Synchronicity at work

After an uncomfortable night in my car, as my Berkeley housesitting gig ended a day early, and there were no available post-pandemic couches to surf on in West Marin where I needed to be in the morning (gas @ $4.30 gal), and home bed was more than an hour’s drive north, I made a pot of morning tea with the last of Robin Rule’s looseleaf Yorkshire Gold. My grandmother was always an advocate for a pot of strong tea to make you right as rain, nothing like a strong cuppa to help you to carry on, she’d always say. As I sipped that cup of fierce courage, and massaged my old bones and aches into facing the prospect of the day, and dwelled on the unsettling aspects of the future, I thought of Robin, nestled up north, on a ridge in a handmade caboose house overlooking Willits. I marveled at all the good work she has been doing during the pandemic, with the food bank, and feeding people. Who says that good thoughts and best intentions don’t affect change? I don’t believe in prayer, I believe in doing—my mantra is action and verb. I believe in poetry, perhaps that’s a more tangible form of prayer. I haven’t seen her in decades, yet, we are still in step with each other—our friendship persists—despite a half lifetime of time and distance. Constant poet, the thought of her generous spirit, and very existence on that steep ridge, nourishes me. When I arrived home, there was a care package waiting for me—Robin had sent me three boxes of Yorkshire Gold tea for HER birthday. Such generous bounty. ❤ Thank you Alabama James❤ Synchronicity at work. Happy birthday Robin. Carry on.

• Serendipity 2.0

Salvaging retro-media

Today is a double-retro media day, liberating James Lee Burke from the ferrous oxide confines of audio cassette books to the cyberworld of digital media format. One MacBook is running Audacity to convert old audio cassette tapes. The other, transcribing CDs. Nothing went swimmingly. It’s complicated.

Imagine my surprise when I ordered four audiobooks on eBay, only to discover they were all on audio cassette tapes. TAPES! Ouch. I did not see that coming. But I was determined to listen to his books, so I had to reinvent the wheel, which meant hauling out an old 2010 MacBook, and borrowing a cassette recorder that had USB connectivity. Of course it wouldn’t work. Of course not. No instructions either. Made in China. You get the picture. Quality Google time, I found I needed Audacity too. OK, retro software. I haven’t used Audacity in 20 years. TG for open source software, it was still around. Many hat tricks under the bridge later, I got it to work, sort of—by using an auxiliary speaker. 

I discovered that Bluetooth speakers won’t work with retro MacBooks or software. Workaround: a speaker wire. My kingdom for a freaking speaker wire. Housesitting’s a btch when you need doohickies. 

Speakerwire scored, two days later. But the recording was too distorted when played through speakers. So I swapped the speaker for headphones and fiddled some more and got Audacity to recognize the USB connections from the audio cassette player. Voilá. The right stuff. The process made me reevaluate the aphorism, third time’s a charm. In my case, third time was pure luck. But the process sure wasn’t intuitive. Not exactly ProTools.

I’ve also learned how to transcribe and clean up audiotapes. I now know what the sound waves of an electronic fart looks like, or an electronic pop, and the difference between them and a terminal K or S, and plosive Ps, or the reader gasping for breath. I learned you can remove much of a word’s sound wave to eliminate distortion (a lot). And it still sounds like a word. Luckily only one tape needed doctoring. But time was not kind to the slide guitar intros, transitions, and exits. So I learned how to clean them up too. Thank you Carlos, sound guy for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, for letting me look over your shoulder in the recording studio so many years ago. Osmosis happens.

Also, I wanted to move New Iberia Blues to my music files so I could listen to it again later on my iPad vs my car CD player, as much of it is poetry. This man writes pure poetry on the slant. I about died when he described the sky or the bayou. I have to rewind and listen again. And again. And again. This man has a bad case of metaphor and he knows how to use it. A writer’s writer. And yes, I do get the obscure literary references embedded like Easter eggs throughout his stories. 

So I popped a CD into my MacBook, fired up iTunes. Nada. I hadn’t counted on my disk reader being wonky. I popped in another CD, nada. Since, I knew Toast worked on this old MacBook, I fired it up, and it triggered the DVD player to read the CD. Talk about going around the horn. By disk 10, I learned the trick, slam that mothersucker into the CD slot like a curve ball over home plate, top of the 9th, bases are loaded. And iTunes arrives all out of breath, wanting to know the score.

Why all the bother, you ask? Why not just buy a digital copy and use an iPad/Pod/Phone? Good question. Most of James Lee Burke’s work has not made it to digital format. And I have an old car with a CD player, no USB or auxiliary functions. The fake radio bluetooth workaround doesn’t work. So if I want to listen to James Lee Burke’s work, I need to go to extreme workarounds.

But I think I’ve met my match with Sunset Limited. I fixed one busted tape, rewinding and splicing it onto a new cassette holder, recorded it with only two bust-ups. TG for ScotchTape. But the final cassette rewound wrong and got tangled. Even I can’t fix this one. So close to the end too.

After a year+ in isolation, my new habit is…

It began simply enough, a friend loaned me some audiobooks. Since I drive long distances to and from work, I roared through his small audiobook collection in no time flat. Luckily he likes murder mysteries too. I loved reading Dick Francis and James Patterson—my aunt Toddy used to send me crates of books. But time has not been kind to my eyes. Besides, you can’t read a book while driving.  

John Grisham I already knew, but Jonathan Kellerman and Lee Child were new to me. I found them a bit gritty but doable. But soon I ran out of audiobooks, but not the road, which led me to trolling thrift stores and eBay for new reads. At the Rohnert Park Goodwill, I found an audiobook by James Lee Burke, an author I had never heard of, called New Iberia Blues. I took a chance on it. The price was right.

Someone asked me what new habit will you take with you from your 14 months of pandemic isolation? My new habit, besides food hoarding, is listening to audiobooks. My new driving habit is listening to audiobooks in my car. There’s an Irish saying, a good story shortens the road. 

Now I usually don’t like being read to, because I am a fast reader. In the past, I’ve shied away from audiobooks because I didn’t like a reader’s voice, or pacing. An audiobook is a three-way pact between the writer, the reader-interpreter, and the listener. There is nothing worse than being held hostage by a bad reader. They can sour a good storyline. I can’t finish that Kathy Reichs Bones novel because I can’t stand the reader’s voice.

Actors are often the worst readers of prose. Go figure. The woman who read Joan Didion’s memoir did it a disservice. Did you really just mispronounce that word? This is not a football fumble. There’s a comma there, use it—it’s not a run-on sentence. Oh FFS, don’t you even see the period? What is this, a California stop sign? Take a breath, fergawdsake. Don’t read like you’re stuck in the mortuary loo without TP. Do you even know what you’re reading? 

If I’m arguing with a reader’s reading style, it’s more than a distraction, it’s an intrusion. And male readers interpreting female characters. Painful. Why the breathless soft girlie voice? Women don’t sound like that. It’s demeaning. Besides, I can’t hear the dialogue when you go all fem, I have to crank the volume up to full blast.

My current long and winding road obsession is James Lee Burke who writes pure poetry on the slant. I want to rewind, and listen again. And again. And again. Not something you can easily do with a car CD player. I about died when he described the sunset as the color of torn plums, or his run-on sentences when he waxes on about the secret depths of the bayou. This man has a bad case of metaphor and he knows how to use it. 

Midsummer fires

My great-grandfather built bonfires on his hill farm near Dumnaway, near Bantry, and ran his cattle between the twin flames. The actual midsummer bonfire date in Ireland is June 23. Of course, all those midsummer bonfires in California would be an absolute disaster.

