Three of the poems in my not-yet-published book, Hunting the Cosmos, have been published in this month’s issue of Verse-Virtual.
Link to poems
Every story and poem in the book relate to the art of mid-century Spanish-Mexican artist Remedios Varo. The book launches next Tuesday!!!
My grandson wanted to be Peppa Pig for Halloween. His parents and grandparents wanted him to be his other cartoon favorite, Mickey Mouse. (He looks and sounds like Mickey). So his dad got him both costumes so he could choose.
He ended up wearing his rain jacket and rainboots and clomped through the “muddy puddles” in the rain. He trick-or-treated in his other grandma’s neighborhood, and she said he even called out “trick-or-treat” on the porches!
However, last night he went to two houses in his own neighborhood wearing his Mickey costume. These people plan special for his Halloween visits :).
My mom is doing ok. She makes some mistakes because of her memory of day and time, but for the most part she does pretty well. I worry about the day she can’t figure out how to use her cell phone because then how will she and I chat? She turns 92 a month from today.
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On a concerning note, I am disturbed by the rampant antisemitism around the world. It’s gone far beyond people who are angry at Israel’s current policies. One example, a local student, a 14-year-old girl wearing a Star of David to school, was harassed mercilessly by five students and then assaulted. Each time she reported it to a staff member, they made light of it. She no longer attends that public school, and the Anti-Defamation League has made a complaint.
I studied and taught Holocaust literature at one time. Although it was depressing I did it because I wanted to instill the notion of “never again” to my students. I had the same type of reasoning in my text choices when for each children’s lit section I selected a book that showed that animals have emotions and subjectivity. I hoped in both cases that I was contributing to something positive in the world. But now here we are with generations of people who either never learned or have forgotten. People who think it’s ok to hate a group of people and to show it publicly. To discriminate in ways that if they were done to someone else would be against the law. Isn’t it against the law to discriminate against Jews?
Society has given people a free pass to act however they want to Jewish people.
I am posting a link to my 2014 list of Holocaust books for children and teens in hopes that you know someone young who could stand to learn why our world can’t go through this again.
HOLOCAUST BOOKS FOR CHILDREN AND TEENS
This sign is was found on a shopfront in 2025, in Flensburg, Germany. It addresses “Jews,” bars them from the premises, and says the owner can’t stand them. And, yes, this is supposedly against the law in Germany.
It took me eighteen years from the first story I wrote about my father’s workshop in our basement until publication for Scrap: Salvaging a Family. Some of that time was “down time,” including from the day ELJ Editions accepted the manuscript until it was actually published. So in the meantime I was writing other things, usually poetry, but some micro or flash fiction, too.
He usually paints for someone else, but this time when I asked him if I could have it, he waffled and then finally withdrew it from my fingers and said he wanted to keep it. So I let it go. Sadly because I had this brain storm of collaging with his art.
Thank you sooooooooo much, Marie, for your beautiful gift and your friendship and your cats 🙂 and your essence.
I particularly love working with soft pastels and pan pastels because of how they work with water and smudging. I like to burn, rip, and stitch things.
