Epic Facebook fail, who knew mentioning Gravenstein apples was considered spam

 Yet another doozy from the Facebook hall of infamy, shall we call it an epic fail? Twice in one day?

1.EPIC FACEBOOK CENSORSHIP FAIL. For the upcoming harvest apple picking fair, I wrote on Fort Ross Conservancy‘s group page, that the apples in the historic orchard were “The oldest Gravensteins in Sonoma county, perhaps even in the state of California.“ 

And my completely innocuous comment was removed by Facebook for “going against community standards.” 

I had no idea that writing a comment on a post for a group page that I belong to, was considered spam, false advertizing, fraudulent, or harmful. I thought we were supposed to engage and interact with our groups that we belong to—isn’t that what social media means? 

Ya think? What exactly are you protecting the Facebook community against?

Why, I am contemplating committing unnatural acts with apples. How, I don’t know.

And yet you allow white supremacy hate memes on Facebook.

You make poor decisions based on faulty algorithms. Fire the AI bots, they’re drunk.

This is flat out harassment. I hope someone sues your privileged ass Zuk.

Sarah of the Fort Ross Conservancy is as puzzled by this as I am. I guess Facebook doesn’t like any historical posts. Another huge group I belong to, “California History,” was shut down and archived by Facebook. When you’re on the Facebook AI bot harassment list, it is forever.

For the record, I have old ties with the Fort Ross community, I was friends with the former director of the museum and the Living History historic reenactment group, and with Park Ranger Dan Murley—we used to joke that we were cousins (Murley and Hurley are from the same name).

During the 1980s and 1990s, I attended all the community events at Fort Ross State Historic Park—and even couriered/smuggled in the special Fort Ross commemorative gold medallions to the Museum of Ethnography in Leningrad commemorating the historic reenactment of the Chirchov expedition event with the former Soviet Union.

This is the sweet Fort Ross invite in question:


Fort Ross Harvest Festival
Saturday October 16th
Fort Ross State Historic Park
10am – 3pm

Free! California State Parks $10/car parking fees apply

Happy Fall! What better time to announce we will be hosting Fort Ross Harvest Festival than the first week of fall. It has been two years since we welcomed you to this event and we have missed you all!

Join us in the historic orchard for a safe and joyful reunion for Fort Ross Harvest Festival on Saturday, October 16, 2021.

Our dear friends from Russian House Kedry will tantalize your eyes and ears with their enchanting traditional Russian songs and dances. Join in!

As the health and happiness of our visitors are paramount, this will be a low key version of our usual Harvest Festival celebration. We will not be organizing pumpkin carving, apple painting, or apple juicing this year due to the close proximity these activities require.

Pack a picnic, bring an empty bag to collect fruit, and help us harvest the bounty of the orchard. We encourage gentle harvest of all the fruit found in the orchard.

Bake a pie and tag us @fortrossconservancy with the result! We’d love to see what you do with these beautiful fruits.

Bring a hat and wear layers - weather on the coast can change quickly. We will not have an ADA shuttle this year so please park at the main parking lot and walk up to the orchard. (You may drive to the orchard to drop members of your group off who may not be able to walk up to the orchard, but cars must be parked in the main Fort Ross parking lot.)

Call or email us for more information info@fortross.org/ (707) 847-3437
Details: https://www.fortross.org/events.htm

#VisitFortRoss #FortRoss #WestCounty #SonomaCounty #ThingsToDo #Fall #Orchard #YouPick #Apples #Pears

And Sarah’s puzzled reply:

Excavating the Wood-Pussy, Part II

Excavating the Wood-Pussy that was raised off the bottom of Tiburon harbor during the early 1960s and left to rot in a field in West Marin. My uncle, the landlubber, had grand plans to rebuild the little wooden boat and learn to sail, catch some wind, maybe a girl—he was a big dreamer. Only it was never restored. Our place was the final dumping ground of his scuppered schemes. The greenhouse was another scheme deferred. He did eventually learn to sail and race in Monterey Bay—and eventually, the girl. The small sailboat with an odd name and good lines was a very odd fixture at my grandmother’s eclectic make-do homestead. So many cousins and friends set sail on the wind and rode its gunnels in search of swashbuckling adventure skimming a high sea of deep grass. And the horses would come down to graze around it as if to keep us safe. Wish I had some photos of those days, but memory and mere words will have to suffice. During the early 1970s, I turned the derelict sailboat into a planter garden. But the gophers drilled through the hull to get to the bulbs. The only plants to survive their voracious appetites were the naked ladies. This area under the madrone tree is also my summer sleeping platform. However the hump in the middle finally got to me and so I began trying to level the soil—only to find a bit of red shag carpet poking out of the ground like Ariadne’s string, which led me to the long-forgotten Wood-Pussy. I had no idea the boat was buried there under a load of hardpan impacted by decades of cars driving on it. Why not leave it there, you might ask. The wood will rot. But clearly the red and green shag carpet squares that lined the inside of the hull never rotted. At the time we didn’t know the fiberglass and chrome-green marine paint were toxic—so I continue to persevere with my excavation process now that the colonies of naked ladies are done blooming and can be safely moved. You can actually see the small holes embedded in the flakes of fiberglass where marine worms drilled to get to the wood, leading to its demise. The boat was used as an impromptu trash pit during the late 1970s. Small chunks of National Geographics still readable after being buried 40 years, also toxic. A horseshoe, Virginia Slims cigarette holders, beer tabs, embedded glass, a wedge of smoked glass from a Pong table, random plastic, toys, a blue plastic horse,  a tiny boxcar, with a bit of track, half of a mother-of-pearl penknife, pennies, beads, a marble, odd bits of brass spools, cleats, a flathead drillbit, and long iron shanks—means I need to check every dirt clod for debris. A curious lowest common denominator of broken glass, is the triangle. Unless it’s curved, then it’s a long triangular elipsoid. My primary digging tool is a piece of iron rod with a spoonlike spatula end, also found with the sailboat. You can see it at the end of the colander if you look closely. You can also see one floorboard of the Wood-Pussy poking out of the dirt in the upper left corner as well. I’m about halfway done with the memento mori of a project that I began in May. My very own Sutton Hoo Superfund dig. These boards are from the transom and front end of the hull of the boat. The rest of the boat is under that brown shag carpet, aka my sleeping platform. The days are drawing in, soon I will wrap up the dig, and my summer encampment—soon both will be delegated to the unconditional past to become a distant memory. Buried somewhere in all of this is a poem waiting to be excavated.

• The Wood-Pussy, Part I
• Woodies under the floorboards of the Woodpussy 
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Alcedo tortoises, Galapagos

Once, long ago, we rode horses to the top of Alcedo caldera, a shield volcano on Isabela, the largest island in the Galapagos, where the permanent mist creates a perpetual drizzle, where giant tortoises, the size of VW Bugs, wallowed in mud puddles. As we approached, they hissed like air brakes, they hissed like the volcano, they hissed like cats, as they have no vocal cords to speak of. And yet they spoke most eloquently of a bygone era, outliers hanging for dear life on for millennia on end.

9/25/21

Letter to Gregg Dunnett

To Gregg Dunnett, Author <hello@greggdunnett.co.uk> 

Hello Gregg Dunnett with two ggs (not to mention two nns, and two tts),

I read with vague interest when you told us your back went out, and I thought to myself thank God that will never happen to me, and then it happened to another friend, who told horror stories. I repeated the phrase, thank God, it will never happen to me. Well, you know how the law of threes works. Not to mention God. And then a friend abruptly knocked on my door while I was nose-deep in the process of writing, so I leapt out of the bed like a startled cat, and bingo! I tore out my lower back at the beginning of August.

Meanwhile, I was hoping we wouldn't have to evacuate again as Northern California was burning down all around me. So, I was making mental lists, what to save as I really couldn’t carry anything.

I know all about not being able to bend down to tie your own shoe, let alone, wipe yer own arse. I gave up on shoes. Getting out of bed required strategically placed bungie cords and abdominal crunches. Rolling over required an engineering degree. Sneezing, coughing and laughing required advance planning. Getting dressed, spearing my knickers and pants with a pointy toe required intense negotiation, and dexterity with my wrong foot (who knew we favored one leg over the other while getting dressed?), then a whacky hula-hoop belly dance gesture to get my pants from the floor to thigh level so I could grab them with my hands as lateral bending, or any torso bending, was out of the question.