After listening to Billy Collins speak

After listening to Billy Collins speak, I thought of his poem, When I was Ten, and I thought of how 10-year-olds grieve at the idea of time passing. Something Collins hadn’t quite accounted for, when writing the poem, and then when he asked them what they thought, he was surprised to find angst runs deep within—no matter what the age. And yes, even age two is not too soon to worry about the direction of one’s life. Merely the world parameters are smaller, but that same fortitude we all carry within, is like the grief of a thin sliver of the moon waiting to shine as if from within. The stars in their courses never stumble, even the gazelle leaps across the skyscape each night searching for the Pleiades, and we look up into the sky, we look into that face of the moon and wonder about the beginnings and the endings of things. How to do it right. No matter what our chronological age, but we are always in medias res. It is always in the middle of things, there is no age, no circumference of thought. And as for those throwaway images—yes, that eggshell thin porcelain cup. The fragility of memory. I remember that poet’s proverbial jar placed in Tennessee and the slovenly wilderness surrounding it. Sure, there’s a little cultural elitism involved. One offhandedly drops literate phrases in the cultural desert, and utters scholarly things like in medias res, sage tags for the reader. Or to lend credence. All the left brain images we have learned so carefully, are tucked away to save for another day. But in the end, what matters most is not how many angels are dancing on the head of a pin, but how many pins are embedded in in the soles of those dancing angels’ feet.

While most people celebrate Father’s Day

While most people celebrate Father’s Day replete with breakfast rutuals, all I can say is that, for me, it’s complicated—as I had an absentee father (and mother). I knew almost nothing about my father’s side of the family, other than their family was from County Cork, by way of Boston. Lace curtain Irish. I also knew that my father’s mother, my grandmother, committed suicide at an early age, and that her husband, my grandfather, a San Francisco policeman, died soon after, of TB, leaving the teenage boy an orphan, to be raised by an unfit uncle. 

My father’s untold story began to emerge via those scanned photos making the intangible absentee father—somewhat tangible. I first began my scanning odyssey way back in 2015, when we cleaned out my matriarchal grandmother’s house and we found boxes of old photos. Some were from my mother, many from my Aunt Jane—who apparently had a thing for my father—which goes a long way in explaining the sisters lifelong enmity toward each other. And a shoebox collection of my father’s photos mostly from the 1940s to the 1960s.

In my father’s collection, a photo of an unknown woman with a baby raised a red flag. But no real answers. So many surprises, all the random photos that fleshed out distant fragments of memory, which led to new unanswerable questions. These scans of my father were all from prints. Hard copy. So many photos were badly damaged, cloning became my new art form. I also scanned my cousin Sinead Dinsmore’s huge photo collection, adding to the complex multi-generational extended family story. 

Then my friend, Donna Champion bought me a spiffy spit-kit, where I eventually discovered distant relatives on my father’s side, a huge unknown. Still piecing together that family tree, but now I know my great-grandparents’ names on my father’s side. My grandmother Viola Heaney married Joe Hurley, Sr. 

That DNA kit also gave me closure on the photo of that unknown woman and child. Four years later, the scanned photographs abutting new DNA results, yielded new information. My father had a son, I had a half-brother, who in turn, had two sons—both adopted out. Their DNA found me. 

I found an Alaskan connection by way of adoption, which led to the discovery of another generation. When I was first contacted, I denied all connection, but when I delved deeper, I began to find that they were correct, we were related after all. It seems that we all grew up fatherless. Substance abuse, my half-brother’s genetic inheritance, facilitated the two boys adoption. Ironic that my grandmother Viola’s father had a brewery in San Francisco. 

Hopefully, those adopted boys, my nephews, are celebrating Father’s Day with real joy, their adoptive fathers filling the void by stepping into the shoes my father and his son could not fill. And no, none of us have met each other. Hopefully the abusive gene has played out its hand, and these young men whom I cannot yet call brother, or nephew, do not carry that destructive gene.

And I found an old lineage lhread leading back to Nova Scotia, Antigonish, by way of Cork, Ireland, I found a far-distant French and Native connection I could not ameleorate. And then, in a flash, I understood, the Algonquin connection that spanned the eastern seaboard, the Acadians, the trail of tears. My great grandfather, Henry Hurley’s wife. Still don’t have the link from County Cork to Nova Scotia but I suspect it was a forced immigration from the great famine.

As I scanned photos, I began to put the story together, the generic rage I held against my father for abandoning me as a child, began to ameliorate, and morph into something else. Perhaps a vague understanding. My orphaned father, raised by a vitriolic alcoholic uncle—the model was at hand. The uncle left the shipyards of Boston to raise a nephew in San Francisco, instilled a lifetime of rage in my father who sought solace in the bottle. Talk about complex feelings. Sometimes there are glimmerings of forgiveness, like faint stars on the horizon.

My pissy prose riff off on the Billy Collins workshop

Pick any color. The ink always returns from the harsh light of the page to the comforting darkness of the inkwell. The next line is always waiting in the wings, unforeseeable, but inevitable. Gnashing its teeth. It is an attempt to see the poem as a living thing. Tight received forms, pro temp forms for the moment. OCD poets rearranging words from the chaos. We are always at work, it’s never done. We’re making the poem for the reader. Tidy poems, said, Mary Oliver, is the work of poetry. Self-expression is way overrated. Mohler said life is parabolic, no, he said life is paperwork, and manipulates the reader into empathy. Do the paperwork. Do the poets. We must find the time for sound, I thought. Poem is artifact of time and culture. You need a timeline. Matthew Arnold builds the reader a tidy scaffold of comfort, then removes it, brutally, like in Dover Beach. Like a hangman. Poet as master manipulator, or dominatrix. Dylan was in the imperative present tense of what is. Facing the death bed, not to rage, is the norm. He rages. He rages. Do not go gentle. Is the audience even willing to meet the writer halfway? I think not.  Poet as observer counting a murder of crows. Reader imbues meaning. Kay Ryan’s turtle was an inside job. Who won the race? The vowels said they’ve abandoned their end stations and have given up their guns for the well-meadowed line. The rabbit died. Puzzle poems and acoustic echo chambers to sound off outside the cathedral of poetry. A prose poem is an excuse to write bad poetry. Wordsworth was recollecting at the epicenter, I, eye the ego centric at the center of it all. Or was that Keats? No tranquility for the wokid. Poetry‘s job is to make the reader emotional. The pleasure of a poem is discovering the endings. Get in, get out early. A poem is a work order. Poetry is all courtship and no payoff. There is no sex, only a lot of panting. The sonnet is a proscribed birthday genre, but only if it ends in a zero. Null and void. Avoid the wet spot. Sadly, the self adulation urge is not to put away childish things. Begin with a generalization. Then get pacific. The argument of Aquinas’ angels and scholasticism, the theological skulduggery of education gets in the way of poetry. But all those questions about angels and asking them silly questions. Then what? Take care of the reader. An angel dancing alone in an empty room, to a jazz quartet, what about all those secularized angels? What did they have to say? And what about She? Did she want to hang up her wings in order to eternally count pinheads onto infinity? Sounds like a hellish form purgatory to me. Oh, Beatrice! Wherefore art thou?


Most of this prose is from a Billy Collins workshop, some of which became a prose poem, After listening to Billy Collins speak, and a tiny bit of it drifted into my Angels playing for sax freewrite. I suppose I should shape this into something or other, it has potential,mbut I am both intrigued and tired of it. Not a good combo. It took me forever to finish adding my Billy Notes, and this run on. 

Added 1/22.

Billy Collins workshop, Book Passage, June 19, 2021

Billy Collins, In The Driver’s Seat of Poetry: A Live Poetry Session

In The Driver’s Seat of Poetry: A Live Poetry Session

Some 700 of us from around the world joined Billy Collins for a three-hour Zoom workshop at $75 a pop, hosted by Book Passage in Corte Madera. When I did the math, I thought, who says that poetry doesn’t pay? Crime still pays better. Still, I was looking forward to taking the workshop with Billy as I had long admired his poems and have used them when I have taught Poetry Out Loud workshops because they are so approachable. I like his narrative personae.

Billy Collins, two-times US poet laureate, also offers free poetry chats on Facebook, most weeks, usually Tu., Th. at 5:30 PM, EST. The workshops, more like fireside chats, sans fireplace, evolved as a response to Covid isolation. Check it out.

