One Monday, April 8th, there was a solar eclipse over a wide swath of North America. At my home in central New York, we were close to the path of totality with 97% of the sun obscured.
We dutifully bought eclipse glasses but the afternoon was very cloudy. During the time of maximum coverage of the sun, we did notice that it became darker, darker than you expect from cloud cover, even from a thunderstorm. A few minutes after it lightened again, it began to rain.
Meanwhile, many people were expressing their awe and wonder at viewing the eclipse. Some had travelled many miles, even internationally, to see it. All were subject to the vagaries of weather, but most were lucky to have good conditions for viewing. Even people who weren’t able to see the eclipse expressed gratitude at being part of an excited crowd putting aside divisions to look up together.
As I’ve been reflecting on the eclipse experience, I find myself wondering if I would have felt the same mystical sense of awe that others have been describing. Perhaps it is my practical New England upbringing or my study of science or my overall sense of respect for creation but I have trouble separating the eclipse from other natural phenomena. Should I feel more wonder at an eclipse than I do for a broken, blue shell that recently sheltered a baby robin or a riot of forsythia blossoms or the ancient rocks worn smooth by the brook or the full moon?
While I do appreciate the effect that the eclipse had to bring people together, I had no desire to be part of a crowd. Granted, I am the type of introvert who is always uncomfortable in a crowd, however noble or friendly its purpose.
Did you experience this eclipse or one in a different time and place? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.
It was my privilege on Sunday to attend a staged reading of Fall Forever by Eva Schegulla at the Glimmer Globe Theatre in the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY. It was part of the NEXT! Staged Reading Series, which offers readings of new plays by regional playwrights.
Eva is a friend and fellow member of the Boiler House Poets Collective, so I was especially happy to attend and to see her. Her writing covers a wide range, including stage plays, screenplays, radio plays, fiction, essays, serials, reviews, blog posts, and poetry, some of which are published under pen names. Her blog, Ink in My Coffee, just celebrated its 20th anniversary.
I had never been to a staged reading before. The actors read from the scripts set on music stands, although there were a few instances of characters moving around a bit. Another actor read the stage directions so that we knew where and when the scenes were taking place. There were also some sound effects, although a full staging of the play would include more. Although it is structured as a 2-act play, the reading was presented all in one block, which felt a bit overwhelming but gave me a new appreciation of intermissions.
The story revolves around the aftermath of the accidental death of Lily, especially with her sister Leah and husband Alan. I especially enjoyed the performance of Sharon Rankins-Burd, who read Leah. She is part of nearly every scene and, though having the script in front of her, Rankins-Burd was able to project who Leah is as she struggles with grief over her sister’s death and additional challenges that arise.
After the reading, there was a talkback session with the playwright, the performers, and the production team. It was interesting to hear Eva talk about the growth of the Fall Forever from a prompt at a workshop with the Williamstown Theatre Festival to its current form, awaiting a final round of edits as the result of the reading to be sent out for submission calls. There were some questions that elucidated the choices Eva had made in the play and how the staged reading format had impacted the version of the piece that we experienced. It was also fun to hear choices of favorite lines from actors – and audience members!
A recording of Fall Forever by Eva Schegulla will soon be available for a limited time. I’ll share the link when it is posted. I hope you will find it to be as enjoyable and meaningful as I did. Update: The video is now available here: https://youtu.be/GSgrLP56Q3Q?feature=shared. It will be taken down in mid-June 2024.
Belatedly sharing a bit more about our February visit to see our daughter E, son-in-law L, and granddaughters ABC and JG.
Most of the visit was spending time with the family at our rental home in their East London neighborhood. There were games and make-believe, reading, puzzles, drawing, watching BBC children’s programs, especially Swashbuckle, eating, napping, and even a couple of sleepovers for ABC and JG.
Our nod to the girls’ being on half-term break from school was a visit to the Tower of London. Given that we had a 3- and 6-year-old in tow, it wasn’t the most comprehensive visit, but we did see the Crown Jewels, the White Tower, and more cannons and armor than I’ve seen in the rest of my life combined.
ABC and JG were not enamored of the ravens.
London winters are much milder than here in the Northeast US, so daffodils were blooming at our rental house, even though it was only mid-February.
There was the excitement of ABC losing her fifth baby tooth. Of course, the Tooth Fairy arrived on schedule!
Mostly, though, the trip was a time for me, B, and T to be Nana, Grandpa, and Auntie. Because of the distance and infrequency of visits, we aren’t sure when we will be able to see them again, so it’s nice to have a remembrance of some snuggling time.
