I WAS TEN (a birthday poem of sorts)

I WAS TEN

I was ten. The meal complete.
Some two score and more of relatives
leaned back in their chairs, comatose.
The long table was cleared, 
the turkey carcass in the soup pot, 
salt and luck poured onto the spilled wine lakes  
that bled out on mended Irish linen cloths.
The cutlery and cut glass sang staccato arias
in the kitchen. Stacks of dessert plates
clattered and leaned in wild abandon. 
The teakettle screamed its siren call.
Amber whiskey sloshed into cups and mugs.
I waited in eager anticipation
for the entrance of the cake—
the cake that I surely knew was mine... 
Would it be chocolate?
Please let it be chocolate 
with chocolaty frosting.
Not mint. Real chocolate frosting.
But they brought in the pies.
No cake, no candles. Pumpkin pies.
I was ten. I combusted into tears.
My mother slapped her forehead
saying, OhmyGod, it's her birthday.
Everyone cooing, we'll make it up
at Christmas. Never happened. 
Story of my life.

11/22/2016 
Bay Area Generations #42
2/2017

Dear Google, Now Blogger?

The only warning I got that Blogger was being updated. I clicked yes, and Blogger disappeared.

Dear Google,

I see that you've changed Blogger this afternoon—right as I was working on a poem post. I can't say it was an upgrade as I lost all ability to see anything other than your Confidential/ "got it." pop-up windows. Luckily, I had saved my poem in another format. But all my formatting changes were lost.

Your design teams really need to do a better job on Google products—the upgrades are supposed to improve user experience, not frustrate us. I was an early supporter of Google products, and now I'm disgruntled enough to leave Google behind. Your last revamp of Blogger also left me out in the cold for long stretches of time. So now, finally everything's mostly working again, (except the gratuitous extra drafts it saves every time I make a correction) and you had to go and upgrade?

And now Blogger, my entire dashboard and related pages are a blank white field, replete with orange feedback button in lower right corner. I've sent you many of messages today, while trying to get back online to complete my post.

All I get is a blank white page when I try to access Blogger's All Posts, and Create Page, etc. The only thing I can access is the public page. I've tried everything from changing cookies, disabling extensions. dumping, caches, resetting Safari, restarting, and nothing works. The URLs are broken.

I agree, Blogger really does need a revamp, it sure was an ugly interface (what's with all the orange anyway?),  Now, it may be that Blogger no longer supports legacy Macs/Safari. But like with Gmail, it should at least continue to support basic legacy HTML.

Speaking of Gmail, the new iOS Gmail is a warthog of an app. It's cluttered and distracting, What's with all the extraneous red stuff? Are you trying to attract bulls to the proverbial china shop? I can't even do basic functions without emails taking off to the hinterlands. The clincher, the embedded hot links are dead. I can't access URLs. I finally had to delete the app from my iPad, as it deleted some important emails with no way to retrieve them. Steep learning curve by torture? A dungeons and dragons approach to email? Oops! Steep learning curve, I mean, black hole ahead.

I won't even mention what an utter dog's breakfast the new features are. Imagine receiving a password reset, and then not being able to access the URL. Imagine getting an email with a link to reset that password. Now imagine, a Gmail app so screwed up, that you can't access the URL in order to change your password. A weird nanny feature? Yeah, that was me two days ago. And, yes, I have the latest iOS update. I combed the settings, etc., looking for a way to fix the problem. Nada.

Since I was prompted to download the Google Photos app along with my new iOS Gmail app, I was presented with another form of hell, when Google Photos accessed ALL my iOS photos and dumped them into Google Photos. I use my iPad as a diary, I take photos of receipts, checks, etc. I DO NOT want them showing up in my Google Photos folder. I deleted them from Google Photos, only to discover they were also deleted from my iOS photo folder. Luckily, I was able to retrieve all 104 deleted photos.

And now I can no longer use Blogger. What sort of fresh hell establishment are you running over at Google these days?

I dislike Google+, and its attached Google Photos (see previous post) on the Mac, as it's too in your face to be of much use when looking at hundreds of photos at a time.  I am still smarting over the loss of Picasa. I HATE Google Photos, which is a terrible replacement for Picasa. In addition, I lost all my curated notes on my Picasa sites, with no warning. Had I known, I would've copied them. The irony is that some people still have access to their Picasa sites. Bring back Picasa, or fix Google Photos.

So, I'm thinking it's the death knell for you and me, Google, I've downloaded my blog, as it looks like I may need to move it to another platform. Sadly, I think I've had enough of your broken applications.

So, Google, what's next? Please expand your R&D base before trotting out changes that affect our lives. FWIW, I was eventually able to get back onto Blogger, by using a different web browser, but I prefer using Safari to Firefox for my Google applications. It's simple, clean, elegant. Something you should strive for in all your products.

Dear Google, about those 404 errors on Blogspot
Dear Google, Using Google Photos is Painful
Dear Google, Using Blogger is a Painful Experience...

