Author: thedamari

I live in Missouri, a more beautiful place than many realize. I love writing, reading, walking, bicycling, and making lists. I’ve written poetry since I was seven. A few years ago I branched out into short fiction and memoir pieces. I also perpetually have a novel in progress. My brain pursues ideas at a brisk pace, wandering all over the map. This blog represents one of my efforts to keep up with it.

Earth Day Resolutions

I didn’t get to attend our city’s Earth Day celebration today because I was working. However, I have managed not to use a car all day. I walked to work. It’s not far, so I don’t save a lot of driving miles in one round-trip. On the other hand, I walk almost every time I go to work and I’ve had the same employer for nine years. It does add up. I figure at least 1,600 car miles displaced in that amount of time.

I’m continuing my effort to live a more environmentally friendly life by making one change at a time. Here are the steps I’ve taken since last Earth Day:

Reusable coffee filter. One of those things that pays for itself eventually. No more paper filters.

Reusable coffee filter in action.
Reusable coffee filter in action.

LED light bulbs. They’re much more energy-efficient than compact fluorescents, and contain no heavy metals. Also, they’re supposed to last longer – the package advertises 18 years. We’ll see. They’re still pretty expensive, so we’re replacing bulbs gradually, as they burn out.

Our new lighting.
Our new lighting.

Mesh produce bags.

I’ve been using canvas grocery bags for quite a while. But I was still tearing off the plastic bags from the rolls in the produce aisles at the grocery store when I wanted to buy a bunch of spinach or  several apples. Now I have these. They weigh next to nothing, so they’re not running up the price on fruit and vegetables by the pound.

Mesh produce bag
Mesh produce bag

No single one of these things is a huge change. But I hope, as with the walking, over the years it will add up enough to make a significant positive difference.

Next goal – a rain barrel or two.

 

Mid-April Rebellion

Here it is mid-April and a good chunk of the country is freeezzzziiiinng. That Laura Ingalls Wilder book, “The Long Winter” is going to need to be renamed “The Longish Winter” now that there’s this one to compare it to.

But I’m soldiering on. I’m participating in the 30 Days of Biking April challenge by walking every day and calling it 30 Days of Walking. I’m participating in National Poetry Writing Month, informally, by writing a poem every day but keeping most of them to myself instead of linking to the official site. I guess I have a hard time conforming or something. Which is a segue to a poem I am going to share.

I hope to start an uprising, a rebellion if you will, called “Kick Winter Out of April.” Here’s the manifesto.

Mid-April Rebellion

Fine. I’ll hold off on planting vincas
but I won’t succumb to a parka.
The wind might chap my skin
but I won’t pretend it’s winter
when the calendar’s shown spring
for weeks. The hyacinth
and magnolia stand with me
in solidarity
if not heartiness.
Their blooms aren’t the best
this year, yet they make their stand.
I, too, go forth as planned –
no coat, no scarf, no hat.
Gooseflesh? Shivering? I’ve had worse than that.
I will not concede. My arms are bare!
I declare spring. So there!

A History of Snow

One thing I adore about my husband is that he loves to play in the snow. The first Christmas we were dating, he gave me a sled. Living in Missouri, we get two or three decent snows each winter, which is about right for me. I like snow, but not enough to live someplace like Buffalo, NY.

We’ve tried to pass on the “snow is for fun” attitude to our kids. Following is a collection of photos I’ve taken over the past few years of snow creations and activities involving my household.

Poem: Teen Dies in Shooting

I was sorting through some of my poems the other day, and came across this one I wrote several months ago. I know it could use some more polish, but it seems always sadly timely. It was based on a newspaper headline.

 

Teen Dies in Shooting

Teen Dies in Shooting
and mothers who read the headline
die inside a little more
from the combined effects of this
and child soldier documentaries
along with
Young Lives End in Car Wreck

Oh my children, let me go with you
everywhere to hold your hand,
throw myself in front of the gun,
hide you from the recruiters,
grab the steering wheel

Let me never lay myself down to sleep
lest something evil should happen
while I’m not keeping watch

Facing 2013: the Daily Checklist Project

I tend to shy away from major resolutions at the beginning of a new year. But I do like the opportunity for reflection, and the idea of a fresh start, the prompt to decide how I want to live the next few months of my life.

This time around, I’ve started my New Year’s plan early. I decided to make a daily checklist of things that are important to me, with the goal of accomplishing most of the items on most days. Here it is:

1. Exercise
2. Studies/classwork
3. Creative writing
4. Something to improve the house/keep the household running
5. An act of love for someone else
6. An expression of gratitude

Some of these can overlap. Buying groceries can fall under headings 4 and 5, for instance, especially if I make an effort to find one special item for each member of the family. I have a few more specific thoughts about each goal I listed.

