Lunar eclipse on the Solstice

Would someone please tell the moon she's late for a very important date?

Manual for about 1.5 seconds, auto is too overblown.

 I set my weenie Nikon on manual, forgot to check the F Stop & speed....it was on F400 @ 4.6. Ironically, I blindly pointed the camera shot—and it was the best one of the moon. Of course, there was more light. Even when the eclipse was barely discernible, the amount of light drop off was hug.  

Someday I want a real DSLR camera that has a low F Stop...it kills me to be stuck at F4.5. I tried Hi ISO too, and resorted to P (Auto for the red moon shots as Manual mode completely gave up with so little light. I had to lie down on the steps and hold camera to my forehead and not breathe—the movement is the moon itself. 3-4 second exposures.

I noticed journalists have been complete spazzes in reporting the actual time/date. Not knowing the difference between Greenwich and PST, for example. I'm sitting outside with my laptop. Chilly but noice.

 

It's looking a little nibbly at 6 o clock. And we have lift off!

the little rainbow tutu is the cloud cover—it was pretty thick so I held lens open for nearly 3 seconds...then I had to breathe...phew!

  
I've lost imagery—too much cloud cover. I'm shooting at 1/30th @ 4.5 (can't lower F Stop any lower—digital weenie camera. My poor little camera could barely cope. Seriously socked in now—a mooonbow! Ring around the moon...  

This cloud cover is killing me. I've gone & lost the frickin moon... Lunar eclipse on the shortest day, first time in over 400 years and it's hidden by cloud!

  I was going to use the binoculars to enlarge the camera lens...but one eyepiece came off the binoculars and bounced down the stairs and over the wall. So Neill was rootling around in the bushes for the lens during the time the sky was clear. Very Mutt & Jeff.

I have two very weenie Nikon 8.1 megapixel Coolpix P60s (one's CCD image sensor is better than the other—I keep the other one around as Plan B), and I have an older 7.1 MP Coolpix S200 which Neil was using. The P series, you can control the Fstop and shutter speed (sort of). The Automode was a bust until totality. Then it worked (sort of), but there was so little light, half the time I was shooting blind. 

I set the aperature on Mountain mode—as that gave me the greatest depth of field (focus) but even still, there were a lot of out of focus moons. I found that the 5x optical zoom was necessary—I even used the interpolated zoom vs optical (real lens).

My cameras failed, the noise dots are stars. You can see some of them moving.

I remember once we were on our way to see Tom Stoppard at ACT in SF ca. 1999 and between the buildings, hung a red moon—my digital camera couldn't cope.  

The first total lunar eclipse like this one that I remember circa 1972 or 73, I'd stopped off at the Forest Knolls post office to get the mail and looked up and shrieked—my first thought: it was a dragon's eye, then, blood. In that moment I understood why the Chinese called it a dragon's blood moon. The Aha! And another one circa 1986. Both accidental events. I had no idea they were on the schedule. I do remember earlier eclipses when I was a child—but none where the moon turned red. 

MY GRANDMOTHER’S HANDS

MY GRANDMOTHER’S HANDS

My grandmother’s hands
were torn and speckled with pigment
fair northern flesh burned by the fierce California sun.
A rebellious knotted vein rose up like a stone.
Souvenir from a strand of barbed wire
strung to keep the deer out of the garden.

Her freckles were an archiplelago of islands
adrift on a moon-milk sea.
They were Brendan voyagers in curraghs
headed for the New World
with a warrior phalanx of shields
raised up against a common enemy, the sun.
But they failed to protect her children,
when the melanoma set sail for that country
from which nothing ever returns.

I remember her wide spatulate fingers
that rubbed floursack sheets against the washboard
that mended jeans, made dresses for first day of school
and how I was ashamed they were not store-bought.
I remember the way she weeded the gardens,
dug up the praties, stacked wood for coming winter.

From her, I learned the survival of hands.
No caresses were needed because her love
was as fierce as the sun that burned her skin
as she labored in the garden or at the clothesline
she kept us safe, and provided when no one else would.
As she knelt to pray in the Sunday pew,
the sun shone on that knotted vein
and it was so beautiful—the scarring and freckles,
a skin painting of faith and tenderness.

8/28/10 rev. 12/12/10
Medusa's Kitchen, 2012
From Ellery Akers' workshop, Petaluma, CA, 

POETRY FEEDS Benefit For Share First Oakland Program, 12/12/2010

I read too, no idea where in the program, as I am not listed, Elmaz Abinander did not come, I might have read during his slot.

POETRY FEEDS Benefit For Share First Oakland
Program, 12/12/2010
MC's: Loma Dee Cervantes, Ishmael Reed, Francisco Alarcón
6:00-6:45 pm 

Hall - Feast or Famine Chance Dinner: $5 - $10 meal ticket;

Foyer - Holiday Book and Craft Fair; Instant Publishing Poetry Wall. Come attach or write your latest autographed creation on our paper wall for

"instant publishing." Artist? Add your finest. Conserve space for others.

We will be auctioning and/or raffling off the results at the end of the event.

Sanctuary - Slides and Music Presentations

6:45 pm Sanctuary - Welcome: Lora Dee Cervantes

Invocation: Francisco Alarcon

Opening Remarks by J. Webb Mealy, co-founder and Executive Director of Share First Oakland

Reading of poem by Oakland poet, Reginald Lockett: Lorna Dee Cervantes

7:00 pm First Group with Lorna Dee Cervantes

1-2. Special Presentation: Jack Foley and Adelle Foley
Rafael Jesús González
Nina Serrano
Paul Lobo Portuges
Vicki Vertiz
Cecile Pineda
John Oliver Simon
Lucha Corpi
Special Presentation: Ishmael Reed

7:45 pm Second Group with Ishmael Reed
Tennessee Reed
Timothy Reed
Odilia Galvan Rodriguez
Elmaz Abinader
Ruth Schwartz
Becca Carmona
Sharon Doubiago
Francisco X. Alarcón
Special Presentation: Cherrie Moraga

