Hi there. So, I went to log into my website, www.sheilamcmahon.com, only to discover that it is gone. It is now an advertisement. So I am faced with the question of whether I would like to reup with it – and the answer is, I don’t think so right now. I haven’t been doing anything with it. I had a large section of my unpublished but basically finished novel, Someotherville ,posted, with some glaring errors that haven’t been corrected yet, and that was the whole thing. I don’t know enough about websites to make a really good one, and frankly, I really like wordpress, and I don’t think I need a different site.

I am considering posting part of Someotherville here, but I don’t know if I want to yet. I have been thinking over the fact that I haven’t made a concerted effort to get it published. I don’t know what stops me – I’m happy with the book, I think people would enjoy it – there’s no reason not to work harder, finish the last round of corrections, rework one section just a tad more, because I had a revelation about it, and then send it off to —who? That’s the big question, I guess.

But the small question of whether I should contact the website people and get my site back is easy – no. Not necessary. And if some other Sheila McMahon (and there are a lot of us) should snag it, then good for her.

I’m glad I still have my wordpress blog, and perhaps I should start with rededicating myself to posting here every day. I find myself putting things on facebook that would be more appropriate here, anyway.

Hey what up?  Sorry I haven’t been writing much – the fall is hard for me, and I get myself into a funk.  I was somewhat depressed over the weekend, but now I have an idea for a new project for one of my classes.  It’s actually an idea that I read somewhere else a few weeks ago, but I have ideas as to how I’m going to use it.  It’s a memoir project.  The idea is that for each letter of the alphabet, you tell a different story from your life.  You might say, A is for Accident, and then tell about an accident that you had.  We are going to do one letter a week.  Meanwhile, we are still going to work on memorizing a poem, and we are going to talk about the mechanics of poetry.  We will also read some other people’s memoirs.  Yeah!  I am so excited about this work.  Can’t wait to get started.  I think we will start with my favorite idea generator ever – you take about 5 minutes and write down a list of all the people you can remember from your life.  From there, you make a list of important moments in your life… using that list to come up with ideas for your memoirs.  Ok, have a good day.  <3 Sheila

It’s Saturday, and I have had quite a day.  I wouldn’t be able to point out any one thing from today to sum it up, rather, it’s been a hodgepodge of strange events, sharp contrasts, old memories gurgling, and artistic ambition calling.

The most important thing I did today was hang out at the Sculpture Garden by the Walker.  I have been thinking a bit about what I want the cover of Someotherville to look like, and I had an idea.  Let me go get my notes, and I will tell you what I was thinking:

Make a scale model of the Irene Hixton Whitney Bridge and the Sculpture Garden out of yarn and wire, both knit and crochet.

Steps:  Measure and inventory – 10-17-09 11 am

One of my regular footsteps = 1 (one stitch???)

For park, walk, keep track of where sidealks go.  For sculptures, walk around them, as clas as possible, estimate hight, sketch.

Don’t use the Internet.  Do the math myself.  If it’s not perfect, that’s ok.  Loring?  Maybe trail off like an apron – part f loring, but certainly not all.

When this is done, photo of my version = cover art.

Tday I was thinking of some new project, if each step we take in life is like a stutch, we could map a day = wat to do with thime in car, though?  Yarn would just stretch loose until the next place – stitch where your feet hit the groind”  Stimfferer to make yarn math up woth roads?  Or wire?  could do this sti hing on a street map…

I was just thinking of how I feel more and more that I am turning into an artist, and I look up to see:

A sketch I did while sitting in the car next to Loring Park

sacrificed everything through no intent

wanted to hold on, yet there it went

no hand holds in reach now

just one cold marble stone

and memories ricocheting

song fragments say it best

and allow me to lay my head

down to rest in a world

where a 21 gun salute

or a memorial held in a gym

are all that’s left of

him and him, those events

and the thoughts in my head

my unreliable, mortal memories

I hope they are enough.

Hey there.  So, I am considering whether I should be writing more.  I have been teaching this year, and that has been going fine, but I’m not sure if I want to find a way to pursue writing, too.  I really enjoyed the process of writing Someotherville, and I think that I might want to go into an MFA program for writing.  This is questionable, though, because it’s a big risk.  I don’t know if I would get in, I don’t know how it would go.  Do I have another novel in me?  I think I do, but I don’t know what it is yet, so I’m not sure whether it’s the right thing to do.  The first one isn’t even published – yet.

Do I have the kind of dedication that it would take to commit my life to writing?  I think that I do.  If I set things up right, if I was in a position to have time to write, I would certainly write.  I had planned to write this summer, but the summer was too sad.  Waiting and hoping for Jay’s dad to get well, and the fact that he didn’t, well, that kept me from writing and from finishing my M.Ed.  I plan to finish my M.Ed. in the next two months, and then after that???  Who knows – keep teaching high school?  Or turn my life upside down in a mad attempt to be a writer.  I know which one sounds more appealing…  a little adventure, a little risk.  I can go back to teaching if I need to – and don’t get me wrong, I love teaching, but I love writing, too.  Guess I have some thinking to do.

