the prose behind SOLO DANCE

Day 5 of not enough sleep is taking its toll. Flannel-eyed, I am. Note to self: Try not to dance on the rim of that mug of tea, forgotten on the floor. There is no graceful recovery mode. Someone sayys: Just wait til they get to the denim stage.

Ah stress. Was working on the Poetry Out Loud event, and there were problems, so I was up all hours the night before, then it became a pattern. Once I get off my sleep cycle, and if I'm stressed, then I go to sleep late and wake up early, tooo early. Slept last night for the first time in a week. Ah, blessed sleep. You are not overrated.

I read an interesting article on sleep deficit:

Is Your Sleep Account Overdrawn?: Interview with Dr John O’Neill, MRC Laboratory For Molecular Biology, 5th Feb 2016, on the Naked Scientists.

Coffee, chocolate, tea—even sugar will keep me awake. 

To sleep, perchance to dream. There's the ticket.

added 2/17

SUPERBLOOM

A Desert Five-spot mallow bleeds in the gravel,
a rare Valentine amid the Gravel Ghosts.
The Funeral Mountains are giddily dressed
in alluvial skirts spangled with Desert Gold,
Phacelia, Poppy and Purple Mat. 

After that last Biblical deluge,
the saltpan was scoured white as snow.
Decades of dustorms had blanketed it
against the elements.

I remember following a dry streambed
from Badwater to the far side of Death Valley
to see the pupfish. The streambed was white,
and satin-smooth, like a bolt of silk,
I lay down on it like a lover, caressing its skin.

It meandered like a shining ribbon
through the jagged knife-dark hell
of the Devil's Golf Course
with its labyrinth of salt spires.

I walked barefoot on that path for miles,
soft plodding of feet against saltpan
like two fish flopping in a mirage of water.
But they thirsted for sweetwater
in an otherwise arid landscape.


2/14/2016
rev. 3/21

DANGEROUS NIGHTS

Sometimes when my late-to-bed self
meets my early-to-rise self,
when the candle burns at both ends,
it's the the middle of the night
that's in danger.

2/11/2016


from a Facebook thread with Al Young

UnKind Energy Bars are for the Birds

Is it just me, or does an upscale energy health bar that retails for more than a buck apiece tastes like sweetened birdseed? Millet and really raw quinoa. I can still taste the bitterness of the husk long after I've swallowed it. How unKind. Give me granola or give me muesli. Give me horse oats, any day.

Besides, energy bars are merely an excuse to eat candy bars masquerading as health bars. The energy boost comes from the sugar, not the raw grains. Said unKind bar had millet, amaranth, quinoa, buckwheat (like pea gravel) and oats, all raw. Most of which, we probably can't even digest raw. All of which, at one point or another, I have eaten raw. Yep.

And yes, I did eat birdseed (millet) as a kid. Agnes fed Chi-chi the canary millet to make him sing. Speck McAuliffe's green parrot bit my finger when I stole his sunflower seeds.

I also ate horse oats, the sweet ones were the best, and I even ate dog biscuits on a dare!  What can I say, I was gullible? Milkbones were awful, but a classmate loved them. So you know I had to try them. Lucky we didn't have a dog. Kitty kibble is not good. I have it on the cats' authority.

Trader Joe's was giving away packets of what looked like oyster crackers.... I stuffed a couple of packet in my pocket, and when I was particularly peckish, I munched on some. Phwatt! Horrid, with bits of calcium, that is bone bits. I had very clean teeth afterwards. Clean teeth and a shiny coat. Fresh breath. Woof. (Note to self: next time, read the label first, before eating.)

But seriously, sweet horse oats were covered in blackstrap molasses. And they tasted far better than my unKind bar. Way cheaper too. When I was a kid, a hundred pound sack cost me $3.50 ( 6.5 hours' worth of babysitting money), and a gunnysack-ful would've lasted me a decade to two. The horses, ponies and donkeys routinely broke out of the corral to break into the garbage can where I kept the oats. The mice and birds too. It was an ongoing battle of wits to keep the oats safe.

The unKind health bar was so bloody awful, I nearly spit it out. Blows my mind that people actually buy them. Not the generic over-sweetened granola bars, mind you, but the organic "health store" variety. I did eat it, I needed to eat something. But it was not pleasurable. If I wasn't so hungry...there wasn't another option.

I just needed to get something in my gullet and it was free. My shark fin was up and in danger of impaling the air and I had to eat something then and there. An old boyfriend used to carry peanuts when he saw the fin of hunger rise up. He knew the signs. Cranky doesn't even begin to cover it.


Awful, awful. I'd rather eat horse oats with molasses any day. I don't care about the calories but you can be sure, no more unKind bars will cross my tongue. Phwatt and ptooey. I was still cranky after I ate that bar. And I sure couldn't sing like a canary. But I do feel a little whinny coming on. Or is that a sneeze? Maybe it's a desert canary song—a hee-haw arpeggio in Bflat.

Give me horse oats. Give me chocolate, or give me death. Well, maybe some wine too. But never give me an unKind millet bar again.

Shrove Tuesday Pancakes (photo)

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Nothing like Shrove, or Fat Tuesday pancakes for dinner, My grannie always made pancakes for dinner. We were so excited. It was Sunday morning verging on Tuesday night. No funny papers. But even still, it was exciting.

My grannie made everything from scratch. Not even Bisquick snoozed in our pantry. But you can use any quick-bread, or pancake mix and adulterate it. I like buckwheat pancake mix, if I can find it. Make some pancakes using buttermilk, oil and pancake mix, and then add way too many eggs.

If the recipe asks for one egg, add three or more eggs. You can also add a little seltzer water, or ginger ale, or anything bubbly to add a delicate airiness to the pancakes. If you're short on flour, a little added cornstarch will make crispy pancakes. 

Batter should be runny, let it sit a half-hour, or longer, to thicken up. If you’re organized, make your batter the night before. Never happens in my house. I inexplicably get the urge for pancakes at 6 pm, nearly too late. Sometimes I don’t even realize it’s Shrove Tuesday, but I have the instincts of a homing pigeon when it comes to eating authorized pancakes for dinner.

Grease a big pan with unsalted butter, let it get nutty brown for maximum favor impact, spread the pancake batter thin, like crêpes. I use a soup ladle. First one is for the kitchen god. Stack 'em up on a warm plate. You'll need to add butter to the pan for each pancake. Half a pat. Salted butter is too much. Ruins the delicate flavor.

Filling: mix cottage cheese and Greek yogurt, or sour cream, vanilla sugar, zest and juice of one lemon, OK, so spike it with maple syrup too. Spread on pancake and roll it up like a cigar and smoke it.