For our workshop, Billy gave us a reading list, and asked us to write out all the model poems in longhand before the workshop. Since I had only just discovered the workshop literally minutes before it actually began, I was scrambling to catch up. She who hesitates, is…  That was the fastest three minutes ever spent, I managed to contact Book Passage, pay the tuition, get my link, and and then get my Zoom link to work. I was in. A grand slam. There are times when the universe conspires to work with you. I was all damseled about and out of breath. Even still, I managed to scribble out Sonnet 73. But it was a rush to get to the finish line, and that also meant that the entire tone of my experience of the residency was wide-eyed and out of breath.

Billy Collins opens with a discussion on the forms of poetry and then offers us a caveat, saying, this is not how I normally teach, this is not a writing workshop, nor is it is it a lecture. (For lack of a better definition, it’s craft lecture. OK, so, call it a poetry session.) He says, I’m not trying to look at a poem as a finished product but to return imaginatively to the scene of the crime, to draw the ink off the page, and put it back into the inkwell, and to see the work as a work in progress, to deduce the intentions of the poet. (In other words, a poem is never finished, only abandoned….)

Masks Off Day, watching Dancing to Jerusalema

https://www.facebook.com/111138863712827/videos/3637795652958491/

I love this tiny dancer, I love watching her extraordinary moves. I love how the Jerusalema viral dance challenge swept the globe in 2020. It certainly was a highlight during the beginning days of the Covid lockdown. It also seems like it was so long ago. Watching all these people dance to Jerusalema during those darkest of times, still makes me weep. Nomcebo Zikode’s voice is mesmerizing. During those darkest of days, during the pandemic, we defied the odds, and we danced. Oh, how we danced the darkness and the fear away. Someone said that dancing to Jerusalema was like the song of God expressing itself inside your DNA. From the cradle of civilization, the origins of humankind, Mother Africa brought the world together into one global village—for a moment. When the ego melts, the dance begins. The Dali Lama said, Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength. The resilience of the psyche douring those macabre times was an extraordinary feat. We hardly had the time to mourn our dead. So many fallen. Then the brutality of what followed, as society fell apart at the seams. We were brutally reminded that there is only one race—the human race. For a moment, the song, Jerusalema, brought the world together. For a moment, the world was choreographed. For a moment, we danced and breathed as one. For a moment. Literally the definition of conspiracy, is to breathe together. And yet the breath was also the harbinger of death. We masked up and hoped death would look the other way. I have had exactly five hugs since the pandemic. Three of them this month. Lest we forget, as California officially opens up from the lockdown with “Mask Off” day, the unveiling of the year, and business returns to “normal” think of that journey, how far we’ve come. The depths we’ve plumeted. The heights we’ve risen to. The idea of society returning back to normal. I don’t know If I want that ever again. Let the lessons of 2020 not be solely remembered in hindsight, but also be a vision for our future. What changes of habit will you carry with you from the lockdown? I will watch the children dance. I will remember to live in the moment. I will remember to breathe. I will remember to love. Circular breathing. This breath, this day.

Masks off day

It’s kind of weird being out in public to do things other than the absolute necessities. I think I have to re-socialize. I was Miss Crankypants while shopping for used clothing. Though we don’t have to wear masks anymore, most people did, but the dressing rooms are still locked. What’s with that? So I tried on clothes in the aisles. Yeah, my agro levels rose. Turfy, I was. And then it dawned on me that I hadn’t done anything other than grocery shopping in so long that the only socialization skills I had were akin to hunting and gathering. I didn’t know how to behave in public. I think I’ve gone feral again. I’m sure the heat didn’t help. I may not be ready for the concept of leisurely eating out in a restaurant for quite some time. Last week, Glenn Ingersoll and met up at a mostly empty cafe on College and I could barely contain myself, the fight-flight syndrome was big with this one.

Dear Google, why do you keep flagging my posts? I have no idea what you want me to do.

URL is not available to Google

It cannot be indexed. Learn more 

Somehow I don’t think it’s the URL that’s the redirect problem. You are the problem. You changed the software. Not me. I only provided the content. Not HTML code. I used your software. So this is an internal problem. Why shoot the artist in the foot? Dodging bullets is not my thing. This doesn’t even make sense. But then, I’m arguing with a bot. A lot of good that will do. 

Dear Google, why do you keep flagging my posts?

Does anyone work for Google? I am still having problems with my blog. I seem to be singled out for non-existent errors. The Blogspot post harassment continues at my blogsite, mohurley.blogspot.com. I have combed Google Help, poste queries, and have not gotten anywhere. I am at my wit’s end.

I have most definitely forever lost several posts, the 13 recent ones were reinstated (for allegedly going against community standards! Yeah, no), but not the previous ones. 

Google Help said to send in the URL to restore it, but how can I do that when a post is completely missing…and not in draft form either. I can pinpoint the dates of two deleted posts. One deleted post of a play I wrote, I at least had a hard copy of, but the other was of a historic event written directly in Blogger. Juanita Musson’s memorial gathering and photos at Olompali. I’m sure other posts are missing as well. Since I use Facebook to generate writing material, I have been double-checking posts via Facebook Memories. And, no, the missing posts were not catalogued on the Wayback Machine.

Now many of my other posts are being flagged for console search errors. I have never used outside software, only Blogger. It’s mostly straightforward text, that is, poetry. And I haven’t a clue as to why so many my posts are suddenly being flagged. 

The closest I can come to, is that Google installed a new mobile web crawler in 2019, that is causing all these flags. If I knew that ignoring it would mean that it wasn’t indexed, I could live with that, but my last experience with being flagged is that Google can, and does remove blog post without warning. 

I am devastated by the loss of my work, writing is my art form. I have 4000+ posts. At present I am madly hand-copying and repasting everything into text documents, to back it up, but I am only 1/3 done. What Google chooses to flag seems to be rather random. There is no pattern that I can see.I have also backed up my blog with Google Takeout. But that does not resolve the problem. And no, the missing posts were not in the Google Takeout download. I won’t even mention the post that Blogger turned into gibberish during the last upgrade.

MacBookPro journals

A couple of months ago, I managed to find a mid-2012 MacBookPro I planned to soup up. I was just about to buy one last year when COVID-19 struck. That put a big wrench in things. No one wanted to meet up. Not for love, nor money—and certainly not for old MacBooks. 

After a few Marketplace deals fell through at the last minute, I despaired. One seller gave her MBP to her brother at the last moment—as I was leaving to pick it up. But the real asscake was the guy who sold the MBP I had planned to purchase—during the time it took me to drive down from Sonoma to SF. 

He then tried to fob off another dead MBP in its place, saying, Yeah, it works fine but the battery is dead. Yeah, no. I felt like I was in the Monty Python dead parrot sketch. I tried all the restart tricks in the book, including attempting to jumpstart it with a portable hard drive with an OS. Dead motherboard, and the battery indicator was green. After trying to sell it to me for parts, he handed me the dead MBP as a doorprize—but, hey, at least the battery was good, I swapped it out.

I am amazed by all those oily Marketplace guys offhandedly trying to fob off their lemony laptop’s age, or obfuscate its speed, or hide its lack of memory. As if I wouldn’t notice. After months of scanning ads for overpriced MBPs on Marketplace (Craigslist was useless), I finally found a likely candidate. It had to be a faster mid-2012 MacBookPro, not early-2012, not late-2012 (non-upgradable Retina). And not too expensive. 

I met this guy in the Richmond Costco parking lot, he was solid, not trying to hide anything. After a cursory check, I didn’t even barter—I paid more than I wanted for his MacBook Pro—$300. But it had good bones and a fast GhZ speed. My fastest used Mac purchase ever. I didn’t even need to run the usual checks. 

