Hello Beautiful

OK, I'm suddenly trendy, as I'm reading Oprah's new Book Club selection! It's Hello Beautiful, by Ann Napolitano, and I started it soon after reading her previous book, Dear Edward, which I understand is now a tv series. My paperback edition of Dear Edward, a Read with Jenna selection, had the first chapter of Hello Beautiful in it, so I was twice dipped in its opening sadness and basketball escape.

Also, hello, Beautiful! Thanks for reading my blog. I ran into one of my blog readers last night in person at the theatre. What a joy, and I am so touched! He said he has read some books based on my blog accounts, and he also enjoys my chalkboard poems. This just warms my heart! And I needed warming up, as it's been cold and gloomy for a few days, but yesterday the sun came out, and there was a clear sky with stars and a fingernail moon last night!

It was a busy, but entertaining, Saturday. In the afternoon, I went to The Lost King, about Richard III, inviting my dad, who has written a play about the king and would be familiar with all the basic research and discrepancies! Delightful movie with Sally Hawkins, followed by a panel discussion of theatre and history experts from the university. And a young woman in the audience who had read the book the movie is based on. I remember the news of finding Richard's bones in a car park! That shouldn't be a spoiler! It was on the news! And it's history! The movie tells another story, too, her story!

The balance of cloudy gloom with sunshine carries on in my poetry life, too. A rejection gets balanced by a request to reprint a poem, and going over proofs of some forthcoming poems. And I just keep writing. It's all over the place: chalkboard, computer, composition notebook, notepad for grocery lists, and my shower brain, where dialogue for a script also just spouted out like water or song. Or like water up the basement drain, after saturating rain, when I'm trying to do laundry, making it a half Slattern Day in the blog. But the sun came out, and I'm happy, and the bunnies in the yard, a true rhyme, are hoppy.

Tiny...Dead Things

Well, I went to work today, not to work, but to put up a theatre-library display, due to a collaboration between institutions, library and theatre, and ended up helping patrons and talking to visitors and just hanging out! Indoors. Because it was freezing outside, still is, and now it's snowing again. Poop! Maybe March is the cruelest month.

This picture has the stage manager in it, who played a lot of bagpipes last night.

The play is Tiny Beautiful Things, adapted by Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) from the book by Cheryl Strayed. So, book and playscript are in the display, along with various versions of Wild, and a bunch of nonfiction books that relate to the topics* in the letters that people wrote to Strayed when she was Sugar for the Dear Sugar column of The Rumpus. Already, many of the young people I talk with have already read the book and are delighted and surprised to learn about the play! Tiny Beautiful Things, the tv series, drops April 7 at Hulu.

*including This Body I Wore, by Diana Goetsch, mentioned in this blog entry (where I lost my car).

When I got home, I also didn't work, meaning do any housework, making it a Slattern Day in the blog. As usual it is also a Poetry Someday, as I wrote two morning poems, one on my chalkboard, to a mouse I found dead in a trap this morning by the refrigerator (sorry, Mouse!) and one in a Lenten online workshop where lately I have been doing mostly prose, so a poem was a nice surprise. I did catch up on some computer work. Sigh... Tough week of hospital visits for my dad, so I was staying with my mom, therefore. Lost a little sleep. For escape...and because we saw the season finale of The Last of Us, I am reading World War Z. I am hoping the mouse does not reanimate.

Tiny Poems

Last night I participated in a lovely event at the Chenoa Public Library, a presentation about Fugue, an artist book with photographs by Ken Kashian and tiny poems by me. You can see a little video about it, with a fugue as background music, at Ken's website and at the Fugue link above. Part of the joy was the absolute attention of the audience, and part was conversing with them afterwards in a relaxed and cozy way on a rainy night, us warm inside in comfortable chairs donated by other libraries! In fact, Sheryl the director and I realized we had attended the same regional library conference the day before. I guess that makes it a Random Coinciday as well as a Poetry Someday in the blog! Other coincidences: the library director had participated in a theatre in town that I work with, and I went to high school with her husband and his brothers. He farmed up the road from where I lived, and my son and his hometown have the same name! 

The town and its library are very near the Weston Cemetery Prairie Nature Preserve, where the poems and photos are set. Not everyone in the audience had been there yet, but they'll be visiting soon! I was so honored that people felt reverence for the place, and reverent in our space last night, thanks to the photos and poems, and, I think, the sense of community.

Also, I finally read Educated, by Tara Westover, that everyone had told me to read. Wow, were they right. What a story! Right up there with Women Talking, by Miriam Toews, about women overcoming oppression and violence and being uneducated, and finding a way out, a way to live their lives. We hope. I read a good article--where? LA Times?!--about how Women Talking, the film, won't win Best Picture at the Oscars, but that the real "win" was being nominated. I think it ends (paraphrasing here), But wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world where it could win? Yes. 

And, by the way, can I invite myself to anyone's Oscar party? My tv doesn't get ABC. Well, if not, I guess we could watch the season finale of The Last of Us! But I do love watching the Oscars live.

Real ID

Speaking of cars, my Real ID arrived in the (damp) mail today, shortly before the rain turned to icy snow. It was raining when I went to renew my license before it expired on my birthday, and I eagerly awaited the safe arrival of the Real ID, signed by a new Secretary of State, recently elected. But it still has Abraham Lincoln's face on it, as well as my own. I look OK in this picture! I am smiling. And it's all thanks to the DMV women; they took my picture twice, as in the first some hair had fallen into my eye, and the one woman knew there might be trouble if both my blue eyes were not evident. Ironically, 1) I am not wearing glasses in the photo; they don't let you--glare, eye color, etc. even though 2) the license requires me to wear glasses. So, in a way, it's not the Real ME!

Chalkboard poems continue. Reading continues. I read a sort of magical realism short novel, The Crane Husband, by Kelly Barnhill because the description reminded me of a poem I had written a couple years back where a woman marries a sandhill crane. This was darker than that, though the poem is also about a cryptid, the Mothman, who might actually be a sandhill crane. I love my life, but it is sometimes hard to explain to people who are not me. Let's just say I used to live in Kearney, Nebraska, and also passed through there on a trip west during sandhill crane nesting season.

I think there was more I meant to tell you, but it's Friday, it's snowing, and I am already drinking wine (in hopes of a nap...have I mentioned my weird sleeping patterns during the pandemic?)