November photos

Yeah, I'm late posting these, but ran across them today on the PC: some local photos I took while we were out for a drive in the country on November 11. Enjoy.

Hiatus

Since Randy and I don't "do" christmas, my online absence has little to do with the "holidays" (except that they translate into time off, which I relish). I've been lazing. Lazing and grazing. Today is the first day in two weeks that I haven't eaten a slice of pie. Apples are refreshingly yummy again.

Speaking of apples, Randy picked up a bag of "Arkansas Blacks" at the Farmer's Market on Wednesday: what a beautiful apple! Dark mahogany burnish, small size--they looked so beautiful in a bowl that I wanted to (and plan to) photograph them. The vendor told R that this is an old, heirloom variety with a rather tart flavor. R sliced one today and the flavor was good, though the texture was a bit of a letdown: I like an extra-crisp apple (all-time fave is Honey Crisp). But I'm thinking of baking them into something (yeah, still craving pie).

Randy worked on a photo I took last week with the digital cam. My old Canon (an awesome camera) started having trouble again this summer (the shutter sticks)--I'd had it cleaned and repaired about 2 years ago over in Bloomsburg, at this old-timey shop, the kind you can't believe exist any more. Lately--for the past year or more--I've had no time for the campus darkroom (I used to go as part of the photo club). Anyway, I've gotten more comfortable with borrowing the digital cam, even though R knows a lot more than I do about how to use it.

So last week I took a series of photos, and a couple of days ago Randy came downstairs with an 8x10: he'd fiddled with the contrast (and opacity) and made what I think is a super photo. Let me know what you think. (And thanks again, hon.)

Is this for real?

My friend K (not Kayteau) sent me this link today. I am speechless.

His name is Earl and he's my next-door neighbor

Since I've heard naught from the Island this afternoon, I took some time to catch up with Earl Pickens and his blog. You've got to read it; Earl's a hoot. Moreover, he's a real nice guy, a talented musician, and a super dad. Oh, yeah: he's our next-door neighbor.

I'm hitching my blog-star to Earl's coattails. Just for today. Yeehaw.

Nice line

In Fresh Men, a queer fiction anthology selected by Edmund White, here's a great line from the opening story, Vestal McIntyre's "ONJ.com":

"The line between his ironic and real personae must have been worn away years ago from frequent crossings."

I love that. I read the story on my lunch break, then looked up to see that our wintry mix had arrived. Most of the writing center staff have fled--one reported back that the roads are treacherous--but I was planning to walk home this afternoon anyway. Typing now on a borrowed computer, which won't allow me access to e-mails and files I really need, which sucks because I am *supposed* to be grading short stories right now. Grrrr.

About the computer: this semester I worked on a "loaner" laptop. Loaner equipment has to be turned in by Monday--in the middle of grading week--so, with Randy's approval, I ordered a new laptop. Took them both over to the tech desk today for a data transfusion, or whatever they call it on the Island. (The problem with ISR is what I call the Island/Mainland paradigm: everyone there speaks the same language, but when one of us tech-deficient-but-earnestly-trying dummies paddles over, there's no translator available.) So I'm waiting. And it's snowing hard. And though they said they'd try to have it ready by five, and though I tried to underscore my urgent need for computer access to my students' final portfolios (I have them turn in all their work online), it's really, really snowing hard. Final exams are over and students are leaving for winter break. Is there anyone left at ISR to even look at my laptop? Should I phone? Will that annoy them? Will they purposefully "lose" some of my data out of spite because I've annoyed them? Are they snickering even now, because they know I'm too deficient to even notice its loss for weeks or even months?

On the mainland, we worry that the islanders don't take us seriously. We know it. We feel absurd, like overcautious hand-wringing ministers trying to advocate celibacy to owl-eyed gang members, young men who nod, yeah yeah, speed-typing codes and whisking our precious laptops into the tech labyrinth where Things Get Done. I stand at the counter as the computer technician affixes a case number label to my brand-new Dell. I haven't even had the chance to play with it yet. I feel like a Muggle who's stumbled onto Hogwarts. I have to trust that everything will work out, and on time.

