Audiovisual

Still a little bit floaty and less-than-verbal following last week's Yo-Yo Ma concert (and encounter). So, just a few links to share tonight:

I made a low-tech, "aim the webcam and hope for the best" poem video.




For the past few days I've been enthralled by this nest of barn owls. There were originally five viable eggs (and one dud that got consumed by the mama); today owlet #4 hatched, and the fifth is expected in about three days or so. There is an infrared cam for night vision; during the day you can see how exquisite the female's coloring is, and at night you can watch the male depositing rabbits, gophers, mice, rats, etc. for the family to dismantle and consume. It really is a spectacle of "nature red in tooth & claw" - and I bet anything I end up with at least a couple of owl poems before the owlets fledge.
Free Webcam Chat at Ustream


Finally, just because I've been listening to it over and over on this rainy, chilly early-spring night, here is Eddie Vedder covering one of my favorite Bruce Springsteen songs:

The Night I Talked To Yo-Yo Ma

So tonight I went to a wonderful concert by Yo-Yo Ma, with piano accompanist Kathryn Stott. I initially failed to get tickets before it sold out, but I was lucky enough to find someone selling an extra. Turned out to be a pretty good seat, even; 29th row, nearly dead center. Not a seat you'd necessarily sell your mother to get, but in the IU Auditorium even the seats back that far have very good sightlines, and the sound was very good as well (except for the guy next to me who kept scratching his beard and rubbing his face, making all kinds of annoying little noises - ugh).

(Click the image of the program to see it big enough to read.) The opening piece, a Schubert sonata, worked well as an opener - it felt comfortable, a bit familiar, but lovely; a good way to ease into the evening. After it ended they let in a whole herd of latecomers (people! Seriously! How hard is it to get to a concert by 8 pm? Some of them may have had good excuses, but there were a LOT of 'em) and as they were hustled to their seats Yo-Yo Ma chatted with the folks in the front rows, laughing, charming and relaxed. Then the Shostakovich, my favorite of the night - very textural, with some interesting pizzicato and percussive stuff, lots of interesting darknesses and lots of times when I found myself just not breathing because only perfect stillness was possible. Then an Argentinian tango by Piazzolla, which was terrific too, very different in tone from what preceded it - actually all three pieces in the first half felt very different from one another. The tango wasn't like a standard traditional tango; it was more tango-flavored, tango-based. Rich and full and layered.

The second half wasn't quite as spectacular as the first for me, but it was great - some very romantic, lovely music. Over and over again I marveled at Ma's absolute control of his tone, and how he made it look effortless as breath. The accompanist, Kathryn Stott, was very good too; in fact I had a flash of insight about what accompaniment means for a solo musician - it's like the piano provides a textured canvas, a surface to support the soloist as he plays on and above and around and sometimes dipping briefly beneath the surface. Yeah, musicians probably understand how that works pretty instinctively, but until tonight I don't think I'd ever really gotten the difference between playing a duet versus a soloist playing with an accompanist.

Standing ovation at the end, of course, prolonged, until both musicians came back out for a bow and then returned again to perform an encore. The first encore was actually one of my favorite pieces of the night - jazz-inflected (turns out it was written by a Brazilian jazz composer and was called "Cristal" - I'm going to track it down somehow) and obviously a lot of fun to play. The second encore was a piece by Elgar (don't know the name, but I'll probably be able to find it in a review somewhere tomorrow) and it ended the concert on a light note - not light as in insubstantial, but light as in light-hearted. When Ma and Stott came out for one final bow (sans cello) he didn't have a microphone so he couldn't say anything to the audience but he kept touching his chest over his heart, waving, gesturing with great appreciation and happiness, waving with both hands high over his head as he finally left the stage. Afterwards, I looked around at faces on the way out of the auditorium and people were just glowing, smiling, joyful.

It reminded me of leaving a Bruce Springsteen concert, actually. That level of pure joy and satisfaction, feeling that a musician has been generous with their time and energy, that feeling of a connection being made from the stage. The moments of looking into others' faces and having, for just a moment, that shared experience, the acknowledgement that you've shared something remarkable. So remarkable you don't even really have words for it, so you just look at each other and glow, and smile.

I've now seen three performers who reached this level of absolute presence in every moment of their performance, and absolute connection with the audience: Yo-Yo Ma, Bruce Springsteen, and the Dalai Lama. That's a heck of a trinity, there. :)

* * * * *

So I left the auditorium walking on air, feeling like I'd just been a bird for two hours. As I headed for my car (I'd found a great parking spot in the library lot), I noticed a little crowd of people hanging around outside near the backstage door. Maybe about forty people. Hmmmm, I thought, and decided oh what the heck, turned around and went back to the auditorium and joined the crowd. Sometimes I do indulge my inner fangirl. Not so inner, I guess. :) After maybe ten or fifteen minutes - not too terribly long - a woman came out carrying the cello in its case, and an audible sigh went up through the crowd (which was made up of mostly music students, I think). Ahhhhhhhhhh! The Cello! It was both funny and kind of adorable.

