Las Vegas shooting

Aw Geez, I stepped away from FB for the day & the news yesterday (still reeling from Puerto Rico ), I saw a fleeting reference to a shooting at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. I had no idea it was a massacre. Devastating. All those poor innocent people: 59 dead and 515 wounded victims, hospitalized. 

How to even process this? Again? Columbine, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Orlando, now this. The worst shooting in American history. A horrific, senseless distinction.

We need stringent gun control laws. Not this continued free reign to domestic terrorism, or lax gun laws where anyone can obtain assault rifles and silencers. A 65-year-old retiree killed 58 of his fellow Americans at a concert—for no reason. I don't want to learn the term, "soft targets." 

Trump dismantled Obama's regulation that made it harder for mentally ill people to buy guns. Then he prays for the Las Vegas victims? What's with that? This is on you, Congress, for allowing the NRA to have this kind of power over our nation. Thoughts and prayers are not enough. If you want to help, please donate blood.



Most of these assault rifles are bought from dealers, or over the internet, not stolen. In some states, there's virtually no background check. Responsible gun owners usually don't own sniper or assault rifles. We're not talking Smith & Wessons here.  

I'm old school. Guns belong in a gun safe. Gone are the days of driving around in your truck with a rifle stowed in the back window rack, to get groceries. Gawd, I actually remember those days, in West Marin! I'm not against guns, surprisingly. I don't like them. I'm against illegal ownership of guns. Australia bought everybody's guns, and allowed those who had permits, to keep theirs (stowed away), and crime and suicide rates dramatically dropped.

So, how does a guy smuggle ten assault rifles into his hotel room? Make that 19 guns in total.

I'm way more stressed than I realize, cousins' deaths, hurricanes, a dysfunctional president, and the Las Vegas shooting have turned my brain into Swiss cheese. Everything requires more effort and my synapses are off. Talk about a bout of dyslexia. And everyone is so raw. Misunderstandings abound. We tend to think world events don't affect us that profoundly, but they do. And we've all been subjected to a tremendous amount of unrelenting stress.

Atop of all this, Albert Buswell  who is friends with Horton Deakins, said: You are an idiot.

Stunned, I said: Please elaborate as to why you think I'm an idiot. Because I am concerned that 58 innocent people needlessly died yesterday, and 515 innocent people at a country music concert were wounded, And the death count will surely go up, because someone, who was unstable, was able to purchase 10 assault rifles without an adequate background check, because Nevada's gun purchase screening process is so lax, that the gunman even used his girlfriend's ID to purchase additional guns? 

If someone buys ten assault rifles all at once with color-coordinated matching ammo, you'd think that should be cause for alarm. Or just maybe the current gun vetting system is flawed. You might want to read my above comments as to my personal stance on guns. Either remove yourself from my page, or I will block you. Your choice, Amadán. 

Silence was his loud reply.

Visiting Boschka Layton's friend, Kat WIlliams

On Monday, we visited Boschka's old friend, Kat Williams in the hills above Guerneville to take photos of Boschka's work. I had no idea what I was in for when I agreed to do this as a favor to Max. I didn't know Kat had moved to a remote homestead, so the previously scheduled meeting had to be cancelled as there was no way I could even get to Guerneville in the time that I had.

We arrived on a high mountain top facing south, and could see all the way to Mt. Tam, and Mt. Diablo. We were up that high. It had taken us 2.5 hours to get there and we were fast losing light but Kat had to settle in to this break in routine and she gave us a tour of the house, and garden, and a catch-up visit as we caught up on the past 41 years! We visited Boz's grave, he died 5 years ago.

We ate warm tomatoes from the garden with basil leaves and mozzarella cheese with balsamic vinegar. The BV wine I had brought was chilled, and we drank chardonnay under the well-endowed kiwi vine trellis. It was hotter than Hades. The cat told us so. We shared stories of the past, and our own journeys to time present. An extraordinary day. We got back to the city long after dark, tired from such a journey back into time.

How many states, and countries visited?

Another one of thise mindless Facebook games.
I've been to 23 countries; 27 US states
(but some I was just passing through)

UK (Scotland, Wales, Britain)
Ireland
Holland
Belgium
Luxembourg
Switzerland
France
Germany
Serbia (Yugoslavia)
Portugal
Hungary
Austria
USSR (Ukraine, BelaRus, Russia)
Finland
Canada
USA (27 states)
Mexico
Guatemala
Bahamas
Ecuador
Peru

And I'm probably missing a few places too.

POEM SCRAWLED ON A ZUCCHINI BOX

From that pale sky bereft of blue, 

ask what is possible in the world, 

a place where alt-night is always right, 

the sky robbed of color, call it alt-white. 

The day’s lure, an olive branch, 

once a gesture of peace, or surrender. 

Fennel lines. He is an interloper, not a refugee. 

When did we become refugees in our own country? 

In our eyes, held hostage to the skies, blue eyed sons. 

It takes such strength in order to be kind.

10/17

The Blogger update that keeps on giving

Ah, the Blogger update that keeps on giving. My old posts with photos are rendered into blank boxes. Sections of text are randomly supersized, or there are inexplicable gaps and multiple carriage returns. Or the typography is an odd color. Makes me look like an idiot.

Wiki links are hardest hit. Cleaning it up is not an easy task. I'm tip-toeing through my 2014 posts, HTML and visual landmines! It's taken me hours to clean up the posts, about a quarter of them had HTML warnings, and I have 135 posts. Ironically it was in 2014 when I really began to run afoul of Blogger, with hanging posts, and disappearing posts. Dear Google, Using Blogger is a Painful Experience. 

Adding old journal entries, part 2

I seem to work in spates, bringing my old journal entries and poems into the electronic age. I've had a stack of journals haunting me at the foot of the bed for months, now. So I've been revisiting old writing for the past week. (Besides Facebook, where I continue to mine bits from the recent past, is boring as feckall these days.)

Right now, I'm mostly revisiting work from the 1980s. There's more to choose from. The 1990s and early 2000s will be lean years, as it was about that time when I sloughed off writing in my journals. Well, I was writing, but it had more to do with going back to school, academics, rather than writing, or art.

I finally got around to adding my Azores and Lisbon journals from 2001 (high on my To Do list), and it proved to be a rich trove. Only thing is, I didn't particularly need more work from 2001. The years 2000, or 2003-06, were lean, yes. But it seems to work that way, they years where I don't need more work, I have lots of entries.

My goal still is 52 posts per year, and I have finally fleshed out the lean 1980s years, 1984 in particular, was spare, until I discovered there was a whole lot more to my Hawaii journals, as compared to first read, or rather first skim.

The Field

Nothing is going on in the field. There is no field. Other than the field of imagination and a collapsing of history. The past is reasserting itself in time present in the form of memory. Like the buttery taste of Proust's madeleines. Buttercups melting on cow's tongues.