Besides, he had also upgraded it to Catalina at my request. That was the deal clincher. He had no idea that it would even run Catalina. As I put it through its paces, he looked at it anew. I was afraid he’d change his mind right there in the parking lot. I paid him off so fast, I forgot to get a bill of sale. Alas, I needed Catalina to run TurboTax. It seem the only reason I ever upgrade my MacBooks is to run tax software. A sad state of affairs.

DEAR GOOGLE, Coverage issues have been detected and flagged on my blogspot site. They are mostly poems, or jpgs of poems.

I keep getting warnings from Google that coverage issues have been detected and URLs have bee flagged on my blogspot site. They are mostly poems, or jpgs of poems. I have no idea what I am supposed to do. Or what could possibly be wrong with them. As it is, Google has deleted a few of my posts, most of which I was able to resurrect, but not all. I mourn the loss of my Juanita Musson memorial gathering at Olompali. 

On my corona poem, I made a brand new blog entry for it. That didn’t work. On the others. I made minute corrections to see if that would help. I even renamed some of them. Nope. Some allowed me to index URL, some didn’t. Looking at referring URLs did not shed any light. I don’t know what to do. But it seems that the Google mobile indexing URL is the culprit. It doesn’t seem to like many of my pages. Because they’re not mobile friendly? Bah!

Some of the warnings include:

Page is not mobile friendly How so? And do I even care?

Text too small to read. Really? And what is wrong with Georgia 12-point type? Actually it’s listed as normal size. It’s closer to 18-point text. You've done away with the font size numbers.

Clickable elements too close together. OK, Google, this is YOUR software. I have no idea what you mean. You don’t like my embedded links? I have not altered HTML. nor am I using other software to compose my pieces. So, what gives? Besides, there are no hot hyperlinks in most these posts. They’re poems fergawdsakes.

Is now a good time to bring up how Blogger chewed up my Shoe de Gras Mouse Wars  post on 11/30/2011, and turned it into an equation field of html madness? 

Notice there's no Hava <3 3="" all="" and="" any="" as="" asian="" at="" attract="" besides="" bird-mad="" cakes="" can.="" chocolate.="" clean="" d="" dark="" does="" drawer="" dry="" field="" go="" godiva="" goods="" hand.="" house="" i="" is="" letting="" list="" mice.=""

DEAR GOOGLE, My Woodside play is missing, looks like Google deleted it

OK, FOUND V. 3 on an old hard drive. Will restore it later. Right now I’m too disenheartened to think.

Final copy is missing. I found a first draft in my scanned notes. The short play would’ve been posted on my blog Sept 26, 2016. It was a smash success. I did a lot of historical research and incorporated folklore. Neil was so good as a vagrant ghost that some of the guests tried to run him off.Literally.

Woodside Spook Party Sat Sept 24TH 2016

Preparing for the drought

In California, we are hunkering down in serious drought mode. Perhaps the worst drought cycle in living history. The past 18 months have been the driest recorded in 143 years of Northern California rainfall records. This is a reminder—if we haven’t already done so—that it’s time to radically change our relationship to water. Less is more. Conserve, conserve, conserve. 

Every drop of water is precious. I know that most of you know this already. But we need to put what we know into radical practice, and share our water stories—in solidarity—if only to remind ourselves to be more diligent to keep our total usage under 50 gallons a day, which is still far too much.

Be proactive. Fix all those leaks, and use a bucket to catch any drips from faucets. Use a bucket to catch the cold water from the shower. Use a plug in the bathtub, or shower drain (or use a child’s wading pool as a catchment system) to catch the water to bail that water for the plants, or to flush the toilet. 

This is the land of two-minute showers. Get wet, turn off the shower water. Lather up. Turn on the shower to rinse. Ditto that with the toothbrush drill. Turn off the water while you brush. Don’t shower daily. Your skin will thank you. Sponge baths were a thing until very recent times. And don’t be frivilous, wear clothing until it’s actually dirty, then launder it. Or be more like Jack Reacher.

Be innovative. If you aim it right, with velocity, you can use a quart to a half-gallon of water to dump the toilet, depending on the bowl model, and your aim. Perfect that velocity, and aim and trajectory. Please practice first with clean water. Ya don’t wanna know... If you have an old toilet, put bricks or half gallons of filled milk containers for displacement. I used three half-gallon containers, plus a brick and the old toilet still flushed. Do not, I repeat, do not use displacement rocks in the toilet tank. Sure. Go ahead. Ask me why. Not my finest moment.

It goes without saying, don’t flush for pee. Toss those twatwipes in the trash, don’t clog the sewer pipes. Listen for unauthorized running water in the pipes. Maybe it’s your toilet having a secret inner life. It happens. Maybe it’s time to kick it to the curb, make it into a planter, and get a low flush toilet.

Think different. Use a wash basin for your dishes, and carry the water out to the garden. Don’t forget to collect those stray forks and spoons from the flowerbeds. Especially if they’re silver. Yes. Your plants may like the gesture that you’re offering them genuine silver cutlery but they really can’t use them as they have no hands. And if they’re fruits and vegetables, you might hurt their feelings. Use biodegradable soap or original Dawn, not detergent. 

Back in the 1970s, when I worked for a family in Belvedere, I rigged the washing machine so that all the water went into a big plastic garbage can on a dolly, and I wheeled it into the garden. That was back in the days of phosphate soap. None of the plants died. However they did develop a lint problem. Kill the fn lawn already. Plant native species. Every drop counts. You know the drill. We got this.

What are your water saving tricks and strategies? 

The Wood-Pussy

As I was spreading out a pile of duff and detritus gleaned from the side of the old family home, I decided to also clean up part of the driveway under the madrone tree, where we sometimes sleep out. The dirt hump was killing me during last night’s lunar eclipse. As the blood red moon crossed the sky, the Milky Way, the heart of our galaxy, was a brilliant swath of stars. The water road in full flood. Last night, I couldn’t get comfortable, so I decided to level the dirt hump out. There was one tantalizing red shag carpet thread poking out of the dirt that I pulled and pulled trying to get to the bottom of it. The hardpan cracked. I pulled and pulled that thread. No end in sight. Like a red herring leading me on. Like trimming a sail. Pulling the wind in close to your chest. Ariadne’s thread, a guide to the labyrinth of the past. I dug up a large tuft of rotted red carpet. And another. I found a huge colony of amaryllis, or naked ladies, nested on top of it, and flakes of embedded plastic and paint. It was from the hull of the old 1940s Wood-Pussy sailboat my uncle had raised from the bottom of Tiburon Harbor. Don’t know how it got to the West Coast. Uncle John thought he was going to restore the 13’ sailboat. A weekend project that never happened. Like the pile of galvanized sheeting he was going to make into a greenhouse. Never happened.  All those lost weekends of good intentions got away from him. And now it’s too late. My mother made a teepee from the old sails. The mast and rudder disappeared along with the centerboard. And I had turned the bow of that little sailboat into a planter circa 1970. But the gophers had drilled through the bottom of the boat and climbed up it to get to the bulbs planted in its bow. Only the toxic naked ladies survived their voracious hunger. Ah, but the imaginary trips we all took in the stern of that little wooden catboat sailing towards unknown shores. A generation of cousins sat in that boat, the wind luffing our hair. I thought the little dingy had long since been removed. But someone had filled it in with dirt. I had been sleeping on the carcass of the Wood-Pussy. A WoodPussy,  dubbed a Woodie by afficionados, is a Yankee name for a skunk. The little stinker became an archaeological dig, like a viking burial ship of the past. I found the rusted metal metal bars that bridged the sides of the boat, broken glass, toy wheels, brass screws, a doll’s white go-go boot, pennies, a soda straw, cigarette filters, more shag carpet in green. My inheritance. Now my penance is to clean up all that embedded toxic marine paint, punky wood, fiberglass and resin parches, and shag carpet that once lined the hull of the boat. And maybe to resurrect some of those old dreams.

