Watusi cattle of Wilson Hill (photos)

And on Wilson Hill Road, Stubbs Ranch, are some extraordinary African Watusi cattle. Mama bathing her calf, I suspect the older calves are hers too by the way they hang on her every breath. No, she’s not a hermaphrodite. They have weird bellybuttons. Bulls also have dewlaps on their necks, and brahma style humps on their backs. Check out those horns! Those horns are used somewhat like a car radiator to cool their blood, not to gore you. But the Watusi cattle are related to the original longhorns, that is, the Egyptian Hamitic longhorn, also ancestor to Mexican (and Texican) longhorns.

The following article on Watusis was so windy it was practically a hurricane, so I paraphrased it. You’re welcome.

“Ankole-Watusi cattle with their distinctive large-diameter horns, trace their ancestry back more than 6,000 years, and are referred to as "cattle of kings."

Long-horned, humpless domestic cattle were established in the Nile Valley by 4000 B.C. Egyptian or Hamitic Longhorn, appear in pictographs in Egyptian pyramids. Over the next 2.000 years, the Egyptian Longhorn migrated from the Nile to Ethiopia, and to southern Africa.

By 2000 B. C., humped cattle (Longhorn Zebu) from Pakistan and India also reached Africa. When the Zebu reached Ethiopia and Somalia, they were interbred with Egyptian Longhorn to produce the Sanga -- the breed spread to the Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, eastern Africa, becoming the base stock of indigenous African breeds. The Sanga had Zebu characteristics, pendulous dewlap and sheath, upturned horns, and a neck hump. Modern descendants of the Sanga, however, vary greatly in size, conformation, and horns.

Particularly remarkable are the cattle found in Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. In Uganda, the Nkole tribe's Sanga variety is known as the Ankole. In Rwanda and Burundi, the Tutsi tribe's Sanga variety is called the Watusi. The Rwanda common strain of Watusi is called Inkuku. 

POETRY ARRIVED LATE

POETRY ARRIVED LATE

     —after Neruda

Poetry arrived late 

and all out of breath, 

in search of me. 

But I didn't listen,

I had no idea that 

I was lost, or that 

I was bereft—without words. 

Images glimmered

on the far horizon 

like clouds thick 

with the promise of rain, 

and distant thunder pounding 

its own drum in dark canyons,

spoke of other things.

I was not yet schooled, 

words were not friends, 

they were elusive as hungry deer

in a land ravaged by drought,

and they carelessly abandoned me

much in the same way 

my parents did so long ago. 

But my grandmother 

took me firmly by the hand 

and she led me up the hill, 

pointing out the plants, 

naming the spring wildflowers

while the pines whispered old

secrets waiting for new words.

So I suppose poetry got a hold of me 

when I was young, almost a toddler, 

certainly before I was lettered. 

But then it lay dormant for decades 

like a manzanita, or a fire poppy seed 

waiting for the right wildfires to germinate,

and combust into the abyss 

of the mind. I was an imposter

dressed in other words and ideas

made of cheap velvet and cactus,

but poetry was patient. It waited 

for me to arrive—for decades 

before declaring itself an ally,

a lodestone. It became

a pathfinder with arrows 

made of leaves pointing 

the way back home

or was it the way forward—

a doppelgänger rebounding 

through distant canyons.

Poetry finding me here, now.

1/26/22 CPITS Write On! Terri Glass class

On this day, Virginia Woolf

On this day in 1882, Virginia Woolf was born. Circling the drain of depression some 59 years later, at the end of March, she slipped sacred stones in her coat pockets—much in the way the Egyptians once hid scarab amulets in the back of the throat and under the heart as protection for the next life. After completing her manuscript, Between the Acts, she gathered cobblestones along the shore, or was it from the road that lined the village of Rodmell? She said, “Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again.” And as she walked, a tributary of words whispering dark secrets followed her along a towpath to the river’s edge. She waded into the River Ouse near Lewes, and slipped in, letting the current drag her down. The words were chasing her. Ouse as in muck, or as in shorebirds? As in the Celtic word for water, uisce, which gives us the word whiskey, or as in oss, Norse for mouth? There are several River Ouses in Britain, this one is in Sussex, a place she once described as “an inland sea.” The Water River, call it the stream of consciousness. The river opened its mouth to drink her in and kept her down like Ophelia, or Undine for three weeks like an errant kelpie before it gave her back to the air. The River Ouse is filled with birds, flightless water ouzels singing over the rocks, and ripples, and the river is feathering its way toward the air.

