Breaking Facebook community standards, yeah, right

Facebook, your so-called “community standard” patrol bots are over the top idiotic asshats. I am so tired of my authentic posts being flagged, marked and deleted as “spam.” Your AI bots just nuked a dangerous map of the Caldor wildfire. How fecking stupid is that? It was a public service announcement about evacuation procedures, FFS. I have friends living in the fire zone. Facebook you’re going against your own community standards to keep us “safe.”

For example, just last week, you harassed me for sharing my own photos of a friend who had just died, famed poet Jack Hirschman, with grieving friends. Someone who had died of COVID! How is that even remotely considered spam? How tacky, not to mention, how insensitive. When someone dies, how do you get the news out, except for by posting more than once?

The time before that, your Facebook AI bots flagged an innocuous photo of a spotted colt and a spotted chicken. I can’t even begin to fathom why a photo of a cute baby horse and chicken could possibly go against anyone’s “community standards.” And no, that wasn’t multiple posts. I’m still puzzling over that one.

I won’t mention how you often arbitrarily curtail my ability to edit any of my comments for a week, because I was “going too fast,” or whatever. I am an OCD writer. Your autocorrect algorithm sucks, and changes my comments AFTER I post them. I change my mind early and often and I suck at typing. Editing your own comments should not a crime. But I guess Facebook would prefer typos and inane comments vs. actual innovative thoughts.

I notice your AI bots only flag me late at night, during the wee hours. How clandestine. How Third Reich. I’m fairly certain that my posts do not contain content that includes “violent extremist propaganda, misinformation, nudity, sexual activity, bullying, hate speech or violence,” tho this post could be construed borderline hate speech against your dafty bots.

Someone noted that when they deleted the Facebook sponsored ads they were thrown in Facebook jail. Bingo! I deleted a plethora of irrelevant Facebook ads as because they were for senior citizens who needed to find rest homes, or wear Depends, or need hearing aids—none of which I want to see ads for, nor do I need. Yet. Is that the trigger that puts us in the gobby gunsites of your bots?

Shame on your so-called “community standards,” Facebook. You suck at this bot patrol stuff. Your so-called safety bots are an epic fail. I think I’ve reached the crossroads where we may need to part company. Enough is enough. This is now borderline harassment, Facebook. Stop bullying me by flagging and removing my posts—especially under such distressing circumstances.

Dear Ones, what are the words that trigger the Facebook Jail bot armies? Using the word kll is one trigger word, and idiota is another. What else? Besides sarcasm.

• Facebook autocorrection woes
• Searching for Trevor Yeats This post got me some detention time. Why, Gawd only knows.

CaldorFire is larger than the city of Chicago

This is seriously hard to fathom: #CaldorFire is now larger than the city of Chicago. South Lake Tahoe is under mandatory evacuation: Twin Bridges, Echo Lakes, Kirkwood. The Caldor Fire has burned over 177,000 acres and containment dropped to 14%.  Keep battling.  CalFire fighters are WALKING those heavy fire hoses in to Echo Lakes. No other choice.

We are fast losing all our historic lodges and summer camps in the Sierra Nevada range. Apparently Strawberry Lodge is still standing but there are conflicting reports on Camp Sacramento. The outbuildings at Sierra-at-Tahoe ski resort are gone, but not the main lodge. 

The radicalization and blame game on various news posts—especially vociferous are those who comment in the PD posts— is astoundingly simpleminded. 

California has never existed under these current man-made conditions. Because of climate change, each fire season is exponentially worse than the previous one. Also, our aquifers have been pumped dry, much productive land has been paved over, and fuel loads are at a record high. It’s not solely about mismanaging the forests or tree huggers or the EPA.

The thing is, that unmanaged, overgrown forests are natural. This idea of “managing” our forests is an anthropocentric notion. And the forest service position will always point to mismanagement and outside blame. There is a quaint notion that Native Americans took care of all the forests of California, and didn’t let them get overgrown—but that’s hyperbole. 

Right now, climate change is the main culprit, a profound lack of precipitation, and even more dire, is the lack of normal seasonal snowpack, which has desiccated the wilderness. Climate change is also responsible for the diseases ravaging our forests—especially the pine borer beetle which has decimated thousands of acres of forest.  Winters are shorter, milder, allowing the insect to flourish. 

It is ironic that so much of California has burned, that wildfire is now taking care of our “mismanagement.” It’s a much more complex picture than that. If you need to lay blame, try PG&E, solely responsible for the majority of our wildfires.

Sneezing, such exquisite pain, so I eat cake standing up

Today was a good day, at a friend’s birthday, when my back began to hurt, I ate cake standing up. All I care about at this point is that I didn’t hurt sitting down in a chair, but I had to stand up by dessert time.  Sneezing brings such exquisite sorrow. We won’t mention coughing. Or trying to sit on the pot.

I went to Lucky’s to get some food. It was a bit of a stretch, the heat was unbearable. I probably should not have vacuumed the rug yesterday. What was I thinking? 

I had planned to go see Billy Collins today, I even had tickets for this amazing triple feature all star conjunction with Isabel Allende, and Dave Barry in the town of Sonoma. But since I could barely get out of bed, I couldn’t even imagine trying to drive there.

I was already wavering, and on the fence about going because of the Delta Variant, even though it was outside, on the Sonoma Plaza. But when I woke up with my lower back and hip still hurting from having done too much the day before, most likely, I knew I couldn’t handle the hour drive to Sonoma, then to sit on the grass for two hours, and then the hour drive back. 

Also it was over 100° and incredibly smoky. It was a hard decision to make. Or an idea to let go of. The smoke is positively hazardous. Shallow breathing is the ticket.

Envoy: Well, it took almost a full month to get to the other side of this stupid lower back injury. My back still gets tired when I drive, I definitely hurt after a half-hour of sitting. A dull ache that won’t go away, and aspirin does little to ameliorate the pain. I need rest for a few minutes in between chores, and be careful when I do housework as it still twinges when I mop or sweep. 

Hardest retrain of all is to not leap out of my chair like a startled rabbit after I sit down to rest my back. Caught myself doing just that yesterday. Boing! As Andy Giddings said, "You need to eliminate Jump from your vocabulary." Not an easy thing. I am the original energizer bunny, sans batteries.

