FULL SNOW MOON haiku

FULL SNOW MOON

A grey fox crossed the road
in front of my headlights—
his tail erasing his shadow.

2/28/21

Links to some of my foodie bloggies

I was compiling a bloglist of foodways for my latest food blog, expecting to find a mere handful. Instead, I found 25 blog posts, and when I compiled a growing list, for some inexplicable reason, Blogger erratically erased the correct links. I had to redo this list too many times to count. I no sooner fixed three dead links, then when I reformatted it, other links went wonky. And so on. For every step forward, I retreated two steps. It took me most of the day to undo the damage. Shame on you Blogger for once again making what once was a relatively simple task into a logistical nightmare. Ditto that with your dogged changing of spelling in the search window. Foodways is a real word. The links are in no particular order, but are mostly chronological in nature. I'm sure I missed a few.

A note on native foodways in the British Isles vs. foods introduced by Romans
Wild Apples

Defiant Fruitcakes

A note on Medieval spices

A note on Medieval turnspit dogs

Folklore: Foodways, saying, a food thief/ house sprite
Folklore: Foodways/ How to make Irish Soda Bread

Folklore: Irish Soda Bread Recipe
Corned beef & cabbage came out of Hell's Kitchen

Groundcherries by any other name 

On Jack O Lanterns and squashes 
Lemon Meringue Merengue
Elderberry Whine

Baking a Cake on Bastille Day

Writing down the bone soup

Recipe for bone broth
Tea vs Chai—if by Land, or Sea
Tapping trees: a soggy story
Arbutus, Madroño, or a Strawberry Tree by any other name
Irish salmon
Naked man in a filbert bush, and spotted dick

Shrove Tuesday Pancakes

Fat Tuesday pancakes

Huckleberries

MY AMERICA haiku

My America 

is a hummingbird hovering 

at an empty feeder 

crawling with ants.

2/23/21

Cleveland Elementary School Days 1-3 teaching notes: LOVE IS LIKE, IF/THEN, MY, HOPE, Ms. Loeser’s 4th Grade, Journal

2/9 Well, this is a first, I came late to my own class, thinking it began on Thursdays, not Tuesdays. Oops! This pandemic messes with my sense of time. It took me quite some time to get into the Zoom meeting as well, which made me even later yet. Egg on my face. What a funny saying. First you have to be eating eggs for breakfast, second you have to be eating them so fast that they’re all over your face. Then you need to be in such a hurry that you don’t even have the time to wipe your mouth. That about sums it up. I never quite caught my breath the entire class. Wipe your mouth!

I am a great one for over-preparing, but this time I had to teach ad hoc, off the top of my head. Luckily the poem I chose was a phrase by William Butler Yeats, Love is like a lion’s tooth as a starter place. Mary did not receive my PDF handouts, so I had to teach, and simultaneously send her the lesson plan via email, talk about multitasking. But we did it.

I did a brief intro—who I am, my relationship with poetry, why I write. How dyslexia, feeling mute, and the urge to share all these feelings shaped my poetic persona. How I arrived late to this class, and also to poetry, I was turning 30 before I wrote a poem, I was late, all out of breath. 

During independent study, or while they were waiting for me to show up for class, students wrote a short bio on Google Docs. A great use of time.

We opened our class with comparisons. I read Yeats’ fragment, Love is like a lion’s tooth. I asked students what they thought it meant. There were some interesting comments, I asked them to write their own version. And there were some great examples. We expanded our ideas into longer poems. Kids are eager to share their poems in this crazy cyber world.

During recess, we had a breakout room. A first. Paloma shared her screen, so we worked on line breaks, a rarity. One thing that came up several times was how to deepen our images. How do we make something generic versus specific? I told her I can’t see the word “bad,” can you give me an example so I can see it? How do we deepen? How do we create a picture that the audience too can see? I tell them, Poetry is a picture made with words. 

Kids wrote in their journals but will transfer their poems to Google Docs which Mary will share with me later. I did not get a chance to record some of the examples that we spontaneously made up, and they were good. Next time. 

I designed a quickie heart card and shared it, saying that since Sunday was Valentine’s Day, they should consider taking one of their love comparisons and putting it inside a valentine card to give to someone. I also mentioned the presidential inauguration youth poet Amanda Gorman was a CPITS student. Kids were sufficiently shocked. They liked the idea that poetry can travel well beyond the boundaries of this classroom.

