Jack Hirschman has left the enormous room

“Til breath do us part…” Jack Hirschman has left the enormous room. December 13, 1933 - August 22, 2021

ONE DAY

One day I'm gonna give up writing and just paint
I'm going to give up painting and just sing
I'm gonna give up singing and just situated
I'm gonna give up sitting and just breathe
I'm gonna give up breathing and just die
I'm gonna give up dying and just love
I'm gonna give up loving and just write

           —Jack Hirschman

I am not quite ready to write about Jack. So this is baby steps. Snapshots of memory. There are some poets that one needs to step back and contemplate, and then reminisce—the sum total is not just the memories of physical events. But it’s a place to begin. The stories are how we begin to remember and also how we grieve. And that remembrance is the legacy.

I first met Jack at Caffe Trieste, which was his unofficial office. He was smoking up a storm. While he and my then boyfriend, John Oliver Simon, were talking of baseball, I zoned out. I was processing the fact that Bob Kaufman had just died, someone I knew from my childhood. A friend of my mother’s. I was haunted by his death. So as they discussed the game, I kept writing in my journal. I was surprised when Jack eyed me, and suddenly insisted that I read what I had written in my journal, and so I did. He sat back, and said wow, you’re a real poet. I was fairly new to writing but such direct affirmation from Jack made all the difference in the world. And I never looked back.

Phil Cousineau told a story about how Jack loved baseball (I’ve posted a few friends’ tributes below to savor for later). I had totally forgotten about that. One time John Oliver Simon and I were at a baseball game, I think it was the Oakland A’s. Mind you I’d never even been to a minor, or major league baseball game. So it was fitting that it was the Oakland As. And then there was Jack bellowing away. There was a whole row of festive cross-dressed poets in the stands—bedecked in both Oakland As and SF Giants colors. John was wearing the CPITS hand logo shirt. Everyone gossiping, quoting Lew Welch, and alternatively writing in their journals. The game was right lively from then on. I grew to love the metaphor of suspended time.

 

Use the link below if you want to share the photos.  When I posted the original link on various group pages (if a group is private, you can’t share photos or posts), Facebook dinged the link as spam and blocked it five times. But this link will post the photos.

Here is a link if you want to see more photos.

TO WRITE after Bei Dao

TO WRITE
—after Bei Dao

It began in a dream
ending at the source,
a reign of ice. Melting glaciers
become part of the story
of water returning to the source.
But an alien rain is falling
on the icefields of Greenland,
the first time ever,
it opens the sluices, veins of time,
and Shasta stands naked, without snow—
another first within living history.
New rivers seeking the sea
all at once, a cacophany of stories
unleashed from the beginnings of time,
the last tear falling
from the corners of the eye,
that saline bath, words
worn smooth as stone.

8/21/21

Facebook autocorrection woes

Yesterday Facebook randomly decided that I cannot, and will not add to, nor change any post, let alone, correct any typos. Period. Ditto that for today. Needless to say, my OCD is amping on overdrive. I’ve restarted my iPad several times. I even deleted and reinstalled the Facebook app.  Nope. Nope and nope.

Not only is Autocorrect on overdrive, and absolutely wrong 99.9% of the time, it often changes the suspect words AGAIN AND AGAIN—sometimes after I’ve posted the blasted comment. Ad nauseum. And don’t even get me started on its insistence on using random capital letters, excess commas, and apostrophes. Arguing with Otto-crrrect is not something I signed up for.

To add OCD-ish insult to injury, Facebook won’t let me correct any real typos on my comments. Oughta-cracked is strangely silent and oddly circumspect at the randomest of times. Like it ignores “thst.” I’m fairly certain thst is not a word in any language unless cats are involved. Odd behavior, as OttoCrrct has its fangs out every time I use an obscure word, then dutifully checks its cuticles whenever I really could use some help. The only workaround is to copy, then delete the entire comment, and begin again the beguine. Luckily, I can edit my primary posts, as I am a constant and ruthless reviser. 

And for those of you who do actually follow my posts, I do apologize in advance, as I only recently realized that if you mistakenly happen to Like one of my posts, gawd forbid, then you’re subject to an onslaught of notifications for every single correction I make, with Facebook dutifully updating and informing you that I’ve yet again updated or changed my post. Again. 

And I am, at best, a piecemeal thinker—not only do I use fragments, and begin sentences with And, I am a misplacer of connective articles and particles of speech, and also an absolutely slovenly typist to boot, so being able to correct and revise my writing is a fundamental process. Something which Facebook, in its hellbot-driven BigBro realm, considers detrimental and harmful to its royal We-we of omni-impotence. 

Luckily folks can turn that “she updated her damned post again” notification off. Did you know that? And yes, I did end that last sentence with a preposition. Ya wanna fight over it? What would Winston Churchill say? “This is the type of errant pedantry up with which I will not put.”

• Breaking Facebook community standards, yeah, right

Stoned off my ass for the duration (translation: I strained my back)

Guilty pleasures: after a fortnight of unendurable agony, I can sit down on the toilet seat, unaided, without having lumbar spasms, quietly, no involuntary screams, no desperate contortionist simian moves to get my thighs parallel to the seat. Bonus pleasure: I can finally wipe me own arse, TYVM. The shower curtain will never be the same. 

My days are otherwise spent perched on a heating pad like a cat, in an iconic Jabba the Hut pose. The pad alleviates the constant dull roaring ache—like a background noise. I can’t pick anything up off the floor. Luckily I have prehensile toes. Getting dressed is interesting. Spearing my knickers with my talented toes and then curtsey-hulahooping them up my thighs, with a few bellydancing maneuvers tossed in for good measure, takes some serious planning and a degree in engineering. Plus some aspirin. And gawd help me if my bladder suddenly wants to get in on the action. I marvel at how wonderful our bodies really are, when something goes wrong, it drives it home. Coughing and sneezing (not to mention farting) require strategic countermoves.

Figuring out how to roll over in bed requires lots of precise isolation moves—like an osmosis roll. I think in the direction I want to move, and then, sluglike, I move the outer bits of my body the direction I want to go, rotate to the tipping point, and the rest follows suit. Really glad I took all those years of dance. The fact that I can roll over in bed, without having to do all kinds of strange crabwise maneuvers, that I can get my legs to the side of the bed, and ease into the upright position, and then walk across the floor, without crumpling in a heap, is huge progress.

