Okay, okay, okay, so now I have readers who want to know why I don't blog more. Well, it's like this. Been doing some renovations around the house which means chaos everywhere. I'm about to dismantle a room in the basement and have no idea, really, of where the stuff is going to go in the meantime. Been doing a little more babysitting than usual and the child was sick, Ted got it (nasty coughing cold thing) and now my throat feels...funny. And not in a "ha ha" way. So I'm eating Vitamin C like it's candy and hoping for the best, 'cause a week from today I'm supposed to be getting on a plane and flying to Victoria for a poetry weekend, and you know how I hate to miss those.
But I do want to invite any Kootenay readers who aren't already doing something else to come out to Aspen Switzer and Thistledowne's fundraiser for the 3rd-year Selkirk nursing students who are going to Guatemala in May this Saturday, Feb. 28, at 7:30 PM at the Nelson United Church. Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door, so get 'em now, either at Eddy Music in Nelson or via Aspen's website here.
Here's Aspen, taken by my cousin at a house concert in Vancouver earlier this month:
And here's the trio, same night. That's Jessa Koerber on the left, Aspen, and Jesse Lee:
Here are the Guatemala-bound nursing students at a recent fundraiser in Castlegar:
Here's Kyran, lipsincing to an Aspen song using a mic he made out of playdough!:
Finally, here's me, on a beautiful day last week, taking pictures of the mirrors Ted hung in the trees:
Oh, and a poem. This one is by the Irish poet, Seamus Heaney. I first heard it last June when my sister and I were in Dublin with Mom, and we went on a Literary Pub Crawl (poetry and booze and Ireland; what could be better?). The two tour guides were wonderfully funny and articulate and kept reaming off poetry and prose all night. Including this one, which I love for the way he builds the story, giving us just enough, and for the way he uses rhyme.
MIDTERM BREAK
I sat all morning in the college sick bay
Counting bells knelling classes to a close,
At two o'clock our neighbors drove me home.
In the porch I met my father crying--
He had always taken funerals in his stride--
And Big Jim Evans saying it was a hard blow.
The baby cooed and laughed and rocked the pram
When I came in, and I was embarrassed
By old men standing up to shake my hand
And tell me they were "sorry for my trouble,"
Whispers informed strangers I was the eldest,
Away at school, as my mother held my hand
In hers and coughed out angry tearless sighs.
At ten o'clock the ambulance arrived
With the corpse, stanched and bandaged by the nurses.
Next morning I went up into the room. Snowdrops
And candles soothed the bedside; I saw him
For the first time in six weeks. Paler now,
Wearing a poppy bruise on the left temple,
He lay in the four foot box as in a cot.
No gaudy scars, the bumper knocked him clear.
A four foot box, a foot for every year.
§
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