September 7: "Statues in the Park," Long Day, Creatives

It is the end of a long day.

I just got back to my hotel room after performing in a show in Calumet.  I've been doing The Red Jacket Jamboree for almost eight years now.  Most of the people connected with the RJJ are like family to me.  I love being around musicians and performers and writers and creatives.  It's my jam.  Truly.

I'm still feeling punky.  My voice is shot at the moment.  Just had a sneezing fit and empties my head of mucous.  (I know, I know.  You don't read this blog to hear about my bodily fluids.)  My energy reserves are running on empty at the moment.  I need some rest.

I got a text this morning from my oldest sister this morning.  She traveled to Detroit yesterday to help care for my aunt who is in hospice care.  From what my sister said, it doesn't sound like my aunt has any fight left in her.

Billy Collins contemplates mortality . . . 

Statues in the Park

by: Billy Collins

I thought of you today
when I stopped before an equestrian statue
in the middle of a public square,

you who had once instructed me
in the code of these noble poses.

A horse rearing up with two legs raised,
you told me, meant the rider had died in battle.

If only one leg was lifted,
the man had elsewhere succumbed to his wounds;

and if four legs were touching the ground,
as they were in this case-
bronze hooves affixed to a stone base-
it meant that the man on the horse,

this one staring intently
over the closed movie theater across the street,
had died of a cause other than war.

In the shadow of the statue,
I wondered about the others
who had simply walked through life
without a horse, a saddle, or a sword-

pedestrians who could no longer
place one foot in front of the other.

I pictured statues of the sickly
recumbent on their cold stone beds,
the suicides toeing the marble edge,

statues of accident victims covering their eyes,
the murdered covering their wounds,
the drowned silently treading the air.

And there was I,
up on a rosy-gray block of granite
near a cluster of shade trees in the local park,
my name and dates pressed into a plaque,

down on my knees, eyes lifted,
praying to the passing clouds,
forever begging for just one more day.

It's an interesting idea, isn't it?  Everyone getting a statue that somehow symbolically represents their demise.  Right now, I'm exhausted.  If I die tonight, my statue would be me standing in front of a mic, script in hand, gazing upward as I recite a poem straight into the eardrum of God.

I have a really good life, filled with a beautiful wife, amazing kids, jobs that fuel my creative spirit, and some pretty cool friends.  I was reminded of that this weekend, over and over.  My cool RJJ friends are currently having some drinks at a local bar.

Saint Marty is saying two prayers of thanks tonight:

1. For the wonderful life of his aunt, who loved her family fiercely.
2. For the acceptance and love of his friends, who let him play in all the reindeer games.

February 14: Their Star, Valentine's Day, Unconditional and Selfless Love

Merton and his father following a star . . .

He would have felt far less hesitant if he had only had some Catholic friends of his own intellectual level--someone who would be able to talk to him intelligently about the faith.  But as far as I know, he had none.  He had a tremendous respect for the good Catholic people we met, but they were too inarticulate about the Church to be able to tell him anything about it that he could understand--and, also, they were generally too shy.

Then, too, after the first day, it became clear that Montauban was no place for us.  There was really nothing there worth painting.  It was a good enough town, but it was dull.  The only thing that interested Father was the Musee Ingres, filled with meticulous drawings by that painter, who had been born in Montauban:  and that collection of cold and careful sketches was not enough to keep anyone at a high pitch of inspiration for much more than fifteen minutes.  More characteristic of the town was a nightmarish bronze monument by Bourdelle outside the museum, which seemed to represent a group of cliff-dwellers battling in a mass of molten chocolate.

However, when we happened to inquire at the Syndicat d'Initiative about places to live, we saw photographs of some little towns which, as we were told, were in a valley of a river called the Aveyron not very far away to the northeast of the city.

The afternoon we took the peculiar, antiquated train out of Montauban into the country, we felt something like the three Magi after leaving Herod and Jerusalem when they caught sight once again of their star.

We all go through life looking for a star to follow, searching for the purpose of our lives.  The Magi following the star is one of the greatest metaphors of this--risking everything to find the center of the universe in the form of a little child.  Purpose and meaning come in many shapes and sizes and forms.

Happy Valentine's Day.  You know, I've been really lucky.  Close to 30 years ago, I met the love of my life.  We've been together, more or less, ever since.  It hasn't been a smooth road.  Rather, it was more like the Magi's journey through mountain and desert and arid plane.  Yet, on this day dedicated to love in the year 2020, we are still together.

