Friday, March 16, 2012

Damp, and faintly misty, on this Friday morning. It's a teacher-workshop day, so the boys are still comfortably wallowing. Only the poodle is awake with me, and even she is fading into a nap. I'm glad to have this slow hour because tomorrow at this time I'll already be up and out, with sleepy son in tow, to spend my Saturday with eighth graders selling coffee cake and doughnuts to grumpy old men at town meeting (i.e., those cranks who waste an hour on complaints such as "It says here on the warrant the town spent such-and-such an amount of money on duct tape, and I want to know why the road commissioner  needs so much duct tape"). If I were a knitter, town meeting would be a great venue for finishing a sweater, except that the aggravation would make my stitches watertight.

But that's all in the future. Today I should, of course, be editing furiously. But I might take some time out to watch that Miss Bituminous Coal documentary or research the variations in polka styles or check out some tournament basketball and crow over my thus-far very successful bracket choices. Only last week I was clambering among the rigidities of H. C. Frick, and now here I am immersed in frivolity. That's what happens when one is the minor regional poet-historian of a minor region (although if I were writing a deconstructionist expose of this project I could compose a long passive-voice sentence highlighting the "minor/miner" contiguities . . . which is suddenly leading me to imagine Mad-Libs based on the prose of Lacan and Derrida . . . ).

Anyway, maybe your day will be less silly than mine is shaping up to be.

2 comments:

Ruth said...

Town Meeting for us as well and we too have such individuals. Among my favorite petition warrant articles: to pass a law that no budgets be allowed to increase more than a dollar. I bring a book, the crossword puzzle, the newspaper a journal, waterbottle. I'd like to bring my laptop and work on grades; however, that would mean that I'd need to lug it w me for the upteen ballot votes that someone is sure to request. I TRY to look on this attendance as a civic duty and entertainment.

Maureen said...

We have the equivalent; it's called the HOA. I have to abstain every time I hear it's called a meeting.

Sell well tomorrow; you'll be able to get home faster.

Have a great weekend.