Stoned off my ass for the duration (translation: I strained my back)

My car is my go-bag

Centa Theresa asks about my living situation. There is no easy answer. Certainly not a short one. It’s been a long, weird journey, I was unhomed in Sept. 2018, after a 21-year relationship failed, and I housesat for a while in Sonoma Co. I was also staying part time with my cousin in Nicasio, in West Marin as I had landed a care provider job in Forest Knolls. But on July 4, 2019, a truck drove into their house in Nicasio and destroyed most of the front of it. The house was uninhabitable. They were moved out by the insurance company to hotels, and later to a house above Dominican in San Rafael. I sometimes stayed in the shell of the Nicasio house, taking care of the poor traumatized kitties, when I wasn’t staying with a friend in Sonoma County. I was care providing in Forest Knolls two days a week, and teaching poetry in Berkeley, and at Juvenile Hall in Terra Linda, so I stayed in Nicasio to shorten the commute. Then the wildfires struck, I evacuated from Sonoma County to that Nicasio house twice, during the wildfires of 2018, and 2019, as there was nowhere else to go. Right before the pandemic, I was also teaching a residency in San Jose 3 days a week, so I stayed with a student’s family there, and at Fred Dodsworth’s home in Berkeley, when I was also teaching in Berkeley. I also stayed at a friend’s mobile home in Forest Knolls when I worked for Sam, my care person. Then, Covid struck. My elderly friend in Forest Knolls, whom I was also caring for, died, so I lost that connection, and I had no place to stay. There’s much more to the story, and yes, I’ve slept in my car a few times, I carry a bedroll in the car, my car is my go-bag, but you get the picture. I use my various short-term jobs as my only anchor as to where home is, a floating horizon adrift in a sea of uncertainty.

Bioluminescent tide

During the 1980s, on one drunken escapade after a night of dancing at the Cotati Cabaret, we found ourselves out at Goat Rock, mid-winter, full moon rising, a bioluminescent tide. The shore glowed like a lace mantle. So of course we stripped, and jumped in the freezing water for about two seconds, made an even faster exit, and then watched the moon rise over the buff. I took a stick and wrote haiku in the sand, the words glowed for a moment, and then disappeared into darkness.

AFTERNOON TEA AT WOOLWORTH’S

     

AFTERNOON TEA AT WOOLWORTH’S

                     —for Al Winans

My grandmother made a beeline to the lunch counter

for a brisk pot of afternoon tea after a hard day of shopping.

We watched the green and cream trolleys rumble down Powell 

to the Market Street turnstile, then spun like musicbox dancers,

while the electric trams labored like lugubrious caterpillars, 

the air singed blue with cascades of sparks whipping the air,

as their antennae criss-crossed an electric junction box.

Iron wheels groaned, singing the lost songs of mines

to the embedded tracks where horses once labored.

I remember the little scoop of vanilla ice cream, 

a summit to be conquered with fork and finger,

while she worked a raft of apple pie adrift on a pale plate,

and the clink of spoons as she stirred her tea, 

was a braille of fairy bells. They did it right, she said, 

beating a spoon staccato on the sides of the thick mug. 

Waiters scalded the teapot before filling with boiling water 

with the Lipton teabag already inside the pot—

they knew to follow her instructions to the letter.

God help them if they brought out the teabag 

still in its ceremonial wrapper on a separate plate.

She would have none of it, no lukewarm water in the pot.

No teabag afterthought. Utter nonsense, she said. 

Afternoon tea, properly made, righted the world. 

I practiced my alphabet, my finger tracing slow sounds 

along the shores of the puddle flooding the Formica table.

8/23/21

Notes from California Poets in the Schools Symposium

San Francisco Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin is our keynote speaker. Hopefully this workshop will be better than the May Poets & Writers workshop. The last workshop was random ramblings, but he sure has raked up the accolades and awards. I read with him during the 2019 Petaluma Poetry Walk. Though I didn't care for his work, I am amazed by the way he speaks his poems, as if extemporaneously off the top of his head. But people say that's how the poems are written. He must have an eidetic memory. 

Tongo talks about arts disciplines, gives us a caveat, offers an apology, or a disclaimer. His thoughts are pretty fluid, but he comes across as almost cray-cray with his rambling dialogue. I am trying hard not to bail. But I really don't want to be here. Yet the CPITS conference is always one of the highlights of my year. This is our second virtual conference. Last year was amazing. 

Tongo talks about how the critical dialogue with yourself is important. Inner and outer dialogues. Let’s see if I can glean something. The problem is, he reminds me too much of my mother when she rambled on, street crazy—and yet here we are sitting at his feet, a gaggle of older white women layering accolades on him, saying Woo. Brilliant, etc. I hold my tongue.

Is he brilliant, or merely rambling all over the place? He works extemporaneously, off the top of his head, which I dislike. I want to have a sense of where we are going. The talking head approach to poetry doesn’t work for me. He said, Poetry is outside of real time and communication. OK I can relate to that.

Everyone is hunting for pearls. 

I am out chasing swine who've escaped again. 

Actually they are my Shetland ponies, 

who still haunt in my dreams 50 year s later, 

the consummate escape artists. 

Decades after they died, 

they still run through the streets of my dreams.

Jack Hirschman has left the enormous room

“Til breath do us part…” Jack Hirschman has left the enormous room. December 13, 1933 - August 22, 2021

ONE DAY

One day I'm gonna give up writing and just paint
I'm going to give up painting and just sing
I'm gonna give up singing and just situated
I'm gonna give up sitting and just breathe
I'm gonna give up breathing and just die
I'm gonna give up dying and just love
I'm gonna give up loving and just write

           —Jack Hirschman

I am not quite ready to write about Jack. So this is baby steps. Snapshots of memory. There are some poets that one needs to step back and contemplate, and then reminisce—the sum total is not just the memories of physical events. But it’s a place to begin. The stories are how we begin to remember and also how we grieve. And that remembrance is the legacy.

I first met Jack at Caffe Trieste, which was his unofficial office. He was smoking up a storm. While he and my then boyfriend, John Oliver Simon, were talking of baseball, I zoned out. I was processing the fact that Bob Kaufman had just died, someone I knew from my childhood. A friend of my mother’s. I was haunted by his death. So as they discussed the game, I kept writing in my journal. I was surprised when Jack eyed me, and suddenly insisted that I read what I had written in my journal, and so I did. He sat back, and said wow, you’re a real poet. I was fairly new to writing but such direct affirmation from Jack made all the difference in the world. And I never looked back.

