This essay was published in the first online issue of the magazine, Inroads, Creativity, Men, Soul on April 1, 2026. The original Inroads Magazine existed in the late 80s and the early 90s and was published by Anthony Signorelli with contributing editors Jonathan Stensland, John Lang and Thomas R. Smith. These magazines featured essays by James Hillman and poetry by Robert Bly and other men affiliated with or influenced by the Minnesota Men's Conferences Bly began in the early 80s. A few of my essays and poems also appeared there.

On April 26, 2026 Dougie Padilla, Thomas R. Smith and myself were featured for a Como Cottage Poetry Scrum. This is the first round for this non-competitive scrum. We had a great time, a phun time, as Dougie says.

On April 11, 2026 I presented a version of my take on Robert Bly's "The Vocation of Poetry and its Ten Labors" to the Australian group, The Fifth Direction. I gave examples of how poets respond to the ten labors, and a few opinions on why poets are so important to our cultural communities. Walton Stanley, storyteller and co-presenter, gave a lead-in passage from Shakespeare's The Tempest, and he closed out the time with the preface from Walt Whitman's The Leaves of Grass. Three of the best poets who have written in English, Shakespeare, Whitman, and Bly.