A couple of minutes later the backstage doors swung open and Yo-Yo Ma himself came out. The crowd erupted in applause and he smiled, took it in. He came over towards us and said that since there were so many people he wouldn't do autographs and photos, but instead would rather talk with us for about two minutes if anyone had any questions for him. One eager young man asked if he would sign just one autograph; Ma was kind but firm, saying if he did one he'd have to do everyone and there wasn't time for that. (You could tell he's done this more than a few times before.) He walked around, arms outspread, and asked again if anyone had questions.

Bunch of music students gone speechless. :) Probably most of them were trying to come up with a really fantastic question, one that would inspire Ma to drop some great musicianly insights, and make the questioner look really smart too. (I've known a lot of music students in my time. They are, in general, as competitive as students come. Which isn't a slam on them; in their field, they have to be.) So I, with nothing to lose, piped up and asked, "Which was your favorite piece to play tonight?" Several of the music students around me murmured, "oooohhhhh, good question!" Now, you'll almost never get a straight answer to that question out of any musician, but sometimes it leads them to talk about what they like about the music they play. Yo-Yo Ma looked right at me and said that he just tried to stay really in the moment with each piece; that it's such intimate music, and such a big hall, that he tries to make a connection with everyone in the audience so that they feel like they're in his living room. Although, he noted, his living room isn't anywhere near that big. :) He didn't name a favorite, but said that he really loves all of that music - and you could tell that he really does, that after all these years he is still head over heels in love with music.

He asked us what our favorite pieces had been; a lot of people said the tango, several of us said the Shostakovich. I love that he made it a two-way conversation and not so much "rockstar cellist gets interviewed by the fan gang."

He talked about the Franck that he'd played, told us that it had been written as a wedding gift and that the four movements were meant to tell the story of a romantic relationship. He talked about how amazing it would be to get a beautiful sonata as a wedding gift. Again - his absolute love for this music was just so clear, and his eagerness to share some cool bit of knowledge about the music was lovely to see.

Someone asked him which cello he'd played tonight; for the cello geeks, it was the 1733 Montagnana. (I don't even want to begin to imagine how much that beautiful beast is insured for. I can't even imagine that its value can be put into dollars.) And someone asked him what the encores had been, since they weren't printed in the program. (I was glad somebody asked that!) "Any more questions?" Someone asked, "Will you come back?" to which he responded that yes, he would. (Yay! Soon, I hope!) And someone else asked, "When are you going to collaborate with Willie Nelson?" He laughed and said "Hey, he's one of my heroes!" Which just made me grin so big. He said a few other things, asked if most people there were music students, said something about it being a beautiful night. It certainly was.

Then as we applauded him again, he got in the SUV and was driven slowly away, hanging out the window waving to fans as he left. He was clearly still on a post-performance high, and came across as being very happy, very gracious, very appreciative of his fans (who clearly appreciate him in return), and very much in his element. I'm so glad I decided to hang around and do the fangirl thing - it was a nice experience, getting to ask Yo-Yo Ma a question (omg!) and have him look right at me and respond to it (omfg!!!). The man is about as big a star as you get in the classical music world, and he could not have been nicer to that little gang of fans out there.

And the concert? The concert was pure magic.

A beautiful night, indeed.

Intensity, ghosts, Yo-Yo Ma

When I was a youngun (teens and twenties), I wanted to be dark, mysterious, intense, and kind of dangerous. I wasn't very good at that (especially the mysterious and dangerous parts). Now that I'm in my late (eek) forties, I want to be one of those people who lights up a room when she walks in - people find themselves feeling happier even if they're not quite sure why. I suspect I'm probably about as good at that as I was at mysterious and dangerous, but it's good to have goals, right?

* * * * *

I've been reading Patti Smith's excellent memoir, Just Kids (about her youth, and her artistic coming-of-age, and her long complex relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe) and thinking about my own youth - both because of the artistic coming-of-age theme and because Patti Smith was one of my heroes in my aforementioned teens and twenties (and, though I don't follow her career as closely as I did then, I still admire the heck out of her). When I finish the book I'll probably write up a bit of a review.

I also spent a couple of days during spring break typing up the last of my old high school & college poems (a project I'd started on a few years ago and set aside) - I had typed (you know, on a typewriter - remember those?) copies in looseleaf binders, but hadn't finished typing them all up on computer until last week. What a trip. A lot of them were so, so, so terrible - embarrassingly bad! Someone should have come along and smacked me upside the head every time I used the words "soul," "night," and "reality" in the same poem. It happened more times than I want to count. Heck, someone should've just smacked me when I used "soul" and that would have saved the world some awfulness. Heh. It was interesting to revisit my evolution from about ages 17-20, though. Amusingly enough, the poems I was proudest of at the time were not, as it turns out, the best ones or the ones that furthered my understanding of how to write. Go figure. I suppose that's probably still true...

I've lived in Bloomington for thirty years - ever since I was 18. With the echoes of some of those (awful) old poems in my ears, I'm even more aware of how many ghosts there are for me here. I don't mind living with them, but damn, they get noisy sometimes.

* * * * *

Tonight I get to see Yo-Yo Ma perform! He's doing a solo recital, accompanied by only a pianist - something he apparently doesn't do that often. You can read about the performance, including the program, here: http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/13743.html He's going to play some Shostakovich - that should be phenomenal. Yo-Yo Ma could play "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" for an hour and it would be the greatest "Twinkle" ever played, so I am really looking forward to this.