Dire vote

You have got to be kidding. How is this even possible? Everyone I know voted for Hillary. Everyone is in mourning. Filing for my Irish passport now. I don't want to live in a country that voted for t.rump. Oof, I didn't see the word “dire” embedded in my post. I must admit that when  I went to sleep Election Night, I was feeling hopeful, then I awoke near midnight, with nightmares of persecution—only to find today's headlines to be deplorable. Trump? Hillary was not my first choice, Trump is not the lesser of two weevils. But hey, now we can all legally get stoned. We may need to.  How else to survive the next four years? Everybody let’s get stoned. Bliss out.

"Not my president." Seen posted on cars as I left Sonoma County.

2016: annus horriblis. Maybe I need to drop one n, that pretty much sums it up.

Cut my Hair

So today, I whacked off my hair to shoulder length, I'm now 30 pounds lighter, and my head is in danger of flying off my neck. I'm looking a little poodley around the edges. All that curl weighted down by yard-long hair. Boing! It was well past my waist and I have a long back.

I warned it to behave. Repeatedly. I got tired of detangling it every morning, at best it resembled dreadlocks, or a hornet's best. As someone said, A messy kitchen.

And my hair was getting thin because of the constant tangles. No matter how careful I was combing it out. For a while, I was out of my hair product, and used commercial shampoo, which made my hair strands thin, and even more flyaway, and prone to tangling. Hair that long dated back to the first Clinton inauguration.

I'm sure I will mourn its loss, but I was so tired of it all. I reached around back to hold my hair, to comfort myself, but it wasn't there. LOL. My familiar has left me. New beginnings. I put my ponytail into a birchwood box laden with turquoise and coral. I said a small requiem to the past. I put on my pantsuit jacket, and I voted for Her.

Dear Google, Using Google Photos is Painful

Dear Google,


I use your Picasa desktop app to edit and to upload photos, for years, it worked swimmingly until I was forced to embrace Google Photos. To my horror, when I was transferring photos from one Picasa site to another Google Photos site, in an attempt to consolidate work, I found that all the Picasa app editing did not translate.

My photos look awful in Google Photos.

Now I'm stuck with either using a different desktop app, and the Google Photos online editor. Alas, your editor is not as robust, and it's slow and cumbersome. Did I mention cumbersome? Try using it with a variable DSL speed sometime. Oh, btw, we upgraded to ATT Uverse, much faster, but still boggy at times. Still your glitches persist.

When you have 1000s of photos to reprocess, Google Photos makes editing impossible. No batch edit of albums—Picasa's desktop Auto Contrast and I'm Feeling Lucky were great filters. And the Darken Sky filter was brilliant. Can't do that in Google Photos.

So disappointing. The entire Picasa app and online experience was so much better than the online Google Photos experience. I'm sure I've told you before, I started out loving all Google products, Like The Guy (Kawasaki, who got me into this blogging mess to begin with back in 2007), I was an Google-evangelista, but I've discovered the more you tinker with our online experience, the worse it gets.

Blogger is a case in point. I continue to use it, but most of the time I'm seething. nay, frothing. The revamped Blogger has been a royal pain in the ass to use for years—since its last upgrade, and now I see Google Photos has followed suit. The relatively new Gmail revision is bad enough. At least I can opt out and use the old school version for slow HTML. Bells and whistles are not necessarily a good thing. I avoid Google+ for the same reasons.

There needs to be multiple ways to do things, and there needs to be quick and dirty methods to deal with multiple blog posts, bulk images, etc. It seems you've gone the way of Microsoft—bloatware. It's fine in small quantities, but frustrating on bigger jobs.

And while we're at it, what the hell happened to all my historical album annotations when you forced my Picasa photos over to Google+ Photos? Have you ANY idea, how much work went into that process, and now it's all gone. Poof. Like with my Seamus Heany Memorial photos, I had written a curatorial pieces identifying the readers, etc.—including poets laureate, and the Consul General of Ireland. Had I known, I would've copied the comments.

I want my Picasa web albums site back. I want my album comments back.

The more I use Google Photos the more I HATE Google Photos, and I mourn the elegance and simplicity of Picasa. What were you thinking? And  yet you've let some users keep their Picasa sites, why not me? I know others are still using their Picasa sites, including Robert Lee Haycock.

I want to opt out of Google Photos, as a user, and have access to my Picasa Web Albums again. All five sites. I don't mind that viewers interface with Google Photos, but, as a user, I need something better designed for behind the scenes access. Something like Blogger-All Posts listing. But with thumbnails.

It seems the more you make things better, the worse it gets. You need to use a much wider test market before you roll out some of these design changes. You do use a real test market, right? It's not all in-house?

And while I'm ranting, do you actually ever listen to your constituents? I get it that I'm proverbially biting the hand that cyberfeeds me. Clearly I am ungrateful. But I was once one of your most ardent supporters. Once you were great, now, you're  bloatware. Cumbersome, at best. Get a new design team in, fergawdsakes. And test drive it to a wider audience. Especially to us dyslexics. I'm offering it up, here.

1. Google+ Photos needs to also have an additional thumbnail user contact page style design—like film strips—for overall ease of viewing. Not just this multi-sized format that fills the entire page that the visitor sees. The eye needs places to rest in order to comprehend, not to be bombarded with imagery.  Please take care of the user as well as the visitor. And modular organizing of images, not by exif dates.