Hi.  Jay and I went to go see the Sun Machine Co-op tonight at Lily’s 3301 Central Ave NE in Minneapolis.  I thought they were good and entertaining.  Lily’s is a nice place where you can get a good cup of coffee.  Jay had a nice hummus and vegetable sandwich, too.

I didn’t pay tons of attention to the first guy that was on, since we were eating outside, but I liked what I heard.  Then Wallace Wylie came on.  We know him, and I play his first disc fairly often, so we went in.  I like him a lot.  He writes thoughtful lyrics and I like to try to catch all of them as he sings.  I thought he would play some from his first disc, but it turns out that he’s working on a second, and so it was all new songs.  (new to me, anyway!)

After that, Brian David played.  I really like Brian’s guitar playing.  The last time we saw him he played with his band The Pharaohs of Rhythm.  This time he started with someone on keyboard and someone with a (?) drum, and then he played some songs solo.  The music was very mellow and he has a nice voice.  It all went too fast!

I am not a music critic, so all I can say is that I enjoyed this evening a lot, and would recommend going out to see these guys.  It’s cool to support local music, and they don’t hurt your ears. 

Hi I am just mad because I read an article in the Strib regarding our darling Tim spreading his budget across other agencies in Minnesota.  This makes him look like his budget is slimmer than it is.  I guess I wouldn’t care, except that he generally tries to play it off like he’s this great fiscal conservative, and he seems to be thinking of running form Prez, and people just might buy his line of reasoning if they don’t know the truth.

And President Pawlenty is just not a epithet I want to be spitting out in another 6 years…

He’s hiding his true costs by doing this.  Much like a heavy gambler might hide their losses on a secret credit card.  I hope people see this when they read this simple little article, and keep it in mind in the future when they hear about his great conservatism – don’t even get me started on the idea that all of us have had no new taxes since he started… suffice it to say that shuffling your costs off to an alternative accounting system is not a valid savings plan, Mr. Governor.

http://www.startribune.com/politics/state/56646752.html?elr=KArks:DCiUHc3E7_V_nDaycUiacyKUUr

It’s a new day today.  I hope that you awoke feeling refreshed.  After all of this grief and loss this month, it feels good to have a lot of rain – it feels refreshing and cleansing.  I am not saying that I am ‘over’ any thing – not sure that I will ever be, but the sting is abating and acceptance is taking its place in my heart and mind.  We are still assessing damage done to long standing relationships – thought they were mighty oaks, but I guess they were as shallow as willows.  There are still a lot of hurt feelings, and I’m not sure that will ever be resolved.  Still going to take it one day at a time, and for now I’m going to go make a batch of pancakes.

In the last ten days, I have lost my dear father-in-law and my mentor from high school and college.  It has been an emotional time, there have been a funeral and a memorial, lots of connections with people I had, until this week, lost touch with, and lots of new connections with family members I had never met before this.

If you knew these two people, it would probably seem strange to read me writing about them both in the same essay as they were so very different from each other in what they did for a living – one was a teacher, and the other was a man of many hats, but generally a salesman.  They came from different generations, and had different takes on most things, but I’m sure they would have gotten along tremendously.

One thing that they had in common was that they both were larger than life.  They knew what they had – that life is precious.  The could both tell stories for hours and make you laugh and laugh.  They were both mesmerizing.  And they both were universally loved.

What I loved about each of them is that I always felt like I was seen.  I was an interesting person to them.  My ideas mattered, and I was more able to articulate them through knowing them.  Ert, especially, helped me with this.  I was in his Speech class in high school, and I took it so, so seriously.  I remember writing and rewriting my speeches.  I wanted them to be perfect, to strike the right tone, to say the right things.  I never took any of my other assignments in high school so seriously.  Any of them.  Never.

Now I am probably taking this blog too seriously.  I have started it several times over the past two days – it seems impossible to strike the right tone and tell you exactly why I loved these two people so much.  But maybe it’s not important that it be perfect, maybe I have only to say that I did love them both, and that both of them have shaped my life in ways that they will never know, and that I will try to be as natural and wonderful and loving as they both were.

The ghost of Tyrone Guthrie

wavers and walks again

across the city in which he slept

built dreamed thought acted

action impacting thousands

even as his body rests

and his face, always larger than life,

stares for a time down Washington Avenue

while we walk, jog, run

acting on the small stage of Minneapolis

under the influence

of the flour sacks

and the ruins of mills

We know our bones won’t last as long

as the stone arch bridge

even with its trusses

its heart surgeries and such

our time is a moment

and we still do not understand the nature of time.