Coincidences 1 & 2

February 18, 2008

Filed in: Alaska, Hawaii, North Dakota, The Home Front

* How cool is this? The superfabulous Peabody Essex Museum, which I have written about elsewhere, is sponsoring a talk on “Keeping the fire in the dark moon times.” Guess which three dark-moon states, out of the 50, they’ve chosen to highlight? Massachusetts. Alaska. Hawaii. My states, all. 

* A long while ago now I won a Pushcart prize for an essay I wrote about God and Santa Claus that appeared in Brain,Child, and absolutely the coolest thing that ever came out of that already cool happening is that everyone who wins is allowed to submit nominations for subsequent years.

I take this honor very seriously, even though the nominations are due in the middle of December and I’m always a crazed rat about shopping etc., as you may recall. The best part of being a judge is that it forces me to keep up with at least a few literary magazines every year, which is how I got hooked on the The Sun.

Anyhow, it takes me months (or even half the year) to get through each new Pushcart volume—they pack a ton of writing into every issue. A few weeks back, I was combing through the latest tome, which is technically Pushcart Prize XXXII, when I found “Overwintering in Fairbanks,” an essay by Erica Keiko Iseri. It’s about Alaska, which isn’t particularly extraordinary, but it was published in North Dakota Quarterly. Two of my states again—AK and ND!

I said to myself, if I flip to the back where the author bios are and read that Iseri’s originally from Hawaii (or even stranger, Kansas), I’m going to spit my tea across the room.

But it wasn’t to be. Probably a good thing for the other patrons of ye old tea shoppe.