Timothy Gager News: 2021

Tis' the Season when Top Ten Lists of the year are presented. Before I unveil my Top Ten viewed blog posts, lets not forget the Top 10 Christmas Urban Legends seen on the below video (such as tics on Christmas Trees causing Lyme Disease). Speaking of video, Urban Meyer did not make this list, though he probably made a lot of Top 10 Video lists for 2021 for his viral dancing video. Now how stupid can you be? And speaking of stupid did the joy of the stupid, "Let's Go, Brandon," chant make it on any smart list? No.

On my list below, all the links work, and they'll bring you back to the original post, which you can re-read or just read for the first time, if you are interested.

Here Are the Top Ten Most Read Posts from 2021

- 2021 Spring Schedule for Virtual Fridays Dire Literary Series (4/9-6/25, 2021)
  Features will read 10 minutes at either 7 PM or 8 PM, their preference. To see these events on live stream join Virtual Fridays Dire ...
- REASON: People want to know who is up next for the series, Part 2.
- Jones Woodfin Purcell, December 20, 1955-February 23, 2021
  " The most original singer songwriter in his time period" - Drummer, |Ed Shockey speaking on Jones Purcell "Troubled a...
- REASON: Popular singer-songwriter....The best unknown songwriter of his generation, Jones Purcell
- 2021 Winter Schedule for Virtual Fridays Dire Literary Series (Jan-April 2021)
  Features will read 10 minutes at either 7 PM or 8 PM, their preference. To see these events on live stream join Virtual Fridays Dire L...
- REASON: People want to know who is up next for the series, Part 1
- Reduced Summer and Autumn Schedule 2021 Virtual Dire Literary Series
  July 9 Natalie Brobin Bonfig 23 John Domini August 6 ...
- REASON: People want to know who is up next for the series, Part 3
It's one more. This Goes to 11
If I ever once thought that anyone or anything could give me "the moon and the stars," it would have taken an army to convince me....

REASON: People are pleased with my sobriety, want to know more, want to know how it works?
- Autumn Schedule (back to weekly): Virtual Fridays Dire Literary Series
  Features will read 10 minutes at either 7 PM or 8 PM Eastern Standard Time, at their preference (before or after the open mic). To see ...
REASON: People want to know who is up next for the series, Part 4
- Feeling Cooped Up With No Where to Go? Special Dire Series is going on Zoom, EVERY FRIDAY with a great feature and open mic
  UPDATE 4/23 -Features will read 10-15 at either 7 PM or 8 PM, their preference. To see these events go to Virtual Fridays Dire Literary ...
  
  REASON: People want to know who was up back in , Part 2020? (this one carried over from 2020's list)
- Going Back Into the Wilderness this Spring? Here are the Fiction selections for WHLR Spring 2021 Issue
  It's spring and Vaccination Nation is upon us. Birds are singing, the sky is blue and if you are vaccinated you can do the things you w...
  
  REASON: When the Wilderness House comes out, there is a buzzy-buzz!
- New book, "2020 Poems" to be released by Big Table Publishing, in 2021--blurbs by Nick Flynn, Jennifer Martelli, Yuyutsu Sharma
  “Tell me where to go,” one poem plaintively asks, in this collection written in the midst of a pandemic. Timothy Gager manages to capture ...
  
  REASON: Grateful people want to know about my new book---and did they ever!
- The Resigned Life of a Condo Trustee, published in Great Weather for Media's Anthology, Paper Teller Diorama
  Wow, that's a mouthful. I know Great Weather For Media, the publisher of this anthology, through their sponsored reading series in New Y...
- REASON: Hey! People were interested in something I put out! The only showing of a singular piece to make the list
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In 2022 please remember, this is stupid
and this was just plain stupid

Monday, December 27, 2021

Not Happy to Be Closing Out the Year with a Timely Poem: Occupy Forever

When I heard the news, I wrote a poem, attempting Blaine's style, titled Occupy Forever, for Blaine Hebbel, and Oddball magazine placed in on their website today, which I appreciate greatly.

"Occupy Everything," was Blaine Hebbel's (May 6, 1954-December 18, 2021) rallying cry. It was his mantra, it was how he lived, and mostly how he wanted us all to live. This post isn't a eulogy, I think his obituary does it better than anything I could ever do.

What I do want to mention is Blaine's support of the written word. Blaine would attend the Dire Literary Series in Cambridge, Masschusetts most every month. I could always count on Blaine to attend my own readings on the North Shore. Sometimes it was only a handful of people, plus Blaine, who never could be described as a mere handful. He read from his work those nights like a giant. His beat-like rhymes always slashed their way to the point which supported those who had less.

Blaine also curated A Celebration of the American Voice, for three nights in Ipswich at the Hall-Haskell Houe each April. He had the best of the best read their work, and he was a humble and generous host. True to his dedication of those less fortunate, the event was a fund raiser for Ipswich Food Pantry, My Brothers' Table of Lynn and Everytown for Gun Safety.

That's all I have to end the year with. Occupy, Heaven.

