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

      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. 

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Here Are the Top Ten Most Read Posts from 2021

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    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. 
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    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
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    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   ...

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  • REASON: People want to know who is up next for the series, Part 3 

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    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....

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  • REASON: People are pleased with my sobriety, want to know more, want to know how it works?

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    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 ...

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  • REASON: People want to know who is up next for the series, Part 4
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    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 ...

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    • REASON: People want to know who was up back in , Part 2020? (this one carried over from 2020's list) 
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    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...

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    • REASON: When the Wilderness House comes out, there is a buzzy-buzz!
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    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 ...

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    • REASON: Grateful people want to know about my new book---and did they ever!
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    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...
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    • 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
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  and this was just plain stupid
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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. 

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”
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• 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”

Jan 2022-March 30, 2022: Winter Schedule Virtual Fridays Dire Literary Series

 To attend/subscribe join this Group  (click the link) or comment on this blog

January 

7 Jerry Stahl

14 Renuka Raghavan

21 Jessica Cuello

28 Jen Knox

February  

4  Daniel Biegelson

11 Alison Stine

18 John Rosenthal

25 Pete Crowley

March

4  Maggie Doherty

11 Erin Khar

18 Elan Barnehama

25 Marguerite Bouvard

Replay Central: Autumn 2021 Features at Virtual Fridays Dire Literary Series

AT REPLAY CENTRAL:

Watch all the readings and interviews from September starting with DeMisty Bellinger, and ending in December with Blake Butler

9.10.21 DeMisty Bellinger (Recorded from Star Island)

9.17.21 Cheryl Pappas (Recorded From Owings Mills)

9.24.21 Matt Bell

10.01.21 Michael Keith

10.08.21 Gloria Mindock

10.15.21 Molly Gaudry

10.22.21 CD Collins

10.29.21 Kevin Prufer 

11.05.21 Beth Robinson/Chris Joseph (Recorded from Williamstown)

11.12.21 Alina Stefanuscu

11.19.21 Meg Smith

11.26.21 Gregory Wolos

12.03.21 Damian Dressick

12.10.21 Jason Wright

12.17.21 Blake Butler 

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. But here we are, and the picture to the right is what I have today, eleven years of sobriety. It really feels like I've been given the moon and the stars because after I got past the early nightmare of "getting sober" my life has been boundless, with limitless possibilities

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

                                                                                                                                  --Carl Sagan 

       Well, Carl, I'm feeling you, as I did get help, and it did come from  within that lonely speck called Earth, because I couldn't get it done without other humans as well as elsewhere than that. 

       In the best-selling anthology, The Epiphanies Project, included essay of mine was published about when the stars aligned in order for me to seek help. I won't tell that story here, because this blog isn't about that,  but check it out when you get the chance! 

       As they say, no one rushes into their first AA meeting as if they are the center of a ticker-tape parade, and full of celebration. No one runs in euphorically and shouts out with excitement that they are there. Like everyone else who had done this, I was broken, and desperate, slithering in, wanting help but hoping not to be noticed. 

     Also, by accepting all this I had to realize that my life as I knew it was over, and I was to accept my 'punishment', which was what I was doing for the life I had been living. My punishment was having to go someplace in order to be helped. I would hang out with all of the other losers being jailed for what they did as alcoholics. Life was going to be bleak, and depressing hanging out with all of those defeated people. 

     After forcing myself to continue and not give up or give in I began to notice a few things. I began to notice that these people weren't suffering but were pretty damn happy that they no longer having bad things happen to them. People were also grateful for little things, more spiritual in their own individual way, and less self-centered. These were good people who were sick, and they were great for wanting to get better. 

    As I learned to accept the new me, and I discovered that I liked who I was. I learned to listen and to help others, and that what I was doing was treatment or medicine, not punishment for years of drinking irresponsively.  And now all these 24-hours, a little more than 4,000 of them, all the way up to today, November 6, 2021---it has eleven years since I last had a drink, and my life is as good as it has ever been. 

Just saying, I was given the moon and the stars, it just was on a medallion, and I didn't have to land on the moon, nor was it a "GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND," but it was a big one for me, which was as personally miraculous as going up in a rocket and walking around in unchartered territory. 

And of course, 11 is one more than 10