I became adept at bending the knee, and doing the odd lunge as if I were auditioning for a fencing tournament or taking up ballet. And once, I accidentally sat down on the floor, with no game plan, or exit strategy as to get back up off the floor. So I wallowed like a warthog until I found the right fulcrum. And no one was around to help me up, either. Sitting in a chair was impossible and driving a stickshift car is still a form of medieval torture.

All in all, it was a humbling experience. It took a full month of mollycoddling before I was able to do the most ordinary of things. And though I have never met you, you were certainly on my mind. So, I am glad to hear that your back is healing. Mine still gives me some grief. But at least I can sneeze without pain.

As for Amazon, remember what Douglas Adams said, "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." And yes, I did write a zany letter to him, and yes, he wrote an equally zany letter right back. This was in the days of snail mail. Not like the whooshing sound of emails zooming across continents and oceans and time zones in a matter of seconds.

Cheers,
Maureen

(I love it when authors write back.)

Summer’s end, under the madrone

 

Summer’s end. My nights of sleeping under the madrone tree have come to an abrupt end. I’m drenched with fog & bathed in the odor of petrichor. Hard to tell whether it was fog or rain, everything was drenched—my car, my sleeping bag, the tarp. Where I lay my head these days is always a bit impromptu. So much depends upon whether or not I am visiting my cousin, whether or not we decide to have wine, etc. There is no room for me in the old house. So, last weekend, we erected a tent of sorts for me to sleep in. Actually it’s a summer gazebo with mosquito netting. No walls. However, last night the fog again turned into rain so I had to sleep jackknifed in my car because no way was I going to get up at 3 AM and drag all my stuff up the hill in order to sleep under the gazebo. Soon I will give it a test run. It will be an interesting experiment as to how comfortable it is as the season draws in. I don’t think it will be rain proof. I will need a Plan B later. I do love sleeping under the madrone but it’s also uncomfortable on my thin strip of memory foam. I need more padding, my hips hit the ground when I sleep on my side. Still, I am blessed to sleep under the canopy of this old tree.

ZOOM CALL

An aurora borealis pulses behind Brennan‘s head, 

a green curtain undulates, a curtain of fire, 

the Pleiades, the gazelle leaps a ladder across the star sky, 

Orion‘s belt, a planetary conjunction. 

The sun is writing stories on the night sky.

Den Bosch and the world of Hieronymus (scanning old photos)

In June, 1993, my friend, Vinz van Neerven and I visited the Gothic cathedral where Jheronimus van Aken‘s paintings graced the altar. The wooden tryptic was dark and much smaller than I expected, and didn’t portray the grisly scenes of the artist’s later works. It was more like an icon. It was way too dark in the church to even think of taking photographs of the artist’s work but I was able to photograph a bookbinding and printing exhibit inside a nave of the Catholic church which was doubling as a museum. I can’t remember, but I think the artist was buried under the stone floor of the church. But the church organ was a stupendous work of art. The mere thought of it filling that cathedral with music gave me goosebumps. Even the acoustics of silence were brilliant.

Gilded dragon, Draak Den Bosch, holding the city seal

Van Aken, aka Hieronymus Bosch (ca. 1450 – 1516) lived in 's-Hertogenbosch, a well-preserved medieval town off the well-beaten tourist path, situated half-way between Utrecht and Eindhoven, in Noord/north Brabant, the Netherlands. OK, so it’s closer to Eindhoven, home to Philips which gave us TVs and CD/DVDs and optical media burners. Den Bosch too manufactures computer bits and is the Heineken HQ. Something about the light.

Hieronymus Bosch came from a family of painters, both his grandfather and father were painters. Bosch’s relatives were from Nijmegen and Aachen (which is reflected in his surname: Van Aken. He was born Jheronimus van Aken. Everyone called him Joen, (Jerome) for short. 

I was surprised to find his last name wasn’t really Bosch. He was from Den Bosch. But try saying the full name of the town several time really fast. 's-Hertogenbosch 's-Hertogenbosch 's-Hertogenbosch. Gesundheit! Do not attempt this exercise after three Triple X beers. You might conjure up a demon or a lemon. 

