Post Holiday Plans

Hope you all had a wonderful holiday, that Santa brought you everything you wanted, and that you all ready to ring in 2012, which I am thinking of, surprisingly, not as an apocalyptic year, but a year of positive changes. I hope. You know, less asteroids, more realizing our potential and stuff.

We still haven’t taken down our Christmas decorations. We’re actually trying to extend Christmas this year, making a long holiday out of it – yesterday I went to a coffee shop downtown (the oldest one in Seattle – Cafe Allegro, which is a super cute find near the U of Washington, in case you’re looking for a good coffee shop in the area) to meet two out-of-town friends for back-to-back post-Christmas coffee dates. The barista asked me if it was my birthday, because he said people kept coming in with presents for me! Ha! Anyway, I had a wonderful time catching up with these friends, and reminding me again how important it is to spend time with the people you care about – it’s tremendously encouraging!

And as far as poetry news: If you’re at all interested in the Japanese form of haibun, go check out Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s excellent article on Poets.org:
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/22712
and here’s the whole haibun from me that she refers to in the article: http://haibuntoday.blogspot.com/2008/04/jeannine-hall-gailey-rescuing-seiryu.html

So what are your plans for 2012? Explosions and Atwood-style dystopia? Or a future so bright…?

Christmas Celebrations with Friends

I believe I have mentioned this is my Christmas of celebrating friends. Tuesday night I went down to the beautifully decorated Sorrento Hotel to see Kelli and enjoy the holiday atmosphere at the lovely fireside bar, where some lovely people were waiting in line to catch one of the comfy couches or tables and get a bite to eat and a cocktail. Friendly Seattleites? Yes! Especially when the sun shines so much during December. We had about three people offer to take our picture for us. Here is one of the results by the Sorrento’s Christmas tree!

Tonight my artist friend Michaela is coming over for dinner, so we’re really excited – Glenn is making osso bucco (which we decided after Thanksgiving will be our official holiday dinner dish!) I just really appreciate having wonderful friends to visit with. Feeling grateful grateful grateful! And hopefully I will squeeze in two more visits with farther-away friends before the end of the year.

And check this out: a lovely poem by Mary Agner about Ada Lovelace, dedicated to me! And it starts out with a robot scientist’s daughter! Love love love – here it is up at Stone Telling: Lovelace Noctures

Our presents have all arrived safely with our families in Ohio and Tennessee, thankfully, so I can stop worrying. Now we just have to rest and relax (and me, try to get over this pleurisy! Six weeks they said it can take! Stupid lung lining inflammations!) – well, I have to write a little on a new project I’m working on and do some editing for Eye to the Telescope, but mostly rest and relax. There is sun outside today – reminding us of longer days ahead – and something that smells delicious baking in the kitchen…Lots of things for me to be grateful for! So Merry Christmas so all who celebrate, also Merry Solstice, and Merry Chanukah! Merry days of cookies and television specials to all!

Grateful Holidays, Lit Mag considerations, doors opening…

This year, I am celebrating my holidays in Seattle, far away from my family, but happily, close to many of my friends, and I’m excited about squeezing in dinner and coffee dates, as many as possible, around Christmas. I am feeling unbelievably grateful for my wonderful, eccentric group of friends.

I don’t want to say too much about anything specific yet, but I have the feeling lately that after a few years of banging hard on doors and not getting anything but bruised knuckles, that when I knock on doors these days they’re sort of…opening on their own. Maybe it’s just foolish end-of-year optimism…or maybe my luck (writing-wise anyway) is changing…

My new e-reader has been a bunch of fun to play around with, but I’m hoping that more lit mags will get on the e-reader bandwagon – wouldn’t it be great to be able to travel with new issues of your favorite lit mags on your Kindle or Nook? The lit mag really would lend itself to this kind of reading, with a bit of poetry or fiction or essay on the go. I can’t see reading a great many novels on the e-reader – still prefer paper books for that – but research and reading bits and pieces of things works fantastically on the Kindle Fire. Are many literary magazine editors considering creating maybe slightly cheaper versions of their magazines for e-readers? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks to Jessica Goodfellow for nominating this little blog for a Liebster award, which I am also grateful for! All the blogs she nominated I follow and and admire, actually!

