Category Archives: Arts

Oscars Sunday

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Mannequins

It’s Oscars Sunday, which doesn’t usually mean a whole lot to me. I’m not a person who goes out to watch every nominated movie (though I wonder if you folks who are have noticed that the Academy nominates a crap-ton more movies than it used to, and do you really not think that’s just to get your butt in the seat more often?). I do love the gala spectacle and the fashion, though, so I sit at the TV looking for best and worst dresses and suits.

This year, my husband and I did catch the program of Oscar-nominated animated shorts in our local movie theater, though. I have to say it was pretty disappointing.

The husband has written all about it in his column on Escape into Life, but here’s what I have to say. There were about eight or nine shorts in the program, and we were halfway through before I finally saw one that I could be happy to see win the Oscar. Then I realized it was a Pixar entry, and my happiness waned because, honestly, it’s just another sunny Sunday from Pixar (not that I couldn’t use a little more sun). Fabulous animation, adorable characters, quirky, funny—which for Pixar is just a commercially successful formula. I wish someone else had done it.

But yes, it could win an Oscar because it’s that good.

Then we sat through a couple more “meh” items and one utterly horrendous thing that required a narrator to tell you what was going on. That was followed by a beauty from Ireland, and then we were watching a French entrant, Hors piste, (the third French one on the program, if I recall correctly)—and suddenly half the theatre was laughing aloud, including us.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

I kid you not: this was the only piece on the program that drew a response from anyone in the theatre, and half the crowd was guffawing. And then we got home and discovered, as the husband began to write his column, that … wait for it … this short is not even on the list of Oscar nominees. WTAF?

So we will watch the envelope get opened tonight while we are rooting for a film that isn’t even nominated.

I just hope whoever’s reading the winner’s name will be wearing either a fabulous or utterly horrid outfit.

Grim or hopeful – it’s day by day

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Depending who’s doing the counting, we had either one or two days of sunlight – any sunlight – in the month of January. It was pretty grim, and many of us got cranky as the month went on. The state of our nation and its politics can’t have helped. Many of us either sat glued to our news sources, unable to tear our attention away from an impeachment spectacle, or tried to ignore the whole thing. In the end, I doubt anyone’s opinion had changed on either side, and I for one was exhausted.

On Feb. 1, late in the day, the sun peaked out for about five minutes. My husband and I were walking our dogs, and I pulled out my camera. That’s the photo you see here, unretouched. Nature is glorious.

I wrote a poem in the midst of it, struggling against pessimism, flirting with hope. The act of writing is itself optimistic, I believe, and hope may triumph if I send it off to a journal in search of a home. We’ll see.

Published!

restaurant window looking out

Meanwhile, I’ve had a couple of other pieces published that I failed to note here. Way back in November, my poem Buoyant found a home in goodbaad poetry journal. It was just republished at Escape into Life this week, accompanied by an original illustration by my talented husband. I’m thrilled that it has some legs—especially given that legs feature prominently in it.

I’ve also had another poem accepted at Tiny Seed Literary Journal, where it’s due to be published in March. Stay tuned!

Also over at Escape, you can find my recent review of True Confessions 1965 to Now, a lovely collection of poetry by John Guzlowski. His poems are simultaneously plain-spoken and profound, painting the world in both its beauty and horror. A couple of the poems in the book were first published on Escape, so if you read the review you’ll find links to those pieces so you can sample the book before deciding to buy it. Also, here are two recent poems from his Twitter feed that I quite like:

Can’t access WordPress? I just wait.

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It’s the lazy person’s solution and today a gift from the gods.

I lost administrative access to this site a couple of months ago. I did some quick searching to find the solution and got as far as figuring out that it meant I had to figure out how to access the back end – through the server, specifically through something called PhpMyadmin. If that means nothing to you, you don’t need to know more. I think I’ve seen PhpMyadmin at some point in my time writing this blog, but I really have no idea how to get in there. Being a busy girl with demands on my time, I had to take an unwanted hiatus from posting because I didn’t have time to figure out the fix.

Today I mustered the energy … and discovered the problem had solved itself. So here I am again, courtesy of the gods and goddesses of blogging and creativity and coding.

Actually, the gods and goddesses of creativity have shined on me this week. I’m taking a much-needed week off work, escaping the huge project that has been eating up 50+ hours per week for several months. I shut my work computer down Friday night, and aside from a couple of hours of final tidying yesterday I’ve no plans to fire it back up again unless I’m summoned back for an emergency. Continue reading →

So this happened…

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Not long ago, on Father’s Day, I sat down and wrote a sonnet. A sonnet—my first. I didn’t share it with anyone (though I did mention it here), and I don’t recall if it was any good. And now I might never know, because it turns out that I’ve lost it. Yep, lost it—don’t remember which notebook I scribbled it in, cannot find it in my notes app or my blog drafts, it has just disappeared in the chaos of my daily life.

Meanwhile, I’ve become a published poet. (See how I just tucked that in rather than screaming it aloud, which is what I feel like doing?) My poem Old Dog is included in Escape Into Life’s annual anthology of dog poems to herald the Dog Days of Summer, where I get to share a page with some amazingly talented poets. I’m thrilled, honored, and inspired not just by this success of mine but by the beautiful work of the other poets in the collection. Please read them all; they are sometimes funny, sometimes, sad, sometimes shocking, and all marvelous. It’s hard to believe that I belong in their company. Continue reading →