Mind you, my butt is pretty stoned these days, ripped out of its mind with Robin Rule’s most excellent arnica-CBD salve slathered on it, morning, noon and night. It’s what gets me through the night. But every time I replenish the salve, I get the munchies. It’s not often you can rub salve on your glutes and get both cottonmouth and a sweet-tooth at the same time. Adds a whole new meaning to the term, candyass. Robin insists that I can’t get high from the salve, but watching Netflix is interesting. Colors become mesmerizing. Oh, wow, dude. Some of you know exactly what I mean. Even better than the placebo. However, I am a really cheap date.

I am clearly on the mend. Now I have to figure out ways to get in there to stretch those deep balance muscles that keep us upright. I could not sneeze or cough for two weeks. Who knew that those flexor and extensor muscles, including the quadratus luborum and the psoas, are necessary for proper sneezing and farting? Ya gotta find some humor in the situation, even if you have to mine your own bowels for it. What can I say, I’m channeling the Borscht Belt?

Driving a car is absolutely tooth-gnashing even with the help of a lower back brace. Shall I mention potholes? I’ve never been a fan of sitting in chairs, but I tore my muscles while lounging in my favorite bed slouch! To be fair, I was a bit stiff, too lazy to stretch out and straighten out that kink in my lower back. Payback time! This is my peculiar punishment for having leaped unexpectedly off the bed after working for hours posting jpgs in my art blog. As old classmate Andy Giddings who is still recovering from sciatica, so aptly said, Act your age, eliminate the word “jump” from your vocabulary. Are we there yet?

More on that CBD unction here: Serendipity 2.0

Smoke inhalation vs Covid

The CDC says to open your windows to combat the Delta Variant. Yeah, no, not with myriad brushfires, the air is so thick, my airscrubber runs 24/7. CA has the worst AQI in North America. If the Delta variant doesn’t kill you, inhaling the smoke from brushfires will.

Two local brush fires on either side of me are wreaking havoc. My Costco Winix air conditioner, purifier, cleaner, scrubber—whatever you wanna call it—has been running full blast 24-7 since I bought it after the 2015 wildfires. It more than earned its keep last year alone. And ditto that this year. Will it never end? I tried to get a second Winix but they’ve changed the model to wifi and a different size filter. Nope.

purpleair.com says Northern California has the worst air quality in the entire continent of North America right now. I forgot to choose the correct LRAPA filter but it doesn’t really make that much difference. The numbers may be ever so slightly lower in real time. But 520+ has my attention. Mordor on steroids.

Yesterday I awoke with intense headaches, today I awoke dizzy, and the smoke is nowhere near as bad here along the coast as it is in the rest of Northern California. Central Valley is Mordor Central. Poor downwind dragons are gasping for clean air. Meanwhile, shallow breathing is the norm.

Just say no to the Delta variant

Just say no to the Delta Variant. Don’t be fools like Darwin Award nominees, the sub-gub-Govs Tate Reeves, DingBel Edwards & DeathSentence, aka DeathSatan. Magical thinking, fasting & prayers, or witholding paychecks for wearing masks won’t help. The ICU hospital beds are fast filling up in the South—the red states are all Code Blue, with Florida leading at the helm. Wear your mask indoors for all our sakes. Because, science. Don’t wait for herd immunity—not gonna happen in our lifetime.

As Florida becomes the epicenter of the nation’s death delta surge, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis had some sage advice for his constituents: Just deal with it. Literally.

"We are seeing people testing positive in higher numbers than I think most people anticipated," DeSantis admitted Thursday in Jacksonville while visiting a facility that will soon be offering monoclonal antibody treatments for people infected with COVID-19.

Explaining that the delta variant is "airborne," DeSantis offered simply, "We just have to understand when that's happening, these waves are something you just have to deal with.”

Sorry folks, we’re sitting ducks here. That was the message from DeSantis, as if getting vaccinated and masking up—the two most highly effective preventative measures—weren't worth a mention. Florida is now ground zero for runaway COVID-19 infection rates and, thanks to DeSantis, a case study in how an elected official can doom a state to a worst-case scenario. Via executive order, DeSantis has deliberately tied the hands of local officials and educators to mandate anti mask-wearing. He has also failed to make a high-profile vaccination push, though he has also admitted vaccines are saving lives. In a briefing, he said, 

“In the past week, Florida has had more Covid cases than all 30 states with the lowest case rates combined," said Zients, "And Florida and Texas alone have accounted for nearly 40% of new hospitalizations across the country.” —Daily Kos

But DeSantis' most depraved move by far has been to leave children who can't get vaccinated 100% defenseless against infection as they return to school by prohibiting universal in-school mask mandates. Concurrently, delta is landing more kids and sicker kids in ICUs than at any time during the pandemic.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made it clear that, when it comes to COVID-19, he has one priority: Punishing anyone who gets in the way of spreading the virus. In particular, DeSantis has focused on making sure that school children and teachers are as exposed as possible by both mandating that schools have to hold in-person classes and declaring that schools cannot implement either mask mandates or vaccine requirements. In order to drive home his pro-virus policies home, DeSantis has threatened both the funding for school districts and the pay checks of school board members or school administrators who vote to protect their students.

These actions had already earned DeSantis some direct criticism from President Joe Biden. As WTSP in Tampa reported earlier this week, Biden said, “...It's clear to me and to most of the medical experts that the decisions being made – like not allowing mask mandates in school and the like – are bad health policy.” In response, DeSantis sneered about “media hysteria” and said that Biden was “obsessed with Florida.”  Then DeSantis went right on threatening school districts and making it clear he was serious when it came to punishments. 

But on Friday evening, Biden fired back in a way that shows serious support for districts already defying DeSantis, and could provide a much needed backbone injection for those afraid of the governor’s efforts to defund the schools. A letter from Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, sent directly to DeSantis, makes it clear: If he tries to cut funds to schools that institute mask mandates, Biden will send them federal funds.

Saying that “safe return to in-person instruction requires that school districts be able to protect the health and safety of students and educators,” the letter from Sec. Cardona expresses that he is “deeply concerned about Florida’s July 30 Executive Order prohibiting school districts from adopting universal masking policies.” —Daily Kos

Apparently full-on death is preferable to wearing a mask according to John Jacob, an Indiana state representative from hell. 