One year I went wild with flavored Wensleydale cheeses, studded with dried apricots, and lemon rind. They were divinely delicious, but way too heavy and boggily filling. Stick with cottage cheese and tart it up. Your waistline will thank you.

Filling no. 2: spread pancake with creme fraich or Mexican extra fat sour cream (it has a much better flavor than American sour cream) on a pancake, then smear it with good raspberry preserves. I like seedless preserves vs raspberry jam. (I abhor blueberries, but that could be a hit. Or huckleberry jam if you can find it). Roll it up. Sprinkle with vanilla sugar. Oui. Olé!

Filling no. 3: spread pancake with butter, really good marmalade or jam. Eat.

Deluxe edition. Drink one glass champagne, or spumante between each step, and don't forget to take a sip or two as you liberate each pancake from the pan, of course. By the time you have enough for a meal, you won't care what day of the week it is. It’s a good luck tradition to flip the pancakes sans spatula. Good luck.

Shrove it Jack!

Landforms moving into dance (photo)

Elephant Mountain, Gallagher Ranch, Point Reyes © Maureen Hurley 2015

Whenever I see the West Marin hills align in wedges as we thread our way along the back road from Nicasio to Point Reyes., my hands begin to sweep and caress the vast swaths of land, as I spontaneously paint and gesture with my arms, my art and photography move into dance. I always want to walk barefoot down those smooth dirt roads in summer. Nothing like the pad of bare feet in cornstarch soft dust between the toes, heading down to the creek. Beauty is twice beauty when it comes to the hills of West Marin.

rev.1/18

Writing Process: Keyboard vs Longhand

I like keeping a little distance from my writing, so I write propped up in my bed with a big LCD monitor at the foot, and I use a wireless keyboard and mouse. I've a headless MacBookPro running the tiny empire (a friend poured a nice big glass of Chardonnay on the keyboard, thus killing the screen, and she gave it to me).

Old back injury precludes traditional desk and chair—not that I EVER liked sitting at a desk, ever, I hurt sitting in chairs, and get spasms... I hated CRT monitors, and always tried to get as far away from them as I possibly could. So laptops are my preferred pen. It's an evolutionary process. And now that my eyes are older (sigh), they too like the six-foot distance from the monitor as well. But I have to make the typography huge in order to read it.

I used to write in journals, but after a second car accident, the physics of writing was challenging (I had PTSD), but keyboarding wasn't threatening and I could fix my wild typos. Besides, I'm a messy writer, constantly revising, so the keyboard process is kinder to dyslexics than paper. That said, I do miss the scribing process. You think different in longhand. Something savagely soothing about writing in cursive.

Hiraeth

Hiraeth is a Cymraeg (Welsh) word which doesn't translate well into English. Hiraeth, and the Cornish hireth are co-equivalents to the Portuguese saudade. It is a deep longing for home, but it's not mere homesickness. It's a deep, abiding bond one feels with homeland, tinged with grief or sadness over the lost or departed, or the past. It is an admixture of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness, and desire. A lump that begins in the back of the throat, straddling both the real, and imagined past, both coming and going simultaneously as you stand there, at one with the eternal moment that is always now.

2/2/2016


 This is probably the origin of this post.
Longing/Saudade/Hiraeth

RIP, SS Pt. Reyes, victim of arson (photos)

RIP, SS Pt. Reyes, victim of arson.

Iconic Tomales Bay shipwreck, the "S.S. Point Reyes," an old military transport cum salmon fishing boat, has been a photographer's wet dream since at least 1998. The fishing boat snoozing on a sandspit behind the Inverness market, was a real fixer-upper. You know how the story goes. One man's manaña complex is now a tourist destination. Supposedly it was pulled up onto the sandbar during the 1980s for a little R&R and renovation that never happened. It became an iconic destination. The "S.S. Point Reyes” was slated to be removed by the NPS, but thundering hordes of irate photographers rallied round the vessel, and saved it for pixellated posterity. 

It reminds me of that other rustbucket, the S.S. Minnow stranded on Hwy 58 in the Mojave Desert near Tehachapi. Ironic that this iconic boat was burnt to the ground by an overzealous photographer, intent upon snagging a spookily lit night shot, he back-lit the wreck by lighting spun steel wool, And the resulting sparks ignited the bone-dry punky wood. What was he thinking? 

I can’t find original photo, from the PT. Reyes Light. Merrel Rocca Sr.

STILL LIFE WITH DEAD BIRD

"Little Sister!" he cried out. "Thank you for guiding us here. Thank you for taking care of us all this way. Wherever we go we will remember your kindness. We shall wear your feathers when you give them to us. We will hold your people in regard and tell our people always to treat you well…" The Flicker flew up into the air, flashing the gold beneath her wings one last time, and then flew back into the forest. —Ted Andrews

I found a rare yellow-shafted flicker
arranged on my doorstep,
perhaps it was a thoughtful gift
from the neighborhood cats,
perhaps not, but it was so beautiful
nestled in that blue woven rag rug,
I couldn't bear to let it go, or bury it.
I took photos of it, I drew it,
and called it Still Life with Dead Bird.
I thought of Wayne Thiebaud's pastries
and kept that bird deep in my freezer,
wrapped in tinfoil and night.
And whenever I needed solace
I took it out of the freezer
to admire its golden beauty.
It shone like sunrise, I kept it on ice
for decades, in a cabin I later abandoned,
along with the interrupted dreams of a writer's life.
I wonder what the neighbors thought
when they found it covered with hoarfrost?

1/18/2016

Bay Area Generations #42

2/2017

Bad -tempered bulls

I have to laugh when people post photos/videos of affectionate cattle. And everybody falling for that image—hook, line and sinker—especially the vegans. Cooing like pigeons. Not the norm at all. Trust me. Nothing like a bad-tempered bull gunning for you—because you happen to be in his line of sight. Hereford bulls are often cranky at best. It must be the red hair. Last year, I was attacked by the Gallagher’s new handsome black Angus bull, Theodore. I shredded my favorite down vest diving through the barb wire fence. My crime: I stepped between him and his ladies.

My neighbors once had a Jersey cow, Ralf, that managed to escape each spring to find the bulls. She had a Hereford bull calf that my best friend Stephanie named Thumbelina, who so sweet when he was young, but later, full of hormones, he treed me up a telephone pole with poison oak. You never know when they'll turn on you. It didn’t matter that he knew me since he was a baby. Once the hormones are running, all bets are off. Or maybe it was revenge for being named Thumbelina. Mr. Stone gave my grandmother the bull’s heart, our revenge was eating his heart. Literally.

