Happy Mailbox

I’m sending out daily haiku for the annual World Peace Poetry Postcard Festival and had received two cards followed by a pause. Got a fabulous card Saturday and today hit the jackpot with four more!

Today was the first day of post-furnace-blowup-replacement cleanup. I gathered up a lot of cleaning supplies and committed to doing a room or two a day until it’s done enough to move the small (not) furry cats back. I did one room today. I’ll just say it’s a strong argument for no doo-dads!

I had done some cleaning OUT of stuff while the new furnace was being installed and that’s out at the curb for tomorrow’s trash.

Happy Mailbox

This and That, Past stuff and a cat

Today, while other stuff was going on (major furnace stuff) I did some tidying and got some stuff done. If I could do that much every day it would be productive. After a few days of below freezing temps, it was 30F and above and felt positively balmy. Which is good when your furnace isn’t doing much. Several times today, I took a break by just sitting on the steps. I was plenty warm enough (thank you Merino) and the sun was bright. Alas there was no seed for the birdies. That had been on my to-do list today but…

When it was all done for the day, I put together a little food and a glass of wine and sat down to watch All Creatures Great and Small. The focus right now seems to be on character development – what in the past made these people who they are today. It was a bit heavy on the feels but it was good to end the day with.

Tomorrow is Monday already and it was a good thing I had gotten a few days ahead of the World Peace Poetry Postcards list because today there was no writing. Maybe I’ll figure out something after this. I had my first card and it wasn’t anything I could play off so I guess it may be time to look through my stash.

While I was watching All Creatures, I was in the room where briefly I did work from home. I found a few odd receipts from holiday presents and other scraps and put them into the trash. Then I found this, and when I opened it up, it was from my training to do that online sales support stuff, notes of changes along the way, the normal retail management stuff and then on to “My Last Working Day at Apple”. Probably about two-thirds of the notebook is used. There were a few pages of fountain pen testing and writing and one not-so-bad ink sketch of a sleeping cat. I mean, one of my co-workers.

Then I got ready to get into bed and was soon joined by Harry. They both seemed to have forgiven me for throwing them into carriers and putting them in the car for a little while today, when I didn’t really know what was going to happen. Mainly I was worried about them getting out somehow, or getting into somewhere where I couldn’t find them. But now they’re both curled up alongside me and we’ll be all right until morning.

This and That, Past stuff and a cat

Day 8 NaPoWriMo 2022

Today was a sort of rest day. No big plans.

The mailman left a postcard that had been traveling to me since February 26 during World Peace Poetry Postcards! A little scuffed but none the worse for having taken the extra long path! I like to think of it spreading a little peace and joy along the way.

Swung by the Hand Hollow Conservation area and watched the geese and ducks from the car. Came home and had the thought to clean out the car. A lot accumulates over a couple months even if you’re not doing too much and spring cleaning seemed to be a good idea.

last shoveling of
winter is not the sidewalk
but the car’s backseat

the hats and mittens
several scarfs and my parka
and the big snow brush

parka, umbrella
and boots remain against this,
early mud season

Day 8 NaPoWriMo 2022

The End of March – April is Coming

It’s been too long a time and here I am again, about to launch into April and National/Global Poetry Writing Month. This interruption started in February, as I was settling into writing daily postcards for World Peace Poetry Postcards. Got thrown off that horse for a couple weeks but finally did get caught up and back on track.

What’s this National Poetry Writing stuff about, you ask? Pretty simple – you vow to yourself that you will write a poem a day for the month of April which is National Poetry Month. If you need some direction or companionship – the NaPoWriMo site is a great place. There you can get daily prompts and information, and read the poems of others and share your own. You’re under no obligation to show anyone your month of poems during the month or after. No matter what you’ll have stirred the pot of poetic and other creative juices and that’s always a good thing.

The End of March – April is Coming

Ukraine

It has been a rising tide of news until you can barely stand up against the waves that come faster and faster. This morning I sat down to write out a few bonus postcards for the world peace poetry postcard fest and it was a tough start and this is what came out.

While working on this, the quote box dug this one up:

All truth goes through three steps: First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Finally, it is accepted as self–evident.
— Arthur Schopenhauer 1788–1860

Ukraine

August Postcard Poetry Fest 2021

It’s definitely August (I’m melting!) and so it’s also Postcard Poetry Festival time!

This year I’m in two groups of 32 folks. The plan is to write a poem a day and send it via postcard to each successive person after you on the list. There is a lovely dailiness to this and it’s a good stretch of the “get-it-done-no-matter-what” muscle. Some days a poem comes easily, other days not so much.

I usually go into august armed with a short list of possible fall-back topics and sometimes a plan of what the poems will be – sonnets or whatever. I have quite a collection of postcards to use so I’m set for a long time. I make sure I have stamps. I have my sharpie pens at the ready.

