Category: blogging

Binghamton Poetry Project Fall 2021

So, I haven’t been posting as much as I intended these last few weeks, but (for once) I have a writing-related excuse.

I’ve been spending a lot of my creative time on poetry.

The most vital piece of that has been connected to my full-length poetry collection. I was finally able to hold a long-delayed workshop session with the Grapevine Group, my local poetry circle, and do revisions. On Friday, I sent out the newly revised manuscript to a publisher for the first time. I hope to send more submissions for both the collection and my chapbook over the next couple of weeks. Given the necessary slowdown of my writing activities during my father’s final months, I haven’t submitted much for a long time, but the rejections have been rolling in, leaving me with very few active submissions. Besides manuscript submissions, I hope to put in some individual poem ones, too. Fingers crossed…

Meanwhile, the Binghamton Poetry Project has been holding its fall sessions. I chose to attend a workshop called Poetic Yearnings: Desire, Place, and the Placeless with Nicholas Kanaar. I write a lot of poetry of place, so it was a good fit for me. Due to the pandemic, we are still meeting online instead of in person. Our fall 2021 online anthology includes three poems I wrote in response to prompts from the workshop along with the work of other BPP poets. Yesterday, we also held a reading via Zoom. I chose to read three poems of place from my manuscript, which revolves around the area from which I and several generations of my family hail.

I am determined to get more submissions in soon and will try to update you on my progress. If I get anything accepted, I will certainly let you all know ASAP. The only way that will happen soon, though, is if I manage to get accepted in a publication that has a very quick turnaround time. Most journals take a few weeks or months to reply and book submissions are several months to a year. Odds are very much against acceptance, especially with books. One recent book submission pool I was in chose four books out of 1,400 to publish, so…

alarm

Because of family circumstances, I have spent most of the last six years focused on taking care of various generations, fitting in some writing and environmental/social justice advocacy as time and energy allowed.

During all those years, there has been an undercurrent of increasing alarm and distress over the unraveling of the social structure and government of the United States.

The roots of the current dysfunction predate the Trump candidacy and presidency. While there has always been racism, discrimination, and prejudice in the US, it became more overt during the historic presidency of Barack Obama, the first Black man to be elected to that office. There were wild conspiracies that President Obama had not been born in the United States, that he was secretly a Muslim terrorist, that he was going to take away all the civilian guns, and on and on.

During his presidency, we also saw the Republican party lying and fear-mongering about legislation, such as the Affordable Care Act. They blocked valid appointments to executive and judicial branch posts. It was the precursor to the current situation where the Republicans have essentially stopped cooperating in governing, even on previously non-partisan issues like raising the debt ceiling and voting rights. They have even blocked votes on nearly all the ambassadorial appointments, so that President Biden is in Europe for global meetings without having ambassadors in most of the countries involved.

The Trump presidency seemed to radicalize – or, at least, reveal unexpressed sentiments of – a swath of the electorate who, through fear or inability to distinguish between truth and lies, have perpetrated or suffered harm because of it.

The largest amount of suffering and death are due to the lies about COVID-19, possible treatments, and vaccines. Because Trump, his administration, and some Republican governors did not convey and act on the evolving medical and research science, the numbers of Republicans/Trump voters who have been sickened or have died from the infection is disproportionately high. It’s sad and appalling. It’s also made it impossible to tamp down community spread in the ways needed to end the pandemic and get our country to the point of establishing a “new normal.” I’m trying to be hopeful that the impending authorization of the Pfizer vaccine in children aged five to eleven will help to cut down community spread; it may well in some regions, such as the Northeast where I live, that have higher rates of teen and adult immunization, but in places where the majority of adults remain unvaccinated despite almost a year of availability, a higher proportion of people will continue to get sick and die. Those people will include vaccinated people because no vaccine is 100% effective and some people, especially the elderly and immunocompromised, do not build up as strong an immunity from the vaccines. They need the additional protection of being surrounded by vaccinated people so that the virus can’t find enough vulnerable people to infect and stops spreading.