ON THE MATING RITUALS OF CORMORANTS

A double-breasted cormorant 

with silly Groucho Marx eyebrows

flashes an unexpected mouth made of cerulean sky 

and his orange beak becomes the eroded cliffs 

of cinnabar and mud bleeding along the coast. 

It was as if a crazy blue streak leaked from his eyes, 

stolen from the secret depths of the ocean,

and circled his mouth like teal lipstick.

1/25/22

Jefferson Airplane house on Fulton fragment

Someone posted a photo of an old house in San Francisco, wanting to know its history. I immediately recognized the place, even though it was painted white. Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane band lived at the corner of Fulton, the big Edwardian style Victorian was painted black. I think the Corinthian columns were painted gold, or trimmed with gold paint. I remember the blue and green shag rug in the living room, with a sunken square tile tub, and a baby grand with red roses on it. My friend Kevin was selling dope to a bandmate in the kitchen, so my friend Carolyn played something classical on the piano, and Grace came out snarling and screeching wearing nothing more than an ecru trimmed babydoll negligee at 4 PM. Her hair was a rats-nest, and she had raccoon eyes from smeared makeup. Not a pretty sight. She tried to throw us out, but we merely went into the kitchen instead—where everybody was gathered round the kitchen table smoking and drinking strong coffee in the afternoon sunlight. An indelible memory. Then they all moved to West Marin and we saw them all the time. They hung a model biplane from an oak tree in front of their house in Woodacre. I used to ride my horse by their place all the time. Some pix.

True Quinces

Nascent fuzzy quince developing, Nicasio, ©Maureen Hurley 2018

The entire back yard of my friend, poet, Rebecca Morrison’s old Craftsman house in Sacramento was a vast impenetrable expanse of quince canes. She had no idea what to do with this advancing quince wicker thicket that looked like a bad case of Einstein’s hair on brillo pads and steroids. The rabbits and foxes, however, loved it, and called it home. 

The edible, or true quince of Asia Minor (with a range from Anatolia, to Armenia, Persia, and Iran), originally hailed from the Caucasus Mountains and the drought tolerant plant quickly spread to virtually all of the Fertile Crescent and Mesopotamia, North Africa and the Mediterranean, the Crimea, the Silk Road, and beyond.

Many old California homesteads often had quince thickets, planted alongside the prerequisite pears and apple orchards. When left to its own devices, the quince becomes a towering thicket, but it can be tamed, trained and pruned into a tree. Sort of. Their broad leathery leaves added vibrant colors to a fall landscape. Quince was also used as rootstock for finicky pear trees, and often went rogue if the pear tree died.

When I was a child, I loved the heavy perfumed odor of quince in late fall, picking the huge waxy fuzz-covered yellow orbs after the first frost, rubbing the fuzz off to make them shine like waxy golden suns, waiting for them to blett and ripen under my bed. Positively narcotic. 

I loved watching my grandmother canning quinces, mashing and straining the cooked pulp through layers of cheesecloth, which yielded a gorgeous blood-amber jelly laden with anthocyanins and tannins redolent with notes of apple, pear and citrus. Before the commercial invention of those little blue and white Knox gelatin packets, and commercial pectin such as Sure-jell (made with citrus), quince peels were used for their pugnacious pectin power to thicken canned fruit jams, jellies, and sauces.

Quinces, once considered food of the gods, associated with fertility and wedding feasts, became the infamous golden apples of discord in Classical literature, and associated with forbidden fruit in the Bible. They make scant appearance in modern literature, but there are occasional nods here and there in fairytales, and in medieval cookbooks. 

In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Juliet's nurse said quinces will be eaten at the wedding feast. NURSE. They call for Dates and Quinces in the Pastrie. Alas, that did not end well, for the wedding party that never was. In the 1859 narrative poem, The Goblin Market, Christina Rossetti called quinces goblin fruits. Let’s hope that that Edward Lear’s owl and pussycat fared a little better as they dined most elegantly on slices of cooked quince.

They dined on mince, and slices of quince, which they ate with the runcible spoon; and hand and hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon, the moon, the moon, they danced by the light of the moon. —Edward Lear

The Owl and the Pussycat, by Edward Lear 1871

Quinces are astringent, and most varieties cannot be eaten raw unless your mouth is impervious to malic acid compounds and bitter tannins. Not to mention, they’re loaded with antioxidants. They are puckery, and hard as chalk, they will make your teeth hurt. You cannot eat them raw. Your tongue will fall mute, you will gag, and the lining of your mouth may want to run off with some olive oil to salve its wounds. 

