Facebook Nostalgia Groups, and SGV thread

I belong to three different Facebook Nostalgia (remember when) groups. It's amazing how all the threads and lost memories surface in the collective memory process. I have found long-lost friends, their siblings, a relative, and even gained a new friend or two. One group is for my grade school as there isn't another for the area, another is for my high school, and the third group is for the county where I grew up.

You know you're from Marin when...  is mostly a southern Marin group. It's interesting to learn what happened "over the hill." Some of it I can't even begin to relate to. But even with the Sonoma County group, it's a similar situation. I realized that rural West County—be it West Marin or West Sonoma, there was a very different reality than in the more civilized parts of SonoMarin.

Sir Francis Drake High School I can't say I liked high school, it was a miserable time for me—and other "valley rats." You can see by the moniker, why it might not have been all roses. Interesting to own up to a time that was painful—and not be attached to any of it. 

And the third group is Lagunitas School District and an Geronimo Valley peeps...  Sometimes it's interesting, it's definitely more scattered. Wide age range. There were multiple LSD groups. This one is the most vibrant. There also a San Geronimo Valley group—but if a group is too small, I tend not to join it. Too secular. 

We grew up during some unusual times and that the entire rock world descended upon us, along with everybody else. So the stories are interesting. I'm gleaning many backstories, not just the stories of what we remember, but the why behind them that set the stories in motion. But we were really there! One thing that's cool is that the groups are inter-generational. Multiple perspectives.

I also belong to Sausalito Children as I had many childhood experiences there. My mom lived in Sausalito during the 1960s, worked for Juanita, and was an actress at the Gate Playhouse–so it all comes together. A memory here, a memory there. And I've got me some blog fodder. Group creator Andrew Fekses and I discovered that we knew each other when we were kids—through Miranda-Micaela and Chris Wall. How small, the world.

Some nice vintage photos posted in I Love Sonoma County, CA:  Not much by way of info on West County. We reveled in our weirdness. Where I came of age as a writer, and an artist in the schools. I was always a west county girl—it was a very different reality than the more civilized parts of SonoMarin. (I got kicked out of that group, unbeknownst to me the moderator was dog crazy and I had the temerity to object to a dog slobbery post from a whinging woman who brought her filthy dog into Le Bourdain.)

Anyway, all this to say, that an incredible nostalgia thread emerged from these Facebook groups. This one began on the SGV post, and migrated to my page. Much fodder for another blog post. But I'm posting it here: stet. Verbatim. Whatevers. It’s all fodder and grist for the wheel.

Summer perversity

Why is it that every time I put on the summer sheets, the fog rolls in, and the temperature plummets 60 degrees overnight. Then when I put the flannel sheets back on the bed, the temperature skyrockets back to the triple digits? The only saving grace is that it's a dry heat! 

Ditto that with prying open the kitchen window—it take a wedge, call it a putty knife, a screwdriver, and a hammer along with some serious hefting, to open the old windows. I hosed down the cement and the windowscreens. Much cooler. The minute I manage to get the windows open for a good cross-draft, the temperature perversely plummets to the low 40s, and I’m reaching for my winter sweaters. We had rain the other day and it was warm and humid. Not normal for SF. I don’t like humidity at all.

I got heat exhaustion on Saturday—rearranging the house. Lobster-faced, dripping, followed by delicious thrilling chills, Not the right combo. Into the cold shower, fully clothed. Drop that body temperature ASAP with a pint of chilled h20 and a smoothie to restore electrolytes. I started hallucinating, I was the girl with kaleidoscope eye. I thought, OMG, I have a brain tumor—no, just a brain freeze, followed by a spectacular ocular migraine for my troubles. Never rearrange the house during a heatwave.

expanded from a FB comment, added 6/21

Facebook conversation about the heatwave (ocular migraine)

Still far too hot. Gonna stand in a cool shower fully clothed. Foggetabout getting nekkid. The wet clothes keep you cool longer.

Rebecca Cintron Osvold old school trix still work in 2013. good on ya.