Phil Cousineau told a story about how Jack loved baseball (I’ve posted a few friends’ tributes below to savor for later). I had totally forgotten about that. One time John Oliver Simon and I were at a baseball game, I think it was the Oakland A’s. Mind you I’d never even been to a minor, or major league baseball game. So it was fitting that it was the Oakland As. And then there was Jack bellowing away. There was a whole row of festive cross-dressed poets in the stands—bedecked in both Oakland As and SF Giants colors. John was wearing the CPITS hand logo shirt. Everyone gossiping, quoting Lew Welch, and alternatively writing in their journals. The game was right lively from then on. I grew to love the metaphor of suspended time.

 

Use the link below if you want to share the photos.  When I posted the original link on various group pages (if a group is private, you can’t share photos or posts), Facebook dinged the link as spam and blocked it five times. But this link will post the photos.

Here is a link if you want to see more photos.

TO WRITE after Bei Dao

TO WRITE
—after Bei Dao

It began in a dream
ending at the source,
a reign of ice. Melting glaciers
become part of the story
of water returning to the source.
But an alien rain is falling
on the icefields of Greenland,
the first time ever,
it opens the sluices, veins of time,
and Shasta stands naked, without snow—
another first within living history.
New rivers seeking the sea
all at once, a cacophany of stories
unleashed from the beginnings of time,
the last tear falling
from the corners of the eye,
that saline bath, words
worn smooth as stone.

8/21/21

Facebook autocorrection woes

Yesterday Facebook randomly decided that I cannot, and will not add to, nor change any post, let alone, correct any typos. Period. Ditto that for today. Needless to say, my OCD is amping on overdrive. I’ve restarted my iPad several times. I even deleted and reinstalled the Facebook app.  Nope. Nope and nope.

Not only is Autocorrect on overdrive, and absolutely wrong 99.9% of the time, it often changes the suspect words AGAIN AND AGAIN—sometimes after I’ve posted the blasted comment. Ad nauseum. And don’t even get me started on its insistence on using random capital letters, excess commas, and apostrophes. Arguing with Otto-crrrect is not something I signed up for.

To add OCD-ish insult to injury, Facebook won’t let me correct any real typos on my comments. Oughta-cracked is strangely silent and oddly circumspect at the randomest of times. Like it ignores “thst.” I’m fairly certain thst is not a word in any language unless cats are involved. Odd behavior, as OttoCrrct has its fangs out every time I use an obscure word, then dutifully checks its cuticles whenever I really could use some help. The only workaround is to copy, then delete the entire comment, and begin again the beguine. Luckily, I can edit my primary posts, as I am a constant and ruthless reviser. 

And for those of you who do actually follow my posts, I do apologize in advance, as I only recently realized that if you mistakenly happen to Like one of my posts, gawd forbid, then you’re subject to an onslaught of notifications for every single correction I make, with Facebook dutifully updating and informing you that I’ve yet again updated or changed my post. Again. 

And I am, at best, a piecemeal thinker—not only do I use fragments, and begin sentences with And, I am a misplacer of connective articles and particles of speech, and also an absolutely slovenly typist to boot, so being able to correct and revise my writing is a fundamental process. Something which Facebook, in its hellbot-driven BigBro realm, considers detrimental and harmful to its royal We-we of omni-impotence. 

Luckily folks can turn that “she updated her damned post again” notification off. Did you know that? And yes, I did end that last sentence with a preposition. Ya wanna fight over it? What would Winston Churchill say? “This is the type of errant pedantry up with which I will not put.”

• Breaking Facebook community standards, yeah, right

Stoned off my ass for the duration (translation: I strained my back)

Guilty pleasures: after a fortnight of unendurable agony, I can sit down on the toilet seat, unaided, without having lumbar spasms, quietly, no involuntary screams, no desperate contortionist simian moves to get my thighs parallel to the seat. Bonus pleasure: I can finally wipe me own arse, TYVM. The shower curtain will never be the same. 

My days are otherwise spent perched on a heating pad like a cat, in an iconic Jabba the Hut pose. The pad alleviates the constant dull roaring ache—like a background noise. I can’t pick anything up off the floor. Luckily I have prehensile toes. Getting dressed is interesting. Spearing my knickers with my talented toes and then curtsey-hulahooping them up my thighs, with a few bellydancing maneuvers tossed in for good measure, takes some serious planning and a degree in engineering. Plus some aspirin. And gawd help me if my bladder suddenly wants to get in on the action. I marvel at how wonderful our bodies really are, when something goes wrong, it drives it home. Coughing and sneezing (not to mention farting) require strategic countermoves.

Figuring out how to roll over in bed requires lots of precise isolation moves—like an osmosis roll. I think in the direction I want to move, and then, sluglike, I move the outer bits of my body the direction I want to go, rotate to the tipping point, and the rest follows suit. Really glad I took all those years of dance. The fact that I can roll over in bed, without having to do all kinds of strange crabwise maneuvers, that I can get my legs to the side of the bed, and ease into the upright position, and then walk across the floor, without crumpling in a heap, is huge progress.

Mind you, my butt is pretty stoned these days, ripped out of its mind with Robin Rule’s most excellent arnica-CBD salve slathered on it, morning, noon and night. It’s what gets me through the night. But every time I replenish the salve, I get the munchies. It’s not often you can rub salve on your glutes and get both cottonmouth and a sweet-tooth at the same time. Adds a whole new meaning to the term, candyass. Robin insists that I can’t get high from the salve, but watching Netflix is interesting. Colors become mesmerizing. Oh, wow, dude. Some of you know exactly what I mean. Even better than the placebo. However, I am a really cheap date.

I am clearly on the mend. Now I have to figure out ways to get in there to stretch those deep balance muscles that keep us upright. I could not sneeze or cough for two weeks. Who knew that those flexor and extensor muscles, including the quadratus luborum and the psoas, are necessary for proper sneezing and farting? Ya gotta find some humor in the situation, even if you have to mine your own bowels for it. What can I say, I’m channeling the Borscht Belt?

