On iClouds & Motherships

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."  —Steve Jobs (February 24th 1955 – October 5th 2011)

Today's MacWorld Headlines: Apple plans new 'spaceship'-like campus. Pretty shocking. Earth jolting even. This is not to say that the proposed Apple campus isn't cool. It's infinitely cool. I'm rapturously ecstatic. I'm over the moon.

But, speaking of moons, the proposed Apple Campus looks like Frank Lloyd Wright's futuristic Marin Civic Center in the round—perpetually chasing its ourobus-hole. Talk about One Infinite Loop! No straight lines anywhere. Even the glass walls will be curved. I wonder if there's a way to design a building as a Möbius strip, er, trip?

In an accompanying video, it was great seeing the faces of the Cupertino City Councilwo/men light up when Steve Jobs arrived. It was as if royalty, or God, himself, had stepped up the podium.

Someone in the audience bawled out to Jobs: I love you! The audience roared and gave Jobs a standing ovation before he even spoke. Now, The Woz I've had an actual conversation with (AKA the Other Steve), but not Jobs—though I've met him and seen him at MacWorld Expo. Jobs has charisma, no doubt about it.

Mission Control: Jobs jumped right into the fray and announced that the Apple Mothership will land in Cupertino in 2015. The City Council, already on cloud nine, cooed and cheered.

Jobs assured the City Council that there will be plenty of free underground parking. And Peter's Gate will be virtual as most Apple employees will live nearby the company store and will bike to work. And Jobs decreed that there will be twice the amount of trees. Not to mention more taxes for the city coffers. There was even talk of restoring the historic prune and apricot orchards.

No mention of more Apple or Macintosh trees. No iOranges either. It's been a busy two days with Jobs redefining the Mac-iVerse as we knew it. And we haven't even gotten to the Lion or iOS 5 yet! (Joni Mitchell singing: I''ve looked at iClouds from both sides now….)

Jobs said, Lo, today there is iCloud, but alas, there will be no free wi-fi for the masses tomorrow—until I pay no taxes. Cirrusly. No, cumulously. (As the city's biggest taxpayer, Apple is Cupertino's golden cash cow.) And then Jobs said: Nor will there be a Mother AppleStore in Cupertino. The natives will still have to travel to GoogleLandia to buy an iPad. (Menlo Park.)

The godseye courtyard of the Apple Mothershop will double as a collective conscousness circle. No talk of shortcut slinglines across the quad—er, the π shaped courtyard. Or into the neighborhood. Forget monorail—too old school. But strategically placed feeder slinglines (or zip lines) could do wonders for alleviating traffic jams as 12,000 employees try to navigate Apple Central each day.

O brave new world! That has such creatures in it…. I don't know whether I'm Miranda or Caliban in this dream. Jobs is clearly Prospero. In my rather delirious flight of Mac fancy, I can just see Merloch Silvermane, I mean Kim Silverman, a master magician in his own right, wizarding his way across the zócalo on a slingline with his beard and mane flying—going wheee, wheee, wheee all the way home.

Talk about magic afoot and in the air. But then, Kim is from Oz. You know, Downundah. Just don't wear yer kilt on the zip line, mate, or there'll be waaay too much latent semantic mapping coming up in Mac OS XXX.

A herd of eco-green Segways might be heeled in. My friend Dennis and the Other Steve, the Woz used to Segway around town together. I don't know where that leaves my best friend's son, Teo Carr—still commuting, old school, via the bio-bus feeder line because SF's—a long way to Segway, I know.

The zip/sling lines could double as tin can iPhones if there's ever a power outage. Maybe Teo will get a new job description as Tin Can iPhone developer. Or maybe the slinglines could double as the world's largest Les Paul guitar. (And then the Möbius Trip Band played Stairway to Heaven).

Jobs told City Council members that no stinkin' power outages and brownouts are gonna happen on his watch. No siree! The self-sufficient eco- Mothershop will run off the grid. No mention of solar panels or wind turbines—though, just natural gas.

Hmmm. Maybe it was yesterday's solar flare acting up. According to the law of thermodynamics, I'm sure there'll be enough hot air generated for the Mothership to harvest a steady source of perpetual energy.

Jobs has been one busy man. He may have stepped down as Apple's CEO in January, but he's clearly still at the helm—I mean—bridge. He just announced iCloud computing at the WWDC, that everything will be transmitted via wi-fi or 3G. No more tethering oneself to desktop computers. No more desktop computers. The new theme song will be: I feel it in my fingers. I feel it in my toes. The iCloud is all around us, can you feel it glow?

(Miss Monday's Apple keynote? Behold, "WWDC 2011: The Musical" )

And then Jobs said: “We’re going to demote the PC and the Mac to be just a device—just like an iPad, an iPhone or an iPod Touch. We’re going to move the hub of your digital life to the cloud.” We've come a long way from the "interpersonal" computer, Steve.

According to Jobs, the virtual iMothership has already left the Moscone building & is floating above us in the great iCloud in the sky. Holy flying Elvises! Cirrusly out of the stratosphere. My MobileMe account—which dates back to the paleo-days of iTools, will be extended until July of 2012. After that? Pfft! It goes up in smoke.

There will be unlimited iStorage in the iCloud but I might have to sell my soul to the devil at the crossroads if I want to take my iMedia with me. No takebacks. Aye, aiii, aiii. Where's that Les Paul online guitar Googledoodle when I need it? I've got that synching feeling the network is the computer of the future and the future is happening right about…now.

This transition will take at most two hardware generations and we’re talking mobile generations, which means three years, total. —I, Cringely

How fast does news travel? At the speed of thought. Within days of its nebulous birth, the iCloud had its own entry in Wikipedia. Holy moly. And the iCloud was only released on Monday. And then, on Tuesday, Apple Starship Central was launched. it looks like God has some good online help in tech development. Clearly, God also uses an iPad. And has unlimited access to the 3G Trinity network. And on the seventh day S/He kicked back and watched PixarFlix on the iPad.

Correction: That would be Yaweh. Yaweh just tweeted that S/He uses an I Am that I amPad, not an iPad as was previously reported. And S/He wanted to clarify that there is plenty of free wi-fi iReception in the iCloud. No need for 3G. But thanks for invoking the Trinity. Muchly appreciated.

I've hauled an old dead iLamp out of the closet (that half-Wilson volleyball iMac); it's in bits & pieces on the living room floor. I'm trying to reincarnate it back into life and turn it into a headless Lazarus server—as the iLamp screen really is dead... it should be ready in time to commune with the great iMothership in the sky in July.

Yaweh also tweeted from Her/His iPad 3.0, something about a new release date for iRapture 1.2a. Apparently there was a bug or a Trojan horse in the software. We couldn't quite make heads or tails out the virtual, or carbon-based data recall date. But I'm sure there's an app in the works for that.

We did learn, however, that the road to heaven is not paved with indentations of old floppy disks, as was previously thought, but with shiny rainbow -hued DVDs—as they will no longer be needed to back up data. Hard drives are another story.

However, we are happy to report that iOS 5 will untether all handheld iDevices with a new virtual cloud clipboard. Hard- and software will be one thing. There will no longer be a division between heaven and earth. Everything will always be backed up.

Wait, that didn't come out right. I feel like I'm channeling The Macalope. There's been a sarcastic void ever since The Macalope, full of sound and furry, crossed over to Pay-Per-View.