2. Each album needs to have a discrete space to include album prose, and not just the space on each photo, but for overall curatorship. People need context as well as visual imagery.

3. On Blogger, you also need another way of organizing posts. It's cumbersome when you have 2K's worth of posts, to navigate. Perhaps a hierarchical decade index as well as a year/month index.

4. Your in-house blogger search engine is not very robust. In fact, it's tetchy. Gawd help us if we add an extra space between words, or misspel (stet) a word. It needs to be more like Google search engine, more boolean in nature. I know you have the skills. I know you can do this. And when we get the results of the blog search, just list the titles, not the entire piece—I'm long-winded, in case you can't tell. It's otherwise impossible to access the older pieces via the in-house blog search. Even with Hot Links enabled—which bogs down the loading of Blogger, BTW.

5. On the Blogger Compose page, an actual date listed up there with the toolbar. The Schedule button is not always visible. And the helpful Schedule And Label slide-out windows are a little too trigger-happy. Sometime I have a cat-and-mouse chase the window to nail it down. Nothing worse than an overly helpful  hide-and-seek window anticipating my every need, only to have it be the wrong need. Sort of like using Autocorrect. And what's with the ghost drafts of blogposts I've already corrected and reposted? Hard to track down and delete.

I'm sure I'll have more suggestions as I continue to use the site...but at least this is a start.

Thank you, I feel better now. So let's get to it, improve Google Photos and Blogger. Or at least keep those legacy pages available for the users.

Yours under the Cranky Sign,
Maureen

Dear Google, Using Blogger is a Painful Experience...

Day of the Dead, Farallones, from a photo 2015

 

A photo from the last day of the year, 2015: the Farallones, 20 miles out from Point Reyes, seemed so close, I could almost touch them. A last gasp from a dying camera; its swan song. Farallón means "pillar" or "sea cliff," once aka "Devil's Teeth Islands," for the treacherous shoals. Part of the Sierras, a block of rifted granitic continental crust thrusted up. A place where, as a child, I though the dead dwelled. I had no idea that the islands were the abode of spirits, called "Islands of the Dead" by the Ohlones.

The Farallones are home to 400 species of birds, many of then rare, or endangered. I once saw a tufted puffin wing his way off Point Reyes. A small clownish football of a bird winging home with a beakfull of fish.

Vizcaíno's friar, Antonio de la Ascencion called the islands los Farallónes. Probably why San Francisco Bay was never discovered by Vizcaíno or by Drake, who called them the Islands of Saint James. A place of treacherous shoals. A place of many shipwrecks.

The American whalers, and Russian explorers built sealing stations there, manned by Alaskan Kodiak Islanders, until there were no more northern fur seals left. Whether Northern, or Guadalupe fur seals, we will never know. One of the largest seabird colonies in the U.S. Then the Gold Rush—millions of seabird eggs (500,000 a month) collected, led to the San Francisco Egg Wars.

Then it was Rum Row during the Prohibition, and a nuclear waste dump during the 1940s to the 1970s; 50,000 radioactive drums, and 44,000 shipyard containers were scuttled, and are rusting away—we still don't know what is in them. But it can't be good. Stories of massive sponges growing in the littoral zones.

Yes, and here we are, still dancing on the brink of the world.

uxar-at kai pire.
On the cliff, on the edge,
on the brink of the world,
we are dancing.

Day of the Dead, All Soul's Day, The beginning and the end of the Celtic year. My grandmother, brother and mother all died right before Samhain. So, Samhain, All Souls' Day, and El Día de los Muertos is a three-fold sorrow.

Thinking of my mother who wanted her ashes scattered off the Golden Gate, to drift to the Farallones. Maybe I should give her back to the sea.

Fitting image for El Día de los Muertos. 

PAD poetry prompts 2016 (not used)

These poetry prompts were copied sans date, if you want the date and Robert' Lee Brewer's model poems, visit his website. 2016 November PAD Chapbook Challenge:

Last sunset of the year (photo)

 Last sunset of the year,2015,  the Farallones from Point Reyes

A macaw-colored sky. Last sunset of the year, 2015, 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.

It was the day I killed my camera, all the photos I took on Dec. 31, 2015, came out too dark, and were loaded with sunspots. but this one, with a lot of doctoring, gaudy as it is, worked. It breaks the rules. Never divide a photo directly in half, it's too 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. But not the pixellation. Spots before my eyes in more ways than one.

I left one sunspot in the lower left corner as a reminder. The upper left corner of the photo 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? 

Nothing to be done about the whacked light meter, though. Fritz is its middle name. So even if I can save some of the photos, the digital noise renders them useless. Luckily with this photo, it doesn't matter. But just look at that water. Lovely pixellation. Which made it even harder to clone the sunspots out of it. You can see several patch jobs.

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 until six months later—hence the late posting. Editing was a nightmare. So this is a salvage job, at best.

from a Facebook post
February 4, 2016

Johnson's Oyster Farm—aka—Drake's Bay Oyster Farm requiem

This was the place where I thoroughly fried my camera shooting a low winter sun over Schooner Creek (it was a Johnson's Oyster Farm—aka—Drake's Bay Oyster Farm homage and requiem). 