Even Mr. Schmitts (a runty Herfie), who had the personality of a doorknob, was cranky when spring came, and he wasn't very bright either. He didn’t have a lot of redeeming qualities—other than he loved my ponies...and I do mean loved....erm. As in the carnal sense. Nothing like a piggyback ride with a stunted horny Herfie. And the sucker had real horns as well. We used them as handlebars, because he often tried to gore us.

Then there was Old Grandad, their gentle sire, who loved a good chin itch. He was so mild-tempered that eventually there were no more calves. Mr. Nunes shipped him off after a few seasons. His idea of foreplay was to pizzle on his own head. Ugh. Poor old man.

From a Facebook post, some revision.

Gallagher Ranch photos

Gallagher Ranch, Point Reyes, will soon be protected by MALT.

Beauty is twice beauty when it comes to visions of West Marin. I always want to walk barefoot down those smooth dirt roads, and often do, in deep summer. Nothing like the pad of bare feet in The fine cornstarch dust between the toes in mid-summer, heading down to the creek. When I see the shapes align like this, my hands begin to sweep the vast swaths of land, I paint and gesture with my arms, photography moving into dance.

In December, I was attacked by their new angus bull, Theodore. I shredded my favorite down vest diving through the barb wire fence. The MALT status went through. Marin Agricultural Trust (MALT) doesn't generally open land up for hiking, but they do lead outings up Elephant Mountain, etc; however, sometimes permission can be had if it's a preserve, like in Sonoma County Open Space, Pepperwood is open. It might be that some ranches are open, or they have open house certain days of the year.
Check with MALT here:
www.malt.org

Get Lucky

After reading some of my Amazon reviews, a writer friend asked: What happened to the great writers? Good question. I keep thinking I'll get lucky. Living writers: who do I admire?

I do like Pat Conroy, but he's a tough read all the way around, I adore Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, V.S. Naipaul, Isabel Allende, Paulo Coelho, Barbara Kingsolver, Jane Smiley, John Nichols. 

 Notice that most writers on that list are not American writers. Gabriel García Márquez is dead (I'm keeping this list to living writers, so Edward Abby, Peter Matthiessen, and Bruce Chatwin are also off list). I guess I should toss in Barry Lopez too. But that moves me off fiction and into another realm...

I really don't like Dan Brown, and many other "famous" or best-selling living writers. I will read John Grisham in a pinch, but I can't say I enjoy his work. Nor Mario Vargas Llosa, or Annie Dillard. Has she done anything since Pilgrim at Tinker Creek? Or Michael Cunningham's, The Hours, what a struggle that was to read; AS Byatt, and Milan Kundera, I felt cheated by them. Paulo Coelho could easily join that cheatin' list.

What do I mean by cheatin' list? Author's use of deux ex machina to get out of a story, too much reliance on godtalk—that includes new age spirituality bytes, etc. Sometimes a book is just a chore to read, despite good craft and metaphor.

I don't seek out Stephen King (I hate horror, and most sci-fi). Ditto Ursula le Guin and Margaret Atwood. Hated Earthsea Trilogy, and Handmaiden's Tale. I read Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, enjoyed them but I would never revisit them.

Yeah, yeah, I read all of J.K. Rowling's Harry Pottery tales, and was momentarily enchanted, but this is supposed to be a list of great writers. Popular, best-selling, or top 100 living writers does not equate to great writers. I used Ranker's Best Living Writers List Criteria: writers who are still alive, in order to compile this list, and then I diverged. It got me to thinking about the process of how we construct lists. So, other types of lists evolved. 

There's the List you need to read for Grad School: Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, and the ones I'm supposed to like: Neil Gaiman, Nicholas Sparks,Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, etc. This list is thankfully short as I'm limiting it to living writers. Otherwise, there's no telling where this blog post would end.

And then there's the uncategorized list of writers who've jumped ship, the poets I've known, who later became novelists (vs. novelists who became poets:  Edna O'Brien): Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon, Sherman Alexie, Michael Ondaatje, Colm Tobin, Dave Eggars, etc.

Thank Gawd I'm not compiling a list of 100 best poets. Would I have to limit it to poets who are famous, poets I don't know, poets I've read, poets I've read with, poets I've worked with, poets I've slept with? Now there's an incestuous list. Better to stick to dead poets for that list.

And there are the pulp fiction lists of popular writers I secretly read: James Patterson, and Dick Francis (didn't he die? I know his son's been co-writing books with him, perhaps they've a special arrangement. Adds another dimension to ghostwriting). 

Jim Patterson's a thoroughly nice guy, I like what he does with his money, and long ago, and far away, I once read with him at Book Passages, and because he was interested in young writers, I gave him a CPITS anthology of student poetry.... Not sure of his hack partnerships, they read fast and furious (three-page chapters), but I do love his Maximum Ride series.  (See, I do like some sci-fi.)

I hurt my knee a few years ago, I've had a lot of down time, laid up, don't like TV, and then I discovered free ebooks on Amazon, I devoured them, then had to get the bad taste out of my mouth and wash out my eyes, so I began to write rather warty reviews.

I've read so much utter dross, it's frightening. I'm afraid it will rub off and then I will become complacent, so I hone my skills by reviewing ebooks. As penance, perhaps. Sometimes it's purgatory. More like hell. 

But then, I'm a poet, not a novelist, what do I know? We take leaps of faith with obscure metaphor, nobody reads us, we don't even write in complete sentences...

There are only a handful of "new" Amazon writers, whose serialist work I admire, and will actively seek out: Jinx Schwartz, RP Dahlke, R.E. Donald, Chip Hughes, Mike Faricy, Brian Meeks, MZ Kelly, Steve Gannon, Jennnifer L. Jennings, Bev Pettersen, M. Ruth Myers, Abigail Keam—but her books have gotten sloppy as of late. Children's author, D. B. Patterson's adult novel, Perdido River Bastard, may be a one-hit wonder. Ditto Auburn McCanta's All the Dancing Birds. I'll keep my eye peeled for work by Florence Osmund and Ellis Shuman—they both are writers of promise.

As to how much I read, I read fast, furiously fast. Most of what I read does not require much by way of grey cells. That is not to say that I haven't read most of the classics, I've read most of those too as well. Grad school sort of ruined me for reading escape fiction, in order to escape, as it were, so the review process is my penance for reading so much poorly crafted writing. 

Every little once and a while I get lucky and am sucked in by the storyline. That's what it's all about, isn't it? 

