O Brave New World

Here we are, one month into the new year and Diana asks, Is time speeding up for you? Neil has always lived in the fast track of time, so it’s a rhetorical question at best. But new year, new world. Maybe our perception of time began to speed up when the continents opened, or were garroted, in most cases. A mere handful of Spaniards on that island. Jade beads and gold littered in their eyes, and all was lost. Arawak and Carrib Indians in their feathered cloaks kept their eyes on the birds of the sky while the Spaniards plundered the earth and sent all that New World cargo to resurrect the empty coffers of the Old World. Always broke. They broke continents. How anthropocentric. We referred to western civilization when we mean European civilization, not Chinese, not Mayan, or Arawak. A New Guinea islander once asked Jared Diamond: How come you white people got all the cargo and we got none? What’s wi' dat? It boils down to a slender golden shaft of wheat and the sheep grazing those hillsides before a thousand years of drought turned the land to a scriptural parchment of land and oil. Of all the animals of the world, only a handful or domesticatble and nearly all are from the Fertile Crescent which led to overabundant grain harvests and tillage, separating us from our brothers. It was an unequal harvest, an unequal advantage, creating unequal worlds. O brave new world that has such creatures in it. Caliban in his feathered cloak raising a human thighbone from that distant shore, gnashing his teeth on the rising sun, time speeding up.

1/27/2006 Writers' Group

Della Madeline Stannard Bedal obituary

Madeline Bedal was a student of mine at Merrill Gardens assisted living. We created a manuscript of her work where she dictated stories of her childhood to me. And October 2005, her brother Bill Stannard created a chapbook of her work. I had no idea her first name was Della—no wonder I could never find the obituary. (added 8/2023.) See also: Madeline Stannard Bedal Chapbook

DELLA MADELINE BEDAL A funeral service for Della Madeline Bedal, 92, of Fremont will be at Chapel of the Roses in Fremont. Viewing Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and services at 1 p.m. Pastor Tom Cory will officiate. She passed peacefully on November 29, 2006 in Fremont. She was born May 14, 1914 in Whitefish, Montana and had been a kindergarten teacher before she married and moved to San Jose. She was a devoted wife of 62 years, loving mother and grandmother and an inspiration to all who knew her. She loved to cook, sew and be around her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She is survived by her daughter, Edna Rodriggs of Fremont and daughter and son-in-law, Gloria and John Coyne of Lakeport. Brother and sister-in-law, William Albert and Donna Stannard of Fremont; sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Kay and Ken Hayes of Castro Valley; sister-in-law, Lila Smith of Sacramento and sister-in-law, Betty Bedal of Sacramento; 11 grandchildren, 23 great-grandchildren and 1 great-great-grandchild. Published by ANG Newspapers on Dec. 1, 2006. Legacy.com

FLIP A COIN

Well, it’s come to that
flip a coin when stasis sets in.
John the Ambiguous
was always one for a coin toss.
Have a kid, break up, get married, break up.
Whatever flummoxed him
was reduced to a 50/50 chance
so he didn't have to decide.
A good thing coins aren’t dice cubes.
It would increase the odds.
Otherwise we’d all be snake eyes.

10/17/06

PERSONA WORKSHOP MARGINALIA

PERSONA WORKSHOP
MARGINALIA After Jarrell

I had started to walk down the path
These are the roads you find yourself traveling
Homesick for anything, she asked me in her windswept voice
Occasions for the grief that left me seething at the sea
She heard a lot of it when she came home from the hospital
Help me! The pain in her bones paralyzed me
So I wrote these words in the margins

GENERATIVE WRITING

GENERATIVE WRITING
From Thoreau, TC Boyle. Oates, Wright, Merrill, etc.

We were observing
Replacing the old style cells
In which a window
Measuring 6 x 8 feet
More movement there
Perhaps I was not thinking coherently
In this state I was careless
Their faces showed consternation
I was confused, so I smiled

The color drained out of the treetops
It was like looking up at the emerging stats
But who was counting
For a long while she didn’t say anything
I don’t know what’s wrong with me
He foresaw every disaster so no was on his lips
Listen he said, speaking tot the sky
The spilled paint of stars
Softened his voice

I won’t give anyone another chance
It’s been a long dance with death
I realized that I’m possibly quite mad. 
I know he is.
The world is full of people 
separated from themselves by families
What was her favorite song., 
the name of the lover she took to the grave
I never adopt a person who doesn’t have 

In the case of numbers
It allowed me a substitution
The trouble with Mike was
We had become middle class
But our dog had not
They turned towards us as if praying
She believed he betrayed mongrel origins

We were all, in all places
A picture of Brazilia, 
a white mansion shining in the jungle
The music is powerful, blessed
In this fine white afternoon
Paying no attention\to our own little brick utopia
Sort & discard
The heavy-footed building
A lazy reach & sigh
These are the papers I need
It begins to thin in the air at dusk
The one, a poet, the other an action.

1o/15/2006

AT THE COUNTY FAIR

AT THE COUNTY FAIR
—for Sharon Doubiago

The carnival straddled a limnal boundary 
between civilization & endless fields of corn. 
A miracle in the bright dust and mirrored lake
deep summer bloomed in cotton candy colors.
For a moment she was screaming,
& laughing against a bright sky
as the Fairest Wheel lifted her
weightless against the burden
of her father’s darkness.

In a constant elegy of ascent & death,
the Fairest Wheel dizzied them up to the stars,
& plunged them in o the dwarfed laps of broken families.
For a moment, she forgot she lived 
the enchanted sleep of Snow White 
where in dreams she rode a carousel pony. 
Between her clenched teeth, not a rose, 
but a blanket emitted a high-pitched sound
as a bright bloom escaped from her gown.

As she loosened herself from the horizon, 
she was forever tumbling against a silken sky.
Her blonde hair, a temporary sun
eclipsed & eclipsing the retextured sunlight.

For a moment she forgot what she was
becoming, a black dahlia.
Dust & parched earth. You could taste it 
in the air, acrid like carbolic soap & sweat.
Soon the rains would come. 

—Maureen Hurley
Walker Creek Ranch, 10/15.2006

Worthless (catch of the day)

Worthless, less than, less loss. Loeser. Mary, the teacher I am working with, was married to a childhood neighbor. How many degrees of strangeness is that to be in her class in Oakland, where I let slip some geographical minutia. She startled like a deer caught in the headlights (we used to turn off the lights so the deer could cross the road… We grew fond of driving blind on moonlit nights.) She said Keith was my ex-husband. I didn't ask how long the X negated the husband part, but I could see there was a fair amount of angst involved. I could tell she thought him worthless. Truth be known Keith was younger than me, a friend of my brother's, and also a little weird. Apparently that turned into a whole lotta weird. Andrea, his genius sister is in a loony bin, and I think, what a colossal waste. What's the use of being a genius if there's no channel for it? What good are numbers to a physicist whose brain is biochemically addled? I know about that kind of life—we come from a long line of addlepated dysfunctional geniuses, and idiots to balance out the equation. Then, there's a rather large group of us with various real and imagined ailments so as to make several relatives hovering dangerously close to the worthless camp. Poor things, succumb to their worst nightmares – as if it was something that could be helped. Call it alcoholism, drug abuse, or being bipolar—the end result is a life rendered worthless because of the purgatorial anguish harbored within the mind. The night before last, I dreamt a nun was flyfishing off a skyscraper. I stood behind her, wondering what the catch of the day was. I opened my eyes wide, but  when I wasn't looking, small white lice had nestled in my eyelashes, obstructing the view.