On being bullied in school

I read with interest a HuffPost article on someone who tracked down and interviewed the bullies she met in school. Coming to terms with your accusers without laying blame. going beyond, and discovering the reason why your tormentors were tormented. 

Few know that I was bullied in grade school and high school. I withdrew into my art, and kept my circle of friends small. At the time, I had no idea I was being bullied. I blamed myself. We did not have the words for it, and it wasn’t immediately obvious. I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t liked. We blamed different cliques and went on with our lives, not knowing that bullying behavior needs to be acknowledged and called out. 

In retrospect, I wish teachers had given us some social skills or tools to cope with that kind of behavior—rather than forcing us to take Home Ec. What on earth did those popular girls and cheerleader types have against me? It was the birth of hippiedom, the age of the Summer of Love. Grudges and differences fell by the wayside during the social revolution that ended the 1960s.

I came to terms with some of the bullying, or rather, I faced it, when I went to my 10th high school reunion, thanks to a high school friend friend Ken Bullock who enticed me to the after party picnic, and to old grade school friend, Dennis De La Montanya who welcomed me with open arms. That was the first snakeskin shedding. The first healing had begun. Poetry gave me back the world. 

By my 20th high school reunion I had left that old world far behind, having grown a thicker skin, and by my 30th reunion, the pain was barely recognizable—those days were an afterthought. But it was ossified. Writing had so completely become my world, my realm, that all was fodder for the gristwheel. But I couldn’t write about it. I think on some level, I had long since forgiven my tormentors, and moved on, but more importantly, I forgave myself. However, I was angry for such a very long time. The pain was still there.

Now facing my 50th, actually my 51st high school reunion since we missed our 50th due to COVID, it is interesting to revisit some of those old feelings. Those old stomping grounds had become a kind of fiction. But also they shaped my persona, and how I react to others bullying people is an indicator of what I experienced. I must admit that when I witness bullying now, I am all tooth and claw.

It comes as quite a shock to realize that you’ve carried that albatross for so long around your neck, like a holy relic, but it also informs your personality, makes you even more who you are. This constant process of becoming.

With thanks to Paula Friedman

YOUNG BOBCAT

YOUNG BOBCAT

1.A young bobcat, all tawny and golden, 

bounded in front of me at Nicasio Creek 

as I was driving towards the bridge at dusk. 

His undulating spots were mesmerizing

as his undersides flashed rufous and amber. 

The white tip at the end of his bobbed tail, 

was like a small searchlight or a shooting star.

I didn’t even attempt to reach for my camera.

Sometimes it’s OK to just let it go. 

Be in the present. My heart felt lighter for it.

2. Then there are those darker days 

when I don’t reach for my camera, 

I try to keep it close at hand,  

but I don’t always succeed 

at keeping the rough beast at bay.

My camera, a small beacon of hope 

on a treacherous coastline.

2/22/21

Remembering Chicken Bill, aka William Muller

Chicken Bill Mueller at the Rancho Nicasio

William “Chicken Bill” Mueller was born in 1946, a Chicago native, he said is background was of Polish heritage, his mother’s maiden name was Irlowski. He said he got out of the Windy City by running off to join the military—probably Vietnam. Something about his draft card number coming up.

When he first came to Marin in the 1970s, he worked in construction with his friend Mike Vinceleone who owned a construction business in Larkspur. Both he and Mike were very fond of LSD. Bill also worked on the Escalle Estate Vineyards, mending fences, and running the backhoe. He said that he built many of the houseboats along the Corte Madera Creek. He also worked at a YMCA camp, and for Gort Jewelers in San Rafael. Bill was a diamond duster and dated the jeweler’s daughter.

He said something about a pimp and a pink Cadillac, and it sounds like at one point he was pretty flush, as he had credit card with $23,000 on it. I don’t know if that was debt, or value.

He got his moniker when he worked on a chicken ranch. Packs of dogs would go after his chickens. He said at one point, he killed 77 dogs, and was arrested, sent to Atascadero, and while there, he was found mentally unstable, and was drugged.

