My Year In Brief Review

Hi. As has become custom on this blog, I'm spending the last day of the year writing a post that sums up my year in writing and wayfaring. Usually I do the top 10 or top 5 blog posts of the year, going by number of hits on each post. But this year I've decided to re-share the links to 4 pieces I had published in 2014 along with the most popular post on my blog for the year. Here's the list:

5. I had two poems published in the Spring 2014 issue of Wilderness House Literary Review. The poems are "Australia" and "The Fading of the Heart." The first one I wrote for a workshop at the Poetry Center in Chicago. At the time, I was a fairly frequent visitor to the poetry slams at the Green Mill in Uptown, and so I think the poem shows that influence in its length and use of alliteration. I had returned from Australia, where I spent about a month in the Outback, less than a couple months before writing this poem. The second poem was written more recently. It's about Ireland, a place where I used to spend a lot of time and loved but also experienced a fair share of heartbreak, frustration, and disappointment. I'll probably return there of course, but it may be a long while.

4. On Easter Sunday in 2014, Literary Orphans released its Irish-themed issue, guest edited by James Claffey. My non-fiction piece "All Apocalypses, Bitter and Sweet" was included. It's a longer piece. I hope people will read it if they haven't already. Looking back, I'm surprised this got accepted, as it's rather local and much of it is about a medieval Irish saint that most people outside of Ireland have never even heard of. I'm glad Literary Orphans took a chance on this anyway, and I hope readers like it.

3. In August another poem of mine was published at Eunoia Review. The poem is called "Transference (Middle West)." It's about my maternal grandfather and the transition he made as a young man moving from the farm in Iowa where he grew up to the south side of Chicago where he raised a family. A lot of people seemed to like this one.

2. In the fall, Literary Orphans accepted another piece of mine, a short poem for its Ingrid Bergman issue. The poem is called "Golden Day." Some lovely photography by Marta Beveacqua was chosen by the editors to go along with this one. The photo below, meanwhile, best illustrates how I felt about getting something accepted by Literary Orphans twice in one year.

Pinky Tuscadero.

1. And finally, the most viewed post on this blog for 2014, by a mile, was my post about Second City, the famous improv school and theater here in Chicago: You Can Fail Here. What was the big attraction with this post? Why did it get more than double the hits compared to most of the my other posts in 2014? Beats the hell out of me. Second City is a popular and revered place. So is Chicago in general. And failure is always a winning topic--so many of us can relate. I know I certainly could in 2014, between a truckload of rejections I got for other poems and stories I wrote and a fellowship I applied for as well as a huge fire that nearly wiped out my workplace and displaced me and all my co-workers for more than half the year. On the other hand, I think I had a pretty successful year in terms of getting a few things published--this was my first year of submitting regularly after all. I also got a chance to contribute to a couple new great projects: Rockwell's Camera Phone and Booma: The Bookmapping Project.

Still, I really hope 2015 is a better year. I'll have some thoughts on writing goals for the upcoming year in a post within the next couple weeks, and tomorrow I'll hopefully have a post up that reveals some travel plans. Thanks to those of you who have taken the time to read my writing. I appreciate and am helped by any support and encouragement more than you might know.

Chicago in January 2014. Good motto for 2015 too.

Good With The Bad

February was not a good month. I wish that complaint was solely in reference to the perpetually freezing temperatures we've been enduring this year in Chicago, including all through February. But bad weather was just the half of it this past month.

At the beginning of February, the bakery where I work part-time was damaged by a big fire that started in the restaurant right next door. The fire started about 3:45 AM on a Sunday morning in the basement of a Japanese restaurant housed in an old (by American standards) building in town. It took 4 hours for the fire departments (note the use of plural here--several in the area were called out) to put it out. There were two bakery employees--the night bakers--in the building at the time. Fortunately, they smelled smoke and got out in time. So did all the residents and pets who lived in the apartments above the restaurant and elsewhere in the building. But those residents all lost their homes in the fire; the restaurant and a neighboring realtor's office and the town's chamber of commerce were severely damaged and are set for demolition; and the bakery has been temporarily displaced since the morning of the fire. Here's a video with footage of the fire:

While a firewall and the work of the firefighters kept the fire from spreading into the bakery, the bakery got some water and smoke damage and has yet to have its power restored. Until the store can be reopened, the bakery is fortunate in that it has a wholesale facility in a neighboring village where it can bake (but not sell) most of the same products it made at its store location. For 2 weeks after the fire, the bakery sold out of a small room in the village hall (where it kind of looked like we bakery employees were just having a community bake sale). Since then, we've been working out of a temporary location a couple blocks from the original location.

This fire came at an especially bad time for the bakery, as it happened just a few weeks before its biggest time of year, Paczki Fest. Paczki, for those of you who sadly don't know, are Polish jam or cream-filled pastries that are traditionally made and eaten in the days leading up to Ash Wednesday and the long Lenten fast. They're a big deal around here in Chicago, where the Polish population is second in the world only to Warsaw. The bakery I work at is owned by a Polish-American family who have been in the business for decades. During Paczki Fest, the bakery gets more customers than during major holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving and sells nearly 50 varieties of paczki. Needless to say, this fire was one of the worst things that could happen to Chicagoland's north-side Polish and otherwise paczki-loving community. Paczki Fest prevailed, however, and went ahead as always. Never underestimate the power of the paczki.

I wish that was where the bad news of February ended. But near the end of the month one of my mother's closest friends lost a long and very courageous battle with cancer. Though her friend's death wasn't sudden or a surprise, my mother was upset and already misses her friend greatly. She was a unique and strong person and a friend to my mother for over 60 years.

