Already I’ve skipped a day of #frontstooppoetry. But I’m not daunted. I had missed more than a month before putting up this poem on Thursday, so a one-day gap is a big improvement. Right?
In any case,yesterday was a work day, and the start of a weekend so also a play day. And here I am today, and there’s a new poem on the chalkboard, so…progress!
Today is a Slow Saturday. I’ll get a haircut (overdue), get the rest of the Christmas decorations down (overdue), make a grocery list, maybe make or write a postcard or two, and otherwise probably just hang out with the pack. I’ve been on walks with both dogs already (separate ones, as somebody needs some serious leash work), so I already feel like the day hasn’t been wasted.
Looking for a good book?
Today’s reading is Parable of the Sower, my first Octavia Butler book ever. I’ve just started it. But there are two books I’ve read recently that I’m recommending widely:
Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures, by Katherine Rundell, is a beautifully written collection of essays about some of the many animals that are threatened or endangered. I found it simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming, a combination that seems impossible even after experiencing it.
The Barbizon: The Hotel that Set Women Free, by Pauline Bren, tells the tale of New York City’s women’s residential hotel, along with many of the famous women who called it home, including Grace Kelly, Sylvia Plath, and many more. For me, it also was an unparalleled look at the culture of the 1950s and what it meant for women.
And if, like me, you’re a fan of mysteries and noir, check out March Violets, by Philip Kerr, set in Nazi Germany before World War II. If you’ve got a reading suggestion for me, drop it in a comment.
Several years ago—back in the During Times (before the Before Times)—I was inspired by (i.e., copied) a friend and start posting short poems or poem snippets on a chalkboard on my front porch. It helped me connect with the world in a time when I badly needed to do so, and it helped nurture creativity, which nurtured me. I did it regularly, pretty much daily, for probably about two years, then less regularly, then sporadically, and now so rarely that there’s been little excuse lately for me to keep that chalkboard on the stoop.
Yet keep it there I have, likely because it has nurtured my soul in days past. I’ve met people through my front stoop poetry, mostly people stopping casually to say hello or even thank me for my words, but also one person I truly call a friend (You know who you are, M!).
I’ve tried numerous times to get myself back into the daily habit but haven’t succeeded. I’m trying again today. We’ll see what happens. Cross your fingers for me. You don’t have to want to read it; just know that it seems good for me.
In addition to the front porch, I’ve also shared #frontstooppoetry on social media, mostly Facebook. That’s a lot of hashtags I’ve posted—actually, a lot of the same hashtag. But now, I think I’m getting ready to swear off Facebook. It’s been feeding me what seems like 80-90% ads and suggested groups/posts for a long time, rather than my actual friends’ missives. While that has been frustrating, it’s Zuck’s decision to get rid of the fact checkers that is finally driving me away. Too much of social media is already an echo chamber, feeding people only what it knows they already want to hear. To do that without any concern for whether they’re propagating malicious lies is simply unconscionable.
Front stoop poetry needs a new digital home. So here it is. When I put a new poem on the porch, I will also put it here, instead of on social media. I’ve already done this occasionally (see posts tagged #frontstooppoetry here), but I’ll try to do it every time. Maybe that will even be daily; hope does spring eternal.
Meanwhile…Skirt side back
Skirt side back? What’s that about?
It’s part of a postcard that I made recently and sent off to a friend.It started out as a failed endeavor, something I tried and hated and set aside but didn’t throw away. That was a couple of years ago, I think, but I came across it recently and salvaged it by approaching what I had done as a foundation to build upon. I think it worked, and there’s a lesson there about viewing things in different ways, trying to find fresh perspective. Seeing something from a new or different vantage point can mean seeing something through someone else’s eyes as well, something I think we all and our world could profit from more and more these days.
Stop me before I climb up on my soapbox of kindness and start sprinkling fairy dust around the room.
I opened Facebook this morning to track down a link shared by Escape Into Life for a daily literary meditation exercise for January. I’d been meaning to start this on January 1, so I’m already four days behind, and to be honest that seems at least par if not better than par for these stay-at-home, end-of/start-of-year times. Don’t judge me. I’ve been filled with ennui here at the start of 2021.
Facebook greeted me, as it usually does first thing in the morning, with a memory. I looked; the algorithm-driven memories are probably my favorite facet of Facebook. Today’s was a photo of an apple—a ripe, red apple pendant on a tree—that for the life of me I couldn’t remember taking. Possibly I didn’t, because it was connected to a poem fragment I had quoted with a link:
“Medieval physicists thought gravity was love. They catalogued it attraction.”