While in the asylum, he said that he learned law, fought his case to get out of prison, and won. But circumstances had drastically changed for him. The world he knew no longer existed. He lost his place on Juarez (when?) due to back taxes, etc., when he was sent to prison.

While in Santa Rosa, in 2017, he was in the Tubbs fire zone and lost everything. He said, “They made me leave in the middle of the night and I lost all my possessions. I had no papers. Nothing. I had a small trust fund, about 15k but lost it all in a bad investment.” I think what he was trying to tell me what is this when you lose all your papers you can’t prove who you are

It sounds like he lived in Forest Knolls on Juarez or Montezuma off and on during the 1970s onward. In 1977, he had a pet pig named Francis he said that the sheriff came and confiscated him…. He said that he lost most of his investment money, and any money from the sale of his property, was long gone. He was a veteran, and lived on a small VA stipend and SSI. Sometimes he stayed in Barb’s back bedroom to dry out, and take a shower, but most of the time he lived in a little camp he had created deep in the woods.

It was not easy interviewing Bill because he would never finish the story and then jump into another story, and if I tried to get him to backtrack, he would get cranky, so I just let it flow.

Trying to get Barbara Scott, who knew him best, to clarify the story was equally challenging, if not downright impossible. When Covid came along, Chicken Bill was looking in on her, taking care of her most basic needs during her year+ of isolation. If she needed heavy, lifting done or soil moved, Chicken Bill was there. He built a solar panel array for her little shed on the side of the trailer, and helped her in the community garden. Barbara left us in July of 2021.

I lost touch with Chicken Bill after that. Barbara was our only connection. Sometimes I would see him on his bicycle headed towards the San Geronimo foodbank, and we would stop and say hello, but then it was as if he just disappeared, evaporated into thin air. I didn’t see him anymore. And now I fear that they are both gone.

Fragments: Don Yurian, shooting dogs, the Weavers. I always meant to write up the story, but somehow I got distracted and now I can’t remember the thread, or the bits that I did not write down. I’ve been too far and too long from it. I would love to collect any stories you have of him and see if we can wave together a piece. Perhaps Angel? In May of 1997, according to my blog, I was at the Rancho Nicasio bar and a drunk asked me if I knew Chicken Bill, so it sounds like he was still living in Forest Knolls at the time.

This was fleshed out from my Feb 19, 2021 notes, on March 19, 2023.

A note on native foodways in the British Isles vs. foods introduced by Romans

I read an interesting post in a Facebook group, British Medieval History, on foodways where someone said, “Introduced by the Romans to Britain: Apples, asparagus, turnips, peas, garlic, cabbages, onions, leeks, cucumbers, artichokes, figs, chestnuts, cherries, celery, wine, plums, etc...”

The list struck me as wrong. I was off and running when I saw that the thread commentor, Paul Davis had credited the Romans with bringing apples to the British Isles. I told him, I suspect if you dig deeper you’ll find that apples were not introduced by the Romans. 

Specific species of apples, cabbage and onions, probably were probably introduced, but apples, kales, and wild onions too were part of the northern European Neolithic landscape. And there were plenty of native brassicas as well. Don’t forget the color woad comes from a brassica. 

Cabbage was domesticated in Western Europe ca. 1000 BC, probably by the Celts. Brassica is from from bresic, a Celtic word for cabbage. Whether native or feral, brassica species favored the white limestone cliffs of Dover, and the Isle of Wight. Brassica oleracea has successfully crossed with native brassica species so it’s impossible to tell them apart. And then there’s another continental shared species, arbutus, or strawberry tree, native to Ireland, but curiously not to Britain. 

I am no botanist or scientist, but I did extensive research on apples, because the information struck me as wrong that apples were introduced to the British Isles via Rome, via Kazakhstan. Also, apples, specifically crabapples, played a significant central role in Irish and Welsh mythology. Then there’s Avalon, the isle of apples. The reason being that certain plant species were circumpolar, such as the corylus, rosids, vaccinium, malus, prunus, brassicaceae and allium—sort of like reindeer/caribou, foxes, etc., so no one region can claim species origin. 

