Tag: JusJoJan

Fitbit system upgrade

Last month, my Fitbit Flex got a software upgrade so that it automatically switches into sleep mode. This is handy because previously B and I had to tap our Fitbits in a certain way to get them to swap over to sleep mode at night and then do it again in the morning to get it back to normal mode. It was easy to forget, which defeated the purpose of tracking sleep and steps in the first place.

As things are getting back to some semblance of routine with B back at work after holiday vacation time, I am trying to be more diligent about getting my steps in. My best practice is to walk while I talk to my mom (nearly) every morning. Most days I get at least halfway to my goal before we hang up. If we are especially talkative, I may get to my goal of 5,000 steps! (Yes, I know 10,000 is recommended, but it is better for me to have a lower goal and overachieve than to set a high goal that I seldom reach.)

After T goes back to school, I may fire up our Wii Fit and try to add some other exercise to my day. I haven’t used it for a long time, so I’ll have to put up with a bit of Wii whining. Those of you who have used Wii Fit know what I mean…
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This post is part of Linda’s Just Jot It January and, for once, actually feels like it could be called jotting. (I do tend to run-on!) Join the fun! Visit here: http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/08/just-jot-it-january-8th-honorable/ to learn more.

JJJ 2016

 

2015 poems

Along with reading lots of 2016 resolutions, goals, and plans, I’ve read a lot of 2015 summary posts. I even contributed my WordPress summary post.

One of my poet-blogger-friends posted about her poem publications of 2015, which led me to the realization that 2015 is the year that I began to have poems published in competitive venues.

The one poem that I had had accepted in 2014 before joining the Bunn Hill Poets, my primary workshopping group, became available in the spring.  The anthology, Candles of Hope, is a fundraiser for the UK charity Topic of Cancer.  My contribution had been previously published on my blog. Generally, I don’t put poetry on my blog that I hope to submit as most editors won’t accept previously published poems, but this poem had been one I had written in the middle of the night as a personal cry and had never thought there would be an appropriate place for further publication.

With the help of the Bunn Hill Poets, further sessions of the Binghamton Poetry Project, and the new women’s writing workshop Sappho’s Circle, I was able to refine my poems and match them to publications well enough that I got a number of acceptances in 2015, which was very exciting after meeting with a number of rejection notices previously. Well, truth to tell, currently, too. While I do sometimes write about rejection notices, especially if they come with a compliment or encouragement to submit again, there are definitely lots of rejections when submitting for publication. One of the things I love about the stage of life I am in is that I know I can withstand the rejections and keep on trying. I would not have been so resilient in my younger days.

2015 saw my first appearance in a literary journal, Wilderness House Literary Review. My three poems in the fall quarterly are here.

I am pleased to have developed a relationship with Silver Birch Press. Besides their print anthologies and books, they publish series of poems on their blog, submitted to match their given prompts. I had a poem accepted in five series this year:
All About My Name
My Perfect Vacation
My Sweet Word
When I Hear That Song
Me, During the Holidays
All but one of these were written for SBP. You can hear a recording of my favorite of them “Lessons from Mahler” near the end of this video.

Which bring me to another point in my 2015 poetry story, the Mass MocA/Tupelo Press residency/workshop that I attended in November. It was my first ever experience with a poetry conference of any sort and an amazing, exhausting, overwhelming week. I’m going to be learning from and processing it for a long time. As the inaugural group in the partnership between the museum and Tupelo, we bonded with each other, named ourselves the Boiler House Poets after the setting of the video above, and vowed to have a reunion, which I’m pleased to say has been scheduled for fall 2016.  I’m hoping to have the bulk of the poetry collection that is flowing from that experience and my life-long relationship with the North Adams, Massachusetts area finished by then so that the Boiler House Poets can help me refine and strengthen it.

There is one poem that was accepted in 2015 but will be published this year by Eunioa Review. Yes, there will be the usual happy squealing and posting of the link when it becomes available, although it is not a happy poem.

My last sets of poems published last year came through the anthologies of the Binghamton Poetry Project, to which I will be forever grateful for setting me on the path to publication. Our anthologies are not available online, but you can find my contributions here at Top of JC’s Mind, for Spring 2015 and Fall 2015.

