Two events at Calvert Library

I have just reactivated my neglected blog, neither to tell the world I ate an over-ripe banana for breakfast while watching five deer scurrying for acorns outside the window, nor about a little prize for a very little love poem (which I could add to my nascent blog after it has seen print somewhere), but to spread the word about two events of note at Calvert Library in Prince Frederick, Md.

Tuesday, October 11, 7 pm "Psychological Effects of Combat" Speakers:
Dr. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie, Colonel US Army [retired], internationally-recognized expert on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorders and the problems facing Wounded Warriors and veterans; now chief clinical officer for mental health, District of Columbia;
and passionate advocate for veterans, Nicole Johnson Starr, veteran currently in National Guard, active in working to improve mental health facilities for veterans, police and fire fighters.

Wednesday, October 12, 2-4 pm "Re-Create Your Life: Creative Memoir Writing" workshop with Elisavietta Ritchie, author/editor/publisher. Bring ten copies of 500-1000 of your original words, double-spaced, to share with fellow memoirsts, some of whom are moving into fiction and poetry too.

For more information on both back-to-back events, call the Calvert Library, 410-535-0291.

And while these days are not connected except in calendar time, they were planned independantly of one another.But yes, there is a whiff of nepotism involved.

MONSOON LESSONS

MONSOON LESSONS

After silence of drought, such speech.
From ephemeral alphabets traced in the mud
I'm learning the grammar of rain.
linguistics of flood.

But puddles are illegible
or too murky for strangers to read:
some message about pain
in the wet stammer of weed.

The sun declares the lesson over.
Hardly mastered. In dried ground
spelling crumbles. There remain
only punctuating buds around

what had been sentences. Next storm
I may learn to decipher earth's half
of cloud's thought, or fail again
to finish one fertile paragraph.



[first published in The Christian Science Monitor circa 1977 or 1988;
reprinted in Raking The Snow, Washington Writers Publishing House, copyright 1982 Elisavietta Ritchie; to be in Fresh Water anthology, Puddinghouse Press, 2000.]