Uvalde, TX child massacre

On Facebook there is a list posted of school massacres that begins in May 1998 with Thurston High School in Oregon (attributed to Ken Bateman). I lost track after counting more than 300 schools. I tried four times to count how many gun assaults on our nation’s children. And not just our children, we are at the epicenter of an epidemic of gun violence with more casualties than several of our recent wars combined. I despaired and could not go back and begin again. 

And now we must add Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School not only to the list, but to the list of the four worst assault atrocities in America including the mass child massacres of Columbine and Sandy Hook. I weep for those nineteen 4th graders and two teachers, on the cusp of summer vacation, gunned down by weapons of war. What has this nation come to that we mow down our children with war-grade weaponry like this? 

The girl who survived the massacre by smearing blood on herself, who draped herself over the body of a classmate, said she felt it when her friend quit breathing. Miah Cerrillo is eleven years old, she is scarred by the wounds of gun violence, and she will never get to be a child again. Ever. She was the one who dialed 911 and said, “Please come….we’re in trouble,” and then wondered why the police never came inside to rescue them. She said the gunman played loud music at the end of the carnage.

The gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a former student at Uvalde High School, bought two semi-automatic  AR-15 assault rifles (with a street value of $800 - $2500 each) and 375 rounds of ammunition for his birthday. No background check, nada. Not even a driver’s license. Or a red flag warning. Ramos wasn’t evenold enough to buy cigarettes or a six-pack of beer, but congress has deemed that Ramos was old enough to buy weapons of mass destruction. For what it’s worth, the median age of these gunmen is 18 years of age, without exception, nearly all are white—except Ramos who was of hispanic heritage.

There were warning signs. He posted on social media that he planned to first kill his grandmother, and then visit a school with premeditated murderous intent. Eight days later, he shot his grandmother in the face, who was first on his hitlist, then slaughtered a classroom of 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School. She survived and was able to call 911 but it was too late for the 21 victims of his misplaced rage.

According to WA Po, Ramos had a history of being bullied for his speech impediment, and attire—and he was failing, and so, dropped out of school. He had nothing left to lose. This was his payback. Surely he must have known that he would also die that day. Suicide by mass destruction. Why take out an entire 4th grade class? Why that school? What was the tipping point? How long had he been harboring that grudge, nursing it into revenge? Were there no warning signs at all?

Uvalde, hometown of actor Matthew McConaughey, whose mother was a teacher there, is a small community in the Texas hill country near San Antonio, some 50 miles from the Texas-Mexico border. About 90% of Robb ES students are Hispanic, and most come from impoverished families. The Uvalde massacre was the worst school shooting since Sandy Hook, nearly 10 years ago. 

So, where were the Uvalde police in all of this? It comes to light that they did not act immediately, rather, they prevented parents from reaching their trapped children by tackling and tasering frustrated parents, handcuffing and macing them. Despite the fact that in 2018, that the Uvalde police force were trained and fully kitted up in tactical armor, they did not do their job. They sat on their haunches and waited. 

One brave mother, Angeli Rose Gomez, was handcuffed for attempting to enter the school, was eventually released, she then breached the fence, ran to the school, and rescued her two boys, unarmed. Unarmed. Now that was a foolhardy, but brave thing to do. It took real courage. What did the Uvalde police force do? Nothing. 

Now Texas Governor Abbot obfuscates about “hardening the schools.” What does hardening actually mean? Locking people in? Locking people out? A penitentiary school is not the solution. Beto O’Rourke was a brave man when he stood up and challenged the governor for his gross inaction. Thoughts and prayers will not bring back those children. I don’t even know why we continue to iterate that phatic phrase as it does nothing to bring solace to anyone. Meanwhile, the NRA is holding their annual convention. Big business as usual.

Since Columbine, some 310,000 kids have been exposed close to a thousand incidents of gun violence on campus, from kindergarten to college level. So far, this year, there have been over 200 mass shootings in the United States — and it’s only May. Seven more months to go. In just 13 of the largest mass shootings of school children, 148 have died, 182 wounded. I can’t do the math for the 400+ schools on the list. In Desert Sheld, Desert Storm and the Iraqi wars combined, we lost 7158 soldiers.

