Field Guide Book Giveaway Winner, a Heck of a Week: Broken Teeth, Birds in Smoke, and Saying Goodbye to RBG, Poetry Reading Corner – Rewilding

During smoke a sign of hope – Painted Lady butterfly on dahlias

A Heck of a Week – Broken Teeth, Seattle Smoke, and Saying Goodbye to Ruth Bader Ginsburg

This has been a rough week for us – the Seattle smoke and bad air quality lasted until yesterday morning, and then yesterday was too cold and rainy to do much outside (although I tried.) I’m hoping to really get outside today and enjoy a little bit of fall and fresh air. The stress of being locked in a room for 12 days really took a toll for me.

This week was so stressful, among other things, I broke a tooth in my sleep. My regular dentist couldn’t get me in because three other patients had done the same thing that day. Hoping to get it fixed on Monday, but of course every dental trip brings anxiety because of Covid risk. I also tried to get in my Guggenheim application – it was a “distraction” (ha!) from the stress of not being able to breathe the air, and so, cross your fingers for me – I’m sure I’m a long shot. Big shouts of appreciation to the people that agreed to be recommenders! It’s a difficult application, and it had changed since last year, but at least I tried.

And then there was the loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the eve of Rosh Hoshana, a blow that I’ll admit brought a few tears. She’s been such a champion of women her whole life, and someone we could count on as an advocate on the Supreme Court. Who will we count on now? Too bad we can’t put Margaret Atwood on our Supreme Court. I also donated to some worthy causes in RBG’s honor. A good time to fight for what we believe in.

Field Guide to the End of the World cover – felt like real life this last week!

Later on in the blog I’ll post some pictures of birds in that continued to visit during our wildfire smoke, but here’s some good news…

Winner of Field Guide to the End of the World Book Giveaway

I did a random number generator on our comments from last week’s post to choose a winner, and the winner was commenter Amy Poague! Congrats, Amy!

Amy, contact me (jeannine dot gailey at live dot com) soon so I can send out the book! Hopefully it will make someone’s week a little brighter!

I’m happy to do these book giveaways during a stressful time when people need books and poetry more than ever. I’ll do another book giveaway at the beginning of October – probably a copy of She Returns to the Floating World, which seems like the most Halloween-appropriate book. By the way, if you want to get a copy of Field Guide to the End of the World yourself, since there are still distribution issues that make it appear “Out of stock” on Amazon, you can go here to order a signed copy directly from me. I’m signing with gloves and even use a UV light sanitizer on the book before I send out it out, so it should be totally safe!

Speaking of poetry reading…

Sylvia with Rewilding and “Fall Mood”

Reading Corner – January Gill O’Neil’s Rewilding

The enforced enclosure of the terrible smoke did result in one good thing – I got to catch up on my reading. Besides reading Joan Didion with my mom (this month: The Book of Common Prayer), I finally read the wonderful third book from January Gill O’Neil, Rewilding. (Pictured to the left: Sylvia loved my “fall mood” table so much that she came and put her paws directly on January’s book! She really does love to cuddle a poetry book!)

This book addresses the natural process of rewilding – what happens when we leave a field or a stream alone for a while – and the dissolving and building of bonds between family members during a divorce. January’s language is clear and straightforward, but lovely, in this collection that will move you and make you rethink your own search for your rewilding self.

And speaking of rewilding, did you think there would be a week with no bird pictures?

Birds (And One Butterfly) in Smoke Gallery

So, it’s sunrise here while I’m writing this, and I’m about to go out on my deck and enjoy the newly fresh air, even though it’s a bit chilly. I’ll leave this blog post with a gallery of pictures I took of birds during the Smoke Weeks. The Seattle Times did a story on how birds fared during the smoke and I wanted to give you the pictures from Woodinville during the wildfire smoke event. We kept our bird feeder, bird bath, and bird fountains full, and we had woodpeckers, jays, juncos and hummingbirds abundantly, but the finches and flickers only came back in the last couple of days with the rain.

