February is being less kind to us than January was. It got down into the teens last night. Just a week ago I noticed we had Tulip bulbs coming up already - this can't be good.
I suppose all the warm weather we have been having has only intensified my lust for baseball season. I have actually paid far less attention to off-season deals this year than normal. I'm not sure why, it isn't for any loss of interest in the game.
Baseball and poetry have a lot in common. There is this saying in baseball that the season is too long to let the win get you too high or the loses take you too low. I think the same advise is good for writers, especially poets. You can easily ride the crest of a wave with a success one day and find yourself swallowed by the surf the next. As a result, it's best to try to stay on a more even keel with you emotions as they relate to your work. Besides, what didn't work last week can become the cornerstone for something different this week. That is just the way it seems to work.
Turning colder should put me in the mood for the Winter Olympics. The winter games are far more interesting to me than the summer games. The sking and figure skating are my favorites. I love the alpine jumps. It just looks so utterly awesome when they are mid-air and leaning way forward. I remember many years ago at one of the Winter Games, perhaps Lake Placid, there was a guy who represented England that they dubbed "Eddie the Eagle" that came to the Olympics as a novice. It was such a trip to watch him. I think I and a million other men must have been living vicariously through him on every attempt.
I was thinking this morning about the relationship between poetry and other things in terms of a scale of importance. I'm guessing most put it pretty low. I'm not speaking specifically in terms of education, but let's take that as an example.
You are going to budget for your overall curriculum. I'm going to give you $100 to represent that portion that is the total education budget. (I know it is low, but play along with me. Remember Bush is president and we are spending $8 billion a month on Iraq so we don't have much to spend.)
So we have to fund the following with our $100:- Math department
- English Department (reading, grammar, language usage)
- Social Studies - History / Civics / Contemporary Issues, etc.
- Physical Education (non- sports team)
- Poetry
- Music
- Art ( painting, Photography, Sculpture, etc)
- High School Sports (team and individual sports program / after school. Football, baseball, basketball, track, tennis, golf, swimming, etc)
- Foreign Language
- Shop / Home making, etc.
There you have what needs to be funded. I'd like to hear from some of you how you'd divide up your $100 budget and use your best argument to make your case - or none at all if you just want to do the math and let it stand on the merit of your priority itself.
Go to it - this should be interesting.