Driving a car is absolutely tooth-gnashing even with the help of a lower back brace. Shall I mention potholes? I’ve never been a fan of sitting in chairs, but I tore my muscles while lounging in my favorite bed slouch! To be fair, I was a bit stiff, too lazy to stretch out and straighten out that kink in my lower back. Payback time! This is my peculiar punishment for having leaped unexpectedly off the bed after working for hours posting jpgs in my art blog. As old classmate Andy Giddings who is still recovering from sciatica, so aptly said, Act your age, eliminate the word “jump” from your vocabulary. Are we there yet?

More on that CBD unction here: Serendipity 2.0

Smoke inhalation vs Covid

The CDC says to open your windows to combat the Delta Variant. Yeah, no, not with myriad brushfires, the air is so thick, my airscrubber runs 24/7. CA has the worst AQI in North America. If the Delta variant doesn’t kill you, inhaling the smoke from brushfires will.

Two local brush fires on either side of me are wreaking havoc. My Costco Winix air conditioner, purifier, cleaner, scrubber—whatever you wanna call it—has been running full blast 24-7 since I bought it after the 2015 wildfires. It more than earned its keep last year alone. And ditto that this year. Will it never end? I tried to get a second Winix but they’ve changed the model to wifi and a different size filter. Nope.

purpleair.com says Northern California has the worst air quality in the entire continent of North America right now. I forgot to choose the correct LRAPA filter but it doesn’t really make that much difference. The numbers may be ever so slightly lower in real time. But 520+ has my attention. Mordor on steroids.

Yesterday I awoke with intense headaches, today I awoke dizzy, and the smoke is nowhere near as bad here along the coast as it is in the rest of Northern California. Central Valley is Mordor Central. Poor downwind dragons are gasping for clean air. Meanwhile, shallow breathing is the norm.

Just say no to the Delta variant

Just say no to the Delta Variant. Don’t be fools like Darwin Award nominees, the sub-gub-Govs Tate Reeves, DingBel Edwards & DeathSentence, aka DeathSatan. Magical thinking, fasting & prayers, or witholding paychecks for wearing masks won’t help. The ICU hospital beds are fast filling up in the South—the red states are all Code Blue, with Florida leading at the helm. Wear your mask indoors for all our sakes. Because, science. Don’t wait for herd immunity—not gonna happen in our lifetime.

As Florida becomes the epicenter of the nation’s death delta surge, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis had some sage advice for his constituents: Just deal with it. Literally.

"We are seeing people testing positive in higher numbers than I think most people anticipated," DeSantis admitted Thursday in Jacksonville while visiting a facility that will soon be offering monoclonal antibody treatments for people infected with COVID-19.

Explaining that the delta variant is "airborne," DeSantis offered simply, "We just have to understand when that's happening, these waves are something you just have to deal with.”

Sorry folks, we’re sitting ducks here. That was the message from DeSantis, as if getting vaccinated and masking up—the two most highly effective preventative measures—weren't worth a mention. Florida is now ground zero for runaway COVID-19 infection rates and, thanks to DeSantis, a case study in how an elected official can doom a state to a worst-case scenario. Via executive order, DeSantis has deliberately tied the hands of local officials and educators to mandate anti mask-wearing. He has also failed to make a high-profile vaccination push, though he has also admitted vaccines are saving lives. In a briefing, he said, 

“In the past week, Florida has had more Covid cases than all 30 states with the lowest case rates combined," said Zients, "And Florida and Texas alone have accounted for nearly 40% of new hospitalizations across the country.” —Daily Kos

But DeSantis' most depraved move by far has been to leave children who can't get vaccinated 100% defenseless against infection as they return to school by prohibiting universal in-school mask mandates. Concurrently, delta is landing more kids and sicker kids in ICUs than at any time during the pandemic.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made it clear that, when it comes to COVID-19, he has one priority: Punishing anyone who gets in the way of spreading the virus. In particular, DeSantis has focused on making sure that school children and teachers are as exposed as possible by both mandating that schools have to hold in-person classes and declaring that schools cannot implement either mask mandates or vaccine requirements. In order to drive home his pro-virus policies home, DeSantis has threatened both the funding for school districts and the pay checks of school board members or school administrators who vote to protect their students.

These actions had already earned DeSantis some direct criticism from President Joe Biden. As WTSP in Tampa reported earlier this week, Biden said, “...It's clear to me and to most of the medical experts that the decisions being made – like not allowing mask mandates in school and the like – are bad health policy.” In response, DeSantis sneered about “media hysteria” and said that Biden was “obsessed with Florida.”  Then DeSantis went right on threatening school districts and making it clear he was serious when it came to punishments. 

But on Friday evening, Biden fired back in a way that shows serious support for districts already defying DeSantis, and could provide a much needed backbone injection for those afraid of the governor’s efforts to defund the schools. A letter from Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, sent directly to DeSantis, makes it clear: If he tries to cut funds to schools that institute mask mandates, Biden will send them federal funds.

Saying that “safe return to in-person instruction requires that school districts be able to protect the health and safety of students and educators,” the letter from Sec. Cardona expresses that he is “deeply concerned about Florida’s July 30 Executive Order prohibiting school districts from adopting universal masking policies.” —Daily Kos

Apparently full-on death is preferable to wearing a mask according to John Jacob, an Indiana state representative from hell. 

Funny, how my grandmother lived through the Spanish flu because she wore a mask, her loved ones survived as well because they also wore masks, and I’m pretty sure no one had mask anxiety after the Spanish Flu was over, they were just glad to be alive. 

May his purgatory be haunted by those who have died under his watch. Especially the constituents of children he has invoked this  upon. I don’t think purgatory is going to let him in—not without a mask.

Wear a mask!

On audiobooks and James Lee Burke

Gah! Abridged audiobooks make no sense whatsoever. Like sending a novel out to a chopshop.  What? Where was I? Who? Huh? #dogsbreakfast. Never again. I am feeling openly hostile like I want to do violence to someone or something. Now that may be a bit over the top, but I don’t like anyone messing with my sublime reading experience. Once upon a time, I worked too hard in order to learn how to read.

Abridged books is like a chopshop for novels. Bits and pieces do not make a vehicle. I just wasted three hours listening to a mangled abridged version of Burning Angel. Ditto that with In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead. Mishmash on speed dial. I am so angry I could spit. 

