siren song

While in my personal life I am absolutely terrified of rejection, as a writer I consider myself quite fearless. In sixth grade I wrote to the William Morris Talent & Literary Agency asking them to represent me based on a novella I had written as a fifth grader. And I haven't stopped since. In fact, since I started seriously submitting my short stories and poems back in college, I have kept every rejection notice I have ever received. Well, kept every one that arrived before electronic submissions became so popular and you started finding rejection notices in your email or could keep track of the consideration progress of your poems with a simple log in to a submission manager. Truthfully, while I love the green aspect of online submissions and how easy it is, I miss the days of painstakingly putting together cover letters and packets of poems into big ol' manila envelopes and filling out those SASEs. Of dropping them in the mailbox after a hesitant moment of lost confidence, only to then spend the next few days, weeks, and months waiting not-so-patiently to find out if someone outside of your creative writing workshops finds your voice worthwhile.

I've sent to the big names: The New Yorker, Paris Review, Atlantic Monthly because I figured, hell, I didn't have anything to lose. As it happens, of all of the many, many rejection notices I have received over the years I have three personal favorites: one is from OSU's The Journal which contains a lovely handwritten note from the editors (a personal message on the standard rejection form is quite a coup for any writer), the second is a rather encouraging paragraph-long letter from the editor of The Georgia Review (an even better coup), while the third is a rejection notice from Playboy because, well, who wouldn't love to be able to say they were in Playboy?

So it was back in late January, I submitted a small selection of poems to three different literary journals. I heard back from two of them within the past few months and had consequently forgotten all about the third, which is why I was very puzzled when I opened my mailbox last night after work to discover an envelope from Potomac Review. Had I signed up for a newsletter? Gotten on some random mailing list?

What was inside the envelope was something I haven't seen since I was a senior in college and working as an intern at a literary journal and was on the other side of the process: a publication agreement. That is, a contract/acceptance letter. Yes, dear and faithful readers, Potomac Review wants to publish my poem "In Ithaca" in their upcoming issue and is paying me handsomely with two free copies of the issue it will appear in. But not only do they want to publish me, I found out on my birthday. I mean, really. For a writer how could there possibly be any better present? When I went back to their submission manager and logged in (for the first time since submitting), I saw there were comments from staff regarding my submission. They described my poem as "wonderful" and said they would like to publish it if it was still available. As if the poem is so wonderful, they figure some other journal has already snatched it up.

And now I get to do the one thing I have always always always wanted to do: write my author bio. The life and times of Tudor Rose in 50 words or less. I haven't been this excited since I was in high-school and props mistress for the fall play and got to write a bio for the program. If this is any indication of things to come, it looks like 28 is going to be one fucking phenomenal year.

on this day in history

Since mid-June I have been utilizing a little whiteboard in the entrance of the library to daily post a new "Today in History" event. I love little historical factoids, and aim for a good balance of important historical events, such as the bombing of Hiroshima and Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon, to things that are more fun to learn about: I started this on June 16th, and the event for that day was in 1884 when the first roller coaster in America opened at Coney Island. I pick events from all over the world, as well as years. The earliest is 1540 when King Henry VIII married his fifth wife (admittedly, I threw that in for my own love of the Tudors) up through 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit. I elect to use three different sites to choose my event: History Channel website, New York Times website, and MSN Encarta and, between the three, I can usually find one really good event to post. I especially like choosing things that have happened here in Ohio; Cleveland especially, as that is the nearest metropolitan city (for instance, did you know that on July 11, 1914, Babe Ruth made his MLB debut in a game against the Cleveland Indians?) Because of where I work, though, I do show some discretion. For instance, the History Channel's website has a section on crime related events for each day. I generally skip that, if only because I want this part of the library to be a positive experience for the inmates, and while, sure it might be interesting that Jimmy Hoffa went missing one day and no one knows what happened to him, such a fact doesn't quite meet my ultimate educational goal. Along with that, because of the few times I have been asked if my library owns Mein Kampf (really? Inmates expect to find that in a prison?), and because of the racial diversity present in the prison population, I elect to stay away from any direct references to Hitler or Nazism, because, quite frankly, I don't want to start anything. Religion, too, is tricky because of the wide range of religious beliefs present among the inmates. There have been times I've toed my own line of rules: Einstein's immigration to the US for instance, where I elected to omit the fact that his decision to leave Europe was because of the Nazis. August 28, 1774 is the birth day of Elizabeth Ann Bayley, who went on to become the first American-born saint.

In terms of things related to where I work, on September 10, 1897, a London taxi driver became the first person arrested for drunk driving. As I work in a drug and alcohol treatment facility and many of the inmates are in here on DUIs, I thought that factoid fit my over-all goal (and the inmates who did stop to read it on that day all got a chuckle out of it), along with when the US prison population topped 1 million in late October 1994.

In honor of today, my birthday, November 12th, I have decided to post some interesting factoids for all of you. (Bet you didn?t know you?d be getting a history lesson today, huh?)

1799: American astronomer Andrew Ellicott Douglass witnessed the first meteor shower on record, the Leonids meteor shower, from a ship off the Florida Keys

1864: Union General William T. Sherman ordered the destruction of Atlanta, GA to begin

1892: Pudge Heffelfinger became the first pro football player

1927: Josef Stalin became the undisputed ruler of the Soviet Union as Leon Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party

1946: The Exchange National Bank of Chicago, Illinois, instituted the first drive-in banking service in America

1954: Ellis Island closed after processing more than 20 million immigrants since opening in New York Harbor in 1892

1971: President Richard Nixon proclaimed the end of the U.S. offensive role in the Vietnam War and withdraws 45,000 troops.