We are the only country with more guns than people—with an estimated 4 hundred million guns. An unequal equation. Since most of us don’t even own guns, that means a small minority are stockpiling guns, for what purpose? It’s not about the Second Amendment. It’s much deeper than that.  Not protecting the vulnerable members of our society—especially young children—against gun violence is a crime against humanity. The Uvalde children were pulverized, only DNA analysis will ID them. Let that carnage sink in.  Some parents are opting for open casket funerals so that the world can see the atrocity firsthand. Memorial Day Weekend is not long enough to contain all this grief.

How is this carnage OK? “Thoughts and prayers” is empty lip service. This is domestic terrorism. We need policy change and action now. If not now, when? We need background checks AND a bipartisan ban on all assault rifles NOW, NRA & GOP. Name and ban the weapons of mass destruction, the Uzi, the AK-47,  AR-15 and its cousin, the M-16. We cannot normalize this wholesale slaughter of our fellow Americans within our borders. Ever.

Those 60 congressmen who refuse to vote for gun control legislation have a lot of blood on their hands. This “guns don’t kill people” argument is utter nonsense. Of course guns kill people. That’s what assault rifles are meant to do. They are weapons of war, not deer rifles. I think we all want to live in a country that cherishes its children more than its guns. Never forget. As Beto O’Rourke just said, “The time for us to stop another Uvalde, is now…. The lives of our kids are literally on the ballot… Action is the antidote to despair. Are you willing to act?”

This is a call to abrazoz.

CATALYST

I always imagined him hunkered down in his enclave 

between appearances, exploring remote trails,

weaving his way through deep New England woods,

observing the splendor of light among granite boulders, 

in boreal gardens of calipso orchid and ladyfern,

where wilderness and the throat of summer were untamed. 

Where intricate clouds of mayflies gathered 

over a glassine pond reflecting the sky,

broken by lucky salmon leaping skyward, 

and the concentric rings merged like Celtic knots,

an old rowboat riding low in the water,

with its tendrils of moss and pond scum

trailing like a threefold beard of wisdom,

and thunderclouds roiling on the horizon, 

promising a storm, that other ink-stained darkness, 

and something infinitely unnamable at the edges. 

Starry-eyed I admired him from afar through his poetry, 

through distances, and in workshops, something spoke 

of a kindred language we shared that went beyond the page.

Perhaps it was our Irish blood recognizing long lost kin.

Each in the other, and all in one. Cromlech and dolmen.

Out of the blue, I invited him to do a poetry reading.

I remember how he arrived on the bus on Railroad Square,

how his books and his eyeglasses headed northward

in a satchel on the Seattle-bound Greyhound, sans tickets. 

I wondered what someone would make of his poems

at the end of the line, would they toss out the books, 

try on his glasses? See the world through the poet’s lens?

As I gathered up my copies of his books for the reading 

he borrowed my car for the afternoon to visit the vineyards,

he was all elbows and knees in my old blue Bug,

that famous forelock of hair over a glacial blue eye,

He taught me to trust the veracity of Anglo-Saxon words,

that were uncomfortable in polite poetry schools, 

that poetry itself was a dangerous traverse over  “bauchy ice.” 

He said to me, Listen to the awkward music of the generations.

You can’t quit writing, ever. The becoming and the dying 

of life cycles is poetry, and the music of the poem is the poem.

I remember how he held me when I returned from the coast, 

a friend, off his medication, had plucked out his own eye.

I stumbled blind in grief, fell over a stone wall, 

how his hands held me up, and he offered solace 

and animal comfort during a time when I could not see.

That night, in the dark, we were all thumbs and elbows.

The braille light of our hands bespoke an older story, 

we had moved beyond the realm of mentor and student 

into something akin to family harboring dark secrets. 

When he returned home, his wife had enough—

a lifetime of wandering eyes, the last straw among many.

Did he return to the deep solace of the woods, 

to measure dappled light splayed among the trees?

I heard he died alone in a hospital bed in a living room,

watching the slow progression of shadows cross the ceiling,

but his mind had wandered onto other wordless shores.

5/25 Write On! Terri Glass workshop

At the bat bar

The only problem is that the lights attract bugs. So it’s like a bug smorgasburg out there. I think it’s hysterical that she’s playing classical music to the bats. They don’t seem to mind the mood music, which  was Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky. Classical music was used to thwart teen vandals at shopping malls. It might just work against the teenage bats. It could be worse, it could be rap. Bottom line is the bats will win in the end. She’s trying to discourage them because they poop all over the front porch. She needs to build dedicated bat houses. And carpenter bee hotels as well. Perhaps she should play Die Fledermaus?