• Excavating the Wood-Pussy, Part II

DEAR GOOGLE, Google’s Blogger took down my memorial service post April 3, 2011 Resurrection not possible

Google’s Blogger took down my Juanita Musson memorial post at Olompali on April 3, 2011 stating it went against community standards. My Blogger post would’ve been dated on April 3, 2011, or sometime later that month. I am trying to resurrect bits of it via Facebook posts. I wonder if this iconic bathtub photo of Juanita is the reason why Google took my blog post down to begin with? How do I get it back? 

From Facebook: It's been confirmed: Juanita Musson's Memorial Service is on Sunday April 3rd, 2011 Olompali Ranch in Novato—Noon to 3pm. Please wear bright muumuus & Hawaiian shirts! A cock or a monkey on your shoulder, bedpans of food and wild Juanita stories will do...what a peculiar tribe we've been! Juanita Musson's memorial at Olompali, Sunday, April 3, 2011. It  was a Gate 5-ish reunion of sorts. Juanita stories abounded. Do you have a Juanita story or photos, etc? Post them here.

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

 friends that were not in group photo: Pagan Neil and Carolyn Heal

"The food's good but not necessarily the temperament of the cook". —Juanita's Galley, Gate 4 and a half, Sausalito 

If you had complained, she would've walloped you with a frying pan. Then it wouldn't matter at all. 'Course if you were blottoed, she could've crowned you one and you wouldn't have noticed!

We met a lot of folks at the memorial that sort of knew, or people who looked familiar, or we were at the same place/time thing. I recognized Jerry Tomlinson who lived at Rancho Olompali when it was a Grateful Dead commune. I remember going to parties there, wading in the grotto. Before that, I got my saddle fixed there—so it was a three-wave tier of memory rolling in. 

We went to Sonoma and partied late into the night. Our host, Tim was a friend of Norton Buffalo's—so sad to see Norton's Ovation guitar silent, by the fireplace. Neil sang. We walked in the sculpture garden. Amazing place over the hill from Beltaine Ranch. One woman Caron, was with Greg Davis in the wayback days—so her kids were related to an old flame of mine, Geoff Davis! Another woman I met went to school with my brother Guy. Shannon McCloud. We all trundled up to Sonoma—Nuns Canyon and drank and feasted until the stars sighed. https://picasaweb.google.com/MoHurleyArt/RelaisDuSoleil#

I'm uploading the last of the photos now. Two more folders to go. I'll leave them all at the end of the album so it's easier to distinguish them form the earlier ones (I had 3 cameras going—and Neil had one too). https://picasaweb.google.com/MoHurleyArt/JuanitaMemorial#

You rarely got what you wanted at Juanita’s Restaurant, but you got a lot of it http://mohurley.blogspot.com/2007/08/you-rarely-ever-got-what-you-wanted-at.html

DEAR GOOGLE, Blogger removed 13 of my blogposts for no reason

 

Who else had their Blogger posts removed by Goofle for “violating community standards” yesterday? Not only did Blogger remove my posts, Blogger posted a big red FRAUDULENT BLOG banner over my entire blog. At least there was a link to contact Blogger and refute the charge. But it was alarming to say the least. Heavy handed, more like. Big Brother’s other name is Google. Move over, Facebook. I thought for sure I had been somehow hacked, or perhaps ransomeware was involved, but after a thorough security check, all systems checked out.

I had 13 of my original posts, for which there was no back up, deleted, now restored TG. But what a rough 20 hours it was, a total nightmare. And a lot of time wasted that could’ve been avoided. Seriously #epicbotfail. Last night I took 170 screenshots to document my nearly 4000 blogpost titles. I spent the entire morning restoring deleted files. Please excuse my lack of clarity, at present I really do have pigeon brain.  

Red flag warning (teaching journal)

 

Nothing quite like being wired & tired, allergic & itchy all at the same time, and desperate for sleep during a diablo windstorm with a red flag warning. I woke up this morning with my mind on sneezing. I hate it when you sneeze so hard that you can’t catch your breath, and the next one’s coming down the track like a freight train on speed. You sneeze so hard, scuttle backwards and jackknife like a crawdad on steroids and wind up in the next county and you consider using Depends. Yesterday the entire Northbay was under a red flag wind warning. The Sudafed is still kicking my butt, the tiny glass of wine wore off long ago. I’m sure it didn’t help. I don’t dare have more wine because of my allergies. It hit me hard—earlier I was both drunk and wired sober at the same time. I was both coming and going—not pleasant. Cheap date. I touched my eye and then had another allergy slam dunk attack. Nothing helps with the heavy sulfuring of the vineyards because it’s not pollen. Alexander Valley is under a yellow haze. The wind is blowing fiercely, practically a gale. That last bit is enough to keep me edgy and wired to the gills. Not to mention the Sudafed which dried up more than my sinuses. Good thing I didn’t take two, or I would be orbiting with Elon Musk’s satellites. I’ve taught poetry to kids in three counties this week. Nine classes. And also another day job. Same schedule next week. I’m wound up tighter than a tick. And I am drop dead tired to boot. Oh, and I forgot to add that the mosquitoes circling like vultures. They know a good thing when they smell it.

San Geronimo Valley Spring Arts virtual art show, painting, drawing, photo

.

The 31st Annual ‘It’s Virtually Spring’ Virtual Art Show. You can view this year's incredible work to SGVCC Instragram and Facebook accounts. You can also visit the online gallery here:

I can’t believe that I was dropped from the SGVCC Spring Art Show, an oversight. Larry was very apologetic, but it’s the second time this has happened. As an elder arts promoter, I managed to get both Barbara Scott and Sam Fisk to enter pieces. I made three triptyches of Barbara’s art, so she had 9 pieces total. She works in threes, so they looked great. Sam and I went to the Immersive Van Gogh exhibit and a created a paint night afterwards, so both our paintings were from that experience. I did a riff on Van Gogh’s Sunflowers 22x24”. The stabilo pencil drawing is of Elephant Mountain, Nicasio 9x6”. And the photo is of Chileno Valley.

IF I WERE THE STARS OF FIRE

If I were the stars of fire, 

I would dream of meteors lost in the night. 

I would dream of lost moons 

and wayward planets, rogue stars
wandering the universe. 

If I were hidden inside your heart 

I would make your dream this big. 

I would bring you courage 

bundled up in fistfuls of raggy flowers, 

or trapped on a long wave

approaching the shore 

with no other thought than the speed of dance, 

where the birds test the air with their wings, 

and the sky answers.

Cleveland elementary school, day 11 wrap up

We talked about a lot of housekeeping things how to use zoom how do use Google docs and so on I managed to read most of the poems and made comments in Google Docs, but there were still quite a few that I could not open. Mary finally got around to opening them for me so that I can access them. So I am done with my first reading of all their poems, and part two is getting them to edit their work and choose best work for the book. I will probably need to go to Cleveland in the afternoons when I am there on Thursdays in order to solicit art for the books. I will need to print out and create the pages so that they can edit them and somehow pick up the pages in order to out of them. I need to find the last day of school and figure out from there when we need to print and get them out.

The kids who sloughed off are farther behind than ever, I am disappointed. But most of the kids really rallied and produced good work. Some kids still do not get that they need to use images and comparisons even though I talk about it every single lesson. So that was a comment that I made over and over again on their work was comparisons and strong verbs. I introduced the idea of I believe for their freewrite, they did not need to use it.

I once believed that Santa could fit down the chimney, that the tooth fairy was real. I missed the memo where I was supposed to alert the parent units. But I had no parents, just a grandmother who didn’t play along with such a notions such as tooth fairies. It’s not that she didn’t talk about the fairies, she did, but hers were from a far older time in the distant past. So I grew up in two worlds, a lot of the American culture, and the head of Ireland. Santa was debunked early on when we moved to Forest Knolls it was patently clear that he was not going to fit down down the stove pipe no matter how much magic he might have had not even if he was alpha sized. But the tooth fairy was always a distant help. She even visited one night and left some spare change but forgot to pick up Bluetooth. The tooth. That’s leaving me in a quandary as to whether or not she was real. Now I just lose teeth because I’m older. No 230 to pick up the girls. No tooth fairy to pick up the dentist bill.