Fire Season: September 2020

Sunrise, smoke

Fire Season: September 2020

I don’t usually do a mid-week post, but I thought I’d just let you know what’s happening in Washington State. Since Monday, we’ve had 500,000 acres burned across the state. (That’s more acres than usually catch on fire in WA in an entire year.)

Wildfires are in every direction, and the air quality started at about 150 Monday night and stayed that way all yesterday. Even running several air purifiers inside, the air quality is still a little troublesome, causing scratchy eyes and throat, a little cough. The news is full of people crying, evacuated from homes. Our firefighting force is stretched thin, fighting huge fires all across the state, many of whom having just come back from volunteering in California’s fires. The Oregon Coast, where you might think you could go to escape the fires, is on fire. It’s just wildfires in every direction, along with dangerous heat and high wind.

Monday, the day this started, I spent two hours outside, gardening, reading. Air quality was fine. When it got to be almost dark, Glenn and I looked at a black and red cloud on the horizon, and knew the smoke was coming for us. This picture was the sunrise on Tuesday, when it came up and the sky was red.

Smoke Map, early Tuesday, West Coast

I have read many of my friends all along the West Coast being evacuated, and we are preparing a bag just in case, ourselves. The smoke, for now, is enough of a hazard – and they’re saying our hazardous air conditions will not go away until next Monday. That’s a full week of me not being able to go outside at all due to my asthma and lung scarring. Still, it’s much worse for the firefighters, who are working in the worst possible circumstances.

Also, WA State emergency systems has the nerve to suggest we use “N95” masks if you go outside. Where are we supposed to get those, since you outlawed us buying them for the last six months? Are we supposed to knock over a hospital? Come out, please give us actual advice we can use, people!

So, think good thoughts for your friends along the West Coast, the firefighters here in terrible conditions, and I guess hoping to find some N95 masks…

I wrote an apocalypse book and published it in 2016. (Which Amazon is having trouble delivering right now, so if you want a copy, click on “signed copy” and I’ll send one to you!) Turns out I was just a couple of years early..

Adventures During a Plague Year: A Full Corn Moon, First Trip to a Store (with Miyazaki), and First Visit with Family (and Unicorn)

Full Corn Moon, with Woodinville Trees

Adventures During a Plague Year: Full Corn Moon

This week, as I continue to feel better, was full of firsts “since February.” If you know me, you know I have an immune deficiency and I’ve basically been isolating since February. This week took me outside of my house, and empty outdoor areas, to a visit a gardening store (mostly outdoor, and practically empty, with all employees wearing masks correctly and social distancing) and a visit with my little brother and his wife in our front yard (also with masks and social distancing). These things felt so odd and awkward, and exhilarating. A little piece of normalcy returning in a town where we are still mostly not normal, not yet. Stores close early; salons and restaurants only hold a certain capacity; school, at least in my county, is all virtual for now.

The moon the last few nights has risen orange and spooky, veiled by cloud, still bright enough to make quite an entrance. Full moons can seem to presage some kind of change. I’m hoping these changes will be for the better. I don’t know about you, but like the moon, I’ve felt veiled with a heavy layer of foreboding and depression. The news is full of horrors, including wildfires in Washington and California; I’m worried about the election, too. It’s hard to see the light.

Me Feeling Better, Looking forward to Fall

Firsts Since February – a Trip to a Store, and a Visit with Family

Our local gardening store, Molbaks, which is largely outdoors (but also has an indoor component) seemed like a good first experiment for a foray into the so-called “outside world.” The last time I’d been there in February they had very little stock in, so I couldn’t build the garden I wanted this year. I picked up some herbs I’d been missing, some mums and pansies to give the garden some color after our sunflowers and dahlias finally fade, and a Halloween mask (in case we are able to celebrate Halloween? At least virtually?) It felt a little bit like a zombie video game, zig-zagging to avoid the store sparsely dotted with employees and shoppers, with signs posting “stay six feet apart from other shoppers” between the seasonal displays. Everyone was required to wear masks, which made me feel a little safer. To make me feel a little more invincible, I wore some Miyazaki-related clothing – a Totoro-themed sundress, Totoro shirt, and Totoro mask (Glenn has a Catbus one.) I wonder how much Totoro is too much? Here I am posing at home (pre-mask) and at Molbaks (with mask). Here are orange dahlias, growing outside the shop. Don’t they make you feel fall-ish?