* * * * *

Attention: Do not leave your longings unattended

Promo, Congrats, & Thoughts on Online Privacy

Shameless self-promotion: I'll be one of the featured readers (the other, Deborah Hutchison, will be performing both poetry and music) at the monthly Hart Rock Poetry Series here in Bloomington: Friday, March 26 at Rachael's Cafe on Third Street, 7 pm. Free admission, but do drop a couple bucks on a beverage or some food to support the cafe and thank them for offering free performance space.

Don't yet know what I'll be reading or, more importantly, what I'll be wearing.

* * * * *

Lots of good news in the poetry world lately! Big congrats to Charles Jensen and Brent Goodman, both of whom were named Lambda Literary Award finalists in gay poetry. Brent's book is terrific; Charlie's is on the very top of my to-read pile and I'm sure it will be as terrific as the rest of his work. Congrats also to poet Michael Montlack, whose anthology My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women who Inspire Them (also on the very top of the pile!) is a finalist in the LGBT anthology category.

Further congrats are in order for Brent Goodman (again!) and D.A. Powell, both named as finalists for the Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, and to Lee Ann Roripaugh, named by the same organization as a finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. More terrific books by terrific poets.

Yep, people I actually know and have met in real life are all over the awards this year. I love it!

Oh, and I almost forgot - Poetry Daily featured a cool poem by Eduardo C. Corral yesterday. Eduardo's blog was one of the first poetry blogs I read, way back when. He'll be in those book award lists one of these days too.

* * * * *

Speaking of real life, the New York Times published a verrrrry interesting article about online privacy. The part that made me really sit up and take notice was when they described a group that was able to accurately guess a percentage of Social Security numbers given only the birthdate and birthplace of someone. Coincidentally enough, the latest "thing" on Facebook is to post the city where you were born in your status field, and a lot of my FB friends have been doing that over the past several days. And that has made me think.

For myself, I tend towards putting quite a bit of information about myself online. My picture and my real name are attached to my Facebook, my Twitter account, and my blog. I'm easily findable via my work address - so much so that I once got fan mail (via USPS) from a guy in prison who'd heard me reading poems on the radio. At the same time, I don't have my street address listed in the phone book (not that anyone uses phone books anymore), and I keep a P.O. box so I can give out a mailing address without disclosing where I live. And certainly not EVERYTHING about my life gets disclosed online - by any means. (Y'all THINK you know me! ;) )

So I don't know. I'm considering unfriending people on Facebook with whom I don't have much if any connection (friends of friends...), and the "what city were you born in" thing just raised red flags for me in particular. But online connections are important to me, personally & professionally, and a certain degree of openness does encourage that kind of connection. I've made some very nice professional connections via Twitter (you wouldn't believe how many librarians are on there, particularly the ones who work with new technologies) and I've made some wonderful poetry-world connections via this very blog (and bought a LOT of books I would never have known about otherwise). I loved meeting up with online friends at AWP last year. And I've very much enjoyed meeting up with online friends at Springsteen shows; there's a very nice little Bruce-fan community online, particularly on Twitter. Some of those connections could have been made without the use of real names, sure. But would they have felt like honest connections?

And I certainly can't do shameless self-promotion without using my actual name. If I want y'all to come to my reading, I have to tell you who I am and where I'm reading!

There's a line, certainly. I tend not to give out my phone number unless I feel a certain degree of comfort. But I can't bring myself to be much more cautious than I already am. The good that's come of being relatively open online has, for me, outweighed any bad.

But I do know people who've posted things online that I've thought were foolish. I once saw a grad student publicly bad-mouthing faculty members in their department via their blog - bad idea. And I've known several people who've posted details of financial difficulties in ways that seemed rather unwise to do in public. (I'm not talking about "damn I can't afford to go to AWP this year" but much more specific things.) And of course, there are lots of people who post details about their health concerns and complaints about their jobs. The Internet is very, very public. Even if you think you're only letting in a few friends - once it's out there, it's out there. That's all a little different from the identity-theft concern, but it's all on a continuum and most of us, even those of us who are very comfortable online, are constantly assessing our own approach and where to draw our own lines.

What do you think? Where do you draw your online-disclosure line?

Springish

Went to a great reading by Gerald Stern this evening on the IU campus. The room was pretty full, which is a lovely thing - poetry doesn't always get a good audience here, and I'm not sure that readings get promoted adequately beyond the walls of the university, but there were lots of people there, as there should have been. Ross Gay introduced him which once again made me think that Ross Gay is about the best introducer of poets I can think of. Seriously, we've all heard those intros that drone on like a paragraph (or five) out of a dusty anthology, listing award after award and book title after book title, but not giving the audience any sense of what the poet is like. Ross Gay always conveys something about the poet as a person, and always comes across as being really excited about the fact that he's about to hear this reading, and his enthusiasm is always lively & contagious.

Anyway, Stern opened with a brief tribute to Lucille Clifton, of whom he spoke with great admiration (he called her a "national treasure" which sounds about right) and read a short poem of hers before getting out his own work. He read some poems, then some prose, then some more poems, and at times you couldn't really tell (unless you were familiar with the work) where his storytelling stopped and the poem started. Engaging, warm, and with both humor and depth. I was glad to be able to be there.

