Anniversaries, Big Birthdays, Birds and Upcoming Readings and a Class on Speculative Poetry!

Glenn and I with lavender at Lauren Ashton Cellars

27th Anniversary and Glenn’s 50th Birthday

So this was a week of celebrations, low-key. Our 27th anniversary we celebrated by listening to music from 1994, the year we got married (Nirvana! Soundgarden! TLC! Tori Amos! Veruca Salt!), dressed up and visited a bunch of local wineries where lavender, roses, trumpet vine and lilies were in bloom, and did a little garden shopping.

Glenn got me chocolates, flowers, and a new eternity ring (rose gold with pink sapphires – so what I would pick for a wedding ring now instead of when I was 21! I was so traditional back then, plus jewelry was boring in the 90s.) I tried to dye Glenn’s hair dark blue, and it came out lavender, and got him a rare orchid. Well, we tried to have a punk rock anniversary, anyway. The couple that dyes together stays together!

Next up is Glenn’s 50th birthday, which we’re celebrating with my little brother and his wife, decorating with all-black decor, and making Blackout Brownies for Glenn’s cake. Glenn doesn’t like to be the center of attention and is a huge introvert, so having any kind of celebration is a big deal. We’ll try to make sure he relaxes a little and at least tries to enjoy his big day.

Swallowtail on purple phlox

Birds and Butterflies This Week: Bushtits, Swallowtails and Hummingbird Showers

This week, I got quite a show – a swallowtail butterfly who visited my phlox, hummingbirds enjoying my new solar fountain, and bushtit action shots (which sounds dirty, but is really cute.) We are lucky that this week hasn’t been too hot, but we’re in an official drought and there’s fire danger already, they’re saying. I’m ready for some of that famous Seattle rain now!

So we put out an extra birdbath with a solar fountain to provide extra water for our hummingbird population, and they love it! I see at least one hummingbird a way splashing through it. Bushtits are an underappreciated but adorable bird, in my opinion, so here’s a picture of a bushtit in flight and a mother bushtit feeding its baby.

Upcoming Reading July 15 and a Fancy Speculative Poetry Class

First I’ll be doing a 15th anniversary reading at Soul Food Books with Annette Spaulding-Convy on July 15 at 7 PM Pacific. Can I believe it’s been 15 years! No! Annette Spaulding-Convy is one of the two editors at Two Sylvias Press and a great poet. Here’s the link for info and to get to the Zoom reading! 

I have an upcoming speculative poetry class at 2 PM Pacific July 25th – only $50 – that you can sign up for on eventbrite.

Here’s the description:

Here’s the link for tickets!  

A Poem “Divination” in the new issue of Shenandoah, Birds, Heat Waves and the Fourth, Good News and Gardening

Bald Eagle

Poem in the New Issue of Shenandoah

Happy to announce that I have a poem in the new Spring 2021 issue of Shenandoah, which also has work by friends and amazing writers like Lesley Wheeler, Ann Fisher-Worth, Erika Meitner, Anna Marie Hong and Lisa Russ Spahr. Here’s a link to the poem but read the whole issue, it’s great. I’m very thankful to be in such a dream magazine with so many great writers.

Here’s a sneak peek at my poem in the issue here:

from Shenandoah Spring 2021 issue

Birds and Heat Waves

It was a brutal week here last week, getting up to 110 degrees in our backyard, almost everyone, including birds and flowers, miserable. I tried to keep the bird watered and the garden watered and called and checked on friends without air conditioning, but it was stressful. The heat makes my MS worse, and I almost fell a couple of times out of nowhere, so that was scary. I have to remember to rest on hot days.

We’ve also got wildfires now in BC, Canada, and the smoke is lingering in the sky high overhead. Many places here cancelled their fireworks shows due to the dry and the heat, but some idiots will insist of lighting off their own fireworks and possibly starting fires. Fourth of July has never been my favorite holiday (smoke! loud noises! asthma attacks from the terrible air quality!) and now with the threat of fires, even less so. Oh well. We’ll hope for the best.

And in the meantime, some pictures of birds (and a Townsend chipmunk) that visited us this week, to cheer us all up. And I’ll post a picture of Glenn and I on the 4th with blue and red hair!

Glenn with blue hair, me with red, Happy 4th with roses and Lake Washington!

Happy 4th and A Bit of Good News

I was thinking about the way we think about good news, and the way we poets are always waiting for good news, and get a lot of rejections, and steel ourselves against disappointment, sometimes so much so that when we actually get this long-awaited good news, we underplay it, to keep ourselves from further disappointment. Isn’t it hard to celebrate? So much easier to expect the worse than to even dare to think about expecting the best possible thing? Is this a writer thing?