The Last Rope Bridge

We crossed the last remaining Inca rope bridge, across the Apurímac Gorge north of Cuzco. I didn't dare look down. But then, just before I got to the lowest point, I caught my boot in a rope guardrail, I looked down. Watched something fall into the night-dark pool. A pebble? a twig? something from my backpack?

I froze, causing a traffic jam. John yelled: No! Don't Look down. Look to the far pillar. Look at me. He was throwing me a lifeline. The water swirled like a vortex, sucking me down. His eyes were the color of clouded winter skies.

They say the Q'eswachaka rope bridge was the inspiration for Thorton Wilder's novel, "The Bridge of San Luis Rey." I still have an original 1927 copy in my bookshelf, it belonged to my lovely Argentinian Spanish teacher. I feel bad that I never returned it, she's long gone now, having crossed over the bridge decades ago.

Once there were numerous rope bridges in the Andes. It is mid July. Anniversary of the bridge collapse. Am I Doña María or Pepita? Please don't let this one collapse, I prayed to any gods who would listen. If it collapses, it is God's will.

Every June, the rope bridge reinvents itself with renewed braids of ichu feather grass and sedges. Yes, there is also a modern bridge but this is not about convenience, or about the modern world. It is a longstanding cultural tradition dating back 600 years or more, the bridge is a gateway the Inca Trail.

They say this is the last rope bridge of its kind in the Andes. Family clans on both sides of the gorge make bundles of grass-ropes and plait them into long cables, they bind rock pillars on either side of the gorge to honor their ancestors and to honor Pachatata and Pachamama.

On each side of the gorge, the villager twine and plait the ropes carefully, untold lives depend upon their strength and fortitude. Spans that once held the weight of an invading army on horseback. The handrail is the width of a man's waist, the woven floor, punctuated with boards and twigs, grows new grass in the crevices, seed-holds, both its origin and its destruction.

It takes a week to renew the vows of bridge and trail, of sky, water and rock, and it ends with festive rituals honoring the apus, or mountain guardians. They say Apurímac, headwaters of the mighty Amazon, means gods of the laughing river. Or more accurately, divinity oracle.

The oracles in the gurgling river were laughing at us, all right. It seemed like it took a lifetime for me to cross that bridge to get to the other side. There was no thought of turning back. It was also the beginning of the end. We could only go on from there.

Cold New Year's Day

OK, I can do this. I just got the Jump out of bed if you can't see your breath, card. Temperature's risen from a low of 24° to a lively 40° outside, and that means the car is thawing. Pipes, not so much. We don't have a working heater in the house. Gawd knows how cold it is inside the house. Above 32° as I can't see my breath. So the secret is to dress from the socks up, by layers, without getting out from under the covers. Happy New Year.

Point Reyes (photo) last photo of 2015

 

Wee Celtic beasties for silk scarf design 8//15

I was drawing some wee Celtic beasties for silk scarf design. Neil wanted me to design a T-shirt logo with a Celtic tiger but none of my ideas seemed to go anywhere. He also didn't seem very interested in any of my drawings. Wouldn't even look at them. Then wondered why I balked and yowled when he wanted a T-shirt design pronto just days before the Games. No lead time at all. I can't work like that.

July-Aug. 11/2015

Celtic knotwork drawings for silk scarf designs 8/15

MoHurley's Amazon Book Reviews 2015

(This piece was originally posted June 20, 2015, but seeking verisimilitude, I've moved each year's reviews to Dec. 31. It's too hard to find them buried mid-year.)

I'm an avid ebook reader and reviewer—I read mostly escape fiction, most of it not so good. Some of it deplorable. But, hey, it's free. And I'm cheap, I'll read just about anything. Especially at 4 AM, when I'm desperate to go back to sleep, and hope I'll nod off from sheer boredom. Sometimes it backfires, I find a great book. Then it's 6AM and I'm owl-eyed.

As I said, I'll read just about anything. But not without some teeth gnashing. So I review some of the ebooks upon occasion. Sometimes I get lucky and even find gems among the dross. They get full five-star rating. Check those authors out. Usually the first book's free....

I consider the review process a good honing skill: I read and mentally edit books as I go. My cousin, tired of listening to me complain about how awful some of those ebooks were, said: Why don't you review them too? (And shut up, already.) And so I did. Another tool in the craft toolkit.

What do I look for when I review a book? Strong plot, storyline, and interesting characters with depth, not flat, stereotypes. Some young writers, not clear on the concept of show, don't tell, rely upon the crutches of rampant consumerism to flesh out their story. Using designer clothing labels to define a character, or to set the scene, and the story reads like an ad. Does the description build our understanding of the character, or plot? Is it necessary to the storyline? Do I need to know the protagonist wore an Ann Klein blouse?

I look for a believable plot, good storyline, and figurative language that doesn't intrude, and subtle intellect. Novels stem from the oral tradition. Storyteller George Sanders says it best:

"...the process of crafting a good story means not condescending to your reader. It means creating sentences that clue them into something unnoticed about the character, and allowing them to figure it out. “A bad story is one where you know what the story is and you're sure of it," he says in this short film, George Saunders: On Story."

Then there's the actual structure of the story. Check out the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet: opening image (backstory), set-up (dilemma), theme/catalyst/debate, acts 1 & 2, intro of storyline B, premise, enter the bad guys, dark night of the soul, act 3 (with help from Storyline B), finale, final image/epilogue. Finis.  I love the liveliness of this layout, replete with examples. Less dry than English 1A's plot breakdown, as exposition, and denouement and everything in between, both eluded and deluded me. (Why couldn't they just say setup, conflict, and resolution? See also The Five Elements of Plot Structure.)

Then there are the typos, and poor craft. It's a bad omen when the writer has typos in the synopsis. I generally won't download a book if it does. And then there are the stories that have typos on page one. Really? If an author doesn't know the difference between it's and its, it does not bode well for the "sullied craft" of writing. Possessive apostrophes do not need to precede every single word that ends with ess. Doorknobs don't need to possess the room, unless, of course, they're possessed. But that's another kettle of fish entirely.

Please mosey on over and LIKE some of my reviews. Amazon's all about Like, just like on Facebook. Except, like, the buttons are, like, different. My older reviews are buried deep. But the most recent ones should be fairly easy to access.

