Red fur, blue collars and arts all, folks!

What a day...and it is only noontime here.

Spoke with people from both the Appalachian Education Initiative and Arts Monongahela this morning. Everything still seems on track and I will be working with ArtsMon in the next few days to start cycling up the local publicity on "The Morgantown Suite Poems". Should be fun!

Got some notes from Dan McTaggart, the blue collar poet who is writing one of the intros to "The Compleat Panther Cycles" for me. It is nice to know that people still squirm when they read the 10th cycle...it is erotically charged and very evocative.

And I spent a length of the morning in exchange with the other locked-in introduction writer for the CPCs...this name may mean nothing to you unless you are a regular reader of my poetry, or from the olden days...but

Brigit

has come out of retirement. Yes, the "Goddess of Fire and Poetry" and "the Crimson Panther" has resurfaced to write a rather brilliant introduction to the works. Although I can't say enough about how "catty" some of her statements regarding her predecessor are. Such is life. Predatory felines will be predatory felines.

For those of you who missed her, Brigit is the unbroken totem-mask of the muse that immediately followed the original panther, and was only named that because of a dream I had, sometimes referred to as "the dream of the three panthers, dancing" wherein I was in a featureless room, hearing old-time carousel music... around me, floating above the floor and circling, were three identical panthers, one of ebony, one of crimson and one of gold. I was very perplexed...then the music stopped and all three smiled at me at once, as if to say that I had to make some sort of decision or take some sort of action...I hesitated...and the music started back up...I awoke feeling that my indecision would have dreadul consequences.

Many have later assigned the "golden panther" to "the leopard" my ex-wife Ann. An I have, to this point, accepted these three women, each unique in her own right, as the logical symbols of the dream...only time will tell, if even it breaks silence.

Anywho, it was a delight to spend some time in the company of someone who knows the process of creativity as well as Brigit does (not without purpose did I brand her "Goddess") as most people I have known seem to limit their knowledge of the arts to "Write me something." It gets tedious being a performing dog for people when they snap their fingers.

Anyway, Brigit stands of her own accord and I look forward to further collaborations with her. I am glad to have her back in my sphere.