Funny, how my grandmother lived through the Spanish flu because she wore a mask, her loved ones survived as well because they also wore masks, and I’m pretty sure no one had mask anxiety after the Spanish Flu was over, they were just glad to be alive. 

May his purgatory be haunted by those who have died under his watch. Especially the constituents of children he has invoked this  upon. I don’t think purgatory is going to let him in—not without a mask.

Wear a mask!

On audiobooks and James Lee Burke

Gah! Abridged audiobooks make no sense whatsoever. Like sending a novel out to a chopshop.  What? Where was I? Who? Huh? #dogsbreakfast. Never again. I am feeling openly hostile like I want to do violence to someone or something. Now that may be a bit over the top, but I don’t like anyone messing with my sublime reading experience. Once upon a time, I worked too hard in order to learn how to read.

Abridged books is like a chopshop for novels. Bits and pieces do not make a vehicle. I just wasted three hours listening to a mangled abridged version of Burning Angel. Ditto that with In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead. Mishmash on speed dial. I am so angry I could spit. 

The thing is, I’m fairly new to the whole audiobooks concept. As a rule of thumb, I really don’t like to be read aloud to most of the time, precisely because I read super fast, my mind races along at breakneck speed, and when someone reads to you albeit poorly, it’s sometimes hard to follow along. And sometimes my mind wanders along the furrows between the words. Since the pandemic, it’s been really hard for me to read, the words are like sawdust. I don’t retain anything. Too OCD for words. So my new audiobook reading habit has restored an old pleasure.  

However, when you have an unabridged novel, you invest in some 14 hours worth of being read to, so you really get to know the characters, and the motivation behind their actions. It’s a developing relationship. Out of fiction, truth is wrested to the ground.

My current crush is James Lee Burke, a complicated and complex writer who waxes poetic—right up there with Pat Conroy. I prefer the reading style of Will Patton to Mark Hammer. But both do a bang up job. The full length novels come alive under their expert touch. The abridged novels are merely ordinary, and that’s not why I read.

Cancel culture redux: High School 1327. Go π-rates!

In the summer of 2020, the City of Larkspur took down Dennis Patton’s quixotic sculpture of Sir Francis Drake in the wee hours of the morning for “safekeeping,” and then warehoused it. Dennis Patton was devastated. He said it wasn’t a statue, it wasn’t an embodiment of the man, nor an effigy of Drake—it was a sculpture, a metaphor for a dream. A dream deferred, apparently. Last month, the City of Larkspur decided to sell the sculpture for $100,000. They offered the artist first option to buy it back, if he refuses, then it will go to the auction block. To Dennis, Marin embodied “the Free Zone for intellectual and spiritual advancement.” But now the tables have turned. We are myopically challenged.

And then that same Marin group that stripped Dixie school of its historic name (expunging Coast Miwok Marie Dixie’s name because it reminded them of the South), fired up with bloodlust worthy of the KKK in full drag, also went after my old alma mater, demanding that the school’s name, and the highway that bisects Marin, needed to be changed.

Last July, the Tamalpais Union School District met behind closed doors, excluding public input, thus violating the Brown Act, then pulled the words Sir Francis Drake off the facade of my alma mater “to protect it from vandalism.” It wasn’t a case of Vox populi, don’t kid yourself, but a case of a select handful of people imposing their ideologies upon the rest of us. Its interim name, High School 1327. Go π-rates!

In the year 2020, the battle to rename our high school tore communities apart. It rent us asunder. People voted on myriad names, they drew blood. It was a draw. Not one name won. We couldn’t see that it was a supreme irony that one name that actually mattered, didn’t even make it to the nomination process—that of our beloved Drake algebra teacher, the Olympic medalist runner, Archie Williams. So much for being woke. Yeah. It seems we were lost, and also blinded by rectivism. Second time around, Archie’s name was finally added to the roster. It was a lopsided landslide. Victory, not so much. I am divided by how this process was handled, pirated away from the majority at the hands of a few. Fascism, much?

The Sir Francis Drake High School class of 1970 will be the first to have a high school reunion for a school with its historic name expunged and erased. Interesting times. The phoenix of cancel culture rises from the ashes. Welcome Archie Williams High School. It could be worse: High School 1327. Still I wonder what Archie would have thought of all this. Prime number?

• Cancel culture
• Retroactive racism and the BLM movement
• Anne Kent Library roundtable on SF Drake history

To the 5-minute Medievalist Danièle Cybulskie, don’t slaughter the text

I loved hearing the backstory of Orpheus and the comparison to Sir Orfeo. And it was interesting to hear how Eurydice’s name was phonetically preserved in the Medieval manuscript, especially the preserving the hard K (evreyZeeke), along with the word lethe, but that is another story. I also discovered that I’ve been saying her name wrong all these years, with an Italian inflection. I blame the movie, Black Orpheus. Apparently the correct pronunciation of Eurydice in English is Yuh-rid-ih-see, itself a fair distance from Heurodis.

I was fascinated to hear of Orpheus’ Thracian connection, a orphan king, no less. His Orphic name loaning us the cognate word orphan. I missed that Thracian connection somehow along the way, and the whole thing about going back to Thrace to hang out with the bhoys was well worth the price of admission. Thank you for a glimpse into the Classical world through the Medievalist lens. I would love to have heard a snippet of the original Medieval translation of the Breton lay of Sir Orfeo for contextual reference.

But I quibble with your reading of the actual translation. For 2000 plus years, reading was a social activity, until the 17th c. everyone in the western world read texts aloud, if even to themselves, except, maybe St. Ambrose. When you read aloud, please do the text justice, don’t slaughter it.

I get that your 19th c. translation of Sir Orfeo by Jessie L. Weston, (a translation of a translation of a translation….) was written in iambic pentameter, but when it is read aloud, it needs to be read with feeling behind the words. Imagine Anthony Hopkins reading it. It would be better to read it in a normal voice rather than to slip into the iambic sing-song that voice that obfuscates the actual meaning behind the words.

