Winter writing

Sometime during the night it started snowing (no surprise there!), a light, fluffy, beautiful snow. It actually looks like the glittery sort of fake snow you see in the better store displays at Christmas. According to the weather forecast last night, this snow should push us over into the snowiest winter on record around here. It is supposed to keep up this morning and into the afternoon. More snow is predicted for Thursday, and it is not supposed to get above freezing for another week and a half. I am planning to go into Reedsburg for a meeting and some library work this morning, and Tom is hoping to visit a friend in New Lisbon this afternoon. It looks like both those trips will be possible. At least they aren't closing schools in the area, which means the roads are okay.

On the other hand, I finished an article I had been working on. Now I have to let it simmer for a few days and re-read it to see how it is. Although it is a spirituality article, I think I may not submit it to Spiritual Life, the Carmelite's quarterly. I will look around and try to place it with someone else. The problem is that most Catholic spirituality magazines have gone out of business over the past couple of decades, at least the ones that published articles of a more academic (scholarly?) tone. It is a credit to the Carmelites that they have not only been able to keep Spiritual Life going but that they keep it profitable. (Not that they or their authors are getting rich, mind you.) It consistently wins awards at the Catholic Press Association every year, too, because of the quality of the articles. Meanwhile similar magazines published by much larger and wealthier groups have folded their tents and disappeared.

I am also cleaning up the mystery and dusting it off for another attempt to get it published. Right now I have to finish a translation of a poem of John of the Cross, and then the revision will be done. The poem is well-known and there are lots of English translations, but if I do my own version, I don't have to fool with getting permissions and copyright notices and all that. Translating a poem is a challenge, though, so this may take a little while.