Lost followers on Facebook

Facebook has this rather strange concept of followers. I hardly know where I’m going, let alone  even knowing they existed until one of them unfollowed me. Follow, fallow, folly.

John Oliver Simon, CPITS AC retreat, Lone Pine (photos)

Storm Alphabet

Well, hurricanes Harvey and Irma certainly trounced us. So, I take it that Hurricane José fizzled out? Steve said no, José was last seen off the Carolinas and was headed for The Big Apple. Did someone call ICE? Will it reach The White House? What were the names of hurricanes K, and L? Someone said it was Katia, not Kyle X (no bellybutton). Maybe we should switch to Cyrillic. After all, the election was stolen. I was in the Dry Tortugas when Ivan struck. We've literally run out of storm grade categories. Let's face it, both Harvey and Irma were both way larger than Category 5. Tell me again how climate change is a myth. How did we get to tropical storm Maria so fast? It's only September. What about L? Do we even want to meet a girl like Maria under this context? Someone said Lee was a tropical depression. Sounds like an old boyfriend of mine. And now Nate's brewing in the Pacific. Storm Ophelia is yet to be born. How did we get around to naming storms anyway? How come we still name most tempests after women? Apparently “Female hurricanes are deadlier than male hurricanes.” But people think they can outride the storm if it's named after a woman. What happened to naming hurricanes after the saints? It's nearly October, and we're running out of hurricane names. Then what? Hurricanes Andrew, Ivan and Katrina's death kills were so high, their names have been retired forever. Add Harvey and Irma to that list. Since 2000, some 30 cataclysmic Category 5ish storm names have been retired. When a tropical cyclone reaches tropical storm intensity (40MPH winds), it's christened with a name. Irma's winds reached 185MPH. What happens when we get to the letter T? Call it Trump? Last time we hit storm T (Tanya) was in 1995. What's the last highest alphabet named storm? Did we ever get to storm Z? Did we invoke Zeus? We got up to Wilma in 2005, it was a watershed year, with Katrina, Rita, and all. That year five storm names were retired, a record. I just found out that the storm alphabet excludes the letters Q, U, X, Y, and Z, because it's a challenge to come up with names: you can only have so many Quinns, Uriahs, and Xerxes. What happens if we run out of alphabet? Then what? Do we start over at the beginning, switch to the Greek alpha-and-omega-bet. Storm Chi and Hurricane Omicron sound smallish, and Storm Psi is rather onomatopoetically wettish. Like I said earlier, maybe we should switch to Cyrillic. Or maybe we should just invent catastrophic new letters for the new monster storms.

AT EVA'S CABIN

At 6000 feet we are that much closer to the sun
I watch the vagaries of heat and wind
leave ripples on the pond
while words surfacing like hungry fish
feed upon the vagaries of air.

9/16/17
Olivas Ranch Road
Above the Alabama Hills

HIKING BACK IN TIME

I had a couple of hard miles ahead of me
up the first two long switchbacks, 
past Carillon Creek, the north fork of Lone Pine Creek
into the deep gorge at the base of Mt. Whitney, 
well above the waterfall at Whitney Portal. 
I gained just enough altitude 
that with each step I hiked backwards in time 
back toward the very beginning of summer.

9/15/17
Mt. Whitney

SUNRISE, MT. WHITNEY

SUNRISE, MT. WHITNEY
     After John O'Donohue's poem, At the end of the day: a mirror of questions

The night dreamed of its own beginning.
My eyes lingered on the spires of mountains
I was blinded by the dawn light.
I was wounded and no one knew
I read the dark script of canyons.
The trees closest to me whispered old secrets.
I forgot about the old speech of the mountains.
I neglected that part of myself
that traversed the secret trail heads, into the past.
What did I begin today that might endure?
These small words, everyday conversations
are meaningless next to that of the ravens at dawn.
I keep forgetting that kindness costs nothing
so I greet everyone and every thing with respect.
And when I smile, my heart is lighter for it.
For I remember the dead today, and every day.

I remember my cousin who died too young in his sleep
whom my family will honor at the Druid's Hall in Nicasio
today, with the cows looking on, while I, here,
gaze upon the face of beauty.
These mountains comb the indigo sky
Sometimes it's the only love I allow myself to receive.
The moment of self, a friend unexpectedly hugs me
on the back side of the Sierras
where the past and the present are one thing,
a deep imprint on the psyche.
The poets see me as I see myself,
a speck of dust in the vastness of what is.
I did not avoid that gift I was given—only to ask:
Why was I given this day?

7/15/17
Lo Inyo High School
With Kathy Evans
Lone Pine, CA
video

LAST NIGHT I DREAMED

Last night I dreamed the moon spoke in tongues.
It talked of distant dreams, and far horizons.
It whispered of the past and it splashed
across the stone faces of the mountains.
It danced with the shadows of dark trees.
It sang with the lonely coyotes
who consider it their mother.
The moonlight was well pleased with itself
and the stars seemed brighter still,
if only for a moment, and then the mountains shifted.
They stood a little taller in the darkness.
The world turtle shifted in its sleep,
and the earth moved in its slumber.
There was no one there to translate.

9/15/17
Lo Inyo Elementary School
With Kathy EvansLone Pine, CA

(there was an earthquake)

The Scandinavians in the parking lot

The Scandinavians are having breakfast in the Lone Pine parking lot at dawn with their rented Harleys. In another century, they would’ve been horses in the parking lot. I can almost understand what the Scandinavians are saying... I keep thinking that if I tilt my head a little more, just so, it will become clearer.

Last night I listened to the Norwegians and Finns sing American folk songs badly. But they knew all the words. And they sang with gusto. They've ridden rented Harleys from San Diego to Zion and are headed towards the chilly fog of San Francisco. Adventure of a lifetime.

They are mostly from Oslo. They're singing Happy Birthday to one of their friends in English. Oddly, I will miss them. Today is a birthday of sorts. They're off to San Francisco. Where will they park all those bikes?

My next door neighbor was from Finland, but didn't speak a word of English. He leaned on his bike in the parking lot and smiled. I tried to communicate, and realized that Finnish has few cognate words with English. I was hoping that via the dialectic continuum from English to Norwegian... nope. 

I was looking for loanwords. I didn't even know the word for poet in Finnish, so I said Kalevala. It was pretty surreal. He looked startled, laughed, and said I no speak English, coughed over his cigarette, and smiled again. The universal language.

Dawn, Mt Whitney, from Lone Pine (photos)

The firebird of dawn only sang for a short moment and Mt Whitney was ablaze. I was not expecting to see the magenta shadow fading to purple. If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I would've thought the camera was fibbing. The smoke is a prism lens. The edge of the rainbow's spectrum revealed on the face of Mt. Whitney. I watched the shadow of the White Mountains draped on the Alabama Hills, the sun rose in a gap in the White Mountains which followed the contour of Whiitney's foothills. Synchronicity. A cradle of light. 



