Into the Wild Wood and Home Again

Sunday, and it's a lovely magenta start to the day. Yes, likely there will be unsettled weather, but it's pretty nonetheless. We have church, then breakfast (Knights of Columbus pancake breakfast--once a month). Then, I'll be coming home to process the last pears and apples from our trees. Well, maybe the last. You know how it is.  And yesterday ended up being a pretty good day. I was working on my full-length poetry manuscript, going down a really deep rabbit hole (when poems are about family, it's like exploring old wounds sometimes). I was, in short, getting both frustrated and depressed. Mainly because I had it all sorted in the summer, but when I went back to it, I didn't see what I thought I'd seen, the arc of the manuscript didn't hold up. It was facile, too easily organized and catalogued. I didn't like it. I didn't even like the title, and it clearly needed a new poem or two to work with the ones already in play. None of this is news to anyo...

It's been hard to ignore the horrors in the news. In fact, I haven't ignored them-- I'm just having a really hard time processing how evil people are. The story about the Cornell rape-fest is making my stomach turn, especially since the response given to a reporter's question was that the men involved would not get a "fair shake" and he "feels badly" for them. Agent shooting a man with a five year old child in the car. The proposed televised execution of a man who, admittedly, did a horrifying thing in 2009, but to put a man who is a paraplegic in front of a firing squad? And there is so much more to be horrified by.  Who the hell are we, as a nation? How and why are we "celebrating" this violence and evil? This is not, and should not be, merely an ontological question. It addresses the core of who we are, both individually and as a country. As human beings. It feels like our moral compass has been smashed to unrecognizable shards.  I...

Finally Friday. Not that it's been a bad week, just a long one. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow: I have the day sort of free to do some poem work. I also need to plan the reading/writing/reflection workshop series I'm going to be hosting at church that focuses on poems by Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, and the book of psalms. I have a couple of people who have emailed me already that they are going to attend --and I don't know them!-- so I need to make sure to have all of my poems figured out. The series will run for four weeks, take a couple off for Thanksgiving, then have one final session with the goal of assembling a small booklet of poems to offer to the parish. We'll see how that goes.  And I'll have time to figure out my own book tomorrow. I hope. And I want to make herbed butter. That isn't time consuming, except for the prepping of the herbs, and it's good to have on hand all winter. I should think about submitting some poems to journals, to...

Thursday, cool and rainy-- but not as chilly as yesterday! Mother Nature is teasing us a bit. It was 46 when I got up- fully 20 degrees warmer than yesterday. Weird. And welcome. I made another pie yesterday-- the bags of apples are down to half a bag. I still have the pears to work through, though, but that's looking manageable. And the garden got frosted yesterday, so likely all I have to do is mourn the loss of the squash (though I have not checked...) and pull up the meager half-row of carrots. That can wait until tomorrow, or sometime this weekend. It's wet out.  School goes apace. We are working through Julius Caesar, working on rhetorical devices, and nothing much new coming up until next Wednesday when the kids 9-11 have PSAT stuff, and I'll be hanging out with a handful of seniors, working on college app stuff. It'll also be Holly's fifth birthday-- so that will be a grand thing! We still don't have definite plans for her big day-- unfortunately, most o...

Crisp (okay, cold) 26 degrees and a hard frost. I suspect that, even though we covered things, the frost has ended the short run for the butternut squash. I will try to get out there to check on it later today, but there's likely no rush. G covered a few plants on the deck, too, but who knows if they'll be okay. They were not a real priority, and inattention may have been their demise, too.  I try. There's only so many hours in a day, right?  That said, yesterday went well at school. The play went off without a hitch, it was really awesome actually, and it seems that most of the kids liked it a lot. Well, except for the dyed in the Carhartts-I hate everything except T. and motocross-why can't I wear my oil-stained hat in school sort. They are a harder case to solve. And frankly, I'm pretty sure I can't solve their issues. Frost said it best in "Mending Wall" when the speaker says, Something there is that doesn't love a wall, That wants it down.’ I ...

Chilly and windy-- perfect fall weather. The wind knocked down most of the pears, so Holly and I went out yesterday and gathered as many as we could. Poor sweetie slipped in some mushy pears and came up covered in pear mush-- it was comical, though. The sunshine was lovely, the wind was brisk, and we were outside gathering fresh fruit. Not a bad way to spend a bit of time.  Today, Weathervane theatre is coming to my school to perform a shorter version of Much Ado About Nothing. I am hoping it all goes well. I always get so nervous about events that I have planned. At least this year there was no chasing permission slips, arranging chaperones, and figuring out busing. Amen. I just hope that the kids like it, and it goes well, and I'll be able to cross this one off my list of things to do.  My list is getting rather long again. Work things, home things, fall project things-- never enough time or enough me to go around. I do what I can, but I sure wish I had a free day or two to...