And here are some flowers from my garden, a little bit of Seattle in July. In the garden, I expect the deer to come and eat some flowers, and for unexpected plant illnesses to kill some of my favorite plants sometime. I just shrug and go ahead planting different plants and hoping for the best. Gardening is so optimistic – you plant some seeds, and you hope some of the seedlings survive and flower. I planted a bunch of poppy and sunflower seeds last year, and although the didn’t all come up, a lot of them survived and gave me flowers I didn’t have before. If you plant a tree in the wrong place, or with the wrong conditions, sometimes it dies. But if you fertilize, and water, and protect it from predators large and small, eventually, you will probably have a full-grown awe-inspiring tree. Trees make me happy. Flowers do too. Maybe the attitude I have towards gardening should also be the attitude I have towards my writing life.

My Interview with Kelli Agodon in Redactions, Some Scenes of Hummingbirds, Supermoons, and Mt Rainier, 100 plus Heat Wave

Sylvia with Redactions Issue 25

My Interview with Kelli Agodon in the new Issue of Redactions

Happy to have an interview I did for Redactions Issue 25 with poet, friend, and publisher Kelli Russell Agodon about her new book with Copper Canyon Press, Dialogues with Rising Tides, available online and in the new print issue. Here’s a quick quote:

“JHG: You have an interesting philosophy about the attitude of competition and scarcity in the poetry world. Could you talk a little about that?

KRA: I guess I do have an interesting philosophy in that regards – I believe in the poetry world, there is enough for everyone. I reject the scarcity mindset that the field is only big enough for so many of us and only so many can come to play. That’s nonsense, we can always use another poet. And we don’t have to feel threatened by them, that now there will be one less spot for me to publish my poems…Just because a poet doesn’t win a prize, doesn’t mean that their book isn’t changing someone else’s life this very moment or having a profound effect on someone. I have never believed success can be measured in art – people try to measure it based on American beliefs such as “this book is better because it 1) sold more copies 2) won a prize 3) was published by a certain press 4) was featured in a certain journal or magazine 5) got an excellent review 6) made the author earn X number of dollars” and so on. . . . Who said that was success? Who wrote that definition? That’s not my definition of success – my idea of success isn’t built from opinion and numbers.”

Here is a link to read it.

Strawberry Supermoon

Some Scenes of Hummingbirds, Supermoons, and Mount Rainier – and 100 Plus Heat Wave

We’re going to break some heat records in the days coming up, which means probably a lot of people sickened – as a city we’re only 44 percent air-conditioned, so getting up to 109 (!!) on Sunday and Monday is a bid deal here. Let me tell you the many reasons spring and fall are my favorite seasons…I saw as I try to save my flowers from the 102 degree heat today. Even the sunflowers think it’s too much sun!

Since this week has been hot, that means my MS acts up a little more than usual, and I spent more time than usual observing birds and flowers and staying up for the Strawberry Supermoon. I also got a beautiful shot of how clear Mt Rainier was one day. But I haven’t had the energy to do much besides water my garden and take photographs. I’m also anxiously checking my e-mail every night, hoping a note from a publisher will come through on one of the three manuscripts I’m submitting. Not very productive, either. Supermoons always interrupt my sleep and make me anxious. I don’t know why, even though they are beautiful.

A Port Townsend Visit, Happy Solstice, and Appreciating Things While the Sun Stands Still

Me with Discovery Bay garden

A Port Townsend Visit – Poet Friends, Eagles and Seals, and a Change in Perspective

One of my favorite places to visit in the Pacific Northwest is the little, haunted Victorian town of Port Townsend. I even lived there for a year once. Even though Woodinville is beautiful, every once in a while it’s nice to get away and get a change in perspective – and goodness knows after the year and a half we’ve had, we needed one. So we booked a cabin, packed up, and went during a couple of rainy/sunny days. (Rain/sun is the main kind of weather most of the year in Port Townsend.)

One of the wonderful things about Port Townsend is the ocean and the wildlife – so different from the woods and gardens of our home. We saw at least ten seals, several eagles, and tons of deer, including two little fawns. It was odd to go back and find some things changed – an old boat dock at Fort Warden that otters used to love to run across with their pups was torn down, to our dismay, and a roundabout in the road that was never there, plus some ugly development where there used to only be old growth forest. And an old-growth rose bower at Chetzemoka Park had been cut back almost to the root. We’ve only been absent a year or two, and yet…all these changes.

Red Rhododendrons with sunbeam

Another wonderful thing about Port Townsend is that besides offering beautiful views, fascinating flora and fauna, is that several of my friends (and soon, my little brother) live nearby. So I got to have a spontaneous afternoon coffee visit with poet friend Kelli Russell Agodon. We got to catch up on poetry news, then we hiked around a bit, birdwatched, and got rained on multiple times.

