AWP Advice, Whether You're Going or Staying Away

So, many people will be headed to Boston to the annual AWP convention.  There must be a reason why AWP so often happens in northern cities in February or March, but I can't figure out what that might be.  At one point, I thought it was cost, but I have since read that Boston is one of the more expensive U.S. cities for conference attendees.  That's one reason why I decided not to attend--the cost of hotels, even with the conference discount.  Yikes.

Could we not find some nice Southern cities?  Like, oh, say, Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, or Tampa?  Sure, I have a vested interest.  It would be easier for me.

But if we're avoiding Florida, why not New Orleans or Memphis?  Austin seems capable of hosting huge groups.  I'd love another reason to head to the desert Southwest.

Ah, well, I'm not in charge.  But I do have advice for people heading to AWP.  Sandra Beasley also has excellent advice in this post.  And if, like me, you're staying home, Jeannine Hall Gailey has great advice in this post.

Here's my advice:

--Bring energy bars or nuts, snacks with fiber that will kill your hunger and fill you up; look for the kinds with high fiber and high protein. Buy these before you leave and pack them in your luggage.


--You'll likely be around a lot of sources of free water: water pitchers in the back of meeting rooms, coolers, water fountains. You may need an empty bottle or cup, so you might want to pack one.

--Caucuses are a great way to make connections.

--You'll need cash or checks at the book fair; many tables won't take credit cards. In the last hours of the book fair, you'll get many a deal. Of course, if you have to ship the books or pay extra because of airline regulations and the weight of your suitcase, the great deals may be not so great.

--Bring business cards or something of similar weight and shape that has your contact information on it.

As I look at that list, I'm struck by how it's good information all the way around. Always have a snack, always have a water bottle, always look for ways to make connections, and you can't always count on being allowed to use a credit card.

And remember, if you're at home, there's lots you can do to build your career, even if you can't make it to these conferences, like AWP.  Treat yourself to a book, and don't forget that your local public library likely has lots of them for you to check out for free.  Write something new each day.  Send some writing out into the world.  Pitch an idea to an editor.  Apply for a grant.

Once again, good information, for weeks when you can't get to AWP and for weeks when nothing much is going on in the wider world.

Flying at Night

Part of me wonders why I am awake.  After all, I spent half the night in the clutch of the airline-industrial complex, making my way from Virginia back to Florida.  That sounds more dire than it was.  Unlike the last time I flew, I had easy trips last night:  exit row seats with room to stretch my legs!

I also sat by the window, and the view enchanted me.  For most of the trip, I had a clear view of the earth below.  I loved seeing all the twinkling lights.  It was like reverse astronomy; instead of stars sparkling above us, I looked down on all sorts of constellations.

In places, parts of the ground were obscured by a dense comforter of clouds, while some of the civilizations still shone forth.  In some places, instead of sparkly stars, the lights resembled a lacy web or clusters of silver and gold beads.

As we flew into Atlanta, I saw a baseball diamond, all lit up.  I had a momentary disconnect:  what season is it?  Have I missed Spring and somehow launched myself into Summer?  And then I thought about all the winter storm systems that moved across the region during the week-end and the system that is coming:  who is playing baseball in this brutal cold?

As we approached the airport, I also saw the "Fly Delta Jets" sign lit up against the darkness.  I thought about how often I've been seeing this sign.  I assume it existed when I was a little girl.  We didn't take many airline trips, but we did live in the Southeast, so I feel safe in assuming that on our few trips, we went through Atlanta.  Likewise, when I was in college and flew home for the holidays, I often went through Atlanta.  And as I flew back to visit my grandmother, after we'd moved to South Florida, the sign always felt like a Welcome Back sign.

In September I had a similar experience as I looked for the Adluh Flour sign on the side of a building in Columbia, South Carolina.  Yep, there it was.  That building hadn't been torn down!

I had a great week-end leading a retreat and leading a poetry workshop in the northern Virginia region--plus, I got to see my family.  It was a whirlwind trip though.  I have that feeling that I sometimes have after that kind of week-end.  I feel like I need to sit here quietly and wait for all the parts of myself to catch back up with me.  I'm also aware of all the Spring events that will come zinging my way in the next 2 months, plus the writing projects that are coming due.

