I was checking my blog metrics last night and saw that there were 666 views on my story about the Rockford Fringe Festival. I’m not terribly superstitious but is the universe implying a theatre fringe festival would be apocalyptic and beastly? It’s Easter and Passover, ffs. Be nice, universe!
I have a busy day today, as I’m sure you do, too, so this will be quick. Happy Easter, if you celebrate. May the spirit and hope of the Resurrection fill your day.
And if Passover is your thing, Happy Pesach! Sam and I made some macaroons to commemorate the exodus of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. So if you are feeling trapped and used, may the spirit of this holiday fill you with the tenacity, speed and fortitude to pursue your truth.
Macaroons before we drizzled the chocolate.
Whatever your religion or faith, I hope you enjoy celebrating and commemorating. Thanks for reading! -Connie
Editor’s note: I thought about not writing today because it is our anniversary which is to say it’s a sacred day. But I don’t want to quit blogging until I reach the 100-day mark, at least, so here I am. Read at your own risk.
Happy 18th Anniversary, Goldie. You light up my life and I love you.
I looked it up and eighteen is porcelain. That’s what toilets are made of so cheers to a practical and necessary anniversary?
Material goods aren’t really our thing, but nature is and I’ve always loved the unpredictable, natural elements of our anniversary.
When we got married, it was 81 and sunny. Today, it’s literally forty degrees colder and windy here in Rockford. But the sun is shining and I can feel the warm spirit of our beautiful day in my jaw, my chest. My temples.
There will be a full moon tonight. The media is calling this one the “pink moon.” Why do they have to call it anything? It’s like assigning porcelain to an anniversary.
Last year on our anniversary, a great horned owl visited our backyard. Awesome.
And I remember the year before that we had a little double-date in our backyard with the ducks. It was the beginning of the pandemic and neither of us wanted to venture too far from home. It seems funny now, but I was afraid to even go to the backyard. And by funny, I mean kind of sad and disturbing.
Most (all?) years we’ve celebrated with a run or walk or hike or bike ride. I’m glad we take it outside. And I’m glad for the days we don’t leave the house. I’m glad for the days I look up from my “morning chair” and I see you on the couch, surrounded by books, art and animals.
But this morning you weren’t there because you were, and are, in San Diego. I do wonder what the pink moon will look like when you get back to your hotel room tonight. Will you be able to see it over the Pacific Ocean? Will you even look for it? I will if you will and for tonight only I’ll let it light up my life. Here’s to 18 more and then 18 more after that. ❤
To the rest of you non-Goldies: Thank you for reading my blog. -Connie
It’s National Poetry Month and a couple weeks ago I saw the following poetry prompt in Writer’s Digest:
Write a smell poem.
I’m not a snob, but the word “smell” seemed unrefined so I disregarded the prompt and forgot about it until today.
This morning, I boiled 18 eggs my kids will dye for Easter. When the eggs cooled off, I placed them gently into their carton. One of the eggs cracked so I removed it and placed it on the counter with the intention of dealing with it later.
I left the house for a few hours and when I got back home, I walked in the front door and was confronted by the smell of that hard boiled egg.
I was immediately reminded of Amy. She was a breakfast-eater I worked with at Coldwell Banker Burnett many years ago. Breakfast-eaters are people who eat breakfast. Weird, right?
Now I have nothing against people who need more than coffee in the morning, but I am not one of them. Maybe you are and if you are, I hope you eat your breakfast at home or at least in the break room and not in a goddamn shared office space.
Amy did not eat her breakfast at home. She ate it at her desk which was five feet from mine. Every morning she purchased her “breakfast” from the vending machine.
I am old enough to remember when vending machines sold candy bars and potato chips. Our vending machines sold dill pickles, ramen noodles, beef jerky and various “cappuccino” options. I was always astounded by the choices.