8:45 pm Raffle / Auction / Donation Drive
Special Music Presentation
Special Presentation: Avotja

8:55 pm Third Group with Francisco Alarcón
Leticia Hernández
Tomas Riley
Javier O. Huerta
Linda Watanabe McFerrin
Cesar A. Cruz Leolol
Blackberri
Trina L. Drotar
Sandy Thomas
Lorna Dee Cervantes

El Mensajero, Lorna Dee Cervantes Hunger reading, 1st Congregational Church, Oakland

12 de diciembre del 2010 | El Mensajero (San Francisco, CA)
comentarios@elmensajero.com

OAKLAND:

Unos 50 poetas y escritores locales, como Francisco X. Alarcón, Lucha Corpi, Ishmael Reed, Reed Tennessee, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Ruth Schwartz, Cecilia Pineda, Maureen Hurley, Jack y Foley Adelle, y más, leerán su obra para alimentar a los más hambrientos de las calles de Oakland. Habrá venta y presentaciones de libros, además de venta de artesanía con tablas de datos y de artesanía. También habrá subastas que serán útiles para donaciones. En la Primera Iglesia Congregacional de Oakland, ubicada en el 2501 de Harrison Street. Este domingo 12 de diciembre. Consulta el sitio en internet: www.sharefirst.org.

Poem and photos published in Medusa's Kitchen

Repent Nothing

• I WAS BORN WITHIN SIGHT

Mythopoetics, or why I write

The Pleasanton Poetry Poet Laureate asked me:
Why does Maureen Hurley write poetry? 

“I grapple with the unconscious dendritic history buried within the personal mythopoetics of my writing while keeping an ear bent to the myriad voices of landscape and memory.”

My poem & photos are up at Meusa's Kitchen blog: 

I WAS BORN WITHIN SIGHT

Me and Dana Teen Lomax CPITS

Me and Dana Teen Lomax, Presidio, David Sibbit's office, CPITS event

CPITS workshop on pocket poems. She won the lavender. It looks like a pot plant.

Dana was my CPITS protégée, I trained her during the 1980s at Mark West School in Santa Rosa, where I had my California Arts Council grants. Poet-teaching became her life's work. Though I've trained many CPITS poets, if I had only one person to choose to pay it forward, it would be Dana.

added 4/24/2016

MIGRATION

              —for Bruce Moody

After the poetry reading, we sit on the balcony
it's sultry for November, real earthquake weather.
The lights of the new bridge glaze the bay
and the train hugging the shore wends its way
along the narrows, sounding a two-chord jazz note.
The frosted pink C&H sign sweetens an indigo sky.
We offer pinot grigio toasts, catching-up with the years,
myriad stars and the Big Dipper whirl above our heads.
Bruce asks, if you had a billion dollars,
where would you go? Not what would you buy.
Death will discharge our debts.
On the far shore of the Carquinez Straits
the new houses ring the hills like fireflies.
Mesmerized by their own beauty

they crowd the shore, a thirsty herd of wildebeasts

waiting for a sacrificial leader to take the plunge
into dangerous waters and force them into the drink.
Perhaps an earthquake will do.

WHY DID THE TOURIST CROSS THE ROAD?

Yearning for another time
we strutted along Petaluma Boulevard,
once the chicken capitol of the world,
and clucked fuck-fuck-fuck-AFF
to a startled gaggle of tourists
aimlessly clogging the sidewalk.
We arm-wrestled them down
to the ground with our eyes.
Reclaimed our turf, and moved on.

Halloween 2010, Petaluma

11/14/2010

Remembering John Prine's Brother at Garbo's

Chicago Sun Times columnist and movie critic, Roger Ebert, wrote "John Prine is the poet of my life. People say he's great, but he's a lot better than that." I recommend reading Roger Ebert's Journal, a column he originally wrote in 1970, "John Prine: American Legend—A Singing Mailman Who Delivers a Powerful Message in a Few Words."

(Ebert's also updated the original story by posting some great John Prine YouTube links. The " Angel From Montgomery" backstory is worth the price of admission.) Bob Dylan once said "Prine's stuff is pure Proustian existentialism." I concur.

I have an interesting John Prine segue too via his brother. Circa 1980, John Prine's brother played John's songs for drinks at our Russian River Writers' Guild Monday Nite Poetry & Prose Reading series at Garbo's bar in Guernewood Park, CA. That's how I first learned to really listen to the words of John Prine's songs as poetry.

Ironically, it was songs—Irish ballads that first led me to writing. But that's another story. Prine always had such good angst-riddled lines: "You've broken the speed of the sound of loneliness...How can you ask about tomorrow?" My kind of lines. I was living in a perpetually warped möbius strip time.

(In the 1980s, we were living under a dark cloud: many of the gay club owners who housed our poetry venues were succumbing to a mysterious disease. Nobody knew what it was. Or its name. But we personally knew the names of the fallen: Peter Pender, the pianist/gold medal figure skater, bridge/chess champ who owned Fife's Resort with partner Hugh Ross, Stumptown Annie's owner, decorated Vietnam Purple Heart veteran, Leonard Matlovich, the first gay man to "come out" while in the military—was no longer looking like Kevin Spacey. It was too much to bear.

There was also my neighbor, handsome Bill Dutra, the original Marlboro Man, his beautiful face ravaged... Note Bene: I can't find info on Bill on the internet but he may have been Christian Haren. The info on Christian (or Chuck) fits—he owned The Chocolate Factory in Guerneville. But I can't find a photo.

Bill showed me an old tear sheet photo of him as the Marlboro Man—which I recognized. Bill told us amazing stories of being an actor, working with John Wayne—how I found out Dr. Kildare was gay—and stories of Key West. So all the pieces fit—just not the name of the Castro Street Cowboy.

I could have confabulated the name—but I've an uncanny memory for details. Whoa! Now I've segued so far from my story, I'm even scaring myself. So sorry. Another story, another time. (The Russian River basin attracted many Hollywood types, Fred MacMurray, Raymond Burr, Irene Dailey all lived in its watershed.)