* * * * *

For a semester that started out with a pretty blank calendar, the upcoming events have been coming up thick and fast - announcements, ticket on-sales. I now have on my calendar:
Gerald Stern - which was tonight
Carrie Newcomer - this weekend
Haiti benefit poetry reading featuring a whole bunch of IU faculty, next week
Yo-Yo Ma, later this month
Martin Sheen lecture, in April
Indigo Girls, also in April
Jeff Beck, in June (super excited about this, as I've recently gotten into him much more than I ever had before, and I've never seen him before)

I'm sure there will be more.

Nice.

* * * * *

This is what I bought with the money Field sent me for a poem:

The journal was handmade by someone named Janette Maher, bound in painted artist's canvas, lovely blank pages. (Etsy is so dangerous!) I liked what Leslie said in a comment on an earlier post, about "tithing to the church of poetry" and using poetry money for something that will feed the poetry. I also decided that I liked the idea of using money that came to me for doing something I love in order to pay someone else for doing something that they love.

The colors remind me of ocean sunsets. Always a pleasant thought.

And I'm slowly edging my way back into poetry after a slight absence. I thought that when poetry came back it would come all in a rush, but it's sort of seeping back slowly. I finally drafted a poem that kinda scares me, which is a good sign. It's always good when your early drafts make you a little bit queasy and uncomfortable. Poetry morning sickness, maybe.

* * * * *

Love, love, love that the sun is already up when I go to work in the morning. Ten days from now when we go back on Daylight Stupid Time it will be dark in the mornings again, but for now, I'm really loving the light. Spring is just around the corner. I can smell it.

Absentee

A busy week out of town playing caregiver, then two of the busiest work weeks I've had in recent memory; as a result, I'm behind on everything online. Sorry to be such a half-assed blogger lately.

I'd hoped to throw my hat in the ring for an NEA this year, but with the deadline coming up fast, I think that hope is going to become another victim of this hectic month. Oh well. I doubt I had much of a shot at it anyway. Best of luck to all my friends who are applying this time around!

* * * * *

Upcoming poetry events in the Bloomington, IN area:

Gerald Stern, Thursday, March 4, 7:00 pm in the Neal-Marshall Grand Hall on the IU campus

A Benefit Reading for Partners in Health, Haiti Soleil, and the People of Haiti, Tuesday, March 9, 6:30 pm, Rose Firebay, John Waldron Arts Center. Featuring poets Catherine Bowman, Richard Cecil, Debra Kang Dean, Romayne Rubinas Dorsey, Ross Gay, Eugene Gloria, Joseph Heithaus, Maurice Manning, Alyce Miller, Maura Stanton, and Crystal Williams.

* * * * *

Many thanks to blogger Lyle Daggett for his kind review of Breach!

And while I'm in shameless self-promotion mode, my prosepoem "Flyover Country" is up over at BLOOM's website (and will also appear in the print edition to be released at AWP in April). Nice to see this journal making a comeback.

* * * * *

Sending thoughts & prayers out to the people of Chile. If you'd like to make a donation to help them out via cellphone or online, here are some options (via Mashable).

More than flurries

Here's hoping that any of you who are affected by the current blizzard are in a safe place with plenty of food, good company if you want it, adequate heat & light, and something good to read. It's pretty impressive out there! Here in south-central Indiana, we are just on the far edge of it; we had freezing rain, sleet, regular rain, falling slush, big fat wet snowflakes, and regular snowflakes at diferent times throughout the day. Currently it is snowing like a snowy thing out there and I hear there have been a lot of slide-offs and fender-benders around town.

Indianapolis, a little ways north of me, is expected to get around 8 inches of the stuff overnight. I'm hoping they get the highways cleared quickly, as I need to get up north to deal with a family situation - I'll be spending about a week with my mom while she recuperates from a bit of unexpected surgery.

* * * * *

So, poets & writers, what do you do with the occasional actual check that you receive for a piece of writing? I mean, those of us who don't get paid enough for it to make up a significant percentage of our living wage. Thirty or forty bucks here and there, that kind of thing. It's always nice, even if it doesn't add up to minimum wage when all's said and done; there's something about getting money for a poem that says "this counts for something." (Yes, contributor's copies and nice notes and even acceptance form-letters count for something too, the nice notes perhaps most of all. But, you know, we live in a culture that values cash. So.)

So what do you do with it? Do you:

• Sock it away in a special savings account and let it add up?
• Purchase a little something special for yourself with it? (I will admit that on the day I got my check from Field, I spotted a handmade journal on Etsy that costs just about the amount of the check... and I'm sorely tempted.)
  
• Turn around and spend it on po-biz stuff, reading fees or postage or supplies? Or sock it away towards a workshop or an AWP trip?
  
• Turn around and spend it on poetry books or journals?
• Treat it like any other income and spend it on groceries or rent or whatever?
  

Just curious what other people do...

The best news

I've had quite a lot on my plate for the past few days. So this will be brief.

