Sunil Freeman, assistant director of the center, said, “When I heard Charlie was going to take the job, I sent a one-word email that said, ‘Hallelujah.’”

So, I’d say people are pretty excited to have him here. Darn, I’m excited to have him here and running the center.

The reception itself was a good time, and I chatted with Dan Vera and Michael Gushue (way too briefly), Sandra Beasely, Reb Livingston, Kim Roberts (too briefly!), Charlie Jensen (of course), and Greg McBride.

Afterwards, DH and I went to Austin Grill. We were in Bethesda and had to take advantage of the good restaurants. With all the good restaurants, how did I end up with such a disappointing meal? The “Migas Plate” with eggs, veggies and refried beans left me feeling a bit sick all day.

We sat outside, though, and got to people watch. Many women who passed by wore a lot of shiny things.

The Bethesda Barnes and Noble has a great literary magazine selection, so I got to read poetry in some of the magazines I don’t already get. I was especially taken with an Oliver de la Paz poem. Wow. I have to buy his book now.

In case you’ve not popped in the past few days, I’ve had to go away. I’m sharing greatest hits from the 32 Poems blog in my absence.

Which Poems Call to You in the Night?

No, Poetry is Not Really Dead

For today, it’s a post called Did You Call the Banana?

Check back tomorrow for the next “greatest hit.”

What’s funny is that they scraped a post on “MFA” as in the creative writing degree. What they really wanted was a post about Made for AdSense.

Someone had a good point about this. She views the scraping as a chance for more links in and hits. That’s true. At the same time, I know that links in from spam and junk sites don’t do much for search engine optimization.

I’ll move back onto poetry topics again tomorrow.

Back to Andy’s Dust Congress blog…

In addition to Poetry Wednesdays and Fridays at The Dust Congress, you can also find a delightful jumble jamble of political commentary, intriguing links, photography and general musings. Here are some posts to get you started:

A different kind of poverty…

My frisbee brings the noise

We met San Diego for dim sum again. Back then, only one child existed among the six of us. Now, there are five children, and they all have opinions.

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It’s time to get back to poems for me. The trauma of August and September are behind me now (well, I await the result of one item). April and May and a part of August were delightful and full of poem writing and reading, and I want to get back to that mental space and clarity.

I enjoyed reading this:

I wholly believe that when we die, our energies reawaken in the memories of all those we’ve touched during our physical lives. The better a person we’ve been to as many souls as possible, the wider our heaven. The more we’ve hurt, the deeper the regret we’ll have to relive. Be kind to each other. Influence change. This is our purpose here and after.

Taylor writes about a variety of poetry-related subjects such as writing well, keeping your point in mind and getting your poetry published. He updates daily — kudos to him — and the posts mostly seem geared towards newbie poets. However, he also writes on topics such as the Harlem Renaissance, which could interest a poet at any level.