Quinces, once imbued with magical powers, were reputed to stave off the plague and Black Death. Needless to say, quince, with its medicinal cornucopia, was extremely popular in the British Isles and northern Europe. Quinces were used as a condiment and digestive for fatty meats, such as goose. (Try reading this recipe aloud for shitzngiggles. Hint: þe is the, that odd þ is a th sound, called a thorn.)

Sawse madame. Take sawge, persel, ysope and saueray, quinces and peeres, garlek and grapes, and fylle the gees þerwith; and sowe the hole þat no grece come out, and roost hem wel, and kepe the grece þat fallith þerof. Take galytyne and grece and do in a possynet. Whan the gees buth rosted ynouh, take hem of & smyte hem on pecys, and take þat þat is withinne and do it in a possynet and put þerinne wyne, if it be to thyk; do þerto powdour of galyngale, powdour douce, and salt and boyle the sawse, and dresse þe gees in disshes & lay þe sowe onoward. —from The Forme of Cury

Still-life of quinces by Vincent van Gogh (1887), Wikipedia 

There is a train of thought that the golden quince was the original symbol for the apple tree of Eden—as the boreal ancestral apple trees don’t thrive in warm climates. They need sub-alpine conditions in order to grow and set fruit. Which throws a spanner into the idea that those apples of original sin fame were really quinces in the Garden of Eden. Maybe Adam and Eve’s tastebuds weren’t fully developed. Or they had a really heavy frost to blett the fruit. Or maybe that’s why raw quinces are generally inedible. All that original sin hooey just to ward you off. You’ve been duly warned!

But wait, the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, was an apple. The Bible tells us so. Nope. This is a rather long segue in what gets lost in translation: see, all those Greek references to apples, the ones mentioned in Homer's Odyssey, the famous apple tussle of Aphrodite, Athena and Hera, and the golden apples of discord—all need to be taken with a grain of salt as they are referring to these pome fruits, furry golden orbs, that is, quinces—not actual apples.

To keep abreast of the situation, the Greek word "μήλον" for apple—or any kind of globular, or round fruit (and apparently fat-bottomed girls) is malon, or melon. The word, "μήλον" also referred to fat sheep or fat goats. Pomaceous: anything-apple-shaped. Round. Fat. There must've been some seriously fat goats way back then. 

Sappho of Lesbos salaciously likened a young bride to a ‘sweet apple’ or (gluku’malon). Insert breast images here, or fat goats, and add a little Anthony Hopkins’ Silence of the Lambs slither sound with fava beans here. Here, have some chianti. Better yet, have some tinto riojo and gorgeous ruby hued membrillo quince paste with your manchego cheese from La Mancha. The Spanish word for quince paste, or cheese, membrillo comes from mimbre, for its wicker-like canes, and the word marmalade comes from the Portuguese marmalao.

According to Wikipedia, “The fruit was known to the Akkadians, who called it supurgillu; Arabic سفرجل al safarjal"quinces" (collective plural), as well as in Judea of Israel during the Mishnaic era where it was called perishin (פרישין collective plural, or sing. prish); quince flourished in the heat of the Mesopotamian plain, where apples did not. It was cultivated from an archaic period around the Mediterranean. Some ancients called the fruit "golden apples"The Greeks associated it with Cydonia (Kydonia) on Crete, as the "Cydonian pome" while the Romans called it strythion.

Enter Eris, the goddess of discord, who wasn’t invited to the wedding party hosted by Zeusy-baby. So she crashed it and brought an “apple.” The quince, a potent fertility drug, was Mother Earth’s wedding gift to Hera, literally food of the gods. Upon the quince was the inscription καλλίστῃ (kallistēi, "To/for the fairest one"), thus fomenting a brawl between three reigning goddesses, Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite—which ignited the Trojan War. Aphrodite won the beauty contest, by the way.

True quince was also used as an aromatic room freshener Wikipedia

Back to that harbinger of spring, those ornamental blood-red Japanese flowering pseudo-quinces in the garden, are not quinces at all, but they do look alike—except for their tiny serrated leaves. Quinces, that is, Cydonia oblonga, with their broad pear-like leaves, are often conflated with the three Southeast Asian ornamental flowering Pseudocydonia “quince” species in the genus Chaenomeles. 