(In the photo at the top of the post, ABC’s bear is wearing a Binghamton Rumble Ponies hat. The Rumble Ponies are the AA baseball club of the New York Mets. Bear is trying on ABC’s cap.)
Just a reassurance that I will get back to substantive posting soon (I hope), after a period of travel, catching up after travel, family health issues, not nearly enough sleep, manuscript work, jet lag/time change, trying to solve problems that never should have happened in the first place, rallying and lobbying against CO2 fracking/carbon sequestration and working on tax returns…
(Photo: ABC’s bear wearing a Binghamton Rumble Ponies cap)
Spouse B, daughter T, and I are in London this week visiting daughter E, son-in-law L, and granddaughters ABC and JG for half-term break. This first half of the week, both E and L are working, so our main goal is taking care of ABC and JG so they can do that.
The last time we were together in person was April when they came to our home in the US. Although we do video calls, they can’t really capture the changes that happen. JG, now 3 and attending full-day nursery school is chatting up a storm! She loves making puzzles, zooming around our rental house near their home, and following the lead of 6-year-old ABC, who likes or tolerates it most of the time. ABC, now in year 2 at school, is reading well and a master of make-believe. She can make up songs and lyrics on the spot, taking after her musically-and-literary-accomplished parents. ABC also enjoys dance and art.
I love watching B being Grandpa, playing games, reading stories, preparing meals and snacks, and dozing off during naptime. T is an involved auntie, playing endless games of hide-and-seek and whatever make-believe ABC has invented and giving gentle hugs, in deference to her still-healing shoulder.
My favorite thing is just being here as family. With the ocean between us, it’s a rare gift to snuggle on the couch, especially with JG who was born during the early part of the pandemic and whom we didn’t get to meet in person until she was a year old. Such a different grandparenting experience than with ABC who lived with us in the US until she was two.
For JG, I’m just Nana. ABC, though, remembers her Great-Nana, who passed away in 2019.
I miss my parents and wish I could be as good a grandparent as they were with E and T.
Granted, I don’t often get to sit in one because we are most likely to be travelling as a group of three on a long flight, which usually puts us in the center of the plane and far from the windows.
This morning, though, I got to sit in the window seat of a small jet, flying from our home airport to Detroit, from which we will continue after a ten-ish hour layover to London to visit daughter E, son-in-law L, and granddaughters ABC and JG.
Even though it was dark out, I enjoyed looking out the window. Town and city lights. Occasional wisps of clouds. A few stars visible above the wing.
As we flew west, it seemed we were trying to outrun dawn. We nearly succeeded, orange and pink blossoming on the eastern horizon as we made our descent.
The stars had disappeared but Venus shown brightly.
After diligently posting daily for Just Jot It January, I’ve been taking a break but hope to be back with some new posts in a few days, although some planned travel may get in the way…
Today’s prompt for Linda’s Just Jot It January is “family,” contributed by Kim of Twisted Trunk Travels. Check out their blogs!
Over these last ten-ish years of writing poetry and blogging here at Top of JC’s Mind, I have written way more often about my family than I thought I would. Of course, it made perfect sense to blog about visiting daughter E and son-in-law L in Hawai’i, as folks often blog about their travels, but as time and circumstances changed and I faced the challenges of caregiving for various generations of the family, posts about family became more frequent. I also used poetry as a way to process things that were going on with my family, most notably about my mother’s experiences living with and dying from heart disease, which became my first published chapbook, Hearts (Kelsay Books, 2023).
I do try to protect my family members by referring to them with initials or nicknames rather than their given names. Nearly all of them use a different surname so only people who know us in real life are likely to recognize them from posts. Currently, spouse B and daughter T are most likely to appear as we are living in the same house, although we will soon be going to visit daughter E, son-in-law L, and granddaughters ABC and JG in London. which may generate some posts. My daughters’ grandparents were called on the blog by the names they used for them, Nana and Paco for my parents and Grandma for B’s mom. (Sadly, B’s dad, known as Grandpa, passed away in 2005, before I was blogging and writing poetry, although his death was the subject of one of my earliest published poems.) If you are perusing the archives of Top of JC’s Mind, you’ll come across posts dealing with their final years and the grief following their deaths.
One thing that strikes me about my family posts and poems is how often they spark comments and conversations about people’s own experiences. Knowing that I offer that space for people to reflect on themselves and their own families is a big part of why I continue to write about my family.
We are having our first major snowstorm of the season here in the Southern Tier of NY.
The system, which is coming up the Atlantic coast, arrived a bit earlier than had originally been expected. I had thought I’d be able to attend vigil mass at 4 PM as I usually do on Saturdays but the roads were too bad for travel. It’s still snowing this morning and some freezing rain is predicted, so it looks like this will be an at-home religious observance weekend, as all of them were during the pandemic.
