We can participate in heaven by living in harmony and respect with all of creation or in hell by bringing greed, selfishness, and disease upon the whole earth.
Carol J. Gallagher
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/08/23/one-liner-wednesday-deep-thoughts/
Poet-friend and fellow Grapevine poet Carol Mikoda has a new book forthcoming from Finishing Line Press, Wind and Water, Leaf and Lake.
Carol’s nature poems have great depth. Of the book, James Crews writes, “The tender, attentive poems of Carol Mikoda show us how to look up and outside of ourselves to notice the intricate aliveness at play in clouds, leaves, and water—to feel the whole world.”
Through August 25th, you can pre-order your copy so you will be among the first to read it in October when it is released. Bonus: you will receive $2 off the list price!
Order today by clicking on the link above!
Sadly continuing with a recent practice, here is a link to the most recent, devastating, sprawling indictment of Donald Trump, this time under the state of Georgia’s RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization) law around interference in the 2020 election.
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Please join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays. Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/08/16/one-liner-wednesday-that-feeling-when/
My poem “Grandpa’s pipe smoke lingers on the stoop” has just been published in Issue 3.2 of The Purposeful Mayonnaise, a Canadian-based bimonthly literary and art journal-platform. The theme for this issue is “Home.” It’s available for free download at the link above. Make sure to view all the amazing art and writing, including an interview!
My poem is part of my currently unpublished full-length collection that centers around the North Adams area and my family’s experiences there. I wrote it during the 2019 Boiler House Poets Collective residency at The Studios at MASS MoCA.
Its original title was “122 State Street.” For those of you who know North Adams and who would like to be oriented physically, the location is right before heading over Hadley Overpass toward Main Street.
This poem is about my maternal grandparents’ home when I was in the lower grades of primary school, over fifty years ago now. Remember that your comments are always welcome here at Top of JC’s Mind.
It never occurred to me that part of my efforts to learn about publicizing my chapbook Hearts would revolve around envelopes.
I needed to buy envelopes to ship my book, first to family members and the poets who wrote back cover blurbs for me, later to out-of-town folks who ordered directly from me.
Most people ship books like this in padded mailing envelopes for extra protection. The book is 6×9 inches and there are 6×9 padded mailing envelopes, so it seemed straight-forward.
But, no.
Most 6×9 envelopes have that as their internal dimension but don’t accomodoate for thickness, so, even though, as a chapbook, Hearts is not very thick, it wouldn’t fit in most of the envelopes in the store.
I did find one Scotch one that worked because its internal dimensions are 9.25×6. Yay! I bought ten, which was about all they had on the shelf. When I used those up, I bought another ten. The store doesn’t have a lot out at once.
I was running low again, so went to the store and was happy to see they were on sale. There weren’t any on the shelf, so I asked for a rain check. They said they couldn’t do that but could order online.
Except they couldn’t, apparently because of the brand.
And they didn’t know when or if they’d ever get more in. They offered to substitute another brand but I explained kindly that those didn’t fit.
I tried looking for another supplier but couldn’t find an in-store one and the online shipping was too high to order them online and have them shipped to my home. Also, I did not need a box of 100 envelopes!
One of these days, I’ll go back to the store and see if more have appeared.
Meanwhile, I still have three from my last stash.
Realistically, most people order from Kelsay or Amazon. If you have a local independent bookstore, you can ask them to order it for you through Ingram.
See? I told you I was trying to learn marketing…
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “envelope.” Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/08/11/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-aug-12-2023/
The Barbie doll first appeared for sale in 1959, the year before I was born. As a child, my sisters and I played with some Barbie dolls. I remember that we had Barbie, Francie, and Skipper, who was my favorite because she was a pre-teen, like me. (We also had Ken, but he was superfluous.) Our Barbies had a lot of clothes, some made by my grandmother, but these were the days before there were tons of accessories.