The thing is, I’m fairly new to the whole audiobooks concept. As a rule of thumb, I really don’t like to be read aloud to most of the time, precisely because I read super fast, my mind races along at breakneck speed, and when someone reads to you albeit poorly, it’s sometimes hard to follow along. And sometimes my mind wanders along the furrows between the words. Since the pandemic, it’s been really hard for me to read, the words are like sawdust. I don’t retain anything. Too OCD for words. So my new audiobook reading habit has restored an old pleasure.  

However, when you have an unabridged novel, you invest in some 14 hours worth of being read to, so you really get to know the characters, and the motivation behind their actions. It’s a developing relationship. Out of fiction, truth is wrested to the ground.

My current crush is James Lee Burke, a complicated and complex writer who waxes poetic—right up there with Pat Conroy. I prefer the reading style of Will Patton to Mark Hammer. But both do a bang up job. The full length novels come alive under their expert touch. The abridged novels are merely ordinary, and that’s not why I read.

Cancel culture redux: High School 1327. Go π-rates!

In the summer of 2020, the City of Larkspur took down Dennis Patton’s quixotic sculpture of Sir Francis Drake in the wee hours of the morning for “safekeeping,” and then warehoused it. Dennis Patton was devastated. He said it wasn’t a statue, it wasn’t an embodiment of the man, nor an effigy of Drake—it was a sculpture, a metaphor for a dream. A dream deferred, apparently. Last month, the City of Larkspur decided to sell the sculpture for $100,000. They offered the artist first option to buy it back, if he refuses, then it will go to the auction block. To Dennis, Marin embodied “the Free Zone for intellectual and spiritual advancement.” But now the tables have turned. We are myopically challenged.

And then that same Marin group that stripped Dixie school of its historic name (expunging Coast Miwok Marie Dixie’s name because it reminded them of the South), fired up with bloodlust worthy of the KKK in full drag, also went after my old alma mater, demanding that the school’s name, and the highway that bisects Marin, needed to be changed.

Last July, the Tamalpais Union School District met behind closed doors, excluding public input, thus violating the Brown Act, then pulled the words Sir Francis Drake off the facade of my alma mater “to protect it from vandalism.” It wasn’t a case of Vox populi, don’t kid yourself, but a case of a select handful of people imposing their ideologies upon the rest of us. Its interim name, High School 1327. Go π-rates!

In the year 2020, the battle to rename our high school tore communities apart. It rent us asunder. People voted on myriad names, they drew blood. It was a draw. Not one name won. We couldn’t see that it was a supreme irony that one name that actually mattered, didn’t even make it to the nomination process—that of our beloved Drake algebra teacher, the Olympic medalist runner, Archie Williams. So much for being woke. Yeah. It seems we were lost, and also blinded by rectivism. Second time around, Archie’s name was finally added to the roster. It was a lopsided landslide. Victory, not so much. I am divided by how this process was handled, pirated away from the majority at the hands of a few. Fascism, much?

The Sir Francis Drake High School class of 1970 will be the first to have a high school reunion for a school with its historic name expunged and erased. Interesting times. The phoenix of cancel culture rises from the ashes. Welcome Archie Williams High School. It could be worse: High School 1327. Still I wonder what Archie would have thought of all this. Prime number?

• Cancel culture
• Retroactive racism and the BLM movement
• Anne Kent Library roundtable on SF Drake history

To the 5-minute Medievalist Danièle Cybulskie, don’t slaughter the text

I loved hearing the backstory of Orpheus and the comparison to Sir Orfeo. And it was interesting to hear how Eurydice’s name was phonetically preserved in the Medieval manuscript, especially the preserving the hard K (evreyZeeke), along with the word lethe, but that is another story. I also discovered that I’ve been saying her name wrong all these years, with an Italian inflection. I blame the movie, Black Orpheus. Apparently the correct pronunciation of Eurydice in English is Yuh-rid-ih-see, itself a fair distance from Heurodis.

I was fascinated to hear of Orpheus’ Thracian connection, a orphan king, no less. His Orphic name loaning us the cognate word orphan. I missed that Thracian connection somehow along the way, and the whole thing about going back to Thrace to hang out with the bhoys was well worth the price of admission. Thank you for a glimpse into the Classical world through the Medievalist lens. I would love to have heard a snippet of the original Medieval translation of the Breton lay of Sir Orfeo for contextual reference.

But I quibble with your reading of the actual translation. For 2000 plus years, reading was a social activity, until the 17th c. everyone in the western world read texts aloud, if even to themselves, except, maybe St. Ambrose. When you read aloud, please do the text justice, don’t slaughter it.

I get that your 19th c. translation of Sir Orfeo by Jessie L. Weston, (a translation of a translation of a translation….) was written in iambic pentameter, but when it is read aloud, it needs to be read with feeling behind the words. Imagine Anthony Hopkins reading it. It would be better to read it in a normal voice rather than to slip into the iambic sing-song that voice that obfuscates the actual meaning behind the words.

When I work with students for Poetry Out Loud, I have them circle the important verbs and place the emphasis there. Punch up the verbs! Just because a line ends, doesn’t mean you take a breath and stop there to acknowledge that line break. The verbs carry the meaning.

I have heard you read before, and every time you read, my attention wanders, and I do not take in what you are saying. And I think that that experience is ultimately true for most people and this is why they came to dislike poetry. Wordsworth said that poetry should be “near to the language of men.” Or poetry should be as natural as speech. Consider upping your oratory game and really bring those poems to life. Breathe life back into those words.

Serendipity 2.0

A care package from Robin Rule.

Serendipity 2.0. Just yesterday I was wishing I had some CBD oil salve for my lower back, as I pulled some deep lumbar muscles. Nothing seems to be working. But as we hunker down to avoid the latest Delta variant, driving to a dispensary was beyond my ability to cope. In the mail today a package arrived from the north, a homemade salve from Shenandoah’s Daughter, still molten from the heat of the mail box. I spread the unctuous golden oils on my back and began to feel relief almost immediately. CBD oil, calendula, arnica, poppy, comfrey, and yarrow—a mountain meadow of wildflowers for my spine. I was moved to tears, even beyond tears, as there was more, much more—a packet of Yorkshire Gold tea, a tea towel from Connemara, and a homemade card with a robin collaged on it. Not things themselves. But something larger than even love. Ah, Robin, I am grateful, doubly blessed by a namesake bird, that harbinger of regrowth and renewal, a bright flame of love that flies across the distance of time. She who feeds the homeless, arrives on the wings of hope—she is the vox populi, the voice of the disenfranchised, banishing despair. She who pays beauty forward wherever she goes. I am both honored, and blessed to have known her across the years. Go raibh maith agat, mo anam chara, mo spideóg bhroinndearg, Roibín. I have nothing to reciprocate, except these small husks words. A transcendental feather wafts in the breeze.