Speaking of effluent, in OSX: AKA The Lion. there will no longer be a "Save" command in the kitty litter box. Everything will be auto-saved under the Lion's throne. Forget about Exposé and Spaces. There will be no scroll bars either. Only a light swipe on the touchpad will be needed. It comes down to a swipe and a pinch. No longer will the mice play. The big cat is here to stay. And there really will be a Mission Control. Really, really. Get ready for blastoff in July. Into the cloud. Pinch me awake, please.

Talk about walking on the moon. Cloud computing is one big step for wo/mankind. We're just getting used to the idea of global village and now we've got global skies? The sunspot's acting up again. Think of all those old Jackie Gleason reruns gliding past Alpha Centaurii. All that free range data above us is gonna clutter up the clouds and create a traffic jam all the way to Orion's Nebula.

As to the future of Microsoft? Yaweh was reported to have mooned the software behemoth while mumbling: We don't need no stinkin' blue screen of death. Let 'em eat prunes. Clearly, S/He doesn't do Windows either. What a peach! Um, orange?

Jobs has been one busy man. In just two days, Jobs has rocked the world—make that: clouds. I wonder what news tomorrow will bring. Think different. Indeed, what a long and strange trip its been.

Segue to Yaweh's iAmPhone. Jobs is on Line One. Will you hold? Muzak segue: This is the dawning of the Age of iCloud, Age of iCloud, Age of iCloud, ohhh. Fade to Stairway to Heaven. (Although some might deem The Godfather theme more appropriate. )

House lights, please. I'm afraid to wake up in case it was all only a dream. Of course, none of us expected that he’d be gone within three months, this was his final legacy.

Lloyd Reynolds' Calligraphic Legacy

Lloyd Reynolds by Henk Pander, cover of Encore (Jan 1978)

About the time I began writing poetry in the late 1970s, I studied calligraphy with Sonoma State University French professor, Adele Friedman, who was a student and friend of Georgianna Greenwood; both were students of master calligrapher Lloyd Reynolds.

So depending upon how you want to count, I am within one or two degrees of separation from both Lloyd Reynolds and Steve Jobs.

At the time, I didn't have a typewriter, so I hand-calligraphed all my poems in a sort of Japanese "running grass" style Italic chancery cursive script for David Bromige's poetry classes. He seemed to like that—and told me it was a Reed College tradition: Philip Whalen, Lew Welch, Gary Snyder, etc., (all of whom I had met, so I was in good company.)

Calligraphy, a Greek word, literally means "beautiful writing." Beautiful, my handwriting was not—it was really awful and disjointed (I'm dyslexic). I hated writing, but after I studied calligraphy for a year, my handwriting dramatically improved. So did my brain. Calligraphy is much more than the sum of its parts: not only is it the art of fine penmanship, it is a state of being.

I never intended to become a scribe. Calligraphy and poetry honed my critical thinking skills and allowed me a visual workaround to combat the dyslexic roadblocks and labyrinths that had plagued me all my life. It was a major miracle that I even made it to junior college, let alone, earn a BA in Art—with a side order in poetry.

The introduction of Apple and Mac computers allowed me to write. The technology unlocked the doors of my convoluted brain. I taught myself how to write on an old Apple IIc with floppy disks. I began small, with poetry, and then branched out to write newspaper stories, and grants—which led to my life's work, teaching poetry and art to kids in the schools.

One of my first artist in residency jobs was at Healdsburg Elementary School teaching RSP/Learning Disabled kids how to write calligraphy (and poetry)—when all else had failed them. I redesigned my approach to the letters, and made up stories about them so the kids could really see the shapes as shapes—not letters. We flourished. Kids wrote poetry and their handwriting and reading skills improved.

During this time, The Calligraphy of Lloyd J. Reynolds was my Bible. I found a battered copy of the rare, o.o.p. book and it was the most money I'd ever spent on a used book.

Letters have fascinated me ever since I found their power and beauty when I was five years old.  I learned to read.  I was always drawing and letters were a favorite subject. —Lloyd Reynolds, Autobiographical Notes

When Lloyd Reynolds (1902-1978), a poet who taught at Reed College for 40 years (1949-1984—the year the Mac was invented), first discovered calligraphy in 1934, he said "The letters would not leave me alone…."

It was like "a bolt of lightning," he wrote: "It seemed perfectly obvious—the only logical approach is the historical one. Learn to cut reed and quill pens and write your way through the history of the alphabet!" Lloyd spent the next few years studying paleography. Connect the dots. (Autobiographical Notes).

[Lloyd] He respected students, and he added joy to the skill. Legibility, communication, clarity, and respect for others—all these were tenets in the religion of Lloyd Reynolds and calligraphy. You got as much from who he was as from what he was teaching, and that’s the talent of a great teacher. —Georgianna Greenwood (Reed, ’60)

In 1972, Lloyd Reynolds was honored as Calligrapher Laureate of Oregon‚ the first title ever bestowed in the nation. Reynolds, who revived the art of calligraphy in the West, saw it as a means to work one's way back into the origins of literature. A gateway to history.

It was also very Zen. One had to approach the blank page with a meditative approach. The mind had to be stilled. It was a true Vulcan body - mind meld. There was no room for hesitation or false starts.

I had to wipe my mind clean: in that state of mind, I could recognize the letters I needed to write, but I couldn't say what the word was nor could I spell it. If someone talked to me, I immediately made a mistake—I misspelled the word—or added the words they said—usually a noun. Wherever my mind went while I was calligraphing was not of this world—it was a tranquil white place of suspended time.

During the late 1970s and early 80s, I became the resident calligrapher / sign painter at Sonoma State University. I traded in my steel pen nibs to dance with fat greengrocer felt paint brushes, I pushed the art form into large format. My ephemeral signs and banners on butcher paper graced every corner of the campus.

I made signs for The Student Union, the InterCultural Center, Peter Scarlet's Sonoma Film Institute, and campus events including backdrops for Pete Seeger, Daniel Berrigan, The Jewish Oral History Project, Westwind, The Dead Kennedys, James Burke, etc. Many performing artists who visited SSU, took my banners home with them.

I also did some freelance calligraphy (I called my business Calligrafix). I made wedding invitations, obituaries, cards, menus, programs, tickets, etc. All our posters and broadsides for The Russian River Writers' Guild were hand-calligraphed as getting anything professionally photo-typeset on a huge Compugraphic machine the size of a VW bus—was prohibitively expensive. Hot lead press typography was still in use. Desktop publishing was still a nascent glimmer in Steve Jobs' eye.

About the time I gave up my IBM Selectric typewriter with its daisywheel fonts, is when I quit doing calligraphy. I began to use the Apple and the Mac (and a Laserwriter) with multiple typefaces and proportionally spaced fonts. The desktop publishing revolution had begun.

This post is a funny circle back to Tim Girvin's blog about his connection with Steve Jobs, and Jobs' connection with Lloyd Reynolds and the evolution of the Mac's superb typographic legacy. Reynolds is really the godfather of desktop publishing.

I guess I unconsciously recognized Lloyd Reynold's long-reaching influence on the art of lettering and typography even on the Mac. Steve Jobs stated, "If I had never dropped in on that single course [and audited] in [Reed] college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts."