BEAUTY IS NOT ONLY SKIN DEEP

BEAUTY IS NOT ONLY SKIN DEEP 

What the mirror said
I learned the hard way
I was born a cygnet
and when I shed my baby teeth

not knowing I was a swan

I thought I was an ugly duckling

I looked away from the mirror
it always lied to me and told me big fibs
but I didn’t see that
the fowlish water was made of crocodile tears
and the rain fell in concentric circles
a stone skipped and danced
across the surface of the pond
I was mesmerized by a shattered reflection
I never learned the truth that
beauty comes from within.

(Now read it again from the bottom up).

2/16/21

Shrove Tuesday on the fly

Laissez les bons temps rouler!  I just realized it’s Shrove Tuesday! I made minimalist buckwheat pancakes on the fly—sans crêpe pan. Stuffed with Laurel Cheney’s cranberry goat cheese and drizzled with maple syrupl, they were divine, but too fragile to flip as I didn’t get a chance to let the batter rest. I forgot to flip mine, does that mean I’ll not be shriven? So they didn’t roll up as nicely as they should have, but they went down the hatch just fine. Burp. 

Somehow this post got lost in the shuffle, or flat out disappeared, when I was compiling a list of food blogs. I found it again on Facebook. So all is restored. Sort of. I don’t have the final rendition.

I used buckwheat pancake flour, an egg, some oil, a little sour cream and milk to thin the batter. Butter for the pan.

The ingredients for pancakes can be seen to symbolise four points of significance at this time of year:
Eggs ~ Creation
Flour ~ The staff of life
Salt ~ Wholesomeness
Milk ~ Purity 

See Pancake Day

San Geronimo! a school play, and Freedom School, Freedom Summer, Mississippi during the Civil Rights movement

This is a rather odd, convoluted story. I hardly know how to process it. Seemingly unrelated events converged at rhomboid angles when I tried to find the news clipping on a play I was in, called San Geronimo! in 1965. It was written by Barbara Scott and directed by Stu Rasmussen. The Marin County librarian had no luck finding it, so when Newspapers.com was free today, I slogged through a decade’s worth of newspapers. Sometimes finding what you aren’t looking for is the real story. Synchronicity works in mysterious ways. During Freedom Summer, the good folks of San Geronimo Valley had raised money and made a massive book drive to furnish Indianola Freedom School in Mississippi. Someone’s local son taught there. They needed books. We gave. We sent them 2000 books. I remember being asked to give up some of my books. I belong to Scholastic book services book club and every month I bought armloads of books for $.10 each—that’s where all my babysitting money went, was for books. The organizers included Harold Gregg of Forest Farm Camp, and the Greenbergers—Joan’s father was a guard at San Quentin. One night he took us kids out to dinner. Instant mashed potatoes and salisbury steak in the San Quentin mess hall. Weird. Understand that the San Geronimo Valley, an enclave of artists and musicians, was not mainstream Marin. More like the poverty pool. Jazz pianists Lenny Tristano and Ralf Sutton were fathers of our our classmates. Maurice del Mué painted our WPA school mural.  Meanwhile, during that Freedom Summer, many of Marin’s young folks rallied, they also joined Martin Luther King, marching from the San Francisco Theological Seminary to Selma. Ken Bullock remembers seeing the greyhound busses pull away from the seminary. Unrelated segue no. 1, I was part of that Marin City mounted entourage from the San Geronimo Valley. I played Joseph leading Mary on a donkey, Dec. 1964. Yeah, I was dressed in white bedsheets pulling a recalcitrant ass through the streets of Marin City. Equally weird. Unrelated segue no. 2. More of a prequel as it set everything in motion. Cathy Barbano who lived on our road, was killed in a car crash in Mexico in 1965. Then her grief-stricken father, Ed Barbano shot himself. Meanwhile, there was Selma Alabama. Bloody Sunday, March 1965. Well, Freedom School was razed to the ground, and Mississippi was burning. So SGV folks began raising money and collecting books all over again to help rebuild that school—and our play, San Geronimo! was a fundraiser. Why I had trouble finding the article was because the lead was buried. Literally. I kept seeing references to Freedom School. Curiosity finally got the better of me. I was so sure I would never find that article. Maddening. And lo, filed under the headline of Freedom Summer, there was the slippery article that had evaded detection for decades. Everything suddenly came together. Our fundraiser, the rebuilding of Freedom School was a memorial tribute to Cathy’s father and our playground teacher, Ed Barbano. See Harold Gregg’s rousing letter at the end. What spurred us into action? The abduction and murder of three civil rights leaders June 25, 1964, by the KKK may have been the galvanizing event. Synchronicity works in mysterious ways.

