Ahooogah! Ahooogah!

This is the approximate sound made on board a US submarine as it rises toward the surface, or engaged in a full dive. I’ve made few appearances lately, either here or in person at a lot of events, and I wanted to say a little bit about what I’ve been up to.

I’ve been changing things over at the Boy Scouts. Shaking them up a bit, maybe. Getting shook up, a lot. I’ve given them a lot more of my time this summer than I meant to, and it’s taken its toll. The chapel service this week was the best we’ve had all summer, but it was also the least well-attended; I find myself wondering if word is getting around that I’m not doing a specifically Christian service, or worse. I learned half-a-dozen new plants in the first two weeks of camp, but since then it’s been nothing. I taught one group of boy scouts to recognize a couple of edible wild plants — so they harvested all of them and brought them to their troop to sample. Now they’re gone from camp, despite my warnings that they should not harvest ALL of them.

These are the same people who get angry at me for balancing rocks. It’s not OK to balance rocks in public places within sight of a man-made lake, but it is OK to harvest every single sample of an edible wild species despite an instructor’s warnings to the contrary??

Last summer, the food was terrible and I lost weight. The new cook is good, but for all the walking and exercise I’ve been getting, I’ve not been losing weight, I’ve been gaining.

A week from Saturday, and I’ll be on a plane to Colorado Springs, CO, for ten days of USFA coaches’ college. You can tell me who to see and what poetry events to check out in Colorado Springs, but frankly, I don’t think I’m going to have the time.

I have a new writing assignment from folks down in GA. Haven’t seen a contract, don’t know what I’m supposed to get paid — tempted to pass on the contract for an August in the cockpit of my kayak.

Still haven’t finished the July New Moon sonnet, and a couple of other poems, and feeling really ticked off about that. Getting hints from school that in the wake of a colleague’s departure, that there’s all sorts of new work for me to do, and not much in the way of compensation or recognition — need to be better about saying, “this doesn’t work for me.”

A lot doesn’t seem to be working for me. I lost my wallet this July, lost two checks, lost my ID, lost a lot of time, lost a lot of time with friends, lost a lot of time on my own with a notebook and a pen, and with Leah.

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