10/13/06 Writers' Group

Love against all odds

I’m in love with my LePen. I have two in my writing folder because they often get tired and lay down right in the middle of a line. I am beyond fussy over my choice of pens. The LePens give up the ghost if you write too fast, after a worthless endeavor into aspects of worthlessness. And I really wanted to get away from the sacred profane paradigm and so I chose worthless. Go figure. 

Neil calls at sunset from the beach on Ventura Highway. He’s persevering alone against significant odds. His love of performing, of singing takes center stage, and so I packed him off this morning with a larder and with bedding. He'd forgot his head if it wasn’t attached. It is an odd love affair, if it is indeed love. I do question it often. When the gods of dailiness chew through us, and the continued affections of the beloved is a slippery slope of sand. For every step forward, you slide a half step backward and so on. 

I remember driving through Nevada with my uncle and grandmother, we were returning from a pilgrimage to Austin to Home Ranch where a familial love of land, against all odds, bloomed in the desert, and turned sage into oats and barley. We sat a while amongst the dead, the headstones of the Walshes that I’ve never known except through story. My grandmother was lost among the memories of flesh and blood. She was soon to join them, one foot nearer to the grave. She told stories of Wild Bill, Julia and the crazy twin who sewed imaginary cloth with imaginary thread and needle. Cloth and weft of memory. 

I struggled up that slippery slope of Sand Mountain, on the ancient shores of Lake Lahontan, shaped by the perfect geometry of sand and wind. With each step I was like Lawrence of Arabia scaling that heights, hiking towards the sun line, listening to the singing sand. My uncle and grandmother were the size of ants in the parking lot, but before I got to the top, they were beckoning me back. 

I had underestimated the slope and the height and the durability of that massive mountain of sand. I was so close to the summit I could almost reach it, but then I turned back against all odds, and headed back down. Each step I descended was an entire body length. It was the closest I would ever come to flying, flying down that dune, nearly weightless with each step—like being in love against all odds.

10/13/06 Writers' Group

CPITS 2006, AT THE COUNTY FAIR

REGENERATIVE WRITING —with Tobey Kaplan


AT THE COUNTY FAIR
—for Sharon Doubiago

The carnival straddled a limnal boundary
between civilization & endless fields of corn.
A miracle in the bright dust and mirrored lake
deep summer bloomed in cotton candy colors.
For a moment she was screaming,
& laughing against a bright sky
as the Fairest Wheel lifted her
weightless against the burden
of her father’s darkness.

In a constant elegy of ascent & death,
the Fairest Wheel dizzied them up to the stars,
& plunged them in o the dwarfed laps of broken families.
For a moment, she forgot she lived
the enchanted sleep of Snow White
where in dreams she rode a carousel pony.
Between her clenched teeth, not a rose,
but a blanket emitted a high-pitched sound
as a bright bloom escaped from her gown.

As she loosened herself from the horizon,
she was forever tumbling against a silken sky.
Her blonde hair, a temporary sun
eclipsed & eclipsing the retextured sunlight.

For a moment she forgot what she was
becoming, a black dahlia.
Dust & parched earth. You could taste it
in the air, acrid like carbolic soap & sweat.
Soon the rains would come.

—Maureen Hurley
Walker Creek Ranch, 10/15.2006

MAUREEN HURLEY who grew up in the wilds of West Marin, a watershed away from Walker Creek, was Area Coordinator for Sonoma County for a decade, at present, she’s learning her urban skills in on the shores of Lake Merrit in Oakland. Published in the 2006 CPITS statewide anthology


GENERATIVE WRITING
From Thoreau, TC Boyle. Oates, Wright, Merrill, etc.

We were observing
Replacing the old style cells
In which a window
Measuring 6 x 8 feet
More movement there
Perhaps I was not thinking coherently
In this state I was careless
Their faces showed consternation
I was confused, so I smiled

The color drained out of the treetops
It was like looking up at the emerging stats
But who was counting
For a long while she didn’t say anything
I don’t know what’s wrong with me
He foresaw every disaster so no was on his lips
Listen he said, speaking tot the sky
The spilled paint of stars
Softened his voice

I won’t give anyone another chance
It’s been a long dance with death
I realized that I’m possibly quite mad.
I know he is.
The world is full of people
separated from themselves by families
What was her favorite song.,
the name of the lover she took to the grave
I never adopt a person who doesn’t have

In the case of numbers
It allowed me a substitution
The trouble with Mike was
We had become middle class
But our dog had not
They turned towards us as if praying
She believed he betrayed mongrel origins

We were all, in all places
A picture of Brazilia,
a white mansion shining in the jungle
The music is powerful, blessed
In this fine white afternoon
Paying no attention\to our own little brick utopia
Sort & discard
The heavy-footed building
A lazy reach & sigh
These are the papers I need
It begins to thin in the air at dusk
The one, a poet, the other an action.


PERSONA WORKSHOP
MARGINALIA After Jarrell

I had started to walk down the path
These are the roads you find yourself traveling
Homesick for anything, she asked me in her windswept voice
Occasions for the grief that left me seething at the sea
She heard a lot of it when she came home from the hospital
Help me! The pain in her bones paralyzed me
So I wrote these words in the margins

One (a virtuosity of vices)

One, a vice of one? One needs a virtuosity of vices … A symphony… Virtue /vice – reminds me too much of biblical leanings. One is the loneliest number one… Oh, piss off ear candy! Get over it. Everybody's happy writing from the attribute of virtue/ vice—except me. I can't get to the next level. Begin again. Now, I'm caught up in word puns and silly rhymes, and God forbid: pop songs  (number one)– partially because I'm so stressed. One. To contemplate. I like one, I like its aloneness, the way it stands like a sacred stone. An "I am." I like the color and the sound of it – and synesthesia strikes again. One is silver-white, and casts a pale shadow of glacial ice, it rings like a silver bell, or like that melodic crash of ice crystals. The queen of Narnia is a one. Cate Blanchett is an ice maiden, cruel, ruthless, and alone in her sleigh is a One. Always winter. I yawn, my ears pop, finally after several days of pain. I can hear. One-eared, I was. No dulcet duet of sound. Singing in pitch was problematic when sound was a singular one. I had to rely on memory. Now I can hear every single thing. The sound of paper rustling, like an avalanche, the rough scratching of pens in unison, a scratch of pens, one in unison. One, I am one.

