jot/things

Cacophony in the street. It's being dug up to lay new water mains. Been going on all week—concrete cutters, excavators, bob cats, picks & shovels, backhoes, dump trucks—but it's been slow going, about fifteen metres a day, because, like nearly all the elevated land around these parts, it's rock. So now they've brought in the heavy artillery, a jackhammer on the end of a huge posthole-digger on caterpillar tracks.

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I feel sorry for the guys working out there. What seems as if it's going to be a long hot summer has settled in on us. It's about 36° C outside, humid as all hell. I'm inside, fans & airconditioners on, & they're working nominal eight hour days in the full heat, in reflective safety gear. I say nominal, because I note that they have long morning & afternoon breaks, & it's an extended hour that they take for lunch.

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The postman has been. The standout item is a handwritten postcard from Gustave Morin announcing the publication of "one of (his) newest projects, Nein Typos, a suite of typewriter poems", just out from Reed Altemus' Tonerworks.

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I'm waiting for the postal van to come (a) because I'm expecting the dvds of the first half of series four of Battlestar Gallactica which has only gone to tv here on high definition which we don't have & (b) Michael Steven has emailed me from New Zealand to say that a box of Lunch Poems, the chapbook of mine that he's published, is on its way to me for me to sign & number & send back. I'm somewhat excited about it because though this is, I think, my seventeenth book, it's my first "crafted with care in the way that only chapbooks can be done" publication.

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& on the subject of books. I've just received word that a second selection from Series Magritte has been accepted.

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& on the subject of publications. Issue #14 of word for / word has just come out & a couple of my pieces are included.