Two days after this came the shocking news that an old friend in Ireland died when he fell into the sea off one of the Aran Islands. He was only in his early 50s. He was a popular man and an unforgettable character, and he was friends with many of the visitors who've come to the islands over the years. He had a mighty laugh. I saw him last time I was in Ireland, last fall. It is hard to imagine the island without him.

It's the 7th of March now. February is over. The cold weather is still here, still being stubborn, and there's still at least 2 feet of snow on the ground around here. But the beginning of this month brought a little good news--for me at least. An essay of mine will be published in an upcoming Irish-themed issue of the wonderful online journal Literary Orphans next month. And some pictures of mine will be featured on a blog project that started up this year that explores the "new Americana," called Rockwell's Camera Phone. I'm thrilled of course. Acceptance always makes me feel like maybe I'm finally doing something right. As with the poems I mentioned in the previous post, I'll post more info and links when the publishing/posting dates arrive for all these pieces.

Hope a better, warmer wind comes along for this 2014 soon.

Chi-Town's Chinatown

Chicago's Chinatown

Saddle up, friends. Today is Chinese New Year and the first day of the Year of the Horse. In honor of this day, I'm sharing some pics of Chicago's Chinatown neighborhood. These pics were taken this past summer, in July or August 2013, on an ordinary weekday in Chinatown. No celebratory firecrackers or dragon dancers, no bad luck spirits needing chasing away, no festivals of lovely lit lanterns. Just Chicago people going about their day in one of the city's better-known south-side neighborhoods.

Summer's day on the streets of Chicago's Chinatown

Looking north on Wentworth Avenue

Of course, it would be great to have some pictures of the firecracking fun going on in Chicago's Chinatown today. But as with every Chinese New Year in Chicago, it's just simply too cold for a street party. It's for this reason I was thrilled to witness a Chinese New Year celebration in Melbourne, Australia, a few years ago. Winter in Chicago is summer in Melbourne. And the summer I was in Melbourne was a genuine scorcher. In honor of the new year, Melbourne's Chinatown was filled with smoke and drumbeats and dancing dragons and swathes of red. It was so much fun, I nearly forgot I was sweating like a horse the whole time...or like an ox (2009's animal, thank you very much). If you'd like a glimpse of what Chinese New Year celebrations look like in warm-weather climates, check out my post on A Melbourne Chinese New Year. Otherwise, enjoy these pics of Chicago's own Chinatown.

Greetings!

The World Is A Commonwealth

Meet me by the peacock

Cannibal cat

All together now...

Benevolent

Fruits for sale

Street watchers

Your lunch

Vegetables for sale

Beauty

Entering Wentworth's Chinatown, sponsored by McDonald's

Saluting hometown heroes

Looking north, red line el tracks running along

Lychees

Church guard

Emperor's Choice

The Pui Tak Center, Chinatown, Chicago

Year of the Link

There's nothing like starting off the day and a new year with a great message. Something lovely and inspiring and life-affirming.

For that reason, I hesitate to post anything on big holidays, especially a holiday with such a high-expectation, wipe-the-slate weight to it as New Year's Day. There's a pressure to post something really profound or witty or original on days with such meaning to them, and I never feel as if anything I have to say cuts the mustard.

I was gonna share a photo with a lovely quote on it about flight from Leonardo da Vinci--until I did some fact checking (it's the former encyclopedia editor in me) and found out da Vinci never said or wrote any such thing. (As I see more and more of these memes and stuff making the rounds on social media, I believe less and less that any of them are accurately attributed, or even quoted. Along with da Vinci, I've seen statements falsely attributed to Oscar Wilde, Marilyn Monroe, Albert Einstein, Rumi, Mark Twain--some of them blatantly out of character and time to the person who is supposed to have said them.) So that leaves me falling back on my own ordinary words and ordinary pictures again.

After thinking it over much of the day, I still can't think of anything worthy of the meaning of the holiday. Anything other than "Happy 2014!!" And also "Thank you" to anyone who's been reading my posts and other work and offering me encouragement and feedback. I appreciate it.

Thank you especially to the person who sent me a personal message and greeting today, to let me know she's been following my blog as she makes her own travels through such places as India and Tanzania and Bhutan on an environmental/agricultural fellowship. It was really unexpected to get a nice message from a total stranger (albeit a fellow wayfaring woman)--and it totally made my day and put a smile on my face. Her name is Lauren, and I've been looking over her own blog and wanted to share the link here. Especially as it looks like she's been doing some really important and interesting work during her recent travels. Here's the link to her blog: There and Back Again: the World Travels of a Watson Fellow. Please take a look. And thank you so much for your thoughtful message, Lauren!

I've been meaning in fact to share a few links lately, so I might as well do that now. This is gonna be the year of the link. Get ready. ;-)

I've made the decision to shut down my personal social media accounts on places like Facebook and Twitter, as they tend to be big time wasters as well as negative triggers for me. I've already shut down my personal Facebook account, and Twitter will go down soon. Instead I've reopened a LinkedIn account last week to help me in finding and sharing freelance writing and editing work. Here's my LinkedIn profile if you'd like to connect to me there.

I also created a Clippings.me profile that compiles some of my publications into an online portfolio. Still adding to it, but it's a good, easy reference to most of my recent writings. Here's the link to my Clippings portfolio. 

If you're hungering for some beautiful writing today (and who isn't), here's a story I like to share. Not one of my own, of course. It's by Laurie Gough, and it's a truly haunting and lovely story about her month spent living on a beach on a Greek island, and a mysterious and life-affirming encounter she had there. It's called Naxos Nights. Check it out.

Finally, here's a picture of me in the snow. We got a ton of it last night and today. Happy Snowy New Year from Chicago, world!

Clear eyes, full heart, red scarf, furry hat--can't lose. ;-)