Last day of the year, Farallones, photo

 

A macaw-colored sky. Last sunset of the year, floating islands of the Farallones from the tip of Point Reyes, The air was so clear, it looked like you could touch them. They're part of Point Reyes' lost siblings. Soon the Point will become an island too. Island moving north. Think I finally killed my camera, all the photos came out too dark, but this one, gaudy as it is, worked. It breaks the rules. Never divide a photo directly in half, it's static (unless it's the Farallones). Don't shoot clichés like sunsets and islands (unless it's the Farallones). Don't shoot in low light sans tripod, avoid pixellation and noise. Image was loaded with burned sunspots from pointing it at the sun, burning the processor. I don't think it'll recover. I was able to clone the sunspots out of the sky. I left one sunspot in the lower left corner as a reminder. The upper left corner looked like a pong table gone mad. Who knew that reflected water off Schooner Creek after 4 PM on one of the shortest afternoon of the year would completely fry my camera in multiple corners? I've fried other cameras before, and undoubtably will fry more cameras in the future, and since the sunspots are usually in the upper corners of the sky, I took to shooting pohotos upside down (the camera, not me) to avoid the sunspots. Damage control was not possible this time. I was so distressed I didn't even look at the photos the next year. Editing was a nightmare. So this is a salvage job.

© Maureen Hurley 2015

In Defense of the Rat

My friend Donna posted on Facebook, a charming story about country woodrats nesting in the back of her woodpile. Donna addressed the give-and-take relationship between the need for woodland creatures to have a safe haven and her need for firewood in order to keep warm. It was a poetic Thoreau moment. However, acute hysteria reigned on her thread. Fear of plague was bandied about. It was like a witch hunt.

I realized that this fear is yet another intersection of the disengagement and distancing between (wo)man and nature. I felt obliged to defend the honor of rats who, by nature, are fastidiously clean, and are incessant groomers.

I tried to assuage Donna's friends' fear by explaining that Donna's country rats, (aka woodrats, traderats, or packrats: Neotoma) native to North America, are not even rats, though they are rodents. No luck. Wood/packrats are related to hamsters and lemmings. City rats, aka Norway, black, roof, or sewer rats, are native to Asia. 

It's true that plague fleas prefer rodents. The marmot or gerbil were probably the original overland flea hosts (who carry in their gut the bacterium, Yersinia pestis, source of the Bubonic plague, or Black Death). Plague originally came from China via the Silk Road of Mongolia, then it resurfaced again by stowaway rats in Southern Italy in 1340. Rattus norvegicus are not first host choice for plague fleas, but marmots and ground squirrels are. So one should add all rodents including chipmunks to the creature avoid-list, if you're concerned about contracting the plague.

We're no longer in the Middle Ages (it's been wiping out Siberians since the Bronze Age), and in North America, plague is no longer a common human threat (there were only two cases in Yosemite; last case was in 1959). In California, plague sporadically resurfaces after long, dry summers. (Apparently there's an El Niño connection, the cycle is 15 years after a warm, moist winter.) California has few human plague victims. By comparison, Arizona's had 64 cases since 1950; ditto that in the Rockies. 

Plague doctor, engraving Paul Fürst, c. 1721 —Wiki

During the Middle Ages, from 1348 through 1351, 25% to 60% of the European population died of the plague, it reduced the world population from 450 million to 350–375 million. Thanks to antibiotics, by 1959, worldwide plague casualties dropped to 200 per year. Plague symptoms (big buboes—hence the name bubonic plague), are also very obvious, not something you could ignore, and it's treatable with antibiotics. 

We've had plague fleas in California since at least 1900, possibly since 1855, it arrived by steamer to San Francisco from China via Hawaii in 1899 (originally via rats, but the plague quickly jumped ship to a new host, native California ground squirrels). The last California plague outbreak (one person was infected) was a decade ago. It's a pretty rare occurrence.

I remember a plague warning at Fallen Leaf Lake during the early 1970s. But nobody contracted it. I had rescued a wayward vole wandering down the road, so I was checking my armpits and groin for weeks for signs of plague. But first, you have to get bitten by a rodent flea (not a dog flea, nor a deer flea...) carrying the plague...

However the plague is decimating prairie dog populations in the Rockies, and our endangered black-footed ferrets will ONLY eat prairie dogs. So now scientists need to save the black-tailed prairie dogs from the plague in order to save the ferrets. The chances of Donna's woodrats giving her the plague is close to zero—even if she slept in their nest. Carrying off her car keys or anything shiny and round would pose a much greater threat.

Anyway, fear of rodents is a deep one, but it's highly unlikely you'd catch anything at all from them. (Yes, rats do poop over our stuff), but they do not all carry diseases. As long as rodents are not running amok in my house, I don't have problems with them. But once they cross that threshold, then my killer instinct emerges, the gloves (and shoes) come off. My preferred weapons of choice are sticky glue traps, and a sandal. No poison to enter the food chain, snap traps don't work, and I'm not interested in using live traps. Besides, house mice and most rats are not native creatures.

I would never kill a woodrat, unless he moved into the attic, as they're not plentiful and their habitat is easily destroyed. After my brother kicked apart a woodrat nest in the upper garden, they shimmied up the plum tree to hide in the eaves, then moved into the attic, and set up shop in the walls, so he had to listen to them scurry about and gnaw through 2 by 4 beams at night. When he punched a hole through the wall to shut them up, then small things began to disappear, matchbox cars, coins, thimbles.... Poetic justice.

Woodrats are territorial, solitary creatures as they rarely travel more than 100 feet from their nests. They have plush, speckled fur, almost like chinchillas. Not at all like rats. They're definitely borrowers, or rather, traders. They love anything shiny or round: car keys, bottle caps and quarters. And they will often trade one shiny item for another. Hence the name, traderats. Funniest thing found in a packrat nest: a set of false teeth. Imagine the backstory....

Because woodrats are such great hoarders, archaeologists will often excavate their middens in search of artifacts. Not only that, the middens serve as a timeline as well. The oldest woodrat midden found was dated at 21,000 years old, and from it, archaeologists were able to tell when certain plants arrived in the Southwest. It was also a remarkable record of climate change.

After much back and forth posting on Donna's thread, it emerged that the poor woman really is terrified of rodents. Musophobia is one of the most common socially induced conditioned phobias.

When Donna's friend was a child, she recounted that when she stayed overnight at her grandmother's house, she imagined rats running across her feet as she slept in her feather bed. She remembers her grandmother sweeping a rat down the garden path with a broom. And when a great-uncle made sandwiches for their tea, she saw mice skitter over the drainboard, the stage was set. Clearly her grandmother and great uncle had no fear of mice. So she learned it elsewhere.

She recounted another childhood story, when the family cat brought a mouse into the house, she and her mother climbed onto a sideboard, screaming. Her mother phoned her husband, who was a bank manager, to rescue them from the mouse. I told her that Kitty clearly loved her, bringing her such treats. She was not amused.