Mt Tam, stabilo drawing 5x7”

Yet another drawing of Iceland5x7” stabilo

Day 5, post vaccine blues, round 2

Day 5: So far, so good, but then, I’m still lolling in bed. I awoke at 6AM, bummed that I didn’t sleep in. I am both restless and exhausted, a lethal combination. I decided to wait out the side effects of the Moderna vaccine at a friend’s trailer, as I was feeling far too weird to drive home. I’m totally spaced out—like being high—without the munchies. I have no appetite at all, and I’m trippin’ without the Grateful Dead.

I’ve spent the past few days dozing while listening to audiobook CDs in my car; the warm winter sunlight amplified by all those windows is heavenly—I must be morphing into a cat. Barb’s cat is jealous of my new digs, she wants in. At least I'm not snoozing on the hood of my car in front of God and the neighbors who were already craning their necks as it was. 

Yesterday I slept in, which helped enormously. Nothing like a full-night’s sleep to make you right as rain, as my grandmother might say. But when I went to my care giver job, I was easily overwhelmed and distressed by mid-afternoon. Not quite ready to burst into tears, but close, I felt so out of sorts. Thickheaded.

The first few days after the vaccine I was freezing, cold as the morgue, a place I’m actively trying to avoid like the plague. I just couldn’t get warm. The first night I crawled out of bed and took a long hot shower to raise my body core. I was hovering at 97° flat. I was one cranky human popsicle. I took more showers during those first three days than the past month. If only I had access to a hot tub. I began to fantasize using a small horse trough as a hot tub. I even priced them out on Amazon. Totally doable.

It doesn’t help that I was born under the cranky sign. When I was a child, my granny said she couldn’t wait until I was old enough to drink coffee. Yesterday’s weak coffee didn’t help, it was limp-wristed milquetoast. I was still cranky as fuck. I needed a quad latte, only I wasn’t fit to drive over the hill into town. Driving while under the influence of Moderna is a real thing. The thought of double-clutching around wild curves, staying within the double yellow lines and avoiding entitled cyclists was too much. Stop signs and nuns didn’t count.

Multi-tasking was completely out of the question. Even mono-tasking was problematic, so attempting to do my caretaker job was painfully hilarious—especially the laundry. I was ADHD. Oh look, shiny. It took me three different attempts to finish one afternoon’s worth of work. The concept of pacing myself was not working out. I had no stamina, and it seemed as if my brain was having a three-martini lunch elsewhere, say, Victoria’s Station, ca. 1976, without me. Those everyday autopilot tasks were overwhelming as I had to actually think about how to do them. Sequential was not in my daily arsenal. My little gray cells were definitely on strike. For all I knew, they were probably calling their union rep for gross misrepresentation.

For example, I had three simple tasks, to check the laundry, maybe start a new load, and bring in the dry clothes. I managed to accomplish one task at a time, sequentially, replete with three separate trips to the laundry room, forgetting to carry over the new load twice. 

You know how when you retrace your steps to the last place you were, in order to retrieve an escaped thought? Well, I had to return to the kitchen three times in order to finish the laundry. I don’t think memory foam shoes with homing pigeon instincts would’ve helped much, I was willing to consider it after my third trip back to the kitchen to remember what I forgot. What is it with the kitchen anyway? Why does it becomes the hot thought spot in the universe of forgotten tasks? Please don’t tell me the answer is 42. That reminds me, I forgot to wash the towels.

The rest of the afternoon followed suit in a similar crazy pattern of random memory breaks. Clearly multi-tasking, something which I am particularly adept at—one might even say I was the reigning champion of multi-tasking—was simply not in my domestic arsenal. 

I was also easily fatigued which exacerbated the problem. And I was restless, niggling about like a homeward horse worried about the state of the barn. I couldn’t seem to rest. An odd combo of adrenaline rush compounded by fatigue and an absence of thought. Finishing sentences and following trains of thought was not on the agenda. I kept thinking, so this is what dementia is like, wanting to apologize to my dead grandmother for not understanding. 