8/25/06 Writers' Group

Filial love

What we heard, was filos, as in philosophy, not love of children for their parents. As usual, I find it problematic writing from virtuous ashram-inspired prompts. I wish we had moved onto another exercise. Months of this, and as a writer, I hunger for the particular over the abstract, the profane over the sacred. Writing from abstraction, and is an anethma, even an enema. There, I’ve used an abstract word in a sentence. Try to describe abstract in concrete detail. Filial, finial, final. Earlier, we were talking about the kinky metier of cultures, the Japanese and British won, hands down. Lauren tells me about Japanese women dressing up as schoolgirls. I can’t fathom the concept of child porn or pedophiles. We were talking of Peter Greenway, Being Peter Greenway is not a movie I’d want to watch. Images, you can’t shake off, once you’ve seen them, there is no undo—like that scene in Reservoir Dogs where Christopher Walken pulls the pocketwatch out of his ass… This is censorable writing. I can’t read it to the group now. And I am so off-topic, it’s almost funny. I’m still lost in junk. Love. Love of children, for their parents, or vice versa? Back to the vice squad. Again. Bell. Out of time. Three minutes of contemplation that I don’t want to contemplate. My head hurts. I didn’t do my assignment. I’m off task and I am not interested in writing about filial love so I blew it off. Blow it off. Taboo, be a bad girl. Be ornery. Fuck the rules. Get it? Saved by the bell. Again. Shit. Five more minutes of this and I’m stuck in this boring superficial freewrite. Waste of time. My time. Time is what I make of it. I have only myself to blame. Role reversal. Teach kids. I love them. Sick of them. Same breath. When I was a child… The other day, a dog bit Neil when he was in the recording studio. Not his pretty face, but close. So much for the fidelity of Fido. The kids, what about them? Their love for the dog, Dexter, whose days are now numbered, the aching, moral dilemma. Put the dog down? Kids will howl and weep for the loss of their beloved playmate. But now the question is raised. Fido was an infidel. The parents’ love for their children, to protect them against danger, imagined, or otherwise. A deep bond. Man’s best friend, but this time, the dog loses.

8/25/06 Writers’ Group

The tango

The Argentinian tango. That dip and sway, and turn of heads away from each other, as if the presence of the other was too much to bear. The passion caught between the side steps of the tango, a rose between his teeth. I imagined dancing with Antonio Banderas, in tight, black pants, Matador style, embroidered as having step from the bull arena onto the dance floor. And me in ruffled silk petticoats slit up to hip level, pointing a leg skyward, then caught in the dip and sway. A fairytale romance, having ridden in after a long day on the Argentinian plain. The Pampas is in his blood. But with Argentina comes the dictators and the repression. Isabel Allende wrote how the tango was banned in Chile, an in Argentina too, because of the passion it aroused and unleashed in the populace. She said, couples danced the tango in the streets, in sheer defiance, because to dance was to keep alive the memory. A pathetic act, but in this way, they kept alive that memory, and hope that that tender flame of freedom, as light tended in the secret places for the darkness of the coming years. Meanwhile, here in America on the other end of the globe, we clumsily watch the dismantling of our freedom, of our country, thinking oh, it can’t happen here on the 20th anniversary of publishing 1984. But in the ear, and the rush of blood cells tintinnabulating. It begins with the lost strains of the tango.

No date Writers’ Group

The color of silence

Silence, so profound you can hear the angels dancing on pinhead, doing that old soft shoe. What you were expecting, Swan Lake? Yes, ballet more suits the dancing angels, than vaudeville, but my angels tended to be an irreverent lot, was it because the nuns told us we had to leave a space on the pew between us for our guardian angels? That I began to put together an odd tapestry of faith? I couldn’t imagine my guardian angel sitting there with nothing to do but twiddle his thumbs or wings, or whatever they do when they we were stuck in church, each isolated from the other by one body width. I was never sure how much space to leave on the pew on account of their wingspan and all. Then I got worried about the technical details, and I forgot why I was there. Sure, the nuns’ ploy worked, silence was golden, silence was maintained, but I began to see they were busy breaking God‘s rules just to keep us under a tight rein. When it came to maintaining orders, they were so busy making up white lies, they never suspected that the bottom was dropping out of my faith. Or at least my ability to believe. But, even at the age of four, I had a mind like a steel trap. If someone said something that tried my logic, I turned it over and over again and struggled with a dichotomy, having no place to put it, it made me a silent, contemplative child, distrustful of adults who told the most preposterous lies and expected me to believe them. Like the time my uncle took my nose and showed me his thumb. I knew it was his thumb, but he insisted it was my nose, so I felt it, and it was right where it always was. Then there was the time when the nun said God was crying because we were being so bad in church. That’s why it was raining. My mind was working on other possibilities and if God‘s tears were raining, then maybe he was just pissing on us for our stupidity. The erosion of faith. I wonder about Mary. And what about the fib where the world is flat? Where if you walk too far, you would fall off the end of the earth into the void? Is it visible or invisible? Would I fall into the void, though it looked to be made of substance? Then there’s the Soviet system of keep silence and don’t question, don’t rock the boat, don’t voice opinions. But the dichotomy comes when you can no longer keep silent for your own safety and well-being. When atrocities were being committed in our name, like now with the Iraqi war. Silence is the color of blood. The angels are having trouble finding room on the pinhead, there’s no dancing at all just the vulgar boatman shuffle. Poisonous silence descends. Be still in my beating heart. I found the sublime state of silence as I rode my horse on the back country fire trails. The empty bowl of faith was found in nature, not in the houses of God. Angels in the wind. Silence, a tremble of wings. Silence of early morning, the sound of sunlight, through a window pain, a tranquil, brief moment before the onslaught of the day.  

6/30/06 Writers’ Group

Write about the best time you’ve ever had

Best time… So many to choose from. Where to even begin? This is the throat clearing. There have been moments that are sublime, hard, earned ones, where, after a struggle I’ve been exalted—like the time the fog parted at the Sungate of Machu Picchu, the sacred city emerged, and later that day, after we had hoisted ourselves up the robust cable to the peak above the city, to the temple of the sun and moon. 

There were times we had to crawl through live rock passages carved by Inca hands. Passages where you had to stoop over and if you were the enemy, your head was smitten off as you stood there. The narrow passages were like keyholes, birth chambers or entrances to other worlds. And once you passed through that portal, you were irrevocably changed, you could never go back to who you were. 

Soon, we arrived at the temple, an alter of stone. Huaca del Sol, and as we gazed back on that sacred city time converged. When I was a child, I loved to read my grandmother‘s secret books on the bookshelf near her bed. I remember her reading Hiram Bingham‘s story of Machu Picchu. I used to gaze at the cover, it was a cheap pulp fiction pocketbook older than I was, with edges turned mahogany over time. 

At that moment, looking down at the city, time converged, but before we left for the Andes, my grandmother had already died. And I was heartsick, devastated, my world had fallen apart. She was my anchor, my foundation. The woman who raised me from childhood, because my mother was insane, not cut out for motherhood. 

When I was young, she left me and my young brother on the doorstep like foundlings. Better there than on a church step. This was how I discovered I had a brother. One hot summer morning, there he was, crying. She literally had dumped him and ran. I was so insanely jealous, because my grandmother spent all her time with the baby. I was four going on five but genetics linked us as surely as it did to my granny. 

At the temple of the sun, I cut a lock of hair with an old brass pocket knife of my grandfather’s, with its worn mother of pearl handle, and dull brass hasps where the pearl had broken off. It made a strange sawing sound as it severed a chunk of hair so close to my left ear, I was leaving a genetic marker on top of the dolman. 

