Monday, October 15, 2007

Not much poetry

Microsoft wants to read your mind. Cue the evil dancing paperclip....

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Factoid: It's very difficult to blog when one has a very large, very fluffy cat flopping himself lengthwise across the laptop and presenting his belly for rubbing.

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Very pleased today to get the word that a poem-ish thing* of mine will be appearing in the not-awfully-distant future in Bloom (the queer one this time, not the Bloomington lifestyle mag I was in before).

*I think it's a prosepoem of sorts, actually, but it might be a highly-compressed little essay thing, or a micro-fictiony-thing without much in the way of plot. I'll call it a prosepoem, since I don't really know any better.

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Glamorous Job (© Rebecca Loudon) department:

If you are interested in volunteering as a Floor Warden to aid in clearing the Wells Library during an evacuation, please contact me.

I thought they only had wardens in prisons & asylums. Hmmm....

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FINALLY got my copy of the new Bruce Springsteen CD today. I made the dire mistake of pre-ordering it directly from the label (Sony), because they were offering a special free lyric booklet along with the purchase. I've been really excited about this CD -- I love me some E Street Band -- and when release day came and went with no package in my mailbox, I started to worry. ("Is there anybody alive out there?") Finally, eight days after release day, I had an email from Sony letting me know that they'd had "a problem at our distribution partner" and shipment had been delayed. They did take off the shipping charges and gave me a couple bucks off the CD, but I still could have gotten it cheaper at Best Buy -- and most importantly, faster. The lyric booklet is kind of neat, but not worth a two week delay. Grrr.

But I have it now. What time is it? It's Boss Time!

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Sunday, several members of my old writers' group got together for a little reunion of sorts. We met once a week, every week, from 1985 until sometime in the mid-nineties ('96 or '97 maybe?), and met sporadically for a couple years after that. Many of us have continued to stay in touch, even if loosely, but this was the first time in quite a few years that most of us had been together as a group. It felt like we'd never been apart, except that our usual routine of going around the table and "checking in" about what was up with us that week became a check-in about what had been up with us for the past ten years. That group was always much more than just a writers' group, which I attribute in part to the strong commitment to feminist principles that underpinned everything about our process, in part to the fact that we all worked hard to communicate clearly and really listen to one another, and in part to pure damn luck in gathering together a group of truly remarkable women.

Not all of us have continued to write seriously (or at all). But to my great astonishment, four of us are now talking about getting together more or less monthly to share and critique poems, along with another woman who used to come to our readings all the time and has been known to mention us as an influence on her own work. I would not have predicted this as an outcome to our little reunion, not in a million years. But I am absolutely thrilled that it's happening.

All the way home from S.'s house out in the country, which is where we met yesterday, I had a line from Paul Simon in my head: "After changes upon changes, we are more or less the same." Yep. That we are.

13 comments:

Lyle Daggett said...

I'm actually an Alternate Stairway Warden in the office building where I work.

"These are the days of miracle and wonder..."

Radish King said...

I believe that wardens are traditionally required to wear ugly shoes. Lyle?

Anne Haines said...

Lyle: Not just a warden, but an ALTERNATE warden! You must be very important where you work. ;)

Rebecca: I work in a library with a buncha librarians. Ugly (but comfortable!) shoes? Not a problem. ;)

Radish King said...

God help us.

Lyle Daggett said...

Yup, when the sirens sound, I stand at the top of the stairway with the door open, and point downward. That's me. More important than anyone knows... :-)

No ugly shoes here. I do, however, keep hoping for one of those tin fireman's helmets like the air raid wardens wear in all those old movies about London during the blitz. But so far nothing doing.

I want a tin fireman's hat. I want one, dammit!

We had two false alarms in the building last week, apparently caused by maintenance being done in the basement...

Anonymous said...

Dude, here's my fave line outta that microsoft article:

"ons later may not produce reliable answers. "Human beings are often poor reporters of their own actions," the company says."

did they ever think we only tell people what we want to know, not that we suck at talking about ourselves?

RJGibson said...

Anne: is your forthcoming Bloom-iness going to be the projected December issue?

Anne Haines said...

Lyle: If they'd give me a tin fireman's hat, I'd sign up to be a warden!

PWADJ: Actually, when one does usability testing on computer applications, it's really surprising how much people aren't really aware of what they do. It's kind of like how everybody knows how to brush their teeth, but if you ask the average person to give you detailed step-by-step instructions for doing it, they'll leave out something important like taking off the cap of the toothpaste. ;) Eye-tracking studies, for example, show that people don't always look first at the parts of web pages they think they look at first. Stuff like that. I'll stop being the web librarian person now since I'm off the clock. ;)

RJ: Most likely, yes. I'm looking forward to the Bloom-iness!

RJGibson said...

Congratulations! How fun! I was updated about upcoming Bloom-iness m'sef, just yesterday. I was hoping/wondering that/if any other po-bloggers would be in the issue.

Anne Haines said...

Excellent! Congratulations to you too, RJ. I'll look forward to seeing it.

Anonymous said...

Anne I am cracking up now. I wish you had gone on longer!

Carol Guess said...

Congrats on Bloom, Anne! That's a lovely journal. I'm eager to read your poem.

I wonder if you saw Tonia M.? I miss her.

And of course, I miss the bookstore
that brought everyone together. If only we had such a thing here now.

Anne Haines said...

Thanks, Carol! Yep, I did see Tonia -- since it is her poetry group I'm in. (Bad grammar, eek.) She's working hard on some of the local political campaigns, these days.

I miss the bookstore too. Where am I supposed to do a reading if I ever get a book out? Sigh...