But I just found out some fantastic news! (Thanks to Patty Paine for linking the article on Facebook.) D.A. Powell, brilliant poet and the best teacher I have ever worked with (two summer workshops in Provincetown), has been awarded the $100,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award! (That link goes to general info about the award.)

Here's an article from the L.A. Times announcing it. Big congratulations to him - this prize is well deserved.

And if you haven't seen these yet, he's got two poems online from the February issue of Poetry: "Pupil" and "The Fluffer Talks of Eternity." (Thanks to Eduardo for linking the latter of those two poems on his blog, thus tipping me off to their existence.)

In the midst of a rough week, it's so nice to hear good news.

Songish

I went to Evil Megachain Coffee Place today, poked at Twitter on my cellphone for a while, then scribbled. Drafted something that feels kinda like song lyrics: it's rhymey and not subtle or complex enough to be a poem, with a song-ish structure. I used to do that all the time, but not so much lately. It's fun.

(Sorry about the evil megachain coffee. It's close to home, usually has a free spot by the windows, and plays decent music. I can usually write there, and that's what counts.)

* * * * *

Apparently there were some football games today. I think I live in the one part of the country that won't generally be cheering for New Orleans. Good thing I don't care enough to take sides.

* * * * *

Ahsahta Press is taking its back catalog digital, via the Boise State University Library's institutional repository, ScholarWorks (the same name IU uses for ours). I suppose there is bound to be a certain amount of controversy over this, but I think it's pretty cool. It's not like they are giving up on print, they're just using the repository to keep books available that otherwise you'd have to order via interlibrary loan, and I like that they've got the library involved - to me that suggests it will be done right. I still love print, carry a book with me at all times despite the fact that any unexpected dull moments can just as easily be filled by poking at Twitter or Facebook or various random websites on my cellphone (and if I'm standing in line at the post office, I'll be honest, it's easier to pull out the phone and hold it in a free hand rather than trying to juggle turning pages in a book while standing there) - but I love the idea of small-press poetry being available in virtual perpetuity. What do y'all think?

* * * * *

The "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon Friday night was very nicely done, with several musicians I'm not usually that crazy about turning in heartfelt performances that won me over. (Justin Timberlake and Mary J. Blige, I'm talkin' to you.) Of course I loved Bruce Springsteen's delicate rendition of "We Shall Overcome," assisted by Seeger Sessions band members Charlie Giordano on accordion, Curt Ramm on trumpet, and Patti Scialfa, Soozie Tyrell, Cindy Mizelle, and Curtis King on vocals. And the new song written especially for the occasion and performed by Jay-Z, Rihanna, Bono, and the Edge - "Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour)" - is actually a pretty good song, unlike a lot of other well-intentioned charity singles ("We Are The World," I'm talkin' to you).

Keep on giving to Haiti if you can. You can donate directly, or you can purchase the audio and/or video of the telethon, or just grab individual songs for a buck apiece, if you're so inclined (link goes to a page that leads to your choice of iTunes or amazon). Here's Bruce to inspire you:

Bruce Springsteen - MTV Shows

Journalish

A few news tidbits from the literary-journal front:

• diode, one of my favorite online journals, has a new issue up. Check out v3n2 here. I've only barely dipped into it so far, but looks like some good stuff!


• Bloom, which fell off the face of the earth for about three years, is (knock on wood!) being revived. Look for a new issue at the AWP conference in Denver this April. My prosepoem (yes, prosepoem -- something I hardly ever write!) "Flyover Country" will be in it. I'd about given up, to be honest. But I'm glad things are looking hopeful once again; this was one of my favorite journals until it disappeared.
  


• Last but not least, today I got the speediest acceptance I've ever gotten -- a few minutes short of three hours from the time I hit "send" to the time the acceptance letter showed up in my inbox! I'll have two poems in upcoming issues of the Tipton Poetry Journal: one in the winter 2010 issue this month, and one in the summer issue this coming July. Not only did the acceptance arrive in my inbox that fast, but there were even proofs attached! Sometimes, technology really does make our lives a little easier.
  

Haiti: Ways to Help

The images from Haiti are almost impossible to comprehend. So many of the people there had almost nothing to begin with; how on earth can they get through this? I can't imagine what those people are going through right now. Horrible. I don't have words.

A few helpful links, in case you have not yet identified ways you can help:

How to Use Tech to Make a Speedy Donation. Helpful tips from PCWorld.

Charity Navigator offers some suggestions for how to make sure your donations go where you intend them to, and how to select the most effective places to donate.

Doctors Without Borders is where I'm sending the donation that I wish could be so much larger. They do good work, hard work, and as far as I can tell they manage their funds reasonably well. Also I believe they already have a presence in Haiti, which helps.

Oxfam America is another good place to donate.

I will admit that I haven't researched Yéle Haiti as thoroughly as I'd like. It's a smaller organization, and less well-known. But it has been in Haiti for a while, it seems to be reputable, and they make it very easy to give a $5 donation via cellphone simply by texting YELE to 501501. $5 isn't much, but a bunch of tiny donations can add up.

You can also donate $10 to the Red Cross by texting HAITI to 90999. The Red Cross has been criticized for spending too much of its money on administrative costs, and I still hold a bit of a grudge against them for their homophobic policies regarding blood donation. But they know what they're doing when it comes to mobilizing emergency assistance, good people work for them, and they are on the scene.