• Synchronicity at work

A curious footnote of the history of wine in California (from the Gallo Girl post)

Note bene: This is a humbnail sketch of the California wine industry which dates back to 1769 when Father Junipero Serra planted the first vineyards at Mission San Juan Capistrano and at the other missions he founded in order to supply wine for meals, mass, and medicine. Fr. Junipero Serra wasn’t the first padre to plant vines. The first vines were planted in 1683 (in Baja?) but were later abandoned. (California has native grapes but they weren’t used for winemaking—yet). 

By 1823, all, but four of the 23 missions had thriving vineyards. The showcase, Mission San Gabriel, had thee wine presses, eight brandy stills, producing 8000 gallons of wine, and 3000 gallons of brandy a year. The missions San José, and San Francisco de Solano (Sonoma) were also among the most productive wineries. Packaging was the biggest problem, oak barrels were in short supply, augmented by big bota bags, made with an entire cowhide, were used. In 1782, Father Serra lamented that an oak barrel enroute to thirsty Mission San Carlos, fell off the wagon, or mule, and broke. His account does not mention if they brought straws. I’m not sure if Jesus wept, but I’m sure copious tears were shed.

The ranchos of the Los Angeles River Basin, not Northern California, were the birthplace of the first secular California vineyards. Rancho owners purloined grapestock from the missions. Louis Vignes opened the first winery in 1833, followed by William Wolfskill who planted 145 acres of vineyards. To encourage the wine industry, land planted in grapes paid no city taxes.

Wine was already a big industry in California by the 1880s, when it moved to Northern California from the LA Basin after an outbreak of Phylloxera, a plant louse, killed all the Old World Vitis vinefera vines. (The lousy louse hitched a ride to Europe, decimating Europe’s vineyards too. The solution: graft Old World stock onto native American Vitis labrusca roots.) The wine industry moved, lock, stock, and wine barrel to Northern California. San Francisco and the Bay Area proved to be ideal for growing grapes.

In Napa County, Joseph Osbourne, and George Yount were among the first anglo settlers to plant vines in 1836, Followed by Sam Brannan, but John Patchett is credited for building the first winery, planting vines in 1854, establishing a commercial wine cellar in 1859. However, bottling wine and getting it to market was prohibitive. Glass bottles were in short supply and pricy, at 20 cents each, so people brought their own jugs to be filled, at 25 cents a gallon. Enter the wine houses.

When the California Wine Association was founded in San Francisco, there were over 100 commercial  wine houses in SF alone. “Wine houses were large operations that bought grapes, made wine, and shipped it around the world.”

Sonoma County, not Napa, is considered to be the official birthplace of the modern California wine industry. Buena Vista is California's oldest extant winery. Count Agoston Haraszthy founded a winery in 1857, planting mission grapes purloined from the Sonoma Mission, and the famous Zinfandel grape. (BV was the only winery to stay open during the Prohibition as it made sacramental wines.) Buena Vista and Gundlach Bundschu were the first true commercial wineries. When President Abraham Lincoln purchased California wines, a stellar industry was born.

“After the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco, the California Wine Association built the world’s largest winery on Pt. Molate near Richmond. Winehaven was a city-state, with housing for workers, a school, a big house for the boss, train tracks, a port, and the capacity to store 10 million gallons of wine at once. “

And to bring this rather long footnote on my aunt, the Gallo Girl, full circle: Ernest and Julio Gallo entered the wine business after the Prohibition ended, in 1933, having worked in their father’s vineyard. Giuseppe Gallo who hailed from Fossano, Northern Italy. Giuseppe was a menial laborer, who managed to save up his money and buy some land in Modesto, and plant a vineyard. But it seems life was hard. After their parents died (in a grisly murder suicide pact), Ernest and Julio decided to make their own wine, using a recipe they found in a local library. And with that, they founded an empire. A younger brother, dairy rancher Joseph Gallo, marketed his cheese, but a family feud ensued, they took him to court for using the family name. 

Ernest Gallo famously said, "We don't want most of the business. We want it all.” Gallo and its subsidiary wineries, is the largest exporter of California wines.

Sources The Wine Cellar Insider

The History Reader

California Mission Life

Searching for Trevor Yeats

While searching for some information on a former student of mine, Trevor Yeats, I stumbled upon a blog called the Arts of May which featured the very poem I was looking for. A friend, Michael McAllister Lyon had posted a drawing of a young William Butler Yeats and I was struck by how similar Trevor and William looked and wanted to share it. I was not expecting to find an accolade in a random blog dated 2014. It seems Trevor’s old poem written in 1992, continues to move people across the time continuum.What a gift that was to find the reference. I’m still no closer to finding Trevor than I was before. I wish him well, wherever he is. And a big thank you to Lily S. May of Toronto, Canada for the shout-out. I’m truly humbled. I wonder if this is my Trevor? What do you think? Oh, and I got dinged for spam by FaceFook when I posted this link. 

William Butler Yeats by John Singer Sargent, 1908. pencil, 9 x 6 in.

In a different dream (art, redux)

This was the desk portion of an old oak school chair desk, it was on my cousins’ porch in Nicasio, but someone drove a pickup right through the porch 4th of July, 2019, destroying it and the front of the house, and this is what I salvaged of the chair. 

This was the entire piece. The back of the chair too. I also had the rungs too, but they got separated from the rest. I repurposed it with chalkboard paint and pastel. I gave it a dream of a lake and a mountain. When my cousin moved everything out of the house for repairs, this piece got damaged along the way, the chalk image brushed off, so I reapplied it, but now it’s a different dream. Since the peace no longer exists with its other parts, is it a new piece or an old piece?

I offered back of the chair with the horses on it to Geoffrey Davis but he never replied. What is significant about the Paleolithic horses is that they were pacers, most horses trot diagonally but amblers, or pacers move both legs on the same side.  The only other horses that do that naturally are Neolithic horses, such as the Icelandic ponies (which have some Irish lineage) and the archaic horses of the British Isles including the Kerry bog pony, Dartmoor, and the Exmoor pony. The extinct tarpan would be related. Can’t use the word breed, here as it predates the concept. I wrote more on Kiger mustang pacers here.