The Beauty of Men

So I've been reading Andrew Holleran's The Beauty of Men, episodically, twenty or thirty pages at a time, mainly late at night before I fall asleep, with continued admiration for his prose style but a rising gorge against his protagonist: I simply loathe the portrayal of contemporary gay men as long-suffering, doomed queens. Am I the only queer who wants to run a few of these characters through a slapping booth? Do we need to perpetuate the message that gay men are virtually invisible after forty, that they have no possible chance at love? I haven't read (nor do I want to read) any reviews or criticism of the novel, and I'm probably too late to join that discussion--which I'm sure is out there--but mainly I'm just, well, appalled. Forty pages from the end of this novel, I'm losing hope of a redeeming moment for this self-loathing whiner.

There, I said it.

Calling all undergrad poets!

January 3 is the postmark deadline for applications to this year's Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets (the "June Seminar"). Fellows live on campus from June 1-22, and are provided free meals and housing. This is such a great opportunity for young poets to spend some focused time with talented peers and accomplished mentors. Past June Fellows include Kevin Young, Mark Wunderlich, Ilya Kaminsky, Ruth Ellen Kocher, Deirdre O'Connor, Stacey Waite, and Mary Szybist. I taught for four years in the program (and was a June Fellow myself years ago) and can't speak highly enough about it. Visiting faculty this year: Terrance Hayes and Michael Waters. Please urge your most promising students & friends to apply!

Rhythm disturbance

So on Tuesday my dad got implanted with his new device: a combo pacemaker/defibrillator unit with two lead wires threaded directly into his heart. A new machine to keep the old machine chugging along. A necessary accessory. A purchase (more time).

Mom, meanwhile, has fractured her foot (in three places) (with no idea how). Well, the general cause is osteoporosis--which sucks--but she doesn't recall jouncing around on a pogo stick or kicking the wall or dropping a casserole on the foot; it just broke. Scary.

Last week, in my sister's e-mail describing Dad's upcoming procedure, she explained that the unit is designed to detect and regulate a "rhythm disturbance." I'm rankled at how medical (and other) terminologies (d)evolve into bland niceties that distance us from our experiences (you're having an "event," they say to the person experiencing a stroke). Still I couldn't help relishing the term: rhythm disturbance. Such associations. I offer it to you, dear reader. Write me a poem. Send something back.

Mary Szybist in town

Poet Mary Szybist will be on campus for a couple of days this week: we had scheduled a visit to my intro creative writing class, but because my class meets at noon, we were able to book a larger space for a Writers at Work talk up at the Writing Center (my class will attend but there will be room for others, too). Mary is also giving a public reading on Tuesday night at Bucknell Hall.

I've been re-reading Mary's book, Granted, and I'm struck again by her poems' inventive engagement with their subjects, and with their structural suspension (I don't know what else to call it): she uses the colon and dash to create connections and extend possibilities. I'm not sure I even have the capacity any more to write critically about so much of the poetry I genuinely like (I'm not sure it's wise to make this confession, but really, my brain feels tired lately), but reading this book makes me want to go back to my desk and try writing something new.

World AIDS Day: searching for poems

Randy, who faithfully reads my blog (dear man), has pointed out that I haven't been posting lately. Things are busy-busy around here, and the November Madness of--well, everything, it seems--takes its toll. I thought it couldn't hurt to ask for a little help with one of my projects:

I'm helping to organize a reading on December 1 to commemorate World AIDS Day. Two years ago, we did this during the noon hour in conjunction with a display of panels from the NAMES Project, and it went really well: lots of folks came through the campus gallery on their lunch breaks to look at the quilt panels, and stayed for the reading. Next year, we're bringing the quilt panels back. But this year, we are trying to present a reading that showcases a multiplicity of voices: some of the multicultural student groups have volunteered to read poems or prose excerpts, and we're doing our best to find material that represents a range of voices.

Here's where I need some help: does anyone out there have any recommendations of where to find some decent-quality writing that presents a multicultural perspective on AIDS and HIV? I thought I was pretty familiar with the literature (duh) and I've been writing about the subject myself for a good long time, but finding poems that voice, for example, the HIV experience of women is proving difficult: what I continue to find are poems by women about gay (white) men. Any help is appreciated; I will track down any leads that you can suggest.