Friday, December 24, 2021

Two Poems ("It Happens in Spring"/"Covid Fears") Published In "Constellations V. 11: Redirections"

Pleased to end the year with a publication in the anthology put out by Nina Rubinstein Alonso. Two poems written in 2021 "It Happens in Spring," about the phenomena regarding the increase in suicide when things begin to bloom. The second "Covid Fears," is obvious from it's title. The timing is perfect as currently I'm isolated for ten days because of an exposure. I've not tested yet, and I feel fine, but will not be exposing others.

Below the pictures of my work are the full list of contributors, and I've included the people I know or met in red! I'd include a link how to purchase, but if you don't know how to buy a book on-line by now....

MK Punky: “The Frog in the Water Set to Boil”

Christine Schott: “Another Introduction to Poetry”
Cassady O’Reilly-Hahn: “Places I Could Have Grieved”
Richard E. Brenneman: “I Must Hope”
Jamilla D. VanDyke-Bailey: “eight & seventeen”
Thomas Belton: “Resonance”
Joseph Hardy: “In a Week of Sun”
Mary Soon Lee: “Directions to Utopia”
CD Collins: “Fade Time”
Lorin Lee Cary: “The Road Less Travelled”
Steve Gerson: “Even a sip to cleanse”
Ken Elliott: “Firemen in a Grocery Store”
Amber Watson: “Wheels in Motion”
Chris Belden: “Trash, Keep, Maybe”
Johanna DeMay: “Unresolved” / “Domestic Terrorism”
Beate Sigriddaughter: “Clipped” / “Cassandra’s Ghost” / “A Girl’s Voice”
Pui Ying Wong: “Practicality” / “Air Show”
Eugene Platt: “How I Escaped the Holocaust”
Erik Moyer: “HIPAA Violations”
Lee Grossman: “Aaron’s Illness”
Sarah Iler: “Map”
Jacqueline Schaalje : “All the things I missed”
Wendell Smith: “Elective Activity Nov. 4, 2020”
Thaddeus Rutkowski: “Changeups”
Terry Allen: “Woodpeckers”
John Hicks: “Burning Privacy” / “Hell Has Its Own Food Chain”
Heather Truett: “Sleeping Beauty”
John M. Davis: “some characters in search of a marriage”
Marc Dickerson: “(Not) The End of the World”
James Croal Jackson: “Going to a Concert”
Michael Estabrook: “because it’s so cold outside”
Kasha Martin Gauthier: “Progression”
Lisa Trudeau: “Temporal Complications of Lunch with an Ex”
Nancy Smiler Levinson: “I Don’t Want to Learn Anything New About Technology” / “Compose Me in a Poem”
Ziaul Moid Khan: “The Mud House”
Jan Ball: “Daily Work” / “His Name First”
Alexander Houk: “Dreaming of a Simpler Life”
Timothy Gager: “It Happens in Spring” / “Covid Fears”
David Donna: “Party Poem” / “Shared Desk”
Virginia Bach Folger: “Vanishings”
Kitty Beer: “Mrs. Professor Bostwick”
Karen Klein: “Night Lights” / “12/31”
Janna Knittel: “Wardrobe” / “In Deep”
Karin Aurino: “Your Name is Second Wife”
Ace Boggess: “A Perfect Sadness”
Tim Suermondt: “Extraordinary”
Krikor N. Der Hohannesian: “At the Edge of the Cliff”
Ed Meek: “Royal Rendezvous in August” / “Boom Box”
Deborah Leipziger: “What is home”
Nathaniel Gutman: “Furtwängler”
Brian Lutz: “Turtles All the Way Down”
Anthony Hagen: “Theory of Ourselves” / “False Theory of Ourselves”
Michael Todd Steffen: “Versus” / “Creature in the Living Room”
Karen Regen-Tuero: “The Promise of Future Happiness”
Jake Bailey: “Portrait of Divorce as a Path to Love”
Peter Grandbois: “The Room” / “And still the heart”
Gaby Bedetti: “Frozen” / “Reception” / “Shadow” / “Vaccine Line”
Eva Eliav: “Autumn 2020: Five Poems”
Cameron Morse: “Night Fright”
Pesach Rotem: “Even in America”
Lo Galluccio: “Two Sonnets for Leah”
Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton: “Revisions”
Gerard Sarnat: “Universal Soldier’s Kaddish for Rolling Thunder” / “Comfy Old Shoe”
DeWitt Henry: “On Wonder”
Bethany Reid: “The Rule of Three”
Zvi A. Sesling: “All’s Well That Ends Well” / “Lost Uncle”
Bert Stern: “Waiting for Rain” / “BSA”
Nina Rubinstein Alonso: “Dizzy Le Carré” / “Turning Lesson”
Kathleen Spivack: “Looking at Water”
Tomas O’Leary: “The Less of Me / “Detente at the Nihilists Convention” / “What You Found”

Thursday, December 30, 2021

My year in Publishing, Readings, Podcasting, and Dire-ing (ALL OF THEM)

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

The most read Blog Posts of 2021 from my "News"

Here Are the Top Ten Most Read Posts from 2021

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Monday, December 27, 2021

Not Happy to Be Closing Out the Year with a Timely Poem: Occupy Forever

Friday, December 24, 2021

Two Poems ("It Happens in Spring"/"Covid Fears") Published In "Constellations V. 11: Redirections"