An Audience

 Yesterday I attended a workshop sponsored by the Long Island Writing Project (LIWP).  The subject of the workshop was blogging.  A number of my colleagues are devoted members of the LIWP, and so I felt encouraged to show up to the Zoom meeting.  Everything is on Zoom these days.  

Today, as I try to control myself from staring out my greenhouse window at all the snow coming down, I will write about my proposed blogging audience.  For starters, I think it's incredibly vain to think that my students will actually read my bogging blog, but, on the off chance that they do, some of what I write about will likely be about those topics I review with them in class from week to week.  Next, I think the other theme to my blog will be simply to write as descriptively as possible about other things that I encounter during my time in Pennsylvania.

Being quarantined in the Pennsylvania countryside, miles away from the nearest town, has both its upsides and downsides.  I've been living at my house in Pennsylvania since March 10, 2020, with only two trips back to New York separating that date from today.  While under normal circumstances (read: non pandemic circumstances) I do spend a lot of time at my house in Pennsylvania.  There is so much to like about living at the top of Mount Wismer.  For starters, it's incredibly peaceful up here.  I think you'll probably come to observe that I absolutely abhor noise pollution.  

I grew up in the countryside of Northern California, so, to this country boy, living anywhere in or near the New York City metro area is like living inside the guts of a noisemaker.  You know what a noisemaker is!  It's one of those silly metal objects shaped like a small rectangular tin of sardines with a knob on the edge of the broad underside that you hold between your thumb index finger.  Holding the knob, you twirl the object in a clockwise fashion and it makes a mean 'rat-a-tat-tat' thrumming sound as long as you keep it twirling.  Yes, to me, that's what it sounds to live on Long Island.  In order to sleep when I'm on the Island, I have a sound conditioner.  I'll talk about that another time.

I'm distracted again.  Only this time it's because the sun is finally peaking through the clouds again and it's time for me to go out and shovel some snow.  I think I'll close here so I can go out and do a good job of shoveling before dark.  It'll be dark in another hour.


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