Continuing with a series of poems and lyrics about/related to Nebraska, my birth state, begun in April 2016. My last post on this was in November, 2024.

Matt Mason served as Nebraska State Poet from 2019 – 2024

To watch a video of my reading of these two poems, go here

(On this day in 1961, Samuel Beckett’s ‘Happy Days’ premiered in New York City)

I’m unfortunately unable to upload here my gravyfromthegazebo YouTube channel video of this brief reading, but you can access it here

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I began writing this blog in 2011, driven by a love of music and need to have a forum for writing.

If you look at the run of posts across the years, it is obvious how prolific I was at the beginning and how much this has declined over recent years. It is not about the love of music also declining – I still listen to as much these days* – but rather a change in focus on my other writing (like here) but also significant commitments in daily life that have curtailed the time for writing/posting.

One intriguing element on this blog is the recording of stats for pageviews. I noted today it was 3.5 million! Extraordinary. Should I be monitising this blog?

I think not. As explained today in my research into Google blogspot pageviews, these can be added to by bots, web crawlers, spam referrers. You think!?

To read Some Diurnal Aural Awe, go here

*I am unable to attend live gigs though, which is a huge personal loss…

This is an expansive collection of like-minded creative responses to the theme, and I am delighted to have contributed. My thanks to editors Peter Carlaftes & Kat Georges who used the second of my two TextArt pieces, both of which follow

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One of my first posts on this blog when it was mainly about English teaching and education…