Dolman, and old-world term for a new world marker of the spirit world. These were portals, markers to the underworld. Rocks raised as huacas, as alters on the ceiling of the world. Dolman in Ireland. Huaca here, but the same intent the world over and I was standing with a foot in two, maybe three worlds. The old world, and the southern world on the new continent. The new world south of the equator.

Standing on the equator that was another euphoric moment. Standing with the foot straddling two hemispheres was astounding, but was I traveling for myself or for my grandmother? Was I my grandmother‘s eyes, traveling to places I had never been, living the life she never had, because in her era it was never possible? 

She was caught up in the realm of the last vestiges of the Victorian Age where women were wives, and they had children. They didn’t vote, but she had her suffragette dreams to write and paint and live alone in a bee-loud glade. 

Wanting to please her, I lived the life she never had. I was seeing the world, I was bearing witness to the wonders of the world. But she was dead, gone, past, and only with the spirit realm was she bearing witness to what I saw with these mortal eyes. 

I placed the thick strands of my hair, tinted with fire, so like her own hair as to be nearly indistinguishable on the stone altar, placing white crystal rocks gleaned from our lower field in Forest Knolls, after heavy rainfall when the gopherholes became conduits for the rain runoff, leaving white quartz treasures in the small alluvial fans that framed each hole. Small quartz teeth of the mountain to hold down my hair in this strange land.

6/26/06 Writers’ Group

Waiting for Grace

We are waiting, waiting with, waiting for... Prepositions aside, we are always a juxtaposition. Just suppose.  I’m waiting, something I’m not very good at. Not a happy camper. So I learn to be a modified bag lady for the infrequent doctor visits, I hate the waiting room. True Godot. Where is Estragon when you need him? 

There are so many forms of waiting, we hardly notice, we are so programmed. Patient sheep. I usually bring a snack, some water, a novel, a notepad, receipts, handcream. Anything to keep me entertained. Not a purse, mind you. All the purse-like vitals go into my front pocket. A purse is a big target.

The deal I had made with myself in order to be an artist in residence was to carry the absolute minimum. Be at the ready because danger, though always present, was never clear. I travel through so many dicey neighborhoods. Hunter's Point is the absolute worst, not a good place for white folks to aimlessly wander. 

My second cousin, Pat D'Arcy, a redhead who lived in the dicy hood, gained serious street cred and respect when he pulled out a chainsaw to cut up some cardboard boxes. They gave him a wide berth after that. 

I drove a rickety old truck named Blue Lazarus, the back filled with art supplies. I had no cell phone, no way to contact the outside world if things went south. But the deal was I could walk into the school with whatever I had in my pockets. My backpack was merely a decoy. The goods were always on me. 

Always carry your money close. Something I picked up in South America. Keep your valuables in your front pockets because the razoristas were true artists and they could slice a back pocket open in seconds and you couldn’t feel a thing. No blood. Backpacks were an easy target. We wore our daypacks in front like kangaroos pouches. There’s always a lot of waiting around when you travel, in transito, todo el Mundo. 

One time we were traveling from the Petén jungle of Tikál enroute to El Salvador, but the US invaded Honduras. Tegucigalpa. And there we were, stuck in transito, call it purgatory, and everyone was on the move, with nowhere to go. Nothing like a little US sanctioned banana republic war to spice things up. We waited a very long time in the Guatemalan airport greasing the palms of airline clerks with morditas to get a seat on the plane to anywhere. We weren't choosy. 

Guatemala City was already uneasy, seething with hostility—and twice now, grace waited with us. Once, outside Atitlán, the guerrillas were disappearing tourists and the Guatemalan Army was pulling people off buses and shooting them. They pulled over the bus in front, and the one behind, but not our bus. We walked with grace. We were allowed to travel onward. In the Petén Jungle the Guatemalan Army stopping us again but we were allowed to continue onward. We were waiting with grace there too. 

At the airport luck followed us a third time. We bore witness to first, and second-hand stories of the ones who were not so lucky. The man who gave us a lift out of the Petén Jungle after our taxi man abandoned us 40 km from civilization. He was searching for a sister who is a nurse. We never found out if she was one of the lucky ones or like us, or one of the disappeared. 

The journey goes ever forward and we will never wait we never waited for Grace. We kept moving on, Grace was within us. But for years I couldn’t stop dreaming of snipers in the jungle waiting for us. We were walking charmed life 

6/16 2006 Writers' Group

Power shopping

Well, you said mundane and I was already spooked by the temptation of the sacred so I picked the most mundane, if not least important part of my day. Being at Costco with only 20 minutes to spare, to shop for staples, and to return the furry bagels, all green in their penicillin splendor. I blindly grabbed a handful of receipts this morning in the dark, hoping one of them was last week's Costco receipt. 

In the parking lot, after I tanked up—why does Neil let the tank go dry, then randomly reset the trip odometer, and never records the results, let alone, fill the tank? So at 6 AM, as we sped down the freeway we didn't know how much gas was left in the tank because my gas gauge doesn’t work. The meter lies somewhere near the 1/3 tank mark leaving us guessing as to how much gas is actually in the tank. 

I can’t stand the suspense, we are running late and Shell is open, but I don’t like Shell's politics in South Africa. They helped invent apartheid. But we only buy 1 gallon to assuage the gods. I still don’t buy grapes out of respect to the César Chavez strike way back in the 1970s, but when it comes to wine I’m suddenly myopic. I don’t see past the rim of my wine glass. 

It made me think of other gas stations where I hunt for the best deals online before the gas gas goes up another $.10. But I digress, so I'm in Costco slaloming around the leisurely paced shoppers who have all the time in the world. One woman yells to her mother: Coming through! as I careened around the corner, and I thanked them. I say I’m power shopping. Don’t worry I don’t drive like this. But wait, I do! I ram it down the aisles, snagging snacks enroute to the counter. In and out in 20 minutes, a world record. I broke my own personal best. 

But the woman in front of me was in suspended animation time. She slowly picked up each item contemplating it as if it were a rare jewel, taking it up to the conveyor belt, leaving no room for me whatsoever. So, when her head was turned, I shoved her stuff closer together, slicing my thumb on a plastic package of tomatoes. There, I’ve even given blood to the god of power shopping. I will race to the school and Neil will be 45 minutes late. I will sit in the sun hot sun in the parking lot and take a deep breath. Breathe.

6/3/06 Writers' Group

wax resist watercolor fish (art)

wax resist watercolor fish, in class demos.

Arthur Boericke Obituary

From the Independent Journal

Arthur Boericke was an original and daring thinker and person. He was an advocate for unorthodox creativity in architecture -- elliptically bringing both away and towards the mainstream. He published several seminal books including 'Handmade Houses' -- a classic. He also was involved in the formation of the Farralones Institute, and was a supporter and adviser to Sim Van Der Ryn. He was born August 27th,1927 to Arthur and Edith Boericke, owners of Boericke and Runyon Pharmaceuticals. Arthur's grandfather was William Boericke, MD, author of the 'Materia Medica' which remains the primary reference for all things homeopathic. Arthur is survived -- and loved -- by many, many of us. We will celebrate him on Saturday, April 22nd, 2006 at 1:00 p.m. Call Sarah Howard for information about the Celebration 415-663-9778.