Someone I know recommends Partners in Health, another grassroots organization that has been in Haiti for a while and has built up relationships there.

And clicking on the logo below will take you to some information provided by the White House.


If you are in a position to help, please do.

Draft dodging

The temperature hit 32 degrees here after 11 days, I think, of never inching above freezing.

And Monday afternoon (while I was on my dinner break from work before heading back for the evening shift), another dam may have broken. I drafted two poems, or poemish things anyway. I hadn't drafted anything that held my interest since, oh, about September... so it felt like a pretty big relief to come up with something that felt like I might actually want to look at it again at some point.

I'll post it here, but it will disappear in 24 hours or less. (Things blow away when it gets drafty, you know.)


Edit: *poof*

Test post via SMS.

Bookish

It's been quite a while since I took a stab at writing a book review. I love talking about books, but for some reason find reviews difficult. In this case, I was writing the review with a very specific audience in mind -- obsessive Springsteen fans -- and that made it easier. So you can go over to Blogness to read my review of Nick Hornby's fun new novel, Juliet, Naked.

And over here, where my audience (inasmuch as I have one...) tends towards the literary sort, I want to post an excerpt from Hornby's book, because he manages to describe a particular frame of mind -- call it long-term writer's block, or something like that, though I don't actually believe in "writer's block" myself -- so vividly. I think some of y'all might recognize it... I know I do. Hopefully, if you do, it's because you used to feel this way and you don't anymore. The protagonist here is Tucker Crowe, a rock singer/songwriter who hasn't written or played any new music in years.

It wasn't as if he was a happy slacker, either. He'd never been able to shrug away the loss of his talent, for want of a better word to describe whatever the hell it was he once had. Sure, he'd got used to the idea that there wouldn't be a new album, or even a new song, anytime soon, but he'd never learned to look on his inability to write as anything other than a temporary state, which meant that he was permanently unsettled, as if he were in an airport lounge waiting for a plane. In the old days, when he flew a lot, he'd never been able to get absorbed in a book until the plane had taken off, so he'd spent the pre-boarding time flicking through magazines and browsing in gift shops, and that's what the last couple of decades had felt like: one long flick through a magazine. If he'd known how long he was going to spend in the airport lounge of his own life, he'd have made different travel arrangements, but instead he'd sat there, sighing and fidgeting and, more often than was ever really acceptable, snapping at his traveling companions.
(from Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby, pg. 159)

2010:2

S-s-s-so cold this week. It was 1 degree outside when I woke up this morning. One.

* * * * *

Thanks to Leann's post over at Blogness, I just frittered away at least an hour working out my personal Springsteen setlist statistics. I attended 9.4% of the shows on the "Working on a Dream" tour, and I was curious to see which songs I got that were statistically more or less improbable to have gotten. I didn't get the sole performance of anything, but I did get one of two performances for a few, and ... so on. Also, I got 25% of the Girls In Their Summer Clothes this year.

Anne. Put down the spreadsheet and back slooooooowly away.

* * * * *

Here's a little video that I took at the Atlanta Zoo when I was there. The keeper was feeding the meerkats some live crickets, one by one. Apparently this is a great meerkat delicacy.

2010:1

As I wrap myself in layer upon layer of fleece (it's 9 degrees outside, and my house is drafty) I catch myself doing what everyone seems to do in the last days of one year and the first days of the next. Lots of internal summation, lots of listy thinking. I'll spare y'all. And no, I'm not making resolutions, though I do have goals and hopes for the next few hundred days.

* * * * *

In my last post I mentioned the murder of fiction writer & IU professor Don Belton. It appears that his killer has been caught; the young man's story is that Belton had sexually assaulted him a few days prior, and the alleged killer had gone over to Belton's house to discuss the situation. (Here is the ABC News version.)

Now, I didn't know Don Belton, and I don't know the alleged killer, and so anything I say must be conjecture. I do know what friends of Belton have been saying, and they all say that he is not the sort of person who would have assaulted anyone, and they sound pretty credible to me. And while I believe that self-defense against sexual assault is absolutely justifiable, I don't think that showing up at someone's house several days after they allegedly assaulted you, with a large knife in your belt and a willingness to use it, is really what I have in mind when I think of "self-defense."

I also know that homophobia and racism stink pretty loudly, and there's been a bad aroma around this story for a while. As the "Justice for Don Belton" website points out, "there is a long, established history of suspects invoking a claim of sexual assault and/or a “gay panic” defense to get charges reduced or to win over a jury when the victim was a gay person."

The whole thing makes me fairly queasy, to be honest. As I said I didn't know Don Belton at all, but it sure sounds like the world has lost a talented and much-loved man. And it won't surprise me if homophobia turns out to play a very large role in what happened. It's all very, very sad.

* * * * *

Also sad, the recent suicide of poet Rachel Wetzsteon (who I also did not know). Along with the Christmas-week suicide of Vic Chesnutt, this news spotlights the fact that this time of year can be so very hard for people. If you know someone who's sad or lonely, do the world a favor and reach out to them this month, will you? Sometimes even love doesn't help someone pull through crippling depression -- sometimes there's just too much fear, pain, damage -- but sometimes it's good to try.

