Sherry Chandler

• Joanie DiMartino’s chapbook, Licking the Spoon, will be released by Finishing Line Press on or around June 1.
• Wind Publications will be publishing a collection of Georgia Green Stamper’s newspaper columns later this year. Title & publication date tba.
• Ruth Bavetta has a piece in the Art Faculty show, Past & Present, at San Bernardino Valley College. The show is up January 29 - February 15. She’ll have a solo show in the same gallery “towards the end of March.”
• James Burgett will be one of the twenty-two exhibitors in the Positive/Negative Twenty-two Juried Art Exhibition at East Tennessee State University’s Slocumb Gallery.

The last couple of days I’ve been paging back through my journal, looking for a quote I thought I may have jotted down. I used to do that in my journal in the days before I had a blog into which I can channel that kind of thinking.

This particular journal begins in May 2002 and ends on October 2006. I did not find the quote I wanted but I was amazed, being reminded of all that has happened to me in the last 4½, nearly 5, years: two chapbooks published, a sister with a diagnosis of breast cancer — now nearly 5 years cancer free — a mother nearly dead of a heart attack now flourishing again, children struggling with the transition to a post-college life. The origins of many poems. Many losses for family and close friends. And behind it all the dark war drums of the Bush years. A sad five years, with death and the threat of death pervasive. I understand better, now, why I am tired.

The journal contains quotations, poems I wanted to remember, drafts of my own poems, free writes, doodles, photos and cartoons snipped from the newspaper, snippets of overheard conversations, and a few traditional journal entries. On this second anniversary of my blog debut, I thought I might share with you a few things that leapt out at me as I turned the pages:

Sunday, May 18, 2002 (first entry): Frost this morning; low about 34 ºF. W. Bush is in the White House. What more need I say?

Saturday, June 8, 2002: Madeleine L’Engle says you have to write every day even if all you do is sit and write I cannot write today over and over. Who am I to argue with Madeleine L’Engle? I cannot write today.

Tuesday, June 25, 2002: The moon again last night.

Wednesday, July 17, 2002: We ate the last of the turnips last night with kale.

July 24, 2002: If I stare at this carpet long enough, I may turn into a DaDaist.

Read the rest of this entry…