I finally had time to read all of Shift & Switch and: wow. It's such an exciting book. It's so much the opposite of what anthologies are usually: a sort of gathering up and condensing. Most anthologies present writing so definitively. All you need to know is there, summed up and distilled.

Shift & Switch, on the other hand, is all possibility. So much of the writing seems in process, in flight. Some of the poems may be finished, but I'm sure a lot of the selections will be revised into bigger projects, or smaller, or just different.

Writing is always changing, writing is always renewing.

I don't mean that the book reads like a draft, because it doesn't: it's well-edited, well-designed and well-written. The poems are good, but not perfected. They're present, and vital. That's why it's exciting: it's like a promise of more and more writing to come.

The conundrum: If I live another sixty years and if I stay able and if I read a book every two days, that's still only 10,000-odd books and that can’t be enough; how can I ever begin to know? And without knowing, how can I ever begin?

I've discovered a brilliant lunacy in the regulations that govern non-profit societies in Alberta:

10(1) The name of a society may contain only the following:
(a) letters of the alphabet of the English language;
(b) Arabic numerals;
(c) the following punctuation or other marks:
(i) !
(ii) “
(iii) #
(iv) $
(v) %
(vi) &
(vii) ‘
(viii) ( )
(ix) *
(x) +
(xi) ,
(xii) .
(xiii) -
(xiv) /
(xv) :
(xvi) ;
(xvii) >
(xviii) \
(xxii) Ç
(xxiii) ?
(xxiv) @

Each punctuation mark has its own sub-section! Brilliant. And I love how it takes five letters and two punctuation marks to point out that a name can indeed contain a question mark [(xxiii) ? ]. But don't interpret this expansive attitude toward punctuation too liberally.
(3) No society may have a name that consists primarily of a combination of punctuation marks or other marks.

Also no name may contain
(b) a number or word that might lead to the inference that the name is a number name, unless the name is a number name.
Is a frustrated poet drafting regulations for the Alberta legislature? I like to think so.

I have a tendency to focus on the negative. Over the past three days, I drank and packed and drove, and the only detail that stands out as worthy of recording is the dead bear I saw on the Transcanada. It was on the other side of the road, so we only caught a glimpse as we drove by, but it looked like a smallish probably not quite adult black bear. There was a guy standing next to it who looked like a park ranger or animal control type person, and another guy (the one who must have hit it) standing next to a camper.
I guess it's fortunate that a camper and not a smaller car hit the bear, or there might have been dead people too. I guess it's also better that the bear was actually dead rather than badly injured. But man, what a horrible thing. I've run into bears in the woods a couple of times, and that is a terrifying experience, but it's much, much better to see bears alive than roadkilled.