Thanks--

Reading Edith Pearlman

is such a treat that I have to hold myself back or there'll be nothing left on my plate. (Fortunately, Edith's stories only get better with re-reading.) Savoring now: How to Fall, her newest collection, which Sarabande released this spring. Included is "Trifle," a story we ran in West Branch a couple of years ago. Please check out this marvelous fiction writer: she's at the top of her gift, and she totally deserves the prizes that are coming her way.

Fall of the Medici

At one this morning, we were jarred awake by a resounding shatter from downstairs. I was out of bed before Randy (for once) (he'd been sleeping with his headphones on). Even as we stumbled down to the kitchen, I groggily noted that he'd had time to pull some pants on (I was wearing only my glasses), and that he was urging me to "wait upstairs." [In situations of perceived danger, R's bear emerges protectively.]

Flipped on the blinding lights to see that it wasn't a window, but a teapot in smithereens, literally all over the kitchen floor. It had rested on top of the cupboards. I had moved it a wee bit closer to the edge the other night, to make more room for Allie (cat), who has gotten into the habit of leaping from floor to counter to fridge and then into a smallish empty spot at the end of the cupboards, where she perches like a ginger gargoyle to supervise our cooking and dishwashing.

So: top of cabinet + impact at counter = stupendous spray of fine white bone china shards. I found Allie hiding in the living room and made sure she was unharmed. Randy sent me back up to bed (I have an early start this morning and won't be home from Penn State until pretty late tonight).

It's not like the teapot was functional. It had a hairline crack, which I noticed one day in Houston when it started to leak delicately on the countertop. I had visions of it exploding all over me (or worse, over me and the dog or cat) immediately after being filled with boiling water. I set it in the back of the cupboard, packed it up with our other must-haves when we left Houston, and have carted it from apartment to apartment since. I even considered sticking a plant in it, but the image of a fern growing out of a fancy Wedgwood teapot seemed way too fey, as if it might open a door to the influx of tatted doilies and fuzzy toilet seat covers.

But I couldn't throw it away. I'm not even sure what it's come to represent (though after ten years you'd think I'd have a keener perspective). This was David's china, an elegant pattern--"Medici"--with a small blue and gold shell design around the rim. He picked the pattern, though we bought it together, and in fact we even registered at a big department store in downtown Houston (this was the mid-eighties and the clerk was flummoxed at the suggestion; I think my name was entered in the "bride's" column). But the truth is that I'm just not a Wedgwood sort of fag, and I never will be. After David died, and once I was able to realize that hoarding a Wedgwood setting for eight* was ridiculous, I sold it all on eBay.

And now the last of it is gone.



* more on my hoarding tendencies some other time

Another Common Wealth reading

I'll be bopping over to Penn State for another reading by Common Wealth poets: this one's set for Saturday, November 19, 2:00 pm at the Barnes & Noble in State College. Will post an update if I get more information.

(The reading was initially scheduled for October 22 but has been rescheduled.)

Pepe LePew!

Okay, we're in a pretty small town in rural PA, so it's not unusual to see (or smell) a skunk scurrying along the street. Nice, eh? Often in the evenings, a malodorous local critter wafts its lovely essence through the open windows: it's noticeably strong, enough to make us glad that Sadie has never encountered a skunk on her evening walks. (We actually did get about ten feet from one last summer; Sadie was on her best behavior.)

So tonight, when a sudden overwhelming ODOR completely permeated the living room within seconds, we suddenly realized how much worse a skunk encounter could be. O. My. God. I just about gagged. My eyes and throat started burning. Randy ran for the Lysol--it doesn't help--and slammed the windows shut. Too late.

I'm typing this through streaming tears and a wheezing, sneezing allergy attack. I think my throat is actually swelling. I cannot fucking believe this smell.

What I'm reading now

Between Camelots, stories by David Harris Ebenbach.

