Fingerprint Not Recognized

Could it be all the handwashing and surface wiping? Frequently now my phone says, "Fingerprint not recognized" when I touch my finger to it to see what's up. Am I gradually disappearing? Well, yes, figuratively, but now, I guess, maybe literally! Fingeratively. 

What joy, joy, joy and relief I've been experiencing since yesterday! I'd gone into my front yard at 11:30, maybe to put out the mail? My across-the-street neighbor said, "We've got some good news!" This was the first year her daughter could vote! Yay all around! So many pictures of champagne later in the day, the spread-out family toasting! And all of us had beautiful weather wherever we were, the weather joining in the figuratively/literally thing.

And some terrible sadness, a family member lost to Covid-19. I only hope that family can grieve now inside a feeling of protection and relief surrounding them.

It's Sunday and I've got that "Love thy neighbor as thyself" feeling. Neighbors have been out in the fine weather, so we've been able to chat from an appropriate distance in the fresh air. I still love my back yard neighbors who probably voted differently than I did, the down-the-way not-so-responsible (poop) dog owners, and the neighbor who left conservative/religious books in my Little Free Library as an obvious message (since the yard signs recently in my yard were also an obvious message). Yes, let's heal, work together, and love one another as best we can.

Freight Train

I'm back to a poem a day on a chalkboard for November, with the easel-style chalkboard moved inside to my home office. So far, though, 1) the weather has been gorgeous and warm, and I could have left it outside, and 2) a lot of my poems are about patience and waiting! 

Turns out, I'm writing longer poems in my head as I walk back and forth to work, but those disappear into the bramble of my brain. I remember salient images from them, and their walking rhythms, but they are mostly gone. That's probably fine. I recall, and often use, a composing/revising technique I learned years ago of writing a draft of a poem and then not looking at it and writing it out again. Only what is important comes back!

Yesterday, freight trains came through town on both my walks. On the way into town, I saw the marvelous graffiti that gave me this small poem that started as a haiku, expanded into a double haiku (not really a thing), was briefly a reverse haibun (also not a thing) in the bramble, and eventually became two stanzas that fit on a chalkboard.

Freight Train

Graffiti on its box cars
gives me the finger
over and over.

I smile in the sun,
admiring the patient art
of angry artists.

On my walk back home, I was joined at the corner by a friend on his way back to our neighborhood. We chatted, masked, for a long time, as all lights were red, waiting for the long freight train to go by. He'd been an election judge at our polling place and gave me a few more details of his day. We waited long enough to see the bad behavior of impatient drivers--turning right or left from the wrong lane, U-turn on a one-way street, driving too fast for the delayed traffic--and eventually witnessed an accident. A young woman took the right turn too fast and smashed the corner of her car into the corner of a building. She began to scream, continued screaming as she got safely out of her car, and as masked people came to help. I was calling 911, and so were several others, evidently, as by the time I got through, the police knew about it.

The train was stopped now, all crossing bars down. I could see that no emergency vehicles would be able to get through until the bars went up. The police station, blocks away, is on the other side of the tracks. Et cetera. Drivers continued to make bad choices, especially when the crossing bars went up, and they surged and turned into the path of police cars to get where they wanted to go, but finally help reached the woman, and she walked into the ambulance with two fellows helping. My friend gave a witness statement, and I chatted with a young man with a bike, who had come to work in the building she'd just hit. He had a bandage on his head from an accident that morning--bike, car--and seemed a bit befuddled, repeating his story with exact words to everyone who came near.

Walking away, I could see how easily we could have been in the driver's path. There were two white turn arrows painted on the street. One pointed to the sidewalk a few feet from where we stood, and one pointed to the building where she had crashed. These are advance warning arrows, but it was as if she had followed the second one exactly. Her car took the arrow's path, not the street. How is she doing now, that young woman? What a horrible day for her, on what a beautiful day.

I went home and collected yard signs for candidates (to return or recycle) and raked the side yard of tulip poplar leaves and sat in the back yard with the squirrels and read a book and drafted more poems and said hello to a tiny dog that had been running around the neighborhood and eventually into my back yard (where the gate is stuck open), explaining some past incidences of poop. And now I know the identity of the dog's people...the back yard neighbors down the way who curse a lot. Maybe they'll turn up in a poem someday.