Published in Marin Independent Journal from Apr. 13 to Apr. 16, 2006I didn't hear of this until much later, and am sorry I missed it. This is a reference stub, something I need to get back to later.

Handmade Houses: A Guide to the Woodbutcher's Art, Arthur Boericke and Barry Shapiro (1973, Scrimshaw Press, A & W Publishers). I used to go on driving expeditions with Arthur as he was writing the book, in Marin, Sonoma, and Mendocino. We both had a red Volvo panel van.

Visible Spectrum

"Go deeper," he said. As if I needed prompting. All that azure and violet converging on ultra. I needed no encouragement. I opened a slender door that had no lintel, that had no frame. I had my hand on the visible spectrum, but on the cosmic side, where indigo crossed thresholds with ultraviolet, was where I was drawn to—luminal boundaries between worlds. Both the seen and the unseen, I was betwixt and between. Hovering towards the shade as in capital "S." Those ghostly apparitions who survive on the horizon. Not on the other side of the spectrum, near infrared.  Too hot. To me that was Hades, that was hell. Interesting that hell itself was either hot or cold depending upon your locale and ancestry. There was no hell in the Otherworld, merely the fourth dimension. Alternate reality was a world where time either ceased to exist, or hadn't yet been born. But the monks took care of that discrepancy, suggesting that time existed there too, only it passed more slowly, otherwise no one would ever get around to being born, let alone, conceived in the missionary position, or otherwise. We won't mention that their parents would never, ever meet up, because they too would have considerable trouble getting around to orchestrating their own conception, until we were all traveling backwards through time at such a tremendous rate that the Big Bang imploded into the period at the end of the sentence. And then, where would we be, then?

4/7/06 Writers' Group

AFTER THE STORM

AFTER THE STORM

Boy rides his bike down the Emeryville Bridge ramp
billowing white shirt lufting behind like a full sail
the back tire throwing up a spray onto that white shirt
until he is wearing a skunk tail down his back.

4/7/ 06 Writers' Group

It was a dark and stormy night

No "was" about it, no night either. Make mine present tense and hold the ice. Today, as I stepped out of the car I had to quickly step back in again and put my hip waders on because the sidewalk had turned into a stream. There were rapids forming over the curb and whenever a car wheel turned in snug to kiss the curb, like we were taught to do in drivers education, only no one ever actually cranks their wheels in to the curb, unless they’re too tight or too poor to get a brake job. That would be me on both counts. 

Thank gawd I have a clutch, as the emergency brake is done in for as well. We haven’t quite reach the Fred Flintstone school of driving and braking, but it looms on the lithic horizon. Anyway, the tire against the curb becomes a mini cofferdam and debris plugs the holes until the rivulet has left its bank. The storm gutters are overfull. 

We negotiate impromptu lakes spanning San Pablo, Marshall, and Stanford avenues. Momentary calm before the storm. A gust of wind turns Lorene into Mary Poppins. I have visions of chasing her down the street shrieking something about a spoonful of sugar. And the next thing I know, I can’t shut off the damn soundtrack. Earworm. As long as Willy Wonka isn't invoked, perhaps I'll maintain enough sanity to make it to nightfall. 

Here we are, April showers—more like April monsoons than showers. But the wildflowers are cavorting. I found myself kissing the landscape on both sides of the freeway. I gasped when I saw in the distance, a swale of buttercups—as if the painter had fisted buckets of yellow onto a canvas of green—so green even the air was verdant. When the storm hit, all the color drained out of the sky and the land turned the color of pavement. Everything was grey until I was on a glass bell glass of rain—and no one else on the road. 

Boy rides his bike down the Emeryville Bridge ramp  

billowing white shirt lufting behind like a full sail 

the back tire throwing up a spray onto that white shirt 

until he is wearing a skunk tail down his back. 

4/7/ 06 Writers' Group

Arts Education Alliance professional development workshop in Santa Rosa

Arts Council of Sonoma County 
ARTS Education Alliance

ARTS Integration:

Bringing Creativity to the Classroom

A SPECIAL WORKSHOP FOR SONOMA COUNTY TEACHERS

Saturday, April 1, 2006 – Wells Fargo Center for the Arts

The Arts Education Alliance is proud to bring you this dynamic professional development workshop.  In 2003, the Arts Council of Sonoma County formed a hardworking collaborative group, Arts Education Alliance.  Through this strong collaboration of individuals and organizations, the key goals of this group are to:

·    Communicate and disseminate arts education information throughout Sonoma County

·    Provide Professional Development opportunities as a way to keep art in education

·    Encourage creative partnerships and collaboration between local arts organizations, schools and teachers

Arts education is essential to the vitality if our community and the future of Sonoma County’s quality of life.  Anchoring a student’s learning with arts education will help motivate students in all areas of academics and contribute to their life skills.  Through professional development events and our Arts in Education a Resource Guide for Sonoma County we are supporting our Sonoma County educators!

On this CD you will find lesson plans for all three of today’s artist led professional development breakout sessions.

Thank you for participating!

I was one of three featured workshop leaders for this event. Maybe I'll find the publicity for it. This is all I have. But they made a CD too. The lesson plan I developed for teachers is

ART & SCIENCE: Color Mixing teaching notes

Divine Ratio

In a room where it is forever 4:44 in frozen time, we teach each other in four-minute lessons. Not five. In that we are congruent, we measure analogue time in digital increments, but it interferes with the metaphor of clock and moon. Or take five. The metaphor hasn't yet caught up with technology. We measure triangles, we invoke Pythagoras, and integers. We decode rational numbers using analogy. We question the golden ratio, calling it the Golden Mean. Take St. Patrick's Confessio, it was a secret word puzzle to unfold, invoking the divine ratio.

Crossroads Irish-American Festival Poetry reading Maureen Hurley, Jack Foley, Chad Sweeney, Katherine Hastings 3/5/2006

Crossroads Irish-American Festival Poetry reading, 3/5/2006
Maureen Hurley, Jack Foley, Chad Sweeney, Katherine Hastings

2006 CROSSROADS: Irish-American Festival

Basking in the sea

Vito says you can’t bask in the sea. Shiva says But you can bask in the sun, but I am thinking of floating in a warm sea, basking, floating, with no destination in mind. Surely the creatures of the sea can bask? What about the basking shark? I have seen turtles basking on the surface of the sea, with no destination. They were more than just floating, they were basking. Once, during the total eclipse, I sea turtle startled me and I nearly drowned with excitement as he swim beneath me. He was huge, like a sled or a boogie board and all morning I followed him around that bay as the sun in the moon wrestled in the sky between light and dark. It was a free time where all bets were off even in the natural world. We were out of time as tide and wind were in stasis. I followed that turtle ballet until I was so far out to sea, all alone. But when the sun returned as Maui the sun god pulled the moon's face from the sun's…. But not before I saw the diamond ring and the penumbra. Meanwhile a couple exchanged wedding vows and let their leis loose in the sea. Puuonuaohonaunau, the place of refuge. That turtle pulled me far out to see like a siren. That day I had no fear of drowning though drowning was at hand.

