Although we had been thinking about it for months, Drew, Tommy, and I decided to scratch our plans to travel to Europe next summer. But a combination of factors make us even more excited for a different destination. After hearing from Laura about her trip to Alaska (and looking at some incredible pictures she took) we now have our hearts set on exploring the Last Wilderness. Then we hit the movie theater and saw Into The Wild, which had the strange effect of making us NOT want to go to Alaska and to desperately WANT to go to Alaska. It makes sense if you’ve seen it.

Plus, I’ve always wanted to go to Alaska, ever since I wrote about it for my “State Report” in Mrs. Powers’ 5th grade class. The state just seems so…endless.

Based on the fact that we have time but not that much money, our plan has developed an extra bit of quirkiness: we’re planning to drive there. That’s over 3,000 miles. Much of it will be spent on the infamous Alcan, the Alaska-Canadian Highway that Drew’s always wanted to drive on, which stretches from Dawson Creek to Fairbanks.

(I don’t know what it is about me, but something inside makes me want to go to these crazy northern places. Like “Nunavut” up there in the corner. Nunavut! I just like saying it!)

Not many more details at this point, but one thing’s for sure, it will definitely be an adventure.

Hello and welcome to the new site, jacksonhays.com! Maybe a couple more of these: !! To everyone who followed me over here, thanks for doing so. Talking to yourself is much more interesting if you have an audience.

It’s taken me a few days to set this all up, but it’s coming together. I was getting a little frustrated over there at bigwhoop – not at the bigwhoopers themselves of course, but with the blogging software the bigwhoop happened to be running on, MovableType. MT upgraded to a new software version and it hasn’t been the same. I haven’t even been able to access my website for about a month, through no fault of bigwhoop. So I decided to cut loose and finally get my own site. Of course I am indebted to Matt Jankowski for giving me the chance to blog and put some of my writing online. But it’s time to move on, as they say. Who are “they”? I dunno. They said it though.

Let me tell you about the new arrangement here. As I ended my career at bigwhoop, my site had almost completely split into two sections: my own writing, and the “sweatshirt poesy” blog which, despite my infrequent updates, was taking on a life of its own as a sort of educational blog about poetry. That split is now permanent. Sweatshirt poesy will become its own blog/website at sweatshirtpoesy.com, where I can continue with theme posts like MONSTERS OF POETRY and Found Poetry, and begin writing posts on meter and rhyme and style and other fascinating things. Jacksonhays.com, then, will house my portfolio and this blog, which I’ll use to write “normal” journal-style blogs about my boring life, introduce new poems (Poemosity ____Day), write about music, and post my mixes.

So there you have it. Double the Jackson, double the awesome. Sweatshirtpoesy.com isn’t quite ready for primetime yet, but rest assured I’ll let you know when it’s up and running.