Dulcie Wright It must be hot! Maybe you should run in the sprinklers???Delete or hide this

Mo Hurley That would imply a lawn.

Dulcie Wright Well find a lawn then! And walk in the sprinklers.

Mo Hurley No, just mean city streets. No lawns in Forest Knolls when I was a kid, and no lawns here in the urban jungle either.

Dulcie Wright EEEUUUW, how bout water pistols?

Mo Hurley Sure, come on over, we can be hot epistolary packin' mamas! Draw!

Dulcie Wright ewe betcha!

Mo Hurley Why is it every time I put on the summer sheets, the temperature plummets, and then when I put the flannel sheets back on, it skyrockets? Ditto with prying open the kitchen window—it take a wedge and some serious hefting to open it.

Facebook conversation (photo) Lyle Daggett & me on Bukowski, Black Sparrow Press, Doubiago

This was too good a Facebook thread to toss.

Long ago, and far away, at the Port Townsend Poetry Conference 1980. I was with Sharon Doubiago, Linda Macaluso, Tobey Kaplan, and Leonard Cirino. In this photo I'm listening to Meridel LeSueur, sitting on the floor at her feet. Her daughter Deborah LeSueur took the photo with my camera. I found it much later among some old slides. We crashed the Centrum conference—oh, how they tried to bust us, and Meridel said, “the California poets stay or I go.” Jane Bangs, whose middle name was spite, backed down fast. But then she spent the rest of the conference vociferously bad-mouthing us, and generally making our lives miserable. We were sleeping in the empty dorms, she had the janitors lock the doors, so we had no place to stay. We wound up sleeping on the beach in our sleeping bags. But it was the full moon, and then the tide came in, nearly floating us away. But the upshot was that Sharon Doubiago read from her new ms, Hard Country—it got published, and the rest is history. Meridel said, "I've waited all my life for this book and before I die I'm going to get it published."

Shout out from Sharon Doubiago on the publication of Hard Country.

DROUGHT

DROUGHT

It's odd how the life you
always envisioned
was never that obvious.
Hiding in some dark alley,
perverse dreams enticing you on,
like fool's gold or carrot sticks,
stubborn dreams that never materialized
haunting you—
but those hopes and aspirations,
abandoned by roadside ditches
amid thistles and blue chicory
and a paucity of water,
were the only things
that kept us going.

6/22/13

END POEM

Lemon Rustler

Agh! Full moon loonies have taken to walking around in broad daylight, I caught a woman from up the street walking up and down our private driveway, tweaking, stopping off to rustle some lemons from our tree (with her own stepladder, no less). She's stealing the new lemons. Babies. Some of the big ones from last year too. She hid the old ones in the shrubbery for later. Meyer Lemons don't keep once they're picked. We won't mention her equally crazed chihuahua who was having a pissing contest with the neighbor's cat. Then, she had a long screamfest with the neighbors who were rescuing their own cat. All this while I'm trying to write. My knee is really cranky today. I barreled out the front door. All of us standing in the driveway ready for blood. I told her she needed to leave, she was trespassing. She called Ricky the manager white trash. It got worse from there. This may be Oakland, but don't mess with us, this is our hood. Police enroute. Welcome to hot summer in the gritty city.

SOLSTICE TRIOLET

SOLSTICE TRIOLET

On the crest of the ridge, the full moon
rises with the fire of sunset in her arms
and holds the remains of the longest day.
On the crest of the ridge, the full moon
seeks the sun's solace—a slender night
while clouds shimmer in unearthly hues.
On the crest of the ridge, the full moon
rises with the fire of sunset in her arms.

6/21/13 noctilucent clouds

NOTE POEM

SOMEBODY'S MOGGIE

SOMEBODY'S MOGGIE 

He scratched at the front door
insisting we let him in.
Somebody's senile moggie
inspected the living room,
sat down, then looked at us
as if we'd lost our minds
rearranging the furniture like that.
We were a generic match
and the floorplan was familiar
so he ambled over to where
the food bowl should have been,
it was there last time he looked—
he puzzled it out, and posed, 
rail-thin, then yowled mightily.
We obliged with a saucer of milk.
Blue Willow to match his eyes. 
He sniffed. Shook his head.
Not his cuppa, apparently.
And so, he gazed at us
with crossed eyes, trying 
to set his world right.