One month, the devil stocked the vending machine with hard boiled eggs. There were several wedged in their respective coils. I remember looking at them and thinking, “God, who would ever eat a hard boiled egg from a vending machine?”
Amy would. That’s who.
***
“Morning, Connie.”
“Hi Amy.”
I can still remember the fear pulsing in my heart when I saw her clutching the packaged egg. I turned away but I still could hear her pulling the cellophane apart at the seams. There was no way to escape. The bag was unsealed and the scent of the sulfur wafted into my workspace. It permeated my clothes, my hair.
She liked it so much, she ate another one the next day. And another the day after that.
With no further ado, here is my smell poem. It’s a double dactyl.
Higgledy piggledy
neighbor in cubicle
ate boiled eggs that would
make me turn green
She ate one each morning
sanctimoniously
til someone unplugged the
vending machine
Thanks for reading my blog. Hope it wasn’t a rotten egg. -Connie
The front page of today’s paper says MarketWatch put Rockford on a list of “surprisingly cool towns.” Gosh, thanks MarketWatch! Your backhanded compliment tells me you are surprisingly cool, too.
Speaking of compliments, kudos to Ken DeCoster for this surprisingly cool journalism! I love how his story leads with “Proximity to Chicago and Milwaukee…” as the number one reason the forest city is so fabulous. It’s good to know that what’s cool about Rockford isn’t Rockford itself, but that it is on the way to actual cool places.
It’s really the story that just keeps giving because DeCoster interviewed Marc Strandquist, a 59-year-old Rockford native who works for a “private equity firm in the Chicago area. That’s right: DeCoster interviewed a middle-aged white guy who doesn’t actually work in Rockford for perspective! How surprisingly cool!
As DeCoster writes it, “…proximity to O’Hare International Airport” was what sold Strandquist and his wife on moving to Rockford during the pandemic.
I think the most surprisingly cool part of the story is when Strandquist is quoted in the story as saying, “I’ve dragged my wife everywhere” when they were looking for a place to live. Gosh, I hope she didn’t put up too much of a fight!
Another reason Rockford made the “surprisingly cool” cut is because you can buy a house here for less than $150,000. DeCoster also interviewed Conor Brown for this story. Brown is the CEO of Rockford Area Realtors and said Rockford has “always been a city that has been cool and creative.” How surprisingly cool to hear an unbiased comment about the city where Brown buys and sells houses for a living!
Rockford is a small city with a population of about 150,000 people. I would never call it “surprisingly cool.” I’d just call it cool. Great people, including my family, live here plus there are outstanding options for education, anti-racism, spiritual growth and science. I love writing in Rockford and can honestly say I am in a constant state of inspiration here. I love the land, I know where to get a good latte and should someone need me, I am accessible. I may not have much love for the story I read in today’s paper, but I do love it here.
Thanks for reading my unsurprisingly uncool blog. -Connie
It was a beautiful day in Rockford. I know this because I looked out the window once or twice. For the most part, however, my eyes were glued to my manuscript and my buttocks were firmly planted in my seat; the same seat I am sitting in right now.
Connie: Buttocks, don’t be rude. Say hello!
Buttocks: Hellooooo!
Connie: Thank you, Buttocks. Dismissed.
Buttocks are confused and stay put. Connie changes subject.
I hope you like the picture. I took it yesterday at Rock Cut State Park. I’m using it for today’s blog entry because it’s a visual metaphor of my writing. Other than it being a dead tree, I don’t really know what I’m looking at, but I do like its shape and textures.
Writing all day isn’t a new sensation, but there is a special shame that accompanies me when a deadline is involved. That’s because other things get ignored in the process. Things like my chores and hydrating. My children. But the good news is I checked Facebook 14,097 times so at least I’m caught up there.
