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2/3/2025 Featured: Our Will PowerOur Will Power is a project by mother and son team Janice and Brandon Will, both disabled in different ways, writing from both sides of the caregiving relationship, and participating in advocacy to address ableism, ageism, and our country’s inadequate care infrastructure. Using writing and other creative media, our mission is to create space for ourselves and those facing similar circumstances to remember the fullness of who we are and have been, beyond our roles giving and receiving care: Our many forms of grief and inspiration. Our griping, thriving, and coping. Our jubilance and joy. To create the future that’s yet to be written.  Janice: I was really doing this. Sixty-three, and for the first time in my life stepping forward to read my poems to friends and neighbors gathered in this library and eagerly looking to me. But I was embarrassed to call attention to my lack of expression! Parkinson’s was the reason. Facial masking. My family doctor had diagnosed. Then the neurologist he’d sent me to wasn’t so sure. I wasn’t certain of anything. Wasn’t myself. Didn’t talk much. Voice, weaker. I’d become dull of emotion. Aside from concern and self-consciousness. Like a painter’s palette stained from past bright colors, but with only splotches of grays and browns to work with now. When my youngest, Darren, had moved to New York, taking no books, I’d donated his childhood Paddington collection to our local library. Knowing they’d be loved. I’d wanted to go and grab his books from the stacks, I missed him so much. How to release that longing? Adult enrichment classes. At the community college. Enlivening! I made a whole new set of friends. We went to readings in Ann Arbor and downtown Detroit. But I never read my work like friends did. Always pictured I would. Once I found my voice. My professional life had been spent writing human interest stories and marketing copy. Semester by semester, I took whatever was offered. Fiction hadn’t been a fit. Sounded stilted. I was proud of some essays. One published in a local paper. But I’d always been called to poetry. The three piece band that had accompanied the readers before me began. I hoped that I’d brought the emotions to my words that I couldn’t to my face or voice while reading them. Just weeks before I’d watched my middle son, Brandon, at his MFA graduation reception, read his work with confidence and finesse, wowing the whole full room. I knew how long he’d been rehearsing. Remembered the crowd of stuffed animals lined around the Franklin Stove, getting the best seats in the house, when he was a child. If he could’ve been in my audience, I knew he would’ve understood how much I missed him, too. Brandon: Not being at Mom’s first reading—it didn’t feel right. She’d been there for mine. At the mall. When I was seven. She was proofreader for my first published work, too. Cricket Magazine. She always encouraged me. All the way to moving to Chicago for college in my twenties, where I became part of the city’s vibrant writing community, and began performing my work frequently. But aside from my MFA reading, during my two years in New York, I’d only been able to bring myself to read one other time. I hadn’t been this shy since Junior High, inexplicably overwhelmed (undiagnosed “severe” ADHD). After I returned to Michigan to intervene in her health spiral, we talked about how we’d each like to start reading again soon. To be a part of more communities, see our writing through, and to perform our work, both separately and collaboratively. But “soon” evaporated into a series of crises, a decade’s worth of traumas: The heedless progression of Parkinson’s, a betrayal by a family member that pushed us toward a new beginning in Chicagoland, the isolation of the pandemic, three major hospitalizations in six years, learning to live with disability as she lost her mobility. Despite this, these two hearts generated a quarter million words: journals, a screenplay, our joint memoir written from both sides of the caregiving relationship, and a nonfiction book for Brandon that had broken off of our collaboration. But it seemed less and less possible we’d ever perform again. read the full post here
1/1/2025 The 2024 Mix by Bex
Happy new year & happy half-birthday to two humans and one cat in my home! As usual, I'm sharing a mix of my favorite songs that were released in the last year as my January 1st party favor.
Lately I've been sharing a second sprawling playlist of other songs I loved, too, since I stick to an 80-minute limit on my favorites list as a callback to its origins as a burned CD. I hope there are some wide open spaces in your day today that might be filled with music for a while. -Becca Klaver 
Runners up playlist here
12/6/2024 Chorus Blog: Happy PhantomChorus Blog is our opportunity as the team behind Meow Meow Pow Pow to share our interpretation of the themes we ask writers to submit work for. Here is our Chorus Blog on... "Happy Phantom."
Acrylic Apparition, The Return - Krystle Griffinart by the author On a day just like this, painted gray overcasted skies that rained off and on, several canvases arrived and filled my apartment. Varying degrees of completion , styles, medium and life. The pieces of her soul left behind; her art.