1. Exercise. This is pretty obvious. I need to take care of myself. I walk to work, which helps me meet this goal. However, it’s only on five-minute walk, if I take no detours. Then again, some days I work split shifts, so I make the round trip twice. On those days, that’s 20 minutes of walking. If I can manage to leave the house a few minutes early on workdays, I can add a loop around the park and end up with a fair number of steps. Days I don’t work pose more of a challenge, as unintuitive as that seems. But I find I’m trying to run all of my errands and catch up on other things, so the opportunity for exercise isn’t automatically scheduled in. I’ll have to remind myself to make the effort on those days.

2. Studies/classwork. I’ll write about this in more detail in a future post, but I’m pursuing a course of study that has me taking one on-line class right now. I might bump it up to two at a time after I finish this one, depending on how my schedule is feeling. Nevertheless, it requires the discipline to make myself show up and do the work.

3. Creative writing. I have a theme in mind for poetry for the coming year. I’m thinking in terms of a chapbook, so I don’t want to divulge too much detail at this time. I’m also about 30,000 words into writing a novel.

4. Something to improve the house/keep the household running. There is no end to the number of home improvement projects that need done around here. A couple I plan to tackle that will probably require the use of vacation time. We have a new accessibility ramp, and we can’t put any finish on it yet. Around March or April, though, it’s happening. We also had a new back door put in, and I need to paint the door frame. Same project more or less. My husband and I tentatively plan to repair and repaint the walls in our entry room as well. Beyond that, I need to get a better handle on housework. If I can even just clean a sink on days I’m super busy, that will be better than nothing.

5. An act of love for someone else. The older I get the more I think love is defined by how you act, rather than how you feel. I hope I don’t disappoint myself on this one. It doesn’t have to take a lot of time. Listening with genuine interest to one of my kids talk about something that excites them, or taking some supplies to my mom, or getting a cup of coffee for my husband. I just want to make sure I’m remembering to be part of the world around me.

6. An expression of gratitude. Another one that can be accomplished in mere seconds, yet I can forget it some days. It can be as brief as noticing that – yay! – our water heater still works. Or  a sincere thanks to a store clerk.

That’s it. Nothing huge. But daily attention to the basics feels about right.

Duotrope to Begin Charging Fee

Starting Jan. 1, 2013, Duotrope will make most of its information available to paid subscribers only. I understand why they need to do this, but I’m bummed. I’ve found the site to be a valuable source of practical market information – the average response time feature, especially. The search filters have been pretty awesome for me, too. I’ve sent a donation or two to help keep them running, but not much, to be honest.

It’s the age-old quandary for the spare-time writer who would like to get somewhere with the art, but is inching along. How do you justify to yourself and your family the time you devote to this activity, if you’re spending a lot more money than you’re bringing in? Duotrope’s fees look reasonable. $5/month. But honestly, I’ve never made more than $120 in a single year with my writing. I want to support them, but can I afford to?

I can’t remember the number of times I’ve read articles telling me I have to attend conferences if I want to get my writing noticed. Or enroll in an expensive writing program. Or…do something that costs a lot of money. Who can afford that? I also see a lot of people for whom writing is an expensive hobby. If they’re happy, that’s fine. If my writing time turns out not to be much more than a hobby, that’s fine, too. I have a day job. But an expensive hobby is out of the question. I’m not poor, by any means. I have everything I need and more. But I’m also not in that small percentage of the population who don’t have to budget so much. And I’m frugal by nature.

I completely support this move by Duotrope. I believe it’s a good value. It still doesn’t mean I can pull the money from my budget at this time. Ah well, I will thank them for the years they’ve given me and be grateful for that. And maybe, if things change slightly for me, maybe I’ll be able to subscribe eventually.

Come Healing – the Power of Music and Poetry

Like everyone else, I’m processing the school shooting that happened in Newtown, CT last Friday. Like everyone else, I can’t fathom the pain experienced by the parents of the slain children. I felt devastated more than 1,100 miles away, with no connection to the families, other than being a parent who knows what it is to love a child.

