New Year

Resolved?

--Weed out my junk, inner and outer.

--Write more.

--See more of my friends.

--Skate some. Walk some.

--Keep this &%#$# blog!

Oh--and stop stockpiling for the "next catastrophe". I had our cleaning goddess, Orianna, cull out three garbage bags full of expired canned goods from our basement. Shame. What's left? Pasta, pasta, pasta. Also, I have eight cans of tuna, four cans of crab meat, seven tins of sardines, and four cans of corned beef hash to consume by April.

No problem. One can of said hash is this very moment developing a lovely crust in our big frying pan.

Speaking of catastrophe, one of the cats left me a turd outside the bedroom door this morning. This means the offending kitty carried the item up the basement stairs from the cat box. In its mouth. That's motivation. They've been upset since we ran out of Greenies two weeks ago. Things are starting to escalate. Must get to Pet Quarters.

It seems I'm back in the writing biz! Had two poems accepted for the upcoming issue of The Cafe Review and just heard from John Berbrich that he's taking two of mine for an upcoming issue of Barbaric Yawp. These publications and their editors have championed my work since early days and I'm so pleased to be breaking my rather long silence by a reappearance in their pages. I've also accepted an invitation to participate in a panel discussion at the 2001 Terry Plunkett Poetry Festival at UMA.

The publishers of Barbaric Yawp, John and Nancy Berbrich, have become dear friends over the years, and in two weeks I'll be visiting them in their incredible book-crammed house in Russell, NY. Harold and I had a fantastic time with them when we visited a few years ago and I've decided to stop postponing the delight of a return visit and GO! Check out their website; they publish great chaps, too-- two of mine, I'm fortunate to say.

I'm getting revved up for my "Mass Media and Popular Culture" class. It's a hybrid this year, which gives me a lot more flexibility for using multimedia. Thanks to Harold, who turned me on to the series, I've been previewing episodes of the CBC's great radio show "The Age of Persuasion" with Terry O'Reilly. O'Reilly really makes the ad world come alive. Starting this month, the series will be officially available in podcast. UNofficially, archived shows are available thanks to some enterprising blogger.

Time to eat that hash! Mmmm, mmmm!