Thank you to all my readers who have been encouraging me on the poetry front. 2015 was a breakthrough year for me and I’m excited to see what 2016 will bring.
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This (perhaps way too long to be considered jotting) post is part of Linda’s Just Jot It January. Join the fun! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/07/just-jot-it-january-7th-robust/

JJJ 2016

 

One-Liner Wednesday: criticism

The best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better.
— Richard Rohr

Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesdays! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/06/one-liner-wednesday-enough-said/

This post is also part of #JusJoJan. http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/06/just-jot-it-january-6th-cloud/  I know that the majority of JusJoJan participants this year are doing the daily prompts, but I have been opting to do my own thing, which is the general operating procedure at Top of JC’s Mind, so I decided to follow the original plan which was to count One-Liner Wednesday as my daily JusJoJan post.

JJJ 2016

 

on the radio

This morning, I heard the first part of President Obama’s speech on gun violence and action against it. Near the beginning, he listed the major mass shootings that had happened during his presidency so far.

One of the sad realities of living in the United States is that there is a long list of mass shootings, so many that only certain of them are synonymous with the place in which they occurred.  Aurora, Fort Hood, and Newtown are among these during the Obama presidency.

But this morning, the President listed all the high-toll mass shootings. (In 2015 alone, there were over 350 mass shootings in the United Sates, using the definition of mass shooting as one with four or more victims, so the president was listing only those with the highest number of victims.)

Although the list was not chronological, one of the first cities he mentioned was Binghamton. (Binghamton is in New York State, near the Pennsylvania border about halfway across the state. The town where I have lived for over twenty-five years borders Binghamton.)

While I am grateful that Binghamton hasn’t been reduced to being shorthand for mass murder, I am sad that the shooting at the American Civic Association and its aftermath have been largely forgotten, its lessons about mental illness and access to guns, about discrimination and social acceptance, about civic pride, education, altruism, and the ideals of America as a welcoming community unheeded.

On the fifth anniversary of the ACA shootings, I wrote about why I think that is so.

Early last month, I posted about my thoughts on gun regulations and the Second Amendment.

I am grateful that President Obama is taking further common-sense steps to ensure that more background checks take place. I call on Congress – again – to take action to change the laws to protect people from gun violence.

The United States loses over 30,000 people every year to gunshots. If we were losing 30,000 people to plane crashes, it would be considered a calamity of the highest order and there would be swift action to rectify the situation.

The people of the United Sates deserve action – now.
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This post is part of Linda’s Just Jot It January. Join us! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/05/just-jot-it-january-5th-2016-my-bucket-list/
JJJ 2016

Resolutions, goals, and plans

I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts over the last few days with people stating their New Year’s resolutions. I admit that I am not a New Year’s resolution person. If I need to make a change, I prefer to start when the need arises.

I’m not especially wedded to January first as a date. Which reminds me that I wrote a poem about it…

Some people chose to list goals rather than resolutions, but even that sounds too cut-and-dried to me.

Jay Dee, at the end of this Authors Answer post, asks what are our plans for 2016.

Plans are something I can get behind. Plans to me are more dynamic and able to be adjusted or revised as needed. Plans don’t have an expiration date.

My writing plan is to put together my first poetry collection.

Those of you who followed my saga of the Mass MoCA/Tupelo Press residency/workshop know that I had hoped returning to my home locale in its new phase of life would spawn a chapbook. Midway though the residency week, I realized that it needed to be a collection rather than a chapbook.

I have a provisional title.

A schema for organizing the sections of the collection.

And some poems that I have already written that will fit into the collection. Others are drafted but need revisions, workshopping, and more revision. Others are still barely ideas and there may be still others that become necessary to write to fill in gaps in the timeline or to balance the sections.

I am planning on marshaling my local resources, Sappho’s Circle and the Bunn Hill Poets, for help with workshopping individual poems. As I get further along in the process, I will probably afflict commandeer invite several writer-poet friends to critique a section or the whole collection. Other people are so much better at pointing out what doesn’t make sense or what is out of order than I am when I am so close to it.

I am ecstatic that our residency group, the Boiler House Poets, will have a reunion this fall. I definitely plan to enlist their help, although I’m not sure in what capacity. It will depend on where I am in the process in the fall. I may need more workshopping help, or organizational assistance, or help navigating the submission process, or may need some more art poems to balance the final section so that I would be generating new poems during the residency that would need feedback.

To me, that is part of the beauty of a plan. It can change and grow as needs dictate.

I know that many people would say that plans need to be written out with checkboxes and timelines and deadlines or things won’t get done.