I clicked the link to re-read the same poem, but got a different one. It turns out the one I shared last year had (probably) been the featured poem of the day on Autumn Sky Poetry. And the poem of the day for today was another one—also utterly lovely: Why I Have to Sing, by Kitty Jospé.
I read it and then found the one by John Calvin Hughes as well. What a lovely start to the day.
To top it off, I did follow that up by starting on the literary calendar for January, which fed my soul. Now feeling hopeful, I head off to start my day—first by mailing a poem/card to a pen pal (what a lovely, old-fashioned phrase) before turning my attention to the work that pays my bills.
I have so many things I want to write about today! Reading, the end of this seemingly endless year, the deer that visited our front yard overnight while we slept…
Let’s start there, with the deer.
I took this photo thinking it would be a Wordless Wednesday post here on the blog. Then I got up this morning and wrote it into my #frontstooppoetry for the day. So, words, which means not wordless.
My husband and I saw this in the snow when we opened the gate from our side yard to head out to the sidewalk for our first walk of the day yesterday.
A single deer had walked right into the branches of our front-yard lilac tree, and from there we couldn’t tell where it had gone. Right on through? Maybe, but the tracks on the other side were definitely a rabbit’s. Either a rabbit obscured deer tracks, or the deer backed out the way it came. We could see only about three hoof prints, so it’s possible this deer used the sidewalk and veered into our yard only for a quick snack. I’ve seen it happen in the daylight. I know lots of people consider deer pests; to me, they’re graceful and beautiful creatures, with whom I’m generally happy to share a garden. It brightened my day to know I had hosted one in the wee hours.
Reading out the year
Lots of my friends are tallying up the books they’ve read this year and sharing the numbers on social media. Not me. I’ve found reading difficult this year. Oftentimes I’ve found myself too anxious to focus on reading anything longer than a poem, and for a short while leading up to and following Election Day, I couldn’t even read poetry. As a friend said to me recently, my relationship with books has been a troubled one. On the bright side, I’ve actually read more poetry books than usual this year. Among the ones I finished the year with was The Abridged History of Rainfall,by Jay Hopler (McSweeney’s Press), which is absolutely super. One poem in it, Elegy for the Living, is so heartbreakingly beautiful that I was compelled to read it aloud for the Twitterverse:
My unread book pile grew the other day when a friend emailed to ask if he had loaned me a book that he couldn’t find. He had not, but I’m pretty sure I own the book, and I thought, “If I can find it and have already read it, I can just pass it along to him”—an elegant solution to get him the book he wanted and clear one object out of my too-cluttered life, don’t you think?
You can probably tell already that this didn’t work out as planned.
I, too, found that I couldn’t track down this book, which for all I know might have decided to take a forbidden vacation with its sibling of the same name from my friend’s book collection.
But in the process of looking for it, I came across three other books that I had forgotten I had and really do want to read: two murder mysteries and Joe Biden’s book about the death of his son Beau, Promise Me, Dad. So those vaulted directly to the top of my next-read pile. The good news is that I’ve just finished reading one of them. Care to guess which one?
As we’re counting down the days to Inauguration Day 2021, and I’m looking forward to change in the White House—and, I hope, the country—it seemed appropriate to end 2020 with Biden’s memoir. I took the rediscovery of this book as a sign that the time was right to get to know my next president a little better. I’m glad I did. Although, of course, I cried at the end. So be forewarned.
Next up is one of the murder mysteries, a little lightness to start the new year.
My husband’s political advent calendar
Speaking of lightness, the new year, and the countdown to Inauguration Day…over on Escape into Life my husband, renowned cartoonist Phil Maish, has created a post-Christmas advent calendar to count down the last days of the current White House administration. Each day he opens a new door to show a new cartoon. Day 25 will be Inauguration Day.
After the overnight snowstorm that revealed the deer tracks yesterday morning, we had an utterly gorgeous day today, sunny and clear and crisp. The husband and I took a nice walk, to and through a neighborhood park, and I couldn’t resist taking a few photos, including the one at the top of this post. It was a simply perfect winter day; I couldn’t have asked for a better one to end 2020. We’ll be spending our New Year’s Eve the way we like best: watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies and trying to stay awake until midnight. Tomorrow’s lentil soup is already made, and the traditional Swedish rice pudding will follow it up; if I recall correctly, we started 2020 without either of those good-luck staples, and look where that got us.
