And I don't mean the song of the same name: “my love has come along. My lonely days are over and life is like a song”.  And if you want to hear a great new version of that old standard check out Raiatea Helm, (www.raiateahelm.com), one of the musical Helm Ohana (the Hawai`ian word for family) of Moloka`i. She is indeed a Hawai`ian blossom(the title of her most recent CD). The girl can sing and has a fabulous falsetto that can be one of the highlights of Hawai`ian music. And for great Hawai`ian music from the likes of Raiatea, Nathan Auweau, Cody Pu`eo Pata and the one and only Israel Kamakawiwi`ole, go to www.mele.com and give a listen. But I digress. I digress a lot and probably will continue to do so.

At Last. Well, you might say that the high-speed internet service we finally have here in southern Vermont has made me feel about that good. I had been blogging away and losing material right and left because I was on dial-up, which kept cutting out. Never mind when I tried to upload anything. I really do not know how much text I lost, but then I finally gave up trying to load or even blog because I would just lose it. To say that I was frustrated was a grand understatement.

So I thought. I didn't know the meaning of the word frustration till I tried to deal with Fairpoint Communications. At first I thought they were just not telling us the truth but then came to believe they were just incompetent. A small company out of North Carolina bought up Verizon's New England operation for in excess of $2 billion, which they didn't have and then tried to pretend they were one of the big dogs. Well, they seemed to leave big piles everywhere they went but that was the only evidence of big-doggedness. And then they filed for bankruptcy. Well, I should have known. It seemed the Peter Principle was at work again – those in an organization would rise to the level of their own incompetence and then stay there – Fairpoint seemed a perfect example. They are being rewarded for failure.  I am not going to detail the weeks of frustration as they attempted to “escalate” our service. All I could think of was Marvin Gaye when they said that: “brother, brother, we don't need to escalate... war is not the answer...” Well, you get it. Not only did they coin a neologism every time they talked to us,   but they didn't DO anything to help. I would hang up the phone and scream.  But enough of that.

At last we have high speed and I am here to begin blogging. I thought I had lots stored up to write about but I cannot (nor could my computer guy) find where my previous blogs might have gone -- but gone they are. I have a bunch of ideas to write about but I will probably digress a great deal. It seems to be my nature. I have been working on a prose book for about two years now and haven't written a poem in all that time. I don't think I have given up on poetry but there are times I wonder if I gravitated toward poetry because of a short attention span. It seems possible. The prose can be a drudge and editing is surely different.

So – here we are. I will try to hit this space a few times a week. This is a literary magazine and I hope to be talking about things literary. And of course, if there are things readers would like to see addressed, let me know. Next time out I am going to say thanks to folks who made the 10 plus years of tMR in print possible and talk about how grateful I am to them for all they have given and how much they continue to give. They must have thought from time to time that they had surely gone nuts, wondering why they were doing such a thankless task. But we can talk about that later.