This poem of Rachel Wetzsteon's, reprinted in the New York Times, struck me hard:

Sakura Park

The park admits the wind,
the petals lift and scatter
like versions of myself I was on the verge
of becoming; and ten years on
and ten blocks down I still can’t tell
whether this dispersal resembles
a fist unclenching or waving goodbye.
But the petals scatter faster,
seeking the rose, the cigarette vendor,
and at least I’ve got by pumping heart
some rules of conduct: refuse to choose
between turning pages and turning heads
though the stubborn dine alone. Get over
“getting over”: dark clouds don’t fade
but drift with ever deeper colors.
Give up on rooted happiness
(the stolid trees on fire!) and sweet reprieve
(a poor park but my own) will follow.
There is still a chance the empty gazebo
will draw crowds from the greater world.
And meanwhile, meanwhile’s far from nothing:
the humming moment, the rustle of cherry trees.

* * * * *

I continue to contribute to Blogness on the Edge of Town; the last few days have celebrated the "Decade of Bruce" with several of us talking about our favorite album, song, tour, and show of the past ten years (as well as our least favorite song - that one was kind of hard). Other than that, I haven't been writing much lately. Maybe it's just too damn cold. Maybe the days are just too damn short. Or maybe I've just been too damn lazy.

I hope all y'all had a good holiday, whatever "a good holiday" means for you. Mine included a short trip to Atlanta, where I got to see actual giant pandas for the first time in my life. Here's the youngest, Xi Lan:


And some meerkats (they remind me of people I know, though I can't put my finger on who):


And finally this dignified gentleman orangutan. My sister said he looks like Buddha. So he's the Orangubuddhatan:


(More zoo pictures on my Facebook, for those of you who are there.)

Terrible news

Few details so far, but terrible news today that fiction writer and Indiana U. creative writing faculty member Don Belton was found stabbed to death in his home.

Here's the story from an Indianapolis tv station.

I didn't know him personally, but this kind of crime is not usual here in Bloomington, and to hear that it was a fellow writer...

This following the awful news a few days ago that singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt took his own life. Just very, very sad.

I'll try to check in at more length in the next day or two as I catch up from holiday travels.

Update, early Tuesday morning: The local paper reports that a suspect has been taken into custody.

Solstice stillness

I can't figure out whether tonight or tomorrow night is the longest night of the year. It comes down to seconds; tonight the sun set at 5:25 and will rise at 8:01, and tomorrow the sun sets at 5:26 and rises at 8:02 Tuesday morning. The actual moment of Winter Solstice happens around midday tomorrow. Tonight feels like Solstice Night, though, with darkness and stillness and just a bit of snow.

And fleecy blankets, and a cat on my feet. That'll enforce a little stillness.

* * * * *

I continue to trace the roots of this stillness. I feel like I haven't got anything to say, but when has that ever stopped me? I think, perhaps, I need to go back to the details. To just being awake, and noticing deeply.

I like Twitter. It's good when you don't have much to say.

And so, I'm going to use the avenue that has felt most hospitable recently. Beginning tomorrow, I'm going to try to notice three things each day. I don't need to force those things into poems; I just need to pay attention to them. Full attention, even if only for the length of time it takes to compose a 140-character description. And I'm going to tweet about them.

We'll see how that goes and whether it wakes me up again.

I bought a new phone a couple of weeks ago, and it has an adorable little slide-out keyboard and a bright shiny touch screen and it has Twitter and Facebook and Gmail and Outlook and a camera and maps and navigation and even a lolcat application.

So if I notice things, I don't even have to be near my computer to record them, to put a few words out into the ether. I just have to grab my little phone, my little portable brain.

Three things a day. I can do that, right?

* * * * *

In other sort of writing-related news, I've signed on as one of the contributors to Blogness on the Edge of Town, which is, yes, a Bruce Springsteen-related blog. Mostly news and tidbits and suchlike. Should be fun, and a nice way to stay connected to a community that's become important to me.

Lucky for me, as soon as I took this on, Bruce did a lovely and newsworthy thing (in case you haven't heard): he posted a statement on his official website in support of marriage equality. You have to scroll down past the cute picture of him at the White House for the Kennedy Center Honors a couple weeks ago, but the statement is still there, and it still gives me the warm fuzzies to read it. He doesn't post political statements very often, so the fact that he felt this one was important enough to comment on makes me really happy.

Why should I (or anyone) care what some wealthy heterosexual rockstar thinks about this, or any, political issue? That's a fair question. And it's an age-old one, really - can someone's art be compassionate, authentic, truthful if the artist is a weasel? Not going to even try to answer that one tonight. I'll just say that it did my little heart good to see someone whose work I have respected for over thirty years demonstrate, not for the first time, that his heart is in the right place. And considering how much of my money has ended up in his pocket, I feel like I have more than an artistic stake in this, heh.

I will say that his statement has not met with 100% support in his own fan community. There are people who listen to his music who disagree pretty strongly with a lot of his politics. So I guess he took a certain risk in posting that statement, though at this point I think most people who'd stop buying his music or going to his shows because of something like that have already stopped long ago.

I'm rambling. It just made me really happy, the night that statement got posted and I stumbled across it. Fangirl that I am, I'll leave it at that.

