Anchorage to Talkeetna by Rail

Perhaps the best thing in the world is to be married to someone you consider to be your best friend—that one person you enjoy spending time with more than anyone else you know, especially when you share similar sensibilities and interests. Both Christi and I wanted to go to Alaska, and we both didn’t have any interest in a luxury cruise.

From the earliest planning for the trip, we agreed that some train travel would be a blast. We’d heard that the Alaskan rail line offers some of the most amazing views you could imagine and that the rail cars were designed for excellent sight-seeing with an observation deck. All true! The train crew was cheerful, helpful, and knowledgeable. And the food was quite good too.

We were only on the train for two days out of our entire trip. The pictures here are from the first day as we traveled from Anchorage to Talkeetna. While not nearly as scenic as the second day of travel, you have to agree it was beautiful!

Slight Slow Down

With the beginning of the school year, my life seems to be slowing down again a bit. What it means for me is that the whirlwind of summer (when my wife and I take our trips and try to enjoy the time that she’s home from her job as a media specialist) has come to an end, for the time being. We don’t have kids—just a rascally dog that keeps us hopping—so things get quieter for me during the school year. Also this summer was insane in terms of what I tried to pack into it: trip to Alaska, trip to Maine, launch of poetry press, and continued effort for Georgia Poetry Society.

In the next couple of blogs, I suspect I'll talk about my summer in some more depth. Just in photographs alone, I could easily blog hourly until the next millennium.

Here's another sample of the sights from Alaska:

Whew!

Where to begin? It’s been months since I wrote anything for this blog—with good reason! I’ve been to Alaska for an 11 day vacation. See the picture below. I’ve teamed up with Ron Self in starting our very own poetry press: Brick Road Poetry Press. Our start up entailed me typesetting, formatting, proofreading, and correcting the text. Also I laid out the cover and formatted that. Our first book is due out in about 2 weeks, entitled Dancing on the Rim by poet Clela Reed. I’m very proud of it already since I find Clela’s poetry to be top notch. This is not just another poetry collection. It’s one that rewards the reader the first time through and the tenth time through. On top of all that I’ve been working my normal day job at the church, and presiding over the Georgia Poetry Society. Recently I’ve been sinking a lot of time into the pre-planning and publicity for our next quarterly meeting on July 25th. Whew! There’s good reason why I feel like I’ve got three full-time jobs.

I also want to put out a big thanks to Jerri Beck, Robert Boliek, Suzanne Coker, Jim Ferguson, Irene Latham, and Barry Marks, The Big Table Poets, for coming from Birmingham to Columbus, GA for our first Thursday of the month poetry reading on July 2nd. Their presentation was outstanding! I can’t wait to read their new collection EINSTEIN AT THE ODEON CAFÉ.