Rainey Blogs on Some Days

In recent years, I've noticed that I do not readily jump up in October, run upstairs and pull the air conditioners out of the windows, and take them down the stairs into the basement to store them away for the winter. I had realized this last November when I took those burdensome boxes out of the bedroom windows and carried them down. This made me think that I was in pretty good shape, especially since our bedroom air conditioner was about 30 years old and was huge, heavy, and unruly. My body managed to get the AC down to the basement by myself (a drawback in life of having only daughters), but my mind kept telling me with each precarious step down the stairs “you're getting older, you've got nothing left to prove, you don't need this, so just stop using this ancient old heavy air conditioner and replace it with a new, lighter one.” This annual rite of passage with the air conditioner is a way I've watched myself age over the past ten years. There were years whe

Original Draft of "Barbecue Grill," from Touching Other Worlds, pg. 1   Original Draft of "Barbecue Grill," from Touching Other Worlds, pg. 2

Now that my book has been out for over a year now, I've gotten lots of good feedback by email and in person at book and poetry readings. Here's what people are saying about Touching Other Worlds : “ Not horrible . . .” “ Brave . . .” “ Better than I thought it might be.” “ He'll be a good writer some day!” “ Finally some manly poetry for a change.” “ Not half bad, especially for a descendant of Midwestern farmers.” “ Very rare collection, indeed . . .” “ Liked it better than I thought I would.” “ Moved me to tears . . .” “ This poetry is definitely other-worldly . . .” “ Rainey's poetry is unbelievable . . . unimaginable” “ Reminded me of buses and diesel fumes . . .” “ Woven in transluscence throughout . . .” “ Lifted me out of the doldrums” “ Waiting for the German translation.”

The winds started in on Monday and apparently gusted to almost 90 mph. Our big tree survived in front in the high winds, but power went out Monday evening and still hasn't been restored. Just in case, I tied my leg to the bedpost during the height of the storm because it was really windy. We are partying like its 1899, playing board games and sleeping good in the deep darkness without light pollution. It gets a little chilly, but not bad. Water heater works--notice I didn't say "hot" water heater!--so we do get warm showers. My work has been up and running since Tuesday, so I made it in on Wednesday and can get on the Internet from here. I drove 24 miles to work this morning and saw only three gas stations with gas. Each had lines of 1/4 to 3/4 mile long. I've heard the people were acting really nice. I've been fortunate since Marcia sat in the car in line on Wednesday for an hour and filled up my car. It looks a little like Russia here, or at least what I i