Today we had my little brother Mike and his wife Loree over for a little rosé and skewers (all finger food, for safety, and plastic champagne glasses) and we introduced the inflatable unicorn rainbow sprinkler again. It was great to see their faces (and my little brother’s pandemic beard) but it was sad not to be able to hug them. We sat about twenty feet apart for most of the visit, to be safe. Is this “the new normal?” It seems so strange. Masks, hand sanitizer, outdoor furniture arranged just so – not things we’re used to yet – well, this was our first socializing in a long time! But the visit was definitely a bright spot in our long weekend. I took the most pictures, so I didn’t appear in that many of them, but I have fun taking pictures (masked and from a distance, of course), so it’s all good. It was a perfect day, not too hot, and so great to catch up. But the smoke from the fires is starting to creep into our area – by the evening, you could almost see it hanging in the air. Check out the moon tonight compared to the picture at the top, from three days ago.

Pileated Woodpecker Perched a Planter

I have to admit these modest adventures – which felt risky to me, but rewarding – did lift my spirits. The week ahead promises to bring record-breaking heat (in the nineties) and more smoke, so I’ll probably be acting more Emily Dickinson-y than daredevil-y for the rest of the week, a good time to write and send out work, and spend time with my cats and my birds instead of humans. Here’s one of my regular visitors – a pileated woodpecker. This week I saw a V of snow geese migrating overhead, always a beautiful sight (if a bit cacophonous). The hummingbirds were persistently hanging around us this afternoon, fluttering in front of us and zipping from flower to tree branch. It was like they wanted to socialize too!

I hope you all stay safe and find some joy in your week. I’m going to sleep after watching a little bit of the Last Unicorn on cable, which seemed appropriate viewing.

Winner of the PR for Poets Giveaway, The Light in August with Otters and Unicorns, and Looking Forward to Fall (and Working While Ill)

Sylvia posing with PR for Poets

Winner of the PR for Poets Giveaway!

Congratulations to Jan Priddy, who won last week’s giveaway of my book, PR for Poets! I’ll be sending it out really soon. Thanks to everyone who entered!

I’ll wait to do another giveaway til the first week of September, when it will be Field Guide to the End of the World.

A bouquet of dahlias from my garden

The Light in August

Both metaphorical and spiritual. As September approaches, the days here get shorter, but the light between 6 and 7 PM is so beautiful and golden. As I continue healing, I find my spirit lightening as well. My husband made a concerted effort to try to cheer me up this week – as you’ll see in pictures, this included a visit to Lake Washington where we got an up-close visit with otters, and an inflatable unicorn sprinkler. It may seem silly, but sometimes in the darkest days we need to make an effort to embrace the light.

For me, being out in nature, flowers, wild animals and even inflatable unicorn rainbow sprinklers can be part of healing the inside as well as the outside. After all, life can’t be all doctor visits and medication schedules. You have to remind yourself of why you bother fighting by doing things that remind you of the joy of living, the beauty of the world. (The ugliness of the world is easy to see – but the beauty often takes a little more searching.)

Sunflowers in late August light

Looking Forward to Fall – and Working While Ill

As we turn towards September, it feels like my energy for writing (and sending out work) is increasing. I’m feeling more hopeful about my manuscripts too, which I worked very hard on editing during the summer, along with writing new poems. Do you find the fall is linked in your mind to increased productivity and happiness, even with the pandemic? Summer is definitely not my season – I’m allergic to the sun, and MS makes you sensitive to heat – and anyway my personality definitely tends towards the “wrapped in a sweater, reading by the fire with a cup of tea” rather than “beach bunny” type.

