|
So glad you have signed up to receive the For Random Learning Comes Newsletter! This is the ninety-fifth edition. People keep asking me, what's going to happen, when you get to 100?
|
This week's newsletter is definitely on the "lite" side. In preparing to go to the Florida Writers Association Convention in Orlando this past weekend, I did not get much new writing done. And in the week following the convention, I'm afraid, I was equally productive.
|
I am including below my overview of the FWA convention, which I hope will encourage those of you, who are so inclined, to check it out in coming years.
|
I also want to wish everyone a Happy Halloween and share some of my favorite spooky content on the website. I hope it will bear repeating.
|
I managed to get up the nerve this past week to go to a poetry night at a local bar and sign up to read. I shared my poem "Haint Blue" which tells a love story between two ghosts, from the perspective of the homeowner, who suspects that they are hanging out on her front porch.
|
I did my best at the reading, but I probably stood out like a sore thumb, as the eldest and most traditional poet in a room full of people much cooler than me.
|
I also got the brief wrong, as they say on the BBC, meaning that I didn't understand the assignment. I thought it was supposed to be Halloween poems, not the love poems everyone else was presenting. Not the least bit embarrassing.
|
Nonetheless, it was an interesting and educational experience, in terms of how to present oneself on stage, and whether it is wise to include intrusive popups on one's blog, from which one is desperately trying to read, on a tiny cellphone screen.
|
I will try to write more soon, if I am fortunate enough to have a less eventful week! Below you will find Halloween posts first, then the FWA post, then the most recent posts in reverse order.
|
|
|
|
|
|
This poem mixes the images of a mysteriously opening door and a found baby shoe to produce a Halloween romance.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
This poem is a love song to my sister. She and my brother and I recently went to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, along Lake Superior, for a scattering of my parent's ashes. When people live far away, it's easy to slide into a habit of benign neglect. To fail to call. To fail to visit. We hurt people by …
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ice Don't Keep
|
{This is a short-short story of 100 words, in response to the weekly photo challenge called Friday Fictioneers. Rochelle Wisoff-Fields is the den mother of this operation. I have participated in this challenge since May 2018, but have been absent for a while, busy with other things. Still, I always enjoy coming back, for the comradery and encouragement of the …
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Kiss
|
{This dark poem came to me the day after Christmas, rather inappropriately. It would have been much more suitable for Halloween. Oh well. It was inspired by a flash fiction written by Reena Saxena last week, for Friday Fictioneers. I hope she will not mind my expounding on the theme.} Close to the ghost Of a wide-eyed woman, Who …
|
|
|
|
|
|
Ghosts
|
{This week for What Pegman Saw we are in the Black Hills, South Dakota, USA. Many moons ago I visited there, when I lived in Minnesota. But this story is mostly about the rich heritage of Indigenous culture in the Midwest, and how little we tend to respect what has gone before the current dominant culture. Fort Snelling is …
|
|
|
|
So Close and Yet So Far
|
|
This essay discusses the Semiquincentennial celebration and compares it with Fourths of Years gone by.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Drawing
|
|
A poem on redistricting, the drawing of new districts to serve the ruling party's political purposes, with the blessing of the Supreme Court and with enthusiasm unchecked by either the people's will nor the State's Constitutional provisions.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Attempt
|
|
A poem describing the swirling emotions on and offline provoked by the attempted assassination of President Trump at the dinner for the press. Caveat: I do not doubt the attempt on his life was real. P.S. The photo is an attempt at beauty.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Approaching May 1st, 2026, Anniversary of The Great Fire, Jacksonville, FL
|
|
A poem about a very dry spring in Florida which calls to mind the terrible fire which consumed Jacksonville early in the 20th century.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Smiles
|
|
This poem analyzes the loss of reputation of the US in the eyes of its closest allies, and the attitude it projects, about that loss.
|
|
|
|
|