In case you are wondering what I’m writing: I am sharing scenes 3 and 4 of my full length drama Nothing Could Be Finer Than To Be In Southwest China at Tuesdays@9. I’m introducing a new character, Shan, with these scenes.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the peek into my process (and negligence). I suppose a haiku would have been a more economic approach.
guilt is worse than pain
when you spend the day writing
buttocks stuck to seat
That’s the long and short of it. Thank you for reading my blog. Inside or out, I hope you had a decent weekend. -Connie
When I was walking Willow this morning, I found an “empty” mourning dove eggshell and brought it home. I told Sam about it when I picked him up after Track this evening. He said, “Oh, I saw it on my way to the bus this morning.” When we got to our neighborhood, he asked me to pull over. He got out of the car and retrieved “his” shell. When we got to our backyard, I showed him “my” shell. I’m pretty sure they are sibling shells.
I decided to write a sestina about the mourning dove massacre. A sestina is six stanzas with six lines followed by a 7th three-line stanza. Instead of rhyming, the last words of each stanza are repeated uniquely in the following stanza. The concluding stanza has to incorporate all six words in three lines. Iambic pentameter and repetition replaces rhyme in this kind of poem and the effect is supposed to be soothing and haunting. I’ll admit I got a little “creative” with the iambs.
Good Mourning
Mr. Grackle broke and entered the nest
and the unborn doves never had a chance.
He ate the sleeping siblings for breakfast.
They say it's part of the life cycle
but it makes me sad for Mother Nature
though i'm not the only one in mourning
When the unborn doves were asleep in their nest
they had recurring dreams about eternal mourning.
Father felt them trembling beneath him at breakfast
while mother stole seeds scattered by wind's chance.
When she flew back he told her about the eggs' nature
and they both smiled and said this was a good cycle.
Predators won't accept birdseed for breakfast.
They say it goes against their nature
so they watch over someone else's nest
and secretly wait for their chance
to remind the world they're not morning doves, they're mourning
their doves, forever swept away in a gluttonous cycle.
One month later she laid another two eggs after breakfast.
This time they are leaving nothing to chance.
Father added a fresh border of twigs around the nest,
says it will protect them from the evils of nature.
He's feeling confident about this new cycle
but mother still spends her mornings mourning.
This morning the garbage trucks made their clamorous cycle
through the neighborhood, waking them up before breakfast.
She swears she'll poop on their heads when she gets the chance.
He smiles because he knows that's not in her nature;
her feathers ruffle but she's not going to leave that nest
until her world is filled with the coos of two new doves mourning
She's cranky because this is a frigid spring cycle.
Every morning they wake up to snow and ice in their nest
and neither of them want to go get breakfast
but she knows she needs it and being healthy is her only chance
to fulfill her true calling, her true nature
until then she is truly mourning, truly mourning...
Morning, she says, will never come. This is a terrible cycle!
She is tired and sore and he is bargaining with Mother Nature.
Please, he begs the goddess, give us another chance!
Let them live and I'll never skip breakfast
again and I'll always protect the nest.
Please protect us from eternal mourning.
Night cycles into morning and guess who is in the nest?
Little doves with mouths wide open expressing their mournful nature
Mother and Father say it's time for family breakfast
If you’re not up for a sestina, there are some shorties below that I wrote in between my parent-teacher conferences.
An untitled tanka.
the teachers and i
talked on the phone to discuss
my kids' potential
for achieving true success --
or were we just killing time?
An untitled haiku.
free education's
a constitutional right
fourteenth amendment
An untitled senryu.
constitution says
a free education is
yours for mis-taking
Here's a tanka about some (bad) advice I was given about how my kids should stay and 'give back' to Rockford. Give Back
who benefits most
when the next generation
never leaves home and
lives a manufactured life
cut from someone else's dreams
Here's a tanka about a local scholarship called The Rockford Promise.A Promise or a Threat
Rockford promises
kids who maintain a three-point-
oh! free tuition!
if they matriculate at
a local institution
Thanks for reading! Did I mention it’s National Poetry Month? -Connie
Constance Kuntz 