Weekend proofing

Spent a big chunk of my weekend proofreading the new West Branch (#57, our fall/winter issue): it's nice to come in during the last stage of this process, when literally months have passed since the work was accepted, and most everything feels fresh and not-too-familiar. I found only about a dozen errors, roughly one in every ten pages, and though I know there's probably something that we've all overlooked, I'm proud at how clean this issue looks. We've also redesigned the cover and interior, and the cover art by Ken Beck looks awesome.

Not to miss: super fiction by Joseph Bathanti and Edith Pearlman, poems by Mike Dockins, Charles Jensen, Matt Ladd & Shane Seely, and a lecture/essay on sentimentality by the incandescent Mary Ruefle.

We're reading now for issue #58, so send your fiction (to wbfiction@bucknell.edu) and your bestest poems (by snailmail to West Branch, Bucknell Hall, Bucknell University, Lewisburg PA 17837). (If you want me to look at poems, say so in your cover letter & mark your envelope "solicited.")

[/end whoring for my mag]

Morning shrieking

Our entangled drowsing was pierced this a.m. by a familiar panicked shriiiieeeeeeeek! that demonstrated once more why Randy would be an excellent fireman but I (all fantasies aside) would not. He sprang up and was downstairs--following the sound--before I had even found my glasses (which had fallen under the bed). I stumbled toward the hall and gravity had its way with my bladder--no avoiding a stop at the bathroom--so I was mid-stream when R hollered up for some clothes.

It's hard to stop some things once the've started. I figured as long as he wasn't yelling for bandages, he had things under control. I hurried up and went back to grab last night's shorts and t-shirt from the floor.

He was at the foot of the stairs, holding a freaked-out chipmunk wrapped in something--a kitchen towel?--and he comically stepped into the shorts and then declared them too baggy (who you calling fat?) so I undid the drawstring and yanked it tighter. Little Chippy's beady eyes--you can't really see the "whites" of their eyes, I thought, so what makes them look so panicked, the glinting light?--took in nothing, I guess, except two GIGANTIC predators, as its one free forearm scratched feebly against Randy's grasp.

Allie was, of course, beside herself, ashiver with the constant trilling meow that looks like some kind of seizure. I picked her up and R took the chipmunk out the back door, through the laundry room, to release it. "One of your people bit me once," I heard him say quietly. Then it was over.

I love that gentle man.

Mark your calendar

Mark your calendar for October 11: I'll be reading with Stadler Fellow Betsy Wheeler in the River Poets series in Bloomsburg, PA. Totally looking forward to this!

Location: Phillips Emporium & Coffee House, 10 East Main Street (rte 11) in Bloomsburg (570.387.8027)
Time: 7:30 pm.

Common Wealth release!

I'll be heading over to Penn State on Wednesday, October 5 for the launch party of Common Wealth, the new Pennsylvania poets anthology edited by Marjorie Maddox and Jerry Wemple. There'll be a reading, reception and book signing at the Pattee Library (Mann Assembly Room and Foster Room); it all starts at 7:30 pm. Come to the reading! Say hello!

Fine Press Seminar for Emerging Writers

I'm passing along this e-mail from the Fine Arts Work Center; please share this opportunity:

The Center for Book Arts invites applications for our Letterpress Printing & Fine Press Publishing Seminar For Emerging Writers. The next section of this seminar is scheduled for Fall 2005. The seminar is tuition free for participants. Participants will hear lectures from various professionals in the field - printers, fine press publishers, book artists, and dealers, to get a practical overview of letterpress printing and fine press publishing. They will learn the basics of letterpress printing, both traditional typesetting and options with new technology, by collaboratively printing a small edition of chapbooks or other projects.

Each seminar will be offered to a maximum of eight students. Writers from culturally diverse backgrounds are especially encouraged to apply. Finalists may be interviewed or asked to provide supplemental information to their applications.

Applications will not be accepted from students enrolled in undergraduate or graduate degree programs during the program year (September 2005 - May2006).Application postmark has been extended to October 1, 2005.Email snicholls@centerforbookarts.org for more information, or download the guidelines at http://www.centerforbookarts.org/newsite/opportunities/.

Sarah Nicholls, Program Manager; Center for Book Arts;
28 W. 27th Street; NY, NY 10001;
212-481-0295; FAX 212-481-9853