I do understand that logic, but I can’t force myself – or my poetry – into that kind of straitjacket.

My life experience has featured too many unexpected events to carve any plan in stone.

Too many things can happen.

Too many things have happened.

I am confident that I will assemble this manuscript, but it doesn’t feel safe to me to say it is a 2016 goal or worse – shudder – resolution. It is a plan with roots in 2015 which will grow in 2016.

The fruit will ripen when the time is right. Whatever number gets attached to that date is not mine to say.

It’s not in the plan.
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Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more about it here:  http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/04/just-jot-it-january-4th-dachshund/

JJJ 2016

 

Catching up on the twelve days of Christmas

Today, Catholics celebrate Epiphany, commemorating the visit of the magi to the infant Jesus. Technically, it should be celebrated on Jan. 6th, bringing to a close the famed twelve days of Christmas, but Epiphany gets moved to a Sunday in the modern liturgical calendar. Also, the liturgical season of Christmas extends through the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord the following Sunday.  (Can you tell I spent many years serving in liturgical and music ministry?)

I posted about our Christmas Eve and Day, but haven’t filled in much of the rest of our Christmas observance.  We do try as much as possible to observe Advent as a time of waiting and preparation, even though culturally in the US, most of December is packed with Christmas festivities which end on Christmas Day rather than begin there.

One of the things that helps us extend our celebration of Christmas is the arrival of my sisters and their families after Christmas. This year, they arrived on Dec. 26. We met at my parents’ apartment for food, fun, Christmas cookies, and gift exchange that afternoon and evening, followed by a big dinner at our house on the 27th.

We inherited the making of family dinners when my parents first moved to an apartment about ten years ago. Part of the inheritance came in the form of the electric rotisserie that I remember from my childhood, on which we made a traditional rolled beef rib roast. We served mashed potatoes, gravy, popovers, rutabaga which my parents prepared, baked onions, Aussie-style bread which our son-in-law made, and fall vegetable chili, which is made with carrots, parsnips, sweet potato, onion, tomato, and red and white kidney beans.

For dessert, we had four pies:  apple, pumpkin, apple blackberry, and cranberry meringue, an addition to our pie repertoire made by our older daughter and her husband. Four pies may seem like a lot for fourteen people, but we always want to have some left over for breakfast the next morning!

Unfortunately, work schedules and threatening weather intervened and both sisters and family had to return home on the 28th. That left us two days with our older daughter E and son-in-law L before they had to fly home to Honolulu. We went out to lunch at a couple of our favorite local eateries, spent time with the grandparents, and enjoyed quiet times at home.

On the morning of the 29th, we were all up at 4 AM to get ready to bring E and L to the airport for a 6 AM flight to Newark and then on to Honolulu. We wished they could have stayed longer, but were very grateful to have them with us for a week.

I did write about our (sedate) New Year’s Eve and Day, although I did have the excitement of a new poem coming out on Silver Birch Press.

Epiphany is traditionally the day that we take down our Christmas tree, although we were late putting it up this year and it isn’t dropping needles, so maybe we will wait until next weekend. B returns to work on Monday and next week’s calendar is filled with appointments, so it is back to reality, or at least what passes for routine, tomorrow.
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This post is part of Linda’s JusJoJan initiative. Join us! Read more about it here:  http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/03/just-jot-it-january-3rd-frozen/

JJJ 2016

 

SoCS: hitting the pause button

It’s been a busy couple of months. Ummmm…maybe more than a couple. OK – 2015 was a busy year.

This weekend, I just want to hit the pause button and rest. Not worry about planning anything. Being anywhere.

Just be.

Soon enough, it will be Monday morning. My husband’s 6 AM conference call with his colleagues in India will be back on. A lot of other obligations will be back on the calendar. I know. I spent a good chunk of yesterday copying dates onto a 2016 calendar. I’m still old-fashioned enough to keep a paper calendar rather than an electronic one. Well, two paper calendars. One on the dining room side table near the phone. Yes, landline. Still have one of those, too. The other a pocket calendar in my purse.

All those obligations waiting for my attention, starting Monday, January 4th.

But this weekend, a pause to catch a few more moments of unstructured time with B and T. Maybe a nap. Or a fire in the fireplace. Some hot cocoa with the last of the Christmas cookies.

Who knows?

