Cold, Snowy Week With Lots of Poems
This week has been given over to judging the National entries for the WOMR Jose Gouveia Poetriy contests. I finished the Cape Cod Regionals in two days and a bit more. This week, I began Tuesday on the entries for the National contest. They are so many more of them that I cannot even lift the satchel they came in. Every year that I judge these two contests, there are more and more entries. I’m trying to do 50 entries a day – most have multiple poems submitted. I can’t work at night because my eyes get too tired.
Obviously, I can’t get any writing done till I’m finished with judging.
It remains and up and down weather week – 45 degrees or higher one day and down to 20 the next. We have a coating of snow on the gardens and other bare earth, but nothing on paths or around the house. We’re expecting cold today, maybe a snow shower, and perhaps rain tomorrow to wash it all away.
We have been watching American Primeval and Breakthrough, which we finished. Both on Netflix. I have been following the news but each day is worse than the one before. Destruction every day of programs we need. Trump sees no reason to spend money on helping anyone but himself and other white very rich men. We’re all losers in his opinion and deserve nothing. If we had any brains, we would be born into wealth instead of being born poor like me or middle class like a lot of people.
The real reason for his appointments of cabinet heads is not to run the government, but to destroy it. I follow the news with increasing dread and disgust every day, every hour. I know how the ordinary citizens of Rome must have felt when Caligula went mad.
The number of poems is almost overwhelming, yet I enjoy reading them. It’s a cross section of what many poets are writing now. I have enjoyed reading poems since I was able to read.
Chaim and Theresa are coming for supper tonight. They are spitting the cooking with us, bringing an appetizer and dessert and I’ll make the rest of the meal. They’ et mostly fish, so I will make a shrimp pasta dish and Woody his “famous” Caesar salad. (Why, I don’t know but that’s what he likes to call it.)
Yesterday the people we bought new blinds and bedroom drapes from came to install everything. The drapes we replaced were in very bad shape. They were no longer are easy to open and shut, sometimes impossible; one set were torn and another had sizable holes. This all started because the long shade across the big bay windows in the living room broke and Woody’s efforts to fix were futile (read: totally crooked). We got up extra early to clear the way for them. Removing stuff form my vanity took forever and putting it back took forever and a half. Now all the furniture is back in place and all the things we piled on surfaces returned to where we use them. But because we had to move everything we also saw fit to wipe, wash, and vacuum behind couches and dressers that REALLY needed it. Naturally Willow disappeared through all of it while the Bushy Tailed Gang (Shaman and Schwartzie) was entertained.