When I work with students for Poetry Out Loud, I have them circle the important verbs and place the emphasis there. Punch up the verbs! Just because a line ends, doesn’t mean you take a breath and stop there to acknowledge that line break. The verbs carry the meaning.

I have heard you read before, and every time you read, my attention wanders, and I do not take in what you are saying. And I think that that experience is ultimately true for most people and this is why they came to dislike poetry. Wordsworth said that poetry should be “near to the language of men.” Or poetry should be as natural as speech. Consider upping your oratory game and really bring those poems to life. Breathe life back into those words.

Serendipity 2.0

A care package from Robin Rule.

Serendipity 2.0. Just yesterday I was wishing I had some CBD oil salve for my lower back, as I pulled some deep lumbar muscles. Nothing seems to be working. But as we hunker down to avoid the latest Delta variant, driving to a dispensary was beyond my ability to cope. In the mail today a package arrived from the north, a homemade salve from Shenandoah’s Daughter, still molten from the heat of the mail box. I spread the unctuous golden oils on my back and began to feel relief almost immediately. CBD oil, calendula, arnica, poppy, comfrey, and yarrow—a mountain meadow of wildflowers for my spine. I was moved to tears, even beyond tears, as there was more, much more—a packet of Yorkshire Gold tea, a tea towel from Connemara, and a homemade card with a robin collaged on it. Not things themselves. But something larger than even love. Ah, Robin, I am grateful, doubly blessed by a namesake bird, that harbinger of regrowth and renewal, a bright flame of love that flies across the distance of time. She who feeds the homeless, arrives on the wings of hope—she is the vox populi, the voice of the disenfranchised, banishing despair. She who pays beauty forward wherever she goes. I am both honored, and blessed to have known her across the years. Go raibh maith agat, mo anam chara, mo spideóg bhroinndearg, Roibín. I have nothing to reciprocate, except these small husks words. A transcendental feather wafts in the breeze.

• Synchronicity at work

A curious footnote of the history of wine in California (from the Gallo Girl post)

Note bene: This is a humbnail sketch of the California wine industry which dates back to 1769 when Father Junipero Serra planted the first vineyards at Mission San Juan Capistrano and at the other missions he founded in order to supply wine for meals, mass, and medicine. Fr. Junipero Serra wasn’t the first padre to plant vines. The first vines were planted in 1683 (in Baja?) but were later abandoned. (California has native grapes but they weren’t used for winemaking—yet). 

By 1823, all, but four of the 23 missions had thriving vineyards. The showcase, Mission San Gabriel, had thee wine presses, eight brandy stills, producing 8000 gallons of wine, and 3000 gallons of brandy a year. The missions San José, and San Francisco de Solano (Sonoma) were also among the most productive wineries. Packaging was the biggest problem, oak barrels were in short supply, augmented by big bota bags, made with an entire cowhide, were used. In 1782, Father Serra lamented that an oak barrel enroute to thirsty Mission San Carlos, fell off the wagon, or mule, and broke. His account does not mention if they brought straws. I’m not sure if Jesus wept, but I’m sure copious tears were shed.

The ranchos of the Los Angeles River Basin, not Northern California, were the birthplace of the first secular California vineyards. Rancho owners purloined grapestock from the missions. Louis Vignes opened the first winery in 1833, followed by William Wolfskill who planted 145 acres of vineyards. To encourage the wine industry, land planted in grapes paid no city taxes.

Wine was already a big industry in California by the 1880s, when it moved to Northern California from the LA Basin after an outbreak of Phylloxera, a plant louse, killed all the Old World Vitis vinefera vines. (The lousy louse hitched a ride to Europe, decimating Europe’s vineyards too. The solution: graft Old World stock onto native American Vitis labrusca roots.) The wine industry moved, lock, stock, and wine barrel to Northern California. San Francisco and the Bay Area proved to be ideal for growing grapes.

In Napa County, Joseph Osbourne, and George Yount were among the first anglo settlers to plant vines in 1836, Followed by Sam Brannan, but John Patchett is credited for building the first winery, planting vines in 1854, establishing a commercial wine cellar in 1859. However, bottling wine and getting it to market was prohibitive. Glass bottles were in short supply and pricy, at 20 cents each, so people brought their own jugs to be filled, at 25 cents a gallon. Enter the wine houses.

When the California Wine Association was founded in San Francisco, there were over 100 commercial  wine houses in SF alone. “Wine houses were large operations that bought grapes, made wine, and shipped it around the world.”

Sonoma County, not Napa, is considered to be the official birthplace of the modern California wine industry. Buena Vista is California's oldest extant winery. Count Agoston Haraszthy founded a winery in 1857, planting mission grapes purloined from the Sonoma Mission, and the famous Zinfandel grape. (BV was the only winery to stay open during the Prohibition as it made sacramental wines.) Buena Vista and Gundlach Bundschu were the first true commercial wineries. When President Abraham Lincoln purchased California wines, a stellar industry was born.

“After the 1906 earthquake and fire in San Francisco, the California Wine Association built the world’s largest winery on Pt. Molate near Richmond. Winehaven was a city-state, with housing for workers, a school, a big house for the boss, train tracks, a port, and the capacity to store 10 million gallons of wine at once. “

And to bring this rather long footnote on my aunt, the Gallo Girl, full circle: Ernest and Julio Gallo entered the wine business after the Prohibition ended, in 1933, having worked in their father’s vineyard. Giuseppe Gallo who hailed from Fossano, Northern Italy. Giuseppe was a menial laborer, who managed to save up his money and buy some land in Modesto, and plant a vineyard. But it seems life was hard. After their parents died (in a grisly murder suicide pact), Ernest and Julio decided to make their own wine, using a recipe they found in a local library. And with that, they founded an empire. A younger brother, dairy rancher Joseph Gallo, marketed his cheese, but a family feud ensued, they took him to court for using the family name. 

Ernest Gallo famously said, "We don't want most of the business. We want it all.” Gallo and its subsidiary wineries, is the largest exporter of California wines.