And our love for each other has brought into my life two other loves--my daughter and son.  Learning to be a father has simply been an education in learning to love unconditionally and selflessly.  I would do anything for my kids, and I think they know it.  They are my guiding stars, helping me get through the deserts of my life.

Some people never find their guiding stars.  I have three, and they continue to shed light in my darkness.  I know I'm sounding sentimental here.  I don't really care.  A little sentimentality on Saint Valentine's Day is acceptable.  I embrace it.

Tonight, I'll be performing in the Valentine's Day show of the Red Jacket Jamboree at the Rozsa Center on the campus of Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan.  Two of my guiding stars will be there--my wife and son.  I know that when I step out on stage at the beginning of the evening, I will see there smiling faces looking up at me.

And Saint Marty will be bathed in their light.

December 21: Alpha Proxima, Winter Solstice, Poetry and Decking the Halls

A little passage from Hitchhiker's about light . . .

Even light, which travels so fast that it takes most races thousands of years to realize that it travels at all, takes time to journey between the stars.  It takes eight minutes to journey from the star Sol to the place where the Earth used to be, and four years more to arrive at Sol's nearest stellar neighbor, Alpha Proxima.

For light to reach the other side of the Galaxy, for it to reach Damogran, for instance, takes rather longer:  five hundred thousand years . . .

Greeting, loyal disciples, on this long, dark, winter solstice night.

You know, I don't have a problem with darkness.  As a writer and poet, I tend to embrace darkness in my work.  If you are one of my two constant readers, you have probably already figured this little fact out about me.  Scrooge liked darkness because it was cheap.  I like darkness because it's only through darkness that we find light.

Last night's performances of The Red Jacket Jamboree went quite well.  I got to hang out with my friends onstage and backstage, singing and laughing and doing the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland thing--putting on a show.  After the show, I met up with an old (figuratively--as in I've known her for a while) friend.  It was so good to see her and visit for a few, all-too-brief moments.  That's my first moment of light in darkness.

This afternoon, I gave a poetry reading at my home-town library.  I read poems and an essay, and my friend, Linda, provided songs and music.  We had a small audience--three friends who read about the reading and decided to show up.  It was intimately wonderful.  We all celebrated this season of light.  That was my second moment of light in darkness.

Then, I played the pipe organ for the 4:30 Mass at my home church.  Lots of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" and "People Look East."  We were celebrating the Fourth Sunday of Advent, and the Gospel readings focused on the birth narrative of Christ.  It filled my heart with anticipation for the coming of Christmas.  Third moment of light in darkness.

In the evening, after the sun disappeared around 5:06 p.m., I set myself to finish decorating my mother's house for Christmas.  I put the tree up last weekend.  Tonight, I strung a whole lot of colored lights through the living room and down the hallway to the bedroom I had as a child.  (My mother and sister now share the room.)  By the time I was done, all the halls were decked with light.  Fourth moment of light in darkness.

Now, this evening, even though I am in the heart of night, my Christmas tree is glowing next to my leg lamp.  (It was a major award!)  My daughter is up in her room, watching a movie with her boyfriend.  My son just went to bed and told me he's probably going to be crabby in the morning because he's tired.  Some people see family as something to escape.  Something that takes away your identity and freedom.  I see family as a source of light in my life.  I don't know what I'd be without my family.  This is my final moment of light in darkness on this winter solstice.

It may take light five minutes to reach us.  Or five years.  Or five hundred thousand years.  But light always finds us.

Saint Marty is filled with light tonight.

October 2: Where do I Go?, Dizzy with Anticipation, Dreams and Hope

Now that I have reached the end of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the question remains:  Where do I go from here?

In the past, before I started retyping entire published novels into my blog over the course of a year, I hand-picked passages that went along with the themes of my daily posts.  I could do that.  I feel like I pretty much know Hitchhiker's backward and forward, having lived with it for the past ten months.

Or I could start quoting from the second book in the series, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.  That, however, is an endeavor which would take longer than the three months I have left to devote to Douglas Adams.  I really don't want to spend the next five years of my life in the Hitchhiker's universe.

My third option is to abandon the novel for these last months and go rogue--choosing my subjects willy nilly.  As appealing as that prospect sounds, I work better with some kind of framework--a guide, if you will.