When I first got up, the mountains were a drab dove grey. I was disappointed. But then, sometimes, when you least expect it, magic happened. Sometimes you just have to wait for the right moments to align with the universe. Channeling pure Galen Rowell light this morning. It's a gift from the gods when you catch a moment like that.

Lone Pine Peak, a band of magenta above the shadows. 

A slightly better photo of Mt. Whitney a few minutes later. 

And then the color was gone. A lone raven in the sky.

Later, I visited Galen’s storefront, Mountain Light, to pay homage. And yes, I was talking to a window with his name on it, to tell him a story of mountain light. I got up early for the next several mornings to witness another roseated dawn on the face of Mt. Whitney. It never glowed like that again. 

CROSSING TIOGA PASS

It snowed at Tioga Pass, just a sprinkling.
The vagaries of weather, still in the high 80s,
back side of the Sierras. No respite from the heat.

When we drove over Tioga Pass at sunset,

the air was so thick with smoke from wildfires,

we could see godbeams piercing the clouds.

I watched the sun set on the crest of Mt. Whitney.
Magical. Dow Villa is loaded with movie memorabilia.
The light still shines on the place where the Duke once slept.

9/14/17
Lone Pine

WHAT ROUTE?

WHAT ROUTE?

So much depends
(no, I'm not there yet)
upon what route
to take to the Eva Conference
to Lone Pine
What deep canyon
to traverse?
The wildfires
are raging,
licking at the venerable
heels of giant sequoias.
What pure poetry combusts
in the form of stardust?

Old poets and lovers debate
on the best route
to take: Highway 50
over Carson Pass,
or ascend 10,000 feet
to Tioga Pass
and risk a blizzard?
Mono Lake eyeing
our descent
to the backside
of the Sierras—
that Range of Light
It's all smoke
and more smoke—
no mirrors
involved.
No weapons, 

other than

the hindsight

of memory.

9/7/2017
Tioga means where it forks

THE NEW NORMAL

Welcome to the new normal. We have corrupt cabal of Mammon-worshiping politicians in power, an impotent toad-puppet in the White House, myriad wildfires, even in Greenland, a triple digit heatwave dubbed Lucifer, massive flooding in India and Africa, a deluge of biblical proportions, the mother of all hurricanes spinning out of control, category 5 leveled Barbuda, Saint Martin, St. Barts, St. Kitts, Turks and Caicos, destroyed Puerto Rico, islands stripped of all vegetation and structures, down to primeval rock,  earthquakes so strong, they’re creating their own light show, followed by 20-foot tsunamis...  It’s raining grasshoppers and fish. What's next, locusts? Locusts on Viagra is not something I want to envision. Lie, Lie, Lie Pinocchio!, said the girl sitting on his face. Meanwhile Jabba the Hut plays with his nuts and denies climate change.

What? Locusts next? We need rain.
Bring on the frogs.
The measly fog spit over Oakland
is not even enough for frog spawn wet dreams.

Rev 9/7/2018

FIRST RAIN OF THE SEASON AFTER WILDFIRES, haiku

This measly fog spit
over Oakland, not enough

for frog spawn wet dreams.

On the publication of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the rise of literacy during the Industrial Revolution

A Facebook friend posted an old link from The Economist magazine on Mary Shelley whose birthday it was. She prefaced it with "When Frankenstein was published only 10% of people could READ and WRITE, /there is a big historical tell."

The Economist,  August 30, 2016 · The author of “Frankenstein”—who was born on August 30th 1797—was marked out from the beginning. As a child, Mary Shelley was intensely interesting to intellectuals for being the creation of an anarchist political philosopher, William Godwin, and a feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft, who died—like Dr Frankenstein?— in giving life.  Mary Shelley: complex and unpredictable, a woman of hidden fires. The poet was born on this day in 1797 The Economist 

The 10% literacy rate figure grated upon what I knew of 18th and 19th c. England. So I said: That's not entirely true. It is estimated that literacy was about 12% worldwide. And how would anyone ever be able to figure that out? It's some scholar's guesstimate.

YET ANOTHER CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES

YET ANOTHER CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES

Rather than living in a Confederacy of Dunces,
it seems as if we are living in a nation of idiots
with a jester-in-chief & there's no consolation prize.

My morning resting bitch face

In my nicest morning (I'm not awake) resting bitch face, I explained to a neighbor who had blocked the driveway to the garages with her car without leaving a note, that my partner didn't know it was her car, and so, had to park the car way down the hill, as it's a cleaning day.

As I was explaining the situation, (I was sweeping the steps) and not gratuitously grinning at her at the same time, she snarled, and called me a bitch. And when I laughed it off, while still sweeping the steps, it made her madder yet.

Apparently I am also a troll. And I haven't even had my second cuppa tea yet. Now, the resting bitch face is the real deal. And the steps and driveway are really, really clean! LOL. The thing is, I was actually very restrained (for me). She has no idea of what I'm capable of....heh. I tend to avoid conflict. Until I don't. Then I'm all in. Next time, I'll just be my usual snarlly self. Save the bother.

She was spoiling for a fight. She's always been rude to me whenever I say hi, so I no longer interact. She actually said I was messing with the wrong woman. I said Likewise, I'm sure. 

I believe self-righteous indignation is the mantle she's wearing. I needed to step out of the verbal circle sooner, even though she was the aggressor. I think she wasn't expecting me to talk back. Now that makes me laugh!

And ultimately it has to do with the fact that I don't readily engage in the rules of superficial social etiquette. Yeah, and I don't do small talk well on a good day....  At least not before my third cuppa. She's never liked me, which doesn't help matters. Because she's been rude in the past, I often act like she's not there—but I do mutter under my breath....

We're 10 cottages sharing the same driveway, but she doesn't have a garage, so her parking in the driveway to avoid a cleaning ticket, I get. But not the rudeness. She thought I was rude. So it was a preemptive strike on her part. But I could care less. Which made her madder yet, hence the taunts. As if name-calling actually worked.

I didn't say anything denigrating, or hostile, not even once. I just refused to engage in her rules. And yes, I do talk to myself, I mutter under my breath...which drove her nuts. Apparently she didn't get the message that I was born under a sarcastic sign. I'm not a fire dragon for nothing. It's a good thing she's not the thought police. Or she would've really gotten a real earful.

Must be the post eclipse-alistic blues, or there are far too many planets in retrograde.