Interesting to note that Tim Girvin's own chancery examples look a lot like Georgiana's work. Lloyd had a strong influence. A distinctive style imprinted upon so many of us—even those of us once and twice removed from the source.

Even Joan Baez kept my calligraphy sign.

Lloyd Reynolds

Note Bene: This blog entry is in response to an interesting calligraphy link posted by Oregon poet Jim Carmin, whose day job is an antiquarian rare book collector and manuscript wrangler for the John Wilson Special Collections at the Multnomah Library. @JimCarmin tweeted: GIRVIN: Steve Jobs, Calligraphy, Lloyd Reynolds and Reed College. Check it out.

SOME LINKS AND CLIPS:
Italic Calligraphy and Handwriting with Lloyd Reynolds
Lloyd Reynolds: Italic Calligraphy

Lloyd J. Reynolds Biography
The Dance of the Pen
'Lloyd Reynolds: A Life of Forms in Art,' on view at Reed College

Steve Jobs Stanford Commemoration speech 2005

My links:
Calligraphy doodles (art)
see also my early calligraphed poems from 1978, 79... (uneven work—some were drafts, and some were silly poems)

New Grass, the 2010 CPITS anthology

The 2010 California Poets in the Schools anthology, New Grass, from the Science & Spirit Symposium at the Institute of Noetic Science has arrived! Thank you Arthur Dawson and Phyllis Meshelaum for editing this anthology.
(Photos by yours truly). 
A link to my poem, Mommae.

The Grapevine, near Gorman (photo)

The Grapevine, near Gorman, on Memorial Day, 2011. The hills were still green when we crossed Tejon Pass the week before. Summer heat settled in with a vengeance and on the return trip, the hills were like tawny beasts. Too soon. This also marks the beginning of a drought cycle. We went to Antelope Valley, and all the poppies were on strike.

Drive by Shooting

Highway 128 © Maureen Hurley photo

When I travel to Bay Area schools to teach art & poetry, I spend a lot of time on the road, so I started a US Highway 101 drive-by photo shoot collection, but I also took pix on the backroads. This is on Highway 128 in Alexander Valley, by Jimtown Store, near the school.

Over the years, I've created my own digital virtual auto F-stop club. :-) My only rule: the car has to be moving. No pulling over to frame the shot. There's at least a 3-second lag between what I see as the photo, and when the camera records—because we're moving about a mile a minute. So I have to pre-guess as to when the best shot is—or, rather—will be. Knowing the road, and anticipating where the best shots will be, helps. Clean windows also helps. It keeps my mind well-honed and in racer shape—no soduku for me!

I am interested in the accidental distortions, blurring, color breaks, etc. I particularly like the painterly aspect of these digital shots. Shots into the light. Into shadow. Notice how the foreground is blurred and the sign has nearly disappeared because of the low shutter speed, yet the barn and vineyard are still in focus because I've used the landscape setting to increase a sharp long depth of field.

Highway 128 © Maureen Hurley photo

These photos are unretouched, other than cropping them. I shoot large and crop all my photos—if only to reduce the file size. I'm far too impatient to wait and frame photos with the zoom, it takes far too long, and you lose the picture. I'm interested in zooming in on that fleeting split-second when the eye sees something as art.

In fact, the digital camera is a poor substitute for what my eye really sees. It's always taking pictures. I'm definitely left-eyed when it comes to composition. Besides, I've not the luxury of time to zoom in on something.

A trick I learned while in Lima, Peru in the early 1980s, was to take photos without looking through my camera lens. When the army invaded the capital, with tanks and guns, I wanted to document what was happening, but I didn't want to be "disappeared" so I learned to shoot blind—sans viewfinder.

This was during the pre autofocus cameradays—so I had to guess F stop, depth of field and focus without raising the Pentax K-1000 to my face. My arm became an extension of my eye. I don't need to use the viewfinder.

Highway 128 © Maureen Hurley photo

My camera is an extension of myself. Another eye to render the world into form and light. One time I didn't have a camera on me, so I used my MacBook to capture a rainbow over Santa Rosa. There was a huge time lag between finger and shutter. Very accidental as to when and where the photo was taken. And very low resolution. So they are more like iPhone shots than anything else.

Highway 128 © Maureen Hurley I like the way this leans left.

I now use Nikon P-60s. I have two of them. Er, make that "I had…" At the end of one residency in April, a kindergartner gave me a great thigh hug for teaching her to make art—just as I was documenting their final art project—self portraits. And the LED cracked on the 2nd camera as I was carting toys in a drawing class at Alexander Valley school. Two dead cameras in two months. Ouch! The photo above was with my cheap nameless brand camera from China. It took amazing, if noisy, photos.

I can still use the Plan B Nikon via the viewfinder. But the other one has trouble focusing as the lens took a good hit on a cement floor. I am SO completely underwhelmed by the replacement Nikon L110. My first Coolpix L14 (7.1 MP) camera was far superior to this overinflated ego of a camera. Lack of saturation and inability to focus, for starters. But it was cheap. I mourn the loss of my cameras. Like missing a part of my eye.

Highway 128 © Maureen Hurley Despite the lack of light, it's in focus!

Marin's Pastures of Plenty

Heifers resting by the creek, George Lucas' Big Rock Ranch, Marin County, northern California. All these photos are © 2010 by Maureen Hurley and may not be used without express written permission from her. Please respect copyright.

There's a great SF Gate Inside Scoop blog by celebrated executive chef/restauranteur Hoss Zaré at Flytrap, who interviewed Straus Family Creamery owner, Albert Straus. Albert who once told me that majored in ice cream at Cal-Poly, has revolutionized the organic dairy industry. I remember Albert's mother, tiny Ellen Straus, made the best strawberry shortcake in the world. Ellen was also co-founder of the first agricultural land trust in the nation, the Marin Agricultural Land Trust.

(See the history of MALT at YouTube.)

During the late 1970s to the early 1990s, we made an annual party trek to the Straus farm, Blake's Landing Farm on Tomales Bay, to bring on the Autumn Equinox. My cousin and I made wild huckleberry ice cream with Albert's fresh cream in an old wooden ice cream paddle churn—with all the kids madly cranking away.

We shucked oysters and barbecued salmon, bratwurst, corn and tofu on the metal water trough-cum-grill. We visited the creamery, we petted the cows and fed the calves. We danced in the barn and raised the rafters. But the piece de resistance was always Ellen's strawberry shortcake piled high as the Matterhorn with fresh whipped cream.

So it was with delight that I read Hoss's fine interview with Albert. But it also got me thinking on how much has changed in Marin since I was a child—once dairying was an important part of Marin's culture and identity. Where did it all go? Suburbs, parking lots and malls. Like how it goes in the Janice Ian song: pave paradise, put up a parking lot. If not for Ellen Straus.

Summer Camp

As a kid growing up in West Marin in the 1950s & 60s, I lived in a place where we never went to camp but kids from all over the US came to camp where we lived.

It was an uneasy mix as the Forest Farm summer campers were from the land of faraway (mostly the eastern seaboard—NY) and they had no notion they were guests in our land—they weren't nice to the natives. Nor was Old Man Gregg.

Camp counselors and campers hailed from the far reaches of the known world and descended upon Forest Farm Summer Camp each June, founded in 1944 by the Greggs. They may as well have been Martians.