Yard Signs, Gun Shots, Trick-or-Treat

I'll start with the gun shots. After some chores on Saturday, a sunny, windy day, I took a long walk on the hiking/biking trail to keep heart and mind open, to see and breathe nature, and to stop by the labyrinth for centering. Right after I walked the labyrinth, calm of mind and loose of limb, as I went to collect phone, mask, and gloves, I heard two gun shots from the apartment complex beside the cancer center. Phone at hand, I called 911 to report this. The officer was calm, like me, and said they'd drive through the complex to check it out. No news of tragedy later that day, no sound of sirens as I continued through the beauty of the afternoon. Somehow, this is my/our life right now, yes? Possible, potential, even probable disaster near at hand, but uncertain, and maybe not. Maybe we'll be OK.

Maybe it was a Halloween prank. We did not turn on our porch light for trick-or-treaters this year. Instead, I put book hedgehogs and candy in the Little Free Library in case anybody came by. Somebody did come by, leaving two bags of peanut M&Ms, my favorite! But I haven't checked yet today to see if some books went home with kids or grownups, and whether I'll need to bring candy back inside. I had put some solar lights in the ground that day, and they worked: they lit up fine at night.

There was a Trump rally in our town on October 22. I found out about it after the fact--900 people at the local baseball stadium. Pictures showed the masked and unmasked, and people sort of spread out in the bleachers. It was a watch party for the debate, with the debate on the big electronic screen out there. Yes, Covid cases have been on the uptick since, but that's happening everywhere. The direct result of the rally that I saw locally was the appearance of yard signs. A news photo from the rally showed all the Republican signs stacked up for people to take, and, sure enough, they started popping up over the next few days in my precinct, which had mostly Democrat yard signs before, plus some perennial Republican incumbent signs.

Of the above, the labyrinth, the fall beauty, and the Little Free Library give me joy and peace. Hang in there, everybody. We really are all in this together. I hope we make it through with as much love and kindness as we can muster, "muster" being a battle term, alas, or a group of peacocks.

Lambslide

Yes, I do hope for a lambslide. But in the moment, I am just happy for small joys, like finding the book Lambslide, by Ann Patchett, illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser, as part of my work today! As things change and adjust during these Covid times, I will now sometimes process children's books, as well as grown-up books, plus movies and music, at the library. So Lambslide came my way, and I hope that Escape Goat, their newest collaboration, will, too! 

As you can see, Lambslide is about some sliding lambs, as well as how to work together to help create what you want in the world. Plus voting. Looks like Escape Goat has a similarly wise message delivered in a similarly charming way, as I can tell from its book trailer here! And I bet you'll like this interview!

Broadcast Hysteria

I had not intended to impose a quarantine on my blog, but many, many days have gone by since I have written here. I've been reading and writing and getting out the vote in my precinct, working, gardening, and doing a little outdoor visiting, safely, while I can. The weather has changed several times--rain, chill, return to summer--so I've done some of my reading outdoors, and I've transplanted five bright yellow mums into the ground, hoping they return, as, for me, yellow is the color of joy.

I feel suspended, at loose ends, busy, scattered. I know it is election anxiety on top of Covid uncertainty, flux, change, stasis...  I've written some small monster poems, a couple inspired by the book I am now reading: Broadcast Hysteria: Orson Welles's War of the Worlds and the Art of Fake News, by A. Brad Schwartz. I'm reading it to get ready for a broadcast of Howard Koch's radio adaptation of War of the Worlds, the science fiction novel by H.G. Wells*, coming up October 30, at 8:00 p.m. on WGLT, our local NPR affiliate station, and produced by Heartland Theatre Company. This is the famous radio play broadcast on October 30, 1938 as part of Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre of the Air,** and some people who tuned in late, after the announcement that clarified it was fiction, an entertainment, did get scared and confused, thinking the "fake news" aspect of its presentation was real news, about a possible meteor landing, poisonous gas attacks, or Martians taking over the earth. Apparently, most who heard the Martians part realized it was science fiction...but some ran out of their houses to escape, just not as many, as this book makes clear, as newspaper reports the next day seemed to suggest. 

This Schwartz book is from 2015 and is firmly aware of the contemporary "fake news" problem, also situating "fake news" in history as an ongoing sensationalism-to-sell-papers thing and a more complicated and subtle freedom of the press vs regulation thing. Interesting! And fun to read about Orson Welles and his theatre, radio, film projects in this context, too.

Mostly, I am avoiding any personal broadcast hysteria by regulating what I read or watch or listen to in terms of news. Sigh... And cleaning out the basement.

*I remember first hearing about this as a kid, from my dad, and getting the two "wells" people mixed up in my mind, which has lasted into adulthood even though I know the difference between them. Memory and the mind work in weird ways.

**I meant to say "Mercury Theatre on the Air" (not "of") but I'm correcting my typo down here (instead of up there) because I like the ethereal feel of a theatre of the air!