Bread & Roses certificate of appreciation

I worked for Bread & Roses at the end of the 1970s through the early 1980s; I've been singing in the holiday chorus for nearly a decade, and I sometimes volunteer at the booth at the Kate Wolf Festival. This is the first time I've ever received a certificate of appreciation. Wow! Thrilled. Tickled, even. Ironic, also, in that I was the resident in-house calligrapher for Mimi Fariña, and times have evolved since then. Now a Mac can mimic calligraphy. My calligraphy teacher was a student of Lloyd Reynolds. Another odd note: Steve Jobs attended Lloyd Reynolds' calligraphy classes at Reed, which impressed him so much, that it became the design face of Macs, ushering in the desktop revolution. Full circle.

• On iClouds & Motherships
• Lloyd Reynolds' Calligraphic Legacy

Gettin' jiggy with 23andme

On DNA testing and the idea racial "purity", it seems that many of the alt-right folks have some bones to pick with DNA genetic sequencers upon finding, shall we say, alt-white in their family trees. Call it family weeds and grafts on the old family tree. Or alt-right vs. alt-white in the family tree. Gettin' jiggy with 23andme.

...if you traffic in alt-right circles, proving your ‘whiteness’ is essential. ...members of the movement are using genetic testing to “prove their whiteness” to win bragging rights within the movement and establish their place in the American white elite. —23andMe: Alt-right mistaken, DNA tests can’t ‘prove their whiteness’

White nationalists are flocking to genetic ancestry tests to prove their superior whiteness so they can be bona-fide -toting members of the big-daddy white supremacist racist organization, Stormfront, that promulgates racial hatred. But some Alt-rightists don’t like what they find. So they keep retesting or reinterpreting the findings until they get the results they want. One way of coping with extra family tree branches is to reject all genetic ancestry testing with the mirror test:

(“When you look in the mirror, do you see a Jew? If not, you’re good”) were better tests of racial purity, some suggested. Others offered up conspiracies about DNA testing companies led by Jews: “I think 23andMe might be a covert operation to get DNA the Jews could then use to create bio-weapons for use against us.” —When White Nationalists Get DNA Tests That Reveal African Ancestry

But my personal favorite is this one:

“Sweetheart, you have a little black in you,” the talk show host Trisha Goddard told Craig Cobb. But that didn’t stop him from redoing the test with a different company, trying to alter or parse the data until it matched his racist worldview." —White nationalists are flocking to genetic ancestry tests. Some don’t like what they find

The Irish, and the Italians were once considered to be alt-white and denied citizenship based upon race and religion. Add Portuguese, Poles, Spanish and Greeks to that list. (Or any Catholic, or Jewish immigrant group.) 

But what's most frightening is how the accuracy of the DNA test results are are explained away with a distorted white-nationalist interpretation of history. "For example, the mixing of DNA in a region would be explained by the heroic conquest of Vikings. Or a white female ancestor was raped by an African man." (White Nationalists) Call it alt-history After the election of Trump, the ultra right-wing white supremacists are crawling out of the woodwork and they are swarming. Where will they land next?

Oh, how the world burns.

from a FB post, rev. 8/19

BROKEN ARGUMENT haiku

He said: I will break
you. Too late, I am shattered
well beyond repair.

But I'm the willow
resilient stems weeping
on the farthest shore.

I spend the morning
writing of Paul's last concert.
We knew all the words.

Now I've none at all
Summer fog filled with useless
tears, laden with anguish.

His apology
like spitting in the ocean.
Sky mirrors my thoughts.

White bridge, a life-line
shrouded shore of no return.
Barricaded heart.

An act of selfless
preservation, or fear?
Run from the enemy.

Who says: I will break
you, expecting no resistance?
The picket line crossed.

I have no words left.
No tears to soften the heart,
this final trespass.

8/14-16/17

SIREN CALL

Classmate Steve Tristano in Oregon 1952-2015

SIREN CALL

We were in 2nd grade, Mrs Burge had left the room,
Lennie's son, Steve Tristano climbed up
onto the piano bench to bang out a boogie woogie,
we were all rocking out—until she returned.
Busted. Instead of praising him, she raged
and let out an anachronic scream
that ripped open the fabric of the universe.
The planets cowered as Steve took the brunt of her anger.
In that way, we knew jazz was bad, very bad.
A siren call, a farewell to arms. An addiction.
And with that, Steve slipped off his moorings a bit—
the descent into darkness had begun.

8/11/17

Tristano & Son (Amie Street)
Sutton & Tristano

Defiant Fruitcakes

Filed under "Lost Desserts" Hundred-Year-Old Antarctic Fruitcake Found in 'Excellent Condition Conservators with Antarctic Heritage Trust have uncovered a perfectly preserved fruitcake that dates back to Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition, which began in 1910.

A curious headline made me think of my Victorian grandmother who made fruitcake, or steamed pudding, every fall for Christmas gifts. It did seem like they would keep forever. I guess that Hundred-Year-Old Antarctic Fruitcake Found in 'Excellent Condition is proof enough. The proof is in the pudding, literally.

When the nights began to draw in, my grandmother would haul out the dried fruit she had stockpiled in the closet, usually three types of raisins, including tiny tart currants (real currants, not tiny raisins), and golden sultanas; prunes (sometimes she added dried figs, or Medjool dates— but that was rare); candied ginger, and the prerequisite jars of preserved glacéed fruit—a mixture of citrus, citron (candied melon peel) and candied cherries. (She used to make glacéed fruit from scratch—I remember helping her make candied orange rinds.) She'd gather kidney suet for the lard. And a bottle of port.

We'd crack pecans and walnuts from 25-pound bags, tossing the buggy ones in the fire along with the shells. They'd sizzle and hiss like snakes as we gazed into the fire while she told me stories.

In Ireland, Valencia oranges were a special Christmas gift. They arrived from Spain wrapped in foil, and were cherished right down to the rind. Dried raisins and nuts were hard to come by, and spices were a luxury few could afford, so women hoarded the ingredients, when they could get them, for that special steamed Christmas pudding or wedding cake. In Ireland, wedding cakes are traditionally fruitcakes: a symbol of wealth and abundance.

The key ingredients of the fruitcake were part of a curious family history. They were foot soldiers marching in an act of defiance against unjust American land laws. During the 1920s, Asians and Indians, ineligible for US citizenship, couldn't own farmland in California. This made my Irish grandfather angry, so he bought farmland in Fresno for his friend Jahn Singh, and held the land title to circumvent the unjust alien land laws. 

As she assembled the fruitcakes, she told stories of my grandfather and Jahn Singh. Every autumn Jahn Singh remembered our family with bushels of fruits and nuts. My grandmother would receive crates of oranges, raisins, pecans and walnuts as payment for the Fresno farmland that my grandfather had bought for Jahn. 

When the anti-Japanese California Alien Land Laws of 1913, and of 1920, also known as the Webb-Haney Act, were repealed in the 1950s, my grandfather turned the land title over to Jahn Singh. 