Sources The Wine Cellar Insider

The History Reader

California Mission Life

Searching for Trevor Yeats

While searching for some information on a former student of mine, Trevor Yeats, I stumbled upon a blog called the Arts of May which featured the very poem I was looking for. A friend, Michael McAllister Lyon had posted a drawing of a young William Butler Yeats and I was struck by how similar Trevor and William looked and wanted to share it. I was not expecting to find an accolade in a random blog dated 2014. It seems Trevor’s old poem written in 1992, continues to move people across the time continuum.What a gift that was to find the reference. I’m still no closer to finding Trevor than I was before. I wish him well, wherever he is. And a big thank you to Lily S. May of Toronto, Canada for the shout-out. I’m truly humbled. I wonder if this is my Trevor? What do you think? Oh, and I got dinged for spam by FaceFook when I posted this link. 

William Butler Yeats by John Singer Sargent, 1908. pencil, 9 x 6 in.

In a different dream (art, redux)

This was the desk portion of an old oak school chair desk, it was on my cousins’ porch in Nicasio, but someone drove a pickup right through the porch 4th of July, 2019, destroying it and the front of the house, and this is what I salvaged of the chair. 

This was the entire piece. The back of the chair too. I also had the rungs too, but they got separated from the rest. I repurposed it with chalkboard paint and pastel. I gave it a dream of a lake and a mountain. When my cousin moved everything out of the house for repairs, this piece got damaged along the way, the chalk image brushed off, so I reapplied it, but now it’s a different dream. Since the peace no longer exists with its other parts, is it a new piece or an old piece?

I offered back of the chair with the horses on it to Geoffrey Davis but he never replied. What is significant about the Paleolithic horses is that they were pacers, most horses trot diagonally but amblers, or pacers move both legs on the same side.  The only other horses that do that naturally are Neolithic horses, such as the Icelandic ponies (which have some Irish lineage) and the archaic horses of the British Isles including the Kerry bog pony, Dartmoor, and the Exmoor pony. The extinct tarpan would be related. Can’t use the word breed, here as it predates the concept. I wrote more on Kiger mustang pacers here.

I made this Angel assemblage from the rest of the old oak chair, and other detritus from the yard. it lived outside the Nicasio house like a guardian angel until the contractors finally came to repair the house last year. Now it solely exists as a photograph. It rests on a piece of sheetrock from the 1940s. It was one of the walls that was smashed in. When the contractors discovered that it was made with asbestos, the entire house got tagged and bagged for hazardous substances. The beginning of the end of the Nicasio house.

I write in order to learn—what I am currently interested in—and I never know what will catch fire. Suspect my dyslexia has a lot to do with my eclectic interests. But I must admit anything to do with horses has my unabiding attention—weird ideas come to me and then I follow them. See where they will lead. Most of these convoluted essays stem from Facebook comments. I write one thing, and then discover something related, and so on. And then it won’t let go of me. I am possessed once I am in the throes of writing  Most people just roll their eyes at this stuff.

Few folks know that Petaluma was once the hotbed of racing trotters. I think the famous stallion Kenilworth was a trotter. Not sure if he was a pacer. That information is hard to track down unless there’s an action photo. There were also famous trotting/pacing thoroughbreds, not just Standardbreds, and I remember reading that one famous racehorse who was a pacer, can’t remember who I have to go look that up. Like Healdsburg’s Black Ruby, the world’s fastest mule at the trot. So the larger question begs, was she a trotter or a pacer? Inquiring minds want to know.

The Gallo Girl redux: My Aunt Jane

A Facebook memory about my aunt Jane resurfaced today, and I shared it with the group, California History. I expanded the Facebook post from the original version to a much longer piece, in order to give it some background to a larger audience. So, even though I posted a blog about her in 2015, (and another blogpost as the Gallo Girl) this version is significantly changed enough to warrant its own new blogpost page. Also, in the process of explaining the California wine industry to one reader, I wound up with a rather long thumbnail sketch (at the bottom of the page), which, by right, should be a separate blogpost unto itself, as it kept expanding itself exponentially, but I will keep it here, for context. —MH

The Gallo ad of my Aunt Jane appeared during the mid-1950s and 1960s in newspapers, on the back covers of magazines, and on billboards (including Times Square—my uncle, upon returning home from being deployed in Korea, saw the ad in Times Square and said, Hey, that looks like my sister. His army buddies said Nah. It’s just a coincidence. When he got home to San Francisco, he said men were lining up around the block trying to score a date with her. I don’t know if the ad generated that much buzz.)

Jane Reilly, an Irish-American, was the first model for Gallo's Paisano wines (the artist had to make her look Italian. The San Francisco Irish shared strong ties with the Italian-Swiss colony.) Various permutations of this ad appeared throughout the mid-1950s to the mid-60s in newspapers, magazines and on billboards across the nation—including in Times Square. An image I saw throughout my childhood. My Aunt Jane. I thought everybody's aunt appeared on the back page of the Sunday Comics. 

When Jane was young, she performed in amateur musical theater in San Francisco, including The Mikado, and a Barbary Coast musical review, The Golden Nugget, where she was the lead can-can girl. At nearly 6 feet tall, the auburn-haired beauty was statuesque, and resembled Maureen O'Hara, so photographers including Peter van Nghiem, sought her out as a model for their portfolios. That exposure landed her the job as a model for the Gallo ad.

Check out the half-page front section ad in the Food Section of the San Francisco Chronicle, dated July 1, 1954. Check the price of the wine. I found it rolled up inside an old Christmas wrapping paper tube that I had nearly thrown out.  I don’t know what made me go back and check it out. By the time we got around to cleaning out the basement, I found several artifacts that became the basis of this story. A true salvage job.

I found a very poor half-eaten version of the color ad in a shipping crate in my grandmother's basement. And a photo to back it up. Can we say provenance? I also found the hoop earrings she wore, and this photograph, crumpled up in a trashcan. Time was not kind to the photo. I had to clone much of it in order to digitally restore it. It seems the woodrats had become the sole curators of the family photos and tacky Christmas ornaments.

I don’t know when Gallo changed the brand name from Paisano to Carlo Rossi—it was probably ca. 1970. The Paisano trademark of E. & J. GALLO WINERY patent was filed June 8, 1953, they opened for business in 1954, so this is really the first ever ad; there were also television ads with Carlo Rossi as well.