Pseudo Japanese flowering “quince,”  Wikipedia

If you mixed up the two genera, don’t feel bad. The reason why I wrote this blog post is because a San Marcos native nursery man insisted that they were closely related species—nae, he called them mere varieties. As in one species. Since my childhood memories were so closely associated with true quince, I had to set him straight. I tend to get cranky when people don’t know the difference between genus and species. Especially a nurseryman. May you eat raw quince.

See, real quinces are orphans, they are their own sole genus and species, no close cousins whatsoever to speak of.  When you’re the only species in your genus, that’s something to crow about, evolutionarily speaking. It’s either good news, or really bad news. As in the last of your kind.

The large five-petaled flowers of the true quince, like showoff apple blossoms, tend to be white, or veined with a pale pink blush—kind of like the Chinese pseudo flowering quince. They even have similar looking fruit to the pseudo-quince. Five seeds in a star pattern like an apple or a pear cut crosswise. Blame it on a common ancestor of the Maleae tribe in the Rosaceae family. Call it convergent evolution. A divine model for a divine fruit. Not to mention the Judgement of Paris. You do know that Helen bribed Paris with a quince.

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  True quince blossoms, Manfred Heyde Wikipedia

Green Day Boulevard

I was in Stonestown shopping for thermal clothing. We were in the midst of a cold snap, it was down in the low teens and we didn’t have a working heater in the house so, layering was the name of the game. I was inside Macy’s, and the pop song, Boulevard of Broken Dreams wafted from the speakers as I was shopping in the boys section. 

Now Green Day was not my musical genre, I’m much older than that. The musicians of my era were The Animals, the Rolling Stones, and Van “the man” Morrison. But the lyrics caught my attention. I walk alone, I walk alone. Yeah. I totally get that as I was a returning student to San Francisco State, picking up the lost threads of my old MA, and isolation seemed to be the name of the game. 

My partner was taking teachers courses and rapidly entering a world of pedagogy while I was reinventing myself in the English Department. There’s a peculiarity that happens when you go back to school as the greater student body renders you invisible. Call it ageism if you must label it, but it goes much deeper than that. It’s as if one were an oil slick surfacing on a turbulent sea. You can’t get a hold of yourself and all your anchors are gone, your identity along with it. 

As I held up the furry sweatpants that would keep us warm during the freeze, I was walking my own street of broken dreams, trying to pick up the pieces of the past. It’s odd as you step out of the comfort zone and begin to grow in other directions, picking up the shards of broken dreams and rearranging them, there are bound to be razor cuts. 

Black ice on the parking lot had me scrambling for balance and I realized that this balancing act meant I had to let go of so much of the past—call it self identity—in order to not lose my balance in the tenuous new direction. 

A few days later, Green Day lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong pulled into my cousins café on his bike for a coffee. The road to Lagunitas from in town was long and all I could think of was there he was, the lead singer standing on the controversial boulevard that dissects our county. He smiled at me, and shoved off, his tires were singing a broken song on the gravel as a sudden chill filled the air.

1/20/22 Mill Valley Library non-fiction workshop with Sarah Broderick

THE GARDEN

THE GARDEN

With a smile like that, the world came to a halt 

and we just stepped off the edge to dance 

our way between the portals of stars and time. 

Imagine being an astronaut filled with sunlight, 

standing at the edge of all that darkness,

a knife on the horizon, the Kármán Line, 

60 miles straight up, a violent and fiery 

boundary that separates our atmosphere 

from outer space. Did you know that 

the real Capt. Kirk, the oldest man ever

to venture into space, said it was so profound, 

he wept. His tears, small diamonds of the first water.

With a smile like that, the loftiness of altitude 

would become a quaint concept. 

We could don our shiny new astronaut wings 

and salute the mesosphere, 

and revel in the weightlessness of space. 

Commander Chris Hadfield, a real live astronaut, 

said, You can’t imagine how dark it is out there. 

He should know. The odor space is like hot metal, 

or seared meat—not that you can smell a Sunday barbie—

let alone, breathe in the perfect vacuum of space. 

What’s startling is how the color of the sky 

disappears completely without a gasp.

But when you smile, it sucks the air 

right out of this room and there is nothing between us, 

save for the stars and the errant circling planets, 

scattering the ancient light into our eyes. 

