Endless negotiations and a great, great feast
I have two gigs in St. Louis on next April 17th. We’ll drive to St. Louis and arrive the evening of the 16th, leave the morning of the 18th. I have been negotiating for at least three months to set up readings on the way there and back. I had hoped to give a reading or two in Detroit, my home town, on the way back but after being dangled for all these months and being told something was definitely in the works, nothing, nada, zip. No Detroit this year. A heroic academic at Dennison went to work and has been juggling various venues in Ohio that want me, sort of want me, maybe want me, not, definitely do want me but not on the day they agreed on first, and then not on the day they chose second, etc. etc. Allison deserves a literary medal of honor. I think I have three gigs in Ohio on the way to St. Louis and one on the way back, but nothing seems set in stone yet. Probably over a hundred emails have crisscrossed trying to set up venues coming and returning. I have two other readings in New England in April, so it’s going to be one crazy exhausting month. Plus all the garden work. I also have a poetry reading in Ann Arbor on the 16th of January but so far, not even a nibble for the way there or the way back. Today is raw but bright and the wind is rushing through what leaves are left – mostly the oaks and the weeping beech. All the sugar maples and birches have been stripped. Woody went outside with the leaf blower to clear the turn-around and the brick paths to the house because wet leaves are extremely slippery underfoot. We just pile leaves on the perennial beds as that gives them protection and some fertilizer till spring. The leaves will have mostly rotted by then, and what hasn’t can be dumped on a berm we are creating by the “grassy” area. When we need a watch repaired, battery put in or watchband replaced, we go to a kiosk in the Hyannis mall. There a man named Mike who is French-Lebanese takes care of us. I love Middle Eastern food and cook it not infrequently, but I have a particular fondness for Lebanese cooking – and their red wines. Toledo, where I have been for readings but long before that when I was a student in Ann Arbor, has a large Lebanese community and great food. Mike told us the best Middle Eastern restaurant in Massachusetts was Byblos in Norwood and we should go, talk to Maurice and say Mike set us. Last night Woody drove there with our friends Lois and Ramon and me. It’s two hours each way but it was worth it. We wanted to treat the Rustias because they are good friends and they put on Thanksgiving every year now. I’ll make rum pumpkin pie, apple-cranberry sauce as I usually do. But Dale is having a triple bypass heart operation next week and cannot make the range of hors d’oeuvres he usually provides. I’ll make tabouli, provide a cheese or two and if Lois decides she wants it, my hummus or baba ganoush. We had mezzeh for 4 and the plates kept coming, each course tastier than the last. We brought home a huge doggy bag that we’ll have for supper when we return late from my panel at Temple Shalom in Newton tomorrow. the belly dancing unfortunately didn’t start there until after 9 and we were done by 8:30 with a two hour drive back. But the service and the food were great. Hummus, baba ganoush, tabouli, fatoush, kibby, pickled turnip, olives, three kinds of little pastries with varous meat and vegetarian fillings and cheese rolls, kefta,then grilled lamb, beef and chicken. The men split a baklawa and Ramon and I split rose water rice pudding. I love rice pudding but I never make it for company because almost no one sees it was the treat I do. Woody finished my raised bed herb garden and we transplanted the herbs that had survived the three years I could not get down to weed them. It is going not only to be convenient and a pleasure but attractive. I met with my friend Dan to critique each other’s recent poems this week and then I revised the ones that I agreed needed work. I wrote two this week, one too raw yet to share and the other, one of those rare poems that come out complete, polished and ready to depart.