* * * * *

Watching the news, where they're talking to stranded travelers in the airport. I hope those of you who got blizzarded on this week are digging out without too much drama, and if anyone's traveling, I hope you get where you're going okay.

Hope it all clears up before Thursday, when I am getting on a plane myself. Till then we just have a little snow, and enough cold to make me bundle up trying to stay warm (except when I suddenly have to try and cool off - you middle-aged women know what I mean there) but not so cold as to be dangerous. It's not so bad. Though I confess I wouldn't mind being snowed in for a few days, so long as I had heat and people food and cat food and the Internet and a few books to read. And maybe somebody with a younger, stronger back than mine to shovel me out eventually!

May you have a happy holiday, if you celebrate one of those Decemberish ones. Peace and joy and goodwill and light, and all that.

Yes, light. Here's to its return.

AWOL

There’s a difference between where I am now, on the one hand, and productive silence (where you’re not writing but your silence is moving you towards new work) on the other. Where I am right now feels necessary and unavoidable, but not necessarily like it’s moving me towards any kind of writing.

On the other hand, who knows?

* * * * *

Shedding skin is an itchy procedure. Snakes get real cranky when they’re halfway there.

* * * * *

So after all the drama about “OMG is this the end,” it looks like Springsteen doesn’t feel like the E Street Band is anywhere near finished. Nice interview with him in Billboard this week, conducted just prior to the show I saw in Nashville. What amazes me is that the guy’s had basically the same job since he was a teenager and he still clearly loves his work. If you could bottle that kind of undying passion & enthusiasm and sell it…

Getting paid squillions of dollars for doing what you love probably doesn’t hurt the enthusiasm, of course.

* * * * *

Music just makes words seem inadequate. With just a few notes, a chord or two, you can convey a feeling as complicated as “triumphant but wistful, without regret” so clearly that everyone listening feels it too. You can convey feelings and images so complicated that there aren’t actual words for them. Add the dimension of performance, and musicians have a whole language that, as a writer, I barely have access to.

The same could be said for visual art as well, of course – there are things you can say with a certain intensity of blue, a certain slant of light – but I don’t have the vocabulary or the framework for that. Music, at least, I can hear with comprehension – even if I can’t produce it myself worth a darn.

I foresee guitar lessons in my future. I took lessons for a few years in high school, but it’s been a long time since I was anywhere near serious about playing – long enough that I think what I want to do is start from the beginning. I know it’s not the same as having an actual teacher, but I think I’m going to invest in lessons via Nils Lofgren’s online guitar school. He’s one of the most amazing guitarists I know, and with any luck the lessons will give me just enough to keep me interested and focused and give me a reason to sit down & practice every so often. I don’t think I stand a chance of ever getting good enough to get paid for playing, but I would like to regain enough chops to do a little songwriting. I used to write songs now & then and always enjoyed it, but was hampered by the inability to create music that could provide a strong enough framework to support complex lyrics, so my song lyrics were always kind of dumb and simple compared to the poems I was writing during the same time period. I’d like to revisit that effort. But to do so will require the acquisition of musical craft.

So that’s going to be my Solstice gift to myself, I think. And yes, I’m going to start at the beginning with the beginner lessons, make myself go from the ground up. Because the hard part of having been serious about playing & then letting it go for years is that my expectations are all out of whack – I pick up the guitar and my hands jus t don’t do what they’re supposed to, & I find myself trying to play things that I just don’t have the technique to do anymore. And because I’ve never stopped listening to music my ear is still good, so I can hear how much I frankly suck. If I start at the beginning and get somewhat disciplined about it, I think I can get my chops back. Might take a couple years.

And maybe, once I start playing again, the creative, articulate part of my brain will wake up and I’ll find my way back to poetry again. I sure hope so.

* * * * *

Still have an essay or two brewing, I think. Watch this space.

No, I haven't...

... fallen off the Internet. At least not quite.

Just back from a quick trip to Nashville, put about 580 miles on the ol' odometer (well, the rental car's odometer; my beater wasn't quite up to the trip) in two days and saw a terrific concert. I need to go back to Nashville when I can spend more time. Very cool city.

I've been a very, very lucky girl this year. Wednesday night was my 8th Bruce Springsteen concert of the 2009 "Working on a Dream" tour. He and the band play in Baltimore tonight, then Buffalo NY on Sunday night (no, I won't be there for either one, sadly) and then ... that's it for the foreseeable future. The E Street Band is officially on hiatus for at least a year or two. I think most of the band members have every intention of coming back together and touring again, but life takes its hard turns sometimes and there aren't any guarantees. I've certainly enjoyed every moment of the ride I've had; it's been worth every penny, every mile, every aching muscle.

April: Denver
May: St. Paul and Chicago
August: Mansfield, MA x2
September: Chicago again
October: St. Louis
November: Nashville

Add that to the 4 shows I caught on the 2008 "Magic" tour (Indianapolis, Nashville, St. Louis, Kansas City) and it's actually been a two-year journey.

I have an essay-ish thing brewing about it all. Maybe this weekend I'll get it written. Gratitude is an important part of it, so it's an appropriate Thanksgiving-week thing...