This resonates with me. Thank you, Nancy, for your writing and your witness as we make our way in these troubled and troubling times.
Source: Making Art in the Age of Trump
Category: writing
It’s a Spring Party… Let’s Groove 🎶🌻🌷⚘🌺🍉🍔🍗🍿🍦🍻💃
Jacqueline is hosting a marvelous Spring Blog Party! Scoot over there, enjoy some lovely treats, and mingle with the other guests!
Thank you for coming to my Spring party. I love Spring. It’s a beautiful season with a lot of refreshing promises of budding life and blooms. A season of rebirth.
Do make yourself comfortable. Refreshments are nicely arranged down the page: Drinks, Chocolates, Cakes, Donuts, freshly squeezed juice, Coffee, Tea and so much more. 
The little party rules.
- Be friendly. Mix and mingle with others. Don’t be a wallflower. Blog parties offer the opportunity to meet many other bloggers in one place. Use the opportunity effectively.
- Please leave your blog link or post link in the comment box below along with an introduction.
- It’s one link per comment, but come back as often as you’d like, that way it’s easier for others to focus on a link one at a time.
- Have fun, this is a great way to find bloggers and have them find you.
- Please show some love. Reblog…
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SoCS: too many
I have way too many projects going these days.
Most of them, like preparing tax returns, are not especially fun.
My blog and other writing are suffering a bit as a result, but, someday, I will have a bit more control over my time and will be back posting and poet-ing more.
Thank you all for your patience.
JC
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “project.” Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2017/03/03/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-mar-417/
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Poem: Beatitudes
Beatitudes
~~~by Joanne Corey
The priest took a risk in his homily,
asking the President to look
again at the refugee ban,
before a conservative congregation
who thought the Sermon on the Mount
was meant only for long-ago Jews;
the poor and hungry,
those searching for justice and peace
have nothing to do with them,
secure in their homes
with well-stocked kitchens,
their children safe
in schools with locked doors.
Who is my neighbor?
Who is my brother or sister?
Questions as ancient
as Cain and Abel,
confined within church walls.
Still, a faithful few
go forth,
march,
chant,
pray,
demand justice,
give shelter,
food,
clothing,
sanctuary,
dare to be Christian
and American.
Note: Thanks to Sappho’s Circle and the Grapevine Group for their help with this poem. I decided to share it here as it is related to current events and doesn’t have a long shelf life.
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One-Liner Wednesday: videopoem link
As promised, here is the reactivated link to our Boiler House videopoem: https://vimeo.com/187387583.
This (somewhat atypical) post is part of Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday series. Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2017/02/22/one-liner-wednesday-rock-is-dead-yippie
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SoCS: Crowning Glory
For most of my life, my hair was, well, just my hair. Not much of a topic of discussion. It was brown and wavy and thick and heavy and a bit cowlick-y.
Of course, there was always discussion with my hairdresser, because that is their business. She was not a fan of my decision to let my hair go grey naturally. “Men with graying temples look distinguished, but women look old.” This was not helped by the fact that I started to have stray silver strands as a teen, with a lot of acceleration in my thirties.
When I was mostly silver, I decided to let my hair grow longer. The natural thinning that happens with the change in hair color actually worked to my advantage, because I could let my silver hair grow longer without having it get overly bushy, which it did when it was mostly brown.
What I hadn’t expected was that my long, silver waves would become such a topic of discussion. Friends, acquaintances, even complete strangers often comment on my hair. They tell me it is beautiful and that if their hair looked like mine, they would stop coloring it. I tell them they should try and see, as some don’t really know what their hair looks like naturally.
I even wound up writing a poem about my hair when Silver Birch Press did a series called My MANE Memories. You can find the poem, entitled “Crowning Glory” here. My husband took the photo that accompanies the poem. I liked it so much that I started using it as my gravatar.
So, maybe my hair does make me look older.
I prefer to think it makes me look more beautiful.
At least, I have lots of people tell me so….
