountains who were having to evacuate, how hard the fires have been to contain, discussions of how this is our new normal, etc.)

But finally the smoke started to blow out on Saturday evening, and I just couldn’t wait to get out and explore! Our first stop was the newly opened McMurtrey Farm, where I got to cuddle a new farm kitten, cut some dahlias and sunflowers, and visit with the owner’s lovely family. There was still some haze even Saturday late afternoon, but it was so good to be outside again. We also went up to Bob’s Corn and Pumpkin Farm, which just re-opened to get fresh corn and pickles and kettle corn (a must for the season!)

Hot Air Balloon

Backyard Wildlife: Deer, Butterflies, Birds and Web Site Woes

Some things that we get used to in summer have returned with the good air, too: hot air balloons, local deer, and more birds. I did have some downtime during the heat and smoke to write, send out some work, and catch up on movies I hadn’t seen yet, like Supergirl and the Mandalorian movies. (For the record, I enjoyed both, but can’t say I thought they were…good? Maybe it was me being in a bad and MS-aggravated mood, but The Mandalorian and Grogu would have been better has a new season of the show, and Supergirl seemed bogged down and less fun that it should have been.) I got good news from some acceptances and bad news from some particularly disappointing rejections. But I always feel very lucky to have my garden and birds and deer—the Black-Headed Grosbeaks are going to be leaving soon and the goldfinches will be losing their color.

Is late summer a very productive time for you? For me it is a time to finish all the things I meant to do during the summer while the weather allows—like walking along Lake Washington, or going to the zoo or one of the gardens and farms I love. My intellect doesn’t work as well in the summer.I wrote a little bit while trapped in the house, but not as much as I feel I should have? There’s always this feeling of missed opportunities towards August, and also anticipating the increased work load of September.

I did also have to change web hosts this week after multiple expensive and frustrating years with HostGator, and a complete failure of this site, we switched to SiteGround, which so far has been pretty good. If there are glitches in the web site, forgive us, it’s just me and Glenn trying to fix things that have been wrong with the site for years—broken links and web mechanisms like plugins that were clunky. If you note anything, please leave a comment.

Can you believe it’s already the middle of August? I mentioned this in my last post, that though a lot of Seattle-ites lament the end of summer, I am always ready for the fall to begin. Are you ready?