The more terrifying impact for the future of the country is the millions of people who now believe that our elections are rigged and that President Biden is not rightfully serving as president. Court cases, recounts, and audits have shown over and over again that Biden beat Trump. Investigative journalism and official investigations are continuing to reveal how some members of the Trump administration tried to engineer overturning the election results. Some of these machinations boiled over into the attempted insurrection on January 6th, which, even though much of it was recorded and has been attested to by Trump supporters who were participants, many Republican officeholders claim was not really an insurrection. Many Congressional Republicans refuse to even state the obvious truth that Joe Biden was fairly elected president, despite there being no credible evidence of wide-spread election fraud.

Cynically, these same Republicans are now voting against legislation that will strengthen voting rights to ensure that all eligible voters can have their say in our elections, even as some states are acting to restrict voting rights and putting in place partisan election officials or even giving state legislatures the power to appoint presidential electors pledged to the candidate that did not win the popular vote.

These kinds of things are terrifying because they have occurred in the past when autocrats have come to power. I have heard several interviews with Timothy Synder, author of On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, which are stark reminders of parallels between recent currents in the US and a number of countries in Europe in the last century where democracy was subverted by fascism, Nazism, or communism. (Ironically, many current Republicans try to paint Democrats or Independents as being socialist or communist when they are actually continuing to espouse capitalism and US constitutional values.) There have also been several more recent books looking specifically at the current state of democracy in the US, including Midnight in Washington: How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could by Rep. Adam Schiff.

While I know my own reach is limited, I make sure I post facts about vaccines and the pandemic. I also post facts about the political situation. Joe Biden is the duly elected and serving president. The Republican party has no current policy platform, having carried over the 2016 platform at the 2020 convention instead of writing a new one that addresses current issues such as COVID and increased incidence of violence against people of color, people of faith, immigrants, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. Rather the Republican minority leaders in Congress, Rep. Kevin McCarthy and Sen. Mitch McConnell, instruct their caucuses to vote against all Democratic proposals with only rare exceptions, such as the Senate infrastructure bill.

Tuesday is Election Day. In New York State this year, the elections being contested are local but there are several state-wide ballot propositions which will strengthen our voting laws. I will proudly vote in favor of all those propositions.

I also will continue to participate in civil discussion whenever the opportunity presents itself. Granted, there are not many opportunities these days, but I will continue to try.

One-Liner Wednesday: being loved

We are not loved because we are so beautiful and good. We are beautiful and good because we are loved. —Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Joy (video interview, 2014)

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2021/10/27/one-liner-wednesday-easily-amused/

SoCS: fingers

When I read Linda’s prompt yesterday, the first thing I thought about was fingers. And poetry, which is probably a good sign as I am trying mightily to get back to thinking more about poetry.

I am working on editing a poem in which fingers play a prominent role.

I have an older (unpublished) poem about how I still have a pianist’s mentality about my hands, even though I can no longer play.

And, of course, I am using my fingers now to write this. I know that there are lots of tools now that are talk to text, but I feel very oddly about talking to machines. Perhaps I will get over that one day, but, for now, I’ll let my fingers do the talking.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week was to write about a body part. Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2021/10/22/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-october-23-2021/

JC’s Confession #19

In the first few seasons of The Late Show, Stephen Colbert did a recurring skit, now a best-selling book, called Midnight Confessions, in which he “confesses” to his audience with the disclaimer that he isn’t sure these things are really sins but that he does “feel bad about them.” While Stephen and his writers are famously funny, I am not, so my JC’s Confessions will be somewhat more serious reflections, but they will be things that I feel bad about. Stephen’s audience always forgives him at the end of the segment; I’m not expecting that – and these aren’t really sins – but comments are always welcome.

JC

I am still on Facebook and feel guilty about it.

I’m confessing this now because it is top of mind after reflecting on Ellen Morris Prewitt’s post on leaving Facebook. Ellen is an amazing author, blogger, community volunteer, and former lawyer from the American South. She shares her insights on a range of topics and has recently published a number of powerful posts about race and racism. I urge everyone to visit her blog and subscribe.

I confess that, despite my dismay over Facebook spreading false information, their exploitative business model, and the vagaries of their newsfeed algorithms, I am staying with the platform for now.

