the black virgin of montserrat

No news about my writing, except that I'm struggling to get back to it. I missed a meeting of my San Francisco writing group for the first time I can remember because I'm sick, I don't have new work ready, I'm so unbelievably busy with my duties at CRAFT. Acceptances (and a long list of near-acceptances while I worried about our March and May longform slots), getting manuscripts edited, getting edited manuscripts with notes to authors, fielding their responses, editing their author's notes, fielding their responses, working collaboratively with the EIC and my editorial assistants on edits, writing introductions for publications. What else? I think there must be more, but mostly I'm juggling more projects simultaneously than I ever have at the magazine, I think as a result of our two-week "vacation." I haven't even gotten to the first batch of contest reads yet.

What did I do on my vacation? We flew to Scotland, had fun for a day or two before both Steve and I got COVID. We didn't have fevers, but it was pretty miserable nevertheless, and in order to comply with the regulation five-day isolation period in Scotland we had to take separate hotel rooms in a hotel by the airport when our Airbnb ran out. Ben took care of us until then and somehow managed to avoid getting COVID himself.

And then, less than week after we finally got home, I had the worst tooth pain I've ever experienced and had an emergency root canal, which I thought would fix things but hasn't. Apparently pain can persist long after the root canal. Who knew?

Ben meanwhile continued in his travels, first to Paris (where he went to a Harvard classmate's wedding), then to Barcelona, now to Oxford. He knows I'm fascinated by Black Virgins, and when he was hiking in the mountains in Catalonia, he took a picture of the Black Virgin of Montserrat at the Santa Maria de Montserrat monastery. I have decided to make her my patron saint for the year 2023. I seem to need one particularly this year.

​Below, a picture of Ben in Paris, the picture he sent me of the Black Virgin.