My personal John Prine favorites were the songs that had recently made the charts. I loved "Paradise," but we all called it " Daddy Won'tcha Take me Back to Muhlenberg County," a song Prine says he wrote for his father. There's some good backstory video on the song here.

When I was a senior in high school in 1969, the town of Paradise, in Muhlenburg County, was drowned by the floodwaters of the Green River when a dam was erected, so barges could get to the Peabody coal fields. All about progress.

BUKOWSKI IN ORANGE

Ever notice how the really orange cats, the ones with the tiger stripes tend to be male? I know, this is supposed to be about the Buk. Bukowski was orange. Nothing to rhyme with that. Savior's a nuisance to live with at home as Joan Baez once said. Not that I lived with him. I was living out of my car at the time. A rusted blue VW Bug. Bukowski was crashing on a friend's couch at a farmhouse by the railroad tracks in Cotati. I was running the poetry center, trying to hide my backstory. Bukowski wanted to lasso a reading but he was always drunk on cheap red wine by 3 PM, and he stank of stale cigarettes. I was recovering from an illness and they called me a China doll, taunting me as they grabbed at me as if in jest because I was pale & wan. Little did they know I was near death's door. Anorexic. An abortion gone south. A river of blood raged in a flood tide. Redredred. The edges of the world closing in. My periphery darkened before the clamping down. And the will to live had something to do with it. But they saw my slender self as desirable. And so they, showing their stripes, grabbed at life, grabbed at me, but I was dead inside. I felt lucky to make it back outside‚ gasping for breath, I doubled over. Puking in the weeds. An orange cat frantically wove his way between my ankles as if to shackle me too. But it was a clear fall day, facing south, the sunshine cradling me. That was before Rohnert Park overran Cotati and there were still vast tracts of adobe fields and blankets of oat hay surrounding the campus. George Rohnert's seed flower beds bloomed in wide ribbons of pink and red. Waiting for the harvest, fields wrapped like a present.

RANDOM NOMADS

RANDOM NOMADS

A painter of hollyhocks

constellations

a treatise of light 

where the laws of departure 

collided with mirrored chaos

 an apricot cloak across the sky 

but a departure of words 

ceaselessly scraping against 

the drama of ink.

Random nomads
A purgatory of treatises
whisper about the pleasures of the heart
a eulogy of delicate pointillism. 

So we have the words
we must shake them out of our heads. 

11/6/2010

Susan Wooldridge workshop

IF I WAS

If I was a container
I would hold the stars closer
If I was a source of light
I would burn at absolute zero
I'd be a constellation of chaos
I would write treatises of surrender
I would be a purgatory of fire
I would whisper an elegy of delicate smoke
against a horizon of bleakness

We need Joycean words to hibernate our shadow souls
Sometimes the words just start writing themselves
Sometimes we're just stuck inside  our own heads.

NICHTALALLOUDI

She was a painter of night-blooming flowers
She made color: apricot, tangerine, cerise

swirling around a dervish of bright pollen.
There was something profound about that act,
the brush spiraling in towards the center like a dancer.
Dawn was a treatise of light, a constellation of fire.
The lake mirrored the feathered cloak of the sky.
It was a departure of worlds, a murmur of words
ceaselessly scraped against a dark drama of ink.
Sometimes the poems just started writing themselves.
She was mesmerized. There was no turning back.

11/6/2010

BALANCE

I am without flagrant words
the family transports 6 million pieces
of angst into every room, the hearth
I am not a bittersweet song of iron tracks
the oncoming train, or stunning constellations
a silver center deep in the mines
or a lone candle by the river
I am the forgotten pointallism
the ears of night listening to blue piano notes
I am the river of singing stones
I am the Apúrimac, while the Andes wept
an ancient glacier of rhythms melting
into dry sobs of the coming summer.

11/6/10

When in Rome freewrite

When in Rome, and… an elipsis following a trail, breadcrumbs for the birds. A trick? When in Rome, the idea is to follow the customs of another culture. The culture of birds following a trail, the trap, or the Trojan horse? The cat, anticipating fresh meat, wiggles her haunches like a track star brandishing her cleats. She waits, anticipates trajectories and potential outcomes. Don't tell me cats can't plan ahead. The successful hunter requires mathematics and timing. The cat is a quantum dancer ... Oh, hell the breadcrumbs have led me astray. I am following a cold trail because Rome wasn't built in a day, nor did it fall in a day either. The system continued on for hundreds of years after the fall with no one at the helm, I might add, sort of like today. The politicians fiddle and burn, and combust at absolute apoplexy. We follow the Spanish customs and then look at what happens. Yeah when in Rome, it never left us. We carried the Capitoline burden into the second millennium without missing a beat. We are our own Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Moors simultaneously tearing down the infrastructure of our civilization well shoring up the bastions of hope. When in Rome, do as you would, and to others. To the other, take those aphorisms and drop kick them over the fence and let them drown in the pond of regret and despair.

11/5/2010 Writers' Group

Gold star voting badge

In response to the prompt of a Facebook badge, I snarled, I voted days ago, OK? And I don't need no stinkin' badge to prove it.

Zana Darrow said: My dad held on to "Bohemian" as a descriptive for a long time. When we settled into the San Anselmo house for his project building BART, he knew we would probably stay for awhile. That we would not be living like bohemians anymore. We had been moving every 2 yrs or so. When I came to WI the summer of 70, I was labled a hippie. Just being from CA got you that, In the 90's the competition called me the hippy realtor.

Ken Bullock said: Bohemian. That one may go back to the Middle Ages ... but it essentially meant living like a student, a protracted adolescence. "Hippie" originally meant a white guy trying to act like a black hipster ... a derisive diminutive.

I said, Ah but you were a svelt young waif in 1970, Zana! No hips at all! It doesn't mean that we didn't absorb some of the hippie lifestyle, we were native northern Californians, and therefore, not hippies—who came from elsewhere—primarily NY or LA by way of NY.

