Let me share with you a thought from Rumi, which I use to encourage myself to go out a write Plein Air and stay engaged in the world. "Don't run around this world looking for a place to hide in." Rumi. Let me share with you a few Poet Laureate experiences from this week. On Monday I gave a seven minute performance at the Chamber of Commerce/COPPeR arts awards luncheon. What a challenge and joy to share poetry with 300 business men and women and civic leaders. At luncheons, often, when speakers are talking, the audience keeps eating and talking and there is a lot of noise. When I read, there was absolute silence. Since then I have received numerous congratulations from men and women. I share this not to toot my own horn but to encourage all poets to practice oral presentations and to see themselves as having a gift that others do want to share in. Wanting to end on a humorous note I closed with my zucchini poem: Zucchinis flower Growing so many green fruits -- Tonight, lock your doors. This brought good laughter and long applause as I stepped off the podium. Exiting, a couple came up to me, "We loved the zucchini poem. We had a fund raiser and zucchini was in the silent auction -- whomever made the highest bid did not have to take home any zucchini." On Wednesday, at the bequest of English department chair Dave Reynolds, I gave a poetry performance/reading to the all school assembly at Fountain Valley School. A wonderful and appreciative audience of 300 students and staff. I selected poems about being a teenager but because of the season of autumn I also read the Julesberg, Fall Harvest poem. Later, in the workshop, a student told me how much she loved that poem. I thanked her and told her I wrote that poem 40 years ago and her eyes widened open -- and I said, "yes, 40 years ago -- good poems are timeless." Thank you for reading.