Poetry in action: Please help save Akron's water supply

You may or may not be aware, but on Monday, January 25, 2021, Akron's City Council plans to vote to sell the mineral rights from LaDue Reservoir to a company that will frack under the reservoir for natural gas.

We need your help. Please contact City Council and Mayor Horrigan and tell them fracking will jeopardize the health and safety of the city of Akron and that we need to reject this deal.

For details about this bad deal and to sign a petition, CLICK HERE.

To contact council, emails are great, calls are better. Find all council members HERE.

Public comments can be sent to publiccomment@akronohio.gov or by calling 330-375-2566.

Finally, this report from the Concerned Health Professionals of New York and the Physicians for Social Responsibility details the latest scientific data on the dangers of fracking, published December 2020. There is a summary on Page 7. The quote that best sums up the report:

        The result is a public health and climate crisis. 

 If you are at all familiar with my poetry over the last several years, you know that ecopoetry has factored in a large way into my work. I've been prompted to share what is an older poem, that sadly remains relevant, and urgently so. Please watch the video, check out the information above, and please act to help us if you can--contact Akron city officials to tell them not to sell the mineral rights, sign and share the petition, or send a comment to be read during the city council meeting on January 25th.

My 2020 Poetry in Review

 Over the last week, I settled my headspace and sent out two year-end submissions--one of which asked for a resume of my writing. While I'd been beating myself up (poetically) for much of 2020 because I hadn't been writing or submitting, updating my poetry resume made me realize I'd done more than I knew in 2020.

Not only did I start off 2020 accepted into the Scioto Winter Workshop for a mind-blowing three days of intense study and writing, guided by the amazing minds of Will Evans and Ruth Awad, but once the pandemic consumed the world's collective attention, I still managed to respond to some of Literary Cleveland's pandemic prompts and was published on their website, and one of those pieces was picked up by Braided Way, an online publication for spiritual writing. And I participated in the collective poetry videos Keith Allison had been producing (thanks, Keith, for your reminders and nudges to get my work out there).

I know a lot of folks did a lot more in the last year, and I congratulate you. I am slowly learning that I don't need to compete with anyone except myself, and I was happy to look back and realize that I did what I was able to do. Here are the links below if you missed them the first time around.

Happy New Year, and I wish you fulfillment, peace, and health in 2021!

Act of God, published in Braided Way

How to Survive Quarantine with Ancient Matriarchal Wisdom, published in Literary Cleveland's Pandemic Prompts