6/20/13

INLAND

INLAND

Inland
a plot of ground
far from the water
sucking the shore
salt smell of waves
awakened the boats
Beating death by
drowning the
taste of the sea

6/19/2013

FOUND POEM

WALT WHITMAN

WALT WHITMAN

Beyond the seas
we take up the burden
bequeathed
by the earth—
a clear flame of truth
separated from
theories of religion
as the perfect meaning
is often lost to us
we are more sacred instinct
than the surge and fret of time,
the spirit often lost
while the letter of tradition
is retold with unlimited unction.
a poet's work
this song of America
make us feel the poetic force
These poems touched
with sweeping music
of Time and Space
open the mind.
to sing the first
harmony of the universe
The conjunction of
of poetic vision,
gaze into the future,
the social miseries lose
their finality of woe,
in the eternal human march.

6/19/2013
FOUND POEM

Bummed knee

I am a reclining social media typist. My keyboard is leaning at a 37* angle on my lap. Propped up on the bed at a 37* angle (the angle of declination), with a bran hull pillow under my poor knee. I can't do much else these days. I've become a bum with a knee for an excuse.

With my keyboard on the fritz, I'm lucky to get anything correct. If I touch the num-pad or move the keyboard, it freezes. Sometimes it types the oddest string of letters as if possessed. I need a new one but I really prefer a bluetooth keyboard to a leashed one. And money is not an option. Meaning I have no money to option. No matter that the pain has turned my brain to fuzzy logic.

*      *      *

Last night I took the kinezio tape off my knee (it was itching like mad), with no support, my knee feels very unstable—just to walk to the teapot for a refill is tricky. 

Acupuncture today. Not sure it'll be of any use. Waiting for simple surgery—in a holding pattern stuck in bureaucratic mode. A simple meniscus trim job‚ cartilage torn in two places. Both sides of the knee. Agh! I imagine loose-jointed chicken carcasses.

*      *      *

Day two of headaches. What is it about mid-June triggering migraines? Tea is not working. Got right cranky and tweeted to Sherman Alexie "Don't be such a twat" on Twitter for tweeting "Grammar cops are rarely good writers." Then I deleted it. Maybe Advil would be a good idea.

Clearly Sherman Alexie has not been reading any trashy novels on his Kindle. He is still a twat.

*      *      *

I'm averaging a book and a half a day on Kindle. Freebies rule. OMG, the typos! They hurt my eyes, affront my sensibilities. Usually they flub the possessive: it's vs its. But the grammar is also fairly a·tro·cious! I actually wrote to one author, who ruined her great storyline with too many sentences constructed with an overly aggressive possessive use of the common noun: the door's knob. The room's ceiling. Really? SO what's the technical term for this? Other than bad writing.

Makes me stop and look at the wonky sentence construction every time. Have any of these so-called authors ever heard of editors? Or grammar?

Understand, I'm a very forgiving reader when it comes to fiction. I can read just about anything including cereal boxes—as I'm a slut for storyline. But enough already! I smacks 'em in the metaphorical gob with a wet fish every time they can't correctly use a compound word, or use unnecessary and excessive apostrophes. Or get confused by homonyms. Makes for very fishy reading.

My bed is a vast sea of unschooled fish.

What came out of this process, call it a rant, were my Amazon reviews:
My Amazon Book Reviews
March 27, 2014 I posted my first review.

Knee after acupuncture

Knee elevated, and iced after acupuncture. Oww. Did he have to stab the top of my head too? I have needle welts. $2.5 buck Chuck still not working. OK, Advil, it is. 

Saw the orthopedic surgeon on Friday. Two meniscus tears on either side? No wonder my knee won’t work. I am on the waitlist for a double surgery. You can't heal torn menisci. Mine's torn on both sides of the knee.