The law prohibited "aliens ineligible for citizenship " from owning agricultural land or possessing long-term leases over it. It affected the Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Korean immigrant farmers in California....The California Alien Land Law of 1920 continued the 1913 law filling many of its loopholes... the leasing of land for a period of three years or less was no longer allowed; owning of stock in companies that acquired agricultural land was forbidden; and guardians or agents of ineligible aliens were required to submit an annual report on their activities. —Wiki

Something ancient was evoked as my grandmother assembled the ingredients. Assembling fruitcake was a multiple-day affair, from making the candied fruit, to shelling the nuts, and soaking the dried fruit overnight in alcohol.

My grandmother soaked the dried fruit overnight in port, or rum. Next morning, she sifted the flour with baking soda, and a litany of spices (equal parts cinnamon, ginger, and a scant measurement of nutmeg, allspice, clove and mace) to coat the dried fruit and nutmeats. Then she doused the dry mixture with a mixture of creamed butter, eggs, brown sugar and dark molasses. During Prohibition, bootleg whiskey was used to soak the dried fruit if a bottle of port couldn't be finagled from the church stores.

My grandmother mixed the ingredients up with her large knotted hands in vast ceramic vats, standing over them like a field marshall. The round, and half-round cake pans were already well greased and the bottoms lined with oiled brown paper bags.

She filled the cake pans to the brim (fruitcake doesn't leaven, or rise—though the dried fruit soaking in alcohol, may have contributed some wild yeast), tamping them down on the table with soft thuds to dislodge any air bubbles. Then she placed the cakes in three tiers on tall racks inside the vast aluminum canning pot half-filled with water. The canning pot was a modern day version of the cauldron—double-trouble, boiled and bubbled. 

The fruitcakes were steamed atop the stove for several hours, they were never baked in the oven. That would’ve been sacrilege. The steam vent atop the canning pot lid, with its three roller latches, chattered a little song and tapdance into the evening hours as I drew pictures with my finger on the steamy kitchen windows dripping with condensation. By the way, fruitcake, a steamed pudding, is a medieval dish, pretty much unchanged across the centuries. Her recipe was practically straight from The Forme of Cury. 

Once the fruitcakes (or steamed pudding) had cooled overnight, there was a three-fold bathing ritual (in port or whiskey) a swaddling ritual (wrapped in thin muslin or in cheesecloth), and a cloaking ritual (in tinfoil), before they were placed in their air-tight Christmas tins. They needed to be carefully tended during the first few months, dressed and bathed every few days until they ripened. She kept a few extra fruitcakes on hand to ripen, as fruitcake was deemed best when it was left to ripen (or ferment) at least 3 months, to a year, or longer. A union of space and time.

Fruitcake (aka figgy pudding) was never eaten fresh from the steamer. The flavors needed time to mellow and meld into a rich marriage of spiced goodness. Months, years, even. She had a few fruitcake that were ancient. Not 100 years old, but old enough. The time-defying secret was in the ritual bathing in booze. Fruitcakes were unwrapped to receive an annual anniversary bath of booze to preserve them, then rewrapped, placed in tins, and stored in dark cupboards. And later, they were delegated to the back of the refrigerator. And forgotten.

Whenever unexpected guests came over, she'd bring out thin slices of the dense, boozy, nut-studded fruitcake, along with the pot of Irish tea and a sidecar of whiskey. The thin fruitcake slices were like a rich mosaic of stained glass panes on the shining plates, Sadly, the guests wouldn't touch the fruitcake, perhaps thinking it was the commercial American version, a baked sawdust hockey-puck affair, studded with plastic candied citron and day-glo cherries, so she eventually quit making it. And I never thought to ask her for the recipe.

How did the fruitcake, something once so opulent, and made with love, become such a hated symbol of the holidays? The substitution of facsimile ingredients: rancid nuts, inferior dried fruit, and the prerequisite jars of commercial glacéed fluorescent plastic fruit that swept the market during the 60s and 70s, directly led to the fruitcake's fall from grace. The honeymoon was over. Americans said, Let's call the whole thing off. Another tradition bit the dust. And the very word was beggared and denigrated to an insult of insanity: She's a real fruitcake.

It must've made my grandmother sad to let go of such a venerable tradition, to let die a family labor of love that was passed down the generations from her mother, and her mother's mother, in Ireland. A family heirloom. I still collect the fruitcake tins, though I haven't made a fruitcake, ever. None of my cousins would dream of making fruitcake today, My mother was not domestic, and all my aunts are gone now... no one left to carry on the tradition.

One of many fruitcake recipes in my grandmother’s extensive recipe collection, I found this one from Helen Civelli Brown:

Now about that case of 100-year-old Antarctic whisky on ice they found....

Mill Valley's Unknown Museum and the Gluers Junk Art Movement

Embedded in my hitchhiking blog post, was a small story on the Unknown Museum, time for its own post, something i've been resisting for years—then I found the old photos. This is still very much in progress... Also, I found some slides I took and I scanned them. I'll need to add them in. But you can visit the gallery I made on my Facebook page Nico Morris was able to ID most of the work.

In 1969, on the long coattails of the Summer of Love, at the age of 22, eccentric LA artist Mickey McGowan moved to Sausalito with nothing more than the proverbial shirt on his back. Penniless, he shared a studio with a friend, Rat Soup, at the Sausalito Art Center for $80 a month. 

"A lot of us had our first shows there, myself with my drawings. Rat Soup with his sculpture." To make ends meet, he slept in his car, or sometimes in the studio, and worked at the Trident kitchen for chickenfeed. "Every night Miles would stroll in and Janis, or Crosby, the mainstays of the place." (Marin Nostalgia). My mom, who was working at the Trident, between theater performances, said even Perry Como used to drop in. And of course, the Limelighters All, were in situ.

McGowan, taught himself to make shoes, called himself the Apple Cobbler, and set up a funky little shop in downtown Mill Valley in 1973, and soon was court shoemaker to the rockstars (Grateful Dead, the Doobie Brothers, The Tubes, Journey), artists, and fashionistas. His wild hand-stitched leather boots and quirky one-of-a-kind brocade boots festooned with doll heads and toy tanks were in high demand. 

Mickey also made non-functional art shoes. (Combat Boot Stepping Out Shoes in World Culture, on exhibit at SFO International Terminal until Nov. 12, 2017.) Mickey was a Marin City flea market regular, often seen collecting kitsch for his art shoes and assemblage art. The small accumulations of ephemera and knick-knacks decorating the shop corners soon became a monstrous collection threatening to engulf the shop.

Around 1974, McGowan, in need of larger digs, moved into an old radiator shop at 35 Corte Madera Ave., at the corner of Lovell, across from City Hall, in Mill Valley to house what later was dubbed "the world's largest private collection of pop cultural artifacts" (Paul Liberatore). He also took over Ted’s Richfield gas station next door. Mickey shared his low-rent garage-atilier ($200 a month) with a motley collective of psychedelic-era glue artists, and the Unknown Museum was born.