We wrote fake apology Paul poems and we also wrote Mother’s Day poems. I wrote about a pan

Dear Bic pen, I am sorry for treating you like a straw but it was right before lunch and I was so hungry I could’ve eaten a bear. Instead, your ink stained my tongue and lips the color of midnight. It was like being sent to bed without supper.

MalcolmX ES teaching journal, Berkeley Day 3

Thinking that Sunday was Mother’s Day, in a panic, I switched around my lesson plans around and taught Mother’s Day Poems. To my detriment, Kathy Mapps had already done a great job on teaching Mother’s Day Poems. That’s twice now she’s taught my lessons, which is fine, but she didn’t tell me. I had them talk about making weird bump in the road lines to get them to write something where they’re making comparisons in every sentence. I told them that one line needs to be weird. And then part two was to write an ode to their best friend. There are too many wandering minds in this class and making sure everyone’s on the same page is tricky. Not my best teaching moment. But we made it through the lesson with grace.

Potted scorpion for Earth Day (photos)

I found a wee scorpion snoozing under a pot when I was spring cleaning up Sam’s front porch in Forest Knolls. He was hunkered down for the duration of the drought and was nice and moist under the pot A post Earth Day surprise. Meet C.B. De Mille, my new gardening buddy. He prefers to go by the handle, Cecil B, the baddass Scorpion. I was expecting to find baby salamanders snoozing under the pots. Not a wee timerous scorpion. He’s very tiny, about an inch long, or 2 inches long if his tail were flattened out. He’s lightfooted and can skitter like a mouse, and he’s very docile. When I was younger I used to have scorpion nightmares. So it was interesting to get a chance to study him up close. Please don’t kill the wood scorpions. They are the good guys. Mighty bug hunters, (they love centipedes) and they can live up to 6 years. He’s iridescent, which means he will fluoresce under a blacklight. I didn’t want to stress him out too much with all that direct sunlight. So I took his close-up & put him back under the pot. You can bet I’ll move those pots carefully from now on. Forest Knolls. Full Scorpio Moon.

We have seven types of scorpions in the Bay Area. Woodies (Uroctonus mordax) have the biggest claws.

April showers (not)

After a long dry season of anticipation, possible rain prediction here; but haven’t seen it yet. Hopeful. Meh, now a fizzle. That was a bust. Cold! Alas, it’s fizzled to a drizzle in Forest Knolls. And it has turned cold. Snowing somewhere! Yet another year of drought on the horizon.

THE GIFT OF THIS DAY

THE GIFT OF THIS DAY

I am offering this day filled with fog and sunlight. 

My hands holding the air up to the sky. 

The pine trees whisper such secrets
that the cat climbs up the trunk in search of lost youth.
The birds scold her for her transgressions.
And she retreats, having nowhere else to go, but down.
Only the sky overhead, but it is overcast today.
I love you said the sky to the clouds.
I love you said the wind to the trees
and they whispered back secrets to each other
which I could not translate. The sun breaks through,
warming the bones of the old cat
and she is grateful for this gift, this day.

4/20/21, 

Pádraig Ó Tuama refers to these types of prayer exercises as Collect poems

Published in The Freedom of New Beginnings: Poems of Witness and Vision from Sonoma County, California, 2022, edited by Phyllis Meshulam, with Gail King, Terry Ehret, and Gwynn O’Gara

I will be reading from the anthology, The Freedom of New Beginnings: Poems of Witness and Vision from Sonoma County, California for Petaluma Poetry Walk on Sept 18, 2022 at Aqus Cafe, 189 H St, Petaluma, CA, 6 to 8 PM.

Cleveland Elementary School Day 10, teaching notes: Offerings, Colors, journal

Today we talked about final expectations and how many finished poems (3-4) students needed for the upcoming poetry book. I noticed that some students have not written anything in their Google.doc folders. I said, that if I don’t have their poems, then I cannot make a poetry book. That this is Day Nine (actually it’s Day 10) that they should have about 18 poems total, including freewrites, for me to choose from for the poetry book. 

Ms. Loeser contacted the students who didn’t manage to get their work recorded in their Google.docs folders and hopefully that will be ameliorated soon— otherwise several kids won’t have any work at all. I’m concerned about that because it’s something I haven’t been able to keep track of because I have not been able to access their folders. I’ve been locked out since the beginning.

There are several students whose files I still cannot access. Ms. Loeser said she will copy and paste their work, if needs be. I’m kind of panicking for Emily‘s sake because her poems appeared, and disappeared, or rather there were only three poems when I opened her file, and then suddenly there were a lot of poems, and then, there were only three poems again. I know she’s been writing a lot, she is one of my star poets. I may have copied the full file and saved the ephemeral poems, but I have the wrong computer with me, so I can’t tell if I have saved them or not.

So, to reiterate, we discussed expectations, then we did a freewrite, then we went onto the day’s lesson, Jimmy Santiago Baca’s Ofrendas, or offerings—our hands could offer up gifts, or offerings. A good followup to last week’s Dorianne Laux heart poems. Some great poems came out of the process. Hopefully students are beginning to make the heart and mind connection in their writing.

Pipevine swallowtails

Today was one of those days when a rare black swallowtail butterfly decided to cross my path, and flit in front of my car bearing down at 40 miles an hour. Nothing to be done, I saw it flutter to the road and I thought of how not only did I strike down a rare butterfly, I killed the only pollinator of an even rarer plant, the pipevine plant. Both, indelible images from the landscape of my childhood. The carrion-scented pipevine, or Dutchman’s pipe, with its heart-shaped leaves, is the only foodsource of the butterfly, the butterfly, its only pollinator. Their age-old dance is a deep symbiosis that I cannot even begin to fathom.

When I went to pick up my friend for his appointment, another black swallowtail fluttered overhead. I felt that for a moment, that maybe I was forgiven. I drove slowly along the road looking for the one I had struck down, thinking I could at least photograph it in death.  A memento mori. But it was gone, like the shadow of a leaf in the wind. California pipevine swallowtails are melanistic, and in the right light, their sooty wings are fringed with indigo jewels. In many cultures a black butterfly is a symbol of transition, renewal, or rebirth.

To ameliorate that sense of loss, call it unnamed grief, having an hour to kill, I hiked up the fireroad to the ridge above Terra Linda while my friend was in the hospital getting a procedure done. Lately, I’ve been keeping the doldrums at bay with routine and projects. It sneaks in when the pattern is broken. An old friend, Katelin died, and from that, there is no recovery. I walked along the ridge line, gazed back at the iconic shape of Mount Tam, and then north to the broad expanse of Loma Alta Ridge, Sleepy Hollow below me. I dawdled, and took photos of wildflowers and rock outcroppings of Franciscan strata, ribbon chert, and stray blueschist knockers. 

It wasn’t until when I was leaving, that unexpected stop after what you think is your final stop—I doubled back to see the place where an old house once stood on the ridgeline. Near where the front door might’ve stood, a liminal boundary to the east, there were two clumps of white freesias in the grass, that heavenly narcotic scent taking me back to another time, another place, when life was not as painful. Someone once said, let grief come in, and then let it go out again. I have not seen the ocean for over a year. Cease, surcease.

Still feeling blue, I headed back north to prepare for a Sierra Poetry Festival poetry reading for the California Fire & Water anthology reading with Molly Fisk. I joined a little late because I stopped off at Hick’s Valley to feed the Dolcini horses some apples, it was a necessary stop, if only for their soothing animal kindness, and gentle presence, as they snuffed and whuffled, and begged me to itch that one unattainable spot high on their necks for just a little bit longer. 

