Just back from a long day that featured the first of Madrigal Choir’s Lessons and Carols performances. It was in a small church to our north. Our audience was small but appreciative. It gives me confidence in our performance in our home county tomorrow, which will draw a larger number of listeners.
This will be super short because I’m going to meet up with a lot of people today. (Well, a lot for me, at least!)
This morning, I have a Creation Care Team meeting at church.
From early afternoon through early evening, I’ll be going to a gathering of women, organized by a friend and being held at the retreat space of another. There will be expressive arts, chair yoga, an opportunity to walk a labyrinth, companionship, and, of course, some food. I made a big bowl of applesauce to bring and share. Very indicative of fall in the Northeast.
I don’t usually see that many people in a day – or, perhaps, it’s more accurate to say I don’t usually interact with that many people in a day.
When I saw that Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week was “prime,” the first thing that leapt into my mind was Gail DiMaggio’s first book of poetry, Woman Prime, which won the Permafrost Prize from the University of Alaska.
Gail was one of the original members of the Boiler House Poets Collective, now retired from attending our reunion residencies, but still a much-admired legacy member. I especially admire her ekphrastic work and her remarkable ability to write about difficult topics with insight and grace.
I invite you to check out Woman Prime or Gail’s other work and experience its power for yourself.
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.
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.
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.
Back when I was learning my first few acronyms and emoticons – a bit late because I was not an early adopter of cell phones – my older and much more tech savvy daughter was still living at home.
My favorite acronym to use was LOL, which amused my daughter because I would use it for things that literally made me laugh out loud.
When I was a child, I collected rocks in a shoe box. Maybe “collected” is too strong a word as it usually denotes some kind of organization or classification that was not the case. I just picked up rocks that I thought were interesting or pretty for their color or shape.
Rocks were part of every day life – the stepping stones in the brook that we used to get across, the huge boulders under the high lines across from the house, the stones in the yard, the pea-stones along the side of the macadam road.
We had stone samples with garnets in them from the excavation of the underground powerhouse carved out of the mountain for Bear Swamp, a pumped storage power plant that was part of the hydro system that my father oversaw as superintendent of what was then called New England Power. (The plant is still operating over fifty years later, although under another name and company.)
I loved earth science when I took it in high school, so much so that I took a few geology courses when I was in college.
I do still have a few special rocks, including some that have been carved or inscribed with special words. I love their ability to help me feel grounded.
We arrived yesterday and saw some relatives that we don’t see often. A sight for sore eyes!
On Monday, we will relocate to a new site to celebrate our 41st wedding anniversary.
(Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “sight/site” with bonus for using both, although the bonus is psychic, not material.)
(Maybe there is an extra bonus for using both and making it short.)
All I can think of is how hard it was for my father to be left alone when my mother passed away. It was the thing she had been most worried about. What she couldn’t have known was that a pandemic would arrive which severely curtailed our ability to visit.
Joanne Corey 