I made this Angel assemblage from the rest of the old oak chair, and other detritus from the yard. it lived outside the Nicasio house like a guardian angel until the contractors finally came to repair the house last year. Now it solely exists as a photograph. It rests on a piece of sheetrock from the 1940s. It was one of the walls that was smashed in. When the contractors discovered that it was made with asbestos, the entire house got tagged and bagged for hazardous substances. The beginning of the end of the Nicasio house.

I write in order to learn—what I am currently interested in—and I never know what will catch fire. Suspect my dyslexia has a lot to do with my eclectic interests. But I must admit anything to do with horses has my unabiding attention—weird ideas come to me and then I follow them. See where they will lead. Most of these convoluted essays stem from Facebook comments. I write one thing, and then discover something related, and so on. And then it won’t let go of me. I am possessed once I am in the throes of writing  Most people just roll their eyes at this stuff.

Few folks know that Petaluma was once the hotbed of racing trotters. I think the famous stallion Kenilworth was a trotter. Not sure if he was a pacer. That information is hard to track down unless there’s an action photo. There were also famous trotting/pacing thoroughbreds, not just Standardbreds, and I remember reading that one famous racehorse who was a pacer, can’t remember who I have to go look that up. Like Healdsburg’s Black Ruby, the world’s fastest mule at the trot. So the larger question begs, was she a trotter or a pacer? Inquiring minds want to know.

The Gallo Girl redux: My Aunt Jane

A Facebook memory about my aunt Jane resurfaced today, and I shared it with the group, California History. I expanded the Facebook post from the original version to a much longer piece, in order to give it some background to a larger audience. So, even though I posted a blog about her in 2015, (and another blogpost as the Gallo Girl) this version is significantly changed enough to warrant its own new blogpost page. Also, in the process of explaining the California wine industry to one reader, I wound up with a rather long thumbnail sketch (at the bottom of the page), which, by right, should be a separate blogpost unto itself, as it kept expanding itself exponentially, but I will keep it here, for context. —MH

The Gallo ad of my Aunt Jane appeared during the mid-1950s and 1960s in newspapers, on the back covers of magazines, and on billboards (including Times Square—my uncle, upon returning home from being deployed in Korea, saw the ad in Times Square and said, Hey, that looks like my sister. His army buddies said Nah. It’s just a coincidence. When he got home to San Francisco, he said men were lining up around the block trying to score a date with her. I don’t know if the ad generated that much buzz.)

Jane Reilly, an Irish-American, was the first model for Gallo's Paisano wines (the artist had to make her look Italian. The San Francisco Irish shared strong ties with the Italian-Swiss colony.) Various permutations of this ad appeared throughout the mid-1950s to the mid-60s in newspapers, magazines and on billboards across the nation—including in Times Square. An image I saw throughout my childhood. My Aunt Jane. I thought everybody's aunt appeared on the back page of the Sunday Comics. 

When Jane was young, she performed in amateur musical theater in San Francisco, including The Mikado, and a Barbary Coast musical review, The Golden Nugget, where she was the lead can-can girl. At nearly 6 feet tall, the auburn-haired beauty was statuesque, and resembled Maureen O'Hara, so photographers including Peter van Nghiem, sought her out as a model for their portfolios. That exposure landed her the job as a model for the Gallo ad.

Check out the half-page front section ad in the Food Section of the San Francisco Chronicle, dated July 1, 1954. Check the price of the wine. I found it rolled up inside an old Christmas wrapping paper tube that I had nearly thrown out.  I don’t know what made me go back and check it out. By the time we got around to cleaning out the basement, I found several artifacts that became the basis of this story. A true salvage job.

I found a very poor half-eaten version of the color ad in a shipping crate in my grandmother's basement. And a photo to back it up. Can we say provenance? I also found the hoop earrings she wore, and this photograph, crumpled up in a trashcan. Time was not kind to the photo. I had to clone much of it in order to digitally restore it. It seems the woodrats had become the sole curators of the family photos and tacky Christmas ornaments.

I don’t know when Gallo changed the brand name from Paisano to Carlo Rossi—it was probably ca. 1970. The Paisano trademark of E. & J. GALLO WINERY patent was filed June 8, 1953, they opened for business in 1954, so this is really the first ever ad; there were also television ads with Carlo Rossi as well.

Jane led an interesting life, including attending Cordon Bleu in Paris long before it was popular. She learned French in order to attend. But women were actively discouraged from becoming chefs. She fought back and got her Grand Diplôme. Landing a job as a female chef in Marin County in 1975 proved  be impossible, but she also had a petit diplôme for desserts up her sleeve, and catered her desserts to local restaurants. To make ends meet, she also cooked for the Marin County Civic Center cafeteria. All the lawyers would line up whenever she placed her prized lemon meringue pies in the glass showcase.

My aunt Jane bio, as the Gallo Girl, RIP. Jane B. Reilly obituary 6/26/1929 - 7/26/2015.

Tweaked my back again...

After a fantastic marathon photo-editing session for my spanking new art blog, I leaped off the bed to do something, and promptly pulled my lower back. Yeep. I was sitting weird all day and thought nothing of it, and then I jumped up out of bed like a startled cat! Spasms. Oww. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Will I never learn? 

It seems like every back injury I've ever had was a result of sitting too long in one place and then leaping up to do something physical with no transition time in between. Like that time circa 1978, I was painting a watercolor for an art class and leapt off the couch to help my granny bring in some wood. I tore my entire lower back, including my psoas muscle (it keeps you upright) and I was flattened for three months. It was so bad I couldn't even sneeze. It took ages to recover. 

Redux. This injury is nowhere near as bad. TG. I took a Flexeril last night, and some aspirin. So now I’m fuzzy brained. Weirdly, I was editing a photo of an old painting I did for an art class in the way back days (was it the same painting?), and I stayed in one position all day, so I was stiff. The things I do for art. The painting, a copy of a Mucha, came out great. I learned how to dry layer watercolor like using pencil strokes.

It’s not clear exactly whereby back injury is, other than it's on my right side. Not an area I usually have issues with. My back is keeping mum. When I lie with my knees up, and then move suddenly, I have to quickly straighten my right leg out like a piston to stop the spasm. 