I know some of my friends who are parents are struggling with having kids at home while working full time, and friends who are teachers and professors being forced to be in the classroom, which brings risk and more stress than usual. How are you adjusting to the coming fall?

Pileated Woodpecker takes flight

I thought I’d write a little bit about working while ill. Chadwick Boseman’s death – may he rest in peace, such a talented, beautiful actor –  came as a surprise to many, even though he had been fighting colon cancer for four years – almost all the time playing starring roles in major movies. Chadwick was the same age as my little brother – way too young – and by all accounts was a sweet, kind, upbeat guy – as well as a terrific actor who didn’t get enough time to showcase all of his talents. It seems unfair. I saw a lot of people raising the issue that he didn’t make his cancer struggle public – though he often engaged with children with cancer in charitable ways. But working in Hollywood while ill is a fraught issue – studios might not want to cast you, insurance companies might not be willing to insure you while filming and getting health insurance means you have to keep working. (Actresses like Selma Blair have discussed this in terms of going public with MS, as well.) I think also there’s a psychological aspect. If you admit you are fighting cancer, it becomes more real to you, and people will keep bringing it up in interviews or even strangers on the street will probably address you about it. Maybe he wanted to focus on the positive, and not be constantly reminded of his cancer. I can understand why he kept it private, for professional and personal reasons. His work, his radiant spirit, will live on his movies, not just the iconic Black Panther’s King T’Challa but also icons like Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall and James Brown. (He also was pretty great on his stint as a host on SNL.)  Director Nora Ephron also kept her cancer a secret even from her family almost right up until her death, even while working on her last film, Julie and Julia, probably for similar reasons.

I hope people will respect these kinds of decisions, among ill and disabled people in regular life as well as Hollywood – because even though I talk here about working while disabled and chronically ill, I’m not a celebrity and my work as a freelance writer really isn’t impacted that much by whether I am sick or not. Also, I’m the kind of person who feels better venting, and when I was dealing with my own disease journey (including being diagnosed with terminal cancer a few years ago, gearing up for chemo, getting multiple oncologists’s appointments, getting radiated) – I felt okay reaching out to friends and family for support, even though some of them weren’t all that supportive (some people feel cancer is maybe contagious, or maybe talking to you might remind them of their own mortality – and while those friends’ and family’s reactions were disappointing to me, they weren’t the end of the world). That’s the way I deal with most of my problems, but other people’s decisions on how to deal with theirs are equally valid, and I hope you will try not to judge them if they don’t disclose their health struggles with you. I hope for a future where being disabled or ill would not result in discrimination at work or in personal relationships, but that future, sadly, is not here yet.

Roses in August light

That was a somewhat somber way to end a blog post about embracing the light and otter encounters. Doesn’t it seem like every bit of light these days has a little shadow cast over it – whether by the pandemic, politics, or personal losses? We do not get to choose to live without loss, stress, difficulty. But I hope we can look to Chadwick – who reached out to others to improve their lives while confronting his own mortality at such a young age – as not just a positive icon in his role as Black Panther, but a person who embraced the little joys of life, and cared deeply about others, to inspire us to help bring joy to others, and to appreciate the little joys along the way, despite our struggles. Also, this is a reminder that if someone you know seems tired, loses or gains weight, or even if they seem completely fine, they may be dealing with something hard that they have chosen not to make public. It is a reminder to be kind, to cut people some extra slack, because we never know someone else’s true story.

Onward, towards September! Remember that one of Boseman’s last tweets of a picture of him hugging Kamala Harris, and urging us to vote this fall. Write. Vote. Plant a tree, or a bunch of trees. Leave flowers for a friend. Try to change the world, a little bit at a time, to be a little bit better.