Centa Theresa said: You are kind of a farmer/hippie/bohemian poet type, yet completely unique. Are you sure you didn't grow up in Berkeley?

I replied, Born in SF, and grew up in West Marin with the cows. We were a little too young to be true hippies! I was in high school during the Summer of Love. I wasn't a hippie—wrong income bracket/social class. Poor immigrant family. Irish Victorian era roots.

I just hate this Facebook badge thing. Reminds me of why I didn't like school. I'm like Ferdinand the bull seeing red with all these Facebook badges (in general). I appreciate the sentiment, I hate the concept.

Zana said: I ignore that stuff. I don't trust it. How about a gold star? I am waiting for my daughter to get moving so we can go vote together.

Brownie Mary

Brownie Mary

"My kids [people with AIDS and cancer] need this and I'm ready to go to jail for my principles...I'm not going to cut any deals with them. If I go to jail, I go to jail."

—Brownie Mary

I covered this story for The Western Sonoma County Paper as Brownie Mary was busted in Cazadero (scoring her harvest). I can't find the story so the Wikipedia entry below will have to suffice. (Guess I'll need to write a blog about her—the photos are place holders.) Brownie Mary was a a real kick in the pants and I stayed in touch with her for some time after she won her case. We had Irish heritage in common so we got on like a house afire. She took me on her hospital rounds at San Francisco General Hospital, delivering brownies to her "kids," terminally ill AIDS patients—who (figuratively) lit up when they saw her coming. She had that effect on people. I originally posted the photo of her in remembrance for those who've died, but coincidentally California's medical marijuana bill, Prop 19 is also up for the vote. —MH

Mary Jane Rathbun (December 22, 1921 - April 10, 1999), popularly known as Brownie Mary, was an American hospital volunteer who became internationally known as a medical cannabis activist.   —Wikipedia

Que Sera, Serra: Remembering Tony Serra

Tony Serra took Brownie Mary's case pro bono

Brownie Mary
Born	Mary Jane Rathbun December 23, 1921 Minneapolis, Minnesota
Died	April 10, 1999 (aged 77) Forest Hill, San Francisco, California
Occupation	Hospital volunteer Cannabis activist

Dennis Peron & Brownie Mary

Topaz

Yesterday at an Open House at an escrow service deep in the suburbs, an overcast day, sad drizzle softening our thoughts, we sat around a table, strangers from other worlds nibbling food and drinking wine, while drowsily droning on about this and that, name-dropping, pontificating, exchanging cards—seeking common ground the way folks do at cocktail parties…

And then—wham—with little by way of segue, we were suddenly onto the Holocaust, the WWII American concentration camps of Manzanar, and Topaz with a real Japanese American survivor. I was wide awake. I remember the desolation of Manzanar in the early 1970s before it was sanitized and upgraded into a national historic monument. No apple orchards—bleakness and fine red dust everywhere like pulverized blood.

I visited Manzanar around the time Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's memoir, Farewell to Manzanar was published (1973), but it was before the TV movie was made (1976). I think excerpts of it were printed in the SF Examiner's California Living. I remember meeting Jeanne later, in the early 1980s when I met with James Houston over some poetry matter when he was teaching at the U of Hawaii.

(I once met a Manzanar survivor in the 1980s when (my then boyfriend) John Oliver Simon's mother, Frances Cassandra Kehrlein Adler, was interviewing him for a newspaper—I  was the photographer. Frances was once the Look Magazine staff writer and photographer, and cousin to Ansel Adams, so the pressure was on. But soon I was entranced by his story of survival. I forgot all about taking photos. Someday, I hope to find that story and his name. It is a story that will have to wait its turn. Meanwhile this is a placeholder.)

Eddie reminded me very much of the Manzanar survivor—at first I thought it was him, but as his story began to unfold, I realized he wasn't the same person. Eddie said though he was born in San Francisco, they were given a hour to evacuate. They took only the clothes on their backs. Their new Chevy sold to a neighbor for $5. They lost everything.

As the afternoon stretched into nightfall, we sat transfixed as Eddie recounted the broken fragments of his life. He said of all the internment camps, Topaz, aka The Central Utah Relocation Center, near Delta, four times the size of Manzanar, was the worst. He was separated from his family, never got to know his little brother.

I had recently read Sandra Dallas' novel Tallgrass where a World War II Japanese internment camp called Amache, near Greneda, Colorado, as told through the eyes of a 13-year-old Caucasian girl, is the centerfold of the story. Eddie told us stories of life at camp—similar to Tallgrass—only this wasn't fiction, this was the real deal. Oral history at its best.

Returning to civilization after the war did not improve the plight of foreign-born Japanese Americans. Eddie told us how the foreign-born Japanese weren't allowed to own land and how they had to set up dummy corporations to own land.

(My grandfather helped Indians "buy" farmland in the Central Valley, we had our own Jahn Singh stories of social injustice.)

One place in San Francisco was "bought" by the YMCA for a Japanese American Club, but later, the YMCA decided to "sell off" the clubhouse—a Julia Morgan building. Eddie's brother knew where the bodies were buried, so to speak, himself dying of cancer, he tracked down the documentation, translated the minutes, and with a lawyer, forced an injunction.

Then he mentioned Cecil Williams and how Cecil's wife, Janice Mirikitani read a poem about the internment camp on Angel Island. The hairs rose on my arms, the room stood still. How small the world, how the stories survive us. I was there. I remember that day. Janice reading to us in the basement of Glide Memorial.

On my broken nose

When I broke my nose for the upteenth time, Kaiser wanted to fix it—make it pretty. The surgeon described how he'd sculpt it into a perfect WASP nose and he'd take the little ball off the tip too. Not pretty. I RAN from the hospital. Over my dead body. My deviated septum & I.

My only regret is that it is hard for me to breathe thru my nose—if the doctor hadn't arrogantly suggested that he could give me a perfect little pert pointy nose—I might have done it. I was ABSOLUTELY outraged. 

My poor nose has met so many mishaps. Horse rearing up, a coke bottle, a football tackle, the back of Sue William's head when the toboggan hit a pocket and stopped dead. The cable core rope swing at Devil's Gulch...