At work today, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. I surreptitiously checked it, only to see a text alert from the local public school district, the one where my son is enrolled. All schools were on modified lock-down. Students safe. Wha-? ALL schools? Were they being threatened? What was going on? I had a hard time maintaining my composure as I waited on library patrons, because all I wanted to do was check the web for local news to try to find out what was going on. Thank goodness for the “students safe” part of the text. Turns out there was a wide-ranging car chase going on, and the driver had been identified as having an ex-wife who was employed by the district. Before too long, a second text arrived stating the lockdown was ended.

And that was when I had to excuse myself to go wipe my eyes in the bathroom. Because I’d had the tiniest of tiny tastes of what the Newtown parents had experienced. And it brought the tragedy to the forefront of my mind again.

Many people, myself no exception, have taken to social networking with opinions and activism of one sort or another in the wake of the tragedy. One thing I’ve noticed in between impassioned debates about gun control and mental health care, is that folks have been posting many links to music and poetry.

Only last week, I discovered the Leonard Cohen song, “Come Healing.” Somehow it seems perfect for the time. I can’t stop listening to it. I can’t even explain why it helps, but it helps. That’s the magic of music. It doesn’t make the grief go away, but it gets us through.

Many of my facebook friends have posted the link to the children’s choir singing “Silent Night” on Saturday Night Live. For the couple of minutes the song lasts, you’re given the feeling that somehow the world might be worth living in again some day. A few more friends have posted this Kahlil Gibran poem.

Now I see. Music and poetry are more than arts. They’re human instincts.

What songs and poems get you through?

November Numbers

I squeezed in twenty minutes of novel writing tonight, the last official day of NaNoWriMo. And my total word count for November is 5,461. I didn’t leave out a digit. I also didn’t sign up for NaNoWriMo.

I consider 5,461 respectable, given all of my other responsibilities. That’s 5,461 words and Thanksgiving dinner for ten people. And a home improvement project. A refinanced mortgage. A daughter enrolled for the spring semester of college. Two doctors’ appointments with my mom. Dental appointments for both me and my son. Winter coat shopping for my younger child. And more than 100 pages worth of manuscript critique for my writers’ group.

Oh look. I managed to compose a blog post before midnight. 5,581 words.

Who Owns Your Stuff?

 

On October 29, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear an extremely important case.

If you ever buy or sell used items on eBay, craigslist, half.com, amazon.com or anywhere, this case affects you. Buying used is one of the main tenets of my life. It’s what makes life affordable. And I resell sometimes, especially books. If I’ve read it and know I’m not going to read it again, why not get back a couple of bucks, while giving someone else a bargain and the joy of reading?

This is not only an ownership issue. It’s an environmental issue. It’s the “reuse” part of “Reduce, reuse, recycle.” If you can’t pass on things you no longer need, what happens to them? Landfill?

It’s an equality issue. It would hurt lower-income folks disproportionately. Think of kids who have a computer at home for their homework, only because their parents found one used.

I keep re-reading information on this, and it never becomes more believable, even though it’s true. Thriftiness, financial responsibility and environmental stewardship could be criminalized. Crazy.

Spread the word, sign the petition, and don’t let it happen.

DIY Obituary

Sorry I haven’t posted anything in a while. I’ve been busy writing my obituary. Okay, that’s an inappropriate joke – as referenced in the poem below. But really, I was writing my own obituary recently. I hope to have many more decades to polish and edit it before it needs a final version.

It’s one of those self-discovery writing exercises. Write your own obituary. So, here’s the first draft of my response to the prompt.

At My Grave

At my grave, remember me
for my morning grumpiness.
Think about how socially awkward
I could be in crowds, sometimes fleeing
to hide in a restroom stall
when the pressure to make small talk
became too much .
Don’t forget my problem skin
or the perpetual spilling of food on my clothing.
I’ve heard tell I was a toddler who bit –
may as well include that, too.
Remember my poems and stories.
Remember I loved my children more
than was fathomable.
Remind them how I stayed up all night
caretaking when one of them was sick.
Then recall the time I threatened
to return my kids’ Christmas presents
to the store and spend the money on myself.
Remember when I shared my picnic lunch
with the hungry man in the park.
Remember I always mislaid my glasses.
I got lost on every road trip.
I strove to be kind.
But I cared a little too much about being liked.
I kept my word when at all possible
and didn’t give it if I thought I couldn’t follow through.
Don’t recall my endless patience; I didn’t have it.
Repeat some of my witticisms,
while keeping in mind I had a hard time knowing
when the situation made joking inappropriate.
Look back and notice I accomplished a lot
by flying under the radar of naysayers.
Speak of how I was complicated
and some days that was lovely
and some days infuriating.
Don’t airbrush my life.
Remember all of me.