We talked about her latest book from Copper Canyon Press, we talked about my projects-in-progress, and generally I was reminded about the positive way that writer friends can help support our dreams and goals. After a year and a half of mostly staying in touch through phone calls, it is especially nice to be seeing people in person. It made me feel grateful.

Glenn and I with ocean overlook

Glenn and I got to visit our favorite spots – Chetzemoka Park, the lighthouse at Fort Warden. We walked on the beach, and were surrounded by walls of yellow lupines, which smelled like honey and salt. We explored around Discovery Bay – the place we stayed had a beautiful overlook among historic cabins. The only thing we skipped were indoor things – no shopping or restaurants this time around, just in case. Visiting Port Townsend was like visiting an old friend – observing things that had closed, or that were still open, or how an old madrone tree had finally disappeared after all the years of clinging to the cliffside. Here’s where Glenn met a coyote on his bike, or where I encountered a white deer. Little things. But it did allow us to appreciate how much the ocean, the trees, just the chorus of frogs so loud at night and birdsong so loud in the morning, can shift perspective. I am always happier when I am close to nature. I don’t have a body that supports most rugged individual sports, but it does allow me, even with MS and all my other nonsense, to get close to seals, and swallows, and deer, and look at the sky overhead, and laugh when it rains on me even when it’s sunny (yes, it’s happening in quite a few of the pictures here.)

Me at Chetzemoka State Park

Happy Solstice!

Well, we have a new holiday – Juneteenth – to celebrate, as well as the Solstice, and Father’s Day. I am so happy to have a President who actually agreed to make Juneteenth a holiday – can’t see that happening with the last guy – a holiday that’s long overdue. As we approach the longest day of the year, as the day lasts long into nighttime, I can appreciate the good things around me even though things aren’t perfect right now. Do I wish I had some things easier, like my health stuff or career stuff? Or that we hadn’t just gone through a year and a half of pandemic (that’s still not over in some parts of the world, or really even all the way here?) Of course. But with the flowers blooming, and feeling thankful for family and friends, and the beauty of the world around me, it’s easy to feel celebratory. Hopeful.

I don’t have all the answers. I’m two years away from fifty, and I’ll be celebrating my 27th year of marriage next month. I’m feeling the years, but also feeling grateful I’ve had so many of them. The sun appears to stop in the sky around the summer solstice, although we know it never really stands still, and neither do we. What does the future hold? Nothing stands still. We just have to stop and appreciate what’s beautiful and good around us, right this minute.

A Stormy Week, Both Weather and Health-Wise; a Few Literary Things to Look Forward To

Black-Headed Grosbeak

A Stormy Week, Weather and Health-Wise

It’s June, or as some on the West Coast say, June-uary, and we’ve had a bizarre week of low and high pressure systems, storms, sideways rain, hail, cold, and wind. On top of this, I had one of my rare migraines with aura that took me out for an entire “day in bed in darkness” followed by a few days of a stomach bug. Fun, right? So, the weather and my health have been equally gloom-inducing. But strangely I have not been feeling as down about my writing life…see below for a few reasons I have some cheer in that department.

Female black-headed grosbeak

So I have not gotten as much done as I was hoping, besides which, it’s not feeling very summery. On the other hand, lots of opportunity to photograph by birds when my headache wasn’t too bad, so I have pictures of Hairy Woodpecker mothers feeding their babies, all kinds of hummingbirds, and black-headed grosbeaks.

Me with sequins and typewriter. This is how I always dress to write!

A Few Literary Things to Look Forward To

But I do have a few literary things to look forward to. I’m working on a speculative poetry class I’ll be teaching online in July. I applied to Breadloaf for the first time since I was a young writer and I had just quit my job to try and be a real writer (but was too poor to afford to go), so I’m going to the all-virtual Breadloaf in August, which I’m pretty excited about – because having this event virtually allows someone like me, with disabilities and chronic illness, to attend. I’m an extrovert who can’t travel and go to as many literary things as she would like, so this is something exciting for me. Maybe conferences will start having a virtual component so those of us who can’t travel easily can still enjoy the cool opportunities, readings and classes – I mean, this year proved we could do it, right?

Then, I’m going to my first residency in a very long time on San Juan Island, one of my favorite places, in September for ten days, where I’m hoping to get to serious work on a new poetry manuscript. There will be foxes and otters and deer and seals and bioluminescent life forms right on the water to help me write, and maybe, if we’re lucky, dolphins and whales. I haven’t been to the San Juan islands in six years, even though it’s one of my favorite places to visit in the state, so I’m really looking forward to this (and crossing my fingers that my body is cooperating with me health-wise that week, and no wildfires.) I’m also feeling a bit more positive about finding a publisher for my book manuscripts. I’m thinking of starting a newsletter, too, pre-book, just to start up another way to outreach. Anyway, hope your June-uary is going as well as possible!