I am rather dogged, and tend to finish my tasks—no matter what. But yesterday was a challenge. I left many things undone. Time was an odd, if fluid concept. I was in a quagmire located in the land of forever, so just to make chicken soup and do the dishes was like being caught up in a domestic Godot walkabout. I dumped the pot of chicken soup I was making on the floor.

Driving home to Sonoma Co. from W. Marin was a more of a challenge than I had anticipated, I just wanted to pull over and sleep by the side of the road. I did pull over by Nicasio Reservoir to gather my wits. It didn’t work. They were off with the fairies. I should’ve just stayed over another night in W. Marin, but I wanted to be in my own bed. It was too difficult to be a guest, in a strange bed not my own—especially when I felt so out of sorts. 

I fell asleep while listening to an audiobook, practically in my dinner plate. At least it was Blue Willow.  I have no idea what audiobook. TG I was already in bed. Dressing for dinner during these Covid times revolves around which flannel nightie to don. So I was battle ready, girding my loins with plaid flannel. But at least I’m vaccinated. If I can make it through the next two weeks, I’ll be home free. No more masks. But now the scuttle is that Covid is morphing ahead of the curve. Hello mask.

• Vaccines and blue horseshoe crab blood
• Post vaccine blues
• Waiting to be Moderna-ized

Second Covid shot

Second Covid shot, so far, so good. Better organized. I was injected within minutes. I medicated with Benadryl & aspirin. Need a nap.

As soon as I got my shot I took aspirin and Benadryl. I was told that same information to not take NSAIDs but I could not verify it, so to play it safe, I followed directions, only to find out it wasn’t even true. I think that sound bite about not taking NSAIDs is left over from the .45 bleach era. There is a lot of misinformation that is still floating around. My nurse practitioner was very clear on the subject. She said it was bullshit. There is no reason why you can’t aspirin or Advil beforehand. Bring a water bottle and aspirin or drug of choice, maybe Benadryl.

Seriously more organized this time around. My appointment was at 11:15 and I was done by 11:30. Then I had to wait till noon. Still no side effects. However Benadryl is probably working as well as the aspirin. I had to go up to my car and take a nap literally for an hour. I feel like I have been drinking for a week. And I don’t drink, not really. What a relief. Now we wait for two weeks before I am immune.

My synapses and my inability to finish thoughts and sentences, are definitely off kilter.  I’m sure much of it is stress, and some of it is Benadryl. I had a glass of wine to celebrate. It tasted so good. My speech did not improve.

I was also nauseous in the middle of the night. I couldn’t even raise my right arm it was so painful. I thought for a moment I was going to visit the porcelain god. Today I have a headache. And my hips hurt something fierce. All my old aches and wounds are lining up and taking turns.

Slept or dozed most of the day.  Still easily tired, fatigue, but at least my brain is back online. No more brain fog. Yesterday I spoke excellent qualude scrabble, almost all vowels. My arm still aches but it’s nowhere near as bad. No aspirin today—so far. Still seeking warmth like a heat-seeking cat. In my car, sort of like a sauna, or a sunporch.

Let’s just say last night was a very long cold night. Watched several episodes of the Queen’s Gambit. I don’t understand chess anyway. I was taking baby aspirin by the handful. I, who rarely take anything. Every old injury chimed in and said remember me? I have been beaten with small sticks, It’s a Thursday, but it isn’t Paris in the rain. Where is Cesar Vallejo when you need him?

OCCASIONAL POEM FOR PAMELA

OCCASIONAL POEM FOR PAMELA 

     —for Pamela Robertson-Pearce

If that is supposed to be yellow,

well then, I’m a monkey’s uncle.
Chartreuse by any other name

I’d say, with a tinge of ochre. 

Give me Naples yellow, or give me death.
Give me cream and sunshine.
Give me limoncello over ice
on a Mediterranean balcony
in deep summer with a long lost friend.
Or a newfound one.
Now, that is the secret heart of yellow.

Not mud passing for light.
Give me sunflowers and dandelions,
and Van Gogh enough for Pamela, 

she with the fiery halo of hair,
who resides in the snow country 

amidst the dreams of sheep.

2/2/21