Post your GOOD News 2
 

Hi All,

As you will see if you look back to my original thread, I felt the need to let it finish at post #414... a very special number to me.

Here we go again then...

Let's hear about any of the lovely things going on in your lives -- but not about publishing or literary successes, please... we have The Accomplished Members board for telling everyone about that.

Many thanks.

All the best,
Jayne

Tomorrow is our fifth wedding anniversary.

Cheers,
John

Thanks for kicking off Good News 2, John.

Have a lovely anniversary celebration with your wife. In the UK, 5 years is the "Wood'' anniversary - there are lots of gorgeous gifts made of wood - and made to last, ...just like a happy marriage!

Jayne

Thank you, Jayne! Wood it is!

Cheers,
John

Wood that it were.

Much better English! Thanks, Edmund.

At intervals in the last month my wife and I spent several days in sequence forty or fifty miles north of New York City, visiting a semi-rural house with a largish screened porch that looks out on another such building about two car lengths away up a grassy hill. Under the second building lives a groundhog, or woodchuck, that once in a while when things are very quiet emerges to snuffle around in the grass looking for bugs or other small wild food items. It never strays very far and is very cute. I will call it groundhog A. I think it is female for the following reason. On one of its very rare excursions, another groundhog (B) suddenly appeared, and, after snuffling around ten feet away from groundhog A for a quarter hour, B leisurely waddled over to A, started waving its tail furiously in every possible way, and then the two gently bumped noses and perhaps exchanged food items for a solid half minute. B and A then separated a little, snuffled the grass for a period until B went one way and A went under the house where it dwells. So much for that. Love among the groundhogs it seemed.

Then, more recently, another rodent (but not a groundhog) appeared when A was snuffling. It was a very active squirrel, which approached quite close to A, waved its tail even more actively if possible, repeatedly rolled over on its back, waved its tail some more, darted up and down a big nearby tree, and repeated this performance with variations and crescendos, but was unable to get even one iota of interest from groundhog A. There was no nuzzling or anything like that. Eventually, the squirrel grew tired and climbed that tree, while A snuffled on.

I think, as an amateur, that the squirrel was overcome with admiration for A’s scent and wanted to be a part of a rodent love affair. Groundhog A would seem to have had powerful bit of musk or whatever rodents of various sizes employ, a scent sufficiently effective that the squirrel just couldn’t believe it wasn’t meant for him.

Moral of the story: None. Unless someone can find one and express it in a nice way. Lewd jokes and rude slurs aren’t encouraged. But it all was fun to watch!

That is beautifully told, Allen. A story I think Thoreau would have appreciated.

Cheers,
John

x
Naturally, you make me think, Allen, and it leads me to dream up an allegory suited for our times. Then I smelled the coffee and let the mug slip out of my hands… The good news? Life everywhere, even in the hollows, is loved.
x
x

On Sunday, I will have gone exactly a year without an alcoholic drink. I'm posting now on the assumption I won't crack before Sunday...;)

That's a great accomplishment, Mark -- going on 365 great accomplishments if you count your sobriety one day at a time. Congratulations.

Congratulations, Mark! That is a tribute to daily and sustained resolve. Something to take pride in.

Cheers,
John

Good for you, Mark. Half of the battle of becoming a writer is staying alive and able to work. Many great writers have failed on that half, no matter how good their writing was.

Susan

Hooray! That is, indeed, good news, Mark. Keep up the good work (temperance-wise and writing-wise).

Congratulations, Mark. A difficult, valuable accomplishment!

Very happy for you, Mark : )

Ahh, thanks so much for all the nice words, folks. It feels good.

x
Good news all the way Mark.
(Your faculties are hitting on all cylinders from my POV. Perseverance.)
x
x

Hi folks,

So, officially seven years cancer-free, as of today, and counting. :-)

Cheers,
John

That's fantastic, John!

Thank you, Julie. Another year above ground. :-)

Cheers,
John

That's truly good news, John.