Having thought about it for most of the day, I have decided to go with the first option--apple picking passages for my blog posts for the remainder of 2019.  It is the choice with which I feel most comfortable.  I've done it before.  Here is today's selection, spoken by a whale plummeting to its death on the surface of the planet Magrathea:

Never mind, hey, this is really exciting, so much to find out about, so much to look forward to, I'm quite dizzy with anticipation . . . 

It is going to be a crazy couple of days for me, although I am a little dizzy with anticipation.  Tomorrow morning, early, I get in a car and drive to Calumet, Michigan, to be in the Red Jacket Jamboree at the Calumet Theatre.  It's something I really enjoy.  It combines everything I love to do--reading poetry, acting, doing improv, writing, and singing.  And I'm surrounded by talented, creative people.  It's truly a blessing for me.

I don't suppose a lot of people get the opportunity to be a part of something they love.  Neither do I.  I don't get to write full-time.  Don't get to do poetry readings full-time.  Or act full-time.  Or teach full-time.  I dream about it every day, and there's nothing wrong with dreaming.  Dreams are the only things that can get me out of bed some days.

I've always attached dreams to hopes.  Most people who've been reading this blog for some time know how important I think hope is.  It's what reminds me, on bad days, that something better is possible.

And tonight, I have hope in my heart.  I get to be around artists I love tomorrow.  And they're good friends who value me. as a writer and performer.  It's an amazing feeling.  For a few hours, I am who I want to be.

Cool father.  Loving husband.  Friend.  Poet.  Actor.  Artist.  Radio personality.

Now, if he can just get himself canonized, Saint Marty would have everything.

Some people who fill me with hope . . .

July 17: And Everything, Calumet, My Passion

More on the history of the stupendous super computer Deep Thought . . .

Fook was losing patience.  He pushed his notebook aside and muttered, "I think this is getting needlessly messianic."

"You know nothing of future time," pronounced Deep Thought, "and yet in my teeming circuitry I can navigate the infinite delta streams of future probability and see that there must one day come a computer whose merest operational parameters I am not worthy to calculate, but which it will be my fate eventually to design."

Fook sighed heavily and glanced across to Lunkwill.

"Can we get on and ask the question?" he said.

Lunkwill motioned him to wait.

"What computer is this of which you speak?" he asked.

"I will speak of it no further in this present time," said Deep Thought.  "Now.  Ask what else of me you will that I may function.  Speak."

They shrugged at each other.  Fook composed himself.

"O Deep Thought computer," he said, "the task we have designed you to perform is this.  We want you to tell us . . ." he paused, "the Answer!"

"The Answer?" said Deep Thought.  "The Answer to what?"

"Life!" urged Fook.

"The Universe!" said Lunkwill.

"Everything!" they said in chorus.

Deep Thought paused for a moment's reflection.

"Tricky," he said finally.

"But can you do it?"

Again, a significant pause.

"Yes," said Deep Thought, "I can do it."

"There is an answer?" said Fook with breathless excitement.

"A simple answer?" added Lunkwill.

"Yes," said Deep Thought.  "Life, the Universe, and Everything.  There is an answer.  But," he added, "I'll have to think about it."

For those of my disciples familiar with the Hitchhiker series, you will already know that one of the sequels to this novel is titled Life, the Universe and Everything.  Thus, this little scene with Deep Thought is sort of pivotal, touching upon one of Douglas Adams' most important themes:  the meaning of existence.

Greetings from the city of Calumet, Michigan, a place that makes me contemplate big life questions.  I am currently sitting in the dining room of the Oak Street Inn.  I'm here to perform in a show called The Red Jacket Jamboree at the Calumet Theatre tomorrow night.  It's a radio show that has comedy skits, poetry, music, singers, and (sometimes) conspiracy theories.  (You'll have to come to the show tomorrow evening to understand that last item.)

Yes, I have a lot of time to ponder the meaning of life when I'm in Calumet.  I am away from my family, and, therefore, have a great deal of empty time on my hands.  I usually do a lot of reading and writing when I'm here.  I haven't had a whole lot of time this week to reflect and brood, which is both good and bad.  Good for my mental health, which has not been the most positive recently.  Bad for my art, which has taken a back seat.

On Monday night, because my son is at Bible camp for this entire week, my wife and I went out for dinner at McDonald's.  (We also did this to escape the heat for a little while.  It has been in the high 80s for the last couple weeks.  Our house has become a soup bowl of humidity.)  Last night, my wife and I had a therapy appointment.  (She and I have marriage counseling appointments every month.  I recommend this practice to all married couples--whether you've been together six weeks or sixty years.)  After therapy, we went out for a quick bite of dinner.  The rest of the night was about packing for this trip.