But there is time.  There is time to savor a cup of coffee in this strange cold that has found its way down the peninsula of Florida.  There is time to write a poem so that I can get back on track with my poem-a-day Lenten discipline.  There is time to make a quick trip to my neighborhood Doris' Italian Market to buy the ingredients for the pot of chili that my spouse will make.  There is time to unpack from this trip, before it's time to pack for the next.

Saturday Retreats (in Collage and in Virginia)

A week ago, I was working on this collage:

Can you find all the locks and keys? 

All the images come from ads and photo layouts in magazines; the words were painted on the barn, and the word "transforming" was part of the ad.  I'm fairly sure that the image of the kneeling man and the moon is Jan Richardson's, used in an ad for an event where she'll appear.  I assume that since I'm not selling this collage or using it in some other kind of commercial application, it will be OK.

Today, I'll be leading a one day retreat with my mom in Northern Virginia.  I'll be doing the Bible study and a workshop on spiritual journaling and gratitude haiku.

If you want more of a sense of what we'll be doing today, go to this post, which talks about the first time my mom and I led this kind of one day retreat. 

Scarcity Consciousness or a Universe of Abundance?

When I look back over this week-end, I'm amused at myself.  I was careful about when I watched Silkwood, because I didn't want to get too scared too close to bedtime.

What did I do instead?  I read Barbara Ehrenreich's Bait and Switch--a book that terrifies me in many more ways than Silkwood.  In this book, Ehrenreich wants to do the same undercover reporting on the lives of middle class workers that she did in Nickel and Dimed.  So she creates a resume and waits to be scooped up into a middle class job that pays at least $50,000 a year and has full benefits.

She gets no calls, even with a manufactured resume.  She fills her time with resume coaches and networking groups and online searching.

What's even scarier:  she's doing this in 2003-2004 (the book was published in 2005), long before the economic implosions of 2008 onward.

So, for the first part of this week, I sank into that self-pitying, I-will-never-make-it-to-retirement, whiny state that I hate.  But last night, I went to an event that put me back into the cautious optimism which is my natural state.

If Barbara Ehrenreich was writing from a scarcity consciousness, Branard Carey operates from a place of abundance.  He's making a living from being an artist, and he had all kinds of ideas for the rest of us.

His presentation at first had more relevance for visual artists and some performance artists than for writers, at least at first glance.  But I found all kinds of inspiring nuggets.

Careful readers of this blog know that I do more than write, in terms of my creative activities.  In fact, yesterday, before I went to work and then to the evening presentation, my spouse and I did a mosaic project in our effort to avoid replacing a pedestal sink.   More on that later.  We've created fountains and worship spaces and photos and collages and paintings and all sorts of sculptures.  We both cook, and he gardens, and on and on I could go.

I've often wondered if we could take all these projects and create a variety of income streams.  Brainard Carey would say yes.

He began by asking why do we, as artists, check our success at certain levels?  He says the only thing holding us back is ourselves.  In other words, we've got a lot of self-defeating behaviors, and many of them are unconscious.  If we could control that behavior, all sorts of success would follow.

He talks about speaking in the language of financiers, which those of us who are poets might think has nothing to do with us.  But maybe it does.  He talked about artists who approached rich people not by asking for money, but by describing their project, saying "This is our dream," and then asking, "Have you ever thought of investing in a dream?"

He also talked about approaching gallery owners by going into a gallery as if one is going to buy a work and letting the owner talk about the work.  The way the gallery owner talks about that work is the way that the owner will talk about your work, should you choose to let that gallery represent you.

In many of our encounters with people who might want our work, he encouraged us to think in terms NOT of what those people can do for us, but what we can do for those people.  What needs do they have that our creative work could meet?

I thought about publishers and then my mind meandered to readers.  We live in a time-starved society.  Our readers will be spending hard-earned money and then spending time with our words.  What's the reward for them?

Over and over again, Brainard Carey reminded us of the value of asking for what we want and need.  If you want a show, ask for one.  If you need an audience with a mover in the industry, invite that person to coffee near where the person works or for 10 minutes in a cafe in the building.  He understands how we're afraid of rejection, which makes us afraid to ask, but he assures us that we will be astonished at often the answer will be yes.