In anatomy, a meniscus (from Greekμηνίσκοςmeniskos, "crescent") is a crescent-shaped fibrocartilaginous structure that, in contrast to articular disks, only partly divides a joint cavity. In humans it is present in the knee, acromioclavicular, sternoclavicular, and temporomandibular joints...
en.wikipedia.org

Well, that’s clear as mud. No more dancing for me. I have a stylish color-coordinated kinesio tape-job today: black and magenta. Matches my dress. I have turquoise too. Kinesio tape really works, supports the knee, yet is non-restrictive.

Want chocolate. It's all baby steps. I take the stairs one step at a time! One at a time. Try the half-step one-legged shuffle. The broom is my crutch.

Advil & chocolate. Feel better now.

Well well well, that danged needle upside the head (and elsewhere) actually worked. My knee was not in dire pain at 4 AM. I actually slept through the night. Acupuncturist stuck needles in my left foot, inside knee, right arm and ear, and on the crown of my head. I looked like a weird radio antenna tower. Acupuncture has never worked on me in the past. I'm the incorrigible one. But when things work, they really work.

Now, acupressure has always worked on me. But needles, not. I've been stabbed so much I might as well be a virtual pincushion.

Warriors' Parade

Sounds like Vietnam, 1967, outside, large choppers have been hovering overhead for the past hour. You can feel the pulse of their blades. What's going down in the hood? Are we living in a Bladerunner dystopia? Someone said it was for The Warriors' Parade preparation. Three million people are out there, meandering with intent. Cars driving up and down MacArthur Boulevard, decked in Warriors flags, honking their horns, circling the block, looking for parking spots in all the wrong places. I am so not a sports fan. Last time I saw this sort of mayhem it was for the 49ers Super Bowl ca. 1981 in San Francisco. Dudes were shimmying up the street lamps and stoplights and screaming like gibbons. Joe Montana was the hero of the hour. Then the mass destruction began to go crowd ugly. As the helicopters make another pass over our cottage, I can feel the compression of their spinning blades—even inside the house. It sets my adrenaline dancing. This is going to be a long day and an even longer night. I hope there won’t be riots. Go Warriors! 

Woodbutchers and carpenter poets: Remembering John Haines, Stephen Torre, and Ebbe Borregaard

Whatever happened to poets John Haines, Stephen Torre, or Ebbe Boregaard? I often used their poetry in the classroom when I was just beginning to teach poetry with CPITS. They were my gods of poetry. John Haines, I didn't know, other than from afar. I met him at a poetry reading, probably in Port Townsend, ca. 1982, I don't remember where—but I took a liking to his poetry of place. John was a homesteader, and the poet laureate of Alaska. A visual artist, when his paints froze, John began writing poetry.

Stephen Torre was an elusive lumberjack of a poet, with a deep husky voice that frayed the edges of my wilderness. He referred to himself as a wood-butcher (a term made infamous by my friend Arthur Boericke's off-grid book, Handmade Houses), but there was nothing incompetent about his writing. I first met Steve with Susan Kennedy and Mike Tuggle at a benefit reading in Cazadero. His Navarro Ridge poem was an epic tribute to the woodmen of the past. In 1988, I invited Steve to be a guest poet for my poetry residency on Sonoma County history at Mark West School in Santa Rosa. Sparks flew, but nothing kindled. All the little boys went wild for him too—for them Steve was a mythic mountain man. There's almost nothing on the internet about Stephen Torre, or Bolinas poet Ebbe Borregaard either. These raw, untamed men predated the internet, but I just wanted to date them, feel their two-by-fours, sawsust on my tongue.

