The Penultimate Issue

Here she is at the LiBerry Music Festival, Carey Seward, musician and playwright, founder of Seward's Follies, on the cover of the penultimate issue of The Ester Republic. Or possibly the last issue, but what I put on the cover was the word "penultimate," thinking that perhaps I didn't mean it but too tired to look it up. Hah! My subconscious really didn't want to let it go.
At any rate, now I have that ambiguous possibility waiting for me, the hope left in print on the early October 2012 issue of Ester's only paper that it might in fact return, left there due to bleary eyes and a late night trying to get the last damn issue to bed and off to the printer, once again without enough of the right kind of help, despite the good intentions of so many good people.
And now, people still ask me from time to time if the Republic will ever return, or they tell me they miss it. I miss it too.

I think about what the next issue tagline could be:

• the Resurrection Issue (implies it'll go on living, if the Romans don't get it)
• the Zombie Issue (much more probable scenario, at least insofar as the condition of Madame Publisher is likely to be)
• the Revival Issue (I doubt I'll get Religion, but who knows?)
• the Reawakened Issue (it was asleep all along, just hibernating here in the north, folks)

See how much fun this could be?
However, the Republic won't be back until the library is built. I just can't handle two enormous projects at the same time. (No guarantees, folks!)

Midterm madness: agriculture and libraries and cats

I focused my recent editorial on agriculture, which fits right in with my life the last couple of years: gardening and garden expansion, the Alaska Food Policy Council (which I got involved with via my job at SNRAS), the Alaska Community Agriculture Association (ditto), the Sustainable Agriculture Conference, and most recently, my class with Craig Gerlach on sustainable food systems and farming. It's a giant editorial, three pages. But the midterm is going to be a monster, probably around 24 to 36 pages. It's grueling, and I don't know if I'm going to be able to get it done in time!

And then there's the new kittens, who are wildly energetic, and the grantwriting workshop that Susan Willsrud and I are doing for the Ester library, and the new plans for it, and who knows what all.

Right now, my life is so frantically busy I can't keep up with myself.

Squoze brain, words came forth

The writing biz has been VERY intense lately. I'm working on the strategic plan for SNRAS, the introductory document for the Alaska Food Policy Council, trying to keep up (unsuccessfully) with the Republic, and working on Ester library policies, PR for the Lallapalooza, and a community survey for the library. Last night I finally hit the opposite end of writer's block, where the block o' grey matter has created and composed and spewed forth every last drop of literary goodness (and badness) that it possibly can, and the writer (that would be me) is left with a well-scrunched sponge of an organ that can hardly think or comprehend visual, audio, or any other sensory signals, and is in serious need of a re-dunking in the waters of mindless pre-thought.

I was, to put it mildly, wrung out.

I am looking forward to doing something that does NOT require thinking with words. My plans are to do some good old-fashioned quilting for the JTEL Sewing Consortium's t-shirt fashion sweatshop. Tonight at 6-7ish. Looks like Shannan Turner will be able to join me. Yeah!