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “hair.” Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2017/02/03/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-feb-417/
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Phoenix Project
I haven’t been using most of the available-but-not-mandatory prompt words for Just Jot It January, but I was struck by the word “detritus” which is today’s last-day prompt.
I used “detritus” in a poem that I read recently. The poem, which I can’t share because it is unpublished, is about the Phoenix Project by Chinese artist Xu Bing. 
Two giant phoenix sculptures were created by Xu Bing, using the detritus from construction sites. Part of my Facebook comment on this photo, which is from September, 2013, reads, “They are also a political statement. When Xu Bing went to the Beijing construction site of the fabulously expensive buildings, he found workers being poorly paid and exploited, making shelters for themselves from the construction debris. He decided to make a pair of phoenixes, which in China denote power and wealth, from the debris, to call attention to the plight of the workers. At some point, the building owners decided they would not pay for the completion of the commission, but the artist was able to finish and Mass MoCA is their second venue for display. Next they will go to the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in NYC.”
I had been planning to write on the latest news from the fallout of DT’s travel ban/refugee executive order, but I didn’t have the heart. Detritus may be all that is left of the US government soon, too.
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It’s the last day to join in with Linda’s Just Jot It January! Many thanks to Linda and all her blog community who made it such a great experience! If you want to add your voice on this last day, you can find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2017/01/31/jusjojan-daily-prompt-jan-31st17/
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SoCS: RiverRead
Last night at Open Mic at RiverRead Books, my poet-friend Merrill Oliver Douglas read a new poem that she had written after visiting the Corning Museum of Glass.
I read “Thanks to the Department of Public Art” which also mentions glass. “Broken shards of glass and lives…”
I had especially wanted to read this poem at RiverRead because it is located amidst the public art in Binghamton to which the poem refers.
The very sad thing is that this was the last Open Mic at RiverRead. It will close at the end of the month, going the way of many independent bookstores.
So, we celebrated books and poetry and the bookstore together one last time.
We know we will continue to celebrate books and poetry. Just not in this place. And not in a bookstore, as there isn’t another independent bookstore available in our community.
😦
Note: If you visit the link above, you can see RiverRead in the background on the left side of the photograph.
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It’s another double dip, Stream of Consciousness Saturday and Just Jot It January! Linda’s prompt this week is “glass”. Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2017/01/20/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-and-jusjojan-jan-2117/
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March Poem by Abby Murray
I am pleased to share a link to a new poem by Abby Murray, who earned her doctorate at Binghamton University and is a former director of the Binghamton Poetry Project: http://www.rattle.com/poem-for-my-daughter-before-the-march-by-abby-e-murray/
Abby now teaches in the Seattle, Washington area and plans to participate in the Women’s March there on Saturday. She wrote this poem for and about her young daughter.
Bonus: If you follow the link, there is an audio of Abby reading the poem, as well as the poem itself and a note about it from Abby.
Congratulations, Abby!
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I already did a Just Jot It January post today, but I’m adding the link and badge here, too, so more people will have the chance to see Abby’s poem: https://lindaghill.com/2017/01/19/jusjojan-daily-prompt-jan-19th17/
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early morning jot
I got an early start on jotting today.
I had tried to follow the advice from medical professionals and magazines to get to sleep relatively quickly, but no.
I did, however, have a poem coalescing in my head, so I got up to write the draft down before I lost it.
Midnight found me just finishing the draft.
Of course, I can’t share the draft. It needs work and it is one that is meant to make its way into my manuscript, so I want to be careful about how and where it is published. Most publishers count blog posts, even in a wee, little blog like Top of JC’s Mind, as prior publication and they won’t publish anything that has already been made public.
It isn’t too late to join Just Jot It January! Any jot will do and there is a prompt for each day if that is what helps you to get a post out. You don’t have to post every day, either. Just link to the post on Linda’s blog for that day to increase your blogging community and find new blogs to read. Enjoy!
This jot brought to you by Linda’s Just Jot It January. Join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2017/01/08/jusjojan-daily-prompt-jan-8th17/
Joanne Corey 