Last weekend was marvelously warm, but since midweek, it’s been cool here. Cool, not cold. We have still been able to work outside quite happily. Now Woody is about to deal with the sheds [we have three sheds, one very old and falling apart and two in better condition. We use them all]. I have to start weeding the herb garden and planting chervil. I started some morning glories and would like to plant them along one of the fences today, if I can get to it. I have been fighting a losing war all week with an academic journal called FEMSPEC. When they announced their issue on aging, I gave four poems to an editor there I know, not in person but via email. She actively wanted my poems. Much time went by. Finally on one of my listservs, I noticed that they had published the issue with my poems in it. in fact, that was one of the things they advertised about the issue. I emailed them asking for my two contributor’s copies – a need I had mentioned when I submitted the poems. One copy is for me and one is for the archivist at the University of Michigan, as they bought my papers ten years ago on an ongoing contract. They replied I would have to subscribe to the journal to get any copies at all. Their rate is very high and I have no interest in academic journals, including this one. A flame war ensued. But they refuse to budge and give me any copies and I am not about to subscribe to something to which I freely gave four poems. They list me as on their board and they advertise the poems, but they dis me. I am going to put the poems on FB and on my website, so nobody has to buy the stupid zine in order to read them. I won’t list them as published. I will not give credit when the poems are included in my next poetry collection. Feeble responses but what can I do? I find more and more poets are treated as unpaid, unlauded providers of “content” and nothing more. Notice how little zines support themselves with endless contests where you have to pay more and more to enter. I never submit to anything where they charge me instead of paying me. I believe I support zines by giving them my poems that may well attract readers. They keep saying they are poor feminists, as if I am some suburban lady supported by an affluent husband or living off a trust fund. Because of my politics, I am never given prizes or grants. I live off what I write and gigs. And I’ve been an active feminist for fifty years. I know how difficult is the world of small press publishing, having run Leapfrog Press for ten years with Woody. But we never expected our writers to carry the burden of running the press. We put our own money in until we couldn’t do it any longer. Then we sold the press. We went to visit a friend who has cancer this week. He spent 40 days in the hospital, is briefly home – gaunt and grey – and must go back for at least 5 more days very soon. He has been in incredible pain. It’s all hard to accept and understand as he was a jock and seemed very strong, thin but wiry. Things come down on us without warning. Another friend went through a scare this week but it turns out it was only caused by dieting. Now he is eating as he says like a pig and his blood count has returned to normal. So that was good news. Woody has finished four raised beds in the upper [Rosa Luxembourg] garden, so that I can plant them. I’ve planted one completely with 6 kinds of lettuce, two kinds of radishes and arugoa and put bok choi in another. Two of them are for paste tomatoes and the last one for eggplants, peppers and a few more paste tomatoes. Too early to plant any of that yet, but the seedlings are growing quickly, especially the tomatoes. I have been thinning them when I get the chance to go out to the greenhouse. More interviews and work at my computer occupied a lot of the week.