Peg Duthie's Blog, page 70

ranunculus

Having company = ready excuse to splurge on fresh flowers. These are from the farm I worked at last summer:



( three more snapshots under the cut )

In their newsletter, Tally and John wrote, "It seems like there has never been a spring with so much to do at once!" Indeed.

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reading at the library

Joanne tells the audience about polar bears.

Mary, Joanne, and I presented some of our poems at the downtown branch of the Nashville Public Library yesterday morning, in the beautiful West Reading Room. The room is also where the monthly Shakespeare Allowed gatherings take place, so between that and March Madness, it would have been foolish to start with anything other than "Practicing Jump Shots with Shakespeare."

The rest of my set (all from Measured Extravagance):

Playing Duets with Heisenberg's Ghost
Schrodinger's Top Hat
The Language of Waiting
Devotion
Deep and Crisp and Even
Hymn

I'm now kind of kicking myself for not including "Proportions" and "Shehechianu," but truth be told, I found myself powering through an (atypical) attack of nerves, so ending the set at ten minutes (instead of fifteen) seemed the more prudent course of action while I was at the podium.

I'm enormously grateful to the friends who attended the event -- thank you all so much for making time for it, amid so many other choices! It was also thrilling to discover that we'd caught the interest of strangers: we were a Critics' Pick in this week's Nashville Scene, and Liz mentioned being asked about the reading while riding the bus.

Joanne's posted some photos and notes as well.



Mary read primarily from The Scientific Method, and offered "My Mother Was a Mad Scientist" cards:



Other pleasures of the weekend have included:

* Time with Mary and her sister. We walked to Little Hollywood and back, tried a vanilla marshmallow at Provence (said mallows are huge -- one was sufficient for three people), admired the felt vines at Retropolitan ...

* A Friday night gathering with Joanne's household. She brought potato salad and spinach salad; the BYM picked up pork shoulder and cornbread from Jack's; I made two pitchers of sangria, a plate of devilled eggs, and a bowl of blue cheese slaw. Good eats and good times.

* A note from Houseboat -- they'll be publishing two of poems this week.

...and, there's more to share, but it's time to head to church. Here's wishing each of you a happy start to your week.

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Messenger to Mercury

I was stuck in traffic yesterday afternoon. The upside to this was hearing NPR's story on, among other things, why it takes so long (i.e., eight years) for a spacecraft to land on Mercury:

[Maria] Zuber says the answer is gravity. Mercury's orbit is closer to the sun than the Earth's, and if you launch a rocket toward the sun, the sun's gravity is going to cause your spacecraft to speed up.

So ... [Messenger] used the gravity of other planets to slow it down with respect to the sun. In a trajectory worthy of Rube Goldberg, Messenger looped once around the Earth, then made two close encounters with Venus. When it arrived at Mercury in 2008, it was still going too fast, so it flew by Mercury three times, slowing down a little more each time. "The fourth time it came by Mercury it was slowed down enough that when we fired the main engine, Mercury's gravity field was able to capture it," says Zuber. Messenger has been orbiting Mercury since March 2011.

I need to remember this story the next time I'm taking six detours to get from A to B.

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toda raba

Taking ten minutes to give thanks for ten wonderful things:

(1) The first review of Measured Extravagance, by Marissa Lingen.

(2) It's kass 's birthday!

(3) ...and her Hebrew skills just came to my rescue. (So many languages, so little mental storage space...)

(4) Revisiting my memories of Tmol Shilshom (The Day Before Yesterday), a bookstore-cafe she recommended.

From tmol shilshom

(5) Iced coffee and the arago sandwich (bagel, tomato, avocado, provolone) at Portland Brew.

(6) Arcade Fire on the PA system. Remembering four years ago, hearing the same song ("Lies") for the first time in a Kentucky coffeeshop. Thankfulness for that coffeeshop being there when I needed it, there being neither internet nor non-fossilized caffeine products in my mother's house). Thankfulness that I'm no longer commuting between Kentucky and Tennessee.

(7) I'm sitting in front of a painting that contains both the Loch Ness monster and a rubber ducky. (I don't understand yet why it's named after Michio Kaku, but I'll look it up...)

(8) The replacement battery for my laptop has arrived.

(9) Receiving word of a new publisher for experimental poetry. (I participated in a reading with Jane last spring where she channeled Johnny Cash. Has to be seen to be believed.)

(10) One acceptance this week; three rejections. So much gratitude to the people who circulate, promote, and recommend my work; gratefulness, too, at receiving the "no"s, since they let me and those pieces move on.

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first day of spring

Sing, ye heavens, and earth reply, Alleluia! - Charles Wesley

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flame challenge (and a couple of other things)

From things that make me happy
Chemistry Kitty!

There's a competition through April 2 for answers to "What is a flame?", seeking descriptions that "an 11-year-old will find intelligible and maybe even fun." It's also canvassing for 11-year-olds to act as judges.

http://www.flamechallenge.org/



ysabetwordsmith , who will be featured on this blog on April 20, has opinions and observation about publishing models for you to ponder.



I am far from a purist when it comes to prosody, but Lehman's prediction + clarification on why Obama and not Santorum will carry the electoral college -- let's hear it for the true double trochees!

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a letter to me-at-sixteen

Danville, Kentucky, 1986. Photo taken by Ray, a pal at GSP.

( Yo. )

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other people drawing

I visited Beale Street three times on my recent trip to Memphis. The first was in broad daylight, around 3 pm on a Thursday afternoon. There was already music blaring, and a drunken boor bellowed "Where ya from?" at me from his sidewalk seat (and then laughed with his friends as if he had said something funny). But there was also the pleasure of winter sunshine on old walls...



...and watching an artist with her paints:



[I'll post about the other two visits some other time. In the meantime, say hi to the Hugs Bison. :-) ]

[Also, I am 8/8 in predicting the WTA quarterfinalists at Indian Wells. I'm going to revel in this moment, since the only sure thing about my ATP bracket is that it's going to be trashed one way or another after tonight.]

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book! and Jerusalem sharing a moment with Nashville

My poetry chapbook has been at Smashwords! 4.99 USD (19 Israeli shekels) will get you the PDF edition of forty-odd pages of poetry by an odd forty-something. :-) (Kindle and epub editions forthcoming within the fortnight.)

( a Jerusalem fountain waves to a memory in Nashville )

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Lucky Heart

I am trying to maintain my "travel eyes" when I am at home. When I travel, I tend to pay more attention to signs -- not just in terms of direction and destination, but to their style and age and surroundings. I have a particular fascination with what I think of as "ghost signs" -- the near-vanished outlines of storefront letters and the faded advertisements of businesses no longer with us.

But Memphis's Lucky Heart company is still filling orders, as far as I can tell, and its history is calling out for some other afternoon for me to become better acquainted with it.

( more glimpses of a Memphis corner )

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