We breathed in each other’s breath in greeting. Theirs smelled of spring grass, and summer lawns. Mine, of coffee. Their soft eyes, like the deep lakes of the wings of those butterflies, held no judgement, no expectation, other than that of animal companionship. They crowded in, glad for the distraction. Sometimes I forget that deep connection with horses. The unexpected stop made me a little late for the reading, but was necessary for peace of mind.

Some 50 of us poets were electronically joined at the hip via Zoom. We read for the children, we read for the planet we read for the jetstream—that it might find its way back home; we prepare for what is to come. This year, the fire season will arrive too soon and already the hills are losing their greenery. As I listened to the poems, I was lifted out of the doldrums. After the reading, the blues slammed back in, wanting its due—that pound of flesh. But there are indigo skies on the horizon. It is all part of the dance.

There is always tomorrow for the reboot.

Cleveland Elementary School Day 9, teaching notes: Laux Heart, journal

Weirdly, last week I got all geared up and ready to teach—only to discover that it was Easter vacation. Oops. During this these Covid times, school holidays like Easter vacation are relatively meaningless. I meant to introduce the idea of the Ofrenda, or offering lesson (Jimmy Santiago Baca) as a follow-up to the hand lesson, but for some reason we got bogged down and I wound up introducing Dorianne Laux’s Heart poem instead. 

What I discovered was that the two-week gap was more than enough to derail my students to the point where they did not really remember what we had accomplished. So I wound up re-introducing the hand lesson and many of the kids did not do the homework which is to draw their hand filled with symbols, drawings which we will be using for the poetry book as illustration, so it’s a problem.

As it turns out I don’t think Ms. Loeser had a chance to give the kids the handout, a dictionary of symbols so we went over that. There is definitely a time lapse problem with this class that makes it a little more challenging to get through things with some sense of equilibrium.

Next week I want to introduce the Ofrenda lesson as a possible link between the two recipes. Today we looked at Dorianne Laux’s Heart poem and I had each student read one sentence aloud versus one line aloud, which was interesting because we all had to think a little differently that way. Students are used to being asked to read only one line each. But I wanted to work enjambment in. They had to pay attention to the lines in a different way.

It was great to do a a class generic catch-up after the Easter break. We talked about the upcoming poetry book at the end of the residency at the end of April. And I was able to share with them the two published California Poets in the Schools broadside posters. All three posters were of my students’ work, and two of the posters had to do with hands so it was a good segue into today’s lesson—not only a segue, but it picking up on the themes that I had introduced two weeks ago.

I am always striving for continuity when I teach—trying different languages and patterns to bring forth the poetry recipe from the previous session, and making a bridge to time present. I am not always successful. But I do strive for that contiguous quality.

We talked a little bit more about using Zoom, making our drawings and just sort of a chatty catch-up, unscripted as it were. But that’s good too.

MY MIND WANDERS

MY MIND WANDERS

My mind wanders to the clouds 

where I find lost dreams 

of those who wept for other lives,

having found theirs wanting. 

Sometimes my heart is so heavy 

it wants to lie down 

right in the middle of the road 

and give up, kicking and screaming.

But then it sees something shiny 

and is distracted by the beauty of the day. 

It frolics in distant meadows, 

wanders off to far horizons, 

where it loses contact with the mothership, 

and returns, ever the prodigal child.

4/13/21

IN THE GLOAMING

IN THE GLOAMING

I was crossing a bridge on the River Callender,
when a tiny red-breasted bird hopped up to me.

Fearful of stepping on it, I froze.

And it promptly fell in love with my foot. 

Was he seeking solidarity with my shoe? It was red.

Was he begging, did he want feeding? 

I had nothing to offer. I stared down at it, 

and the penny dropped, I realized 

it was an Old World robin. Not a thrush, 

not the large red-breasted American robin

that visits us each spring. I thought of how, 

sometimes the renaming of things 

fails us with false similes, not metaphors.  

Impossibly tiny, it communed with my boot.

I wasn’t too sure what the attraction was about. 

Needless to say, we stood a very long time 

on the foot bridge, in the gloaming,

that robin and I, while the river carried on.

4/11/21

MalcolmX ES teaching journal, Berkeley Days 1-2

Day 1: We began our MXES residency with I am poems, but since Dr. Mapps had already taught the class my I am lesson plan, I had to come up with a way to make it a different type of I am poem on the spot. Talk about a curve ball. Luckily, I had calendar photos of endangered species in my teaching bag so I passed handfuls of those photos out.

Moral of the day, always have at least 2 to 3 extra lessons ready to go The I am animal poems came out surprisingly well even though I was having to use untested photographs to generate material.

I’m not too sure of the skills of this particular second grade class. They have been sequestered most of their school careers because of Covid. Distance learning has been a challenge with these little guys.

Day 2 with Dr. Mapps. The class went better. This is only my second day in the classroom since the epidemic began. It feels weird. I am all thumbs. I have lost my teaching mojo. And one of the things that is most difficult to do, is to try and teach with a mask on, because the students cannot see your face—they can only see your eyes. It’s like teaching in a burka.

So today, I used my whole body as an expressive teaching tool. Big steps, big arm gestures, and way over the top big voice to try to compensate for the fact that they could not see me speaking. Total improv. Cardio workout. After class I am exhausted and my throat hurts.

Another problem with teaching while wearing a mask is that no one can hear each other read. The students are behind plexiglass kiosks and they’re wearing masks so when they read their poems. They’re talking down to their desks in their little cubicles, not projecting the sound back out again. It is an interesting dilemma, I think we are all losing our hearing at this point.

I had forgotten it was Earth Day. I thought that was yesterday, so we all sang Happy Birthday to the earth. Dr. Mapps played a pollution song and after I leave the students will write poems to the earth

Since I was already set up to do if /then poems, I continued with that lesson plan. But I said, think about all the things on the earth and so on and so forth. It was not my best switch hitter moment, but it did work. I began with a group poem on the board. Some thing I do when kids are either preliterate or don’t have solid writing skills.

If I were a dragon fire
I would live in a cave of the melting son.
If I were the seahorse of the stars,
I would shine like the moon of flowers.
If I were the shooti g star of the rainbow
I would fly like the clouds of sorrow.
We dream of happiness in the universe.

Dr. Mapps’ 2nd grade group poem

Weave and Mend, folksong from Daughters of Copper Woman

The Poets & Writers Townhall meeting led me on a very merry goose chase tracking down an earworm of a song I had once heard long ago that haunted me—as we were discussing how to teach during the time of Covid. As with all earworms, the song interrupted my thoughts and became a message. I finally succumbed and looked it up, and was glad I did too. I learned a lot. I love being a folksong armchair historian.

My first go-to was Mudcat, of course, I found a Mudcat thread on the song. At first I couldn’t find anything on the song because I didn’t have the right title. The Browne Sisters—the version I’m familiar with—called it Old Woman, which yielded a wild goose chase, and no lyrics. 

Now I  love the Browne Sisters, and know them well from various Highland Games, but sometimes it’s hard to glean the lyrics from their amazing harmonies. Many thanks to Shay Black who saw my query on Facebook and sent me the full lyrics. He also gave me another lead, songwriter Mary Trup. But I also discovered that Anne Cameron wrote the poem.

No one on the Mudcat thread connected the song up with the writer, Anne Cameron, or where she grew up, Nanaimo, or that she was tapping into Nootka creation stories in Daughters of Copper Woman, so this is theoretically where this song came from. 

More research is ahead for me. Note that the name is spelled Mary Troupe here. I kind of like it. Created ca. 1981. Still searching, still sleuthing. Meanwhile, I found simple acapella version here. No ads. Great graphics in this vsrsion and Janet Russell’s harp accompaniment suits this song. No ads.

Below is songwriter Mary Trup’s version as sung by Shay’s sister, Irish Senator Frances Black. Now I am officially obsessed by this song. Words by Anne Cameron, slightly rearranged but that is the way of folksongs—even newly minted ones. I can’t seem to find anything on the songwriter Mary Trup, where she’s from, or if the tune is borrowed, or based on Celtic music, but it does have a Celtic echo and lilt. It’s certainly a song and melody that grabbed me by the heart strings.