My neighbor also had a severe musophobia. I found a wild field mouse trapped in a coffee can and brought it over to show her my treasure. She screamed and climbed a chair... I was shocked. I was about 6 years old and had never witnessed such behavior in an adult. Such a tiny animal. Why was she so afraid? I looked into the can again, and took him home, convinced adults were nuts.

Unfortunately there's no reverse button for musophobia. Those phobias probably evolved for good reason. I was thinking of Victorian women who used to scream at the sight of mice (in novels), the mice making a beeline for those billowing skirts...and I shudder.

I found a deermouse in one of my grannie's old handbags and it leaped out of the handbag and madly circled around under my sweater a few times before it exited. A little rill of fear—would he bite me? I was fairly critter crazy from a tender age and adopted them early and often. I wanted to be a vet. And I did work for horse training stables. So though it was a novel experience, I was not afraid.

I once found a half-drowned deermouse after a storm and he went bald from stress, I had some liquid cat vitamins, and he loved it. When his fur grew back, I let him go. Deearmice and fieldmice never tame up, not like (non-native Chinese) house mice, who are the ancestors of lab mice.

You can get hanta virus (much, much deadlier than the plague) from deermice (wild North American mice), but it's only a small portion of the population that carries it—on Navajolands, far from CA. 

Some people's fear of rats extends to all rodents, and squirrels often get lumped into the hate bag. Probably because they can be destructive and eat wires. But they usually mind their own business. 

A silly red squirrel lives on my fence, and during the drought I made him a water dish. So he runs up and down the fence, stroking it with his chin, saying "Mine! Mine!" He hides his acorns in the water goblet, then has to dive in to retrieve them as they sink. Hilarious. Just like the squirrel in the animated movie, Ice Age. He has been known to purr, but he doesn't want to share that section of the fence, or that water goblet. However, I don't stand close enough to share his fleas.

Chilly weather

If the house was any colder, you'd think I was in Siberia by the way I'm dressed. Ohchin cholodna. Wish I could light a fire. Those days are long gone...so I layer and layer and layer.

A favorite pair of motheaten gloves, becomes the new fashion statement. I cut the fingertips off so I can write. I 'm wearing two sweaters, a flannel nightie, a down vest, and jacket, fingerless gloves, hood, down blankie, Toasty now. I think it's warming up, around 40° as I can see my breath. A cold nose is an occupational hazard.

Thermostat is daid daid daid. Thermostat went out ages ago, luckily we've had such mild winters, so it's not been an issue. Brrr. it's been in the low 40s. Maybe even the high 30s.

I absolutely hate using the furnace. Can't stand the stink, but today it's warmer, but I still have to find a new thermostat. If it's the old copper wire leading to the thermostat that's at fault, we're screwed. Where's Ebeneezer, you ask? Heater's been kaput for at least five years, maybe longer...it just hasn't been that cold. Oakland's nowhere near as cold as Forest Knolls.

A cold friend has suddenly taken up baking marathons, as she couldn't get the furnace to work. My thermostat is newish, but broken, and I HATE the gas heater. It stinks, gives me blinding headaches, and yes, we've a carbon monoxide reader...

It's practically toasty today at 46°.  Not as cold today. But I'm wearing layers. I have a saltsock neck warmer. If it gets that cold again tonight, I'll zap it.

Old house, wattle & daub (almost that old, it's wood slats and plaster—pre sheetrock days). But the bonus is that the heating bill is very low: only the stove and water heater. 

I'm not exactly convinced burning wood fires is as bad as the Clean Air Control Board says. If you're burning real wood, that is, not presto logs. Colder than a witches' tit.

St. Stephen’s Day

Today is St. Stephen’s Day, or as my grandmother called it, Boxing Day. When I was a child, I wondered what pugilists and wrens had in common. The day after Christmas, you boxed up your food and old clothing for the poor, She then told me the story of killing the wren, who was the king of birds. No, not the wren!

‘Dreoilín, Dreoilín, Rí na nÉan,
Dreoilín a fuaireas-sa thíos ar an inse,
Istigh fé charraig agus carbhat síoda air,
Thugas-sa chugaibhse é, lánúin an tí seo,
Agus má thugann sibh onóir na Féile dom’ Dhreoilín
Le bhur lámha do shíneadh,
Go mbeire an bhliain fé mhaise agus fé áthas arís oraibh.’

The wren the wren the king of all birds,
Saint Stephen's day he got caught in the furze,
Although he is little his family is great,
Cheer up landlady an give us a treat,
Up with the kettle and down with the pan,
Give us some money to bury the wren!

I took the equivalent of two years modern Irish at UC Berkeley one summer, I bottomed out in July, my learning button broke. I later took Archaic/Old Irish to translate the epics (all bookwork), but I still can't read it, other than recognize words and phrases here and there.

 I can swear profusely (and rather inventively) in several languages. I also did a year of medieval Welsh, but was completely ADD as it was during 9/11... Yes, Welsh is easier to learn, no doubt. But there's not that much crossover. And of course all the extra "vowel" types and double consonants are maddening. But I can do a pretty good Ll sound.

Even Russian is easier than Irish. I remember looking longingly into the other classrooms, where people were learning Spanish, Latin and Russian, and it seemed like comfortable slippers by comparison. I could understand what they were saying with little effort. Hey, they don't conjugate prepositions!

I lived in the USSR for a while so I had to pick it up fast. You should've seen me in Portugal right after 9/11. Waving my arms like helicopter blades as I spoke a a bastard Portuguese- Spanish. Everyone thought I was Italian.

Sendoff for Whitman McGowan

Wild frenetic dreams all last night, I think Whitman was very much with us yesterday at the memorial. He was certainly in my head. I gave up on trying to sleep. Middle Aged Dub...

I just met Pasha DeSaix yesterday at Whitman's memorial! All this time I thought she was a man. LOL. We're now FB friends. She knew my mom, and said she was just thinking of her a few days ago. I told her that she had given my mom a n audio tape, Leonard Cohen's 10 New Songs, and after my mother died, I played it incessantly. Thanked her for the unintended gift from so many years ago.

Blue Dawg, we sent you off nicely at the Presidio. I love you always, and I met Pasha! My mother was dancin', dancin', singing White Folk was Once Wild too.

BABY, IT'S COLD OUTSIDE

Went to grab my vest
only to find he had nabbed it
and left it behind

left at a party
like the vest I had bought him
not so long ago

a gift he had lost
careless love like the others
who'd compete with that?