Over the past year, during the pandemic, I began cutting up all my cardboard boxes: crackers, cereal, tissue, into postcard sized pieces. This may have started when I found a stack of old phone books that had nice or interesting covers and I ripped off the covers before recycling the rest. Who knows? Anyway, with a few donations from Mom, I ended up with more than enough postcard-sized hunks of boxes to use for August. I put self-adhesive postcard backs onto them and so far, so good.

I did have a short list of emergency ideas but I haven’t dipped into it yet. Also during the pandemic, I started responding to a friend’s facebook practice of posting a photo and asking us to show our daily “one good thing”. Early on in the pandemic I really looked forward to getting out in the yard and finding something good. Taking photos is another way of looking at things and dailiness is a good practice. When he stopped posting those for awhile, I picked it up and kept it going with my friends. Now that he’s back I send him a different version of my one good thing.

So it seems that in the first couple weeks of PoPoFest 2021 my cards are going out with a short poem about something simple but noticed. Something heard and pondered. After the first couple days, a format I like – three haikus on a theme – seemed to be the plan.

And that can be my good thing for the month!

Here’s a little view of all the cards received so far from the two groups. I also got a card (not shown) snuck in from the World Peace Poetry session in February – very welcome after some list rummaging! And turns out two bonus cards which I’d only registered one.

August Postcard Poetry Fest 2021

A Very Good Mail Day

Small box on front porch
inside reminders: freedom
hard won and maintained.

Thanks @WAMCradio for the tshirt and mug but mostly for being who you are – a strong center in a world that needs both news and arts. Also thanks for a World Peace Poetry postcard in the mail.

And according to one of those silly facebook quizzes, if you can’t find me, here’s where not to look (I’ll be the one wearing a First Amendment tshirt…)

One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honour or observation. — Sir Walter Scott

And Just Like That, March Arrives

Yes I know it’s the third. Yes I know I’ve been rather quiet.

Had a bad cold-whatever which kept me home for a string of days, not good for much other than brewing tea, swilling day/nyquil and watching movies.

Spent February doing a postcard poetry thing – World Peace Postcards. I really enjoy the daily-ness of these months. The first few days might feel a little rusty or forced depending on how much I’ve been writing before the first day of the month, but each day gets easier. Sort of. There are still days when I resort to writing a haiku or three about something near at hand or a word combination overheard to see if that will lead to something else.

But, every night I get to go out to the mailbox, after marking off the list and scanning the cards going out (this time with a postcard each to my two US Senators). It’s a nice nightly ritual, a grand excuse for going out in the cold and looking at the stars or enjoying the snow etc.

The mailbox sometimes rewards me with the work of others – sometimes one card, sometimes a bunch. Sometimes it’s a little wish for peace, sometimes a take on a recent news event. I try not to get tied up in tallying how many arrive but being who I am, I dutifully check off the names of the senders on my month’s master list just as I mark that I’ve sent them a card and what photo/watercolor it was.

So I’m in it for the daily, the every day, the repetitive doing of the work because at the end, that’s what it’s all about, eh?

PS – I’ve spent the last few days doing some head-down, serious type editing, considering of poems I want to submit as a group. What a different way to look at things.

Poetry and Postcards and Watercolor

I work at my watercolor (not as often as I’d like) and I work at my poetry (this month very regularly indeed) and they often cross paths when I’m sending out postcards of poetry. These are the three postcards I made today. Sunny and Cold is the newest one, inspired by today’s bright blue sky and puffy clouds.

From the Quote Box – More Guidance

A man’s duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life. — Plato

I spent part of this morning working on poems and then fetching sunflower seeds for the tiny but very hungry birdies. It was wonderfully pleasant to be out in the sun, temps in the forties and the sky so blue. Big puffy white clouds.

To divert myself from the world over the past few days I’ve watched quite a few instructional videos about watercolor. Last night I watched Frank Clark who walked through quite a few exercises, doing a landscape in one color, using simple shapes to suggest people, fruit and things like boats. He talked about sky, horizon lines and foregrounds. He uses goat hair brushes which are pretty strange but wonderful. Can’t argue with someone who can dash off a fair landscape in a few minutes (with hairdryer at hand) using 8 colors and three brushes.

I’m learning myself that most of the time things get done with bigger brushes so it doesn’t surprise me when I see these video guys using brushes that are 1 1/2 inches or bigger.

Anyway, I gathered up what I’d seen and sat down with the two latest paintings which were lacking proper foregrounds. I played around with my biggest brush a one inch wash and it did a pretty good job of being ragged and rough when dry. I played with holding the brushes by the far end and that just needs practice and repetition.

When those had grassy and melted areas here and there I slapped some blue and grey washes together and created a big bright blue sky with puffy white clouds sailing by. I didn’t let myself leave the foreground empty. That way I can start a new painting next time. No more dilly-dallying. Do the work. Keep making art. Do the work.