The sun’s fiery corona blossoms like a flower

in the garden of your smile.

1/19/22 CPITS Write On! Terri Glass class

Dear Alexander McCall Smith

Dear Alexander McCall Smith, 

During this time of pandemic, I have rediscovered your delightful books in audio format, as I seem to have the attention span of a gecko for reading these days, this is a real boon, and I do love falling asleep listening to Mma Ramotswe’s escapades. Comparing her traditionally built figure to a baobab tree had me laughing out loud in the middle of the night. Woke me right up. My roommates, too.

I have begun at the very beginning of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, but I must admit I snuck ahead to listen to How to Raise an Elephant. So, I know the little white van is in perfectly good, if bent, working order. Lovely to hear from you, and that you’re embarking on yet another book. All that I know of Botswana is through the lens of Mme Ramotswe. 

I do have some questions about the Botswanan cattle. Are they like the ones with massive horns, like the Ankole-Watusi of Rwanda? Horns so massive, they could cradle the sun? The reason I ask, is because weekly I pass a herd of African cattle on a west Marin hillside, and of course I think of Mme Ramotswe’s late father making this all possible.

Speaking of ancient cattle, I did take another spin through Portuguese Irregular Verbs, this time in audio format, and was surprised to find that I got to the end of the book. A first. Alors! In the past, as you may recall, I never got past Chapter Three because after reading about Irish Irregular Verbs, I was satisfied to stop there. What else was there to know? It has become a pilgrimage of sorts over the decades, to read the first three chapters, every few years, then drift off into an odd reverie of sorts, having once attempted to study Old Irish Irregular Verbs at Berkeley via translation of the Táin Bó Cúailgne, or The Cattle Raid of Cooley, in English. A real bloodbath, I might add.

I do look forward to your latest book, no. 23, is it? And this time, if you do visit California, God willing, I will indeed make an attempt to see you. The last time you were here, I came down with a frightful cold. I am still kicking myself that I didn’t make more of an effort to see you at Book Passage. Have you considered doing some Zoom appearances? I would love to listen to you, even if pixelated.

Your ever so grateful reader,

Slán agat,

Maureen Hurley

Chasing sundogs and sunbows again (photos)

A right-handed sundog hid behind a sunbow, refused to show its face, but the lake saw it.

Neither my eye or camera could see the left sundog, but Nicasio Reservoir captured it.

At Wilson Hill, a right-handed sundog hid behind a cloud, refused to show its face, it was a long wait.

Driving north to Two Rock, I had better luck capturing the right sundog hiding behind a cirrus cloud.

Chasing sundogs and sunbows again. They were elusive as sprites. A sunbow—aka a parhelic circle, is formed by ice crystals in the cirrus clouds, refracting light like prisms. I could only capture one sundog at a time, aka a parhelion, it was so bright. I thought I could capture them at sunset, but they disappeared. So much depends upon the angle of the sun in the sky and the time of day... and timing is everything. I took an entire afternoon off to chase the rare sundogs.

Since neither my eye or my camera could see all the sundogs at once, I resorted to using lake reflections to capture the left sundog. The lake was a vast mirror. But the sundogs were distorted by the cirrus clouds. They were way more intense than in these photos. The invisible left sundog was trapped on the surface of the lake. I had to use a bush to block out the reflection of the sun, and was nearly blinded for my efforts. The upper and lower sundogs remained invisible.  

Driving north over Wilson Hill Road to Chileno Valley, I had better luck capturing the left sundog hiding behind a cirrus cloud. It was a long wait but worth it when it reappeared. But as the sun set near Two Rock, the sky turned all dirty rainbow as if tinged with smoke, on both sides of the sun. Impossible to capture.

I am still searching for that elusive moment when the sky is covered with myriad rainbows and multitudes of sun dogs with long arms. I saw something like that once in the 1990s, the buttermilk sky was like a shimmering sequined dress made of rainbows and diamonds. I may have attempted a photo but in the days of actual film, we were much more stingy with our media. And knew what wouldn’t adequately record well on film.

For a better explanation of parhelia see my other post Facebook) or here on my blog: Chasing sundogs (photos) You can see the parhelic circle more clearly there. There is always one sundog on either side of the sun, connected by a circular rainbow. The parhelic circle extends from one sundog to its twin, which is part of a much larger arc. They are like angel wings of the sun. But timing is everything.

