December first I opened up my juried intensive poetry workshop on Facebook and my website. The announcement will appear in the next issue of Poets and Writers magazine in the classified ads at the back. As soon as I announced it was open for entries, the manuscripts started flooding in. So far I have found three good ones that I have accepted. That’s a decent haul for less than a week. I read and reread every submission to be sure I see it clearly and then can make a decision if this is a poet I want to work with and feel I can take to a higher level of craft. I had my semi-annual checkup this week, the short one – the long checkup with all the bloodwork is in May. Apparently I am very healthy for my age, good heart, good lungs, good blood pressure, good oxygen ratio, good bones – except for the right knee implant that has never stopped hurting after a year and a half. if you can avoid it [I couldn’t] never have surgery at the end of june or the beginning of July. All the medical personnel are in a new rotation and half of them have never done before whatever it is they are doing to you. So they make mistakes. So it went with the nerve block. I still have nerve problems in that leg. Hannukah starts tomorrow at sunset, which is around 4 PM. It’s very early this year, surprisingly so. It is also my mother’s yahrzeit. For those of you who aren’t Jewish, that is the anniversary of her death according to the Jewish calendar. Our calendar is lunar so the date on the secular calendar moves every year. She died while I was in the air going standby to be with her. So I never got to say goodbye. Every year I say Kaddish for her and light the 26 hour candle [in the bathtub for safety’s sake] the same night I light the first candles on the hanikiyah – which people call the menorah although it isn’t. There are seven candle holders on the menorah and nine on the hanikyah. Anyhow one holiday is joyous and the other, sad. All mixed together for me as things in life so often are. My friend Dale had a triple bypass heart surgery the week before Thanksgiving. Stephen works all day and I gather the cuisine at their home hasn’t been too great. Yesterday I made supper for them – roast beef, potatoes lyonnaise, creamed spinach, starting with a Trader Jo’s hors d’oeuvres and a bowl of Celestine soup, leeks from our garden in it and for dessert, my special chocolate pudding. I am working on the problem of green burial. I would vastly prefer that to cremation, which does pollute. I want to give the components of my body back to the earth. I have interested Suzanne Thomas at the Council on Aging in the project and am trying to get information from the commissioner of cemeteries here. I will NOT be embalmed and leak toxic chemicals into the earth and water table. I bought three new copies of the paperback of Grave Matters to give to Suzanne, the cemetery commissioner and someone in town who is in control of a family cemetery where the State rules don’t apply. I don’t want to be in a cement vault or a lead coffin. I want to be put in the earth in a shroud or a cardboard or thin pine box. I have eaten meat and don’t mind if other life should consume me. I owe my body back. No fancy coffin, no viewing, no embalming, just quickly into the earth where I belong.