Jane led an interesting life, including attending Cordon Bleu in Paris long before it was popular. She learned French in order to attend. But women were actively discouraged from becoming chefs. She fought back and got her Grand Diplôme. Landing a job as a female chef in Marin County in 1975 proved  be impossible, but she also had a petit diplôme for desserts up her sleeve, and catered her desserts to local restaurants. To make ends meet, she also cooked for the Marin County Civic Center cafeteria. All the lawyers would line up whenever she placed her prized lemon meringue pies in the glass showcase.

My aunt Jane bio, as the Gallo Girl, RIP. Jane B. Reilly obituary 6/26/1929 - 7/26/2015.

Tweaked my back again...

After a fantastic marathon photo-editing session for my spanking new art blog, I leaped off the bed to do something, and promptly pulled my lower back. Yeep. I was sitting weird all day and thought nothing of it, and then I jumped up out of bed like a startled cat! Spasms. Oww. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Will I never learn? 

It seems like every back injury I've ever had was a result of sitting too long in one place and then leaping up to do something physical with no transition time in between. Like that time circa 1978, I was painting a watercolor for an art class and leapt off the couch to help my granny bring in some wood. I tore my entire lower back, including my psoas muscle (it keeps you upright) and I was flattened for three months. It was so bad I couldn't even sneeze. It took ages to recover. 

Redux. This injury is nowhere near as bad. TG. I took a Flexeril last night, and some aspirin. So now I’m fuzzy brained. Weirdly, I was editing a photo of an old painting I did for an art class in the way back days (was it the same painting?), and I stayed in one position all day, so I was stiff. The things I do for art. The painting, a copy of a Mucha, came out great. I learned how to dry layer watercolor like using pencil strokes.

It’s not clear exactly whereby back injury is, other than it's on my right side. Not an area I usually have issues with. My back is keeping mum. When I lie with my knees up, and then move suddenly, I have to quickly straighten my right leg out like a piston to stop the spasm. 

When I get out of bed, I grab my left knee and pull it up to my chest and then use that as a fulcrum to tilt  self upright. My right leg is not a happy camper about being pulled to my chest like that. So I move like a mime, isolating muscle groups to keep the spasms at bay.

FWIW, It does not feel anything like sciatica. Not that I've ever had sciatica. I don’t feel any vertebrae out of line, but it is more tender on my right side right below my waist, not quite to the sacrum. I think it's a muscle strain, nothing more. But I am sure it will take its own time healing.

Oddly, standing upright does not hurt. I can’t tell exactly where the pain is, which is maddening, but it is right below my waist on my right side. I think I must’ve tweaked something. It doesn’t feel like my back is out of alignment. The only thing I can say is that it's a good thing I am limber, and good at isolating muscle groups. So I can control the spasms. But it is excruciating when I’m lying down and I have to roll over, or if I have to get up out of bed. 

It sounds like it is the Quadratus lumborum, but more toward the bottom, where it joins the pelvis. Now that I can visualize it, it will make it much easier to heal. A stabilizer muscle. Like the psoas. Groan.

Positions to stretch that muscle are all comfortable, I like being on my hands and knees. Fetal position. All those muscle stretch poses is how I’m navigating movement through time and space right now. I make ridiculously dramatic tableau poses to do the simplest of things, but I am grateful for my strong thighs right now.

“The QL comes into play in the function and stability of your spine. It assists in forward-backward and side-to-side flexion and extension as well as assisting the diaphragm during inhalation. Sitting for prolonged periods of time affects the stabilizer muscles of the vertebrae, effectively shutting them off.”

Small mercies, at least it does not hurt to breathe. Could be worse.

See, I’ve been helping my cousin move a lot of heavy stuff lately. Real grunt work. I don’t recall pulling anything, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t. It also may mean that my body thought my back was in danger and went into spasm mode to protect my spine. Also I was probably dehydrated. It's a constant struggle to drink enough water.

I think I know what I did to set this avalanche off, I was getting out of my cousin's big monster truck and I slid down to ground without using the steps, and twisted my left ankle, stepping down wrong, thus jarring my spine. Meanwhile I was moving lots of boxes, then I was driving lots, so I must’ve put a strain on something. Then, I was sitting supine on the bed for a very long time without moving.

My left hip and femur did hurt somewhat yesterday, inexplicably, as if it couldn’t seat itself, but then, it stopped. I have an over-limber left hip and my femur can rotate out. I'm a bit double jointed. All those years on horseback.

At least it isn’t my psoas muscle. Then I would be right and truly phucked. Walking around upright feels OK, if I stand tall, should I attempt a walk? or rest?

Well, there’s some progress. I was able to haul my sorry carcass out of bed unassisted, so I must be healing. I’ve been using bungee cord style exercise bands to haul myself upright in order to crawl off of the bed. Once upright, I resort to sumo wrestler poses in order to get across the room.

I have added odd arabesque and lunges as well to my sumo wrestler pose to get around. Anything to avoid the pain when I have to bend over. It’s very dramatic in the kitchen when I have to get something out of the lower cabinets. Like making coffee. I look like I'm practicing kinky ballet in the kitchen.

I could use some tennis balls to massage the area. Dang, no tennis balls. OK, now I got balls. Tennis balls, that is. Green ones. I stole them from the neighbor's dog. I used them today to poke into the pressure spot. Relief. Snooze, ya loose.

I found some Voltaran gel from my old knee injury, and my TENS unit, but only one channel works. Anything is better than nothing. I'll use it until the battery dies. The heating pad feels lovely.

Voltran is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory topical NSAID (mainly for arthritis), it's no longer used, much but beggars can’t be…. This Voltaren is similar to BenGay. Didn’t think it was working, but I do feel a lot better now. 

August 16. Well, the end is in sight. Perhaps my rear end. Not. This is the first day that I’ve been able to get out of bed without doing odd sideways serpent crunchies. I’m not 100% healed but what a radical difference from yesterday, and the day before, and so on stretching back to when I first posted this note August 9. So basically, 10 days in, there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

 I’m still using my elastic exercise bands as bungee cord handles to spring outta bed since that seems to be my most vulnerable position. I am trying to gird my loins, ironically that’s part of the muscle group name, loins. there must be some sort of cosmic joke embedded in that definition. Roar!

Meanwhile life goes on. In order to go to Lucky's I really had to gird my loins. It wasn’t too bad driving sitting upright and if I keep my most excellent posture, that is, walking tall, it doesn’t spasm. 

