I’d like to thank everyone who made a donation for the MS bike ride. The money is for a great cause and it means a lot to me.
Unfortunately, this morning I broke my left ankle bicycling, so I won’t be able to do the charity ride. I intend on making a full recovery and trying again next year.
I will be participating in the 2007 City to Shore MS Bike Tour to help the 11,000 local people living with this devastating disease. Every hour of every day, another American is diagnosed with MS — we need to take action now to help the growing number of people affected by this disease.
Today, there is no cure for MS, but we’re fighting to change that. This is why I am writing to you: I need your help and support. Click here to get to my personal page and make a secure, online donation. Any donation, small or large, will help.
You will be pleased to know that the National MS Society is the leading provider of programs for people with MS and their families. The Society also invests more money into MS research than any national voluntary health organization in the world.
Each one of us can help create a World Free of MS. Volunteer. Advocate. Educate. Donate. Participate. Join the Movement.
P.S. If you would like more information about the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, how proceeds from the MS Bike Tour are used, or the other ways you can get involved in the fight against MS, please visit nationalmssociety.org.
Click below to donate:
www.nationalmssociety.org/goto/Christine-Klocek-Lim
My average seems to be about 5 pages per hour and that’s how much I wrote today. I had to squeeze it in between picking up the kids from school and various other things. 🙂
Finally, I started work on the novel again. It’s been two and a half weeks and I was appalled at how much detail I’d forgotten. I had to reread everything in order to get back into the characters and pick up the story. The good thing about this is that the novel is better than I thought. I haven’t been allowing myself to read over anything because I like revising so much better than writing the first draft; it’s very easy for me to get stuck on fixing one or two sentences for an hour, but then I’d never get any of the rest of the novel done. What this means, though, is that I was afraid that what I’d written so far was terrible, and because I wouldn’t let myself read through it I had no way to tell until today.
The bad news is that I only got four pages done. This is because I was putting the finishing touches on Autumn Sky Poetry so I could send out the DRAFT to my contributors. And also I had to clean the bathroom. During which I cut my finger. This made typing very painful, so I had to go slower. Thus: four pages instead of fifteen. Oh well. That’s it for today. Gotta get a bicycle ride in before I go insane. It’s been two days and already my legs are freaking out from the inaction.
14 pages yesterday. 16 pages today. I can see why writing a novel takes so freaking long. It feels like only a few minutes have passed, but in reality it’s been three hours. And now my left eye is twitching. Time to stop, exercise, eat lunch.
Editor John Amen will host a Pedestal Magazine event at the Manayunk Art Center in Philadelphia, PA on May 6, 2007 starting at 3PM. This event is sponsored by Peter Krok, humanities and poetry director of the Manayunk Art Center and editor of Schuylkill Valley Journal. Participants will include Arlene Bernstein, Christine Klocek-Lim, Peter Krok, Anna Evans, Dan Maguire, John Bourne, Adele Bourne, Yvonne Chism-Peace, John Capista, Amy Small-McKinney, Rosemary Cappello, Eileen D’Angelo, Kelley White, and Tree Riesener.
*expired*
napowrimo – 22 april 2007
© 2007 Christine Klocek-Lim
note: Normally I would not post this sort of poem so close to the tragic event (if I ever posted it at all). But since this is the poem I wrote today for napowrimo, please be aware that I intend no disrespect to the victims, survivors, or family members.
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To my surprise, I seem to be getting some good poems out of this month’s foray into terror (writing a poem-a-day). The poems are good enough for me to shove them out into the ocean, a practice otherwise known as submitting to literary journals.
Because a great many editors consider posting to a personal blog = the poem is published, I will be removing the poems I post for napowrimo after a few days (i.e. *expired*). If there is a poem you like, feel free to email me and I’ll send you a copy of it for your personal perusal. Thanks for reading.
THE COUNTDOWN #20 with Bob Marcacci is live. Featuring Arlene Ang and poems by:
01) Ann Bogle “Basal distance”
02) Rachel Dacus “Wine Under a Fig Tree”
03) Craig Hill “South of Clark” – Craig Hill’s Poetry Scorecard
04) Christine Klocek-Lim “Children, do not mourn the snow”
05) Rick Mullin “Amtrak Cheeseburger, Northeast Corridor”
06) Shelia Murphy – “if as if whole daylight came to be” – As/Is poet
07) Maurice Oliver – “When the Daring Among Us Flirt”
08) Pearl Pirie “Old Uncle”
09) Wm. Rike – “Crone on Time”
10) Jordan Stempleman – “The Eye”
Listen to it:
Here’s my poem:
Children, do not mourn the snow
There is fear we say. Snow breaks over our feet.
The school bus drives away, a blizzard of young faces
at the windows. We fall sometimes when ice changes
the earth and to reassure ourselves we insist
there are no disasters here. But the day meanders
against our impatience as snow engulfs our bus
again and again. Inside, children carve frost-flowers
down from the windows to watch them melt against skin.
They barely noticed the drive begin while we floundered
on the curb, swiping at the cold. The shock of it all cornered
our voices until we examined the damage that silence makes
and waved goodbye too late. When the bus comes home again,
we kiss our children’s faces, pinked in this weather, turned up
into the wind that frosts the afternoon with light.
© 2007 Christine Klocek-Lim
Christine Klocek-Lim 