A living memorial and writers galore

I first met Ti-Grace Atkinson in New York in the early flowering of the Women’s Liberation Movement. Then we met again at the conference two and a half years ago at Boston University called The Revolutionary Moment. We spent time together at meals and talking. We have been in email contact ever since. Ros Baxandall’s son Phineas had with the help of some of her many friends arranged for a memorial party for Ros Baxandall who is dying of cancer. It was held at her summer home in Truro, the next town to Wellfleet. Ti-Grace and I had been invited. Neither of us were personal friends of Ros but we both knew her from the women’s movement. I’d been in a group with her and had met her sporadically on the Cape. We both wanted to pay our respects to her lifelong political work. Ti-Grace came to Provincetown on the early ferry on Saturday and Woody, who was still sick, picked her up and brought her here. She was more fragile than she had been two and a half years ago, as she had a hip replacement that became infected after the operation and had to spend a long time in the hospital. She is being evicted with her seven cats by developers who want to turn her affordable apartment building into expensive condos. She’s been organizing the tenants to resist. Anyhow, we went to Ros’s living memorial together until the heat became too much for Ti-Grace. Many people spoke about Ros as a person and as an activist over the decades and as an academic who wrote influential books and was very involved with her students and the university where she taught in American studies. Ti-Grace and I had long conversations over the weekend and she fell in love with Xena, our huge rescued tabby, who returned the affection and crawled into bed with Ti-Grace Saturday night – something she has never done with anyone except Woody and me. Ti-Grace went back on the late ferry Saturday night. The week went quickly with lots of work inside and outside and preparation for Friday. We left at 11:30 to go to the Cape Cod Resort and Conference Center at the West End of Hyannis, where the Cape Cod Writers Conference was being held. We had limited our memoir workshop to 16. It was filled and there was a waiting list. I think it went very well. We had supper there with old friend Charles Coe who was teaching 3 poetry courses there. He’s retired from the Massachusetts Arts Council, writing and teaching workshops full time.It was great to see him. Then I gave the keynote speech and signed books. I give good speech, if I say so myself. We got home to four pissed off cats. Today we have a lot of garden work to do, I have to start preparing my program for my reading at the Wellfleet Public Library on Thursday and what I’m doing at the rally with Harvey Wasserman next Sunday against the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant and nukes in general. I have to sort the garlic that Woody dug a week ago and bring it inside in mesh bags. We also must start canning tomatoes today. Tonight, poker at Lois and Ramon’s with other friends.