The official story goes that the Greggs welcomed everyone—they built their own pool when a Chinese counselor was told she couldn't swim at the Woodacre Improvement Club. But we local kids were never invited to swim at the Woodacre Improvement Club or in the Gregg pool. Ever. No matter how much we drooled. Funny how that goes.

Somebody At Forest Farm Summer Camp must've had a sense of humor: SAN RAFAEL. Calif. (AP) —A sign posted recently on the office door at the Forest Farms Camp by owner Harold Gregg reads, please keep door closed so bird won't eat our cat." The bird is a turkey vulture. (Miami Herald/Lewiston Evening Journal/The Evening Independent, etc., July 26, 27, 1965). 

 I actually do vaguely remember the sign. Only I didn't get the joke at the time.

The FBI was interested in the Greggs for suspicious activities, but then anyone who moved to Marin and Sonoma from Hollywood or New York was under investigation during the paranoid era of McCarthyism—including my best friend Stephanie's mother, Johanna Stone, a former Russian translator for the UN.

Mrs. Gregg was OK—she was a former teacher who was originally from Petaluma, so she was nicer to the local kids than her husband, Harold. I believe cookies may have been involved.

Harold Gregg, a New Englander, dressed in plaid shirts, thin and dour as they come, taunted Jack Gilbert when his daughter Linda brought him home. The apocryphal story goes: Old Man Gregg said Jack wasn't a real man, but a sissy poet.

Jack got his macho out and shimmied up a Doug fir to fell it with a chainsaw. Something went horribly wrong—the tree split in the middle and Jack came plunging to earth like a sad soft Icarus.

Linda Gregg ran off to Greece to care for Jack Gilbert whose wings were forever clipped. He was sentenced to the wheelchair—and she became a famous poet. Most people know Forest Farm Camp as Serenity Acres—the rehab place where Jerry Garcia died. But that was long after Harold died.

Forest Farm Camp was a commune before that. One of my high school classmate ran away from home and lived there in the 1970s when Claire and Jim Felson owned it from 1966 to 1976. She later told us wild stories of musicians who lived there and even wilder parties. Chalk it up to the times we lived in.

Mrs. Barbano—who also ran Barbano's Lagunitas summer camp on Arroyo Road, just down the hill from the Greggs, opened up her pool for swimming lessons—that's where I learned to swim at the ripe old age of ten. Old Man Barbano's daughter was killed in a car accident in Mexico. He wasn't right in the head after that.

Old Man Barbano gave up the summer camp business and rented the dorms out to musicians including Big Brother and the Holding Company. Yes, Janis Joplin. When the grief got to be too much for him, he shot himself in the head. We were walking home from high school when they brought the gurney out. It was the first time I saw a dead man. But not the last.

There were other camps in the San Geronimo Valley but I don't know their names. Perhaps someone else will remember the stories of the summer camps. The transient folk. Certainly people came in droves from the Bay Area to Camp Taylor ever since the turn of the 19th century. Some families camped out all summer long along the banks of Papermill Creek and Devil's Gulch. Research fodder for another blogeen.

Chevron-Texaco is our BP

It seems that post -Rapture hangover has politicized me today. Most of these recent posts are Facebook inspired ramblings, I decided not to let them sink back into the void and see if there was enough material to suffice a blog post. Andrew Sullivan had an interesting blog on post-internet writing. It seems I too am caught up in the midst of that revolution. Maybe I will expand this memory into a full-blown blog. So this is a placeholder with an action item. Please do sign the petition.

In the early 1980s, in a Quito restaurant, I overheard Texaco American oilmen casually discussing the refineries and pipelines—and devastation to the Amazon rain forest as mere collateral damage—and thinking nothing of it. The image haunted me...

I am glad the scandal is finally out in the open, the devastation Chevron-Texaco has deliberately done to Ecuador is horrific.

Chevron-Texaco is our BP. On the quasi-anniversary of the BP Gulf spill, as marine life is washing up dead all over the Caribbean, know that Texaco and other oil companies have been destroying large swaths of the Amazon Basin for 30 years. Please visit the link below and then sign the petition.



Tell Chevron to Clean Up Ecuador Now!  

See this open letter to the United States from the communities in Ecuador devastated by oil giant Chevron's contamination. Then, sign the petition.

HR Bill 1891 to cut Arts Education

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) is calling for the termination of 43 education programs at the U.S. Department of Education, including arts education.  (H.R. 1891)  This bill is more serious than the annual funding measures that threaten to de-fund arts education, as HR 1891 would permanently strip policy language out of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) that allows the Arts in Education program to be funded each year.  Contact your Member of Congress to register your opposition to this legislation and let them know the importance of arts education to students and the critical role this program has had in supporting arts education throughout the country. 

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

Due to so many drastic cutbacks and a misguided move towards teaching students to pass standardized testing, rather than educating them—our schools are failing miserably to educate our youth and oftentimes art is the only resource that keeps students engaged and learning.

The arts open doors of learning and are crucial in the development of critical thinking skills. Art is a bridge, a crossover tool—especially for the sciences. Cripple the arts, and cripple all forms of learning. Art is integral to all learning styles and multiple intelligences.

The Arts in Education program is the ONLY source of dedicated federal education funding to support arts education, a core academic subject of learning proven to improve schools, teaching, and student success in school, work, and life.

The arts have too often been shoved to the margins when our schools need them most. Don't let HR 1891 further narrow the educational opportunities of our nation's students. Protect the Arts in Education program.

Maureen Hurley

Cab Calloway

Cab Calloway was one cool hep cat! I remember watching the old black and white movies when I was a kid, and when Cab Calloway did his heidi heidi hei/heidi ho thing—I was positively mesmerized. Calloway was truly the king of scat singing.

Cab Calloway was also way ahead of his time. He produced the first music videos decades before MTV. I always associated ‎Cab with Betty Boop. I loved how the old black and white cartoons had real music scores: jazz, stride piano—you name it. We got a music education without knowing it.

Yep, Cab was one cool hep s-cat cat. Check out  We The Cats Will Hep Ya - Cab Calloway Band from Sensations Of 1945. I wonder what ever happened to the groovin' kid? Elucidate. Elucidate. I love the long coattails.

Amazingly, Cab Calloway, who was born on Christmas Day, in 1907, didn't let old age get in the way. He continued to perform the nightclub circuit until his death in November of 1994 at the age of 86. He was one hep cat alright.


Speaking of scat singing, when I was working for the West Sonoma County Paper, I spent a memorable evening in the 1980s or early 1990s with the incomparable Scatman Crothers at a Guerneville Diner (River Inn?) next to the River Theater.

I don't remember why he was in town. Before that night I had never heard of him. Man, the stories he told—we were riveted to the booth until way past closing—3 AM. The waitress closed up around us, but the Scatman was on a roll. And she had the good sense not to mess with that.

My friend and neighbor, Jonathan London had a groovy poem, Hep Cat, he was working on. (Was he with us that night in Guerneville?) Around the time Scatman blew outa town, Jonathan got a nibble from the big publishers who liked Hep Cat, and could he turn it into a children's book? Suddenly hep was in. And so was Jonathan riding high on a long coattail wind. Elucidate. Elucidate, indeed. hep-hep-hurray. He gave me signed copies. I wonder where those books are now?

Gonna have to dig up that old story and post it. Yepppety beebop, ba beebop yeah.