My camera lost its mind. You can see a few sunspots in this photo. But it was so outrageous, I shot several photos, each image added to the overall sunspottiness. Not only that, after these shots, the light meter also went south. Or maybe it was north. Everything was underexposed. Nearly black images. Hundreds of them. Not much to be done about it. Except cry.

It was a suck it up Buttercup kind of moment. I used to cry whenever my cameras died...Quivery-lipped, I buried the images in deep dark folders. I still haven't edited this batch...

The Farallones photo and comment were from an old Facebook post, that I rediscovered and revised. Hence the odd posting date.

Day of the Dead, All Soul's Day, The beginning and the end of the Celtic year. Halloween is always hard, my grandmother, brother and mother all died right before Samhain. So, Samhain, All Souls' Day, and El Dia de los Muertos is a three-fold sorrow.

Thinking of my mother who wanted me to scatter her ashes off the Golden Gate, to drift to the Farallones. Maybe I should get someone to sail me out there, and be done with it, give her back to the sea. Who has a boat?

See also
Tomales Bay Photo I managed to save a few photos from hundreds.

El Dia de los Muertos was moved atop our Day of the Dead/New Year....

There was an altar for a poet friend who died last year, Francisco Alarcon, and a woman posting it said: "Dear White People: Día de los muertos is not your Halloween!" Not knowing the background as to why El Dia de los Muertos was moved to our Day of the Dead/New Year....

I wrote back:

Hallowe'en/Samhain is when we Celts celebrate the end of the year (it's our New Year), and it's a day we also honor our visiting ancestors with food, song, and storytelling. It's a time when the doors to the Otherworld are open. Francisco was a longtime friend, and he would've also honored our traditions as well. FYI, El Dia de Los Muertos was moved atop our holiday, and there are also shared traditions. Francisco would've also honored that.

On Jack O Lanterns and squashes

This was a diatribe against a medievalist's "scholar" post, who conflated pumpkins, New World squashes with old world species.The author also lumped the Renaissance with the Medieval world. We (imperially speaking) came undone. These are from my notes to Medievalist.net. I had reposted some of my comments on Facebook. I always meant to make a blog of it, but never did, so this is a placeholder.

I wrote: Did something get lost in translation? We don't call cucumbers squashes. Citrullus was the other form eaten. Melons are not called squashes. Lagenaria was mostly inedible (gourd, clalbash). The word cucurbita means "gourd".

 Most squash as we know them, came from the New World. Note the country of origin in the list below.

"squash, pumpkin, or gourd depending on species, variety, and local parlance,[a] and for their seeds. First cultivated in the Americas before being brought to Europe by returning explorers after their discovery of the New World, plants in the genus Cucurbita are important sources of human food and oil....Cucurbita fruits have played a role in human culture for at least 2,000 years. They are often represented in Moche ceramics from Peru. After Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World, paintings of squashes started to appear in Europe early in the sixteenth century. " —Cucurbita- Wiki

The genus Cucumis in the Cucurbitaceae family, including some gourds, do not include New World squashes. Most gourds are inedible, and you can't eat a loofah! Some gourds (calabashes), and several melons were native to the Old World.

Cucurbita – squash, pumpkin, zucchini, some gourds
Lagenaria – mostly inedible gourds
Citrullus – watermelon (C. lanatus, C. colocynthis) and others
Cucumis – cucumber (C. sativus), various melons
Luffa – the common name is also luffa, sometimes spelled loofah (when fully ripened, two species of this fibrous fruit are the source of the loofah scrubbing sponge)

"Six cucurbit crops are represented in 23 Byzantine-era mosaics from Israel, these being round melons (Cucumis melo), watermelons (Citrullus lanatus), sponge gourds (Luffa aegyptiaca), snake melons (faqqous, Cucumis melo Flexuosus Group), adzhur melons (Cucumis melo Adzhur Group), and bottle gourds (Lagenaria siceraria). Cucurbits are represented in 23 of the 134 mosaics containing images of crop plants." —Cucurbitaceae - Wikipedia

The Cucurbits of Mediterranean Antiquity: Identification of Taxa from Ancient Images and Descriptions

"By ancient times, long-fruited forms of Cucumis melo (melon) and Lagenaria siceraria (bottle gourd) were selected, cultivated and used as vegetables around the Mediterranean and, in addition, bottle-shaped fruits of L. siceraria were employed as vessels. Citrullus lanatus (watermelons) and round-fruited forms of Cucumis melo (melons) were also consumed, but less commonly. A number of cucurbit species, including Bryonia alba, B. dioica, Citrullus colocynthis and Ecballium elaterium, were employed for medicinal purposes. No unequivocal evidence was found to suggest the presence of Cucumis sativus (cucumber) in the Mediterranean area during this era. The cucumis of Columella and Pliny was not cucumber, as commonly translated, but Cucumis melo subsp. melo Flexuosus Group (snake melon or vegetable melon).

