Finally, after days of rain and snow and ice and rain, we've got a sunny day in the forecast. I expect the ground will be too saturated for actual gardening, but at least I can get outside to pick up sticks and branches from the ice storm and soak in some spring air.

I'm behind on housework and groceries because I had to spend yesterday in the basement ballroom of the Holiday Inn hawking the wares of Monson Arts to members of the Maine Council on English Language Arts. But it turned out to be a pretty useful day: not just spreading the word about the conference among teachers but also confabulating with various teaching poets and writing organizations about how we can best work together with our resources to support literary education in the state. There's a notable lack of territorial defensiveness among the people doing this work. Partly that's because Maine is huge, so there's plenty of geographical need for all of us. Partly that's because our organizations have varied approaches to writing with young people, and that variety is useful and necessary. Probably next year I ought to do a presentation at this conference, not just sit behind a table. But that's a decision for another day.

I didn't expect to run into so many colleagues. I still tend to think of myself as a lone poet-wolf prowling around the edges of town. But that's not true. To be sure, Monson Arts isn't very well known among teachers around the state. This is the big reason we decided to set up a table at the conference: to promote ourselves as an educational resource. But all of the work I've done independently and through organizations such as the Telling Room, the Frost Place, and Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance has accrued. Yesterday I kept surprising myself. Who knew that I would be the person who kept saying, "Hey, I'd like you to meet . . . "? Who knew that the state poet laureate would launch herself across the room to give me a hug and say, "Dawn, I need to talk to you about this idea I have for a teaching project. . . . "? I always think I hate these kinds of events. I always think I hate the word networking. But that, in fact, was what yesterday was about. And it was not only useful but joyful.

When you're committed to the moral righteousness of your mission, networking and marketing are a whole lot less terrible. This sounds like such a pompous thing to claim, but it's true. I believe wholeheartedly in the value of the work I do with young people and with teachers, so why not forthrightly say so? It's not like I'm a snake-oil salesman. Still, publicity is always a challenge for me. I constantly fight against my engrained instincts: "extinguish your light," "don't show off so much."

At the same time, our educational team at Monson Arts is in an enviable position. This winter we were awarded significant funding for our high school studio programming--enough to keep us going for up four more years, if we receive some matching grants. Not only can we maintain our current programs, but we will able to do outreach work in schools, hire guest artists to extend our network, bring in teams from other arts organizations . . . The possibilities are vast, and the question now is how do we make best use of these resources? how do we best serve students, teachers, schools, and teaching artists, in the short term and in the long run?

I've never had this luxury before. Even in organizations with established reputations, our big dreams constantly collided with no budget. Yet luxury is daunting in its own way. Monson Arts has resources. We have a mission. We are also faced with various coiling tangles: idealism about art versus local indifference to art; students who long for opportunities versus students who scoff at opportunities; teachers who value artists as partners versus teachers who are suspicious about our intentions; administrators who want to foster connections with our programs versus administrators who could care less about the arts. And then there's the giant geographical challenge.

Still, it's an enviable problem. And it's exciting to imagine the future. I'm almost sixty years old, and I have to be realistic about how long I'll be playing a part in this story. I hope, though, I can help figure out a few things for the next person who comes along.