As soon as I got back from the store, I took another generic Flexeril. Didn’t dare do it beforehand and try to drive. I can’t bear to take it three times a day. Once every 24 hours is about all I can handle. I am so much better now than I was earlier today. I think a lack of magnesium and potassium is playing a role here because I was dehydrated, and suddenly bananas smell good.

No, I did not stay flat for the entire duration, I had three necessary outings (2 were jobs) which I’m sure set me back to the protozoan age. I was in agony again—especially while driving long distance to Forest Knolls to see Sam. However, I did get some quality writing time in. See The Gallo Girl redux: My Aunt Jane. But Searching for Trevor Yeats got me thrown in Facebook jail again for spam.

Laundry yesterday was a gymnastic feat, avoiding using my psoas, etc. I could not lift the laundry basket off the floor. Going up the stairs, I humped the basket up each step, but when I got to the top of the landing, I still couldn’t pick up the fucking basket, so I took off my shirt, slipped it through the handle and dragged it along like a good dog. 

I must admit, when things hurt deep inside, you get incredibly inventive on how to work around those physical limitations, I call them roadblocks. Now, to begin core stretches and strengthening. Suggestions?

Thank you all my friends for all your advice and input, Robin for sending me and that super CBD salve—which gives me the munchies. See Stoned off my ass for the duration and Serendipity 2.0, and Sneezing, such exquisite pain... (It took me a good month to heal from this fiasco.)

Saskatoon berries

In Glacier Park, I once saw a ground squirrel perched in a Saskatoon bush, greedily shoveling berries into his mouth for all he was worth, purple juice dribbling down his bib. He saw us but didn’t want to leave his booty. He couldn’t even squawk at us, his mouth was so stuffed, I thought he might gag, so he beat his little chest and slapped the branch with his forepaws, as if to say, My bush. My bush.

Words from the Arabic

A Facebook friend posted a great word list from the Arabic. Apparently an Arizonan was offended by the word haboob. He snidely said, We don't use Arabic words in Arizona. I had to laugh. There was a habūb in Death Valley once, took the enamel right off my teeth. He said, What we need now is a good monsoon. She should tell him it's monsoon season in Arizona. Words from the Arabic: haboob and mawsim.

But many of the words my Facebook friend posted were actually loanwords into the Arabic, not words FROM the Arabic. So I looked up each word from her lengthy list and came up with these solid Arabic contenders. Candy, cotton, lemon, magazine, mattress, alcohol, sugar, soda, sofa, zero, safari, sirocco, haboob, monsoon, zenith, azimuth, nadir, alchemy, alcove, assassin, adobe, tariff, tabby, sash, ream, mascara, cork, artichoke—all words from the Arabic. 

There was mixed etymological origins on of many so-called Arabic words listed, though. Most words were originally from the Persian, which is an Indo-European language. Moon and wine are Indo-European (IE) words, not Arabic. Chess is from the Sanskrit (also an IE language). Basil is from the Greek basilius (king). Guitar, Gr. kithara, music, Gr. mousa. 

Queen is also an IE word cwēn. There’s a lot of variation on that word, from incanabula to c*nt to quim. I was trying hard not to be a wordc*nt, and I tried to make it interesting but I couldn't let those errors stay—stet. I was on a roll. I wish I had kept the original word lists too. But se la vie. What I noticed on the many wordlists I looked up, was that people play fast and loose with word origins. 

Borax is interesting, Medieval French, from the Arabic, BUT from the Persian burah, (in other words, also an IE word by way of Arabic, call it a double borrowing.) Orange, from the Persian nārang, to Arabic, to Spanish naranja. Ditto that with scarlet: Persian to Arabic to French… Race and rest have Germanic/ Norse origins. And solar is from the Latin, solus. 

Many of our Latin plant names are roundabout travelers by way of the Arabic. And roundabout cloth names are also loaned or derived from Arabic: tabby, satin, possibly gauze, from Gaza. But taffeta is Persian, for woven (tāftah) with Arabic intermediation. Mouth-watering Arabic food names: Baba ghanoush, kibbeh, tahini, falafel—but fattoush is a compound word, Arab + Turkish, halva, is both Persian and Arabic. Neck-and-neck root word origins. 

Any Spanish words that begin with al- are, of course Arabic in origin. Alfombra, alcorque, arsenal, alhambra, algodon, albondigas, algebra, alcohol, amber, admiral, azucar, aciete, achofa, etc., of course are from the Arabic. But sugar is from the Sanskrit, she said sweetly. 

Maybe I'll get back to this list, but for now, it stays stet. A placeholder.

See Spanish words from the Arabic

• Nothing rhymes with… On the origin of oranges. Old Persian, purteghal, or narang, which is derived from the Sanskrit for the orange tree: nāraṅga. In Greek, the word for both the color and the fruit is portokali. In Romanian the fruit is portocala and the color, porticaliu.

SMALL RELIEF

I awaken to the alien sound of rain on the roof,
a passing fancy, a fleeting thought,
a last-minute hurrah clapping in an empty hall. 

At least this time there’s no lightning.

Small relief. No wildfires on the horizon.

AFTER HEARING BILLY COLLINS READ BAGS OF TIME

AFTER HEARING BILLY COLLINS READ BAGS OF TIME

    —after Billy Collins

I'm enamored by a seanfhocal from South Uist:

bags of time. When did we put time in a bag? 

I envisioned bags of wool, three bags full, to be exact. 

One black, two white. Double tax on the black bag.

And none for the little boy who lived down the lane.

Once upon a time, the great wool tax 

was levied by Longshanks and the peasants revolted. 

I had to sing the nursery rhyme, 

as my Irish baby name is invoked. 

Black sheep run in the family. 

And no, it's not a racist nursery rhyme.

That's a bad case of presentism at work.

My Corkonian grandmother cursed Longshanks 

and Cromwell daily. I thought the antiChrist 

would come and get me like the big bad wolf. 

In America, we say oodles of time. 

What are oodles, exactly? Rhymes with noodles.

A Tennessee slant rhyme, perhaps to accompany caboodle, 

as in kit & caboodle, perhaps lost cargo from the Dutch, 

as in boedel, or property. Open-ended portmanteaus of time. 

But those medieval bags, morphed from a hunting term 

to a race or an appointment. As in fixed time.