Food in Antiquity: A Survey of the Diet of Early Peoples

"The cucumber was much cultivated in Egypt in Pliny's day and known in Early ... Apicius cooked them with brains, cumin, honey, celery seed, liquamen and oil, ... "

Triskeles, whiteface, and woad, photos

Celtic triskeles and spiral inspired by La Tene art in whiteface and woad—I mean Maybelline. As to the usual: Yes, but what are you supposed to be, my answer was I am that I am. If you need a name, the hag cycle of the Morríghan, the phantom queen, goddess of fertility, war and death; or the Cailleach, the divine crone, a creator/weather/ancestor deity. (From caille, mantle, the veiled one.) The feather growth on the side of my head is part of a plaster bandage mask/cast of my face—also in whiteface and spirals. But prettier. The maiden aspect. I couldn't wear my scary face when I taught kids poetry, so the mask was a compromise. I either wore the mask on my face, or on the back of my head—which really freaked people out. They couldn't tell whether I was coming or going. Nor could I, apparently. 

I always painted my face up as the grotesque Celtic hag with triskeles, but people complained, asked, can't you do something nice....I just wasn't into "pretty" so this was as good as it got. Only once, and once only. I got tired of explaining my character/costume. A New Age Pierrot-Columbina character?

Halloween Traditions (notes for the UICC Samhain series)

Oíche Shamhna! Happy Samhain. Hallowe'en, aka All Hallows Evening, has its roots in an Irish Catholic tradition that supplanted ancient pagan Celtic Samhain customs. It was introduced to Scotland ca. the 16th century, and came to America in the 19th century via the Irish refugees.

Oíche Shamhna ( night of Samhain) Hallowe’en is the evening before the Feast of All Saints (The Hallowed Ones). But it wasn't always so. In 608 AD, Pope Boniface IV decided to commemorate all the martyrs, so the 13th of May was

designated as the Feast of All Holy Martyrs. In 837 Pope Gregory IV extended the festival to remember all the known and unknown saints. The festival was renamed the Feast of All Saints and the 1st of November was chosen for the festival. The Martyrology of Oengus written circa 800 records the Irish keeping All Saints on the 1st of November but additional feasts of All Saints of Europe on the 20th of April and All Saints of Africa on the 20th of December. Later the 1st of November became the sole commemoration date for All Saints in Ireland. The 2nd of November is the feast of All Souls a day which commemorates the faithful departed. The feast began in the 11th century and was connected with Christian concerns with death and purgatory. Later a popular belief developed that the souls in purgatory could on this day appear back on earth to haunt those who had wronged them. The souls would take the form of ghost, witches or toads. (Farmer 2011, 14). It was also believed one could help the dead on this day by giving alms in the form of coins or food (ibid). In Britain a small round cake called soul cake was made and the cakes were given out to soulers (mainly consisting of children and the poor) who would go from door to door on Halloween, singing and saying prayers for the dead. (BBC)

All-hallows or All-hallowmas (Middle English Alholowmesse: All Saints' Day) the night before was called All-hallows Eve, shortened to Halloween. Pope Gregory IV in 83 AD, moved All Hallowmas to November first. Another harvest holiday was co-opted, one celebrating a Roman Harvest Goddess (of apples) Pomona. Later, the New World Aztec holiday, which shares a remarkable amount of customs with Samhain, El Dia de los Muertos, was moved from August, and added to the melange.

The first historical reference of Hallowe'en in America dates back to 1919, The Book of Hallowe'en. A Massachusetts librarian, Ruth Edna Kelley, credited the Famine Irish with bringing Hallowe'en customs to the new world.

On Irish Saints' Names and Family Names

Molly posts a photograph of the two churches in Nevada City, stranded  on opposite sides of the freeway, St. Canice's & Trinity Episcopal. If you stand just so, you can see both spires at once. Two churches separated by road and by faith.

Few know that Canice was an Irish saint, Cainnech moccu Dalánn, he was born in Glengiven, Ireland, and was a close friend of St. Columba's. Helped convert the Picts. 

I'm sure everybody mispronounces the church name. That's Canice, not Candace—which drove my aunt Canice crazy. Just. Don't.

My aunt Canice, the last child in line, was named after a dude. Yep. That would be Kenneth, in English, or Anguish as my grannie would say... 

The name gave my aunt Canice much anguish during her lifetime. She gave up trying to correct people and eventually went by the handle of Candy. People couldn't screw that name up. How sweet.

Sort of like why I cowped to using Mo vs. Maureen after resisting for decades. Not that there was a Saint Maureen, but it means Little Mary, or bitter herbs. Take your pick.

It's a good thing my granny didn't choose St. Kevin. Can you imagine what would've happened with the moniker, Caoimhín, in the mouths of the English speakers? 

Keeping in the family tradition of unpronounceable Irish names, Canice named her only daughter  Sinead, after my grandmother. You'd think she would've known better.  I guess it could've been Siobhan. St. Joan.

My cousin Sinead doesn't let anyone read her nametag at work, their eyes get all tangled up in the random assortment of vowels. And she won't give her real name out to baristas—it comes out as Sin-head, or Sineed! We liked Sinhead. It makes us laugh. 