CPITS teaching journal, AVS

Friday the 13th. Today I taught five classes, itself, exhausting, and I read their poems, and typed some of them up. I usually type up about 10 poems per class, or a page’s worth, double column. But there were so many fantastic poems, I probably typed up 75 to 100 poems. It took me until 5:30 PM to get through all their journals, but I did it so that I could have a long break. Otherwise it’s harder to get through them all if I wait until later. Probably my personal best in terms of getting through a sheer amount of work. Usually I tank after reading two classes. TG the classes are small. But it’s still a marathon. 

I’ve sped up the entire reading/commenting/publishing process considerably by dictating kid poems to my iPad, and then emailing them to my MacBook. And the iPad dictation process to Notes really speeds things up, but makes the strangest mistakes, so extra proofreading diligence is necessary at the other end. The Apple speech to text platform is much more accurate than Facebook. But, still it’s a huge time investment. Some really strong poets, but I’ve been working with these kids since kindergarten. Such fantastic writers they are. This year’s poetry book will be extraordinary. 

The work is sometimes grueling, but so rewarding. A crazy job, who knew it would become my life’s calling, but I absolutely love doing what I do. It’s like being in the epicenter of magic. A symbiosis of creativity. I absolutely love what I do, but the prospect of financial insecurity is always looming.

I think the quality of their writing is related to how I pair and mix up the model poems. Currently I am using Dorianne Laux’ Heart poem paired with Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Ofrenda poem, the recalcitrant heart and unexpected gifts—and the synthesis produces amazingly insightful poems from 3-5th graders—in both urban and rural populations. One girl wrote a poem to her dead rabbit, and she burst into tears because she felt guilty for not being there, and I said, No, you are not to blame. Getting real. Obviously it was preying on her mind, but she had no outlet. She achieved some degree of resolution by the catharsis of writing.

I am always looking for ways to teach students to find their own authentic voices vs. parroting back the model poems. Of course, I also like to use Emily Dickinson’s Hope is the Thing with Feathers too. My current teaching trifecta. There’s a lot of improv too. For example, I threw in Elizabeth Bishop’s The Fish because 3rd graders were raising steelhead trout to release into the river.

We’ve had a lot of Covid talk lately, the isolation, etc. What I’ve discovered across the board is that they’ve had no real platform to express their feelings around the isolation, and quarantine. So it arises. We keep it real. We share our stories and render it into poetry. The personal experience into the universal. At Berkeley, the next wave of Covid is rolling through the school, taking out students and teachers alike in droves. Sometimes just finding the through line becomes the lifeline. Sometimes we even find love along the way.

5/12/22 Alexander Valley School 

HEART SPEAKS ITS MIND

Heart speaks its mind, silent as snow, 

falling from cornices. 

Heart wants an eclipse in all its pocketses. 

Heart wants a dragon moon with you 

looking up at the sky,

Orion‘s Belt cinching you up to the stars, 

Betelguese sends signals to the Andromeda Galaxy 

where Jackie Gleason reruns are tumbling 

like polished stones among the stars. 

Heart wants a warm bed with flannel sheets in winter. 

Heart wants a cat curled up by the fire. 

Some say the heart is just like a wheel, or so the song goes, 

but heart is studded with rose thorns 

and weeds on the ground. Heart cries, lacrimosa,

red tears of justice measuring out the length of our days 

to the end of our death. In this we all dream 

of other places where the ties that bind us 

are made of spiderwebs and hope.