Ebbe, who once wrote under the pseudonym, Gerard Boar, I knew long before I became a poet. He was rebuilding the porch steps for my employer, Alice Kent. I was working for Western Star Press in the basement of their Victorian mansion in Kentfield. My job was the antithesis of exciting—sorting and packaging mixed up decks of New Age tarot cards—a colossal publisher's nightmare of 52-card pickup, make that 84-card roundup. As I sat by the window mindlessly sorting cards to fill standing client orders, Ebbe would tell me stories of the Egyptian dhow he was rebuilding in Bolinas Lagoon, and generally mesmerized me. I was young. He worked with his shirt off, and looked like a bronzed Viking god. The way his muscles rippled beneath his skin. Pure poetry. Probably the roots of my poetic awakenings. Poets be like gods.

rev. & expanded 6.15.19

CHIA SEEDS

CHIA SEEDS 

Each morning Neil glugs down 

a dietary concoction of chia seeds—
slimy things I find hard to swallow.
A cup of tea keeps me regular.
And chia pets keep me green.
A college classmate, artist David Best
once chia-seeded an old 50s Cadillac.
He mounted a water buffalo to the hood
and lined its sides with broken mirrors.
At night the deer came down to graze
upon the curved beauty of its fenders.
And to gaze upon their starry reflections.

6/9/2013

World Ocean Day

Today is World Ocean Day. The Pacific Ocean is the largest in the world—covering 30% of the planet. One of the best homages we can pledge for the great mother ocean is to re-use, or stop using plastic bags, and definitely recycle those non-recyclable plastic bits and shrinkwrap at Trader Joe's, Safeway, etc.

Don't toss any plastic in the garbage can! It sloughs off landfills, etc., or is dumped at sea, and becomes marine debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. There are three garbage patches: Northern (Hawaii), Western (Japan) & Eastern. The Northern garbage patch is two times the size of Texas. And I haven't even mentioned the Atlantic.

Small bits of floating plastic debris breaks down into bite-sized fish morsels, and it never, ever decomposes. Not even inside the stomachs of turtles, seals, whales, fish and other sea creatures that eat it. 

(With thanks to Col. Chris Hadfield's Cuban coral reefs photo—I don't think he'll mind the appropriation.)

This Cuban coral reef redefines the colour blue. Col. Chris Hadfield 

Sunfish, Moonfish

Ocean sunfish, or Mola-mola —Wiki

One evening circa 1974, we were walking along the shore at Cannery Row where the Monterey Bay Aquarium now stands, admiring a full moonrise over the bay. As we ambled towards a seafood restaurant on Cannery Row (The Outrigger?), I noticed something odd on the rock reef. The moon glinted on a reflection of itself. But then I saw a fin flip up, as if it were waving to the moon. Oh my gawd, whatever it is, it's still alive.

I hiked out the reef to find a strange sea monster stranded on the rocks at low tide. It was big as a millstone and silvery as the moon. I didn't know whether to shriek and run away, or what. The oddest creature I'd ever seen was watching me warily with an enormous eye, its little beak mouth opening and closing as if in supplication. I couldn't just leave it there to die. 

Not knowing what it was, I called it a moonfish. Now, I'm not sure who its mommy & daddy were, but I imagined a very large fish picked up the full moon at a Cannery Row bar, and well, after a few martinis, one thing led to another. Their progeny, like flounder gone wrong.

Mola-molas look like they were designed by Pictionary. All head and a scalloped petticoat for a pseudo-tailfin (called a clavus)—with nothing much going on in the middle. It looks like somebody forgot to add the body. Add a dorsal fin like a sail and an anal fin like a rudder and you have a mola-mola—a large winged coin. Mola is Latin for millstone.

They're also called sunfish because these deep-water fish like to laze and swim on the surface of the ocean to catch a few rays. Normally a pelagic fish, mola-molas like to dine on jellyfish and that year the jellies were so numerous they decorating the sea like flotillas of hot air balloons. Kids were tossing pennies onto their mantles to make them sink.

Purple-striped jelly, Monterey Aquarium—Wiki

This particular sun/moonfish wasn't clear on his own minimum height requirements for tidepooling (or the uselessness of fins on dry land), and he certainly wasn't clear on the concept of outgoing tide. So much for sunbathing, this was one vertically-challenged moonbathing mola-mola stranded on the rocks. He wasn't going to make it moonbathing like that on the rocks overnight until the tide came back in.

I hoisted the mola-mola up—he was the size of a hefty truck tire. It was like holding a big slippery moon in my arms. What I didn't know at the time is that they can weigh 2000 to 3500 pounds, full grown—the largest bony fish in the world. This guy was a svelte baby—somewhere between 70 to 100 pounds.