All this naming after saints in my family to keep us in line. Not that it ever took.

So long, Tom Hayden

So long, Tom. May the roads rise up to meet you...

I got to hang out with the “Chicago 7” anti-war activist Tom Hayden at the Santa Anita Irish Faire, in 1997, his anthology, Irish Hunger just came out. I tried to buy it, he said No, poets shouldn't have to pay for this book. And he signed it with a flourish.

I used to run into Tom when we lobbied for the arts at the state capitol in Sacramento. Tom's office was always open, a refuge for artists. Tom, former husband of actress Jane Fonda (17 years), tried to make change from within politics. He was a real mover and shaker.  The radical inside the system. He worked both sides of the floor. Tom was elected to the assembly in 1982, and in 1992, Hayden was elected to the state senate.

We kept in touch via Facebook and Twitter, but he'd been quiet for a while, he had a stroke in 2015, I guess it was a long illness. He died year minus a day just shy of Maureen O'Hara (2015).

Wow, 2016, helluva year for our cultural icons. May the righteous roads rise with him and may he rest in justice.

Hayden legislated the Great Hunger be included in curriculum 1997 

Napa Poetry Conference cartoon

Once upon a time we were an extraordinary group of poets who met each summer in Napa. Organizing poets for this photo shoot was like herding cats. My photo traveled far and wide, so I made a parody drawing of it. Can you recognize any of the poets? It's 1985. Some of the poets no longer walk with us.

Napa Valley College English Chair, Dave Evans founded the Napa Poetry Conference in the summer of 1981. It began as a collective of Berkeley poets and students who came together to share their expertise and perfect writing skills. 

I'm not sure how I got roped in, probably to do a potential story. But I attended most. if not all, the conferences through 1987; Dave kept the tuition low. In my case, he waived it entirely in exchange for photographic documentation. At first, I merely observed, but then, Dave brought me in as a participant and presenter. My writing life was irrevocably changed.

Word got out and poets from all over the US and beyond attended the workshops. Several came from the Bahamas, of all places. So during the spring of 1985, we all packed up and flew south—to Nassau, for an international conference. Extraordinary times.

One of the unique aspects of the Napa Poetry Conference was that we were all housed within the community, no motels. I stayed as some extraordinary homes, one place on top of Mt. Veder, another ranch in the Mayacamas, replete with lake and rowboat, our hosts were a medic and a combat helicopter pilot, each was carrying on a secret affair, so life was intense. Because we were all poet-roommates, we made deeper bonds.

After Dave died, John Leggett took over, and the direction of the Napa Poetry Conference drastically changed. It became the Napa Valley Writers' Conference. Some of the old guard were invited back; Frank Bidart, Robert Pinsky, but the flavor had changed, with Dave Evans gone, there was no community housing offered, and tuition was stiff. A tony new era was ushered in. I never went back.

Stay tuned, I found a large box of photos from NPC, and am scanning old memorabilia.

Another photo, Poets on the landing. Still can't get everyone's attention.

River of Words Workshop with Pam Michael

Warm up, blind contour line drawing of an object in a paper bag. Using your finger as your  new "eyes" trace along the edges of your object, and make a drawing from what you feel. 

I had to laugh, Pam also used rubber bands to keep our non-drawing hands inside the bag, and so we couldn't peek. Also, snails have weird eyestalks very much like little fingers, art imitating life imitating art.

When you're done with your drawing, make a word cluster. Any words that come to mind. Don't censor, don't think. I didn't use any of them in my poem, but it was pleasant to warm up by drawing...

Then unmask your object, after you've speculated as to color, texture, etc. Share the drawing with the class. I speculated the stripes but not the brown color. I went for pink. Sometime what you  already know isn't useful. begin fresh each time.

POETRY LINE PROMPTS

write down 5 images

1. Outdoor setting

2. weather

3. something lost

4. something found

5. final line, wrap it up: comment, compare, contrast, complain, question. Revise. Read aloud to class.

The wind plays the barbed wire 

with its ghost fingers

The trees hiss and sigh 

while the grass whispers secrets

Cumulus clouds gather on the horizon

ladened with the promise of rain

Looking for remnants of lost childhood 

on this lonesome ridge

Garnered the wisdom of experience,

remembering then, and now, as one thing.

What other secrets does the wind dream up?

10/15/2016
Berkeley


Pam also gave us a historical perspective and slide show of River of Words highlights. An amazing annual international poetry and art contest for children and a program that reached students from around the world. Fantastic art and touching stories of students in refugee camps sending in their artwork. Perhaps the saddest story is that Pam turned over the project, her life's work, and all the memorabilia to St. Mary's College, and they've let it go defunct. Tossed 20 years' worth of art out.  But the ROW website is still up. Check out the website and download her free PDF River of Words Teacher's Guide.

Poison Oak Bouquet

One day during the Fall in the early 1970s, we were hiking in Big Basin Park in the Santa Cruz mountains. It was sizzling hot, Indian Summer, the only evidence of Fall under the redwoods, were the brilliant splashes of red leaves of the poison oak, shining like sirens in the understory.

