Interview with Segullah

I was interviewed by the cool chics at the new Segullah blog this week. You can read the interview at http://segullah.org/blog/?p=31. Let me know what you think.

Oh, and the latest issue of Dialogue has my poem, "Washing Mother" in it.

Long Live the 80's!

I'm supposed to be canning peaches, but I wanted to say thanks to my friend Dave W. for telling me about youtube.com. He said they have millions of 1980's music videos there--just type in the song and there you go!

So, here's a list of the songs I looked up (in roughly the order I played them):

Under the Milky Way Tonight by the Church
The Whole of the Moon by the Waterboys
Change by the Sparks (HILARIOUS VIDEO!!!!!)
Where the Streets Have No Name by U2
The Working Hour by Tears for Fears
One Simple Thing by the Stabilizers

Here's what Roger looked up:

I Promise You
some Duran Duran
some other stuff that I can't remember

So, here's the question: what would you look up first?

Nurturing Weekend

I hesitate to use the word "nurturing" to describe a funeral, but the memorial service I attended for Laraine Wilkins was just that for me. My soul grew because of it. Some of it was because of thoughts I had about her:

What an amazing person she must have been.
I've only touched the tip of the iceberg in my acquaintance with her, but then do we ever really know anyone? Did anyone there really know more than a little facet of her? We would have to combine all of our impressions and experiences of her together in order to understand her.
How many lives she has touched! How very many people in the local arts community are here because she affected them.

Then there were the thoughts about me:

Who would come to my funeral?
What would happen to all of my half-finished writings if I died?
What would people think of the stuff I leave behind?
What things will I wish I had done sooner if I have to die young?

I'm trying not to feel guilty about all the thoughts about me that the funeral inspired. (Everything's always about me, isn't it?) Because that's what a thinking person does--takes what she sees, reads, hears, participates in, and asks, "How is my life different, or how should it be different, because I've experienced this?"

But the soul-searching was nurturing to me, and I loved the chance to step out of daily existence and ponder these things.

Then that night I went down to hear Thom Duncan's new play read at Scott Bronson's house. Only, luckily, it got rained out. I say luckily because now I got two for the price of one: Thom loaned me a copy of the script, so I can experience the play, AND I got an evening of great conversation with Thom, Scott, Scott's wife Lynn, and Elwon The Actor. Which is absolutely as nurturing to me as any play.

So it was a nourishing day for me, intellectually and spiritually.

We fasted for Laraine's daughter, Layna. Please keep her in your prayers, too.