Netless Weekend

My my my my my. I have been chin deep in poetry and work lately. Here I am on last weekend.

We had no internet at all on Friday nor Saturday. Our database program works fine without it, except that any information we change or add will not carry over to the internet space where all that information is stored, so it's pointless to do anything involving new books.

Friday featured a bit of organization, but mostly it was just being there and reading some of the books hanging around. Everyone except Stellan (he usually stays a bit later) quit early, and the majority went to a little bar down the street. I was going to be staying in the city for the evening, because Academic Computing was having a party in the city, so I tagged along with Mike, Katherine, Krista and Jennifer. It was good to experience my fellow workers in a bar, even though it is already comfortably laid-back at work. Katherine is certainly a very talkative person, and is good to converse with. She brings up points to keep the thought evolving. She helped me decide to look at bewilderment, a craft of poetry that I had studied for a week back in Matthea's class last year. I think Stevens and bewilderment are connected, though perhaps not commonly closely. If you have any thoughts, please share.

Saturday would have been an entire day of sitting around with nothing to do (enjoying the company of course), except that there was a children's event (Mike is the children's event coordinator) scheduled today. We all went to a wonderful library two blocks east. I forgot to mention, we had a visitor who is a personal sponsor and supporter of Poets House, Annie Wright, wife of the late poet James Wright. I was not familiar with the name but I feel rather reluctant to bring up something like that with the wife; I have looked into his poetry and may take one of his books out for Spring Break.

It was really nice to have Annie there to talk to. She has been through a good deal of history in the New York scene and she had some great stories about friends of her husband: Robert Bly, John Berryman, Theodore Roethke. She was here I think to help with the children's event, though in this situation she really just came for support. One of today's emerging young reader poets, Bobbi Katz (she signs her last name with a cat), was to read this time. I met her and she was a very cheery woman.

This is where it gets hectic. After meeting, and then walking around the Japanese section of the library, Mike sent me on an errand to get a large pad of newsprint and some markers. Ok, Staples wasn't too far down the street. It was raining but I had to make good time (within the half hour) so I ran. Staples didn't have anything bigger than construction paper, so I rushed off down the street to a place the salesperson mentioned on Canal. Canal isn't too far either (maybe 3 blocks diagonally), but it set me even farther from the library, and the weather was not very kind, big gusts of wind too.

I made it to Canal and found the place. Pearl Paint. Not knowing a thing about it previously, I was blown away. 7 stories of art supplies. It's too bad I was in such a hurry. the staircase was old, the people were casual and friendly. I'm not even into art, but this place was a ball. Not so helpful if you're in a hurry though.

I made it back with the supplies (I even got a student discount). Bobbi was very grateful and when she came to use the print to brainstorm poems with the kids, she dedicated "My Special Friend" to me!

Unfortunately, the majority of the kids in the library were not attended by adults, and thus were more often playing video games than interested in the reader. By no means was I surprised by that, although I was disappointed to see the lack of parent input and accompaniment. There were a few kids with both mother and father spending a long time in the library that day, and they helped create a stark juxtaposition to those who were spending hours playing little pokémon style battle-based video games.