At the overlook, we interrupted a soldier on leave with his girl. He was dressed in army fatigues, and sounded like he was from Tennessee, probably stationed at Fort Ord. She looked like she had stepped out of American Bandstand. Ratted hair in a flip, big bows and buttons. Clearly visitors from another planet.

The soldier was busy gathering armfuls of brilliantly colored poison oak for his lady love. When they spotted us, instead of greeting us, they scowled, refused to make eye contact, and treated us as if we were invisible.

We watched, flabbergasted as he gathered armloads of poison oak. I said, Excuse me, sir...  Not quite knowing how to begin to tell him. He may have been rude, but no one deserved a fate like that—especially not his girl.

But being Californians, we were perceived as the enemy,  we were automatically labeled "hippies" with our long hair, etc., so they sneered at us, and of course, he refused to listen to my plea not to pick it. If anything, he went at it with a vengeance. Soon he had armloads of the stuff, which he deposited on his lady's lap.

It all must've ended rather badly. I bet they were both hospitalized...especially since they were so busy groping each other all afternoon long. By that evening, I'm sure there was no place left untouched, as it were. Worse than the seven-year-itch.

These beauties are from Soda Rock Lane, Healdsburg, 2009. I have the year wrong.

I once ran into a soldier from the Deep South on leave with his girl at Big Basin park in the Santa Cruz mountains—he was gathering armfuls of brilliantly colored poison oak for his lady love. We, being Californian, were perceived as "hippies" with long hair, etc., so they sneered at us, and of course, refused to listen to my plea not to pick it. It must've ended badly for them. I bet they were hospitalized...especially since they were pawing each other.

Indian Summer

First days of fall, time to put the summer sheets back on the bed. The hottest days of the year are always in September. This summer was so chill, I put flannel sheets back on in July. It's been an off again on again flannel sheet, weather. But I am considering putting on the summer sheets again. 

One year, the temperature climbed to 117, then to 119° in September, 1970? Walking along San Anselmo Avenue, in my new school clothes (wool, of course), hitching home from College of Marin. I keeled over and hit the sidewalk. It climbed to 119° later that afternoon in Fairfax. It was like an oven blast when the breeze blew in.

September has always been HOT! We called it Indian Summer. And it sometimes extends through October, but that's rare. Now it’s considered politically incorrect to call it Indian Summer. Somehow Native American summer doesn’t quite cut it.

Seasonal temperatures are often averaged out with night temperatures, so it's inaccurate. We may have as much as a 40 to 50° difference in temperature between night and day. The entire Bay Area summer has been deliciously cool while the rest of the nation fries. Small mercies. The air conditioner rolled in last night, so now we're back to cooler weather. 56°. The flannel sheets stay. Stet.

rev. from a Facebook post 9/20

Summer's End in the Alps

Wengen, overlooking Lauterbrunnen Valley. —Wiki

Summer's end in the Swiss Alps above Wengen, in the Berner Oberland, where I worked one summer, is not marked by the equinox, but by the vagaries of weather. When the grass no longer yields its bounty, the cows are driven down from high mountain meadows to winter pastures in the valleys below. That marks the end of summer.

I got to witness the Alpabzug (Désalpe) in 1972, I was transfixed by transhumance, a tradition that dates back to the ancient Celtic inhabitants—alp is a Celtic word.

Maurus Servius Honoratus, wrote that the mountains were called Alpes by the Celts. Possibly a pre-Indo-European word  for hill, alpe was a name for many mountainous regions besides the Swiss Alps; Albania, the Caucasus, and of course, Alba is another name for Scotland. 

My friend Claire spoke a Gallo-Italic language Romansh, (a "language spoken to kinder and cows"), which retains remnants of Celtic and Raetic languages (once spoken from the Rhine Valley to the Irish enclave, St. Gallen, and Tyrol until the 17th c.; mat/mac = boy).  

Wengernalp, overlooking Wengen, and Lauterbrunnen Valley. —Wiki

And I was told that Wengernalp, where most of the cows are summer-pastured in the shadow of the mighty Jungfrau, means cheek of the alp.

Each fall, after the Grand Cheese festival, after the cow-shareholders have collected their alpkäse shares, the cows are brought down from the alps by their Älpler cowherders dressed in traditional costume. They festively thread their way down the mountain, and parade down Dorfstrasse, the narrow main street of Wengen, a car-free village, which was probably once an ancient drover's road.
 

Hotel Bernerhof, my garret room for the summer was under the eaves on the far right.

The cows' hooves, waxed and shined, their rich cream and russet coats were shampooed, and brushed to perfection. Everyone stops what they're doing to witness the ancient annual passage of the cows. It is a time of celebration. Though I was working as a waitress setting up for lunch in the Hotel Bernerhof, I was unceremoniously shooed outside, in my apron, to witness the traditional passing of the cows. Apparently, some sort of transference of luck was involved.

Thank you Rolf & Wengen Switzerland for permission to use photos.

