Love & Grief

Happy Valentine's Day. As poetry editor at Escape Into Life, I celebrated with the annual mini-anthology of (often unusual) love poems. This year it is called Parted from Love. Poems by Karrie Waarala, about a busted marriage; Michael Meyerhofer, about a cleaving; Kristin LaTour, about a seafaring lover; and Jennifer Finstrom, about a divorce (a darn good one). With art by Eric Finzi.

Then my heart broke again at the news of another school shooting, this time in Parkland, Florida. My broken heart goes out to all in woe, fear, and grief today.

For the Loyal

Well, the play is up! Yay! For the Loyal, by Lee Blessing, at Heartland Theatre. I never would have imagined myself directing a football play with a pedophile in it, but it has been a marvelous experience, working with a great cast and creative team and a rock star stage manager and her fabulous assistant. Good stuff all around. If you are local (I almost wrote "loyal"), come see it!

The play was written in response to the Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State and has similar but different circumstances. It was awful to have the Larry Nasser scandal in the news at the same time we were working on the play, reminding us that this keeps going on and nothing fully protects kids from it. What should we do about that?

The local paper did a great feature story on the production, and the review is up today. Many thanks to all who have been working on the show and helping to get the word out. It takes courage to work on this one, and to see it!

M&Ms for Breakfast

1) I don't recommend M&Ms for breakfast, but 2) I was sure glad to find some in the top right drawer of my desk at work this morning. Apparently, I forgot to eat breakfast. This may have been because I accidentally washed my hair and had to dry it before going out into the resumed bitter cold. (Italics to emphasize bitterness.)

I needed to leave early for work to have time to take  about 100 letters to the post office so they would arrive 1) before the March 20 primary election (plenty of time for that!) and 2) before a local candidate forum on February 6 (less time for that). I think I made it, even though our letters now go to another town before returning to our own. I am on this particular ballot, as Precinct Committeeman,* and we have candidates to choose to run for Governor, Attorney General, and state and county offices.

In the wee hours, before I accidentally washed my hair, and when I could have been eating breakfast, I was instead finishing up an enthralling book, The First Bad Man, by Miranda July. I had read one of her short stories recently and liked her movie Me and You and Everyone We Know (our family's kind of quirky comedy), so it was time to read her novel.

*"man" is part of the official name of the office, but we like to think of ourselves as people