And in a corollary command, he warns us about underselling ourselves, which artists tend to do.  He reminds us to ask for the moon.

If you live in Southeast Florida, you've still got one more chance to hear him:  he'll be speaking tonight at Girls' Club Gallery (117 NE 2nd Street in Ft. Lauderdale)at 7 p.m.

Gender Justice

Last night, I stayed up long past my usual bedtime to watch Makers:  Women Who Make America, which you can buy or view, episode by episode, here.

Even though I knew this history, I still stayed up to watch.  The show did not break new ground, but it struck me as a good history, particularly for people who don't know this history.  Unlike Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, which has been getting a lot of media coverage as we've come to the 50th anniversary of its publication, the PBS show focused on women of all classes.  It did a good job of explaining why African-American women did not always feel welcome or committed, and it included the stories of lesbians, who also felt excluded.

The show was a good reminder for me of what ordinary people can do.  I'm always grateful for those reminders.

I hear people of a certain age complaining about today's youth and wondering why they don't go out and protest.  I would argue that today's youth have different tools, and they may not need to throw their bodies on the barricades.  We're still in the early days of social networking, which is already changing the landscape in ways we can scarcely comprehend. For that matter, in many ways we're still in the early days of the Internet, which also has transformed us and continues to do so.

The show pointed out that women had been trained to organize in other contexts (like the Civil Rights Movement and the fight against the war in Vietnam), and thus, they had the tools to organize for their own interests as they became radicalized.

I remember back in graduate school when we learned to work the mimeograph machine, one of the tools of social revolution of the 1960's and 70's.  Sure, we had copy machines; I'm not that old.   But grad students had to use the old technology because it was cheaper.  Maybe smartphones will be the mimeograph machine of this generation of students.

The show makes clear that we're still not where we want to be as women, and I already had this on the brain yesterday as I read a series of articles in The Washington Post.  This article points out that one year after college graduation, female graduates are making roughly 15% less than their male counterparts, and here's why that fact is so significant:  "All the traditional reasons typically trotted out to interpret the pay gap — that women fall behind when they leave the workforce to raise kids, for example, or that they don’t seek as many management roles — failed to justify this one. These young women didn’t have kids yet. The study took account of the differences in their academic majors. And because they were just one year removed from their undergraduate degrees, few of these women yet had the chance to go after (much less decline) leadership roles."

Yes, we have work to do, even as we approach a time where we have more females graduating from college than males.   And that work is not just here, in our own country.

Last night's show ended by reminding us that third world women face even more brutal conditions than women in this country have faced in many generations, centuries even. But it's worth repeating the point that the show made again and again:  social change can come swiftly, after years of slogging for justice that seems like it will always be out of reach.  I have a vision of a world where women can move safely as they fulfill their full potential.  I've seen enormous changes throughout the last 47 years that I've been alive.  I hope to continue to see positive changes for women as I move through the next 47 years.

No Future?

On the heels of watching Silkwood, and then reading about MOOCs and all the other ways my industry is being destroyed, I came across this blog post with its clip of The Sex Pistols singing "God Save the Queen."  A few hours earlier, my friend said, "I worry about what's ahead for the younger generation."

I said, "I worry about my generation."  But I really worry about us all.

I find old punk music to be oddly comforting.  We've thought we were doomed before--watch The Sex Pistols sing it:  "No future, no future, no future for you."  Reread Margaret Drabble's The Radiant Way to remember just how bad the social conditions were that spawned the punk movement.

Maybe we'll get some vibrant music out of these hard times.  Maybe some unlikely heroes will emerge.

I've been immersed in the 80's, so it was strange to wake up this morning to hear that C. Everett Koop had died.

There are very few members of the Reagan administration whom I respected much, although time has softened my outlook.  I tend to believe that people are doing the best job that they can do, which doesn't stop them from being horribly uninformed or working under outdated paradigms or feeling the beginning effects of diseases which dull the judgment.

But I still find Koop's story inspiring.  I remember him as being the only Reagan administration official who would even talk about AIDS--and then he did it so openly and matter-of-factly that I thought we might survive the plague after all.

