A New Assistant, A New Herb Garden, and Old Friends

I hired a new assistant Ajia last week; Monday and Friday we worked together for the first time. There’s a lot to learn on the job. For dealing with my poems alone, when I write a poem and revise it, then I send it via email to the downstairs office. There it’s printed up in three copies, eachof which goes into a different place, including the file of poems to be sent out. Then there’s the submission list to keep up, checking to be sure I haven’t sent the poem elsewhere before I send it out. If it’s rejected, it goes back into the file. If accepted, it gets marked accepted. Once it’s published, it goes into my bibliography and into the poem indices; copies of them go to my agent every few months. And all that’s just for poems that are not yet put into any book. Anyhow, I’ve enjoyed working with her; so far, so good. We had friends over last Friday night. Tonight Dale and Stephen are coming over. That’s always fun. They are good and adventurous eaters and we don’t have to clean for them. They take the house as it really is every day, a mess with cats all over the place. Mingus gets very happy with Stephen comes over because Stephen makes a fuss over him and plays with him. Willow is getting that message too, but she is determined to seduce Dale, strictly a dog person. She is making headway. Dale actually played with her last time he was over. Woody is starting to make a raised bed for our herb garden so I can take it back. It was always mine to plant, weed, harvest, but I couldn’t do that for a couple of years now. I’ll get it back into order as soon as the big raised bed is built. We’re finally getting salad greens. September was the hottest on record globally and certainly here, so the salad greens were slow to get moving. We lost our Brussels sprouts in the heat of August to caterpillars. Normally we can pick the caterpillars off but it was way too damned hot. People either hate or love Brussels sprouts. it’s genetic. I’m a lover. I miss them. I have great ways of cooking them. I’m back to writing poems. I had a poem I was stuck on for a few weeks called “War story” but I finally finished it this week and wrote a couple of others. It’s hard to write a fresh non-rhetorical anti-war poem but I think I succeeded. I sure did try. We had a session the week before this with Down Cape Downwinders writing letters about closing Pilgrim Nuclear Power Plant to Governor Baker, the NRC, both our senators and our congressman. We don’t have to write our state rep or senator as they are leaders in the fight to close leaky Fukushima clone Pilgrim. There is no way to evacuate the Cape. On busy weekends, the traffic to go over the bridges backs up sometimes for seven miles. If the Cape had to evacuate – it’s a joke. Plus when there’s any trouble, the State closes both bridges. The NRC is giving Pilgrim till 2019 to close but that only increases our danger as Entergy won’t spend the money for necessary repairs and what experienced workers they have are already starting to job hunt. Government Baker thinks that having the energy from Pilgrim is far more important than saving our lives and the money the Cape generates for the Commonwealth.