I wasn't expecting so much slime. The fish didn't have scales, but he was greased up better than a banana slug at a greased pig contest. I nearly went into the drink a few times, staggering beneath his bulk, skidding on sea lettuce festooning the rocks, while usuccessfully dodging shallow tidepools. My shoes would survive a saltwater bath but my new Irish coat sweater was ruined. I nearly dropped him a few times. My arms ached from his tarnished weight. But I was committed to dragging him to safety.

Tottering on the rocks, like a drunk clown, I reached deep water and eased him into a deep tidepool, nearly falling in headfirst in the process. I hadn't accounted for his weight as I bent forward. He lay on his side gasping, as if incanting a prayer to the moon, his small fins rhythmically slapping the water—as if in applause. I thought I was too late. Don't die now. How on earth do you give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a fish? But then, he slowly righted himself and then he eased into deeper water. 

I was startled by the sound of people applauding. I looked up to see what it was about. All the diners on the balcony gave me a standing ovation. I was thoroughly slimed, my Irish sweater ruined, and I smelled more than a bit fishy. Sardines came to mind. All I could mutter was: hypocrites.

Needless to say, that night, fish was not on my menu. Not one of those diners thought to pick up our dinner tab or offer us a drink. They went back to their fish dinners and tucked in. That night I dreamed the moon came to me to lay in my arms. It was my birthday.

Monterey Bay Aquarium—Wiki

Facebook FAIL Rant

Nearly all my screen is filled with the new Facebook header: FAIL.

OMG Facebook, if you get any more crochety, I'm going to shoot my screen. Today, I can't access my pages because your blue header wants to hog my entire screen so I can only see three lines of text at a time. Yesterday all my Pages disappeared from my Newsfeed (only to be replaced by my Groups, and nothing but Groups).

I had to search you in order to access my own Artist Page—only to find that half my comments and posts appeared under my regular screen name. Of course there were mistakes. Glaring typos make me cranky. Then, you wouldn't let me edit my own comments on my thread—threatening blockage and expulsion from the tribe and whatnot.

There I was trying to switch back and forth from my homie Page to my Artist Page to fix the typos (no, I'm not a Gemini, but I live with one), and all I got for my effort was a stalled page with spinning beachballs. Talk about unresponsive script.

BTW, I don't like the word No, let alone Forbidden on a good day. It makes me all snorty and bothered. And that's never a good thing. Ask my partner. Ballistic comes to mind.

Dear Facebook, I won't even mention how S L O W you are these days. Did you know that I can read an entire Wiki article in the time it takes you to refresh the Newsfeed page? Forget about switching back to reload Home Page. Who has that kind of time to spare? Apparently Limbolandia is a large blue Facebook header across my entire home screen. So much for Cover Photo.

My dear social media portlet, with your server shenanighans, you brought Firefox to a screeching halt replete with spinning Gay Pride beachballs everywhere. It was quite festive, but impractical to browse with.

So, with my other browser fired up, while you juggled your balls, I've manged to read everything written on Wiki about the entire Indo-European linguistic continuum. Ask me anything about Proto-Celtic, Tokarian A, B or C, cetum vs setum borders, velars, datives, or ablutives; or the classification of the entire cat family—from caracals to pumas.

I also managed to read all of Col. Chris Hadfield's old tweets, and view all his space photos back to the beginning of April too. I was tempted to draw googlie eyes and a moustache on one of your spinning beachballs with a Sharpie.

And what's with the spinning tractor tread cursor at the bottom of my stalled Newsfeed anyway? You're not my Finder, or my browser. This shouldn't be happening. And yes, I have DSL. But I might as well be on dial-up, or using tin cans with string.

Get it together Facebook, your slippage is showing. A good thing I can multi-task with multiple browsers, or I'd have gnawed my other left foot clean off waiting for Godot to find you. Just call me Estragon. Or GoGo for short. These boots are made for walking. I'm outta here.

Thank you. I feel better now.