Mickey had teamed up with other like-minded junk artists, later dubbed “gluers” or glue-artists, Larkspur artist Dickens "44" Bascom, Larry Fuente, and David Best at the Sausalito Art Center. 

A reflection on Women & Technology: James Damore's Google Manifiasco

It seems yet another Facebook post got the better of me (but not bested me), and my comments have manifestoed and manifestered into fodder for a blog post of sorts.

Wow! When I read Google engineer James Damore's Google manifesto argued that biological differences make women less apt to perform in the tech industry, I saw red. Biology has nothing to do with a lack of women in technology. Why it's a hot issue is because Damore's so-called 'manifesto" advances patently incorrect assumptions about harmful gender stereotypes. 

I have several relatives who are/were forefront in the field of technology. A cousin, key mathematician on the Manhattan Project, an aunt who did programming for IBM back in the early 1960s, cousins who work/ed for Apple, Pixar, Dropbox, etc. I happen to fix (or rebuild) the computers, and problem-solve all the software issues in our household, and for family and friends too. Not my male partner.

So, I'm quite sure competent women in the technology field are not an anomaly, nor the only reason why they're in the industry is solely because of equality, or affirmative action, as Damore suggests in his ten-page Alt-rightish manifesto. Alas it's couched with a request to open up dialogue—after taking potshots at women in general. The reason for the low numbers of women in the technology workplace is about discrimination at the grassroots level.

And for the record, among the first to create a computer program, to create a compiler, and create object-oriented programming were women. (See my list below).

BTW, I'm taking some flack over on Facebook from a few men for daring to counter their perceived male enclave, and swim with their sharktank mentality. One asshat had the audacity to ask me to stop posting on my own FB thread, thinking that I couldn't possibly a) have read said manifesto, and b) didn't understand or comprehend what it said.

I object to Damore's use of absurd clichéd gendered stereotypes to support his argument that enough women aren't in the technology field.Biology is not the reason why there are fewer women in the technology field. Discrimination is. 

KQED News, SF Gate, and Tech Insider paraphrased, but did not publish the memo, which you can read on Gizmodo, along with prefaces and an interesting epigram. What was more enlightening was a post from Yonatan Zunger, former senior Google employee: 

"So it seems that someone has seen fit to publish an internal manifesto about gender and our “ideological echo chamber.” I think it’s important that we make a couple of points clear.
(1) Despite speaking very authoritatively, the author does not appear to understand gender.
(2) Perhaps more interestingly, the author does not appear to understand engineering.
(3) And most seriously, the author does not appear to understand the consequences of what he wrote, either for others or himself.

It’s true that women are socialized to be better at paying attention to people’s emotional needs and so on — this is something that makes them better engineers, not worse ones. ...
And this is addressed specifically to the author of this manifesto.

What you just did was incredibly stupid and harmful. You just put out a manifesto inside the company arguing that some large fraction of your colleagues are at root not good enough to do their jobs, and that they’re only being kept in their jobs because of some political ideas.  Read the entire rebuttal at Medium.

ADDENDUM
(With much thanks to BizTech Insider's excellent article: Mothers of Technology: 10 Women Who Invented and Innovated in Tech)

Among the first to create a computer program, to create a compiler, and create object-oriented programming were women (in no particular order):

• Ada Lovelace invented the world’s first computer algorithm. Lovelace was hired by Charles Babbage in 1843, to document his never-to-be-realized “computer,” the Analytical Engine, intended to count Bernoulli numbers. 

"Many persons who are not conversant with mathematical studies imagine that because the business of [Babbage’s Analytical Engine] is to give its results in numerical notation, the nature of its processes must consequently be arithmetical and numerical, rather than algebraical and analytical. This is an error. The engine can arrange and combine its numerical quantities exactly as if they were letters or any other general symbols; and in fact it might bring out its results in algebraical notation, were provisions made accordingly,” —Ada Lovelace

• Dr. Erna Hoover invented a telephony switching computer program that kept phone lines functioning under stressful loads. Her 1971 patent for telephony technology was one of the first software patents ever issued. She developed on her idea while in the hospital after the birth of her second daughter. 

• Common Business-Oriented Language, based on the FLOW-MATIC language, was invented by Grandma COBOL, Grace Hopper. Hopper was the first person to create a compiler for a programming language and one of the first programmers of the Mark I computer in 1949. The programmers of the ENIAC computer, were six women mathematicians; Marlyn Meltzer, Betty Holberton, Kathleen Antonelli, Ruth Teitelbaum, Jean Bartik, and Frances Spence. Adele Goldstine was one of the teachers and trainers of the six original programmers of the ENIAC computer in 1944. Hopper also popularized the term "debugging" from a moth fowling up the works. 
•  
• During WWII, Hedy Lamarr and composer George Antheil developed an Allied torpedo anti-jamming radio guidance system which utilized a spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat tampering by the Axis powers. The US Navy did not adopt the technology until the 1960s, but the principles were incorporated into Bluetooth technology, and legacy versions of CDMA and Wi-Fi.
•  
• Margaret Heafield Hamilton was Director of the Software Engineering Division of MIT Instrumentation Laboratory, which developed on-board flight software for the Apollo space program. In 1986, she founded Hamilton Technologies, Inc. The Universal Systems Language was based on her paradigm of Development Before the Fact (DBTF) for systems and software design.

• Adele Goldberg was one of seven programmers that developed Smalltalk in the 1970s, one of the first object-oriented programming languages, and the base of today's current graphic user interface. Smalltalk was utilized by Apple to launch Lisa in 1983, and Macintosh in 1984. Windows 1.0 was launched in 1985. 

• IT trailblazer Barbara Liskov of MIT, invented CLU, a programming language that was the foundation for object-oriented programming; Argus, a programming language, an extension of CLU, that supports distributed programs; and Thor, an object-oriented database system. Which led to the invention of Mac OS X, Objective-C, Visual Basic.NET and Java. 

• Another object-oriented language, Simula 67, was created by Kristen Nygaard and Ole-Johan Dahl of the Norwegian Computing Center in Oslo. 

• In 1985 Radia Perlman developed Ethernet technology. Her Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) made it possible to build massive networks by creating an innovative mesh network of layer-2 bridges—by disabling the links not part of that tree. This had a significant impact on network switches, thus making Perlman the Mother of the Internet. She has done extensive and innovative research, in the field of encryption and networking. 

• Mary Lou Jepsen co-founded and served as chief technology officer of MicroDisplay in 1995, and created the small display screen. She also headed the display division at Intel, until she co-founded One Laptop Per Child. She invented the X O, the lowest-power, and lowest cost green notebooks ever made. She is the the founder of Pixel Qi. 

