Poets House has extended its annual showcase through August 17. You can see, fondle, sit and peruse this past year’s publications from the wompus along with a slew of other wonderful books by small presses throughout the US and beyond.

“Never Again Enough: Field Notes from a Drying West” is William DeBuys’ TomDispatch meditation on the Colorado River’s “tidal” flow, how the power needs of Phoenix, the least sustainable city, are sucking dry the source of that power, and how all this fits into the New Climate Normal.

The publisher had a little reading in NYC last week, with Couplet, at the NY Poetry Festival on Governor’s Island, a former military installation in NY Harbor between Brooklyn and the southern tip of Manhattan.

The ferry is free, the island odd and lovely, and the poetry was a blast–thanks to NYC’s Poetry Brothel for concocting the whole shebang. Favorite moment: Cornelius and the band, Rough Magic, doing their thing on the White Horse stage.

When I was in school my classmates thought I guzzled coffee by the gallon but it was an illusion.

I’d stop off at Dave’s Corner, the 24/364 (“every day except Yom Kippur”) diner at Canal and Broadway, before hitting the subway down to Brookyn each morning. That single cup of coffee in its blue and white paper cup lasted me all day, it was my talisman through a rough passage. At Governor’s Island the awesome food trucks included the Mud Truck, which serves what they call a triple shot as a single order of espresso. They pull it short–hardly any water–so it really is like mud. I’m a cheap date, one of my favorite tourist things to do is sample coffees from indie shops. We decided Mud’s espresso was a tad on the heavy side (even for me–the ex-waitress who topped out at 12 espressos a day when that was what the boss permitted us to have for free). On our way to the High Line we stopped in at Ninth Street Espresso, nestled into the cave-like Chelsea Market spanning a full avenue underneath a lower segment of the High Line (which is an amazing park, and a testament to the will of ordinary people to improve their communities). Chelsea Market, the only indoor mall I know where you can say “the bathrooms are just past the waterfall.” Ninth Street’s brew was good stuff, as was our morning cuppa next day from Blue Spoon, up the block from the odd little boutique hotel in the Wall Street neighborhood where we found discount lodgings.

A case of summer laryngitis caused me to cancel a bunch of appointments and meetings today, opening a moment to savor the flickering green of leaves in the tall trees that watch over our neighborhood. Change is in the air here at the wompus, we’re not yet sure what shape it will take but we welcome it.

Coming soon: dispatches from Boston and Cape Cod, and books, more books…