Memorial service for Michael Collins at Saint Raphael's in San Rafael

 Memorial service for Michael Collins at Saint Raphael's in San Rafael.

random FB fragment on teaching and time

I have been teaching kids poetry & art since 1980, and I don’t seem to run into too much of that widening gulf of language redundancy between the old and the young. Possibly because I’m working with their language base. But your column, though it made me feel somewhat chagrinned, was wittily entertaining. Carolyn Forché mentioned the reality check gulf when her students didn’t know what snow angels were, and she gave a JFK reference—where were you when JFK was shot? They said they weren’t born yet. Now, for you, it’s those born after 9/11. Most of my students were born after Frozen came out. Foggetabout The Princess Bride, or understanding the immortal lines: “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” The gulf between 1969 to 2022 is as far apart as 1969 is to 1916. Such strange watershed times we live in.

Flex? OK, I cowp. What is it?

Tongan Tsunami steals trash cans from Santa Cruz harbor

Tonga sends volcanic greetings to North America with a mighty wave. Santa Cruz harbor leapt its banks early this morning, the tsunami stole all the trash cans in the parking lot. They’ve headed out to sea riding on the first surges. Wonder if the ocean will return them back to shore on the next surge? Yes, let’s have a little tsunami arrive at the same time as super high tide. Let that high tide also be a king tide, just because it’s 2022.

What I learned today is that tsunami advisory means any wave action under 3 feet, no classic 10 foot tsunami waves. Tsunami warning means the real deal with big waves. Port San Luis Obispo, CA, got 4 extra vertical feet of ocean all at once. There’s a really interesting photo of the 2011 tsunami rolling into Richardson Bay in Sausalito. Luckily this is not as big. And the US National Weather Service San Francisco Bay Area/Monterey California says we probably haven’t hit high water mark yet. It may arrive later today.

Chasing sundogs (photos)

Late afternoon sun, one sundog, and a sunbow—aka a parhelic circle, which is sort of like a fogbow, caused by ice crystals in the cirrus clouds refracting light, at Nicasio Reservoir, Elephant Mountain, and lake reflection. I could only capture one sundog, aka a parhelion, it was so bright.

There was one sundog on either side of the sun. See the vague horizontal band of light coming from the sundog? The parhelic circle extended from one sundog to its twin, and was part of a much larger arc. Poor iPad struggled, didn’t catch the sundog reflections in the lake. It was like being inside a large prism or Fresnel lens. 

Each ripple on the lake carried a small reflection of the sun and sundogs. Today it was a case of trying to take a photo of one thing, and getting something completely different and unexpected. Hence, the synchronicity. Sometimes you have to let go of the idea and go with the flow. Truth be known, I didn’t see the sundog right away, until after I had taken a photo, it was so bright.

What I originally meant to capture was the reflection, I was intrigued by the little ripples so like sketch lines. Sometimes you have to let go of the idea you’re planning to take a photo and go with the flow. Truth be known, I didn’t see the sundog right away, it was so bright. A rainbow is a symbol of an end of a rainstorm, while a sundog is a harbinger of more rain, or snow on the horizon.

I had a hard time capturing it. it was so bright. There was one sundog on either side of the sun. See the vague horizontal band of light coming from the sundog? The parhelic circle extended from one sundog to its twin, and was part of a much larger arc. Poor iPad struggled. Didn’t want to use my camera, as I once burned out the imager on my favorite camera taking photos of reflections one winter afternoon, late. I underestimated the power of the sun. So I may have just sacrificed my iPad camera. But sundogs are so rare.

Didn’t want to use my real camera, as I once fried the image sensor on my favorite camera while taking photos of late afternoon reflections at Schooner Bay one winter afternoon, when I underestimated the power of the low December sun. See how the sun blasted out the image when I tried to capture both sundogs? I could barely look at the iPad screen, so I was practically shooting blind. So I may have just sacrificed my iPad camera. But sundogs are so freaking rare…. ya hadda be there. So, a ew days later, there was another sundog. Chasing sundogs and sunbows again (photos)

LEARNING TO FLY

LEARNING TO FLY

In the dream, the yellow school bus 

dropped me off at the highway at the bottom of the road.

I escaped a bedlam of screaming kids, the taunting, 

and the torture of spitwads and rubber bands.

But when I stepped off the bus, it was so silent,

my feet couldn’t touch the ground, as if repelled by gravity. 

