Zoo Visit with Dinosaurs and Red Pandas, Speculative Poetry – Practice and Teaching, and The Importance of Fun for Your Health

Allosaurus, very scary

Zoo Visit with Dinosaurs and Red Pandas

Let me just say two things: I freaking love zoos and I love dinosaurs. If you know anything about me, you should know that these qualities imbue my writing and thinking.  I took a college course during my three-year biology pre-med degree on how to be a zookeeper (a real investment) and seriously considered it as a career (til I found out the starting salary was $24K a year and a zookeeper lost her arm to a polar bear that year.) And I’ve been obsessed with dinosaurs since I was a kid. I love paleontology and also briefly considered studying ancient botany. And growing up around robots, I am frankly in awe of walking, talking dinosaur robots (better known as animatronic dinosaurs.)

So a visit to Woodland Park Zoo was just what I needed after a week of strange insomnia and high anxiety (days with only one or two hours of sleep in a row, which almost felt like no sleep.) Hell yes, I paid extra for the “Dinosaur Experience” and then hung around the red panda cubs (mostly grown now) that I visited in November. It was wonderful to be outside on a serene cloudy day, with so many happy children (kids love dinosaurs, which they definitely should) and I came home, had dinner and slept blissfully for six straight hours. Doing what you love is absolutely good for sleep. And good for your writing. I hadn’t submitted any poems this month, but the day after my visit I submitted to two places.

Glenn with T-Rex model head

Dinosaurs and Red Pandas Are Good for You

Okay, I may not be able to prove that a visit to to a local zoo with animatronic robots will fix your insomnia and boost your will to live. But just look at those pictures of baby dinosaurs and try not to feel joy!

But I stopped to look at a few actual real animals too – herons and penguins, my red panda twins, a sleeping snow leopard. This was one of my few planned outings to public places – I’m still being fairly conservative with my coronavirus risks, but I felt this one was fairly low risk and worth it.

Speculative Poetry – Teaching and Practicing

Fox statue, Woodland Park Zoo

In preparing for today’s Speculative Poetry Class, I learned some things – Zoom classes really require PowerPoints instead of handouts, and there aren’t a lot of resources out there for people who want to teach speculative poetry. It’s considered a niche, though speculative fiction is widely known and widely popular, still. I hope that spreading the word about the class – and hopefully, introducing some poets to the idea that speculative poetry is as old as Gilgamesh or at least the Goblin Market, and not at all strange (even if the subject matter is.) I wanted a few different exercises, which meant I had to try out a form I hadn’t really before – scifiku – and trying to select which poems to teach was hard! There are so many good speculative books of poetry, but to choose only a few poems to represent all of speculative verse? Tough.

Heron among penguins at feeding time

Stress Relief is Necessary, not Optional

At last, I’ll leave you with the thought that during these still very uncertain and fraught times, it’s important to grab joy and try to go do the things you know are life-giving, inspirational. I am very happy to have made a brief foray downtown this week to the zoo (and afterwards the Woodland Park rose garden, just to smell the flowers.) If you get stressed out by something – like I occasionally do by giving Zoom readings and classes, and much more seriously, by the dubious covid comeback that’s constantly in the news – then make sure you schedule yourself some downtime, some self-care, something you enjoy. Don’t continue to push yourself until you break teeth (I’ve broken six this past year and a half) and make yourself miserable. This summer I’m trying to both re-enter “regular life” at a very slow pace and stay cautious and put my own health – including doing things just for fun, as well as things like dentist visits and MRIs – as a priority. It’s a tough balance. I know I can’t stop worrying about some things – and the summer is usually my “down time” because my MS symptoms tend to act up in the heat. But I can choose to do what I can, when I can. And seriously, doing something you enjoy just might be the key to keeping your sleep schedule on track which helps your immunity.

So wish me luck on my speculative poetry class tomorrow, and in relaxing my over-anxious self afterwards. And I am wishing you all calm, peace, poetry, and if possible, fun.