Post Rapture Hotline

Thank you for calling Family Radio's Post Rapture Hotline: If you would like to report a Rapture, please press 1. If you would like to report an earthquake, please press 2. If you would like to report zombie sightings, please press 3. If you are calling to ask Harold Camping for an apology and a refund of any donations you made for post Rapture bliss, please stay on the line and someone will assist you as soon as hell freezes over...

Well, there weren't any earthquakes, but there was a volcanic eruption!

Maureen Carden wrote: The Rapture happened; we just misunderstood. I can't find my sunglasses or my camera or several other objects that I know were right here in this house. Obviously they were raptured.

It's a wrap.

WCW poem Knockoffs

THE WHITE TOILET

so much depends
upon

a cat litter
box

filled with pine
shavings

beside the white
toilet.


THE HAWTHORNE TREE IN FULL BLOOM

Under

thick 

felt 

sheets 

down 

quilts 

thunder 

clouds 

tease 

cold
white
spring 

mid-May




BETWEEN STALLS

the back doors
of the

old stable where
nothing else

will grow blooms
a dungheap

where steam
rises in full

dressage of white
tule fog

Sutton & Tristano

I stumbled upon a Facebook thread by a Lagunitas School classmate, Kevin McConnell, who posted a link to Pete Sutton's dad, Ralph Sutton. I'd totally forgotten that Ralph, who tickled a mean Maple Leaf Rag in his time, played some of his famous stride piano compositions at a school assembly concert when we were all very young. But after Kevin posted it, minute fragments drifted back from the imperfectly shelved memories of childhood.

What I did remember, was, being surprised to hear such a complex arrangement of chords and cartoon music churning out of the cranky old school piano. Magic music from a strange man dressed in a gray suit who looked more like a school principal (or maybe Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman) than a famous jazz musician. Kevin said that the jazz concert inspired him to become a musician. Me, not so much.

And the vague memory fragment of that concert goes a long way in explaining why my classmate Pete Sutton's best friend, Steve Tristano, was standing on the piano bench banging out a rollicking Boogie-Woogie on the piano at recess. We were all rockin' out. That music was so radically different than the somber proscribed chords of the  America, the Beautiful. The teacher, hearing the infernal ruckus, came bursting into the classroom, apoplectic. We were all so busted.

From this incident, I learned that certain types of music was forbidden, therefore delicious. I also feared our 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Burge, was going to have heart failure right in front of us. I'd never seen such a show of emotion from our right-proper 50s school-marm teacher.

There was always a lot of counterculture going on in the San Geronimo Valley in the late 1950s, and early 60s. But we were so young and we knew no other life—living out so far from the towns and the growing suburbs. Many famous musicians and artists and writers took refuge in The Valley as the Marin Beat scene havens, including Mill Valley and the former fishing village of Sausalito, were beginning to erode into the effluent of mainstream acceptability.

Steve was born with his musical talent. Our 2nd grade Boogie-Woogie champ was the son of another famous jazz musician, Lennie Tristano. But great jazz musicians were also absenteé fathers—always on the road—or more notably playing the clubs in New York, where the real action was.

So to see Ralph Sutton was unusual as it was to see the blind piano player, Lennie Tristano. People often lumped Sutton & Tristano's names together, and said that they were famous jazz musicians in New York. But in retrospect, I can't imagine such a synthesis as they were both such very different musicians.

A bit of San Geronimo Valley apocrypha: Scott Joplin (with whom I share a birthdate) was said to have visited the Valley in the 1890s, and allegedly wrote Maple Leaf Rag at Frank "Speck" McAuliffe's bar in Lagunitas.

Don't know if there's any truth to the story—other than countless would-be ragtime piano players have banged out that archetypal ragtime hottie on every available piano in the Valley. But chances are pretty good Scott Joplin hammered out a rendition of it at Speck's. What was the bar called before Speck McAuliffe bought the place since this was before his time—Lagunitas Tavern & Livery?

Before you go, Whoa there, Nellie! Teddy Roosevelt had a cabin in Lagunitas—Argentina House—and used to water at the Lagunitas trough when he got all hot and bothered. And Joplin was no stranger to The Valley. (Nor were José Revere (Paul's kin), or Alexander Graham Bell—who set up the first telephone in the Dollar barn on Dickson Ranch.)

Teddy Roosevelt liked The Valley for its wildness and isolation. He famously exclaimed, "When I am in California, I am not in the West, I am west of the West."

Another Boogie-Woogied classmate, Adair (Lara) Daley once dubbed The Valley in her SF Chronicle column as The Valley that Time Forgot. Growing up in West Marin, we were all so far west of the west, we met ourselves coming and going. Often shunned by the townies, we were our own universe.

RIP Harry Roche

RIP Lagunitas Elementary School teacher and principal, Harry Roche, born January 28, 1923 in San Francisco; died Jan 4 2011 in Roseville, CA. He is survived by wife Lorraine, son Steve, daughter Laura. He was 88. 

Read more here:

Harry Roche, the Coach, who threw chalk and erasers at us when we didn't get the right answer in math or English. I was terrified of him. I didn't dare open my mouth even when I knew the answer—which wasn't very often. Somehow I survived eighth grade and graduated.

Prince Hal was a dark avenging angel. The tennis pro with a wicked eraser throw.  Tall, tan and blond with white eyelashes—Harry was always disappointed in us. My next math teacher was also an athlete but he was benevolence and light. Poor Archie Williams inherited me, a frazzled, dyslexic under-achieving student, in his Foundations of Algebra class at Sir Francis Drake High School in San Anselmo, CA.

After Harry Roche, the Coach, I was a bundle of raw nerves. I was a young horse afraid of the shadow of the wind. Archie may have been an Olympic Gold medalist, but there was no victory gold in it for me. No math ever took root.

But Archie's stories were a lasting legacy. The way he ran the 440 in the Olympics—inspired us. His running mate was Jesse Owens. How they were the first Black men to receive Olympic medals—from Hitler!

I ran headlong from math. I hardly knew who Hitler was, but I knew the cool weight of the gold medal. Kathy Briones and I broke the school girl's track record running the 660 in under 2 minutes. But it was unofficial and so it didn't count, said Miss Scott. She thought we cheated. But we didn't. I couldn't walk for a week afterwards, I was so hamstrung.

Once we were helping Archie clean the chalkboard, we took the big chalk erasers and "wrote" obscenities on the side of the school wall. Archie was cool, he was all for free speech. But he said we needed to remove it because the principal didn't understand such things. 

Dust in the wind.

"Olympic Pride, American Prejudice" documentary includes Archie WIlliams

Class of 1970

NOTE BENE: I don't think I'm quite ready to take on this post yet. Still gathering info. If you want to follow some of the threads on Facebook, go to Sir Francis Drake High School Alumni page. It stared as an innocuous question on my part and has been gathering momentum as people add their memories. By right it should be handled as an oral history project.


Apparently we were the most politically motivated class (of 1970) at Sir Francis Drake High School. We were the first high school in the nation to shut down a draft board. Apparently we also made the 6 O'Clock news and a mention in Time Magazine too—but I never saw it. None of the other high schools were marching or staging sit-ins at their local draft boards. We were DEFINITELY the odd ones.

