Summer Writers’ Conferences
The Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference in Mendocino, California offers “craft seminars, panels, one-on-one-consultations, and open mics.” Registration is now open for the 2023 conference to be held from August 3 – 5. It features keynote speaker Ariel Gore, founding editor of Hip Mama and author of the memoir, Atlas of the Human Heart. www.https://mcwc.org
The Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference in Southern California will be held this year from June 18 – 23 at the beachside Mar Monte Hotel. Celebrating its 50th year, the conference features 30-plus speakers, agents, panels, seminars, and workshops. It can accommodate full or partial week attendees. www.https://sbwriters.com
The Jackson Hole Writers’ Conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, will be held from June 22 -24 at the Jackson Hole Center for the Arts. Featuring a wide range of speakers and craft classes, including a fiction class by Dave Eggers, it offers both day and evening events, as well as individual manuscript critiques. www.https://jhwriters.org
Books Noted
A Field Guide to Nature Meditation
In A Field Guide to Nature Meditation: 52 Mindfulness Practices for Joy, Wisdom, and Wonder, author Mark Coleman describes how to develop a “nature-based meditation practice (Awake in the Wild, 2022) A psychotherapist and senior teacher of mindfulness meditation at Spirit Rock in Marin County, California, he also conducts wilderness retreats around the world. “Nature teaches us simplicity and contentment,” he says, “because in its presence we realize we need very little to be happy.” For all seasons and landscapes, for sitting still or for moving, these 52 meditations are designed to deepen awareness and support a sense of well-being. https://www.markcoleman.org
Climate Champions
Journalist and author of Girl Warriors, Rachel Sarah showcases the lives and work of influential women “on the frontlines of science” in Climate Champions: 15 Women Fighting for Your Future (Chicago Review Press, 2023, 12 years and up). Aiming to create a sustainable future for planet earth, the subjects profiled here “do not shy away from showing how racial and social injustices lie at the root of so many climate-related issues.”
Environmental News
Bats at Risk
White nose syndrome has killed millions of bats in North America since it was first discovered in a cave in upstate New York in 2006, according to a recent article by Wilson Ring (www.https://physorg.com). Of the 154 species found across the United States, Mexico, and Canada, 81 of them are “at risk for white nose infection, climate change, and habitat loss,” the North American Bat Alliance reported last month. The fungus is identifiable by white spots on their noses, which can disturb their hibernation and prompt them to leave shelter in search of food in frigid, deadly temperatures. Yet studies suggest that certain bat populations have evolved “an efficient DNA repair mechanism,” according to virologist Dr. Arinjay Banerjee of McMaster University (PBS News Hour, December 2020), and these bats can “provide hints for possible future medical treatment strategies.”
Bats in Poetry
“…And bats with baby faces in the violet light/Whistled and beat their wings/And crawled head downward down a blackened wall…”
– from The Waste Land, by T.S. Eliot
Many poets have written about bats, including D.H. Lawrence, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Anne Sexton. My favorite is by D. H. Lawrence. Known mainly as a novelist (Sons and Lovers, Women in Love), he had a keen eye for observation that served him well as a poet, too. Titled, simply, “Bat” (from Birds, Beasts, and Flowers, 1923), it’s full of unexpected rhyme and images, alarm and, finally, humor. https://www.poetryfoundation.org
Jerome Gagnon Blog 