Happy Monday! I hope you had a good week. It’s still hot in the Carolinas, but apparently, summer is over! The shelves in Dollar Tree and Walmart are all gussied up in colorful notebooks and backpacks, boxes of crayons are stacked like building blocks, and Bluey, Moana, the Paw Patrol, and the characters from Mine Craft are running amok across lunch boxes, backpacks, and binders. I feel bad for students walking in to those in-your-face displays when July is only half over. I’m not sure I’d be excited to be thinking about going back to school already–by September for sure, and excited about all the new stuff–but mid-July? Nope. How about you?
Last night I Zoomed book club with my oldest Grand, a rising senior going into her final year of homeschooling. She’s excited about the school year starting. At this point she’s basically finished her credits to graduate, so she’s taking just an art class. She’s also taking 6-8 on-line college courses over the next academic year through Ohio University. I’m really proud of her.
And that’s why this post is titled, It’s Not All Politics. Really. With the tone and topics of some recent posts one might think I spend far too much time watching the news or scrolling my news feeds. One would be mistaken.
As a writer and an American citizen, I think it’s important to be aware and engaged in what’s going on; I know many of you feel the same way. But I definitely could not spend my days absorbing all the rancor and ridiculousness that is today’s political arena. I have a healthy heart and don’t want to mess that up. Besides, there’s too much more enjoyable stuff to do!
You probably guessed this pic from last week has to do with Nana and Papa Camp this week–starting today! We’ll only have 2-3 Grands every day this year but hope the other 3 locals may pop in for a day. This combo of Grands, 8 and 9-years-old, still has a varied range of interests and attention spans so a lot of movement. Thankfully all of them like science experiments, the messier and louder the better. And they like to cook … again, the messier the better.
Today’s messy craft will be tie-dying t-shirts. One can never have too many t-shirts with swirls and bulls-eyes in glow-in-the-dark colors. One of the science experiments will be sun photos–plenty of sun for those! Other messy crafts this week will be painting and working with clay. Non-messy activities will be board games, Legos–though those can get messy–possibly soccer and using the ‘lawn scissors’ (clippers) if it cools off a bit, and a trip to the movies. All in all, a wonderfully, messy, busy week ahead.
Since my blog is A Writers Window, I like to check in occasionally to prove I do write and do writerly things, not just observe and react. Even though some of my recent posts have had a political flavor, my other writing hasn’t.
I submitted two poems to an anthology this month. Editing Kakalak is still a work in progress but it is progressing. I was asked to write a blurb for a beautiful new collection of poetry that I’ll share here once it’s published. I’m reading a manuscript I’m enjoying and will review that here in September, along with an interview with the author in October. My poetry group has also been invited to create another ekphrastic poetry exhibit for Lancaster’s Annual Literary Festival next April and May so I’ll be wrangling poets from now until then.
Next week is my Poet Sisters’ retreat when we’ll finalize all the edits and tweaks on our collection of poetry. The poems have moved around until it feels like they each have the right home within the collection. We’re playing with the image we hope will be the cover. We’re getting the list of publishers together so submitting will be the next phase.
And an upcoming class reunion is in the mix too! Maybe that’s why all this back-to-school hoopla is more poignant than purposeful this year. Hubby and I will still shop for schools, but there’s more nostalgia this time. My class was relatively small, around 250, and most of us grew up through elementary, middle, and high school together. We’re a tight class. Even if we didn’t all hang in the same groups, we all knew one another. It will be great spending time with them.
So, while politics touches everything, not everything I do is political. Like many of you, my interest in what’s going on today is because of the generations that will follow.
You know how my week is going to go and that it will be a great one. I hope your week is filled with busy, messy fun that brings joy to your heart, too. (And enjoy what’s left of summer) See you on Monday!
A Writer's Window 