Imbolc offering to Brigid, simultaneous saint & goddess, ca. 2000

I made a Celtic scarf as a prop for finals in my MA MFA playwriting classes on monologue at San Francisco State University in 2000. Making the scarf went off without a hitch, after a lot of research, I banged the drawing out in about 45 minutes, and another hour or so for painting it with dye. The pin I was using to hold it in place, slid off during my monologue, and Justin Chinn dinged my performance for a costume fail. It was a class monologue reading for fucksake, not a public performance. He was an absolutely horrid teacher, resting on recent minor theatrical accolades, and he should never have been teaching. The class was a required waste of space, so I called him on it. He gave me a C-minus for the class. I fought the low grade and won. But the A-minus dropped my entire MA/ MFA perfect GPA to 3.9. May he rot.

I also simultaneously used the St. Brigid scarf for a final in my Celtic studies class with Professor Dan Melia at UC Berkeley. I came to class dressed as the goddess/St. Brigid, so it must’ve been around Imbolc, February, 1, 2000, as I began the long poem in October of 1999. I’m not too sure where the poem came from, as it was something that literally possessed me, written in a fugue, augmented with facts—after the fact, as it were. Probably because I was devouring medieval Celtic timelines, including the Annals of the Four Masters, so my brain was oversaturated. I wish I had kept a first draft of the poem as the original might have given me a way back to the source, and an entirely different revision might have evolved. But without that long-winded piece of didacticism, the scarf would’ve never came to be. Art works in mysterious ways.

For my Brigid costume, I made a halo of twelve candles (with little battery operated Xmas lights) I was dressed in purple robes, a green Celtic shawl for a cape, a kirtle with all her symbols attached to the costume, including a poem, an iron horseshoe, a candle, and a rubber chicken, I read a poem monologue, and prepared a traditional Celtic feast for the class. Salmon, bread, and beer as she was the goddess of bread making, and beer making. Dan sniggered and said, you can’t bring alcohol to class, pocketing the Guinness for later. I got an A-plus. Sadly, I don’t have a clear in-focus photo of the scarf when it was fresh.

BRIGID/BRIGIT  A triune goddess of:

1) healing                             (therapy)

2) blacksmiths                    (fire)

3) fertility & poetry  (light—poets/seers, divination, prophecy)

Odd Facebook conversation

Odd Facebook memory post. Said my old UC Berkeley Celtic Studies friend, writer and poet, Jasmine Donahaye, who lives in Ceredigion, Wales, to a friend, Kevin Delaney, So I've asked my friend Maureen Hurley wot lives in northern CA if you can pick her brains about work/arts/poetree etc - she's an artist and poet and works in arts education. Also she's quite mad. She said yes, so go find her. If you dare.

Kevin said: oh no! am I going to have to learn to speak British for this...?

Jaz said: Well, she's Eirish, you know. So American might serve you better. 'Quite' and 'mad' in the British sense, of course. Scuse us, Kevin.

I’ve no idea what she asked me....if she asked me. She must’ve asked me. But the question has fled the scene of the crime. But I said: LOL! Yer a right fyne one to talk, Blodeuwedd! Probably the last conversation I had with her. So naturally I asked, Wot was the question? some nine years later.

From a Facebook post, added 8/20

BAWP "Teachers as Writers" with Greg Hamilton

Bay Area Writing Project facilitator (BAWP) Greg Hamilton works at the Marin Teaching Network, Larkspur where he coordinates the Literacy Project and is a lecturer in the Graduate School of Education at UC Davis.

From Bay Area Writing Project 11/15/08

My first BAWP Saturday Workshop was with teaching consultant Greg Hamilton and our job was to meld memoir with the teaching practice. The personal meets the persuasive. Interesting. We all do this automatically, using personal story with argument. Only this time the process was made concrete—or should I say—transparent?

We wrote our introductions: Greg says he extensively uses the transcript process to rethink the writing process. He likes the blur between fiction and non-fiction. He asks, "Who's the audience? Teachers like story." Fiction = story (or vice versa) and concrete fact is the lens of non-fiction.

Theory and methodology.

1. Write an autobiographical incident and imbue it with story memoir). Theme: inspiration and writer's identity.

2. Write a persuasive expository paragraph. Prompt: What do you believe about teaching and language? Teacher/writer reciprocity.

Bay Area Writing Project

Well, well, well, I never got to begin the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) project (maybe next year) but I did take a writing workshop with the Bay Area Writing Project (BAWP) at UC Berkeley on Saturday morning.

