sea salt

I am at home now.  I am on a plush couch listening to planes leave Logan airport, with two cats wandering around, occasionally brushing against my ankles.  My apartment is quiet, except for the small playlist I have been listening to on repeat.  The songs on the playlist are stripped down - a piano and a male voice singing songs to God.  I am at peace now. The peace of the lake began at the shoreline, where a children's paddleboat waited patiently for use (my sister and I paddled out on it early in the day, making a loop around one of the many small islands in Belleau Lake).  The peace stretched out along the dock, into the pontoon boat where we lounged in the sun, bundled in coats but still drinking cold water and beer, nestled into the cushions of the bench seats while the brothers fished off the sides of the boat.  Classic rock radio was on, but not too loudly, since not even Led Zeppelin would try to outdo the lake.  The peace slipped in...

I spent the weekend at a lake house on Belleau Lake in Wakefield, New Hampshire.  Saturday was beautiful, and the fish were biting.  My brother-in-law caught 3 largemouth bass; his brother caught a pickerel.  We drank Long Trail, we wore coats (temperature on Saturday was high 40s), we pointed out trees that had begun to change color for the fall.*  Saturday night we sat by the fireplace and watched National Lampoon's Vacation while playing a game called "Things."  The point of the game is to answer the prompt on each card and then go around the room and try to guess who said what.  One card's prompt read: "Things you would line up to see..."  One person wrote, "A Golden Girls reunion show;" another wrote, "Criminals;" another, "Oprah."  As we went around the room to guess how each of us had answered, we recited the responses to help remember what was left.  When were down to the final three, the mantra be...

I have a Plato quotation in my email signature: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle." It's true, you know.  Everyone is at war of some kind, fighting battles on all fronts: battles against themselves and their own insecurities; battles against family members and ever-present memories of abuse or abandonment; battles against people they love and feelings of rejection, desire, and inadequacy.  Then of course there are the battles against bosses and coworkers, against the liberal or conservative media agenda, against the president, against the former president, against racism, socialism, indifference, health care, aging, censorship... I bring this up because a woman yelled at me on the phone on Tuesday.  She is frustrated that her custom textbook is taking so long to create (it is ~1500 pages of text for which we have no existing files, so every word must be retyped).  Her book is a collection of readings about public policy in higher educ...

I date this awesome guy and he has this awesome brother who makes awesome tshirts.  Check 'em out here, and after you check 'em out, buy 'em. http://absinthetic.etsy.com/

I am easing myself into online exposure with Sea Salt, and hope to add something meaningful to the seemingly endless collection of online musings.  Feel free to let me know how you think this quest is going... This is as perfect a time as I can imagine for creating a blog.  Since the beginning of the summer, I have: moved away from the buses, students, and unreliable red line of Somerville for a quieter existence by the sea; begun teaching a class of college freshmen who call me "Miss" and depend on me to teach them how to write; achieved one of the biggest goals of my life - publication. These changes have necessitated an unprecedented amount of time to myself.  I've had ample time to reflect while unpacking boxes, hanging pictures, preparing lessons, grading papers, and typing/formatting/printing/addressing/stamping/mailing submissions to any contest, literary magazine, and journal that will read my work. And lately, reflection is easy....