1980: Voyager I came within 78,000 miles of Saturn

1987: The American Medical Association issued a policy statement saying it was unethical for a doctor to refuse to treat someone solely because that person has AIDS or is HIV-positive

2004: A jury in Redwood City, Calif., convicted Scott Peterson of murdering his pregnant wife, Laci, and dumping her body in San Francisco Bay

2006: Gerald R. Ford surpassed Ronald Reagan as the longest-lived U.S. president at 93 years and 121 days

And, of course:

1981: Oh-so-awesome librarian and blogger, Tudor Rose, was born

poker face

I get how I look to them: I'm a young female who does her hair and makeup everyday. Not for their sake, of course, but for mine: eyeliner and mascara are my weapons for confidence and control, but I'm also fairly confident that eyeliner and mascara make me look like an easy mark. And, in the beginning, I admit that I was. But I've been here for nearly nine months now and I've got a fairly good handle on dealing with the lovely little boys locked up here.

Tonight, however, they are all in rare form. I went ten rounds with one inmate who somehow thought I wouldn't write him up for leaving early, despite the fact that I wrote his friend up last week for the exact same thing. Round and round we went: "I'm gonna leave. Write me up." "Okay. I will." "Seriously. I'm gonna leave." "Knock yourself out. It would take me all of five minutes to write you up." "I'm out in three days. You really think I care about a ticket?" "Door's right there."

And, of course, he didn't leave. Seriously? You think I won't call your bluff? And, honestly, at first, I wasn't 100% sure he was bluffing. But either way, I had nothing to lose: he left, I wrote him up. He stayed, I just called his bluff. Game over.

But as we were having this conversation, another inmate was listening in and acted all surprised at the fact that he couldn't leave, despite the fact that I tell every inmate when they walk in the door because I do not want to continually have the same "What do you mean I have to stay?" conversation an hour later. So, a little while later, this second inmate comes up and says he needs to use the restroom. There is no inmate restroom in the library, they have to walk next door (all of three yards) to education. So I tell him sure, go next door. He starts to head back to his table, and I tell him to leave his coat here. He looks at me, taken aback that I somehow was able to ascertain his plan to go straight back to his house from education. In fact, as he left to go to the restroom, he actually smiled and shook his finger at me, like "Well done, sir. Well done."

All I ask is that you guys send me lots and lots of cookies when I inevitably get thrown in jail for punching an inmate.

she keeps going and going and

Next Friday the 13th (oooh! spooky!) is my birthday party. The weekend after the party I am attending a vegan Thanksgiving potluck dinner (where I intend to attempt the five-spice sweet potato recipe in the current issue of Food & Wine) and the Wednesday before my party I'm going to go see Mamma Mia at the Palace Theater in Cleveland with a friend/co-worker thanks to free tickets from another friend who is touring with the production.

Last weekend I was out until 5am (pre-time-change time) for Halloween. And that was after getting up at 5:45am for work the day of. Last night I had a lovely dinner out with one girl friend where I remembered why I love both Johnny Mango and margaritas (Bookslut, take note: this is so where I am taking you next time you are in town), while Thursday night I met another girl friend for last minute drinks. Last minute as in I was already in my pjs and settled in for the night, but as soon as her text came through I threw on a pair of jeans and was happily out the door.

I'm not sure which is more surprising: the fact that I've become such a social butterfly, or the fact that I like it. If nothing else, going out so often makes those nights where I elect to stay home curled up watching hours of "House" and "The Office" on DVD so much more enjoyable. And way less embarrassing.

librarian's paradise

I have a long and complicated last name, one that is so long and complicated that both my sister and I have very short and simple first names to balance it out. It also is a name that is open for reinterpretation in the spelling area and caused quite a bit of trouble awhile back in regards to the title of my car, Miley. Of course, while such annoyances are, well, annoying, I also love knowing that a variation of my name appeared in Margaret Atwood's book The Robber Bride and Sylvia Plath gave her alter ego Esther the Anglicized version.

All of this means that when I began working here at the prison, I ended up following in the footsteps of so many teaching relatives before me and made it simple for all involved by just going by "Ms. G". All of the inmates call me that and some of the staff, too, although it took a few to get comfortable with it because it made them "feel like an inmate." Some staff call me by my full last name, although in the past eight months of my employment I don't think my supervisor has ever spelled it right, including throwing in a completely random F every once in awhile, a letter that doesn't even appear in my name in its original form. A few in admin call me by my first name, which I'm actually not crazy about, if only because I feel like they use it as a power maneuver. But when it's the guys in charge, sometimes it's better to just go with the flow.

This evening I was sitting at my desk when two inmates walked in, one who is a regular and has been here at the prison for awhile and another inmate who appeared to be fairly new. When they walked in I informed them that the prison was now operating on winter hours, which means very little inmate movement after dark, which means once they decide where they want to go for the evening (library, chapel, rec), they are stuck there until said place closes. For us, this means 7:15 pm. They opted to leave and head elsewhere, not wanting to be marooned in a sea of books for the next two hours, but not before the new guy asked me my name. I told him, and he repeated it back to me, wanting, I think, to get the correct letter, and then asked "Is that all?" The more seasoned inmate then jumped in and said "Y'know, Ms. G. As in Gangsta!"

It's those moments that make the rest of the bullshit tolerable.