Hi, All! I read this to some people who said it sounded like "The Night Before Christmas" and I said, ''Well, the first day in the garden is a lot like the night before Christmas, in a way. Hope all your gardens are thriving! Phoebe

First Day In The Garden

Nothing to do,

   Such a beautiful day,

So out to the garden

   I went to play.

There with the flowers,

   Veggies and weeds,

When just weeks ago

   I had nothing but seeds.

Welcome, O Spring!

   Yay! It’s finally stopped snowing!

Get up and get out!

   It’s time to get going.

Pull out the shovel,

   The hoe and the rake,

And dream of tomatoes,

   Heirloom and beefsteak.

And of corn that will grow

   So green and so high,

I might need an elephant

   To measure it by.

Noble eggplant and pepper,

   Red radish or pea,

Tender shoots hold the promise

   Of dinners-to-be.

So I water and feed them,

   I nurture and weed them,

I mulch every bed,

   And clip all the dead heads,

I fend off the rabbits,

   the birds and the bugs,

And purchase a 6-pack

   To conquer the slugs.

But nothing’s forever

   And this will not last.

It will soon be September.

   Time passes so fast!

Leaves will be falling

   And nights will turn cold.

My birthday will come,

   To remind me I’m old.

DISCOVERING OLD AGE

   Bette Davis said “Old age is not for sissies.”

   Every day something else happens to let me know how true that is. We did our first summer concert on Sunday, (Sundays at 5, UU Meeting House) and I was faced with the prospect of putting on makeup. In my far away youth, I NEVER went ANYWHERE without full makeup, up to and including false eyelashes. I wore two, sometimes three pairs at once. Don’t forget, it was the late 60’s and Twiggy was the top model. If you don’t know who Twiggy is, look her up. She was really something and we all wanted to look like her. More than once I fell asleep with my lashes on and woke up with my eyes glued shut. Lovely. I don’t wear false lashes anymore, or even much makeup at all, but lately I’ve noticed that when I do, it’s much more difficult to apply. Why, you ask? Let’s start with foundation. First I’d like to say that if I see one more commercial for “age-defying” makeup where the woman demonstrating it is obviously in her mid-twenties, I think I’ll scream. What that says to me is, “Too bad you didn’t take care of your skin when you were my age. Maybe this stuff would do you some good.” Thanks. I really needed to feel better about myself.

   There’s a lot to choosing a foundation. What color is right, now that I have light gray hair? My old shade looks like mud on my face. Too light and I look like Joan Crawford in “Mommie Dearest”. And the stuff manages to find its way into EVERY wrinkle and line, outlining brilliantly what it’s supposed to cover up. ‘Age-defying’? More like “age-defining,” if you ask me. Fabulous. Years of smoking and sun abuse highlighted for all to see. And let’s talk about seeing. How in the heck do you apply eye makeup when you can’t see without your glasses??? “Get a magnifying mirror,” my buddy suggests, so I do, and now my already enlarged pores look like manholes in the New York streets. I can’t bear to look. I think I’ll just throw on a bit of lip gloss and call it a day. That’s what I call growing old gracefully.

Got House?

Hi, All, she wrote optimistically. I’m never sure if anyone reads this. Writing is so different from performing. When I sing for people, I may not be sure they like it, but I’m certain they hear it. If you are reading this, I hope you like it.

The big news this week in town is affordable housing, though it hasn’t been small news for many years now.  When I first came here, oh, so many long years ago, housing was pretty easy. At loose ends, I had driven up from Orleans where I’d been visiting friends after spending the winter at Mt. Snow in Vermont. Lots of people from Provincetown went to Mt. Snow in the winter to work back then, and I’d heard a lot about this place, but hadn’t been here since I was about eight, with my father. (Dad used to say to me and my brother, “Let’s go up to Provincetown and see all the weirdos .” Heh, heh. Little did he know he was, at those very moments, growing his own little “weirdos!” Rob and I laughed about that later.)  Anyway, the year was 1968, and it was April on Cape Cod, so I borrowed a car for a drive and wound up here. After prowling around town for a while, I stopped into The Town House, and next thing I knew, I had a job there. I found a great place to live, at the White Horse Inn, on Commercial Street in the east end. The whole apartment was furnished from the dump. Most people call it the “transfer station” now, but then it was “the dump”, and treasures could be found every day. Old stained glass windows and carved shelf brackets, banisters and newel posts, ice cream chairs, the list was endless. Please don’t picture the pristine setting we all enjoy now. There was no Swap Shop, and garbage was mixed with the good stuff, but the good stuff was there for the taking, and once you got it home and washed it off, there was no telling what you might have. Jackson Lambert, a wonderful artist who lived at the White Horse, was an expert dump-picker, and it was he who had decorated the unit I moved into when I first came to town. It must have been affordable, because I know I didn’t have much money and the paychecks from the Town House took a couple of weeks to kick in. To this day, it counts among my favorite places that I have lived in town.

So, I had a pretty soft landing here, back in 1968, but the workers coming here now are not so lucky. Every year I see them arrive with their luggage all taped up, (what’s that about anyway?), trudging from one real estate office to the next, looking for a place to live. Somehow, every year, they seem to get absorbed by the town, and you can find them working as waiters, or at the supermarket, or in retail on Commercial Street. That takes guts. Even at my most impulsive, I never flew halfway around the world with no place to stay. Yikes! Also, the housing crisis is causing an exodus of people who have lived and worked here for many years, or were part of families who have been here for generations. This is very sad. I miss them: Edel, who did beautiful stained glass, and Teddy, so spiritual, so much fun, and so many others who had to leave because they could no longer afford to stay. It makes me feel insecure at a time in my life when I really don’t want to feel insecure. I could be next. You could be next. One tiny change in one’s life can spell the end of living here. Hummm. This is getting depressing. Think I’ll go for a walk on the beach while I can. 

The Search for an Agent

The Search for An Agent

 I wrote a book. How long I’ve waited to be able to say that! It’s finally happened! So, what now? It turns out the fun has just begun. Now I need to find a way to get someone to read it. Self-publishing was the obvious choice until I discovered that there are over 1500 self-published books hitting the marketplace every day! Wow. That’s depressing. After much agonizing, I have decided to try the traditional route, which involves finding an agent. Okay. In my innocence, I turned to my old friend Google and typed in “Literary Agents”. Only three or four hundred results popped up so I gamely started down the list. Not surprisingly, my eyes began to glaze over by about the fifth result, so I quickly clicked on something, (anything!) and began to read. I learned that I might have more success with an agent who was just starting out, as I am. I also found a booklet that advises me on writing query letters that actually get read. A nice man from Green Ivy Publishing called me but I was out so he left a message. I called him back, but he was out so hopefully we’ll talk tomorrow. This could be good, or it could be someone trying to sell me something. We’ll see. The whole thing is pretty interesting. (Hopefully you think so, too. If not, you’re probably not even reading this.) I’m a real newbie to the book publishing world, even though I’ve written all my life and have even had some pieces published. I’m told it’s very hard to get noticed, but I’m used to that after of years of auditions, etc. (For those who don’t know, and lots of you don’t, I used to be in show biz). Anyway, I’m going to keep a record of this process. Who knows? There might be a “how-to” book in my future. I’ll keep you posted. (Heh, heh. “posted”. Get it?)