Weave and Mend

Old woman is watching, watching over you
In the darkness of the storm, she is watching
She is weaving, mending, gathering the colors
She is watching over you. 

Chorus:
So, weave and mend
Weave and mend
Gather the fragments safe
And win the sacred circle,
Sisters, weave and mend,
Weave and mend,
Oh women, weave and mend

Old woman is weaving, gathering the threads
Her bones become the loom she is weaving,
She is watching, weaving, gathering the colors
She is watching over you.

Chorus:

For years I’ve been watching, waiting for old woman
Feeling lost and so alone, I’ve been watching.
Now I find her weaving, gathe ring the colors
Now I find her in myself.

And another version on the Black Brothers Band webpage. 

(It took me a while (a year and a half) but I finally got around to recording the song for Carol Hoorn, replete with a cat who was concerned about me. Link.)

My persistence paid off, with the clues I had uncovered, eventually I found a great book review. The Wordpress blog is called Historian’s Notebook, by Faith L. Justice. Ironically I was in Naniamo during that summer of 1981. I could have met her, if only I had known. But I had to wait a half lifetime to put this story together.

P&W CA town hall meeting: poetry in a time of crisis

Two trilliums. yes, there was a third. Green Hill Rd., Sebastopol.

I joined the most recent Poets & Writers California Town Hall Zoom meeting: Poetry in a Time of Crisis. Lucille Lang Day, Ruth Nolan, and Molly Fisk introduce themselves via the native names for the lands we inhabit. Ohlone, Shoshone, Nisean. 

They talked of their community work, and how their anthologies came into being—a reaction to what was happening to our state (of mind). Diversity. They read selected poems from their anthologies. Lucille talks about bio-regions and fire ecology, she reads a poem about about the evolution of redwood seed cones, and a ladybug poem from Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California.

I think: Ladybugs fly hundreds of miles to mate and congregate in my grandmother’s old bedroom, why that place, who knows? Every year they come, and cover the walls. A living mosaic flickering like fire. My childhood room. We haven’t the heart to fix the windows. Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home. Your house is on fire, and your children do roam. Oh, the pheromones of home.

Ruth Nolan talks about the drought and her experiences being a firefighter during the 1980s. She lives in a cabin in the Mojave desert. I keep thinking of fire, fire is always on my mind, but then I am born under a fire sign. Mend and weave. Fill the word basket with fire words. A song fragment is stuck in my head. Old Woman, Weave and Mend. In the darkness of the storm she is watching. Gathering the fragments. This becomes my backdrop. My ear worm.

Molly Fisk reads selections from California Fire & Water: A Climate Crisis Anthology. She talks about the program, and how CPITS poets taught residencies to kids about how to deal with climate crisis. She shares that she came to poetry via personal crisis. How, through that experience, teaching poetry became her life’s work. She asks us, how can poetry help people to heal? An old woman is weaving, her bones become the loom.

I think: The fire season came early this year, it’s a drought year, too soon. Too soon. Poetry is the language of emotion. It is the perfect vehicle to understanding the problem. It is the way to heal. She says, if you can’t understand something or you can’t put it into words, put it into the third person and then write about what didn’t happen. 

I think: Poems are like baskets holding the past. Poets see things differently, we have acutely honed observation skills, we are the watchers. This is why I like to watch murder mysteries. Honing my skills. Looking for clues, the divine mystery. We are gathering the fragments. The old woman, she is weaving the sacred circle, gathering in the colors, she is watching over you. Oh, sisters, weave and mend.

We are spreading the word, we are saving all we can save. It turns out everything burns—asphalt becomes a molten river. I remember how last year, during the wildfire, we were under evacuation alert mode, how the ghost leaves drifted across the valley, and fell, glowing like fireflies on the wind. Leaves drifting like snowflakes, like feather down. Such hot kisses. A torch song. On warm days, the attic still remembers the acrid odor of wildfire smoke. A constant reminder of the past, and what is to come. Oh women, weave and mend.

Can poetry change the world? Its narrative is where things begin. Jamie FitzGerald says, We need to change the narrative. How do we go about teaching in a time of crisis? Working with landpaths and creating eco-poetry. Call it passing the baton of social awareness to the next generation. Oh, Sisters, weave and mend.

Jamie said, During the Covid crisis, the penny dropped, the disparate pieces of climate change became a puzzle, the picture came into focus. How do we name it, this thing called climate change, without distancing from it? Oh, women weave and mend.

Molly says type up lines from poems and put them under windshield wipers at night when no one is looking. I like the idea of guerilla poetry for April Poetry Month. The tapestry we weave with our words. Grandmother Spider. The song, what does it want? So insistent.

We talk about Carolyn Forché’s latest book, Against Forgetting, the role of the poet. This is how we bring about change. Bearing witness. Never forget. 

And finally the song’s earworm message is revealed. I look it up. The Elderwomen of Nanaimo, a place lately on my mind. Songs and poems work in funny ways, an undercurrent below the conscious level of the psyche. The elders are speaking to me through the song:

For years I’ve been watching, waiting for Old Woman, 

Feeling lost and so alone, I’ve been watching.
Now I find her, weaving, gathering the colors.
Now I find her in myself.

A call to action. Become the loom. Weave and mend.

AN OCCASIONAL POEM FOR RIGGY RACKIN

AN OCCASIONAL POEM FOR RIGGY RACKIN 

For you, I would go over the hill, 

and meet you on the lonely road to Occidental.
For you I would travel to the parking lot plaza
where we might smile at each other from a distance,
and perhaps even manage a little wave.
For you, I would travel to the stars, and beyond,
keeping you always within my outer orbit,
you, with your canted grin, bright clown nose,
and pork pie hat filled with the music of dreams.

The ever-faithful compañera concertina at your side.

Because today is the first day of April 

and as you know, April is Poetry Month. 

And I would suffer with such fools gladly.

4/1/21

It’s time for the 2021 Poem a Day and NaPoWriMo challenge

From Robert Lee Brewer: Here we are with the first day of the 2021 April Poem-A-Day Challenge! Each day, I'll provide a poetry prompt and a poem to get things started. You can secretly poem along at home, or you can share your poem in the comments below. Catalogue here.

The 2021 PAD line up Last year, someone on Facebook suggested I start the daily prompting and poeming earlier than usual, since so many people were self-quarantining and social distancing at the moment in the United States and elsewhere around the world. And it was a great call. (That was me! —MH)

The minus PaD countdown began March 22. -10. Begin a poem with Let’s. -9. Write a cause and effect poem. -8. Write a fantasy poem. -7. Take a song title, change a word, make the new title the title of your poem, and write your poem. -6. Write an invention poem.-5. write a MacGuffin poem. A MacGuffin is an object (living or nonliving) necessary for the plot but has no greater value to the story. A good example is The Maltese Falcon. -4. Write a universal poem, a universal truth, experience, or a film from Universal Pictures. -3. Write a "spirit of the stairs" poem. that moment when you come up with all the things you should've said AFTER the moment has passed. Hence, you're on the stairs. -2. Take the phrase "Almost (blank)," replace it with a new word or phrase, make it the title of your poem. -1. Write a warm up poem. It could be related to sports, before a baseball game or track race. Or it could be about a computer warming up, the weather, or even a relationship.

Day 1. For today's prompt, write an introduction poem. Introduce yourself, introduce a friend, or introduce a stranger. If you don't wish to introduce yourself, consider writing a persona poem (a poem in which you write from someone else's point of view like Emily Dickinson or a bumblebee). Of course, you could also introduce a problem, solution, or just a situation. Have fun with it! Remember: These prompts are springboards to creativity. Use them to expand your possibilities, not limit them.

Allow me to introduce myself, 

said the sun to the sky.

And the sky said let me kiss this guy.
A guitar solo was the only answer.

4/1/21 —MH