The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was in 1965—we knew who Mario Savio was. The political activism wasn't just to get out of class. We began protest marching in earnest in 1968-9. In retrospect, classmates must've had older siblings at Berkeley. Ken Bullock reminded me that Jared Rossman was our class president in 67, his older brother, Michael Rossman was one of the FSM organizers w/ Savio. No wonder we were such gung-ho activists. I do remember a Jared giving an incendiary class speech.

When I asked why we were such firebrands, Ken Bullock said: There were constant discussions in the classroom—Duane Miller's, in particular, but not the only one. And in off-campus groups like Vietnam Summer ... But a couple years before, the biggest single contingent to join the Selma March came from the Seminary in San Anselmo. I remember the day their bus left, with news, I think, of the Viola Liuzzo murder near Selma.

Holy shit!

Linda Brown commented: I went with Jared, Michael, Lisa, Mrs. Houck to one of the first anti-war marches at Berkeley. I think that Michael actually was arrested. Mario went on to be a professor (math) at Sonoma State. Mrs. Houck (than Ms. Bagley) was one of the original writers for the Berkeley Barb when it was still an underground paper. My brother John was also active in the moment later in the late sixties, early 70's. A lot of Drake students were involved in those later years!


I do remember going to UC Berkeley during high school—there was some big event. We all piled into Sue Barry's VW Bug and hung out in Sproul Plaza. Lots of people milling around. My first time on campus. I remember people standing on parked cars and police. I don't know what the event was. Maybe it was the one Linda mentioned.

Many of our high school teachers were wonderful "odd birds" thank gawd. Not just Olympic champ, Archie Williams. Warren Fairbanks (who was a classmate of my mother's at Polytechnic in SF), Mr. Lucy, Mr James, Mrs Makay (sp)—my Freshman English teacher (1966) who wore rose-colored glasses (and lived in the Haight).

Down on 4th corridor by the creek, we listened to Beatles lyrics—Eleanor Rigby comes to mind. I remember Simon & Garfunkel's Dangling Conversation. She wasn't the Mary Mackey, was she? These were the roots of my poetic life.

I remember my history & social studies teacher was awful—it took me years to realize I LIKED history! We had no idea that we were also right in the middle of making history too.

FLIGHT MANIFEST

Silly bumblebee
jhodpurs laden with pollen
couldn't resist sweet tea

and he drowned in it
a silly sweet bumble bee
couldn't resist sweet tea.

Osama Killed

As the buzz went up & down the grocery checkout line like a weird game of telephone—punctuated by real cellphone calls, I overheard the news from a customer that Obama had been killed. I was stunned by everyone's relative calmness and I thought OMG—it was yet another tragic moment for this century: "Where were you when JFK was killed." I wondered why there wasn't more of an outcry. I then realized that I misheard the news. It was Osama—not Obama who was killed. I did not feel elated when I heard the news—nor did anybody else in line. It was a macabre moment in time. An anti-climax, nearly ten years after 9/11. My next thought was: what's next? I thought the more enduring question for this century might be: "Where were you when the Twin Towers fell?" and "Where were you when they announced Osama bin Laden was dead?" And where will this all end Nothing like martyrdom to fan the flames of vigilantes on both sides of the equation.

Mayday traditions at Lagunitas School

When I was young, we used to celebrate May Day at Lagunitas School, giving each other little construction paper woven May baskets filled with posies, and we had a Maday parade to the Maypole, weaving streamers around the volleyball poles. It was great fun. Sort of like a double Easter parade. Then it stopped—with no explanation—sadly, someone must've complained to the school board. I remember asking why we didn't celebrate anymore and was told to never mind. It was as if I imagined it.

The Maypole ribbon dance filled me with absolute wonder—even if it was crepe paper streamers—I got to go a couple of weaves—and soon the braided pole was a hopelessly tangled mess. Bit it was pure magic.

I think we had real satin ribbons one year. In second grade, I thought school was grand with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Valentine's, St. Patrick's, Easter, and May Day celebrations. I liked school. Then we went secular. School became tediously long and dull—thanks to some knee-jerk Christians.

Beltaine

The May Day hills were burning, far and near. —Seamus Heaney

Beltaine: My great-grandfather in Bantry used to drive his cattle between two fires to purify them & bring luck. The God Bel, or Belenos' fires. Eadar dà theine Bhealltainn

Happy Beltaine ~ Féile Na Bealtaine

Happy Beltaine ~ Féile Na Bealtaine. The night of Bel's fires. Light a candle tonight, smudge the house with sage smoke. Jump over the candlestick. This is a night of enchantment, like Halloween, when the doors of the Otherworld open. Magic happens.

The Celtic day begin at sunset. So April 30, at sunset, is really May 1. Got it? Good. I won't mention that the calendar we use, is not the same as the one used in the Middle Ages, so it's anywhere from 4 to 9 days off, depending upon which century you hailed from.

I was driving down Hwy 80 from Martinez when the lurid sunset outdid its own clichés. I was stuck in the mother of all traffic jams and the sky was practicing its own weird version of coastal alpenglow. I thought of Heidi's firebird. A phoenix sky to herald the beginning of summer. (No not, the Summer Solstice, that's the half-way mark of summer.




added & revised 4/30/2016 from a FB memory

Car Thieves

Car thieves TOWED off my elderly Honda Civic during the wee hours about a month ago—and then abandoned it in a local parking lot under the freeway—they must've snagged the wrong red Honda and then realized it was older than dirt. Dented door, broken signal light. And a general sense of outrage. Do I have to pay the parking ticket as well?

Killing my cameras softly

I taught 3 poetry classes at one school (5th grade) in SSF, and 4 after-school art classes at Brett Harte Elementary School near Hunter's Point, a dicey part of SF adjacent to Candlestick Park—I'm deep in the trenches and loving it. Otherwise, it's been a pretty shitty day. An adorable kindergartner decided to hug me for all she was worth for doing art with her and so she launched herself at me to hug me and my best camera, make that my only working camera went flying—this right after my tea spilled all over my MacBook. So now my shutter won't open all the way. The other camera too took the plunge in a similar fashion. All this loving. I'm down two Nikons. And I can't document the incredible artwork the kids did. At least my 23-year-old little red Honda hatchback (Lil Rix) is behaving. Not a place you want to break down while being white. But I seem to live a charmed life teaching these kids art.

added & rev. 4/17

BRAINALITIES

BRAINALITIES

Dyslexia at work:
I misread a banal story
of a director whose concussion
changed his life
and sent him
on a quest for brainalities.
WTF?

4/21/11

Missing conversation (w/o Pete)

A Facebook conversation with childhood friend, Pete Sutton where he removed all his comments. My feelings must be hurt.

You were the first Pete I ever knew! When you lived on Arroyo Road... Somewhere between that long distance of almost 5 and maybe 6. Nick was in diapers. You're older than me. I  remember my grannie stopping off to visit your mom on the way back from the store or church—we had no car. It was always a long walk home. When did you move to Lagunitas? I remember visiting you once or twice. But it was too far away.

Remember red-haired Miss Lenz and her pet skunk? Miss Lenz was the best. They let her go after we moved on—whatfor? Perhaps a tad too rainbow? Then there was the longterm sub, Mrs. Brennan. OMG! And to think we went to LSD school....