I’ve tried to make my own Facebook experience as insulated from harm as possible. I use Social Fixer, which allows me to hide sponsored posts, political posts, and other parts of the page that I don’t want to see. I spend almost no time scrolling through my newsfeed and do not use Facebook as a news source. I do automatically send posts to my blog page and then link them to my personal timeline for added visibility, although I remain annoyed at how few people can actually see my posts due to the aforementioned vagaries of Facebook algorithms.

I admit that part of the reason I stay with Facebook is that there are people with whom I am connected only via Facebook and don’t want to lose touch with them. I also am one of the administrators for a private Facebook group for my college class and don’t want to abandon that responsibility.

I know those are personal excuses that in no way forgive my responsibility in participating with a platform that causes harm. I do favor policies and regulations that will make Facebook a safe, honest cyberplace.

I’m probably hopelessly naïve to think that that is possible.

But that is, perhaps, a confession for another day…

One-Liner Wednesday: the lie

In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category, but a pillar of the state.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2021/10/20/one-liner-wednesday-the-line/

SoCS: if only…

If only I could organize my days…

or life…

is something I have been saying to myself off and on for years.

The truth is that most of my adult life has been spent as a caregiver, some of it in very challenging situations dealing with long-term illnesses.

Not the kind of life that lends itself to following a daily schedule. If you ever think you know what is happening on a given day, chances are the phone will ring in the morning and you will be off dealing with some need that has arisen.

Let me be clear that none of this is a complaint. Rather it’s just a statement of fact – and evidence that I was privileged enough to be able to choose a life of unpaid caregiving instead of needing to take paid work and cramming in the caregiving around my employer’s schedule.

The day after Paco’s death, the hospice social worker said to me that now I could figure out what I wanted to do. We had first met during my mother’s illness, so she had some idea of what my life has been like over at least the last few years, if not decades.

While it’s true that I have spouse B and daughter T at home, we are able to collaborate on taking care of the house and each other, so the years of intensive caregiving are probably over for a while, as long as we all remain reasonably healthy.

So, I’m starting to piece together how I want to spend my time in the coming months. Admittedly, right now I am necessarily busy with settling Paco’s estate and final bills and insurance claims and such, which takes a lot more time and energy than you might think if you have never had to do this for a loved one.

I’m trying to keep from jumping back into everything I have put on hold in the past because I think there is a danger of over-committing and exhaustion. I do know that I want to spend more time with writing, so, perhaps, finally regularly posting here again.

I also need to return to spending serious amounts of time with my poetry. During the recent Boiler House Poets Collective residency, I was able to re-connect with my full-length manuscript that revolves around that area and my family’s connections with it. I am going to do a review of it with the Grapevine Group, my local poetry circle, later this month and then do revisions and look for submissions opportunities. I also need to look for more opportunities for my chapbook, as the rejections have been rolling in over these last months so it is only out at a few places at the moment.

I am considering auditioning for a local chorus, although that might not be until after the holidays. I expect that, for the first time in many years, we may travel for both Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I am staying in the loop but not spending a ton of time on environmental and political issues. I still send letters and do public comment on social justice and environmental causes and send emails to my elected representatives but I am trying not to spend hours every day on it, as I did for years during the height of the anti-fracking fight in New York. I admire the energy and commitment of today’s younger activists and support their efforts as best I can.

Church volunteering is still on hold. Eventually, the book study I facilitate may return but only if we can meet safely indoors unmasked. We aren’t there yet.

So, can I do this? Can I re-organize my life and have it stick?

Maybe.

If nothing dire happens…
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week was to being the post with the word if. Join us! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2021/10/15/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-october-16-2021/

Pfizer booster

As part of my ongoing participation in the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine phase III trial, yesterday I received a third vaccine injection, seven and a half months after my second. There was a blood draw to test levels of antibodies, T cells, etc. and the blood work will be repeated in a year. I will continue a weekly symptom check through a phone app and have a couple of phone appointments over the next year, too. The data collected will be used to inform on-going decisions about how often boosters may be needed in the future.