Then there was the round galvanized tin chicken feeder with scalloped edges stored up high on a closet shelf that sliced off the side of my nose. You can hardly tell now. Oh, the blood! The blood!

On Sáami Culture

This thread was a rambling Facebook post with a friend on Sáami culture. Not quite a blog, and I'm not quite willing to let go of the information and shape it into a piece. But we uncovered a wealth of information in one thread in our wanderings. Note: not edited!

What the Norwegians (and all of Scandinavia—including Russia) did to destroy Sáami culture is similar to what England did to Irish and Welsh (and Native American) cultures. Neo-colonialism at its worst. Sáami are (Caucasian) First Peoples. ...Their language is Altaic (or Uralic)—not Indo-European.

You have heard one Sáami singer—Joni Mitchell! And Mari Boine is awesome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sápmi_(area)

The Finns are sometimes considered to be a First People who lost much their culture to Christian Sweden with forced conversion in the Middle Ages, but many peripheral cultures willingly accepted Christianity and blending their cultures - until the Church objected.

Tho Sáamii and Fins share a linguistic connection, the Finns don't seem to be a First Peoples. One would have to include Basque into that mix. Linguistically, Finnish is related to the other Baltic-Finnic languages Estonian and Karelian. Genetically, Finns are a homogeneous group with a genetic heritage in common with other European ethnicities. The mtDNA markers of Finnish people do not differ from those of other European ethnicities. Hungarians (87%) and Finns (90%) are definitely closer to Europeans. Lapps/Sáami, by comparison, are 50% European.

Tho, like Sáamii, Finns (aka Fenni, Phinnoi, Finnum, and Skrithfinni / Scridefinnumin in the ancient texts) are present throughout Scandinavia & Russia (Kvens, Tornedalians, Karelians, Veps, Ingrians or Izhorians). A lot of controversy tieing Finns with Lappi/Sáami—which is an old school of anthropological thought,

"it has been suggested that the separation of the Baltic-Finnic and the Sáami languages took place during the 2nd millennium BC, and that the proto-Uralic roots of the entire language group date from about the 6th to the 8th millennium BC." Because there are nine Sáamii dialects—some mutually unintelligible—but related through the dialectic continuum— this suggests an ancient peoples.

There is also oral tradition suggesting the Finns moved into Jutland from the East. They weren't First Peoples in Finland. The original home of Finns "was in west-central Siberia." Or they were from central and northern Europe, moving north after the Ice Age. But even that idea is controversial.

The Finnish word lape, which in this case means 'periphery' could be the origin of Lappi. (The old us vs, them paradigm.) The Sámii were considered heathens, lost from God. You gotta sift thru a LOT of flaming racism when reading about the Sáami...

The nomadic Sáami are the earliest of the contemporary ethnic groups represented in the area, they are consequently considered an indigenous population of the area. Their relative isolation in the Middle Ages protected them from the bubonic plague.

During the 19th c. was when Norway began to stamp out Sáamii culture. "The strongest pressure took place 1900 to 1940, when Norway invested considerable money and effort to wipe out Sáami culture," You couldn't buy or rent land id you didn't speak Norwegian. After years of forced assimilation, Sáamii culture is reviving. The Sáami were recognized as an indigenous people in Norway in 1990.

I had a Lappi friend—she gave me an earful...and studying folklore at UC Berkeley also put this info on my radar...Finns are extremely nationalistic—and invented an epic founding saga Kalevala in the 19th c. (fakelore—from real folklore) so you really have to read carefully there. I'll shut up now.

Nik Gervae  Exhibits at the National Museum of Finland indicated that prehistoric continental or even Scandinavian peoples may have displaced the original Finno-Ugric peoples of south Finland, while adopting their language and culture. That far back, and considering migrations after the Ice Age, I just don't know how to apply the term "First People".

Finnish nationalism stemmed more from their precarious position between Sweden and Russia than their relations with the Sáami, but it's certainly true that the big nationalist revival saved their remaining scraps of folklore from the grave with Elias Lönnrot's and other ethnologists' collection of rune-songs, which are vaguely related to joik. He assembled the wide-ranging set into Kalevala, a coherent narrative that had not previously existed, and Kanteletar, which was all the rest of the material. (Estonia managed a similar preservation/reconstruction with their Kalevipoeg.) It's that culture that nearly got exterminated by European culture, so I'm really not sure how to qualify it relative to Sáami, considering the records we have of prehistory are largely in grave objects and in peoples' genes....

Nick—you've more than covered the basics here—good job! I didn't delve into the Kavelala because that's a whole 'nother can o worms! But there's no stong evidence that Finns and Sáami are from the same peoples—they may have been enemies as the so called Finnish saga suggests. The Finns probably displaced the Sáami—based on linguistics alone!

Romantic Nationalism was central "in post-Enlightenment art and political philosophy. From its earliest stirrings, with their focus on the development of national languages and folklore, and the spiritual value of local customs and traditio...ns, to the movements that would redraw the map of Europe and lead to calls for "self-determination" of nationalities...

the romantic ideal; folklore developed as a romantic nationalist concept. The Brothers Grimm were inspired by Herder's writings to create an idealized collection of tales, which they labeled as authentically German. ...

Romantic nationalism inspired the processes whereby folk epics, retold legends and even fairy tales, published in existing dialects, were combined with a modern syntax to create a "revived" version of a language. Patriots, it was expected, would then learn that language and raise their children speaking that language, as part of a general program to establish a unique identity. "Landsmål", which is the foundation of modern Norwegian, was the first language to follow this program, and it was joined by modern Czech, Slovak, Finnish and later by Hebrew as nationalizing languages. ...

Romantic nationalism is inherently exclusionary, and that, in the 20th century, proved to be a tragic flaw.....

The concept of a "national epic", an extensively mythologized legendary work of poetry of defining importance to a certain nation, is another product of Romantic nationalism. ...