• Meg Whitman is President and CEO of Hewlett Packard Enterprise. 

• Then there's Marissa Mayer, Google’s first female engineer. Mayer, who stepped down as President and CEO of Yahoo! when it was sold to Verizon, was Google’s first female engineer. She led product management and engineering for Google Maps, Local Search, Google Earth, Street View and Latitude. Her user interface designs and product vision placed Google at the forefront as the leading web, mobile, and search engine company. 

“The number one most important thing we can do to increase the number of women in tech is to show a multiplicity of different role models," Mayer said in article for The Huffington Post. “The stereotype of that very complete and rigid picture of what being a computer scientist means really hurts people's understanding and ability to identify with the role and say, ‘Yes, this is something I can be in and want to be in.’”

Yeah, please mansplain to me again Mr. Damore, or is it Mr. Want (I am entitled to) Damn More, why women don't belong in technology because of "biological differences." You got your 15 minutes of fame. The Alt-right is rolling out the Breitbart carpet.



SEE ALSO:
Women in Computing
Mothers of Technology: 10 Women Who Invented and Innovated in Tech
Google Fires Engineer Who Wrote Memo Questioning Women in Tech

James Damore, the Google employee fired for his anti-diversity manifesto, is (almost certainly) not a victim of a free-speech violation
Sorry, Google memo man: women were in tech long before you | Holly Brockwell

Contra Grant On Exaggerated Differences
Fired Google engineer who wrote controversial memo sues tech firm
Google engineer James Damore, fired over gender memo, sues company

CANTINFLAS THE CAT

My mom had a Burmese-Abyssinian cat,
called Cantinflas, after an old friend,
who was fascinated by water.
He lounged in the tub, a dark comma,
and watch us with jade eyes.
He'd serenade us with a rough song.
Or take a dip when we were bathing.
The toilet, the tub, and the kitchen sink
were his stage.

8.4.17

The day Sam Shepherd died

My mind works in peculiar ways on a good day. We were having a yard sale at my cousins' house in Nicasio and I was lamenting that everyone who stopped were strangers. But then it all changed. First the Peter Coyote lookalike dropped by and left empty-handed, then one of the McIsaacs from Tocaloma (Bud) stopped by. I told him I used to go out with Allan McIsaac. Suddenly it was old home week. And then I sold my toy spool Nessie to Phil Waddell for a buck, he was in a red car and the toy matched. He's from 71 Alta in Lagunitas. He said it was the house next to the one where all the musicians came to play....probably Jean Paul Picken's place, which led to a rather convoluted discussion of the good old days, to Big Brother & the Holding Company, to Janis, Herself (we lived near Barbano's summer camp on Arroyo) because meanwhile someone was wailing away on some blues number at the Rancho Nicasio, which led to a story on Ken Kesey, and the Diggers...which made me think of Lynn Deutra and the Forest Knolls Freestore in the basement of Ron and Marsha Thelin's old red house on Resaca. Which made me inexplicably think of Sam Shepherd. Don't ask. Even I can't make out that connection, other than I used to see him in Mill Valley when I worked for Mimi Fariña. Then I just found out that he died. You see how it goes? The old homes of memory. Circular breathing.

Camping in Baja

One time we were camping in an old abandoned mission in Baja Norte, in the Sierra San Pedro mountain range, and in the morning, I awoke to find the canyon wall glowing in the early morning sun—filled with petroglyphs, and padres' marks—curly Spanish crosses from the 1760s. We arrived at dusk the night before, set up camp in the dark, and hadn't seen the ancient graffiti. Astounded, I gathered the top of the air bed to my body in a big hug, to revel in the sight, only to discover the small rounded rocks beneath my arms began to move on their own: a family of scorpions, seeking warmth, had moved in beneath the air mattress during the night. I believe some rather primitive an ancient form of screaming and dancing ensued on my part. John, who was still asleep, leapt up in a warrior stance to meet the enemy at his feet.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?

I
Climbed up Huayna Picchu above Macchu Picchu on steel cables to see the Temple of the Sun and Moon. What was I thinking?
I
Climbed Half Dome cables twice. What was I thinking?
I
Climbed inside el Caracol, the observatory at Chichen Itza to take a photo of the Solstice. Then couldn't get down.
I
Jumped into a sea cave (alone) at Double Point, Limantour Spit, without thinking how I was going to get back up again.
I
Rappelled down the inside of the dome of the Church of Religion and Atheism, while helping a friend to restore the fresco, Leningrad, USSR. I won't mention bouncing on the trapeze net stretched across the neck of the dome. What was I thinking?
I
Got stuck mid sea in a small boat when fishing net jammed the propeller, between islands in the Galapagos. Someone had to dive under to boat to cut it free. Swam through a tunnel at Corona del Diablo, to snorkel alone (a no-no), and was attacked by an irate sea lion. I was thoughtless.
I
Washed my hair in Laguna Hanson the only freshwater lake while camping in Baja, at the base of San Pedro de Martir. Swam with whale sharks in the Sea of Cortez, and with sea turtles in Hawaii during a full eclipse. I couldn't think at all, as the sun turned into a black sunflower in the sky while the birds stopped singing, and all the golden fish slept in my arms.

GHOST IN THE MACHINE

I'm still trying to figure out

how to pronounce palimpsests. 

When my dyslexic brain has a field day, 

I never know what ghost story 

will appear behind the print.

Magic Fire

I once found some flint in a glacial toe, or an ancient cobbled riverbed, near Groningen, the Netherlands. It was the summer solstice. The sun took a long time setting. The sky was on fire for hours. I knew the rock was special just by the feel of it. Unctuous, soapy, with a clear ring, like a bell tongue. I had no idea what it was, until I struck it and sparks flew. And it sparked mightily when I struck it together.

I then I spent hours lying on my belly amid the cobbled rocks searching for flintknapped bits. Even though the hunnebeds (cairns) were nearby, I found few worked pieces. I lay down on the stones, discouraged, picked up a random handful of flint (chert), to mindlessly toss away in disgust, and there it was, a hand-worked piece. Like night and day, the difference. 

I held nascent fire in my hands. Flint! Of course, I was insufferable, dragging people into dark closets to show off the sparks.  Magic fire! Loved the odor, like fireworks and petrichor, but stronger.

I once freaked out a bunch of 5th graders by striking chert in a darkened classroom. Nobody wrote great rock poems that day but the boys saw other possibilities... Pyro poets on fire. Charles Simic was teaching at Santa Rosa Junior College at the time so I developed a lesson plan around his poem, Go Inside a Stone...

7/17/17 & 8/1/17

Herman Berlandt Memorial, Bolinas

Celebration of the Life of Herman Berlandt

Ilka meant July 16.

