Red Tide

When I was young, during deep summer, when the red tide came in, we used to drive out to Blackie’s Pasture near Strawberry Point, and head towards Tiburon, following the shoreline to catch the rare bioluminescent lightshow, where the small waves lapped in, ethereally lit from within. And a decade later, after the bars closed, we’d drive out to Goat Rock, under full moonlight, to scribe our names and lost fragments of poems that would never otherwise be written, our deep confessions in the sand. The ocean as our witness. Our writing glowed with an unearthly light produced by the dinoflagellates trapped on the shore, waiting for the next wave to take them back home.

4/17/20

Facebook Nostalgia Groups, and SGV thread

I belong to three different Facebook Nostalgia (remember when) groups. It's amazing how all the threads and lost memories surface in the collective memory process. I have found long-lost friends, their siblings, a relative, and even gained a new friend or two. One group is for my grade school as there isn't another for the area, another is for my high school, and the third group is for the county where I grew up.

You know you're from Marin when...  is mostly a southern Marin group. It's interesting to learn what happened "over the hill." Some of it I can't even begin to relate to. But even with the Sonoma County group, it's a similar situation. I realized that rural West County—be it West Marin or West Sonoma, there was a very different reality than in the more civilized parts of SonoMarin.

Sir Francis Drake High School I can't say I liked high school, it was a miserable time for me—and other "valley rats." You can see by the moniker, why it might not have been all roses. Interesting to own up to a time that was painful—and not be attached to any of it. 

And the third group is Lagunitas School District and an Geronimo Valley peeps...  Sometimes it's interesting, it's definitely more scattered. Wide age range. There were multiple LSD groups. This one is the most vibrant. There also a San Geronimo Valley group—but if a group is too small, I tend not to join it. Too secular. 

We grew up during some unusual times and that the entire rock world descended upon us, along with everybody else. So the stories are interesting. I'm gleaning many backstories, not just the stories of what we remember, but the why behind them that set the stories in motion. But we were really there! One thing that's cool is that the groups are inter-generational. Multiple perspectives.

I also belong to Sausalito Children as I had many childhood experiences there. My mom lived in Sausalito during the 1960s, worked for Juanita, and was an actress at the Gate Playhouse–so it all comes together. A memory here, a memory there. And I've got me some blog fodder. Group creator Andrew Fekses and I discovered that we knew each other when we were kids—through Miranda-Micaela and Chris Wall. How small, the world.

Some nice vintage photos posted in I Love Sonoma County, CA:  Not much by way of info on West County. We reveled in our weirdness. Where I came of age as a writer, and an artist in the schools. I was always a west county girl—it was a very different reality than the more civilized parts of SonoMarin. (I got kicked out of that group, unbeknownst to me the moderator was dog crazy and I had the temerity to object to a dog slobbery post from a whinging woman who brought her filthy dog into Le Bourdain.)

Anyway, all this to say, that an incredible nostalgia thread emerged from these Facebook groups. This one began on the SGV post, and migrated to my page. Much fodder for another blog post. But I'm posting it here: stet. Verbatim. Whatevers. It’s all fodder and grist for the wheel.

Sonoma Salute to the Arts, poetry readings 6/90