My partner, Neil, a struggling, newishly employed English teacher at a continuation high school, was all gussied up and heading for the door. I asked, "where on earth are you going? It's only 8 AM. There's no school today." He mumbled something about attending BAWP but said he didn't think I could go too because I wasn't a teacher.

Ever the one to take "no" lightly, I fired, "Nonsense. Of course I can go."

Besides, the arts organization I teach through, California Poets in the Schools, AKA (CPITS) and BAWP have had a longstanding relationship, with Neil's mentor teacher, and BAWP coordinator, Judy Bebelaar, having served on the CPITS board. Few non-profit arts education can claim such a fabulous English teacher/poet as a board member as Judy. We served together. Oh, and she belly-dances too. I was the one who suggested that Neil mentor with Judy in the first place. Sheesh! Besides, the workshop was free.

And with less than 10 minutes warning, I managed to pull it together and blearily find my way into some reasonably unrumpled clothes, brew a vat of tea and then write write write. Not exactly a novel, but something to publish nonetheless. (What a portmanteau word is that!)

Saturday was one of those achingly beautiful Indian Summer days where the warm Santana winds had whipped the marine haze to the hinterlands and the coastal mountains ringing the bay were scimitar sharp silhouettes of indigo verging on violet against a cyanide sky.

The Bay was a cerulean mirror with gleaming jade islands, and on the Berkeley campus the liquidamber trees threatening to burst into pyrotechnic splendor.

(One NaNoWriMo mini contest is to submit your worst constructed sentence or paragraph to Red Room and the previous two paragraphs could easily qualify under the purple prose, or maybe the puce adverb category...)

Or maybe they could be a dishonorable contender for San Jose State's Bulwer Lytton Fiction Award for the world's worst opening sentence of an imaginary novel. ("It was a dark and stormy night..." You know the one.) My friend, writing teacher, Marianne Ware used to egg us on with a plethora of adjectives and adverbs to enter bodice-ripper sentence each year. But I just wasn't rotten enough. One of her students did win the dubious award.

But I digress, we were ensconced inside the hallowed halls of academia all day...the siren call of reflected light off the Bay plashing through the windows proved to be too much, so I snapped lots of photos of the participants and of poet Adam David Miller, whom I hadn't seen in years, between writing pages and pages of persuasive essay/personal memoir and travel memoirs.

From Bay Area Writing Project 11/15/08

But then I'm used to dividing my attention/ time. A Sagge, less than a week away from my birthday, with a Gemini rising, I secretly think my creativity is closer to the surface when I'm slightly distracted. No room for the censor to just say "no."

Now, Neil works from "No, you can't do that..." thing. It's a Scottish thing. Or maybe a UK thing. Or an escaped Beatles lyric. Fear of censure, fear of breaking rules, fear of disrupting societal norms, fear of drawing attention—are deeply ingrained. "I got something to say that might cause you pain.... No. You can't do that..."

Poor guy, even his initials have "No" embedded in them NONeill... Yeah, and denial is a river in Egypt. Having spent the summer in Scotland, I saw firsthand, the subconscious cultural artifacts at work, in situ. Not that I can begin to understand it, but I have a better understanding of it.

American culture is based on "Yes we can" and Europe is "No you can't." Cultural divide, cultural watershed.

Journal entry, 10/7/97 Micheal O Siadhail & Robert Tracy reading

Last night we went to hear Irish poet, Micheal O Siadhail with Robert Tracy at UC Berkeley, and a reception followed. Bob Tracy read some of his translations from Mendestahm, which were quite good (as far as I can tell).

We'd just had a marathon afternoon reconstructing Neil's paper on Brian Freel's The Artistocrats and Castle Rackrent. For some odd reason he didn't save the final draft, and in Preview, Word crashed, leaving us with an old draft. We worked furiously until 8 PM, and went to the reading late, arguing over punctuation and grammar. He laughs, I wonder if we'll be friends after this semester is over.

At the reading, we got Frank McGuinness's address in Kildare from Micheal. Gary Mullan called form LA asking for my cousin Barney O'Reilly's address. I thought of my cousin Sinead, who must be in Dublin right about now, with the baby Sean, my aunt Toddy, and Kate, none of them ever having been out of North America. I'm sorry I missed Sinead's goodbye call yesterday.

Neil's on the phone with Larry Spears who just came back from ?  Today they'll scatter Kevin Sullivan's ashes. Poor man never made it to opening night for Frank's Behold the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme. A death, a near death, an extended run, a Goldie (now Sons will go to Broadway and all the guys want to fly to NY to audition and scoring Frank McGuinness's number and address was a real coup.