Beowulf, Macphearson's Ossian and the Kalevala...were examples of new national poetry – forged either out of whole cloth, or from cobbling together folk poetry,...

linguistic and cultural nationality, colored with pre-genetic concepts of race, were employed for two rhetorical claims consistently associated with romantic nationalism to this day: claims of primacy and claims of superiority. Primacy is the claimed inalienable right of a culturally and racially defined people..."

(That vein of this thought directly contributed to the "superiority of the Aryan race...")

"The idea was that Germans should "naturally" rule over the lesser peoples. Romantic nationalism, which had begun as a revolt against "foreign" kings and overlords, had come full circle, and was being used to make the case for a "Greater Germany" which would rule over Europe."

In the US it played out as The Frontier, Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny—not our most shining moments.

Nik Gervae Yow. But yes, that's what I was saying, the original inhabitants of southern Finland (purporteded migrated from what is now Spain during the ice age), were displaced northward by another people, blond, fair-skinned.

I've been very curious to  learn more about the creation of Kalevala. There's only one good book I know of in English (Pentikäinen's "Kalevala Mythology")...and my Finnish is nowhere good enough yet.

From what I remember—w/o digging out my (really old!) notes—Kalevala is a modern Romantic construct, understand there were no folklore collection rules yet in place, it was very much a product of 18-19th c mindset, some real folklore was us...ed—but it's definitely a collage, a pastiche. An attempt to create a national literature.

Think it was patterned after Jamie MacPhearspn's equally romantic (read nationalistic) attempt at trying to abscond with Irish sagas, by claiming that the Scottish Oissin was the extant story—earlier by 3 centuries.

Sadly, MacPhearson really did collect some old Gaelic verse—but he bowlderized (and plagiarized) so much of it—and then deliberately destroyed the notes, so nothing can be verified.

Point being—the two sagas were modeled on the same construct. We did not study Estonian version. Don't know if it too is a construct. Nothing wrong with that—but claiming it as a national literature was the real problem. More like Oh look I just happened to find this old mss in a trunk or a cave—when in fact, it was a forgery in MacPhearson's case.

Something about the form in the Kalevala—was a giveaway. Can't remember what. Not an ancient form? Anyway, there's been a LOT of misdirection and bad scholarship around it—and I can see in the Wiki articles, the attempts to ameliorate the contradicting schools of thought. Thus confusing everybody even more. Not just grains, but vast piles of salt are needed while reading about it.

Read it for what it is, but don't assume its veracity. Weirdly, Tolkien was attempting to do something similar—create a national English literature. it is said the Simillaron (sp?) is based on the Kalevala...

That's why I posted all that stuff about Romanticism—you (not you, but one has) have to understand the circumstances that spawned it. Romanticism was in direct (antagonistic) reaction to the Age of Reason—I like to think of it as a collective battle of the psyche of modern man. Sorta like The Bible told me so—stance.

As for translations‚ no clue there. I did read it in translation but don't remember who. I found it challenging to read—probably because it is a collage. But Irish medieval mss was really my thing—and the occasional Icelandic saga-for cross reference. The Kalevala was, along with Ossian, when we were studying fakelore. Everybody was doing it—it was all the rage.

Joseph Jacobs, Wendt, and Yeats fall into that category—it's not to say they didn't collect folklore but they sure "improved" it, thus destroying its integrity. Luckily for the Irish—there were all these very real medieval manuscripts to back it up. I took this cool class where we plowed through stacks of books and looked at them as cultural artifacts of Romantic thought. An interesting way to read.

Re  original inhabitants of southern Finland (purporteded migrated from what is now Spain during the ice age), were displaced northward by another people, blond, fair-skinned.


Yeah, I was just reading a variant of that theory—But the Sáamii (who seem to be older than FInns—linguistically, etc.) are pale (and many are blond) tho their skin color is more golden—perhaps belying their eastern heritage. So don't know ow that all fits in. Don't forget there were fair people in Northern Japan—the Ainu...who may be related. (Japanese tried to obliterate them too...) Another wild school of thought!

Nick—this is what I mean by so much misinformation: "The Sáami people, an indigenous race related to North American Indians and Eskimo tribes, were colonized by the Christian Scandinavians." Fail! See what the idea of First Peoples conjures up? Argh!

HAND TOOLS

HAND TOOLS

There was an old pruning saw
I favored that folded in two
with a wingnut hinge
curved handle and blade
two crescent moons
that hung from a rusty nail
on the wall of the back porch
of my grandmother's house.

The saw curved like a comma
and I could pull down hard
on it with my 12-year-old arms
and cut the slender branches
that threatened to pull me
from the back of my horse.

No one else to do it for me
I made do as best I could.
Like the time the Toby's Feedstore
driver delivered a ton of hay but
dumped it at the bottom of the hill
because he couldn't be bothered stacking it
assuming there was a man about the house
to take care of such ordinary things.

I was faced with hefting hay bales
a tenth of a mile up to the old barn
and the sky spitting, rain was coming.
No matter that it took me most of the summer
babysitting to earn enough money
to buy that ton of shining oat hay
for my old glue factory rescue horse.

I wailed, wiped my nose on my sleeve,
jabbed rusty hayhooks into a bale
and frogmarched it to the barn.
Then another, and another.
It was hard work for a child.
It was the only way I knew how
and I was never going to make it
before the rains came.

My grandmother took pity on me
and together we heaved the bales
into the old wheelbarrow but the path was muddy
so we strung together a series of planks
and wheeled hay up that hill all afternoon.

A passing neighbor saw our plight
an old woman and a slender child
bent over a rusted wheelbarrow
grunting and pushing hay to the barn.
In no time, he hefted the bales up,
safely stacked under the eaves.

Then the rain began to pour in earnest.
We were thankful but I felt betrayed
by my own frailty and inability to manage
such a Sisyphean task. I was grateful
that the rain hid my raging tears.
The old horse, sensing my distress,
sidled over and rubbed her muzzle
across my aching arms, her breath,
small comfort on my cold, wet skin.