I totally forgot her name—Smith. I remember making cut-out trolly cars in math—a measuring exercise. I just wanted to look at the model and make my own which was far quicker way to go to my way of seeing, but she insisted that I had to follow directions (never my strong suit). All I could think of, was that was not the best way to approach it. But that wasn't the lesson. I don't remember her being British! Was there a rotund Mrs. Smith and a spinsterishly thin grey-haired Miss Smith? OK, so then I had MRS Smith! More like midwestern. Did we have two 4th grade teachers? I think not. I guess my ears, attenuated t my grannie's Irish English, didn't notice. So there were 2 4th grade teachers! I think I had Mrs. Smith.

Oh no! That's Miss Smith? Tall angular sunken chested. I had her in 5/6th grade for art (awful). So there wasn't another 4th grade teacher? Mrs. Bryce for 5th grade, then we began to rotate classes. Mr Sliney and Bob Plant for science, Coach Harry Roche (the eraser & chalk thrower if you got it wrong) for math and Miss Kolanoski for chorus. Who am I missing?

No Pete, I said we went to LSD! Not on it.

Remember Mr Brown at Drake? Yes, Jim Brown instilled a love of clay and Thano nurtured it. You used to throw these BIG pots—you practically had to crawl inside to throw. I was duly impressed seeing these HUGE pots grow up to the ceiling. Eric Ahola was in that class too.

Pete, is Thano Johnson still alive? Last I heard he was in Colorado. I ran into his ex-wife on the Airporter returning back from Amsterdam ca 1999—he wrote to me and I never wrote back...horiffic car accident knocked me for a loop. A lot fell by the wayside.

I was in your effing class with David Best for 3 years running ferpetesakes! I was a painting major and minored in ceramics—even took glassblowing with a crabbit of a man whose name escapes me. Yep, Al and I didn't exactly see eye to eye. Good thing I never took clay with him.  I did love glassblowing so I gritted my teeth with Al.

I can't believe we hung our teabags up to dry in the glaze lab. What did we ingest? I did an ash glaze project—very timoku. We had a wood-burning stove (as did most folks in the Valley) and I gathered ash. Newspaper—lead

Oh gawd, the names are churning: Bernerd Leach was at the De Young in the early 70s—a huge show. He was quite charming. I adored him. Sasha the Russian, Ron Blett. There was a guy who had a studio above San Quentin. My first boyfriend Sweet Old Bob (Hamilton) was a clay major so we visited everybody in N. CA. We often went to the big Daly firing at Waddell Creek ... Yeah, some of those guys got famous. Sasha Makovkin—we helped fire a dinnerware set. Oh what a drunken feast followed as we broke in those newborn plates. Vodka. Lots of vodka.

Also was in the theater dept w/ Robin Williams... Yep. Malvolio—Jim Dunn blew a gasket. Ha! Robin Williams' cross-gartered yellow-stockinged Malvolio was, er, innovative to say the least. I was ushering and I laughed so hard I wet myself—a different Malvolio every night.

Shit, Pete—tyou do realized this is probably the longest conversation I've had with you since i was about six... :-) and it takes Facebook? LOL. This makes for a surreal thread, as Pete removed all his comments. Should my feelings be hurt in retrospect?

PINK FLOYD MOON

After the Celtic Games closed,
we all sang in the gloaming
until a pink moon rose
mightily over the tule springs
at Floyd Lamb State Park,
then the peacocks all woke up
and joined in on Hey Jude.

CONVOLUTION

Great Alexander
he cut the Gordian knot
with Occam's Razor.

Petroglyph hunting at Mouse's Tank, Valley of Fire, NV

Petroglyph hunting at Mouse's Tank, a box canyon in the Valley of Fire, NV. (Eastern Mojave Desert). The Navajo Sandstone is the same formation found in Red Rock Canyon and Utah's Zion National Park. The Valley of Fire, once the bottom of a deep ocean basin became a desert 150 to 180 million years ago; the dunes fossilized into sandstone; 65 million years ago, subduction along the North American plate caused faulting, uplifting so older limestone rock is now on top of younger redrock!

There were so many petroglyphs we couldn't see them all in one day! There were two hidden sandstone pools like large baths at the end of the boxw hich are catch-basins for runoff—and occasionally become a cistern for a waterfall.

The entire canyon (1/2 mile) is one vast storyboard. Sad that erosion has taken its toll and sides of rock faces have sloughed off, taking the ancient stories with them. We didn't have time to hike to AtlAtl Rock (even more petroglyphs). Next time.

 The canyon is named 'The Mouse's Tank' because a Southern Paiute Indian renegade,'Little Mouse,' who went wild whenever he got drunk, was accused of gunning down two prospectors and other crimes, hid out there in the 1890's.

 The petroglyphs are 4000 to 700 years old, and many were re-eched later. Different styles, enigmatic symbols. Not necessarily Paiute as the Lost City—aka Virgin Anasazi pueblo is nearby in the Moapa Valley.


added 4/17

Google removed my memorial post of Juanita claiming it went against community standards

This is from a Facebook memory as Google removed my memorial post of Juanita, claiming it went against community standards. I thought it was spam egging me on so I ignored it. Mistake. Now it’s gone and there is no back up—not even in the Wayback Machine. I didn’t even find out about it until Google again removed 13 of my posts in May, 2021. So this is a placeholder. I’ve put the gleaned material in quotes.

I am heartbroken, as I know Google had flagged at least 7 other posts. Luckily I was able to restore the Woodside history play I co-wrote from an old hard copy. But what about the other lost posts?

This is what I gleaned from Facebook Memory: “It's been confirmed: Juanita Musson's Memorial Service is on Sunday, April 3rd at Olompali Ranch in Novato—Noon to 3pm. Please wear bright muumuus & Hawaiian shirts! A cock or a monkey on your shoulder, bedpans of food and wild Juanita stories will do...what a peculiar tribe we've been! 

We met a lot of folks I sorta knew or looked familiar or were at the same place/time thing. I recognized Jerry Tomlinson who lived at Rancho Olompali when it was a Grateful Dead commune. I remember going to big parties there, wading in the grotto. Falling in. 

Before Olompali was a commune it was Martin Ranch, I got my saddle fixed there—so it was a three wave tier of memory rolling in. One woman I met, Caron McCloud was with Greg Davis—so her kids were related to my old flame, Geoff Davis! That’s how I met Caron, Shiloh, and Shannon McCloud-Davis, and Kurt Crowbar Kansas. Shannon McCloud went to school with my brother Guy. 

Afterwards, we all trundled off to Sonoma Valley—up Nuns Canyon to a sculpture ranch, Relais du Soleil right next to Beltane Ranch. We drank and feasted on chicken until the stars sighed. We recited Juanita stories. "The food's good but not necessarily the temperament of the cook". —Juanita's Galley, Gate 4 and a half, Sausalito.

It turns out our host, Tim was a friend of Norton Buffalo's—so sad to see Norton's Ovation guitar silent, by the fireplace. Neil sang some folk songs. We walked in the sculpture garden. Big sheet metal horse running into rust. Amazing place over the hill from Beltane Ranch.”

I wrote a lovely log blog piece written ca. April 3-5, 2011, commemorating the memorial and the funereal supper. This group photo was from a 2016 FB post on Juanita’s page, and it gave me the terminus post quem date, so the missing blogpost that Google removed was still up in 2016. That’s all I know. Since it was all my original writing and photos, it couldn’t  have been a copyright issue. But then again, what do bots know about writing?