The queen cow (and her entourage) wear elaborate garlanded crowns made of a pine tree decorated with silk flowers and ribbons, Swiss flags, a cross (for protection from the sky), or mirrors (to ward off the evil eye), and real flowers: alpenrosen (almrausch), edelweiss, daisies, geraniums, even thistles, on their horns. 

The cows' parade finery is replete with a florid embroidered, and embossed leather forehead band, and collar studded with silver rosettes, which holds an enormous ceremonial bell, the size of a man's head, knelling in deep tongues. In spring, the herders themselves must carry the cowbells the last mile up to the alpine pastures. The cows don't wear those enormous bells all summer, only one day a year.  Their summer bells are much smaller.



The larger the treicheln (trychel, or hammered) bell, the richer the sound, and the farmer, so it is said. They're hefty klaxons, so the cows only wear them on parade. The bells are lined up like trophies under the eaves of the summer huts (Scottish: shielings.) The use of cow bells dates back to the Iron Age,  each note represents a specific cow. Some bronze bells are etched with edelweiss, and other floral, or geometric designs.

The queen of queens sets a regal pace, she knows she's Top Bossy. She lows, and aggressively shakes her horns at any interloper that attempts to pass her. If push comes to shove, bovine battles are settled with head-butting contests. In Combats des Reines: there can be only one queen cow, the Kranzkuh, (La Reine des Reines) to rule the collective herd.

Thank you Rolf & Wengen Switzerland for permission to use photos.

I don't know why some cows are also adorned with flowered surcingles, or cinches, as well as headdresses. Some sort of ranking order?  Fighting badges? Social equivalent to The Hulk's wrestling belt?

The heifers, the teenagers, follow up the tail of the herd, their horns sometimes dressed in diminutive greenery, perhaps a single rose, and they were adorned with dainty bells, that rang like silver spoons against bone china teacups. Next year, after they've borne their first calves, in their winter pastures in Lauterbrunnen, if they produce lots of milk, they too will graduate to wearing larger bells and full headdresses. They too will have a chance to compete on the alpen slopes, and perhaps they too will dream of becoming queens for a day.

FALL ARRIVES IN THE BAY AREA

FALL ARRIVES IN THE BAY AREA

First day of Autumn,
dress the bed in summer sheets—
No more summer fog.



Thermometer spikes
triple digits, welcome Fall—
No more flannel sheets.



Summer fog and mist
winter sheets, flannel nightgown—
I dreamed of the sun.



Temperature rises
No it's not global warming—
Indian Summer.



Fans patrol the room
too hot to sleep, crickets sing
a chorus to Fall.

9/22/2016

Scattergories as a writing framework

I turned a silly Facebook game into a writing exercise.

Scattergories are harder than you think. Every answer must start with the last letter of your previous answer. No fair Googling!

Name - Maureen
Animal - nudibranch
Girl’s name - Helen
Name a color - Naples yellow
Movie - Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Something you wear - yamaka
Drink - apricot juice
Food - eggs
Item in the bathroom - soap
Place - Petaluma
Reason to be late - absorbed in a good book

Now use them all in a sentence, a paragraph, or a poem.

Maureen, a nudibranch unfurls its finery at the sea where Helen's face launched a thousand ships, against a Naples yellow sky. Incongruous music from an old movie—what was it? Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. When's the last time you watched that? Can you still sing the songs? Who wore the yamaka? Yehiel was drinking apricot juice, the color of eggs. He carved a whistle from a bar of soap. Said he had to meet someone in Petaluma but she was absorbed in a good book, and didn't notice him leaving.

Name - Mo
Animal - ostritch
Girl’s name - Hermoine
Name a color - eggplant
Movie - To Kill a Mockingbird
Something you wear - dress
Drink - sambuco
Food - orange
Item in the bathroom - earrings
Place - Sausalito
Reason to be late - out late, slept in

Mo always wanted to ride an ostritch named Hermoine. Her thighs were the color of eggplant. You couldn't explain the significance of To Kill a Mockingbird to a bird that big, even if her eyelashes were a foot long—sans Mabelline. With that plumage, she was always dressed to kill. Mo took a sip of sambuco, and watched the orange orb lunge into the ocean like a high diver. She twisted her earrings, thought of the days when they raided the Trade Fair in Sausalito. Little thieves they were. She was out late, slept in. Insomnia came in the form of orange orbs floating just out of reach.

Now to change the categories:

State of mind, or feeling -sorrow
Animal or plant -wombat
Color, or a flower - turquoise
A line from a book nearest you - every step you take
    or a line from a song
An article of clothing - ermine cloak
A sound, or a musical instrument - klaxon horn
Something odd in your purse, wallet, 
   or on your nightstand -  name tag
A place, city, or country - Grenoble
Reason to be late/early - exercise
Famous last words - never a dull moment
 
The princess wore an ermine cloak over her gown of spun silver and turquoise. The klaxon horn sounded the battle cry. Sorrow was a wombat, the sea was restless. The banner unfurled and snapped to attention. Grenoble seemed so far away. Oh well, time for some exercise, a walk along the ramparts should be safe enough. Never a dull moment. Every step you take, brings you closer to the end of the story.

a variation: Every answer must start with the FIRST letter of your LAST name.