Walk through the British Museum using Google Street View

When I went to the British Museum more than a half lifetime ago, I got lost in the bowels, somewhere between the Roman coins and the Elgin marbles, and lost all track of time. I had to run through the rest of the museum before it closed. I streaked by Peter Paul Rubens. All those fleshy apparitions.
But now using Google Street View you can  Walk through the British Museum without going to London
I spent hours virtually wandering these halls. Luckily I had the presence of mind to save the URLs. I've made some pitstops below. It's super easy to get lost via Google Street View. 

Ireland & Celtic Europe, where I spent most of my time in the Museum, but it was dark, not like this wonderfulk well-lit display.

Santa and the Stovepipe

When we moved from San Francisco to Forest Knolls, I was going on five, but there wasn't a fireplace in the Forest Knolls house, just a stovepipe. I knew a few things: I knew that Santa could never fit down the stovepipe, no matter how much magic there was in the world. Thus began my doubt that there was no Santa. And the beginning of my doubting most things adults said in general. My grannie (who raised me) didn't have much money so my Christmas gift really was underwear. But I did get a little girl's bike that first Christmas in Forest Knolls when the family dissolved and scattered, after the sale of our city house, after my grandfather died. But my cousin RIcky came down with polio, so they took my bike with tassles away on Christmas Day. I only rode it once. If there really was a Santa, he would've given Ricky his own bicycle. But he didn't. Ricky grew up, and graduated to a Harley, but lost control of that bike one morning early and never saw another Christmas again.

Hurley: Sea Tide

"Hurley, Murihily, O Morhelly, Murley, O'hUrthuile Ó Muirthile and Morley from Murthuile meaning “sea tide,” is from mur/ muir. Of the sea tides, the Hurleys were sea-farers and mariners. A name almost exclusively from Cork, where my family hails from.

Wow! Thálatta, thálatta! The sea, the sea. A sea tidal surge as a surname suits me. I am named for the sea twiceover.

And if I play fast and loose, I can also transliterate my first name as She of the Sea (an old boyfriend, Edwin Drummond dubbed me She of the Sea), vs. little Mary, Maureen, Máirín (it's the Irish spelling, not Pokémon character fergawdsakes!).

Upon occasion, I've also been called the Morrígan, goddess of battle, strife, and sovereignty (the phantom, or great queen); the Morrígu or the plural triune, the Morrígna. She is depicted as a skald crow, or raven flying over the battlefield, and her triune animal shapes are the eel, wolf, and cow. Not solely the goddess of death, she is the goddess of wealth of the land. Her triune sister aspects are: Badb, Macha and Nemain (or Anand).

Mor may derive from an Indo-European stem, cognate with Old English maere (which  gives us "nightmare" and rí-gan translates as queen, or rather, king., from the Proto-Celtic, *Moro-rīganī-s. But in Old, and Middle Irish, it was scribed as mór, which means great, grand, big; from PIE, *Māra Rīganī-s.

There is also a connection with the Arthurian Morgan le Fay; mor may derive from a Welsh word for the sea, môr, but the scholarly argument against that derivation is that the names are from different cultures and branches of the Celtic linguistic tree. However, there are plenty of cognates in Welsh and Irish, so it is not a strong argument. (All Brythonic forms are *mor; all Goidelic forms are muir; Manx is spelled mooir). The Morrígan could be Queen of the Sea, she was tempestuous enough.

The Welsh, Mair, Manx Moirrey, Irish/Scottish: Maura, Moira (English: Mariah), with the diminutive -ín ending added, equals little Mary. Mairenn, Máirín, Maureen. But then, even the name Mary also has connotations with the sea, as in Our Lady of the Sea.  

In the Middle Ages, Mary was equated with the sea, mare, as in Stella Maris. Not that misogynistic Jewish definition of Maryam as bitterness, or bitter herbs, nor rebelliousness (well, maybe that). Mariam, as in drop of the sea. A name considered so holy in Ireland, it wasn't even used until the Renaissance.

Then there's Muirín from muir f ‎(genitive singular, and nominative plural mara). Old Irish muir, from Proto-Celtic *mori, (Welsh môr, Manx mooir), from Proto-Indo-European*móri, (Latin mare, English mere, German Meer). I guess the idea of a rough sea was always a nightmare.

Hebrew word ma'or for star and yam for the sea equals Maryam. Stella Maris, Venus. Sea-star, also Polaris, the lode-star leading the way. Once I was chosen as Queen of the May, and I crowned the statue of Mary with a crown of roses. And I was baptized at Star of the Sea. Ave Maris Stella. And I grew up in Marin, within sight of the sea, if I climbed up Mt. Barnabe.

Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother.*

Epi oinopa ponton. I'll drink to that.

Ah, the hidden poetry of naming. 

 Goleen Star of the Sea, Mizen Head, Co. Cork, most southwesterly point in Ireland —Wiki

Donkey Wars

Donkeys will do what donkeys want, and bribery seldom works. Ask me how I know. My first mount was my friend's donkey named Joshua, a beast so mean, that no one else would ride her. She threw me off at every opportunity, she was very canny, she knew when the cinch was loose, and having no withers, she'd suddenly break into a stiff gallop, and then slam on the brakes. Head down, fetlocks together, pointing like a ballerina, and I went head first into a ditch, usually replete with a thistle patch. That donkey contemplated lots of shenanegans that required deliberate planning. One ruse  included a hogwire fence around a fruit tree. She broke my arm with that one, among other things. Once she mistook my finger for a carrot (or not), and kept grinding away at it, as I pounded on her head, it was hollow as a drum. I thought I'd never get it back. Joshua was a mean old donkey, it made me into a determined rider, trying to outfox her.

Mad donkeys
EARLY WARNING SYSTEM

A Note on my Writing Lifted by Other Websites

I sometimes stumble upon bits of my blog posts on other websites, with no credit. If I can find a link, I will write to the offender, and usually they'll make a link back to my site, etc. But there are some websites where there is no way to reach out to the plagiarist.

One Hollywood-type, a reality TV producer's assistant, Tinsley, lifted my massive post on Chilean miners, and posted the entire piece on her Tumblr blog (all gone now), apparently, because she was "very liberal," she was also very liberal with my post.

Many of my enraged friends bombarded Tinsley's site, and she took it down. I called it my Tinsleygate. I wouldn't have cared if she had at least asked me, published a portion of it with quotes, then made an obvious link back to my blog. But she didn't do that. She was getting all the traffic and kudus as if she had written it. Thing is, I was still revising it (I revise a lot), when she snagged one iteration of it...

