Seeing how "the third coast" is a thing, we wonder if we can make "Michiterranean" happen.
Pic: Beach selfie. I know I'l be thankful for this reminder of sand, sunset, lake breeze, and book time in a few months.
A Daily Self-indulgent Postcolonial/Feminist/Poetry-in-Progress/Culture Blog
Seeing how "the third coast" is a thing, we wonder if we can make "Michiterranean" happen.
Pic: Beach selfie. I know I'l be thankful for this reminder of sand, sunset, lake breeze, and book time in a few months.
I shouldn't have said it was nearing the end of summer yesterday... What I meant was that it was the end of summer break... for me.
Our D.C. trip is in a week, and I'll be in a full-day workshop (8-5) the day after we return. That's soon.
I can't believe I'm whining--what an incredible privilege it is to take a break as an adult. I always wish everyone got mandated time off. In my family, how nice it would be if At and Big A had at least a couple of weeks off to read, lounge, and turn off their alarms... How much better their health and wellbeing would be.
To someone's text enquiring after me, I responded "I’m good… waking up to the reality that one way or another it’s almost August…" And then on reconsideration: "I mean it’s August THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW 😂ðŸ˜"
Pic: Still summer in flower time, clearly.
Don't ask why I'm up at 3:27 a.m., but now I'm worried for friends and family in Hawaii and on the West Coast as tsunami waves from the Russian earthquake make their way across the Pacific ocean.
I was just thinking yesterday that this has been a beautiful summer--not too hot, just enough rain to keep everything lush, NO mosquitoes, a record-breaking number of fireflies and butterflies...
It has also been a month since At's ex SLE died, and this was the month of my mom's heart attack and Big A's mysterious illness. And suddenly--or so it seems--we're nearing the end of summer.
Pic: Nu is filling out health information forms, and Max thinks he can help. Huck milling around (under Max), is thinking about joining in, because she knows stuff too. I can't believe Nu will be off and living in the dorms in a few weeks!
One of my summer tasks was to do a closet cull. It hasn't happened yet. Could still happen, I suppose!
Another one was to put together a chapbook of poetry. I have been working on that a bit. I started wondering today... if that should be two chapbooks.
Instead of trying to force the nature pieces and the family/politics pieces into the same space, perhaps they should each have a separate volume? It might be easier to articulate a theme that way.
A lot of the time, the nature compositions are untethered--they matter to me at the moment of writing, but may not be interesting to anyone else because they don't tell a story. I'd be sad to lose all of them though.
Pic: purple flowers by the river, reflection of trees and sky. When I looked at my post-walk photos, I didn't know what I was looking at at first.This NYT quiz on dreams--I'm what they classified as "a big dreamer" but there's plenty I learned about how we dream in the process of taking the quiz.
This list of most recommended books in The Atlantic. I'm horrified I've read so few.
A couple of hacks:
If you hit a paywall and don't want to pay or don't feel like supporting Islamophobic/Transphobic outlets like The New York Times or The Atlantic, you could use archive.is. Paste the URL of the piece you want to read into the second box (the one that says: "I want to search the archive for saved snapshots"). Usually, that should do the trick.
I figured out this next hack myself! When I came back from last week's health nightmare, I found I wasn't able to leave comments on some (WordPress?) blogs like Nicole's, J's, and Jenny's. "Mod_Security" kept telling me that my server was "Not Acceptable!" (Threatening exclamation point and all.) But if I toggle my computer WiFi to my phone's hotspot, I can!
Pic: I saved this meme to my desktop years ago... Good save. And I guess those little things did save me and keep me mostly sane.
The beach was calling, so today was a beach day with friends. A late lunch, the art fest in Grand Haven, and then we flopped on the sand unt...