Thanks, Mark. I prefer it to the alternative.

Cheers,
John

I wrote a new poem today, the first I've written in over three months. Hooray for the end of the dead period.

In other good news, at the local used bookstore today I finally found a copy of Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow that doesn't have a fucking deckle edge.

Comment deleted

This Just In: My house has been cleared of all my roommate’s many truckloads of stuff at long last. Now I can take a load off my feet. I even cleared the air with frankincense.

An anthology of children's poems that I'm in called One Minute Till Bedtime has appeared in German translation, Jetzt Noch Ein Gedicht, Und Dann Aus Das Licht. Every poem in the book has been translated into German by various translators. It seems to me the translators did a pretty fine job, in most cases preserving at least a very good semblance of rhyme and meter.

My poem in the book has actually been translated before, oddly enough. When I first posted it here a long time ago, Nestor sent me a translation of the poem into Polish. But as far as I know, that translation has never been published.

Jayne and all, eight days ago I presented a little papillon of a paper to the Classical Association of the Atlantic States on efforts to solve the problem of when the Roman poet Catullus was born and passed on. He’s the author of Odi et amo - “I hate and I love,” as well as searingly hostile feelthy squibs about Julius Caesar and his team, and some funny stuff, like #13 about a perfume that makes the smeller want to be entirely a nose. I was rewriting and correcting the room handout almost until we boarded the Amtrak train. Be that as it may, the presentation went pretty Aswan High Dam well, and was movied by a daughter. Jayne’s and Julie Steiner’s help and shoving last year were essential to keeping me going. Fwiw, Isbell’s fellow student in England, Gareth Williams, has a jolly little footnote. I’m still sandpapering the message, and dare to think the paper just might eventually advance general knowledge a smidge about who kissed whom in Rome and other stuff in the late 50s BC and maybe a squeak later. Fun it was.

I'm going to see the wonderful English folk band The Unthanks on Monday night at the New Vic theatre in Newcastle-under-Lyme, performing the poems of Emily Bronte set to music. I'm going all on my lonesome, too, which is just how I like that sort of thing. Can't wait. Here's a little taste, it's quite beautiful.

https://youtu.be/wjxZ-VbUihI

If the Lyme River flows through that town, I do hope not too much of town lies under it.

Cheers,
John

They're great! I've seen them a few times. I hope they get their clogs out. It sounds like a good show, I'll look out for it.

I've seen them on a folk festival stage once, but it was pouring down and I'd had a few Scrumpys. This will be better. I really like them. I didn't realise you were in the UK!

It looks like the leader of ISIS has been killed. He blew himself up in a tunnel as US Special Forces closed in. I consider this excellent news.

Cheers,
John

Many here felt that the death of bin Laden was good news, too:
https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=14078
I have nothing to add to that thread, other than a reminder that bin Laden's removal created a power vacuum that led to the formation of ISIS. So those who feel jubilant might want to keep that in mind.

True, Julie, but jubilant isn’t my word, and like Kant, I will treat this moment, this event as absolute in assessing it, before I second-guess its consequences. The man was evil and caused evil, and he has removed himself from the world.

Cheers,
John

Julie, that resembles the argument many people make that we shouldn't impeach and remove Trump because Pence may be worse. To which I say, let's deal with one problem at a time.

May I make a polite plea, please?

Can we keep this thread for happy, personal news which will cheer us all up?
(Not publication successes or world news; we have The Accomplished Members and General Talk for that stuff.)

Thanks :)

Jayne

My bad, Jayne, sorry. I forgot about General Talk. I wasn’t expecting to start a flame war though! There’s not been a lot of good world news and I got excited.
Cheers,
John

I recently returned from a lovely holiday in the Turks and Caicos Islands, where my sister has a house. It was only ten days, but by the end, you can imagine how sick I was of all that turquoise ocean, white sand, brilliant sunshine, and fresh lobster tails ...