June Workshop Week
This is one of those rare weeks when I write no poems at all. Monday morning Woody brought me to the building where he has his office. Tracy Harman lent her gallery for the workshop. It’s a beautiful space with many of her paintings displayed, so we try to be careful there. It’s light and pleasant and the toilets are just a short way along the hall. I’ve lived in Wellfleet so long, I remember when the building was the Mooney Brothers feed and grain store, where we got seeds for the birds and sundry other useful items. Now it’s Mac’s headquarters and Woody has his office and recording apparatus upstairs.
This group of poets is accomplished and all but one of them have been published; most have at least one collection of poems in print. Some many khapbooks or books. I hold worlshop in the morning and do conferences in the afternoons. I go over the 15 poems they submitted one by one and at the end I give them the two or three pages of comments I wrote out on their work. Tuesday night Woody put together. Always much to do as the week went on. By the time I finish my last half hour conference, I’m too exhausted to accomplish anything as complicated as walking across the room.
After the woodchuck ate all our beautiful broccoli, Woody has been using PLANTSKYDD, the organic Swedish stuff that rodents don’t enjoy. It does smell but you can wash it off and there’s no residue to poison you or anybody else. It isn’t a poison, just foul smelling and apparently even worse tasting.
The mad catbird is still chasing his image from window and window all around the house, except for the north side. Whenever the sun shines, he’s at it. Cloudy days give us a reprieve. Don’t. please, give me advice. I’ve tried everything and he ignores stencils, everything and just keeping attacking his reflection. Sometimes he makes it difficult for the hummingbird to get to its feeder as he tried to own the pink dogwood outside the livingroom bay window.
Melenie arrived Thursday around 5 pm. We had a lamb supper together. Then we left @ 6:45 for the public reading at the Wellfleet library. /We had a full house and the audience was responsive and enthusiastic. They made me come back for the encore. Meleni sold my books and books or chapbooks for whoever brought their books with them. She is an incredible help.
Friday. Workshop in the morning and one conference in the afternoon. I straightened out the livingroom between when I had half an hour. Then Melenie and I started cooking. We made black bean salad, two different pasta salads. Woody arranged the sun porch, set up a platter with grav lax, allouette cheese, and crackers and then picked, washed and dressed a green salad from our gardens and tossed it with sesame dressing. Then Melenie and I set up a shrimp plate with a dip I made, set out a cheese board with four cheeses, and baked tuna stuffed mushrooms. Woody bought chicken wings; Melenie baked lots of madaliens, Dale made a wonderful apple cake and Tasha brought dragon noodles. This was a great eating group and they drank lots of wine. It was actually a great party. Everybody seemed to be having a good time.
Today, Saturday, both Woody and I are knocked out. I keep dozing off. I had a grandiose schedule planned for today that I’ll be lucky to get a third done. We have leftovers for lunch, leftovers for supper, probably leftovers tomorrow, too.