Link to Juanita’s page.

“Juanita Musson's memorial at Olompali. April 3, 2011 It was a Gate 5-ish reunion of sorts. Juanita stories abounded. Do you have a Juanita story or photos, etc? Post them here.

We were all trying to remember the 60's with little success — with Jerry Tomlinson, Yerushalmi Ben Yehudah, Larry Otis, Kurt Crowbar Kangas, Shannon Cinnamon McCloud, Stuart Ramsey, Lynn D Kircher, Neil O'Neill, Julia Brigden, Letitia Graves, Caron McCloud, Laurie Steese, and Shiloh Sophia. (Stuart's gone now...). 

I'm uploading the last of the photos to Picasa now. Two more folders to go. I'll leave them all at the end of the album so it's easier to distinguish them form the earlier ones (I had 3 cameras going—and Neil had one too). © Maureen Hurley 2011”

Friends not in the main photo: Pagan Neil and Carolyn Heal 

Alas, Picasa Web Album is no more, but the URL gave me the name of the ranch we went to, Relais du Soleil. Not only did I lose all the stories and tributes, I lost the names of the folks who attended the memorial service. I’m still so angry, I could spit.

Added 4/1/23

Juanita's Gallery restaurateur Juanita Musson dies

My original tribute to Juanita

You rarely got what you wanted at Juanita’s Restaurant, but you got a lot of it

• RIP Juanita Musson

• DEAR GOOGLE, Blogger removed 13 of my blogposts  May 13, 2021. At least they restored these posts. 

Li’l Rix stolen again

I think I need some bottled poetry—Neil parked my car down the hill (in the dicier part of the 'hood) and my 1987 Honda Civic Si was stolen. Im trying hard not to be depressed—Neil's Honda was stolen last year, that's why he was driving L'il Rix—but I feel so violated and despondent.

Waiting for the Advil train to arrive

I really did myself in this time—twist & shout—more like scream in pain! I really need a whine & Advil nitecap for lower back pain, pronto. After crawling home, I took a long shower, until all the hot water ran out, now I have wet hair. I'll look like a frizzy-haired banshee with her finger stuck in the light socket come the morn. I don’t care. I can barely stand. Ah, TG for the small mercies of wine and chocolate late at night while waiting at the lumbar station for the Advil train of thought to deliver its dulcet cargo.

From a FB post rev. 3/20

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig and it’s back to bed with a virus

This morning I taught art classes to kids in Hunter's Point, then came home and went to bed... The virus is back. Occupational hazard. No partying for me tonight. I weep for Japan, the earthquake, the tsunami, and the massive devastation we now all face. 

Tsunami Warning

I was sound asleep and something woke me at midnight—news of a massive earthquake in Japan, followed by a tsunami. Then I saw the tsunami warning for the rest of us on the Pacific RIm. It's bearing down on Hawaii. I used to have nightmares of being caught in a tsunami. But I needs must return to sleep.

Hawaii orders evacuation of low-lying coastal areas after massive earthquake off Japan triggered a tsunami alert. A Hawaiian reporter said fish were in the Honolulu parking lot (2.3 foot tsunami left them stranded) like TILAPIA??? That must've been some big wave to strand African freshwater fish like that. They escaped from their freshwater ponds in solidarity with the saltwater fishes, or what?

Huge earthquake hit northern Japan, mostly affecting Tokyo and areas north. Felt it in Osaka, however, even though Tokyo is some 250 miles away and the epicenter was even further away than that. An extended rolling feeling, like being on a boat. The footage of the tsunami that hit Sendai is a seriously daunting.

Unimaginable damage and devastation. And now the Fukushima reactors are damaged. Is this the end of the world as we know it? Does it begin with radiation poisoning? Now my nightmares are waking dreams.

a bat flew into the classroom

Apparently I need to add a new category under my rescuer of small animals resume: a bat flew into the morning poetry classroom, like the shadow of a leaf and landed on my poetry folders. I covered him with poetry sheets, and let him out the window where he fell like a leafy shadow.

STACKING WOOD FOR THE COMING WINTER

—For Lynn DeWitt, a second step-cousin in-law, but still family, & to Howard McCord who liked my wood post on FB, urged me to use the names of tools. 

At the dogtail end of summer, in deep August,
when the shadows grew long thin fingers
tinged with indigo verging on violet,
an unmistakable acrid odor of red clay dust 
& bleached oat hay, announced the coming fall.

We had only the enameled Wedgewood stove.
My grannie tightened the lyre-handled bucksaw;
tumped a limb into the arms of the wooden sawhorse
that bucked & groaned as the blade bit deeper.
She raised the gnarled cross-shaped sledgehammer
& a cauliflowered wedge—tools no man wanted—
to split the fresh logs to fit the firebox.
The age-old music of the smithy's hammer & tong
flung small fireflies into the deeper shadows.
There was no one else to lend a hand:
a small child and an old woman raised
their frail shoulders against the coming winter.

One time a shim worked loose from the lever. 
As I raised the hammer up against the darkening sky
it flew off, knocked me in the head. I staggered
under the crucifying blow. Oh, my aching stars!
Glad to be alive, I kept on splitting the wood, 
for she could no longer raise the iron weight.
Bay split like butter, pine fought the wedge,
oak was the most stubborn, but it burned the best.


See also Kindling. I seem to return to the theme again and again

Compliment from Howard McCord on my grandmother poems

Howard McCord said: I enjoyed your post on wood and fires. Old tools-- a froe, a spokeshave, a marlinspike, as good as birds' names.

Cheetos

If I fits, i sitz.

We gave Cheetos the orange cat a saline drip and force-fed him—staving off the grim reaper for one more night. He was quite pissed about being forcefed (a good sign). But he was so dehydrated. Not a good sign. I gave him a cornstarch "bath" and used an old toothbrush to groom him—he liked it a lot, he lovingly stroked the brush. He purrped, attempted a purr, and seemed to feel a little better. Stuck his chin out to be scratched. Nothing like a good scratch under the chin.  

Whaddya mean I can't sleep here? It's a BOX lid.

Ginger cats are the best. Great personalities. Not always the brightest of cats, though. Goofballs. The like to sleep in odd places. Inside a laundry tub. On top of your head. Before we knew he was sick, he took to sleeping on my head, and peeing on my pillow. No cat piss odor, I should've guessed his kidneys were failing.

Got my Garfield & the heater vent. Fluff my water bowl and kibble.

As a starving kitten in the TGal parking lit in Petaluma, he devoured a bag of Cheetos, hence the moniker. My cousin rescued him. Like she needed another cat. We're glad she did, we've had 15 years' worth of kooky kitty antics. He never did catch the red spot.

A potted kitty

Not so good news: Cheetos is in the hospital. Perhaps it's a good sign? (and a big vet bill for my cousin.) We were bracing ourselves for euthanasia. But Zana's orange bruiser, Nails, was able to live to 21—with kidney issues. Ah, so sad to see a dear old friend failing, but hopeful too that he'll come around to greet his 16th birthday in April. Only the night will tell.

Nap, blankie, and my little pony. RIP Orange Man.

2 Baja photos published in Medusa's Kitchen

St. Elmo's Fire In Our Fingertips

Sunset, El Dorado del Mar, San Felipe, BC, Mexico