Random Word matrixes

I fall for those end of year word matrixes, then wonder why I bothered. Top 10 obsessive words posted were writer, poet, poetry, novelist, gods, love, God, Irish, author, languages, 

My Year in Status is a bit more of a word salad, so I'll pick out the interesting ones.
Being a writer requires an intoxication with language.
Some people become so expert at reading between the lines, they don't read the lines.
I said neither of those lines.

The Little Shits

When I was barely a teenager, my life was held hostage by the wiles of two Shetland fillies who went where they pleased, when they pleased—dubbed the Little Shits by irate neighbors. No corral could hold them. I even tried hobbling them, but they could gallop, hobbled at both ends and with a cross tie. Shackled like prisoners, they still got out to terrorize the neighborhood. I dreaded full moons and the staccato of tiny hooves on pavement. One spring the bigger one disappeared only to return with a colt. So cute! My heart melted all over again but I realized I couldn't deal with a third hellion. Then I was joined by a 4th Shetland—who ran away from a distant neighbor. Then all manner of ungulates began to appear in our lower field. Once a miniature stud horse with his sidekick—a huge horse. I may have been horse crazy but I was overwhelmed trying to feed them all on babysitter's wages.

Lunar eclipse on the Solstice

Would someone please tell the moon she's late for a very important date?

Manual for about 1.5 seconds, auto is too overblown.

 I set my weenie Nikon on manual, forgot to check the F Stop & speed....it was on F400 @ 4.6. Ironically, I blindly pointed the camera shot—and it was the best one of the moon. Of course, there was more light. Even when the eclipse was barely discernible, the amount of light drop off was hug.  

Someday I want a real DSLR camera that has a low F Stop...it kills me to be stuck at F4.5. I tried Hi ISO too, and resorted to P (Auto for the red moon shots as Manual mode completely gave up with so little light. I had to lie down on the steps and hold camera to my forehead and not breathe—the movement is the moon itself. 3-4 second exposures.

I noticed journalists have been complete spazzes in reporting the actual time/date. Not knowing the difference between Greenwich and PST, for example. I'm sitting outside with my laptop. Chilly but noice.

 

It's looking a little nibbly at 6 o clock. And we have lift off!

the little rainbow tutu is the cloud cover—it was pretty thick so I held lens open for nearly 3 seconds...then I had to breathe...phew!

  
I've lost imagery—too much cloud cover. I'm shooting at 1/30th @ 4.5 (can't lower F Stop any lower—digital weenie camera. My poor little camera could barely cope. Seriously socked in now—a mooonbow! Ring around the moon...  

This cloud cover is killing me. I've gone & lost the frickin moon... Lunar eclipse on the shortest day, first time in over 400 years and it's hidden by cloud!

  I was going to use the binoculars to enlarge the camera lens...but one eyepiece came off the binoculars and bounced down the stairs and over the wall. So Neill was rootling around in the bushes for the lens during the time the sky was clear. Very Mutt & Jeff.

I have two very weenie Nikon 8.1 megapixel Coolpix P60s (one's CCD image sensor is better than the other—I keep the other one around as Plan B), and I have an older 7.1 MP Coolpix S200 which Neil was using. The P series, you can control the Fstop and shutter speed (sort of). The Automode was a bust until totality. Then it worked (sort of), but there was so little light, half the time I was shooting blind. 

I set the aperature on Mountain mode—as that gave me the greatest depth of field (focus) but even still, there were a lot of out of focus moons. I found that the 5x optical zoom was necessary—I even used the interpolated zoom vs optical (real lens).

My cameras failed, the noise dots are stars. You can see some of them moving.

I remember once we were on our way to see Tom Stoppard at ACT in SF ca. 1999 and between the buildings, hung a red moon—my digital camera couldn't cope.  

The first total lunar eclipse like this one that I remember circa 1972 or 73, I'd stopped off at the Forest Knolls post office to get the mail and looked up and shrieked—my first thought: it was a dragon's eye, then, blood. In that moment I understood why the Chinese called it a dragon's blood moon. The Aha! And another one circa 1986. Both accidental events. I had no idea they were on the schedule. I do remember earlier eclipses when I was a child—but none where the moon turned red. 

MY GRANDMOTHER’S HANDS

MY GRANDMOTHER’S HANDS

My grandmother’s hands
were torn and speckled with pigment
fair northern flesh burned by the fierce California sun.
A rebellious knotted vein rose up like a stone.
Souvenir from a strand of barbed wire
strung to keep the deer out of the garden.

