Ripe thoughts

Regrets Only

2006-06-21T19:59:00.000-07:00

Regrets Only is ready to be officially released on September 1st and it looks great! The cover photo was taken in 2005 by Natalie Gruppuso when work was beginning to transform the Masonic temple, begun over 75 years ago and never completed, into a grand hotel. The view in the photo, reminiscent of the Colosseum in Rome, is gone for all time as the building has been slowly taking shape inside. The graffitti in the photo scrawled over many years by RISD students and other minor vandals is covered over now. The building seemed a fitting image for a book of poetry on the theme of regret.

Eat this

2006-05-18T04:22:00.000-07:00

"This world is divided roughly into three kinds of nations: those that spend lots of money to keep their weight down; those whose people eat to live;and those whose people don't know where their next meal is coming from." -David S. Landes, author, professor of economics and history (1924- )

It's May again- so soon?

2006-05-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

Long time no blog. I have been focusing on getting the poetry anthology, Regrets Only, to the printer. I am hoping for a September 1st release. It's a collection of 63 poets from the U.S. Europe and Australia. This will be Little Pear Press's second publication. There are two more books waiting in the wings. Please go to www.littlepearpress.com to learn more. Oh, and if you use the website as your portal to Amazon, you will earn some money for LPP and we can keep on publishing. Thanks for your support.

Get POed at the PO

2005-04-26T21:39:00.000-07:00

My post office box is at the Seekonk post office so that's where I go when I have a package to mail. They never have enough people working and the ones who are go incredibly s-l-o-w-l-y. But here's my question: the people who wait in line for twenty minutes to buy one stamp, do they think they will never have to mail another letter or do they really only have 37 cents to their names?

Some thoughts On Coming Back from a Two Day Visit to New York

2005-04-22T08:59:00.000-07:00

- New Yorkers prefer Poland Spring Water from Maine.
- Central Park looks better than it has in my lifetime. The grass is so green, it almost hurts your eyes.
- Do not miss the Arbus show at the Met.
- New Yorkers are not, unlike suburbanites, obese.
- You rarely see a mutt in NY; the dogs are all pedigreed. And a lot of them are miniatures.
- Thanks to the guy in the long beard for allowing me to peek at Pale Male through a telescope.
- I'm two for two this year for celebrity sightings.

Maybe it really is Spring

2005-03-30T21:45:00.000-08:00

Tonight, when I was outside in the parking lot of Seekonk Town Hall, I heard the peepers. I'd never heard them before moving to Seekonk (a swampy, almost-country-like place). They are small frogs (? I've never actually seen one) and they sing together on spring nights. They sound a little bit like guinea pigs squeaking or maybe crickets chirping.
There are also bulbs pushing their green sprouts up through the matted dead leaves I didn't get to rake last Fall. As a matter of fact, I already feel I've fallen behind in my spring outdoor cleanup. Whatever. It was nice to be outside without a jacket on.
Oh, yeah, the ladybugs are out, too. Out in the house, I mean, not out like outdoors. They seem to breed in the window frames of our very old house and suddenly appear on the window when it's warm. I catch them and put them outside.
So maybe it really is Spring!

Charlotte in the Bathroom 5 AM

2005-03-21T08:39:00.000-08:00

This morning I woke up at about 5 AM to discover I had gone to bed with my contact lenses on. I've never done this before. I don't wear the kind you can sleep in. This morning I can still see so I don't think there is any permanent damage. But when I was trying to get them out this morning the left lens popped out and dropped onto the floor. So there I was, still sleepy, and crawling around of the bathroom floor trying not to kneel on the lost lens. The ironic thing about my wearing contacts is that my best eyesight is without them in and at a distance of 6 inches. So this morning, though it seemed I wasn't going to find the damn lens, I discovered a tiny spider sitting on the side of the sink just past the high water mark. I've always liked spiders (the Charlotte's Web effect?) so I left him where he was. It reminded me that I had heard or read somewhere that we are never more than a few inches from a spider wherever we are in the world. I might not have seen this one on most days but I saw him (her?) clearly this morning. Sometimes it's good to change your depth of focus.
Thanks to the use of a small flashlight, I was able, after many minutes on my knees on cold tile, to find the lens, just underneath the inside edge of the sink cabinet, almost out of reach. It's soaking now and I'll leave it there for now. I'll try the depth of focus of my glasses for a while.

2005-03-16T07:56:00.000-08:00

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