I’m fortunate that my side effects have been milder than they were with the second injection. I have a very sore arm, which is obviously from the shot. I’m tired and have a bit of a headache, which could be side effect and could be just life in general these days. Today is the one-month anniversary of Paco’s death, so how I am feeling could be attributable to that rather than to vaccine side effects. When spouse B and daughter T, who are also study participants, received their third doses, they both lost a day to fever, body aches, and fatigue; because I had had a similar reaction to my second dose, I was expecting a similar experience, but apparently have lucked out.

In the United States, a third dose of the Pfizer vaccine is approved for those aged 65 and up, people who have medical risk, and those in certain professions that have close contact with vulnerable populations. It’s possible that the third dose will be recommended more generally in the future as more data become available. It’s also likely that emergency use authorization for children aged 5-11 will come soon, with shots in arms starting in early November.

Recommendations on booster doses for Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are expected soon, as well as the possibility of mixing manufacturers, for example, someone who had the J&J vaccine having a booster from Pfizer. All the companies are continuing to study the vaccines for long-term efficacy and side effects, as well as safety, efficacy, and dosage for children six months through seventeen years. Currently, in the United States, only Pfizer is approved for ages 12-17.

Another helpful development is that Merck has applied for emergency use authorization of molnupiravir, an oral anti-viral to combat COVID. It would be given to patients in the early stages in hopes of keeping their illness from becoming severe. While it is already possible to give treatments by injection or infusion, such as monoclonal antibodies, this medication would be easy to prescribe and administer for home use. A decision by the FDA is expected within weeks.

Meanwhile, over the summer, COVID cases were devastating parts of the US, especially states with low vaccination rates. Total fatalities are over 700,000 with over 44 million cases recorded. In some areas, hospitals were so overwhelmed that they had to send patients out of state to receive care. This applied to COVID patients and also to patients suffering from other serious conditions. Two states, Idaho and Alaska, had to implement crisis standards of care, which means that whether or not an individual receives treatment beyond comfort care is determined by the likelihood of survival as there is not enough capacity to treat everyone that needs help. This resulted in non-COVID deaths from heart attack, stroke, etc. – patients who ordinarily would have been treated successfully but who died because there were not personnel, equipment, and space available to treat them due to intensive care units being filled with COVID patients.

The delta variant was the power behind the summer surge, but, at least, the fear of it encouraged more people to seek vaccination. The increase in vaccination rates is helping the case numbers to fall at this point. Still, the current rate of fully vaccinated people is only 57% with 66% receiving at least one dose. I am hopeful that the Pfizer vaccine being approved for elementary age children in the coming weeks will add significantly to our vaccination totals, at least in states where the vaccination rate among adults is higher.

There are still terrifying amounts of misinformation floating around about the vaccines that are keeping some people from taking them. Unfortunately, this is keeping the pandemic alive, resulting in illness, death, lack of access to medical care, and the possibility of even more dangerous new variants developing.

We are all in this together. Please, everyone, get vaccinated if you are eligible and follow reputable public health guidelines on masking, avoiding crowds, handwashing, etc. Your choices affect your family, friends, neighbors and community directly and your nation and the world, as well. We can’t truly end this pandemic until there’s no population anywhere still vulnerable to COVID-19.

If you won’t do it for yourself, do it for someone you love.

One-Liner Wednesday: Paco tribute

Because I announced my father’s death in this One-Liner Wednesday post, I’m linking the promised tribute to him with thanks to him and to all my friends and readers who have been sending out prayers and good thoughts on our behalf over the years.

Please join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2021/10/13/one-liner-wednesday-aaaand/

looking back at MASS MoCA

Today is the last full day of the Boiler House Poets Collective reunion residency for 2021. It’s always amazing to be back here at MASS MoCA together but the experience is heightened after having to cancel because of COVID last year.

I am in the same studio as I was in the Tupelo Press workshop/residency that first brought us together in 2015. As I was looking back at my blog to get the exact dates of that residency, I decided to re-visit all the posts from back then. I was surprised that I processed as much as I did at the time, while realizing how much I had downplayed the amount of confusion and fear I was feeling.

If anyone is so moved to join me in this walk down memory lane, the posts start here.