5/12

Rich Strike wins the 148th Kentucky Derby with 80 to 1 odds

Whenever I drive to Berkeley to teach kids poetry, I always drive the back way past Golden Gate Fields, just so I can see the jockeys breezing, or exercising their horses. That brief moment seeing them through the slatted fence makes for a good start to my day. At a memorial service for a friend, Maria Perrin, who died of an unexpected heart attack, the Marin Rod and Gun Club bar, was the last place I expected to encounter a glimpse of horses. We caught the tail-end broadcast of an amazing Kentucky Derby win for a last minute scratch entry horse with a longshot 80 to 1 odds to win—2nd longest odds in Derby history. And win, he did, with a deft series of maneuvers, as Rich Strike, a horse with a big heart, went from dead last out the starting gate, trailing at the tail end of the pack, to the middle of the melee where he was caught in a dangerous bottleneck traffic jam which  sometimes results in massive pile-ups. The jockey, Sonny Leon, threaded the needle when a tiny hole opened in the pack, and he deftly wove right through the tangle, and then he went on the OUTSIDE to pass on a curve, when most jockeys would’ve hugged the rail for maximum advantage. Outside means you lose valuable seconds off your racing time. Inside curve on the rail always has the winner’s advantage. Then, Rich Strike hit an extra high gear no one knew he even had, and rode for the win on the rail. Wow! Great horse, great riding, great jockey, indeed. This overhead drone shot really shows it all. And to think he was a $30,000 quick claim maiden race horse from Camulet Farms up against multimillion dollar horses. I bet they’re sorry for selling him off.  First claimed horse ever to win the Kentucky Derby! The historic Run for the Roses only allows 20 horses to compete on the field, Rich Strike was the 21st entry, rotten luck, but at the very last minute another horse dropped out—or was scratched—just as they were getting ready to leave. Quick change of plans. Time to don the racing silks. Kind of like the cinderfella stories with California Chrome, Seabiscuit, and Secretariat. The underdog won. But that’s horseracing for you. The owner definitely struck it rich with Rich Strike. Rich Strike is a fairytale horse sired by Keen Ice out of Smart Strike, whose bloodlines go back to Native Dancer (whose ggg-grandsire was Man o' War!) on both sides—aka the Gray Ghost, one of the most accomplished Thoroughbreds in racing history.  Up next, the Preakness, and maybe even the Triple Crown. However you want to say it, he’s got a big heart, and he’s in the money.

YouTube

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• Our Chromie's Wing and a Prayer to win the Belmont...
• California Chrome, a Cinderfella Horse
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  A horse & his best friend, his groom, Jerry Riley.

  
  

IMAGINARY LETTERS

Every time I slide behind the wheel, 

I find myself writing imaginary letters 

to the past, what might have been

as if the re-structuring of backroads 

and memory could change the past, 

eradicate it, enhance it, or make it so. 

Every time I slide behind the wheel, 

I am ranting, like my grandmother 

cursing Cromwell in empty rooms.

And then I wonder why we get stuck 

in this loop—call it a Möbius strip of desire 

endlessly repeating itself ad infinitem.

Call it eternity, or call it infinity 

if you want to involve math. 

But math was never my strong suit. 

When you add it all up, we are binary stars 

searching the galaxy of the past for our other halves 

embedded in the iridium dust of memory.

Paste a Forever stamp on the envelope.

The address is forthcoming. 

Return to sender.

5/4 Write On! Susie Terence 

RIP Naomi Judd

Note bene: I never know where my next writing idea will come from, where it will go, or what spawns an idea, usually it’s because of a Facebook post that serves as a trigger, I write a comment which leads to another comment, and so on. I never expected to be floored by the death of Naomi Judd, someone I didn’t even know. But there you have it. It seems Facebook style Wakes are becoming a thing. This is a developing piece based on a lot of hear-say (stet) as I only knew her on on the periphery. Call it 1° of separation if you must. So bear with me as I uncover a West Marin story.

A new Facebook friend, activist Sandra Birnhak, who grew up with Diane/Naomi in Kentucky, said she went by the name Naomi back in the late 1950s, early 1960s, so maybe she changed her name back to her given name, Diane when she was in LA, with her then husband, Michael Ciminella, before moving to Lagunitas. She was only 17 or 18  when she had her first daughter, Christine, in 1964. 

Sounds like Hollywood wasn’t kind to her—in her autobiography, River of Time, she mentions about being molested by an uncle, she abandoned by her husband, then, at 22, she was raped by an ex-con heroin addict. I don’t know how she wound up in the San Geronimo Valley, but it was a haven of single mothers. Since I only knew of her peripherally, I’m still piecing together the stories… 

Backstory: The Judds once lived in Speck McAuliff’s apartments above the post office in Lagunitas (where I once lived as a young child before my parents split up). Then they moved up the road to north a cottage on Tamal Road next to the House of Richard (a hippie store), and they also lived on Resaca Avenue as well.