Surreality

I doubt that any people anywhere are quite as weather-obssessed as Midwesterners, and Minnesotans in particular.  So I apologize to those who aren’t really interested, but the weather this winter is so strange that I can’t help but write about it.  Today–January 5–a day on which the average temperature Park Rapids, MN is 5 degrees Fahrenheit, it is 51 degrees.  This is a new record. 

We did have a bare dusting of snow around Christmas, and the jubilation was universal.  Local Facebook friends’ status updates were all about sledding, or skiing or snowshoeing.  It was only a couple of inches (now mostly gone), and I had visions of my friends and neighbors all suited up in their snow pants and parkas, standing by the back door with skis or sleds in hand for hours, watching intently out the window, and running outside whooping at the first sign of a flake.  We do like our winters up here in the North Country.

All of this strangeness should lead to some interesting poems.  Time will tell. I just can’t shake a feeling of unease and impending…..something.  It’s just too weird.

I’m hoping that the next session of Writing the Short Poem–my online Loft Literary Center class–fills up, and I start teaching it again in February.  There’s still time to sign up!  Just click on the course title above.

Meanwhile, the season of impatience for grant and fellowship application results has arrived, snow or no snow.  I have three major applications out there, and by the end of Feb., I will have results from two of them.  One is for a really interesting collaboration with visual artist Tiffany Besonen that will result in a travelling gallery exhibit.  Cross your fingers for us, and do a snow dance!