Snow Solo Walk-On for First Sunday Prose

Wednesday and Thursday brought our first winter storm of the season. Rain followed by snow — fortunately it was light on the ice that was predicted with it — then ending on Friday, leaving Sunday afternoon with lots of white still on the ground.

So it was for February’s Bloomington Writers Guild “First Sunday Prose Reading and Open Mic,” with clear, even sunny, skies, but cold and to some extent getting sloppy, meaning a walk both a little difficult but also pretty to Morgenstern Books. This possibly led to a little bit sparser than usual turnout this time for featured readers Alan Balkema and Jane Goodman, with well-published Balkema leading off with the beginning scenes of his novel, LIGHTNING ROD, detailing a dysfunctional family. This was followed by IU cultural anthropology professor Goodman with a personal essay, “Apple, Table, Penny: A Meditation on Word and Verse,” based on a Women Writing for Change workshop project.

After the break, the second “Open Mic” part brought a surprise of sorts. Even though the turnout wasn’t that low (about nine or ten although, with spillover from Morgenstern’s coffee bar, it’s often hard to tell exactly), there was only one reader. Me. So I read an unpublished tale called “The Softening,” science-fantasy sort of with a shade of horror, on weather, winter, shoveling sidewalks, a leveling off of seasonal differences as well as a generally wetter climate, and . . . snow.