I am not ready to write about Herman. I spent years working with him and even lived in Bolinas for a while I've included some links below. This is a placeholder.

Herman Berlandt, who founded San Francisco's National Poetry Week, and the Beat Museum, was an integral part of the SF poetry scene, and a dear friend of mine, who was instrumental in my development of poetic voice, will be remembered this Sunday at The Bolinas Community Center. During the 1990s, I was co-editor of Mother Earth News, and primary layout artist, typist, researcher for the regional issues. Our first issue, Soviet Poetry since Glasnost, led to Eastern European Poetry, then African Poetry, until we covered all the continents—a massive undertaking. With Jack Foley, we were also co-producing Poetry: USA as well on the local front. When the African issue reached one of our co-editors in Africa, he said everybody was so excited in the post office, that they had a massive impromptu reading right there in the post office....from a Facebook post...

Note been: I never did write that tribute, I was too overwhelmed, then, the following year, my own life was tossed into catastrophic upheaval with the breakup of a 20-something-year relationship. I was homeless, drifting, for a time, but I did manage to create a blog for him, Herman Berlandt, Poet on the Brink of the Mesa, from a collection of papers I had gathered from his cabin in 2018. I scanned clippings from the memorial binder in his cabin and created a blog for him in January, 2019. I always meant to go back and add to it, finish the job, but I never found the time, and now here we are, July 2020, with nowhere to go. I have the time, but no material to scan.

Meanwhile, check out my blog posts on Soviet poetry since Glasnost, the periodical we made for National Poetry week that launched Mother Earth News.

Soviet Poetry Since Glasnost 

The New Zamizdat 

Poetry Unites the World by Dr. Andrei Bantaş 

Andrei Vosnesensky, National Poetry Week 
Letter from Oleg Atbashian 

Worked stone

One of the things I do when I find what looks to be hand-worked flint/chert, jasper, or obsidian, is to look for those telltale flintknapped strike marks, then see if it fits comfortably in my hand. (Most tools I find are not arrowheads, or Clovis points, but harder to identify scrapers, and cutters.) I know it when I see it. 

I liken the worked stone to the wind-stippled surface of a pond, and the larger overlapping ripples as if someone were skipping a stone across it. It is odd to think of worked stone in terms of dropping a rock into a still pond, but the metaphor holds: the rock hitting the water, the scattered splash, followed by concentric waves moving outward. Naturally broken rocks do not have those features. Only those worked by human hands. Basho's mossy pond.

25 random facts, another Facebook quizzy thing

25 random facts about me that may surprise my friends.

1. Do you make your bed? I take the easy way out now, a down quilt and a duvet cover. Making the bed means flipping the duvet over. But I prefer not to, to let the sheets air out. But I'm a fiendish pillow plumper. Can't stand grit or crumbs in the bed, no matter how small, or imaginary. I've been known to flip the sheets in the middle of the night for a cleaner surface.

2. The first car that was officially yours? A 1958/9 Volvo 544 panel truck with wooden interiors. Three on the floor, you had to get a running start it get up over White's HIll. A fact that affects my driving to this day. It was always falling apart, and you couldn't get parts for it as it was so rare. I used baling wire to fix the gas linkage. Learned to swap needle valves in the twin glass carbs, use a screwdriver to bypass a stuck starter solenoid.

3. Three grocery items you don't [want to] run out of. I never run out of pasta, oatmeal, or condiments. I don't want to run out of milk. Ever. Too traumatic. That, and chocolate, the darker, the better. And wine. Chardonnay or Pinot Grigio.

4. When did you start doing your own laundry? I always helped with the laundry, my granny had an old school wringer washer which meant hauling water, and filling the tub for the rinse water. We used a broomstick to stir the clothes. Then hauled them out to the garden to dry on the clothesline and rosemary and lavender bushes. There were always hitchhikers: mainly earwigs.

5. If you could, would you go to high school again? No FN way! It was bad enough to be bullied and beaten up in grade school, but the indifference and cruelty of those same girls in high school took on a whole 'nother dimension. TG for the Summer of Love, things changed for the better. I was so glad to get to college and leave that scene behind. I blossomed and came into my own, emotionally and intellectually. I was a late bloomer. I wouldn't even have gone to my high school reunions if it wasn't for Ken Bullock.

6. Can you parallel park in under 3 moves? Of course. Unless the tires are low. (No power steering).

7. A job you had which people would be shocked to know about? A horse stall cleaner at Fairfax Stables. Salad girl at the Rancho Nicasio. Canning factory worker in Bishoffzell, Switzerland.

8. Do you think aliens are real? Really? Really real?

9. Can you drive a stick shift? Yes, and column shift too.

10. Guilty TV pleasure? All Saints, an Aussie medical drama.

11. Would you rather be too hot or too cold? Too cold. I don't mind wearing more clothes or blankets. I don't do heat well.

12. If the world ends, do you want to be one of the survivors? Oxymoronic question. If the world ends, there won't be any survivors.

13. Sweet or Salty? Salty, spicy. Sometimes cranky.

14. Do you enjoy soaking in a nice hot bath? Yep for about 10 minutes, then I'm out. Showers are quicker.

15. Do you consider yourself strong? Yes, both physically and mentally.

16. Something people do, physically, that drives you crazy? Rudeness, especially drivers.

17. Something you do, physically, that you are sure drives people insane? Chew my nails, (not now), clear my throat a lot. Blurt. Talk too fast.

18. Do you have any birth marks? No.

19. Favorite childhood game? Riding my horse, hiking, swimming,drawing, reading.

20. Do you talk to yourself? Yes I jabber like a bluejay, and I answer myself too. How I problemsolve.

21. Do you like doing jig-saw puzzles? Nope. Nor do I like Rubick's cubes.

22. Would you go on a reality show? No freaking way.

23. Tea or coffee? Tea, then coffee. Then wine. Repeat the next day.

24. First thing you remember wanting to be when you grew up? A veterinarian.

25. No matter how much money you have or don't have, what are you an absolute snob about? Food & wine. Color. Composition. Good writing.

Summer of love, PD article

FOUND POEM from a Facebook word bubble

Apparently this is my Facebook word bubble. Can't say I want to do a freewrite off of it. But let's have at it.

Summer rains
lemon colored mornings
I resist the call and make petitions
send them to the House
Another federal attack on the arts
by my so-called president
reverbrates around the world.
I am surrounded by women,
good, no, great support.
The camera sees
what it wants to see.
Photos in black & white
I gather my thoughts
my final page of poems
a small endowment
care on the page
What is time? A rock?
But we are California strong
and the water is singing
freedom.

7.3

Every day brings another atrocity from our government, so I created a meme

Every day brings another fresh atrocity from our government, I can barely survive the onslaught, so I created a meme.



This one I did not create. I wish I did. It's brilliant.