2/24//2006 Writers' Group

A place called El Refugio

Where do we go when there’s no place of refuge, when all has been taken from us and we are left with the pale ashes of self after the phoenix has flown, and a breeze left lifts us from the balcony to some distant shore? The Aegean has been haunting me again in my sleep as if I had some unfinished from a lost century. The scrunch of sharp golden sand underfoot, the blue sea inviting us into our dream refuge. Refugio. I am in another language, another sea, traitorous Cortez's sea and in a place called El Refugio that is anything but. When was it ever someone’s refuge, surely not within this century. Not this wide greasespot in the road, a dusty town we can’t seem to get out of. I watch dawn turn into midday, a man in huaraches herds his goats and pigs to another sparse patch of desert sand. I’m desperate for coffee and the next bus will not come, ever. At the bodega I manage to order a cafécito of sorts. Nescafé and Cremora. I find out too late to the amount I thought trifling was worth a day's wages to this man who kisses it and crosses himself and hold sit up to the sun exclaiming Madre de Díos. Mother of God indeed. Perhaps El Refugio was the site of many lost missions strung loosely together from Sonoma to Loreto where the wolf boy was born. They all have hair on fire faces—soft, downy and black. For them, even the girls, the only refuge was to run away across the border to the circus. Wolf boy send money home to his family each week. He looks in the mirror brushes his cheeks and brow, squares his shoulders to meet the public. For him there is no refuge, only gawkers. He longs for the normal life, with friends and family. No more freak shows but he will miss the money. In Refugio, inside of the sea, prison walls, prisoners within sight of the sea the brine dark sea. 

2/24//2006 Writers' Group

Morning Tea Ritual

The perfume escaping the Meyer lemon tree, exotic as gardenias in winter, or like sweet-scented coffee blossoms. I've never seen tea blossoms but I imagine them to be exotic, also like camellias. This morning I saw a photo of women picking tender leaves, hand pruning bushes with leaves glossy as camellias. Centuries of fingers have prised the leaves into topiary hedges. I am fond of my black tea in the morning. It gives substance and balance to my day. A morning without tea, and I feel sullen and sleepy, on the wrong side of the bed, even if there's only one side of the bed to begin with. Tea allows me to turn over a new leaf each day, not that I drink it black, or with citrus, like the English. No, the Irish are the singlemost largest consumers of tea, beating the national average of India or China. They drink out of such tiny cups, it would take them all day to catch up with us. No green tea or chai for me (once I thought I was having a heart attack, replete with palpitations, after a Pakistani friend fixed me a proper cup of Indian tea… He boiled the leaves with canned milk and cardamom for what seemed like hours. He added copious amounts of sugar. Lethal stuff.) No, I drink my tea with milk and sugar, added by the scant teaspoon full. The mug is important, as is the spoon. My only silver spoon, a castoff from someone's grandmother, garlanded with roses, the shank balanced just right so you can teeeter-totter it on your index finger while waiting for the tea to brew exactly 5 minutes. And the mug, sky blue on the outside with Paleolithic symbols, bear paws and Kokapelli, the water sprinkler guarding it. On the inside, it's orange as the Grand Canyon and wwritten on the rim like a watermark rise. My oversize handleless coffee mug that has never seen morning coffee, opens my eyes and offers me up to soaring heights of morning with that charge and verve of a citrus sunrise.

2/10/06 Writers' Group

Too hot to handle

Too hot, too hot to handle, my mind croons like a demented rockstar. Lorene's tea has slammed me sideways after an errant lapse of absence—from the cup, that is. As I threaded my way north with the precision of a Panama tailor, enroute to the writers' group, hot tea fans out over me as yet another moron in a truck bigger than his ego, (his other car is a Harley) cuts me off. And my tea spills again as I dust off and polish my invectives. You MF pussysucking cnt, I yell. And there it was, a scalding cup of tea wending its way down my front to my crotch. Lorene is laughing at me as I try to mop it up with a paper towel. Thank gawd its dark out, no one can see me grabbing my crotch. I'm laughing because I'm also holding a banger on a bun and Freud is riding shotgun in the backseat of my mind. This is too hot, too hot to handle, indeed. I love that first rush of spring when the pollen spores coat the windscreen in a chartreuse powder—like gunmetal tea. (Now, where did that come from?)With that, I shed my winter coat, though there's still a nip in the air. Epistolary bullets spraying the mind. It's an Al Capone kind of gangster evening circling Alcatraz with the perfumed air redolent with promise of yet another year to come. I wear a green millefiori heart from my childhood. Valentine's Day is almost upon us. Vito and Sinead's birthdays coming up. Vito, at 70, after chemotherapy, is also too hot to handle, but he is jubilant to be still in the game. I'm in a public place. So, should I drop the "l," is the word pubic too graphic? There's nothing like that prickly feeling when your pants are hot and sticky from spilled tea. I can't help but feel renewal with that turning of the sun, also too hot to handle. 

2/10/06 Writers' Group

BETWEEN DAY AND NIGHT

BETWEEN DAY AND NIGHT

At that time between day and night
when everything is crepuscular in notion,
& the Cole Porter violin cresendo swells,
opens the doors between worlds,
is where the liminal and the real world collide,
where we dream, where we drift,
where you’re not sure where you’re going
or where you’ve been,
living both lives simultaneously. 

Vicariously.
Meanwhile, a petty dictator 

gets in the way of truth.

2/4/06

No guarantees

Who was it that said, no guarantees? When it was first used, and under what circumstances? Imagine sitting around the hearth fire, stone walls singed with smoke and facing the empty spit, mid-winter, the world outside dressed in white, blinding even in fog. The stomach protesting under the fur parka, you stand at the ready with spear in hand but with nowhere to go, except forward into the snow where an uncertain future awaits: either the full belly or the full sleep of death. The cold coagulating your dreams into the shape of ice crystals, and stars bursting in your veins. But the insistence of the empty belly makes itself understood in no uncertain terms. It wants out now, regardless of the risk, taking tentative steps into the cloud-white snow where you sink into the purity of winter, the light edging its return. The days widening by an infinitesimal fraction each day. You step forth anticipating the kill, for to kill is to live. But there are no guarantees, only the hunger and the cold. Soon the snowmelt will bring the game back to your door moving you into action.

1/6/06 Writers' Group

Every note counts (better wait than never, said the dyslexic)

It was a slip of the eye, I misread a sticker. Too tired to untangle its confusing message, I went along with it, laughed at the inner joke: Vote for Note. But then today, all my  notes, votes, vowels, nouns and verbs are a play on the syllables of the tongue—to the point where my eyeteeth are more like seeing-eye-dogs in the braille backwaters of the mind during the day after the night before Little Christmas—The Epiphany. Every note counts.T ell that to the drab female blackbirds whistling drills in the marsh. Today the sea and sky were brilliant beyond belief, everything righting itself after the storm. She sang her haunting call, it penetrated a place somewhere beyond language—a drowsy awakening and collapsing of time. I was 4, I was 12, 19, 30, 45, 53 in that marsh, listening to her plaintive song. The realization that every note counts, whether song, or mnemonic device, or word-counting notes in the marsh. For a moment I was that drab bird clinging to saltgrass, singing every note, making it count. I voted for her continuance.

