Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Waxing Moon
St. Patrick’s Day
Sunny and pleasant

As I’m catching up on email, I just noticed that my essay, “The Artist/Pop Culture Symbiosis” has been up for awhile on Smart Pop.

Stop by and drop a comment, so they ask me back! 😉

We’re finally able to reach friends and colleagues in Greenwich, who were hit terribly by the storm. Most still have no power and no water — and they can’t leave their homes because of downed trees, so they can’t even get to a hotel to wait it out. A few people were killed — no one we knew, but neighbors of our friends.

We tried to drive to Purchase, to go to the post office, but the roads were closed due to downed trees and broken power wires. It was a little scary driving through it, and we were turned back before we could get there.

We went down to the beach — lots of erosion, and tides about four feet higher than normal. It made us realize how lucky we were in our little brick tower here. It was sunny and gorgeous, though, so it was nice to be out.

Lots of busy work, paper work, admin work yesterday. But it pays off to make the time to do it as it comes in, especially when it comes to pulling/printing/filing clips, or else it becomes difficult to get out pitches & packets in a timely fashion.

I’m reading Louise Erdich’s SHADOW TAG. Fascinating book. It’s a slender volume, but by no means a quick read. And not at all what I expected, but, so far, in a good way.

I figured out why I’m struggling with the plays. It’s a really stupid reason, and I better get over myself.

Got some good work done on POWER OF WORDS, and am starting to get excited about it again. The tracking sheets are helping.

Good first morning’s writing session on a short story, even though I overslept and got a later start than I hoped. Today is more admin work, prepping for tomorrow’s talk at the Middle School, work on the play and the novella, a couple of queries/pitches out, polishing the newsletter, filling out the Census, and a talk with my Congresswoman on an issue we’ve worked on together for quite a few months now. It’s nice to have a solid enough relationship with my representative — the person whose job exists to represent me — where we can speak openly and honestly about issues, even when we disagree. We actually agree on a lot of things, but sometimes differ on how we’d get there. She’s really good at making things work both on a community and an individual level, which I think is rare in politics.

Will have to get to the library once it’s up and running again — hopefully by the end of the week. I need to do some scientific research, and don’t have the materials here. I’ve been picking up quite a few good scientific tomes for various projects, but, of course, this one needs something totally different. I don’t have to go into much detail about the process, thank goodness, but I need to know what’s involved, so my character’s choices make sense.

Devon