Ouija, Lockdown

What a weird day. And we're still in it. Lockdown at the local high school, due to a shooting. No one hurt. But trouble there, for sure. Wild weather: sudden storm, surprise sun.

My husband is retrieving our daughter. Area businesses have provided food. I baked two banana breads while trying to stay updated. Heard from our daughter intermittently via borrowed cell phone, so we know all is well.

Ah!  She's home!

Meanwhile, over at Escape Into Life, I've been learning about the Ouija board writings of James Merrill. Two mini-interviews with EIL poets on an upcoming event and the Alison Lurie memoir, Familiar Spirits, about her friendship with Merrill and his Ouija board and life partner, David Jackson.  I had heard of this book, The Changing Light at Sandover, without ever realizing how it was composed.

But now I connect it with A Vision, by William Butler Yeats, written via his wife's activities as a medium. That's a weird fact I remember from high school English class!

Anyhoo, Richard Fox is part of an upcoming reading of selections from Changing Light, and Robert McDonald discusses Merrill re: Lurie in the EIL Blog. With fascinating broken-camera art by William Miller and these amazing paintings by Xue Jiye. Quija board is courtesy Wikipedia and public domain.

We've learned a little more about the lockdown situation now, and I send you to this amazing interview by Charlie Schlenker of WGLT radio, talking to Sean Kennedy, a fellow student of the shooter. We are glad everyone is safe, grateful for the courage of those in the classroom, and grateful, too, that the school system has a plan and had rehearsed it and could carry it out. Grateful to local police, as well, of course! Feeling bad for the shooter, who is clearly terribly troubled. I hope he'll get some real help now.