Tinsley later apologised, see her letter at the bottom of my Chilean Miners post. She back-pedalled a bit, to say the least. Rather than just use bits of my piece, or give me credit, she took it down. I guess we took her down when she realized the legal implications between the concept of "fair use," and copyright infringement.

Borrowing a few lines is considered to be fair use (for educational purposes only) under the copyright act.

Someone also lifted my Black Bart story, but a few emails later, it was resolved nicely...a Dutch fellow interested in old firearms, used my story to illustrate his antique gun collection. Turns out he just really, really liked my story.

black bart - Dutch Gunswww.dutchguns.com/black%20bart.htm‎ Het origineel is te vinden op http://mohurley.blogspot.com/2009/09/black-bart. html. This article is not mine, but found on the internet. It is written by Maureen ...

1. Another nefarious sort lifted my entire interview and photo of Jim Dodge, then posted it on his own blog, zoran rosko vacuum player with no link or mention. Grrr. I guess the word vacuum explains it all. I was able to leave a comment:

   Maureen Hurley7/29/11, 5:19 AM If you're going to lift my entire blog post and repost it here, please at least use my name and offer a back link to it. BTW, you're also breaking copyright.
   Maureen Hurley   http://mohurley.blogspot.com/2009/09/jim-dodge.html

At the time, I thought there was no legal recourse for me. I've never resorted to legal means, but in each case, no one was actually making money off my pieces. To be fair, Zoran Rosco did remove my photo, and credited my work to a literary blog I belonged to, RedRoom, as the author. But not to me.

However, if you find your work appearing on other sites, do check out this helpful post from the National Writers' Union, Are Websites Stealing Your Work? There are some great links at the bottom of the post. (And see my links at the bottom of the page.)

An architectural magazine in Australia followed proper blog etiquette when they ran one of my blog pieces, but they contacted me first and asked permission. (Can't find the link.)

A couple of blokes delving into brewing a heady quaff, did source me (not sure why!) for my bit on St. Patrick & Annals of the Four Masters. Cheers! I'll drink to that. Moor: Dining and Dwelling Part 4

This particular link is more of a tribute, than a theft, but it's done right. A synopsis, and a link back to me.  The Hall of Heorot:  Literrata: Olaf the Peacock's Irish Mother Which, in turn, was a reblog from Ireland's Eye on Myth, from Nov. 30, 2013. And also in Fuck Yeah Vikings and Celts! (But I couldn't find the post. OK, so I'm a little late to the party.... three years later. I't not like I have a huge following,  "This domain listed #3 054 178 number in the world.")

Maybe I should Google myself more often than once every five years. I also found this BOOK! entry on my Tiki Junction piece. It looks like a bibliography.

The Tender Soldier: A True Story of War and Sacrifice - Google Books Result
https://books.google.com/books?isbn=1439177406Vanessa M. Gezari - ‎2014 - History
See also Price, “Barney West Famous for Tricky Tikis,” and “Tiki Junction, Sausalito,” http://mohurley.blogspot.com/2007/03/tiki-junction-sausalito.html, accessed ...

1. cassidyslangscam paid somewhat of a sideways backhanded tribute to me as well, in that he quotes bits of my blog, but didn't like Danny Cassidy (or my blog) all that much. "So, while there are things I dislike about the blog, she is displaying an admirable amount of integrity here and drawing a clear line between the man and his crazy theories. Unfortunately, this kind of integrity is rare."
2. And yes, my photos are stolen as well; But most people do attribute them to me. Until I began to Google my name, I never even knew about this one from Bird & Beckett, a great indie bookstore in SSF, and I've read there... and I do love that photo of HD Moe, RIP.

1. "A footnote: The photo of H. D. Moe above is from Maureen Hurley’s blog (is she perhaps the photographer as well?) athttp://mohurley.blogspot.com/2009/09/black-bart-rides-again.html. There, you’ll find a wonderful account with stunning images from the Black Bart Poetry Festival held at the On Broadway Theatre in North Beach in 1983, with Dave Moe in attendance, among a cast of luminaries that will make you regret ever missing a promising gathering of bards. The post begins with the well-told tale of Black Bart, himself, “California’s first and most notorious stagecoach robber poet” and quotes a commentator who noted that “whatever Black Bart lacked as a rhymer, he sure made up for as a robber.” If you think poetry is a crime, you’re not alone! But crime pays, just like poetry, no? Bring a dollar or two for the poets!" 

I'm less happy about the outright theft of a Brownie Mary photo on a YouTube book review,, but my blog was given credit: The Long MANGLED MESSY MALIGNED Life of MARIJUANA. And it doesn't have a huge following (218 views in one year... So I'll wait and see,)

1. I know I've pissed a few people off with my post calling Arby's dancing chimps ad racist and offensive, and also my Viking Redhead post ruffled a few feathers....many divergent threads there. But enough of this obsession, I'm onto page 5 of Google results and am cross-eyed and growing weary...a lot of spammy, bogus sites replete with the red herring siren call of seeing my handle mohurley.blogspot in print, merely as bizarre spam filler.
   
   Of course this search process only works if my name's attached to my work. There's probably a lot more of my work out there with no credit at all. Not much I can do about that. Except use unique search lines for each post, and at 1500-plus posts, I don't see that happening any time soon.
   
   That's how I stumbled upon my stolen Jim Dodge post, a unique line handle led me to a post where the writing seemed strangely familiar. Which led to that moment of epiphany: hey wait! I wrote that! The irony is, If I wait too much longer I won't remember that I wrote it anyway.
   
   Ultimately, leaving my post up on the vacuum cleaner's blog site benefits my friend, writer Jim Dodge, so I did not invoke legal aid on that blatant post theft. I took screenshots of it, 11 of them, just in case....
   
   So it boils down to this, if you write, you have a few options, leave your writing under lock and key, mouldering in a drawer, while submitting some of it in small sequential batches in the hopes that someone will eventually use it in a print journal, or you can electronically publish your work, whether with self-publishing in a blog, or with electronic magazines. (And that still won't stop people from lifting your work.)
   
   

   Writing is a compulsion, I have to write, I don't seem to have much control over what I write, so write, I must. That's how I learn, how I comprehend the world around me.  I never set out to write about a given subject. It's an organic process, with no tangible beginning, middle, or end.

   
   

   I guess the question begs, who do you write for, yourself, or for others, in the hopes that someone will read your work, and perhaps be moved by it? I do know that by publishing my writing here, such as it is, it forces me to rewrite and to work much harder at my sullied craft, than if it was strictly a private affair. It ups my game considerably. Ah, exposure, exposure, exposure is everything. I'm not sure theft is the most obvious form of flattery.