10/19/10
Medusa's Kitchen, 2012

THE SOUL TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT

THE SOUL TRUTH, AND NOTHING BUT

One's own real history
is buried beneath layers of detritus
what one carries with them
a passel of old suitcases
bound together
with belts and bungie chords
a portmanteau of the past

Then memory serves up
a variant at will—or not
depending upon the state
of one's mind

This is what we press into hard labor
try & mine it for meaning
and forge connections
into a chain-gang of thought
then swear it's the soul truth
and nothing but.

10/19/10

Goldfish —After Frank O'Hara

Last night I dreamed that I put toy goldfish into my hair product. I have a mane of waist-length hair which requires a certain amount of upkeep to keep it from tying itself into gordian knots. I use Citré shine Anti-Frizz serum.

I am not endorsing a product here. Merely mentioning it so you can imagine a clear oval plastic bottle filled a with viscous fluid. Besides Mandarin orange oil spiked silicone gel, the laminating serum has neat's foot oil in it—before a horse show, I used to put a little neat's foot oil on my horse's mane and tail to keep it silky and flowing.

In the dream, I shook the Citré bottle like a snow globe and I marveled how the fish swam and drifted as if suspended by their own volition in the serum.

Of course, I remembered none of this in the morning—my mind was a total blank slate until after I'd showered, and then I rubbed some hair serum on my hair—wondering what had happened to the goldfish.

Then I thought of Frank O'Hara's poem, Why I Am Not a Painter about a friend's painting called Sardines but it had no sardines in it, and how it made Frank write a poem in 12 parts called Oranges —only with no orange or oranges in it.


Like with the goldfish in the hair serum, it's not about drawing parallels, or internal references, it needed something there. Sometimes a fish is just a fish.

Copy, Right?

UnFckngBelievable—I wrote a long blog on Irish monks rewriting themselves back into Biblical tracts, the Tower of Babel, Pharaoh's daughter Scotia, and baby Moses in the reeds.

I wrote of medieval mss, bowlderization, Ptolemy, Cleo, mercenary Celts in Egypt, history real or otherwise, grains of salt, Alexander the Great, St Paul's letter to those pissy party animals, the Galatians, Paul's poor accomodations in Corinth as he crabbily scribbled his famous letter, mosaic laws, thou shalt not steal, lie, copy those sins of omission. Why the Galatians never wrote back.

I wrote about my own sins of omission. My parish priest, Father Connery at St. Cecelia's Church, Lagunitas. I delved into the persona. Why I was a lapsed Catholic during a time of Women's Rights.


I did an epistolary thing with Dear Reader, I made revisions and and virgin posts.


I invoked the story of the 1st © law, I channled St Columba, & St Fininan, monks burning the midnight oil to copy the psalters but next day St Finnian knew something was up—maybe they put the psalter back askew. 


I had a great segue into Tinsleygate...posted the letters, made connections. I wove knots.

Blogger said Copy, Right? It was saved. Hallelujah, it was saved. Several times over. But it began to hang, then in front of my eyes, it fucking disappeared. The entire post. Blogger's auto-save command lied. it lied.

Like now, it says it's saved. Even gives a reassuring little time stamp, but now I know better, unless you publish it—warts and all, it's not saved. It just says it is.

All that's left of an entire afternoon's frenetic work is the fragment below. All that survived is this wan paragraph that I had simultaneously posted on Facebook as I wrote:

A dispute arose over the ownership of the illegal copy of the psalter. St. Columba and the monks squared off, hitched up their nasty habits up around their waists, threw some ballsy taunts, and had a good go at it with whatever was at hand, rocks, dung, swords—forcing King Diarmait Mac Cerbhaill to intervene with a judgment: "To every cow, its calf, to every book, its copy." First ©opyright. 6th c.

I brought the piece into the 21st century and now it's all gone. Gone. Pfft! Just like that. As if the gods were angry I was invoking such nonsense.

Chilean Miners

When Copiapó Valley miner, Florencio Ávalos broke surface from the penance of his underground dungeon, the collapsed San José copper-gold mine, ten minutes after midnight, Chilean time, everyone cheered and applauded. I couldn't help myself. From another hemisphere, another time zone, I too clapped and cried for The 33.

Los treinta y tres—a fortuitous number in Latin American history—the equivalent of freedom—the 33 liberators of Uruguay, Jesus's age, and his 33 miracles. But this is indeed a story of miracles. Though I suspect Roger Ebert would take umbrage over my fast and loose use of the word miracle or milagro. Mea culpea. And he's right. But I love the sound of miracle in Spanish. Let's just say it was a miracle of technology and tenacious know-how.

I don't have TV & it blows my mind that I can watch in real time this Chilean rescue mission. Amidst a covey of balloons against a backdrop of inkdark lapis Chilean sky, a tinabulation of church bells and the braying of  zuzuzuelas, or Genesis alarms, on CNN, they're saying their minds are blown… All our minds are blown. And it's a full-blown media circus—imagine 2-3000 media hounds at full bay. Though the media is literally being held at bay some 300 feet from the emerging miners, I can hear fragments of nasal American English twang rising over the din. Izzat Larry King?

The first miner to be rescued, "Florencio Ávalos came back to us on the 13th day of the 10th month of the 10th year of the decade —which adds up to 33," President
Sebastián Piñera said. It's also the numerical equivalent of AMEN: 1+13+5+14=33.

Hitching in Marin during late 60s, early 70s

When I was a teenager, I bought my guitar stings from Van Morrison's mother at Caledonia Records in Fairfax.

It was worth the bother to get there as she'd make us a cuppa tea with shortbread. I was round-eyed—she sounded like my grannie but was from the north of Ireland. I looked for horns. We shared a name in common: Violet—but her fingernails and mouth were little scarlet wounds circling her cigarette.

Mr. Morrison, in his tweeds, was sitting on a stool, puffing away on his pipe, smiling at us from afar. Meanwhile one of Van's songs—maybe it was Gloria—was blaring on KFRC's Top Ten. I was learning Pastures of Plenty, and Cottenpicking—they chastizing me for not having a guitar case for such a valuable guitar.