I entered a parallel world, my legs dragging in laden air, 

as if I were paralyzed. The ground misbehaved like oil & water. 

It was like being in the Barbano’s pool, just up the bend, 

when I was 10, learning how to swim after a near drowning.

I experimented with weightlessness, hands cupping the air. 

I struggled to get my bearings. It was a long road with no birds. 

Man had not yet walked on the moon. My home 

was another world where my grandmother stacked wood, 

buried ashes in the garden, argued with Cromwell in empty rooms.

I tried the breast stroke, then the Australian crawl 

all those strokes I learned in that saltwater pool. 

At least in this dream I could breathe. No fear of drowning.

Not like the tsunami dreams filled with fish and shoes.

I pulled the heavy air to my chest in hard thrusts, 

gaining traction, but I couldn’t leave the road. 

It was as if I was chained to that roadbed, 

hovering a few feet above it like Chagall’s floating women. 

No chance of effortless flight like the redtail hawks & vultures. 

I had to work hard to gain momentum. Nothing was given.

The road was my body, my guide, my mentor, my map. 

But I couldn’t stray from it. My arms grew weary. 

Like Gulliver, I was chained by invisible ropes. 

Frost rimed the new grass. A pale sky verging on white, 

the beginnings of spring circling the dark drain of winter.

1/12 CPITS Write On! Terri Glass class

GOAT & DEER haiku

Piebald nanny goat
squats on a berm, morning pee
steams in the sunlight.

Must be a theme

eight does on the horizon

taking turns to pee.

Tule fog rises

from the dew laden winter 

grass, jeweled sunlight.

Little Christmas, a.k.a. Nollaig BheagLittle Christmas, a.k.a.

A card my cousin in Kerry sent me.

Today is Little Christmas, aka the Feast of the Epiphany, Orthodox Christmas, and Nollaig Bheag. AKA Women's Christmas (Nollaig na mBan), where Irish men traditionally take on all the household duties for the day. Women are instructed to stay abed late, hang out with friends and generally be pampered and waited on hand & foot by their menfolk in appreciation. A spa day might be in order. As my grandmother said, it is the last day of Christmas to get those cards and gifts delivered. Tomorrow you can take down the tree. Or not.

Eating the bull’s heart

Most storebought food, and especially junk food, including coke and potato chips, never graced our threshold. My granny was too old world (and far too poor) for any modern prepared convenience food, or junkfood. We ate whatever was served. When a neighbor’s bull was slaughtered, or a goat or deer, we pretty much ate everything. But sometimes my grandmother would venture forth, read an exotic recipe and become inspired. Some culinary adventures like the salmon croquettes were lovely, however frozen squid in its own ink, was beyond atrocious. And menudo. Ugh.

I remember watching my grandmother skinning the cow’s tongue after she boiled it. It looked awful on the platter, but it made good sandwiches. Good disguise. I found the beef heart to be more of a challenge. Our neighbors had bumped off Thumbelina, a nasty misnamed stroppy Hereford-Jersey bull calf that grew up to be a menace whenever he escaped the corral, which was often. One time he treed me up a poison oak-infested utility pole. That was the beginning of the end of his demise. So, in compensation, we were gifted the heart and tongue. She boiled, then baked that heart with garlic and rosemary. However, I must admit, we ate his heart with gusto.

1/7/22

The world as we knew it

It’s hard to fathom that yet another year has rolled by. Here we are, still in sequestration, more or less, as the latest variant of Covid rolls through us. We no longer get the news as to how many people have died worldwide. But at least 800,000 US deaths related to Covid have been recorded during the past two years. I have been vaccinated three times since a year ago, January, and the last booster shot will not protect us from the workarounds of the latest version of the virus. When this all began in March 2020, I saw the writing on the wall, that darkness, the world, as we knew it, will never return again.

1/5/22

Not Protea but Silverswords

Jerry Downs posted a photo of protea, and something I remembered that twinned it to another equally rare plant, arose unbidden. When I descended into the aeolian slopes of the cinder crater of Haleakalā, Maui, on the Sliding Sands Trail, I thought of South African protea, not having a namebank for the tall cones of silverswords that greeted me. The ahinahina (grey-grey) that evolved from ancestral California tarweed, greeted me with rosettes of tiny red suns. I later found out they only grow on Maui's tallest summit — and nowhere else in the world. In an extreme high desert, they live up to a hundred years, their final act, to flower once, then die, scattering their seeds to the vagaries of the wind. I imagined that Haleakalā had roped all the days of the the sun and anchored it to these silverswords, but each night they cut the bonds so that the sun rose again in the east. Not Protea, but with similar extreme survival skills.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

The mountains perceive me 

as one of their own long lost kin. 

