About time for some
updates, I suppose. It's been a busy summer, and one of the big highlights was
my retirement from the Federal government in early July. I got a nice send-off
in the form of a luncheon at work, organized my work friends and my family, and
I got my first pension check this month. This is not to say I've spent the
summer in a hammock with a Corona Light in hand. I have gone back to work
part-time for a local attorney, and I've been devoting more time to helping my
wife take care of our 2-year-old granddaughter, who is growing up before our
eyes. (Lately she has been declaring
things that she likes as "pretty awesome".) There are still plenty of projects to tackle
at home, but finding the time to do them is still not easy. The end of August promises to be rather
hectic, with our former international student returning from Korea and getting
ready for college, our new international student arriving from China on the same
day, and our youngest son shipping off for his sophomore year of college the
following day.
Despite all that,
the two of us managed to take a mini-vacation to the Hudson River Valley of New
York for four days and three nights.
She's been there before, but this is my first trip, and I loved it. We
crammed a lot into those four days, touring many of the local historic homes
and sites. We spent the first two nights in the Hyde Park area and visited all
three of the Roosevelt homes: Springwood (the family home), Val-Kill (Eleanor's
home), and Top Cottage (FDR's retreat). The
homes and museums only reinforced our opinions of what exceptional people
Franklin and Eleanor were. Their homes were all fascinating in their own way,
but for over-the-top decadence, they were no match for their neighbors, the
Vanderbilts, who owned a mansion up the road that cost $2.5 million to build -
around 1900! After Hyde Park, we spent
two days at Tarrytown, where we visited Sunnyside, the Washington Irving home. Irving, we learned, was quite the superstar
in his day, and the first American writer to be accepted worldwide as a "man
of letters". We also saw Kykuit,
the Rockefeller estate (last inhabited by Gov. Nelson Rockefeller). The
Rockefellers were known as philanthropists and patrons of the arts, and it
shows both inside and outside the mansion. Nelson was a fan of ancient Chinese
artifacts as well as modern art, and there are dozens of unique pieces to be
seen, including a series of tapestry
reproductions of Picasso works that he commissioned from Picasso himself. Finally, we visited the nearby Union Church,
which boasts beautiful stained glass windows by Marc Chagall and Henri
Matisse. The weather for all four days
was perfect, the views and scenery were beautiful, and our tour guides were,
without exception, excellent. The only thing we regret is that we couldn't eat
at the Culinary Institute of America, which is apparently closed in August. If you're interested in some photos from the
trip, you can find them on my Facebook page.
Time now for a few
poetry updates:
1. I submitted my
final manuscript draft for Hits and
Sacrifices to Finishing Line Press.
The pre-order sales period will begin in September, so you will be
hearing more about it soon.
2. I am the featured
poet for the latest issue of Chantarelle's
Notebook. You can read the issue, including my five poems, here.
3. My poem
"Shelter" has been accepted by US
1 Worksheets for their next issue, due next spring.
4. My poem
"Backbreaking Mountain" placed 2nd in the Poetic Asides Poetic Form
Challenge. It's in a form called a "dodoitsu" - a Japanese poem of 4
lines with syllable counts of 7-7-7-5, usually on a theme of love or work.
Blogmaster Robert Brewer says he may publish the top three winners in his
column in a future issue of Writer's
Digest.
5. The early results
of this year's Poem-a-Day Challenge from Poetic Asides are out - only four
days' results have been announced so far, but my poem "The Man Peeling
Yams on Easter Morning" made the top 10 finalists for Day 5. As with last year's contest, the final winner
for each of the 30 days of April will be published in an upcoming
anthology. So, fingers crossed!
6. Speaking of
Poetic Asides, a couple of the regular blog site members, Nancy Posey and Jane
Shlensky, are organizing a two-day
poetry conference in Hickory, NC in September, called "Fall Face-to-Face
in the Foothills". It's a chance to
meet with several fellow Poetic Asides participants (including blogmaster Robert
Lee Brewer) and enjoy sharing poetic activities. Although it's a nine-hour
drive for me, I plan to go and I look forward to meeting a number of online
friends in person.
Baseball: My Phillies had
the worst first half in the history of the team, going into the All-Star break
at 29-62, a truly dismal record. Since then, they have really turned things
around, winning 15 of their last 20 games. Part of the credit has to go to
interim manager Pete MacKanin, but also Ryan Howard's resurgence at the plate,
and talented rookies like Mikael Franco and Aaron Nola, might have something to
do with it too. They have a big hole to dig out of to even finish at .500 for
the year, but right now they have become fun to watch again. We had to say
goodbye to Cole Hamels, who is the only pitcher in MLB history to be traded
just after pitching a no-hitter. He's
now a Texas Ranger, but he's a classy guy and a possible future Hall-of-Famer.
I wish him a lot of luck.
Poem: Here's the dodoitsu finalist
that I mentioned above:
Backbreaking Mountain
Workaday world, I can't say
goodbye yet. Like
that cowboy
in that movie, I wish I
knew how to quit you.