Good thing I didn’t take the programming for recording mass out of my DVR.
Yes, it’s been over a month since I returned home from the Boiler House Poets Collective residency with The Studios at MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Arts) in North Adams but I am finally getting around to a wrap-up post. I did post a couple of times during the residency, about Marika Maijala and our reading at the Bear & Bee Bookshop, although that was a far cry from most of our years in residence when I would post daily. Things were very busy, so posting took a back seat and this past month has been loaded with other commitments, such as the launch of the Third Act Upstate New York working group and the first concert of the Madrigal Choir of Binghamton’s 45th anniversary season. I also needed time to reflect on the residency and what it meant for the future of the Boiler House Poets Collective.
Until this year, the Boiler House Poets Collective reunion residencies had always had at least half of the participants being members of the original group that met in 2015 as the first group of poets in residence brought together in a collaboration between Jeffrey Levine of Tupelo Press and The Studios at MASS MoCA. For 2023, the number of participants went from eight to ten, with only myself and Kyle Laws planning to return in 2023. (Sadly, last-minute health complications prevented Kyle from joining us, so I was the lone “original” in 2023. I’m hoping to have this be a one-time occurrence.)
I had inherited the role of liaison with The Studios but also wound up acting as an organizer for this year of transition. I was determined to assemble a full complement of ten and to provide for all the elements that had been part of past residencies, including studio time, museum visits, daily workshopping, a group project, a public reading, and discussion/social time (often accompanied by food and drink). Because, in prior years, we had always had a core of originals, adding in new participants from among our poet-friends as slots became available, we hadn’t felt called to define who we were as a group. I thought, at this juncture, we needed to be more intentional about our identity and our goals. I let people know that we would be having an organizational meeting near the end of the residency to talk about what was important to us and what our plans would be going forward.
I admit that I was really nervous about how things would work out with so many people who had never met each other. For the first time, we had a member who was not herself a poet. In 2022, the BHPC residency overlapped with the residency of Nancy Edelstein, whose work centers around light. With that inspiration, I had designed our group project around the theme of light, inviting each person to contribute work that had to do with light. I had expected a group of poems but the amazing thing was that people began to notice light in new ways. One of our members was inspired to take photographs showcasing light and shadow. We were able to share our light-themed work with each other. It’s not yet clear whether or not we will produce some conglomeration of these that is shareable with the public. If we do, I’ll be sure to share it here.
Another thing that was new for BHPC this year was that we workshopped some pieces that were not poetry, including an essay, scene from a play, and excerpt of a radio play. It was interesting to expand our literary horizons. While we expect to remain grounded in poetry, it’s good to have that flexibility to serve our members’ needs.
I felt that the group had a good vibe from the time of our opening night dinner when we were first together but I was nervous for our organizational meeting when people would be assessing how things had gone and if they wanted to return in 2024. I was thrilled – and a bit teary – when all but one person immediately said they wanted to return next year; the remaining person hopes to but lives across the country, creating a lot more complications than those of us within easy driving distance. People enthusiastically volunteered for organizational roles, including inventing some duties I would never have thought of on my own, so that I will be able to concentrate on just doing the liaison role. I even have a deputy who is shadowing me and can take over if I’m sidelined for any reason. This new constellation has embraced being a collective in a wonderful way and I am immensely grateful.
On a personal level, I appreciated how supportive people were of my work. As regular readers here at Top of JC’s Mind may recall, I grew up in the North Adams area and have two manuscripts, a full-length and a chapbook, that I am submitting to presses and contests. I’m at a crossroads with the full-length collection. I have a contract offer from a hybrid publisher but I’m not sure that is the way I want to go. One day over lunch, people were listening to my concerns and offering suggestions, which were very helpful and have led to my scheduling a manuscript consultation with a professional editor next month. I’m hoping that will help me clarify the path I need to pursue.
I also appreciated that people took my work seriously. One of the poets said that my poems were important in preserving the history of the area. That was so gratifying to me, even though I seldom dare to think in those terms. I do think about those poems as being ones that only I would write, given my perspective as someone who grew up there but that has lived elsewhere most of my adult life. It’s a sort of inside/outside perspective that would be difficult to replicate in quite the same way. I don’t tend to think that my following the dictum to “write what you know” would seem important to someone else, so it was nice to hear. It makes my search for a publisher and my wish to have the book be as strong as possible feel more weighty.
So, I have joyfully marked the dates for the 2024 Boiler House Poets Collective residency on my calendar for next October. I’m looking forward to being among this remarkable group of women again, but I’m also grateful to know that, if something happens that prevents me from being there, the group will go on without me.
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