I know this because when I reach the summit, 

they welcome me with breathless vistas. 

A small corner of my raging soul finds 

slivers of peace embedded in archaic ice 

and in the reflections of distant lakes. 

And sometimes, if I am lucky, I take back 

a small part of my lost self as I descend 

into the dailiness of the mundane world.

The mountains do not have a name for me

because to name me would be to separate itself

from itself, because we are all part of this earth.

My baby name I kept secret for years, 

even decades. It still yanks me back in time

whenever I hear it and I don't know what age I am.

It was my private family name, Irish for baby,

once called out in affection, not in anger. 

Not my school name. My friends 

have taken the shortest possible route 

to my public persona, calling me Mo, 

as if the Three Stooges, black sheep, 

and other permutations of my nickname mattered.

My true name is something hidden, 

something I search for amid the scree, 

and the detritus and ruins of civilization.

Look, there it is, a small water-worn stone

buffeted about in a desert windstorm,

sand whittling me down in case a small ember,

a jewel, or perhaps, stardust, was trapped inside.

The morning calls me slowly 

as if to waken me from dreams 

while the night thinks only of itself, 

its wants and its needs.

The past calls out to me, 

a constant companion to what was lost. 

The future is silent, perhaps 

it's passive-aggressive,

with cake crumbs on its lips.

What's in a name? 

I know I've answered this question before 

and I will answer it again and again. 

It hounds me, this attempt at definition of self 

especially during this time of mass extinction.

Exodus, inspiration, we are breathing together

right down to the very last stargasp.

1/5/22
Terri Glass’ Write On ~ a Generative Poetry Gathering

Remembering Mark Rasmussen

Mark Rasmussen, Class of 1967 reunion. Jim McElroy photo

I received a message that all schoolmate Mark Rasmussen had died. As I tried to investigate it, I find much by way of an obituary. So this is what passes for memory. Mark’s father Stu Rasmussen, was a playwright and director of the San Geronimo Valley Players; in the early 1960s, he and another parent, Barbara Scott produced musical plays for us, at Lagunitas Elementary School. I played the female lead in San Geronimo! Mark was tall, I don’t remember his role. Probably José Revere. Mark was our leading man at Lagunitas.

Mark majored in drama at Drake (Class of 1967), and College of Marin with director Jim Dunn. He and several of his CoM classmates went onto Julliard, including Robin Williams, Joel Blum, and James Harper. I think…. anyway, they escaped and broke the mold. I was thrilled to work in the costume dept. and be wardrobe mistress and usher at all the plays—just to watch them perform.

Mark, as Tony Wilson, was in the famous hot tub and peacock feathers scene in Cyra McFadden’s The Serial. We all traipsed to the Fairfax Theater to see Mark on the Big Screen, thrilled and mortified as the idea of Marin being equated with all things kinky with peacock feathers became a trope.

According to IMDB, Mark Rasmussen’s film credits include bit parts on The Streets of San Francisco (1972) Parking Lot Attendant / David, painter; The Serial (1980) Tony Wilson; and The Second Coming of Suzanne (1974) chauffeur; Mark was also an uncredited extra in the airport scene in the movie Bullitt with Steve McQueen. Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind (Documentary) playing himself, 2018. 

But it seems he also kept up his acting chops on live stage. I don’t have a stage credits list, but I found this:

marinij 2016/05/04 › theater-review...

May 4, 2016 — David Abrams as the Fool and Mark Rasmussen as King Lear in the COM ... This “Lear” is very much a star vehicle for COM and Julliard alumnus ...(what I could lift, behind a fierce paywall.) 

“The supporting cast was excellent, but it was the astounding performance by veteran actor Mark Rasmussen in the lead role that lifted this show into the stratosphere. Intense, uninhibited and fully committed to his role, Rasmussen was the best Lear this reviewer has ever seen.”. — Barry Willis

I got a message from someone that Mark Rasmussen died from a fall off a roof in Oregon—an aneurysm. Does anybody have any information, an obituary? She said she couldn’t find one. He is listed in the Julliard memorial section. I would love to pull a Samuel Clemens epitaph here…

Jim McElroy photo