1/6/2006 Writers' Group

"Cactus Heart" photo tryptic for SSU's Art from the Heart show

"Cactus Heart" photo tryptic for SSU's Art from the Heart show, the date says 2006, but this may have been a later entry. It didn't sell. I have another heart that did sell, aquarelle on morillaboard. I guess this was too weird.

Mabli, Neil, his nephew David, and I visited the USS Hornet in September, 2006 (I think). The middle image is a pipe assembly from the ship. The cactus was from a school garden in Fremont where I was teaching poetry (probably 2005), the kiwi was from the Monterey Market, super cheap because of the so-called deformity.

ART & SCIENCE Introduction to Color/ cycles, Silk Mural

OBJECTIVE: To incorporate science and art. Choose a theme: the elements (air, earth, fire, water), an environment (land, sea, sky), cycles (weather, day/night, seasons, etc.) Prepare by studying science lesson/concept you wish to enhance with art. (The history of the Chinese Silk Road and materials used[silk, brushes] is another area to explore.) Then brainstorm to show what concepts students have learned. This project spans about 3 to 6 one+ hour sessions.

Pre-planning: for each student have white scratch paper, pencil, black felt tip pens; magazine & calendar pictures of animals, plants, ecosystems, etc. Have students individually come up with drawing ideas, using contour or solid (not sketchy) line (another lesson), and then trim drawings, glue them into a larger piece on butcher paper—this step is especially helpful with young kids (grades K-3). For 4-8th grades: divide students into teams (5+, with one team captain). If you rotate several kids in, keep team captains for continuity.) Students can finalize mural drawing on white-board. Mark out 3 x 3’ squares.

MATERIALS: Each student should have a small Elmer’s blue glue bottle for gutta resist to draw on the silk. This will contain the dyes like a dam. Small squeeze bottle acrylic fabric paints with plastic tips work great. I like the metallics. (Save those used bottles and refill them with Elmer’s blue glue. If the fabric paint is dried, soak in hot water to clean.)

Or use real gutta resist bottles with metal tips and water-based resist for thinner lines. Real gutta is made of rubber and solvent (like rubber cement), so don’t use it with small kids. Metallic guttas are great, I’ll let a student use guttas but only with parental permission, and only if they’re careful.

One to six 3’ x 3” silk scarves, or silk yardage. (I’ve made murals with as few as 5 kids assigned per scarf, or with an entire class, but you have to work everyone in during shifts.) Use simple ponge, or habotai weave silk, 5 to 8 mm (thin gauge). Polyester & cotton won’t work at all. (Burn a thread, silk leaves no residue, just a fine ash, polyester leaves gunk.) (OR if you can’t set up for silk, use white butcher paper or heavy 80 lb. white sulfite paper and watercolors.)

Stretch silk onto 3’ artist stretcher bars, or duct tape together four 3’ wooden rulers, or duct tape corners of silk to 4 chair backs to keep scarf taut. I’ve also used cardboard windows to stretch silk. For a paper or tagboard mural, no need to stretch! Like cats, most papers (except w/c& sulfite) don’t like water. Experiment.)

Each student should have a small half-sponge, 2-3 Chinese, or sπumi ink brushes (they’re cheap) resting on damp sponges which are better than paper towels for taking excess water off brushes. DON’T leave sumi brushes in water jar!!! They’ll behead themselves....and jars tip over.

Two students can share a water container, and an ice tray arranged with 3 primary (printer) colors, Cyan (sky blue/turquoise), Magenta (red hot pink), and Yellow. I use Jacquard silk dyes. They’re non-toxic, brilliant, pure color and last forever.

Reserve one brush for yellow as it pollutes easily. (For watercolor on paper, I use Crayola 07W mixing paints to get magenta & turquoise). You can also use diluted silk dyes like watercolor. Also have a few large watercolor brushes or foam brushes for painting large areas, rags, water spray bottles.

ART SCIENCE VOCABULARY: Composition, balance, contour line, wet-on-wet, texture, salting/ osmosis, etc. Utilize the arts components: Artistic Perception (planning), Creative Expression (hands-on), Historical and Culture context (models), & Aesthetic Valuing (sharing) with the Science vocabulary: Observe. Ask questions. Make a Hypothesis. Experiment. Make a Conclusion. Share what you’ve learned. What surprised you? etc. Artists and scientist use many similar skill sets: observation and hypothesis are key components.

Young Audiences of Northern CA Calligraphy Residency

Artist: Maureen Hurley
Discipline: Introduction to Calligraphy & Graphic Arts

Goals of Residency/Teaching Philosophy

Goals: For teachers: to spark ideas for the creation of an integrated curriculum, using visual arts and language arts. For students: this calligraphy residency will teach the art and history of fine hand lettering, and instill in students, the historical and aesthetic tradition of the art of calligraphy.

What is your approach to working with children?

I am an active published artist, performer/writer and educator. The excitement of, and proximity to creativity carries over into the classroom and ignites students and teachers alike with a desire to learn a difficult skill. Sharing this inspiration in the classroom allows me to create an arts community and foster a nurturing and safe space for students of all ages to explore divergent thinking skills.

What approach do you use to teach them skills in your arts discipline?

I love integrating core curriculum into my lessons, whether it be language arts or visual arts, social studies or science. I share my artistic process with students and instill in them my teaching philosophy which includes a sense of excitement, playfulness, and a burning desire for exploration and experimentation. I use specific models, class demonstration, group and one-on-one instruction, review process, critique/compliment sessions, and portfolio assessment.

Learning Objectives
(what do you want students to know by the end of the residency?):

Objectives: During this six-session residency, students will practice various skills in the visual and written graphic arts. At residency’s end, students will have a grasp of the mechanics of fine art lettering, and with the skills they’ve learned and the handouts I’ve given them, they will be able to continue learning long after the residency is over. I often ask them to teach a sibling or friend after class so they have a sense of ownership in the learning process.

Young Audiences of Northern CA artist bio and residency workshops

Poet and visual artist Maureen Hurley has led creative writing and art workshops for 20 years in California, Montana; Europe and the USSR. Maureen was awarded seven California Arts Council Artist in Residency grants, and numerous awards and fellowships for her work. Maureen' holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art Studio and Expressive Arts from Sonoma State University. She holds a MA and MFA in Creative Writing (poetry/playwriting) at San Francisco State University, she minored in Celtic Studies, and Folklore at UC Berkeley. She is a storyteller for Oakland USD. Maureen often bases her classes on school curriculum— especially Social Studies or Science, or classes that combine the literary and visual arts. Maureen has taught students of all ages and levels—from Special Ed to GATE; pre-school to Elderhostel. Classes include Poetry & Silk Painting or Calligraphy; Murals, Painting & Drawing; Poetry & Performance. Residencies may be adapted to all age levels and skills.

Residencies (Visual Arts)
Drawing & Painting
How does an artist see the world differently? Students will develop the ability to observe like an artist or a scientist by exploring aspects of drawing and painting using contour line, form, and color composition. Media may include tempera paints and watercolors, India ink scratchboards, oil or chalk pastels, specialty pens and papers. Our models will be the great masters as well as other students’ work. Student-artists may develop a portfolio of their own work and display it in an art exhibition at the school site.