Just being.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is: “pause/paws.”  Join us! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/01/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-jan-216/

SoCS badge 2015

http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/02/just-jot-it-january-2nd-pausepaws-socs/

JJJ 2016

Welcome, 2016!

Happy New Year, everyone! We began our celebration toasting at midnight GMT, also known as 7:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, as I write about in my new poem on Silver Birch Press. We drank the very bottle of sparkling apple cranberry juice that I used in the photo, along with the wine glasses pictured. I did use some poetic license in the poem, as we do still have daughter T here celebrating with us this year.

I woke up early this morning with part of the middle of a poem for the collection I am working on this year swirling about in my head, so I got up to  type it into google docs before I lost it. I’m hoping it is a good omen for my poetic work this year to start January first by drafting new work for my first ever collection.

Later this morning, we will head up to GSV, the senior community where our elder generation live, to pick up Nana for 10 AM Mass. January 1st is a holy day in the Catholic Church, dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God. After church, we will have brunch at GSV with Nana, Paco, Grandma, and Grandma’s neighbor Ann.

There aren’t plans for the rest of the day, although I expect it will be low-key. As you can see, we are not the wild and crazy types!

I wish everyone the gifts of peace, joy, and contentment in 2016!
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This post is part of Linda’s Just Jot It January. Join us! Visit this link for more info:  http://lindaghill.com/2016/01/01/just-jot-it-january-1st-persnickety/
JJJ 2016

SoCS: What is seen can’t be unseen

Once something has been seen, it can’t be unseen, however much we might wish to erase it.

Part of the reason I don’t watch many scary movies is that the images haunt my dreams. I can still remember some of the shock I felt seeing the original theatrical release of “Jaws” as a young teen and the way it haunted my dreams.

Some of the most haunting things I have seen have been family medical things. A look of terror in the eyes during an intensive care disorientation episode. A bad reaction to a medication that caused uncontrollable jaw clenching with resultant biting of cheeks.  A child suffering tremors.  Seeing bones through skin when most of the flesh and muscle have wasted away.

Even years later, these memories make me shudder.  Even so, I can’t wish that I had not seen them, only that they had not existed to be seen.

This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. This week’s prompt is scene/seen.  Join us!   http://lindaghill.com/2015/01/30/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-january-3115/

socs-badge

May as well finish up just Jot It January, too!  http://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/

SoCS: contrasts

I attended vigil Mass this afternoon at a church in the town across the river. Everything seemed to be arranged to afford the most contrast. The pews finished in a blond or clear stain over a cream floor contrasted with a dark-stained wood ceiling with multicolored stenciling. The white marble, ornately carved altarpiece surrounding the tabernacle and the white walls contrasted with the deep blues and reds of the stained glass windows.

The silence after the end of the prelude contrasted with the loud organ and miked songleader and the congregation singing the opening hymn. (I’ll spare you the treatise on the techniques of leading congregational singing as an organist and the  – let’s call it – discrepancies from the ideal that I experienced.) Even the contrast of the ancient instrument playing music written within my lifetime that was composed to be played by guitars and other instruments.

The biggest aural contrast was between the voice of the pastor who was presiding at the liturgy and the answering voice of the congregation.  The priest is from Nigeria and speaks with a very distinct accent. I think that his first language was a tribal one and that he later learned English in school. The answering voices were speaking in American-accented English. Although the parish was founded by Polish immigrants – the inscriptions on the Stations of the Cross and the stained glass windows are all in Polish – the current congregation is largely generations removed from “the old country.” A recent parish merger brought in descendants of immigrants from other Eastern European countries and the entire congregation today was European-American. I find that listening to Father Charles praying and preaching makes me focus in a new way, exactly because I need to be extra-attentive because of his unfamiliar pronunciations and cadence.

There was one other thing that being at Mass today brought to me, not as a contrast, but as a gift. The Stations of the Cross, which are often paintings or bas relief, in this church are actually wall-mounted sculptures. From my seat in the pew along the wall, the sculpture of one of the men helping Jesus from the first fall was looking directly at me. It was comforting to see an expression of concern and compassion watching over me as I prayed with the rest of the assembly. An extra gift and grace for today.

This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. The prompt this week was most/least. Come join us! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/01/23/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-january-2415/
socs-badgeBadge by: Doobster @ Mindful Digressions

And might as well add Linda’s Just Jot It January link:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/01/01/just-jot-it-january-pingback-post-and-rules/ You can join that, too!