UPDATES AND THOUGHTS, part 1

Only UPDATES this time. I have met a return of covid with a short hospital stay, pneumonia, and low oxygen head on, and I am now home and only need oxygen at night.  And Charlie, always Charlie  The amount and pace of my story-telling is almost back to normal, but no one has mentioned how pleased they are. I am not deterred.

UPDATE #1  The Missing Link

This may be the last time I figure out a way to bring up my award-winning poem, The Missing Link, but I wouldn’t count on it.

You may recall that one of the things I won was an online mention of my poem. This did happen, but the location of the online mention was fairly obscure.  No one has mentioned seeing it, so click on THE MISSING LINK for your private viewing.  

Another winning-poem-perk was to replace the ads on city bus innards, but none of the crowd-sourcing riders, which include the 4 bus riders I know, have commented on The Missing Link, so who knows if my poem had few, if any viewers?   To enhance the viewership, and because they agreed with the sentiment of the poem, my Landmark colleagues posted a poster sized copy  of the poem  in the front window of the Landmark to enhance the number of viewings.  Viewings  matter because I remember reading in an old UN document that 50 viewings equaled a publication.  So a grad school bud and I quickly made 50 copies of our latest poems, handed them out to passers by, and, SHAZAM!  We were published poets.  But does looking at the poster in the sidewalk window count as a viewing if it is covered by reflections or if I volunteered to read it and nobody came? 

Are we reading the poem, checking the street life, or looking at ourselves?

 Then I and the 134 other King County Public Poetry Contest winners were invited to join the open mic crowd of one of the sponsoring 4Cultures Poetry Group’s regular events, but I don’t do crowds well in my wheelchair.  So Charlie and I went down to the Ship Canal Locks and made a video, which I sent to the poetry project folks to use instead. Here it is and, SPOILER ALERT, the outtakes win: 

The Locks people asked for a copy, and they have a nifty gift shop, but a staffer told me they put her Locks poem in the closet, so I’m not counting on a  mushrooming viewership.

Finally, I have a gift at the Poetry Group’s headquarters waiting to be picked up, which Charlie will do, sometime.  I don’t nag on this because Seattle’s traffic makes it a 2 hour ask and it will not change The Missing Link’s status as the most-unknown award- winning poem ever.  However, the unknown gift is intriguing. Maybe it will be a Billy Collins Bobblehead to celebrate ‘Musical Tables’, his recent book of small poems, each of which ‘is a thought or observation compressed to its emotional essence.’ Love, love. I’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE #2  Pier Park  Teaser

You may recall that 5 years ago, I helped to FREE THE PIER from its chains, and we pedestrians have loved the lapping water and squawking seagulls ever since.  The large Water Project, of which the Pier was a part, was, and still is, to be finished in 2024 with the tables and chairs of a small park and a pedestrian friendly street entry. Well, it’s already late summer’ and where is it?  Hark!  I hear another project calling.  

UPDATE #3  Reading

The NPR interviewer asked the interviewee, ‘How many books do you read in a year?’  Who knows?  WHO CARES?  I’m currently reading David Ignatius’ latest, Quantum Orbit and learning a lot about the US, China, Russia, and space. I’m on p.29 and  loving it already.  David Ignatius is one of my favs.  Another fav is Timothy Egan, whose most recent book is Fever in the Heartland, [about] The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them.  It is really good, but very scary, only infers the current horror among us, and makes me cheer more and louder for Harris/ Walz.  I read this when the cleaners come and a latte calls.  I like Sara Nisha Adams’ The Reading List better than I thought I would, but it is about people choosing books, making connections, and why public libraries matter, so who could resist? I’ll go back to it after I finish Quantum Orbit. I started Rex Pickett’s The Archivist because two promising potential librarians are interested in archives, but the beginning chapters were about the protagonist’s non-archival thoughts, and I wanted more about building, curating, and searching archives.  I will return, though, because adapting a collection to meet different purposes interests me.  Downsizing has  been, and continually is, an exercise in adapting.   Oh, wait. I found Patrick Bringley’s memoir, All the Beauty in the World, about his ten years working as a guard at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.  It looks VERY interesting.  Maybe just a quick pek…. 

UPDATE #4 COMING ATTRACTIONS, Thoughts