And now I sit, after long, wide-ranging conversations with my Red Jacket cohorts about teachers and beer and poetry and music and storytelling.  I rarely get to be around artists for extended periods of time.  People who know and respect me solely as a poet and performer.  Usually, when I meet a new person, I identify myself as a poet first.  (This introduction usually leads to either stilted conversations about Robert Frost or a quick retreat from my company.)  Therefore, I highly value these two days of living as an artist.

You see, while I have great friends at my medical office job (actually, one of my best friends works there), I wouldn't say that I'm passionate about the work I do.  And I love being in a college classroom, trying to pry open young minds for new ideas and experiences.  I can get passionate about that.  However, it is not what really makes me happy.

If I could make my living as a full-time writer, I would jump out of bed every morning.  After brushing my teeth, I would sit down with my journal and pen--or at my laptop--and just lose myself in words.  I could write for eight hours a day, because it wouldn't seem like eight hours.  Even in the struggle of syntax or line break or narrative structure, I would find joy.  All the time.

For the next 48 hours, I am not registering patients.  Not talking about sentence fragments to college freshmen.  Instead, I am . . .

Saint Marty, the poet.  Saint Marty, the actor.  Saint Marty, the script writer.  Saint Marty, the happy.

March 10: Fetid Little Passage, Calumet Theatre, Being On Stage

Ford and Arthur are about to be tortured with some Vogon poetry . . .

The sweat stood out cold on Ford Prefect's brow, and slid round the electrodes strapped to his temples.  These were attached to a battery of electronic equipment--imaginary intensifiers, rhythmic modulators, alliterative residulators and simile dampers--all designed to heighten the experience of the poem and make sure that not a single nuance of the poet's thought was lost.

Arthur Dent sat and quivered.  He had no idea what he was in for, but he knew that he hadn't like anything that had happened so far and didn't think things were likely to change.

The Vogon began to read--a fetid little passage of his own devising.

"Oh freddled gruntbuggly . . ." he began.  Spasms wracked Ford's body--this was worse than even he'd been prepared for.

"? . . . thy micturations are to me - A plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee."

"Aaaaaaargggghhhhhh!" went Ford Prefect, wrenching his head back as lumps of pain thumped through it.  He could dimly see beside him Arthur lolling and rolling in his seat.  He clenched his teeth.

"Groop I implore thee." continued the merciless Vogon, "my foonting turlingdromes."

His voice was rising to a horrible pitch of impassioned stridency.  "And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles, / Or I will tend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, see if I don't!"

"Nnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyuuuuuurrrrrrgggggghhhh!" cried Ford Prefect and threw one final spasm as the electronic enhancement of the last line caught him full blast across the temples.  He went limp.

Arthur lolled.

"Now, Earthlings . . " whirred the Vogon (he didn't know that Ford Prefect was in fact from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and wouldn't have cared if he had), "I present you with a simple choice!  Either die in the vacuum of space, or . . ." he paused for melodramatic effect, "tell me how good you thought my poem was!"

I am back from performing at the Calumet Theatre.  The show ended last night around 9:30, and, by the time I got to my hotel room, I had just enough energy to order a pepperoni pizza, eat a few slices, and then fall asleep.  Any blogging I might have done last night would have sounded like Vogon poetry, so I decided to forgo any attempt at it.

I think the show went well.  I didn't notice anyone spasming in their seats or screaming "Nnnnnnnnnnyyyyyyuuuuuurrrrrrgggggghhhh!"  Therefore, I will take that as a sign that the we didn't suck.

All kidding aside, I am really lucky to work with some great artists at The Red Jacket Jamboree.  They have become like family to me, as I said in my last post.  As a poet, I don't get a whole lot of opportunities to be around people who truly appreciate what I do.  If someone asks me what I do for a living, and I reply that I'm a poet, that someone will suddenly find a mole on his/her arm that needs to be removed.  Poetry is like sorcery to most everyone I meet. 

The other thing that The Red Jacket Jamboree gives me is the opportunity to flex a few of my other skills--acting, singing, writing scripts, and comedy.  I used to do quite a lot of theater work.  I actually was the lead in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.  I played the Stage Manager in a production of Thorton Wilder's Our Town.  I've directed plays and musicals, as well.  Until I started working at the Calumet Theatre for this radio show, I didn't realize how much I missed being on stage.

