Stomach bug flattened me so I scanned photos instead

Advil. Check. Headache gone. Check. Tea. Breakfast. Check. I can do this. Check. What a difference a "down" week makes. Even if I was sick the entire week, I still got some good scanning time in.

Some Facebook collections of my newly scanned photos include:
Chris Caswell
Utah Phillips and Doc Watson, Rosalee Sorrells
Jack Mueller, national poetry week
Boschka Layton, SSU reading
Paul Mariah
Glenn Ingersoll
Lucille Clifton, Elizabeth Herron
Michael Daley
Poetry Flash event QR Hand, Sharon Doubiago
CPITS retreat Noyo River 1985
Edwin Drummond
Peter Capp
Cal Davis
Brownie Mary, Tony Serra
My family, Feather River 
Kitty Ward funeral 
Wake
My 30th birthday
My grandmother

Sonoma Valley Poetry Festival, Sunnyside cafe, July -Aug

Celebrate Sonoma Festival

Journal entry, 3/1/92 Malcolm X.

3/1/92 OK I will admit that I don’t know much about  Malcolm X. Paul Mariah says he was a separatist, high up in the Black Muslim movement, and when he no longer wanted separatism, they assassinated him. He was like Martin Luther King, but with more guts, more fire, says Paul. I dream about the assassination of self. I had a dream. Now it takes a somewhat macabre and humorous twist. Malcolm X blowing himself up in a public bathroom. What a colossal waste. King, too cool to intervene, or to take sides.

And I’m pissed as hell about all this multicultural crap dividing us, making us enemies. I relate to the oppressed easily. I am Irish, I know firsthand of oppression and xenophobia. Susan says we need a workshop on how to deal with the sensitive egos of men, when we women, both Black and white, are forced to tippytoe around them. All their male supremest bullshit. It’s the women who are oppressed, not the men. Why the hell are we women supposed to be so discreet, and not rock their ego boats, why don’t they learn to not offend us? Why are we supposed to be the bootlickers? I find it offensive that I’m supposed to learn the appropriate new language to deal with Roberto, a Black Latino, when he isn’t required to do the same of me, or other women. That is not equality. Nor is it a case of cultural sensitivity. It is not a neutral meeting ground.

Journal entry, 3/2/92 Poetry Reading, Center of the Universe, Sonoma

3/2/92 God, it’s only 8 AM and I’m sleepy. I’ve got an interview at 1 PM and I need to schedule teaching at Monte Rio school at 3:30, then I have a reading in Sonoma at 7:30 PM and I don’t feel well. Horrible headache yesterday didn’t help. I’m a little chilled, like I’m coming down with something.

I read at the Center of the Universe café, there were a few more people this time, but this time I was off, I couldn’t quite match the words with the tongue, but Jim Bird said, The emotion in the intellect were there. I felt like I could’ve read a telephone book, or random words, the emotions carry the poems, people like my words, even strangers. The strange young man who inhabits the camps of the Grateful Dead, listens intently. I read for a half an hour, but I’m annoyed with a sudden open mic. foisted right in the middle of my set instead of at the end, as planned.

One young man wanted to read five minutes, then someone else had to read another five minutes, because the first one did, and so on, etc. So much for the two minute rule. Or Andy Warhols 15 seconds of fame. The poetry is pure crap. We all have to begin somewhere. The audience disappears. Open mic readers have had their five minutes of fame, the rest of the audience is bored to tears, so they all leave. I was terribly annoyed by the interruption, since it takes me so long to reach my stride.

Anyway Allegra Broughton, SSU Expressive Arts classmate, played music before I read my second set, which was lovely. At least this time the audience didn’t disappear. Her uncle is James Broughton, the Northbeach poet

Jim and Nancy went out for a drink at the Sonoma Hotel afterwards. I get fed dinner and I was paid $10 for the reading. Jim brought me a glass of Chardonnay afterwards. I could have used an entire bottle. I read entirely from my Invisible Boundaries manuscript, so strange and different from my old work, the rhythms are not the same anymore. Paul Mariah gave me an ammo box for my truck, something for the long ride home?

Copperfields Banned Book Week reading

Hart Crane's 101th Birthday Party

The Paper was first launched in 1979 by Elizabeth Poole and Nick Valentine, in Guernewood Park, and Monte Rio. I began working for The Paper around 1980.  Somewhere along the way, it became the West Sonoma County Paper. Nick Valentine or John Boland may have changed the name again. John moved it from Monte RIo to Forestville to Freestone and to Santa Rosa. When it was purchased in 1994 by Silicon Valley-based Metro Newspapers Group (a chain of 10 weeklies: AAN members Metro Silicon Valley and Metro Santa Cruz), it became the Sonoma County Independent. The Sonoma County Independent morphed into the Northern California Bohemian in 2000. I use the same name throughout, though I worked for at least three iterations of the paper.

Sonoma Salute to the Arts, poetry readings 6/90

Harte Crane’s birthday party photo

Blast from the past: Hunce Voelcker's annual Hart Crane party: Ann Erickson, Betty Garrett, Gail King, Hunce Voelcker, Pat Nolan, Paul Mariah (& me behind the camera, as usual). Hart Crane was born in July 21, 1899, and it says 101 year birthday party, but Hunce died in 1990, so it’s 1989.

RRWG 10th annual erotic poetry reading at the Burbank Activity Center

Broadside: Homage to Ken Poff, by David Fisher

April is the cruelest month. A broadside found in Donna Champion’s copy of Boschka Layton’s book, Prodigal Son, published in 1982. So, I suspect we were having a memorial reading for Boschka at the Russian River Writers’ Guild or perhaps a memorial at Paul Mariah’s place in Sonoma—some time in April of 1984, and David Fisher must’ve showed up to read as well. Hence the broadside in her book, marking the title poem of the book. Manroot Press’s Love Poems: Homage to Houseman by Samuel M Steward. So, though I found this in 2018, on somewhat of a pilgrimage of remembrance, I’m posting it on the date of Ken’s death. I remember Ken as a slight, grey sort of man. Dear friend and lover of Paul Mariah. And Paul’s guilt, of course. And the certainty he lived with that he too would follow Ken, so every day he survived the dread disease was filled with grace and guilt. Those who survived the longest shouldered that burden of grief unto the next decade. Or century. I'm not sure when Ken died, but he was still alive and kicking at Helen Luster's memorial in March ofo 1985. His big, beautiful grin shedding light.

Ironically, Paul didn't contract AIDS, He refused to get tested for years, but died of pneumonia in January 1996.




Posted 10/24/18




See Letter to David Fisher

David Bromige, Paul Mariah, Allen Ginsberg, photo

This was from the Helen Luster memorial at the Luther Burbank Center, Santa Rosa

RRWG memorial reading for Boschka Layton, with Steve Petty, Michael Morey, Hunce Voelcker, Gerrye Payne, Mary Hoffman, Mary Ellen O’Banion, Laura del Fuego, Barbara Baer, Peggy Ellingson, Donna Champion, Zara Altair, Paul Mariah, Bonnie Olsen, Maureen Hurley, Jane Flood,

RRWG memorial reading for JH Montrose, Charles Wattenberg, Donna Champion, Zara Altair, Paul Mariah, Bonnie Olsen, Maureen Hurley,

RRWG Erotic reading at the Burbank Activity Center with Donna Champion, Marianne Ware, Lee Perron, Pat Nolan, Gail King, Zara Altair, Bonnie Olsen, Maureen Hurley, Paul Mariah, Hunce Voelcker, Joe Pahls, Helen Dunn,

RRWG Erotic poetry reading, Garbo’s