Her freckles were an archiplelago of islands
adrift on a moon-milk sea.
They were Brendan voyagers in curraghs
headed for the New World
with a warrior phalanx of shields
raised up against a common enemy, the sun.
But they failed to protect her children,
when the melanoma set sail for that country
from which nothing ever returns.

I remember her wide spatulate fingers
that rubbed floursack sheets against the washboard
that mended jeans, made dresses for first day of school
and how I was ashamed they were not store-bought.
I remember the way she weeded the gardens,
dug up the praties, stacked wood for coming winter.

From her, I learned the survival of hands.
No caresses were needed because her love
was as fierce as the sun that burned her skin
as she labored in the garden or at the clothesline
she kept us safe, and provided when no one else would.
As she knelt to pray in the Sunday pew,
the sun shone on that knotted vein
and it was so beautiful—the scarring and freckles,
a skin painting of faith and tenderness.

8/28/10 rev. 12/12/10
Medusa's Kitchen, 2012
From Ellery Akers' workshop, Petaluma, CA, 

POETRY FEEDS Benefit For Share First Oakland Program, 12/12/2010

I read too, no idea where in the program, as I am not listed, Elmaz Abinander did not come, I might have read during his slot.

POETRY FEEDS Benefit For Share First Oakland
Program, 12/12/2010
MC's: Loma Dee Cervantes, Ishmael Reed, Francisco Alarcón
6:00-6:45 pm 

Hall - Feast or Famine Chance Dinner: $5 - $10 meal ticket;

Foyer - Holiday Book and Craft Fair; Instant Publishing Poetry Wall. Come attach or write your latest autographed creation on our paper wall for

"instant publishing." Artist? Add your finest. Conserve space for others.

We will be auctioning and/or raffling off the results at the end of the event.

Sanctuary - Slides and Music Presentations

6:45 pm Sanctuary - Welcome: Lora Dee Cervantes

Invocation: Francisco Alarcon

Opening Remarks by J. Webb Mealy, co-founder and Executive Director of Share First Oakland

Reading of poem by Oakland poet, Reginald Lockett: Lorna Dee Cervantes

7:00 pm First Group with Lorna Dee Cervantes

1-2. Special Presentation: Jack Foley and Adelle Foley
Rafael Jesús González
Nina Serrano
Paul Lobo Portuges
Vicki Vertiz
Cecile Pineda
John Oliver Simon
Lucha Corpi
Special Presentation: Ishmael Reed

7:45 pm Second Group with Ishmael Reed
Tennessee Reed
Timothy Reed
Odilia Galvan Rodriguez
Elmaz Abinader
Ruth Schwartz
Becca Carmona
Sharon Doubiago
Francisco X. Alarcón
Special Presentation: Cherrie Moraga

8:45 pm Raffle / Auction / Donation Drive
Special Music Presentation
Special Presentation: Avotja

8:55 pm Third Group with Francisco Alarcón
Leticia Hernández
Tomas Riley
Javier O. Huerta
Linda Watanabe McFerrin
Cesar A. Cruz Leolol
Blackberri
Trina L. Drotar
Sandy Thomas
Lorna Dee Cervantes

El Mensajero, Lorna Dee Cervantes Hunger reading, 1st Congregational Church, Oakland

12 de diciembre del 2010 | El Mensajero (San Francisco, CA)
comentarios@elmensajero.com

OAKLAND:

Unos 50 poetas y escritores locales, como Francisco X. Alarcón, Lucha Corpi, Ishmael Reed, Reed Tennessee, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Ruth Schwartz, Cecilia Pineda, Maureen Hurley, Jack y Foley Adelle, y más, leerán su obra para alimentar a los más hambrientos de las calles de Oakland. Habrá venta y presentaciones de libros, además de venta de artesanía con tablas de datos y de artesanía. También habrá subastas que serán útiles para donaciones. En la Primera Iglesia Congregacional de Oakland, ubicada en el 2501 de Harrison Street. Este domingo 12 de diciembre. Consulta el sitio en internet: www.sharefirst.org.

Poem and photos published in Medusa's Kitchen

Repent Nothing

• I WAS BORN WITHIN SIGHT

Mythopoetics, or why I write

The Pleasanton Poetry Poet Laureate asked me:
Why does Maureen Hurley write poetry? 

“I grapple with the unconscious dendritic history buried within the personal mythopoetics of my writing while keeping an ear bent to the myriad voices of landscape and memory.”

My poem & photos are up at Meusa's Kitchen blog: 

I WAS BORN WITHIN SIGHT