Tomatoes are Sunshine
Listy List Summer 2026
Dear Friends,
Robbie gets a septoplasty this week, the same surgery I misery-ed my way through in June. So this is a listy-list of random thoughts that don’t amount to a single post, but instead offer little excerpts of life and thought.
Excerpt from the first Blue Note, a subscription based paper letter I’ve started! #Touchpaper is the new #touch grass.
I think I also saw clips of Twister; as an adult, I recognized the moment the special equipment shaped like a barrel, full of silver balls, tips over in the wind instead of being lifted into the cloud; the panic of the scientists. I must have seen it some afternoon my dad was watching tv on a weekend, flipping between channels during commercial breaks for the football games. I’d been to my father’s lab at this point; he’d let me spin in his office chairs and sit on the table that folded up and down, showed me the dial of the radio that listened to the needle slipped underneath the skin to the line of a nerve, send signal to the computer and trace nervous system respond. Losing equipment was like losing electricity itself—an impossible expense. I didn’t know the word for “engineering” but I understood the labor that research required; I understand now listening to something like a tornado is an act of man-made desperation and love.
I like my city. (I made a friend)
We went to the river at sunset to hang out. I broke out Pippin’s markers and started sketching. If you know me, you know that I do not identify as a visual artist in any way—to the point that an art teacher in elementary school remembers how much I struggled (undiagnosed adhd struggling with sequential instructions given only verbally). But as I was sketching, I became very pleased with what was happening on the page.
Someone behind me on the path said, with evident delight, “Are you really making art?!”
I turned around and said “Oh! You’re the poet!” I’d attended Jeanine Walker’s reading a month prior! She is new to the city so we exchanged numbers to get together and talk writing. It was perfect in every way.
Plus, it was magnificent to just be out doodling. Did you know it feels good to put marker on paper and goof off? To look at something and pretend you might be able to render it with your hands? Like breathing without clenching my belly.
Harrisburg has a community of rare and endangered Night Herons. And there are more than a few birders among my readers so here you go: a gift.
I’m fixated on cutting my own hair via Jayne Matthews. The approach here relies on holistic sensory assessment—how your hair feels on your scalp and in your hands—rather than visual cues alone. It gives structure to what I’ve seen Stasia Savasuk do for the ten years I’ve followed her. And it gives me access to what I lost when I left State College and my hair whisperer / kindred spirit Stacey Wolfe. I found out years after I sat in her chair monthly that she has a condition that limits her direct vision; she relies on peripheral and, as such, she cuts hair by feel as much by visual matches. I could say “it’s too heavy!” and she knew exactly where and how to razor it to the texture I sought. I never knew how to explain how I wanted something to look because I was as driven by what I wanted the hair follicles to feel on my head. Jayne Matthews is trying to impart this ineffable education in her classes and I think about it daily.
Emergent Strategy was used as evidence of inclination towards terrorism in a case in Texas. Freaked me out pretty good. So now I’m gathering folks for a group read. Obviously.
I saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl for the first time in decades and still knew every line. Also started choreographing a ballroom formation to the music which I couldn’t believe I’d never done. Found this group on youtube at a far higher skill level than I was designing for. Smiled the whole way through.
I did not like the Mary Oliver documentary. (If you liked it: hurray! Mary is a gift to us all.)
Did I like learning about Mary’s life? Yes. That was about it.
It felt made for tv, almost as if I could feel the commercial breaks coming up—or perhaps more accurately, it felt made for social media, with little 15-30 second excerpts read by people famous enough to stop a scroller in their tracks.
WTF was Garrison Keelor’s voice doing in this documentary RIGHT AFTER we get to the point that Mary discloses abuse?
Oprah, girl, we didn’t need you.
I liked seeing a bunch of different writers respond to Mary but there was no context. The average Mary reader doesn’t know Donika Kelly, for example. I love that she was there; but I wish she (and other poets) were properly introduced rather than a title appearing under their name only the first time they appeared.
The B roll felt like random archival footage that often had no bearing on the plot or poetry being read. It was also so viciously shaky that I felt discombobulated by the end; did not go to learn about Mary from a hand-held camera.
The poem texts was not on the screen.
When we saw Mary’s handwriting, were we looking at actual notebook pages? If so, why not label them as such with dates? AND WHY would you zoom in on the page as if it was a legal document in a true crime documentary?!
Plot was left hanging. Don’t bring in “Anne” or whoever she was if you aren’t going to explain why it was “bad news” for Mary—other than that she moves to Florida? I did appreciate that people have different takes on that decision and points to how people read not only Mary’s poetry but her life in different ways. But it slips past.
One of my favorite musicians Emily Wolfe is playing Pittsburg in September. We’re traveling so much between now and then. I’m going to be so tired.
Still…
The only food I want to eat on any given day (+ Robbie’s gf fried chicken). Plate by Austen Pottery.
With Love,
Dana