Half full, half empty, or a third option

Locks along the River Seine in Paris.

I am still here. It has been six months since I posted, and I’ve probably lost all but one of my regular readers (bless your heart, Nels). In fact, the poem I posted last was written months before I added it to this blog. Where have I been?

Like most people in this pandemic world, home. My writing partner and I finished revising a manuscript and sent it off to the publisher. I did travel a bit – visited my nephew’s family in Paris in early December. That was lovely. Celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas with my own family. Read some books. Knitted some mittens. Revived a book idea and am trying to nurture it back to life. Struggled, like most people, with hope and despair as I read the news. But I am back. 

As a former newspaper writer, I am used to thinking about who is reading my work and what they need to know about a subject. But writing a blog is different. I have no idea who is reading this, whether they need to know – or want to know – anything about my subject. And my subject changes faster than the climate-challenged weather outside my window. But people tell me – and I must agree – that I need to write. Whether I know my reader(s) or not. Since I no longer have an assigning editor, here goes.

I am still jogging/walking around my neighborhood, relying on podcasts to distract me from my minor aches and pains. Sunday I listened to David Tennant, the British actor, interview Stacey Abrams. It was almost like going to church. If you like Dr. Who, liberal politics and the sound of well-used English, I heartily recommend it. You can find David Tennant Does a Podcast on several lists. This particular episode was recorded on April 17, 2020. Here is one highlight.

Asked whether she is an optimist or a pessimist, Abrams says she is an ameliorist. The proverbial glass is half full, she says, but it is probably poisoned. It’s up to her to find the antidote, so that we can drink from the glass and not perish. It’s the perfect metaphor for her philosophy that democracy requires active and unrelenting participants. A perfect spark that can light a fire in someone searching for hope.