So, Saint Marty gets the best of all worlds on these weekend jaunts to the Keweenaw.  And the audience pays good money to hear, among other things, a few poems.  Pretty cool.

March 8: Poetry Appreciation Chairs, The Red Jacket Jamboree, Summer Camp

More on Vogon poetry . . .

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz smiled very slowly.  This was done not so much for effect as because he was trying to remember the sequence of muscle movements.  He had had a terribly therapeutic yell at his prisoners and was now feeling quite relaxed and ready for a little callousness.

The prisoners sat in Poetry Appreciation chairs--strapped in.  Vogons suffered no illusions as to the regard their works were generally held in.  Their early attempts at compositions had been part of a bludgeoning insistence that they be accepted as a properly evolved and cultured race, but now the only thing that kept them going was sheer bloody-mindedness.

I am sitting in my kitchen, waiting for a friend to pick me up for a trip to Calumet.  This weekend, I will be performing in The Red Jacket Jamboree at the Calumet Theatre.  I have rehearsal tonight.  Rehearsal tomorrow afternoon.  Show tomorrow night.  Seven o'clock.  (I include all this information just in case some of you disciples out there would like to come to the performance, be strapped into Poetry Appreciation chairs, and listen to me read.  It won't be quite as bad as Postetnic Vogon Jeltz's poetry, I promise.)

I am looking forward to seeing the musicians and other performers in Calumet.  They have become like family to me.  A loud, sometimes completely inappropriate, family.  The kind of people I love being around and creating with.  Tonight, I'll be bunking with a group of the Red Jack people because my family won't be driving up to Calumet until tomorrow afternoon to see the show.

When I venture out of the confines of my family like this, I often feel like a little kid going off to summer camp.  Sort of unsure.  Somewhat self-conscious.  Wanting everyone to like me.  I remember those childhood emotions.  They weren't pleasant.  I always carry that insecure little boy around with me wherever I go.

But I really have nothing to worry about.  These people know me, respect me, and like me.  I am sure of that.  I won't be the last person chosen for a team to play kickball, if you get my meaning.  These are theater people.  They sort of welcome the weird and rejected.  Most of them were weird and rejected at some point in their lives.  I fit right in.

The sun in shining, and the snow is melting this afternoon.  The drive up to Calumet will be easy and fun.  The evening rehearsal will be a family reunion, maybe with a little alcohol involved afterward.  Tomorrow's rehearsal will be a little intense.  When family gets together, you have to expect that.  And tomorrow's show will be a party.

Saint Marty is ready to get his Red Jacket on.

June 21: Barbecued Porpoises, Summer Solstice, Poetry Blessings

That mortal man should feed upon the creature that feeds his lamp, and, like Stubb, eat him by his own light, as you may say; this seems so outlandish a thing that one must needs go a little into the history and philosophy of it.

It is upon record, that three centuries ago the tongue of the Right Whale was esteemed a great delicacy in France, and commanded large prices there. Also, that in Henry VIIIth's time, a certain cook of the court obtained a handsome reward for inventing an admirable sauce to be eaten with barbacued porpoises, which, you remember, are a species of whale. Porpoises, indeed, are to this day considered fine eating. The meat is made into balls about the size of billiard balls, and being well seasoned and spiced might be taken for turtle-balls or veal balls. The old monks of Dunfermline were very fond of them. They had a great porpoise grant from the crown.

The fact is, that among his hunters at least, the whale would by all hands be considered a noble dish, were there not so much of him; but when you come to sit down before a meat-pie nearly one hundred feet long, it takes away your appetite. Only the most unprejudiced of men like Stubb, nowadays partake of cooked whales; but the Esquimaux are not so fastidious. We all know how they live upon whales, and have rare old vintages of prime old train oil. Zogranda, one of their most famous doctors, recommends strips of blubber for infants, as being exceedingly juicy and nourishing. And this reminds me that certain Englishmen, who long ago were accidentally left in Greenland by a whaling vessel- that these men actually lived for several months on the mouldy scraps of whales which had been left ashore after trying out the blubber. Among the Dutch whalemen these scraps are called "fritters"; which, indeed, they greatly resemble, being brown and crisp, and smelling something like old Amsterdam housewives' dough-nuts or oly-cooks, when fresh. They have such an eatable look that the most self-denying stranger can hardly keep his hands off.