One stood out. One she had barely begun to bring it to life, yet the fainted started lines stretched out and took hold. An outlined woman, reverenced in a hallway. Hands clasped. The beginning of my brushstroke was fury. Ignited inspiration that shook from my root. I dove head first right in. I felt the canvas move me. Bewitching my fingertips in rhythmic creation. It was delicious kismet. . Held frozen in the midst of this painting, a ghost of a woman who once was started on canvas then halted. A painting over top of the ghost of an unfinished painting before, this canvas living in the corner of my kitchen, haunting me. This old piece of someone else’s history. A piece from a collection of a woman now passed. Her leftovers, now housed in my apartment. A gift from her son, a stranger to me, who just a couple months ago, stood in the middle of my living room with grief soaked air around us. Complete silence. He wished them goodbye and good luck on their future lives. They were his mother’s. An artist no longer in this realm, left behind a house full of her work. Abstract to portrait, from landscape to still life, and all throughout the seasons of her existence. Married name back to maiden, from fresh student to a skilled artist. Fifty canvases filled my apartment, brimming it to its limit. I shuffled through them one by one. Connecting and dreaming up her story. With each painting, each manipulated speck of color, I witnessed a woman whose art was embedded into her fiber. It ebbed, flowed and grew as she went through life. A passed torched torture of artist block, now in this moment, has its grips on me. I was able to carry on her painting a little further. However, it stands frozen yet again. This painting on top of painting of a woman stilled. Alone. Perhaps she too is held in time where an unfinished piece stands in a corner. Matryoshka dolls of the past, present and future. I hold this painting close, intertwined with me as I try to carry her forward. For now, I wait. Wait for the spark to return. For the story to come back and carry on with me. I wait for the block to be lifted so that I can set this phantom free. . On a day just like this, I began again. As if no time had passed, like an old friend. I picked up a single paint and brush and started with the tiny thought of what if I placed a single stroke here. With a twist of my wrist, a swish and a flick, the spell was broken and intuition took me by surprise. Once again knowing exactly what to do. When truthfully, I simply allowed myself to get lost. On a Thursday night, there she and I were again, in the middle of my kitchen. As the euphoria crashed over me, I found myself deeply entrenched in gratitude for the return of inspiration. I began to type out the words to a friend when a second wave knocked me breathless; the realization that the weekend to come is Mother’s Day. The air turned dense, lungs exhumed, I burst. Her presence made known. I was to finish this today. And I did. To all mothers in every form. With love.
by Kim Goransson
Hi friends! I will be updating this playlist weekly, every Monday morning, with 4 new songs, and probably throw the old ones into a mega playlist. I'll share it in our instagram story when it's up for anyone who wants to listen. 4 songs and a playlist of about 15 min feels like an ok length for most people to listen to if they want without too much investment. I want to share new and old music I discover through out the week. I want to share music that feels inspiring and makes you want to get up and do something, make art, take a walk, or music with a lot of feeling, music to feel your feelings with, whether happy or sad. A small weekly routine to chart through whatever time we are about to live through next.
Maybe I'll do concept weeks (like Swedish Punk). If anyone wants to make one come find me, or write [email protected]. As always, I'd love for it to be collaborative. Without further words, here is the first weeks playlist: Kim 10/31/2024 Zine: Haiku Zine Issue 2 by BrigitteThis zine was made by Brigitte and can be found here.   
by Michael Seymour Blake a drive by halloween recommendation Vincent Price always dreamed of being a Shakespearean actor, and it shows—he’s operating at full power here, elaborate costume changes and all. And Diana Rigg as Edwina Lionheart doesn’t get lost in his fire. She keeps up well, adding a deranged pathos to the story. The pace of this movie can only be described as “party,” with hardly a moment passing before the next unhinged event unfolds. The script walks the line between goofiness and genuine menace, and the performances match that intention perfectly. Everyone on screen seems to be having just as much fun as I was watching it. This is one of those “it’s been on my list for 30+ years” movies, and I’m so glad I finally got around to seeing it. Totally worth watching, owning, and re-watching. Within the first four minutes, I knew this was going to be something special. It only got better from there. 
This zine was made by Marie Fox and can be found here.        
    
9/18/2024 12 songs to get to know you wrapped
I came up with the prompts for this 12 songs challenge to send to some friends because it seemed like a fun way to get to know them better and also I love / am addicted to making playlists. Always looking for new music. My spotify looks as bad as my email. Loved making mixtapes back when mixtapes were made and burned CDs scratched and strewn in car passenger seats with heavy marker labels and doodled impossible to read tracklists.
It's hard to have words to say what we mean and communicate sometimes, a lot of the time, all of the time? And giving someone songs that have moved you in some way, have lived with you, with the hope that someone might momentarily exist in the same space you have existed in, feels like a beautiful ritual we should continue to perform. To reach across the divide to say: I see you. Do you see me? Are we here together? I sent the prompts to a couple friends then had the idea to share them and catalogue them here on the blog. Truly grateful for everyone who spent time in their day to put theirs together and think about their life as soundtrack and send it in. On the way I've made some new brilliant friends. I've been turned on to a lot of music I didn't know before. I've tried to listen to every playlist from start to finish, on a walk or laying down, doing chores, and have enjoyed the ride of each, wondering about the lives lived accompanied by these sounds. I started making my own when I shared the prompts but it remained unfinished and has changed over the summer many times, obsessions passing and new ones taking hold, what I've been listening to lately, how to choose from all the awesome Gemini artists that have impacted me, what sort of wrestler I would want to be. Only finishing it yesterday, now in September and the weather finally starting to feel mildly mildly like fall. Listening through it a last time it seems pretty sad, end-of-something more than beginning-of-something, like a fall playlist. What comes first, the feeling or the song? But I think also hopeful? It would be cool to do this again and keep the project going. 12 songs to... 12 Songs by Kim Goransson
1. Listening to a lot lately:
"Goodbye Horses" - Q Lazzarus 2. Artist I've seen live: "Maybe the People Would Be the Times or Between Clark and Hilldale" - Love 3. Zodiac sign: "Place To Be" - Nick Drake 4. Breaks my Heart: "Song To The Siren" - This Mortal Coil 5. Makes me dance: "Honey" - Robyn 6. 18 year old me: "La Mer" - Nine Inch Nails 7. Comfort: "Seventeen" - Sharon Van Etten 8. Wrestling theme: "I Hope" - Cranes 9. Music crush: "Horseshoe Crab" - Slothrust 10. Reminds me of a parent: "Höghus, Låghus, Dårhus" - Imperiet 11. Feels like summer: "Senegal Fast Food" - Amadou & Mariam, Manu Chao 12. Jukebox one-shot: "Freight Train" - Elizabeth Cotten
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