So glad you have signed up to receive the For Random Learning Comes Newsletter! This is the sixty-first edition.

Previous editions can be found on the blog's Newsletter page. I send it out weekly, so if you don't get my email on Saturday morning, please let me know! (Check your junk and spam folders too.)

My five latest posts are at the end of this newsletter, latest first.

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This week I have two poems on offer. The first one attempts to compare our technologically obsessed culture with that of the Victorians, in our common love for progress, taste for over-the-top decor and insipid nostalgia. It is called Latter Day Victorians.

The second is a slightly morbid poem about going through the grieving process, and finally coming out the other side. It is called Surroundings.

This week has been dull and uneventful, remarkable only for the enduring heat and sloppy rain, which we Floridians have learned to expect this time of year.

As is usual before the beginning of the school year, everyone's clocks are off. One would think that it was here, in the near subtropics, rather than in more northern climes, that the sun shone round the clock.

But ever since we returned from a weekend away, we have heard stomping at night and lights have been switched on randomly that should be turned off. No ghosts haunt these precincts, but only my adult sons, who insist on keeping impossible hours. You could say, I suppose, that my sons shine round the clock.

I am looking forward to cooler, darker, more peaceful times, if one can hope for such things in an age of global warming. A full night's sleep with no sudden lights or noises would be most welcome. Until then, I will survive, drifting half-in and half-out of consciousness, in this sleep-deprived and suggestible trance that is mid-August.

Stay cool and sleep well!

Andrea
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If you haven't signed up for my newsletter yet, I hope you will consider doing so. And tell your friends! There's a blue signup form on every page.

You can also follow my Twitter account, @AndreaLedew,which posts my previously published blogposts, poems and flash fiction. This will give you an idea of just how much mischief I've been up to over the past five or six years.

Thanks again for your continued readership and support. It means a lot to me.

Have a great week!

Andrea

The links below will take you to the five most recent posts.

The blue logo takes you to the homepage. The section on English Majors has the most recent stuff.


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Latter Day Victorians

Keyboard placed on William Morris Pimpernel patterned fabric. (William Morris& Co swatch from LA Design Concepts) Photo by Andrea LeDew.
This poem lists the ways in which we emulate our predecessors, who marveled at the new speedy technology of trains, yet clung tight to uniforms and codes of etiquette.

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Surroundings

Fruit on the counter with a basket. Copyright Andrea LeDew.
This poem begins ominously, but overall has a positive message. In it, I chart the path of the survivor, from grief to acceptance to rejoicing.

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Container Garden

The contents of a recycle bin. Copyright Andrea LeDew.
This poem is voiced by a proud recycler of my generation, who does his or her duty and yet vaguely realizes, that while collecting recyclables may be enough to assuage his or her guilt, it is not nearly enough, to make a dent in the underlying problem.

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Chalk Dust

View through a airplane window, across the tarmac of Newark, NJ airport, as storm clouds dump a column of rain onto the New York City skyline. Copyright Andrea LeDew.
This is an airport poem. We spent some time enjoying the delights of the Newark, NJ airport this past week, after a lovely sojourn with my relatives in the Philly area. This is an airport poem in the sense that it was composed in an airport, mask on, surrounded by a sea of humanity. Weather had us bumped from timeslot …

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Mine

A lovely garden in spring, riotous and full. Copyright Andrea LeDew.
A morning poem questioning the concept of ownership.

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