Book Signing at Mitchell’s Coffee House

I’ll be signing books at Mitchell’s Coffee House on Saturday, November 29, which is Thanksgiving weekend. You know you’re going to have to replenish your stores with luscious veggies after the big feast, so plan to come up for the Farmers’ Market that morning. I hope lots of you will be able to come. As well as The Girl Who Talked Too Much, which recently came out on Amazon, I’ll have American Governess and both of my poetry chapbooks with me . To buy the books, you can click on the titles, or just come and see me there

Shanghaied

A British 'press gang' bopped 
my great-forefather's head
in fifteen-something.
Saving that, he'd have been dead
with the members of his family
in the plagues of sixteen-three.

The Royal Navy's methods of recruitment 
may have changed,
but each time God's been 
a little rough with me,

I remember Great-Ancestor
was shanghaied against his will
and so survived;
and otherwise
there'd be no me.

I emailed my cousin in Bermuda this morning because I wondered what effects the island had suffered from the passing of the colossal Hurricane Melissa last night, and I haven’t heard back from him. Perhaps the power is out.

I wrote the poem above about ancestor of mine who, as a young man in London, was ‘impressed’ into the Royal Navy. At the end of a career as a sailor, he chose to retire to Bermuda in the mid-1600’s, since his family at home had been wiped out by the Black Plague. My grandmother, a direct descendant, was born there in 1877, and came to New York City to train as a nurse. Her story is in my new book.