But what further depreciates the whale as a civilized dish, is his exceeding richness. He is the great prize ox of the sea, too fat to be delicately good. Look at his hump, which would be as fine eating as the buffalo's (which is esteemed a rare dish), were it not such a solid pyramid of fat. But the spermaceti itself, how bland and creamy that is; like the transparent, half jellied, white meat of a cocoanut in the third month of its growth, yet far too rich to supply a substitute for butter. Nevertheless, many whalemen have a method of absorbing it into some other substance, and then partaking of it. In the long try watches of the night it is a common thing for the seamen to dip their ship-biscuit into the huge oil-pots and let them fry there awhile. Many a good supper have I thus made.

In the case of a small Sperm Whale the brains are accounted a fine dish. The casket of the skull is broken into with an axe, and the two plump, whitish lobes being withdrawn (precisely resembling two large puddings), they are then mixed with flour, and cooked into a most delectable mess, in flavor somewhat resembling calves' head, which is quite a dish among some epicures; and every one knows that some young bucks among the epicures, by continually dining upon calves' brains, by and by get to have a little brains of their own, so as to be able to tell a calf's head from their own heads; which, indeed, requires uncommon discrimination. And that is the reason why a young buck with an intelligent looking calf's head before him, is somehow one of the saddest sights you can see. The head looks a sort of reproachfully at him, with an "Et tu Brute!" expression.

It is not, perhaps, entirely because the whale is so excessively unctuous that landsmen seem to regard the eating of him with abhorrence; that appears to result, in some way, from the consideration before mentioned: i.e. that a man should eat a newly murdered thing of the sea, and eat it too by its own light. But no doubt the first man that ever murdered an ox was regarded as a murderer; perhaps he was hung; and if he had been put on his trial by oxen, he certainly would have been; and he certainly deserved it if any murderer does. Go to the meat-market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras.

But Stubb, he eats the whale by its own light, does he? and that is adding insult to injury, is it? Look at your knife-handle, there, my civilized and enlightened gourmand, dining off that roast beef, what is that handle made of?- what but the bones of the brother of the very ox you are eating? And what do you pick your teeth with, after devouring that fat goose? With a feather of the same fowl. And with what quill did the Secretary of the Society for the Suppression of Cruelty of Ganders formally indite his circulars? It is only within the last month or two that the society passed a resolution to patronize nothing but steel pens.

This is not a chapter for the vegan reader.  It isn't for the animal lover, either.  The details of different animals being killed and consumed are not pleasant, especially when Melville discusses creatures that are endangered and protected.  I know that I probably wouldn't order a plate of deep-fried sperm whale brain at Red Lobster, and I wouldn't be tempted by porpoise balls at a Super Bowl party.

I am in the Copper Country right now.  Have been since last night.  I'll be performing at the Calumet Theatre this evening at 7 p.m. as part of the Red Jacket Jamboree radio show.  It has been one of the highlights of this past year being a part of this group of artists.  Love the music.  Love reading my poems and essays in front of a live audience.  It has stretched me as a performer and writer.

I know I make a big deal out of not being comfortable with change.  That I prefer routine.  That's the writer part of me, I think.  I can't plan my day or week or month of writing if I don't know when I'm going to be able to sit down with pen and journal.  However, since being named Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula, I have been pushed outside my normal comfort zones, and I've really enjoyed the experiences.  Enjoyed the people I've met, the things I've done.

That doesn't mean that I'm ready to sit down to a sperm whale meal after a poetry reading.  Don't think I'd go that far.  However, I have grown in the least year-and-a-half, as a person and poet.  I've been able to raise money for causes that I hold dear, like the local homeless shelter and warming center.  I've been invited to be a part of things (like the RJJ) that have enriched my life a great deal.

Being in the Copper Country at this time has reinforced to me how really lucky of a guy I am.  This past week, the Keweenaw Peninsula was devastated by floods.  Roads collapsed.  Houses were destroyed.  Entire towns isolated by washed-out thoroughfares.  It's incredibly sad.  On my way to Calumet yesterday, I saw firsthand some of the damage.  It humbled me.  A lot.

Poetry has provided me with a lot of blessings over the last year.  I think that I take these blessings for granted sometimes.  I need to stop doing that.  I'm sitting in a hotel room right now.  In a few hours, I'll be at a theater with a group of really talented performers, and they'll be treating me like I belong with them.  That's amazing.

Blessings come in many forms.  I guess they considered sperm whale pudding a blessing back in the day.  In the face of great challenges, people rise up and fight back.  That's a blessing, too.

On this summer solstice day, Saint Marty is thankful today for all of the blessings poetry has brought into his life.