When I get out of bed, I grab my left knee and pull it up to my chest and then use that as a fulcrum to tilt  self upright. My right leg is not a happy camper about being pulled to my chest like that. So I move like a mime, isolating muscle groups to keep the spasms at bay.

FWIW, It does not feel anything like sciatica. Not that I've ever had sciatica. I don’t feel any vertebrae out of line, but it is more tender on my right side right below my waist, not quite to the sacrum. I think it's a muscle strain, nothing more. But I am sure it will take its own time healing.

Oddly, standing upright does not hurt. I can’t tell exactly where the pain is, which is maddening, but it is right below my waist on my right side. I think I must’ve tweaked something. It doesn’t feel like my back is out of alignment. The only thing I can say is that it's a good thing I am limber, and good at isolating muscle groups. So I can control the spasms. But it is excruciating when I’m lying down and I have to roll over, or if I have to get up out of bed. 

It sounds like it is the Quadratus lumborum, but more toward the bottom, where it joins the pelvis. Now that I can visualize it, it will make it much easier to heal. A stabilizer muscle. Like the psoas. Groan.

Positions to stretch that muscle are all comfortable, I like being on my hands and knees. Fetal position. All those muscle stretch poses is how I’m navigating movement through time and space right now. I make ridiculously dramatic tableau poses to do the simplest of things, but I am grateful for my strong thighs right now.

“The QL comes into play in the function and stability of your spine. It assists in forward-backward and side-to-side flexion and extension as well as assisting the diaphragm during inhalation. Sitting for prolonged periods of time affects the stabilizer muscles of the vertebrae, effectively shutting them off.”

Small mercies, at least it does not hurt to breathe. Could be worse.

See, I’ve been helping my cousin move a lot of heavy stuff lately. Real grunt work. I don’t recall pulling anything, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t. It also may mean that my body thought my back was in danger and went into spasm mode to protect my spine. Also I was probably dehydrated. It's a constant struggle to drink enough water.

I think I know what I did to set this avalanche off, I was getting out of my cousin's big monster truck and I slid down to ground without using the steps, and twisted my left ankle, stepping down wrong, thus jarring my spine. Meanwhile I was moving lots of boxes, then I was driving lots, so I must’ve put a strain on something. Then, I was sitting supine on the bed for a very long time without moving.

My left hip and femur did hurt somewhat yesterday, inexplicably, as if it couldn’t seat itself, but then, it stopped. I have an over-limber left hip and my femur can rotate out. I'm a bit double jointed. All those years on horseback.

At least it isn’t my psoas muscle. Then I would be right and truly phucked. Walking around upright feels OK, if I stand tall, should I attempt a walk? or rest?

Well, there’s some progress. I was able to haul my sorry carcass out of bed unassisted, so I must be healing. I’ve been using bungee cord style exercise bands to haul myself upright in order to crawl off of the bed. Once upright, I resort to sumo wrestler poses in order to get across the room.

I have added odd arabesque and lunges as well to my sumo wrestler pose to get around. Anything to avoid the pain when I have to bend over. It’s very dramatic in the kitchen when I have to get something out of the lower cabinets. Like making coffee. I look like I'm practicing kinky ballet in the kitchen.

I could use some tennis balls to massage the area. Dang, no tennis balls. OK, now I got balls. Tennis balls, that is. Green ones. I stole them from the neighbor's dog. I used them today to poke into the pressure spot. Relief. Snooze, ya loose.

I found some Voltaran gel from my old knee injury, and my TENS unit, but only one channel works. Anything is better than nothing. I'll use it until the battery dies. The heating pad feels lovely.

Voltran is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory topical NSAID (mainly for arthritis), it's no longer used, much but beggars can’t be…. This Voltaren is similar to BenGay. Didn’t think it was working, but I do feel a lot better now. 

August 16. Well, the end is in sight. Perhaps my rear end. Not. This is the first day that I’ve been able to get out of bed without doing odd sideways serpent crunchies. I’m not 100% healed but what a radical difference from yesterday, and the day before, and so on stretching back to when I first posted this note August 9. So basically, 10 days in, there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

 I’m still using my elastic exercise bands as bungee cord handles to spring outta bed since that seems to be my most vulnerable position. I am trying to gird my loins, ironically that’s part of the muscle group name, loins. there must be some sort of cosmic joke embedded in that definition. Roar!

Meanwhile life goes on. In order to go to Lucky's I really had to gird my loins. It wasn’t too bad driving sitting upright and if I keep my most excellent posture, that is, walking tall, it doesn’t spasm. 

As soon as I got back from the store, I took another generic Flexeril. Didn’t dare do it beforehand and try to drive. I can’t bear to take it three times a day. Once every 24 hours is about all I can handle. I am so much better now than I was earlier today. I think a lack of magnesium and potassium is playing a role here because I was dehydrated, and suddenly bananas smell good.

No, I did not stay flat for the entire duration, I had three necessary outings (2 were jobs) which I’m sure set me back to the protozoan age. I was in agony again—especially while driving long distance to Forest Knolls to see Sam. However, I did get some quality writing time in. See The Gallo Girl redux: My Aunt Jane. But Searching for Trevor Yeats got me thrown in Facebook jail again for spam.

Laundry yesterday was a gymnastic feat, avoiding using my psoas, etc. I could not lift the laundry basket off the floor. Going up the stairs, I humped the basket up each step, but when I got to the top of the landing, I still couldn’t pick up the fucking basket, so I took off my shirt, slipped it through the handle and dragged it along like a good dog. 

I must admit, when things hurt deep inside, you get incredibly inventive on how to work around those physical limitations, I call them roadblocks. Now, to begin core stretches and strengthening. Suggestions?

Thank you all my friends for all your advice and input, Robin for sending me and that super CBD salve—which gives me the munchies. See Stoned off my ass for the duration and Serendipity 2.0, and Sneezing, such exquisite pain... (It took me a good month to heal from this fiasco.)

Saskatoon berries

In Glacier Park, I once saw a ground squirrel perched in a Saskatoon bush, greedily shoveling berries into his mouth for all he was worth, purple juice dribbling down his bib. He saw us but didn’t want to leave his booty. He couldn’t even squawk at us, his mouth was so stuffed, I thought he might gag, so he beat his little chest and slapped the branch with his forepaws, as if to say, My bush. My bush.