When I began working on this blog post, mid-December, I only 32 poems, I hadn’t counted or added in the prose poems yet, as this was the year of dangerously morphing prose poem posts and straddling genres. So I guess so much depends upon what passes for a prose poem vs. poetic prose, sometimes disguised in journal format. Elevated reportage. I did eventually reach my 52-poem goal but I had to stretch. Note to self, that’s 4.3 poems a month. Get on it.
The good news is that I now have 153 blogposts. A miracle, considering I was having trouble breaking 125 posts mid-December. Not like last year’s 2020 Year in Recap where I managed to break my own personal best record with a whopping 227 posts. Of course, it was the year of serious sequestration, which had something to do with my prodigious output. Some scrambling ensued. I don’t know what happened in May—only four blogposts? And they were all rants against Google for destroying old posts. I have 4,160 posts, many of them not backed up, so I was understandably freaked out. I raided several Facebook posts to bump up my writing stats. And I suspect Facebook Memories will add a few more errant posts next year.
I seem to have rolled back to my 2019 End of year writing stats, which isn’t bad. But, mid-December, I failed miserably by not reaching my goal of 52 poems for the year. However there are some rocking poetic prose posts. When I added in some of those prose poems, plus several unfinished poems that need revision from our CPITS Symposium, I have 52 poems! Yes! I guess if you count the haiku separately, then I've met my goal. Just for a giggle, I raided a pithy prose piece and eked a poem out of it, Tonight, the wind. TONIGHT, THE WIND. The problem is knowing when to stop.
What a year of extremes it’s been. First, there was Covid to contend with. Then it was the debut of the Covid-19 vaccines. In January I was Waiting to be Moderna-ized and experienced severe Post vaccine blues, followed by a near lethal second dose in February (Day 5, post vaccine blues, round 2). And the booster in December, for the Delta variant was no picnic (Post Moderna writing); now we’re contending with the Omicron variant. What’s next? The end of the Greek alphabet and civilization as we know it?
At this point we’ve all lost friends and family to Covid. This is the new normal. But, hey, we’re still alive. As my British friends would say, keep your pecker (chin) up. I went back into the classroom on November 30. And for the new year I will be teaching many classes. No more Zoom. Here’s hoping I do not get Covid from my poetry students. But on some level, life must go on. TG there is now an adult in the White House. I think we all have PTSD, on both sides of the political arena. Not to mention the insurrection of Jan 6.
It’s been a drought-to-deluge year. Literally. At least there were no major firestorms this year in my neck of the woods in coastal Northern California. Plenty of small fires, though. So we were at the ready. Elsewhere in CA, it was the worst firestorm year ever on record. Ever. Nightmare. I lost count after 8000 fires. During August, the Dixie Fire, McFarland Fire, Caldor Fire, and 8,616 other wildfires burned down 2,569,009 acres of forest. We thought we were going to lose all of the Tahoe Basin and Echo Summit. There’s a certain point when you just go numb and cannot respond to catastrophe anymore.
At least this year, I didn’t have to evacuate due to firestorms, but we may need to build an icebreaker ark with skis. Since 2017, when the wildfire began to break world records, my entire car has been a go-bag, I’ve been mandatorily evacuated three times, and after so many years of little rain, I’ve discovered my car leaks like a sieve. So much for my go-bag. Everything is either damp or moldy. As they say, when it rains, it pours. It was the worst firestorm year on record.
Not to mention snow—more than 16’ of snow, so far. The Sierra Snow Lab recorded 193.7 inches, so far, breaking the 1970 snow record of 179 inches. All the roads crossing the Sierra Nevadas are closed for the duration. At least this time the roads aren’t closed due to wildfire. Apparently we do catastrophe and weather on a grand scale in California. We are hunkering down for the duration, whatever that means.
We got our first rain October 15, after 200 days of no rain. But with that first storm came lightning strikes, and more fires. And since October 24, the wettest day on record for California, it’s been raining buckets, with record-breaking deluges and snow in the mountains—busting the 1970 snow record at the end of December.
On Oct 25, while I was away in Florida taking care of a friend’s mother (living a loca nightmare—see my Florida Journals), Marin County was hit by a deluge of Biblical proportions. Mt. Tam got nearly 17” and my natal homeland, Woodacre got 13” of rain in 24 hours. San Rafael streets were drowned, combined with a king tide. Sam lost his car due to flooding. And another storm dumped nearly as much rain—in Marin we almost got a year’s quota of rain in two days.
Poetry-wise, I participated in several Zoom readings, including quarterly CPITS readings, open mike, our statewide symposium, a Spectrum reading, I was interviewed, and read poems for Fire Haus Projects in Miami. I have not see the video. Hope I don’t regret it. I can’t remember if anything was actually published. War, Literature & the Arts journal accepted my Nagasaki poem, but it still isn’t posted. I had three old photos accepted for an upcoming documentary by Ken Rosenthal on Julia Vinograd: Between Spirit and Stone. I put in some fancy time rescanning those negatives to meet Ken’s specs so he could use them.
Meanwhile, Google decided to delete 13 of my innocuous blog posts, for “violating community standards,” whatever that means. Then I found out that Google had also deleted several earlier posts as well. At the time, I thought it was spam and didn’t worry about it, until I realized they had completely disappeared—most of which I was able to restore. But I did lose a few posts in the process, as they only existed in blog format, such as my Juanita Musson memorial at Olompali, replete with photos.
I am now up to 4,157 posts total, but more than a few have gone missing, thanks to that Google glitch in the matrix. Needless to say, I am now backing up my blog more often. See, I began this year with 4,000 posts, and have backposted way more than 7 posts, and I have 150 posts for this year, not counting this one. The math doesn’t add up. For example, there is no end of year stats for 2015. I might not have done one, it’s possible. But I began this process of taking stock in 2014. I am diligent about such things.Thanks a lot, Google.
I also did not scan as many negatives, during the final quarter of the year, nor did I glean old journals for new posts. Not that they would have boosted my stats. And I only made 26 pieces of art, mostly drawings. However, I do have a few stellar landscape photos.
And of course, I didn’t mention how death entered the big room, taking relatives, friends and icons with impunity. It’s been a rough year, with people dying. My cousin Michael Collins, the astronaut Michael Collins, schoolmate Mark Rasmussen, neighbor, Barbara Scott, Janice Mirikitani, Joan Didion, Bob Dole, and the iconic Betty White, a few days before her 100th birthday. I thought she had a free pass like Keith Richards. Nto to mention the 800,000 who’ve died of Covid in the US alone. The hardest death was that of Barbara Scott, who willed herself to die. She was done, she quit eating at the end of May. We found out the hard way, seeing her stuff by the side of the road in July. Remembering Barbara Scott.
But I did gain 32 new posts for 2020, mostly Facebook Covid journals, and prose pieces, returned to me via Facebook Memories. Plus a handful of posts for the 2000-teens. I joined Facebook in 2009, and every year I think I’m done mining the past for old posts, I find more posts to add. Most are standard blog posts but every once and a while I find a nugget. I do hope that this is the tail end of finding old Facebook posts to reformat here—except for this year. Still, I think I’ve met my personal goal. But it was certainly a year of touch and go. The fat lady is still singing.
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