Painting "Sun Catchers" on Silk
Discover the magic of light and color with silk "sun catchers." Students will explore painting and drawing (see above). Using gutta serta—a technique similar to batik, and brilliant non-toxic silk dyes, they will apply their newfound skills to create stunning works of art on silk-covered hoops, or "sun catchers," and on silk banners and scarves. Or we might create large themed group silk "mural" or a series of self-portraits. This class also works well with a poetry or science component.

Murals: paint a story on the wall
Make murals for a school play or event using cardboard and tempera, or create a permanent installation with acrylics on canvas or plywood. Mural painting—whether it tells a story, or records a historical event—is a collaborative process where everyone gets to help with the design. We will incorporate drawings into a mural, create an outline or cartoon mock-up, and then under the guidance of a student mural captain, teams will paint the mural.

Calligraphy = Beautiful Writing
Calligraphy, the art of beautiful writing, develops observation and reading skills as well as fine eye-hand coordination. Students will learn the history of the Roman alphabet, from its pictographic beginnings to modern shapes. "A" is an ox; "B" is a house. We will write secret messages in Phoenician, invent our own alphabets, look at other writing systems including Linear A & B, Mayan, Chinese/ Japanese and Egyptian/ Cuneiform to see how the art of writing evolved. This class is an excellent addition to 6th grade Social Studies curriculum.

Residency (literary)
Poetry, the Mother of Art
The Greeks called poetry the mother of all art: Poetry allows us to synthesize what we know, explore new ideas, and ask questions in a safe format where there are no right/wrong answers. Poetry builds language skills and is an important component of both the Performing and the Literary Arts frameworks. Using their own unique perceptions and relevant life experiences, students write, perform, and publish poetry that creatively expresses their feelings, thoughts, and dreams. They will use culturally diverse model poems from both their peers and by world poets while exploring the use of metaphor to develop their own poetic voice. We will unravel language and make it our own. Many of the poetry recipes may be taught in bilingual Spanish. Publishing may include designing broadside posters or a poetry book. Longer residencies might also include the visual arts such as silk painting or calligraphy.
(Available in Spanish or English)

Young Audiences of Northern CA painting and color mixing workshop

Five Session painting and color mixing workshop

Day one will introduce simple color mixing techniques with tempera paint, and give a brief overview of the ten-session art and poetry lessons. Painting exercise will focus on primary colors (yellow, magenta, cyan) mixing with tempera paint using geometric and free form shapes. Students will learn the proper use of brushes, supplies, etc. We will have a class complimenting session at the end,

Whenever possible after every session, we will close each class with a complimenting session (using Visual and Performing Arts Standards (VAPA): aesthetic valuing) of each other’s work. Teachers will also display student artwork in classrooms and in halls.

Day two focuses on building (9 x 18”) simple landscape, using layers and triangles, using calendar photos and artist landscapes for inspiration. We will draw simple miniature (baby) contour line drawings to identify the shapes. We will build landscapes in layers and artist will introduce age level appropriate key VAPA vocabulary and concepts.

Day three focuses on primary and secondary color mixing with the addition of white/black (hue/shade) with tempera and we will make very large paintings based on landscape. We will use culturally appropriate artist landscapes (reflecting classroom diversity), calendar photographs for our models.

An alternate teaching idea is to have students cooperatively paint a large landscape (18 x 24”) in pairs. Whenever possible, all art lessons will be theme based according to grade level language and or science/social studies curriculum (weather/water cycles, land/sea/sky, transportation, CA history, etc)

Day four will introduce the concept of (solid) contour line drawing with black felt pens using toy animals and cars as our models. We will use blind contour drawing, opposite hand and freestyle drawing techniques. Or, if the teacher prefers staying with color exploration, we could do more landscapes using oil pastels or chalks.

Day five is an optional follow-up drawing lesson, using larger scale toy animals and each other to develop comfort and confidence drawing in a black and white medium. Students will do partner drawings and mirror drawings, if there’s time.

FIRST FREEWRITE TO KIRK WHIPPLE on 5s project A E F W & Q

FIRST FREEWRITE TO KIRK    ramblings that wouldn't separate themselves into orderly piles of air earth fire and water let alone, transcendence

In the beginning was verb
fire danced on water
myriad fireflies etched traces of fire and starlight

in the bayou    crossing the bog
where at water's edge
live coals
sang a reptilian siren call
it's an eat be eaten world
and on it goes

GOODBYE JOHN LENNON, 25 YEARS AFTER

GOODBYE JOHN LENNON, 25 YEARS AFTER

A fan wanted a piece of him, 

and the bell rang good night 

and goodbye to John Lennon.

The Dakota became a pilgrim spot, 

a holy shroud, where the

spilled blood on the pavement

marked the end of an era.

Imagine there's no heaven… 

I remember his round glasses, stringy hair, 

he was dressed in white, as if ascended, 

with Yoko, in a staged bed-in, 

they sat as if on a floating cloud, 

preparing for ascension 

to a heaven where rock 'n' roll 

could be heard at the Pearly Gates.

12/9/2005

Remembering John Lennon, 25 years later

On the 25th anniversary of John Lennon’s death, I stayed in bed, snuggled and sandwich between layers of memory foam and goosedown. I was the cats pajamas. They say that John and Yoko stayed in bed for months on end. they staged a bed-in, and receiving visitors as if they were laid-back royalty at the Dakota Hotel in Central Park where that half acre of bed slumbered like a fairytale castle. I thought of Princess Diana and the story of the pea, once upon a mattress. What songs came out of that gestation, what art? Neil asked me where I was the day John Lennon was shot. I was at home in bed, writing as it turns out. Someone must’ve called me, because I remember turning on the radio and for 24 hours we listened to every song John ever wrote. I recorded a couple of hours' worth of music before I ran out of tape. As it was, I recorded over all my old poetry reading archives and whatnot. I remember, when I heard the news I was facing south, towards the sun, it was an indeterminate day of sun and clouds. It was raining inside all of us that day John Lennon died. It was like JFK, RFK, MLK all over again—singular days etched into the mind forever.

12/9//2005 Writers’ Group

Letter to the Montana Historical Society, Madeline Bedal, Memoirs with Maureen

Subject: Madeline Stannard Bedal

Hi

For over a year, I've been collecting the folk stories of Madeline Stannard Bedal (of Fielding, (Stannard Creek is named after her family), and, later, Whitefish. She would like to send her stories to interested folks. 

She is at the Westlake retirement center in Fremont, CA and was born in 1914. Her family homesteaded in Fielding. She's an excellent storyteller. I take down her stories verbatim (she's legally blind) and type them up, read them back, and she makes small corrections.

We've a class called Memoirs with Maureen. I have been trained in folklore collection at UC Berkeley with Professor Dundes. I have not applied analysis to the stories as they're folk narrative. 

I am a Montana Arts Council artist in residence and was listed with MAC during the 1980s and 1990s. I taught poetry to students in Laurel, MO.

SECRET HEARTBEAT

From the earth comes love
Trees, beast and bird
From the sky above
Stones fall at your feet
Secret heartbeat
Desert skin, mountain
valley, green meadow.


2005 November?

found on the back of a receipt from Office Depot, hence the date.

I think it was from my writers' group.