One time she was shop-sitting for a friend at Amazing Grace Music, an old gas station cum music store on a tiny wedge of land between the Miracle Mile (Red Hill Ave.) and San Anselmo Avenue in San Anselmo. It was much farther out of the way for me so I rarely went there, but I had a Martin and I needed some Martin strings.

Mrs. Morrison made Van give me a ride home. Van the Man in the van was not pleased. He was seriously bent out of shape by the request so I was terrified to speak to him. And it was a long ride home held in utter silence. I lived far from town—way out in Forest Knolls, and he lived even farther out in Inverness.

Violet Morrison was a chanteuse in Northern Ireland

There was no bus service out to The Valley so it was either thumb, or shank's mare. Van the Man drove a van. I had no real idea who he was at the time... I was so fecking shy I couldn't talk to him even if I wanted to.

It seems that every rock musician from the 60s moved out to West Marin—sort of a fallout from the Haight. West Marin was invaded by the likes of the Sons of Champlin, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane—to name a few. 

They saw us kids hitching home every day—to us, it was merely an alternate bus service. We didn't think twice that these guys were famous. The road out to The Valley was long and winding, and in those days, people generally stopped for hitchikers.

---

Jesse Colin Young, who also lived in Inverness, was much easier to talk to than Van. He had cute little kids who took swimming lessons with ze French Mrs. Zettl who lived half way up Arroyo Road—so I got a ride almost all the way home from Jesse.

Carlos Santana was silent like Van—absolute mauna. He had a nice Mercedes with fawn leather seats though... One morning, I was still half-asleep, hitching into Drake High School (emphasis at that point was on getting high), Carlos pulled over to offer me a lift.

It was pretty early so Carlos might not have been awake either. He was pulling pretty hard on both his coffee mug and a joint. He looked half-dressed—like he just rolled out of bed. I remember being a little shocked that he wore those baggy string pants. Them string pants were riding dangerously low on Carlito's hips as I recall....

Carlos moved into my friend Lindy Young's place on Tamal Road (right up from Linda Gregg's place—where Jerry Garcia later died) and he had horses too—that was our common ground. I don't remember much else—other than I got to school on time.

Got a ride from decopage artists Larry Fuentes and Dickens Bascom too. Dickens' art car had an entire Remington typewriter that still worked glued to the trunk of his Fort Falcon. The sides and fins were lined with worn out sneaker bottoms—like fish scales. Poetic justice.

My College of Marin classmate David Best copied Dickens Bascom and Larry Fuentes' art-cars and came up with some amazing art-cars of his own—and made a career of it. I loved the flocked chia seed Cadillac punctuated with mirror shards and a water buffalo head hood ornament that he used to park at Micky McGowan's Unknown Museum in Mill Valley.

The Unknown Museum, (founded ca. 1974—but I think it was earlier than that) which closed its doors in 1989, was something to behold with all its repurposed Americana detritus as iconography—the ultimate recycler's wetdream.

David told me that at night the deer came down to graze on the car. Mickey the cobbler had a Fiat stuffed with Disney toys and Barbie dolls.The Fiat didn't run, but David's Caddy did—I sat in it with David and talked until the cows came home, but never got a real ride in it. So I guess it doesn't count. Somewhere I have the slides... fodder for another blog.

Isla Mujeres

Here's an old memory and I don't know if it's even true but I've always associated Lorna Dee Cervantes with Isla Mujeres—don't know why. I remember standing at the dock looking at the ferry longingly‚ we couldn't go for some reason and it was such a siren call. I kept thinking, wait! We made a mistake. That was back in the days with Sweet Old John (Simon) Who Done Me Wrong. Lorna Dee, your name must've come up in conversation. Do you feel like you're living in a Loretta Lynn song with a Yucatan twist?

Fundraiser for Lagunitas Montessori, Point Reyes Sta. (photo)

I was a featured reader for the Lagunitas Montessori School.

2010 Pt. Reyes Fall Festival fun-raiser for the Lagunitas Montessori School—housed in my old alma mater—Lagunitas Elementary School. A one-school district—aka LSD. (LOL—it was the '60s!) 

Jay and Leora's October Fest at the Pt. Reyes Surf Shop with the whole crew from the San Geronimo Valley Montessori program. 

Can't remember this guy's name—but he lives in Dogtown (I think) and we seemed to know everybody in common. Ah, West Marin, my heartland, my anim cara.

added 4/24/2016 

Bantry cousins

Still recovering after partying with the 80-year-olds. Nothing like a small, intimate 4-generation family clan gathering of nearly 50, with cousins from Ireland (many who've never met) plus two birthdays. But we were in Caesar’s and the Italians understand family gatherings. When Neil and Michael broke into O Solo Mio, it was a showstopper. They also entertained the waiters at Ceasar's with Molly Malone. We closed the joint down. After we closed Caesar’s, we headed over to the Sheraton Hotel and had a another gabfest and singalong until 2AM in the Sheraton lounge. I'm both hoarse and deaf.

What was a scream was all the Sheraton customers who wandered in and stuck around to listen to us singing—a real Irish session. Even the bellhops. One guy brought his bottle of wine over from the bar and watched us. Ah but the craic was good. I once said "craic" outside of Irish circles—and the guy thought we were referring to doing heroin! I was gobsmacked.

Funny, though I'd never met  my Irish cousin Teresa before, the minute I saw her, I knew we were related. She looks like my great aunt Peg. Little kids too recognized kin, they were wrapping their arms around any available leg.

We don't have that many family gatherings—usually wedding & funerals. But when we do, everybody makes up for lost time. This was a first in that this particular lot of Irish cousins hadn't ever been to America—and the long "lost" Nevada Walshes hadn't met either of us. So it was a historic event.  We need to actually plan a picnic. We used to do that in the 60s-80s, but too many of the matriarchs died and the families scattered. This reunion was put together at the last minute—with a week's notice. Finding the lost Walshes from the 1930s via the internet (or them finding us) is a new miracle twist.