Now in an age when so many people view AIDS as a manageable disease, we forget how terrifying it was in its early days.  I'm convinced that it was a more virulent disease then--watch those documentaries that have footage from the early days of the disease and notice how quickly those AIDS victims were turned into walking corpses--and then dead corpses.

Could more people have been saved if we'd just been honest from the beginning and had a frank discussion about body fluids, clean needles, and condoms?  Maybe.  In the intervening years, I've been amazed at the poor decisions of all sorts that people make as they gamble that the ill effects won't catch up with them or that reality doesn't apply to them.

I remember cheering for Koop, who steadfastly acted like a scientist and the nation's doctor, not like a moralist.  He showed us all how to behave like grown ups.

Today I read this article in The Washington Post about Koop's life.  I knew about his accomplishments during my lifetime, but I didn't realize how much he had done in the field of pediatric medicine, particularly surgery.  Not only do we have a generation or two who came of age in the early days of AIDS alive because of Koop's actions, but countless babies too.

I love that Koop was 64 and retired when he was tapped to be surgeon general.  I'm collecting these stories of people who go on to accomplish important events when they're at midlife or beyond.  They make me feel hopeful.

Koop also had no training in public health--but look at what he was able to accomplish.  Yesterday I talked about Silkwood, and being amazed at the depiction of the constant smoking in that movie.  People smoked at work, in restaurants, everywhere--but we don't do that anymore, and Koop deserves a chunk of credit for changing our habits.  He was just as blunt about the effects of tobacco as he was about AIDS and unprotected sex.

I want to watch the movie How to Survive a Plague, and it's cheap enough and sounds inspiring enough that I'll probably buy a copy.  It's about those early days of the AIDS crisis, and how people came together to demand social justice.  It's good to remember what can be accomplished.

Koop's life reminds us how much one human life can make a difference too, and how we may not fully know what we'll be called upon to do.  In the days when it feels like I'm a victim of events I can't control (the economy, which still feels wretched to me, the changes coming to higher ed, the changes coming to my own school), it's good to remember that ordinary humans can live in the face of extraordinary changes and make the world better.

Full Body Burdens and the New Nuclear Age

Yesterday we watched Silkwood, which I hadn't seen again since I first saw it in the mid-80's.  I remember feeling scared by the scrubbings and the nuclear contamination which necessitated the scrubbings.  I didn't remember that the depiction of the main character, Karen Silkwood, was as complex as it seemed to me yesterday.

I remember seeing Karen Silkwood as a spunky, brave heroine, and I still sort of see her that way.  But I also see her as less brave, and more a woman who backs into her heroic acts or does them almost accidentally.

And let me be frank here, I also see her as somewhat irresponsible and careless.  She's the kind of worker that no management type would want to have.  She's sloppy, and she's presented early on as trying to get out of work, and she's a whiner.  She takes drugs at work, and it's been a long time since I've seen so many people smoking so much through the course of a day.  How life has changed in the past few decades!

I feel guilty for even thinking these things.  By the time I saw Silkwood in the mid-80's, the sanctification of Karen Silkwood was well underway.  She was seen as a hero of the anti-nuclear movement and the anti-corporation movement, such as it existed.

But as I watched the movie, I felt myself wondering if the corporate types really had her killed.  She took astonishing risks with her personal safety, and it's no wonder she got contaminated.  One of the first scenes in the movie shows her popping a gum bubble all over her face, and her co-worker, who's been handling plutonium, takes the gum off her face and puts his fingers in her mouth.

You may protest, well what about that accident?  She had an amazing amount of Quaaludes in her system.  Did she ingest them?  Based on her behavior in the film, it's likely that she did, not that a shadowy type poisoned her drink.  It's quite believable that she fell asleep at the wheel.

And the movie made me doubt that she really planned to get the documents that would make her a true whistleblower--it's an angle I didn't see when I first saw it.

I did a bit of Internet searching this morning, and I came across this fascinating article, for those of you who are interested in nuclear contamination of the human body.

I wanted to see this movie again since last summer, when I read Full Body Burden and Plume in the same week (see this post for more).  I'm surprised at how well the movie holds up, how timeless it seems.  It also seems like an important cautionary tale, in this current age of ours, when we see people thinking about nuclear power as a possibility again.