My daughters also had some Barbies in the ’90s. There were Barbies, Teresa, (non-pregnant) Midge, Skipper, Stacie, and Kelly and friends. While there were lots more dolls and lots of accessories available, we didn’t have too many. There were not a lot of career-oriented Barbies at that point, although I remember T, in her imaginary play, creating a scenario where Barbie had a high-paying job because she liked expensive clothes and things but that she gave money to her sister who worked for a charity that helped people. What was important for T was that she had a gymnast Barbie and a couple of ballerina Barbies who could bend their arms and legs, pose, and twirl; T took dance classes and appreciated Barbies who were not stuck in one position. (They also had twin Kens, who were often cast as father-figures to the younger children in the Barbie universe.)
Yesterday, B, T, and I went to a movie theater together for the first time since before COVID to see Barbie. We had all seen the trailers and were expecting an entertaining movie and it did not disappoint. Greta Gerwig, the director and co-writer, along with Noah Baumbach, delivers a film that is multi-layered and attentive to detail. Margot Robbie is amazing as “stereotypical” Barbie who is forced to confront real-world stereotypes and the patriarchy. Ryan Gosling is well-matched as the sometimes clueless, sometimes superfluous Ken. I also enjoyed Simu Liu’s performance as a rival Ken.
While I had expected some laughs – and there were many – I had not expected tears. The story and dialogue of Gloria, tenderly portrayed by America Ferrera, was especially moving for me. I also appreciated the wisdom of Ruth, delivered by Rhea Perlman.
While we tend to think of movies based on toys as being for children, Barbie is not. It is rated PG-13 for good reason. Many tweens would enjoy it, while probably missing some of the social commentary in the film; younger children would most likely find it confusing.
Barbie‘s blockbuster status proves that many, many adults and teens are seeing and enjoying this film. Greta Gerwig has already set box office records for films directed by a woman. Maybe, someday, it won’t be remarkable to point out the gender of a film’s director.
Someday…
(Photo by Elena Mishlanova on Unsplash)
When I was growing up, five was my favorite number because there were five people in my family, my parents, known here as Nana and Paco, and my two sisters, one older and one younger, and me.
It’s bittersweet to think of that now, with both Nana and Paco having passed on.
I don’t have a favorite number anymore.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is to think of a number and write about it. Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/08/04/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-aug-5-2023/
“The purpose of the conspiracy was to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election by using knowingly false claims of election fraud to obstruct the federal government function by which those results are collected, counted, and certified.”
~ Paragraph 7 of the extremely sobering conspiracy and obstruction indictment of Donald Trump regarding the 2020 election results, which you can read in its entirety here.
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This way to refer to 45 pages in one sentence is part of Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday series. Learn more about the series here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/08/02/one-liner-wednesday-am-i-jinxing-it/. I promise that most of the entries will be more fun than mine…
I did a Useful Thing today!
For the first time, I made an attempt at assembling an Author Page. You can either click on the link or choose it from the main menu.
I also made a few updates to my About page.
I know that ideally I would have my own domain that centered my Author Page and poetry with a tab for my blog and maybe I’ll get there eventually, but, for now, this is a big step.
Tell me what you think! You can comment on the Page or here on this post and I’ll see what I can do to improve it.
With thanks,
Joanne
One more time…
I thought I had one.
As most of you know, I am a poet. This means doing submissions – and then waiting months for an answer. (Rarely, it is only days or weeks, but it’s usually months and sometimes over six.)
This morning, I saw that I had a response from an online anthology that I thought I had a good shot to win a place.
But, no.
While one of the poems had made the shortlist, I had not won a spot in the anthology.
Sigh.
It’s a good thing that Hearts came out so that I have a huge positive plus in my life as a poet because it cushions the rejections, of which I am on a pretty long streak at the moment.
Maybe soon I’ll get some positive news on a new submission.
Maybe…
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “one/won.” Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/07/28/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-29-2023/
Joanne Corey 