There are plenitudes of gargoyles and dragons galore in Den Bosch, subjects dear to Bosch’s heart. It is speculated that the nearby chapel of St. Anthony on Hinthammerstraat was a favorite hangout of Bosch’s. It also doubled as an insane asylum that treated people suffering from St. Anthony’s fire, or ergotism. Yep, LSD poisoning. Talk about prima materia. I don’t think I took a photo of the statue of Bosch in the town square, I was sidetracked by all the lovely dragons—especially this gilded fellow (above) on a pedestal. But I have not finished my epic scanning project. A photo may yet turn up. 

Dragon fountain, a 1903 memorial for twin girls killed at 17.

Ode to the Junk Drawer

Ode to the Junk Drawer

Someone wondered why many of us have junk drawers, and did we keep similar things in them. Another, attempting some sort of sublime order, asked if it was OK to split up the junk drawers. I said, No, it is never a good idea to split up a kitchen junk drawer, there is an inherent creative relationship between the things living in the junk drawer. Some of it has to do with their very unlikely relationship to each other. The other has to do with their relative age—how long they have occupied that particular drawer. It’s like an archaeological dig. Things build relationships and alliances with each other. Even secret assignations. All this comes into play when you have to raid the junk drawer to fix something. I can’t tell you how many times I have dived into the junk drawer to retrieve one particular fixit item only to have it attached to another item which turns out to be absolutely necessary to fixing my fixit project. It’s a form of divining. You are aligning the simile gods. Not only do powerful Fixits live in the junk drawer, but nascent poems and future assemblages live there too. Think of it as an art homework bank. I positively had an epiphany when I realized that clear Capri juice straw would fix my frayed iPod wire. Had I not tossed it into the drawer while channeling my grandmother, the two ideas would not have crossed paths. Our junk drawers spans two households and four generations dating back to the Great Depression—an era when you either made do, or did without. No replacement things were available. Not like now, the throw-it-away into the landfill era. Invariably, you will find that when you clean your junk drawer, and randomly throw some of the odd bits away, perversely, those will be the very bits you’ll need to fix your next fixit project. I have had to go trash spelunking in order to retrieve said worthless object I tossed out. So, alway curate and cull with care. Yes, judiciously curate your junk drawer, it must never overflow its confines. But don’t split it. The only free pass you’ll ever get is when you move from one house to another. And then you are allowed to relentlessly cull. The junk drawer gods will understand. But it is important to transfer some prize items from the old junk drawer to the new one, like a prized sourdough starter, so as not to break the long tradition of good juju. And in a pinch, you can auction off the contents of your junk drawer on eBay. Long live the tinkerers and the makers, the McGuyvers, the creative ones who can see solutions beyond the junk.

Please post a photo of your junk drawer.

This post is for Margaret Maughan

Dear Google (redux)

 Dear Google,

I write to you again and again and again, knowing full well no one is actually reading my queries and my pleas sent into the void of your send feedback loop. Please fix the problem, quit destroying and nuking my posts. It is devastating, I am a writer, this is what I do. If I could leave Blogger I would do so.  This is heartbreaking. The only reason why I joined the blogger platform is because Guy Kawasaki talked about the process and suggested that I join. And so I did. But enough is enough. Fix it. Fix it. Fix it.

Google console link explanations don’t help.

FIRST RAIN OF THE SEASON

FIRST RAIN OF THE SEASON

This morning, bright bay leaves 

thrummed a small staccato 

on the tin roof as if like rain, 

followed by an unseasonable cloudburst 

that pummeled the earth with small fists.

During the first splutter, I ran outside, 

the sky was a gaudy sailor’s delight. 

A drop smacked me on the forehead, 

an anointment, my third eye opening,

pushing me back like a baptism.

The acrid odor of stone slaking its thirst.

A chorus of thunder, lightning dresses the night

in off-shoulder sequined gowns. And so it begins. 

The waiting. Thunder on the right. 

At least a mile off. Count 1001, 1002, 1003... 

On the eve of last year‘s firestorm,

the waiting begins. And the night is long.

9/9/21

Online sparrows

We had terrible internet problems for years that could not be fixed. No matter how many times we called to complain, no matter what AT&T did, Flipping remote switches, visiting the house, blaming us, blaming our wiring which I replaced. Nothing worked. Then we got a renegade line-man named Elvis who actually listened to us, and after checking the lines he said it wasn’t a problem inside the house. So he climbed up the telephone pole to have a look-see. Turns out there were a bunch of dead house sparrows online, well and truly fried in the ATT junction box on the telephone pole.