Unexpected Enthusiasm Edition: The Kindle Fire

Surprise! I love my e-reader!
Yesterday, I had a rheumatology appointment. It took three and a half hours for me to get in and out of that dreary, constantly-under-construction UW medical building. Yes, if you want to suck the will to live out of a person, I’m afraid the hospital environment does a great job!
But, knowing I was going to be trapped in a waiting room for hours, I unwrapped an early Christmas present from my parents: The Kindle Fire. I knew there were going to be practical advantages to having an e-reader, though I’m a born-and-bred book lover (my grandmother and I recently bonded over our mutual unwillingness to get rid of old books.) But what I didn’t expect?
How much I’d love it!
The picture quality is beautiful. I tried streaming a couple of things, including the classic movie “Christmas in Connecticut” (Another unexpected Christmas movie that’s a sharp critique of the expectations of working women to be both domestic goddess and shrewd moneymaker) – and it looked better – better – than my television. The sound quality was better than my laptop’s speaker system. And Glenn downloaded the Kindle version of She Returns to the Floating World – and it looked exactly right! Line breaks preserved, everything. The only downside was that with the Kindle version, you don’t get to see the full impact of the beautiful color cover of Rene Lynch’s art work (it’s there, but smaller, and in black and white.) Still, it was much better than I had expected after all the hullaballoo about how troublesome poetry was on e-readers. And definitely I’m giving credit to the Kitsune Books editors (thanks guys) for taking their time and doing it right with the e-reader conversion – a troublesome, time-consuming process. Now, I’m really looking forward to reading this anthology on my new toy!
The screen was easy to read. The only thing I’m finding difficult is getting the much-discussed free access to many classic works (I haven’t figured out where to find those yet, and Amazon – for some unknown reason – doesn’t make it easy to access free content.)
There’s also a way to access your music on the “cloud,” which I haven’t done yet, and since the Fire is color, it might be a good way to read magazines as well – I haven’t tried it yet. You can stream free content if you sign up for Amazon Prime, I believe – some television, some movies, some books and music – but you can’t download it for non-wi-fi times.
Anyway, as someone who loves book and hated – HATED – learning to use her smart phone (which I’m still in the process of doing, if you want to know the truth) – the Kindle Fire is easy to use, beautiful, and just plain exciting for anyone who travels a lot (or is stuck in waiting rooms a lot.)
And don’t be afraid to read poetry on it! The screen even flips so you can read long lines. I’m excited to be able to bring more poetry with me wherever I go!

A Kirkland Reading and a Holiday Special!

Jeannine Hall Gailey and Joannie Stangeland Read at Kirkland’s Park Place Books
Wednesday December 14 at 7 PM

I’m kind of nervous about this reading with Joannie Stangeland tomorrow night at Kirkland’s Park Place Books, partially because it’s the holidays and maybe everyone is too busy to show up at a poetry reading and also because the East side’s readings are sometimes less well-attended than downtown Seattle readings…but Joannie is a doll and a really fun reader with a brand new book and if you haven’t seen me read from She Returns to the Floating World yet, you should come out!

And, for all your holiday gift-giving needs (and, note the previous post on poetry economics!):

Super special! Get my first book, Becoming the Villainess, and my second book, She Returns to the Floating World, both signed to the person of your choice, for only $21!! I’ll include some special holiday swag too!

And if you pick up a copy of my new book, She Returns to the Floating World, for the full price of $12 (including shipping right now during the holidays,) not only will you get the cool swag and signature, you will also get this cool new magnet thing (some may differ slightly from this one, but will include some part of the book cover) that my husband Glenn has made:

Send an e-mail to me at jeannine dot gailey at live dot com to take advantage of either offer! Only available through December. I take Paypal and checks! 🙂 Support your local poets!