Boris Johnson said there was 'bags of time' for the Brexit exit. 

But it was Halloween and you know how mischief runs amok 

when the gates to the Otherworld swing open on rusted hinges.

When did we swap bagging game for bagging time? 

It all comes down to timing and knowing 

when your race is run. It's in the bag.

7/22/21

Getting it into gear

I’m having trouble shifting into gear this morning. Have you ever downshifted, only to have a stickshift come off in your hand? Old story. Apropos metaphor for the day. My first car, a 1958 Volvo panel van was always a mechanical surprise, but holding the stickshift up my hand like a crowbar as I was downshifting off the freeway was a bit much. I had to limp it along in second gear from San Rafael all the way to Larkspur to my mechanic Johnny Google’s autoshop on Main Street. 

I was really irritated when I found out later I could’ve just stuck a screwdriver in the gearbox to downshift. Or just re-screwed the gearshift back in, but I didn’t know that. I was just so freaked out, afraid to kill the engine, I cow-hopped and lugged it along to the garage in second gear without stopping, running stop signs and red lights, etc. 

That old Volvo was such a great teaching tool. This was circa 1970, no idiot's manuals. That old car taught me more about mechanics than I care to admit. I did have to use a humongous screwdriver to start the car as well, I crossed the connections on the starter which eventually melted it. We were MacGyvering everything long before MacGyver was invented. 

Don’t even get me started on alternator stories. We were coming back from San Francisco from an Irish music concert one moonlit night, and the alternator died on the Golden Gate Bridge. We figured out that if we turned off all the lights we could still keep driving. And so we did—all the way out to Forest Knolls—without lights. Without getting busted by the cops. By the time we got to Arroyo Road—there were no street lights—it was impossible to see. So I got out of the car and held my grandmother’s white piano shawl up like a beacon and Bob followed the shawl home like a moth to flame. 

Driving that car was always an adventure, so when one of the pistons blew, I never resurrected it. Because it was a rare car, it was far too difficult to find parts for it. Luckily the turtleback Volvo had the same parts. I always thought I would fix that car. David Best wanted my car to make it into a junk art car. I should’ve given it to him. It would've been immortalized.

The event was real, but, yes, I do speak metaphorically, I just couldn’t get into gear all day. I practically had to kick myself down the road. So I fixed myself a strong doublewide mug of coffee. I discovered there is a God after all who lives in a large coffee mug.

Remembering Barbara Scott

Barbara Davenport SCOTT, age 85, of Forest Knolls, California passed away on Thursday, July 8, 2021. Barbara was born July 19, 1935. Neptune Society I could not find an obituary for Barbara anywhere.

 

Barbara Davenport Scott, someone I’ve known since childhood, has transitioned. I found out via Facebook, how harsh. Not the usual transmission lines, or a note from the family. The first clue that she was no longer with us, was her old French blue velvet davenport couch by the side of the road across from my old alma mater, Lagunitas School, now the SGV Art Center. When the round poker table with its peeling oak veneer showed up by the side of the road too, I had a sinking feeling. All the funky furniture she wanted me to have—by the side of the road—did not bode well. Barb didn’t like being alone at night—I was ordered to stay overnight up to ten nights a month, and she thoroughly chastised and upbraided me if I neglected my duties and didn’t use up my monthly allocation. The times when I couldn’t visit, my cousin dropped in on Barb, took up the flagship. It was never a chore, it was like spending time with an aunt—it was a deep, abiding familial bond. She was also a part of our childhood, part of our past. We got to hang out with Barb, and to cook dinners for her. We had marathon scanning sessions, movie nights, paint nights, giggle nights. We took her on outings, went on hikes. She had never been to the Nicasio Reservoir. I was gobsmacked, and vowed to take her on more outings. We entered her art into the Vitrual Spring Art Show. She had never been in an art show. We remedied that.

Our 50+1 Drake high school reunion cancelled again

Our 50+1 Drake high school reunion is coming up (we caught the Covid bus for our 50th, and here I thought it was a prime number, but I suck at math. Should we join forces with class of 1971?) As I gaze at the photos of my fellow classmates from so long ago, odd feelings arise. I guess that’s probably true for many of us. Seeing all these stilted senior yearbook pages, I realized how I didn’t relate to most of my classmates. Perhaps it was a fear of being bullied. It seems nobody ever talks about that stuff. The overt and covert cruelty of peer pressure. The jockeying for position on the crumbling social ladder. 

I was so glad that the Summer of Love steamrollered in and the resulting societal breakdown had begun.  I really hated high school. I was also painfully shy, which didn’t help. It was time, and it freed us from the fierce conformity of the 1950s, and early 1960s, which was so constraining. I came from an immigrant family, we didn’t fit into the American suburban culture. And of course, we were poor, so we didn’t, or couldn’t buy into it. A blessing in disguise. I would not trade my untamed childhood years growing up in Forest Knolls for the suburban experience that defines American culture.

Wild swan at the Chileno Valley laguna, victim of the drought

I fear this wild swan is a victim of the drought. The Laguna de San Antonio aka Laguna Lake!) in Chileno Valley, in both West Marin, and Sonoma County, has completely evaporated. A first. Technically the laguna is a very large vernal pool, the largest in California, but this is the first time I’ve seen it bone dry. See that swan’s big black foot? It was always suspended above the water line. S/he was constantly grooming under that protruding foot, it stuck out like a small black sail. I’ve observed this particular bird for hours. It could not put that leg down, and the wing too was permanently canted up. That said, it could chug along pretty well on one leg. With only one functional leg, s/he managed fine in this part of the laguna, but never migrated to the other side of the lake with the other swans, or to the Arctic either. No idea if it’s a he or a she—we like to assign gender to things perhaps to personalize our experience—but it never had a mate or any babies. It usually swam alone, apart from the flock. I’m not even sure if it’s a mute swan or a tundra swan. There are both found in the laguna. After hauling out the old photos to post here, I can see it’s a mute swan—an invasive species. Am I supposed to suddenly hate it because it’s not native? But I have unconsciously named it. Its beak is somewhere in between the two species. Tundra swans have yellow embedded on their beaks, this one has scarlet on its beak. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t commute. It doesn’t know where to go. Besides, it probably has been anchored to this spot of the lakebed for so long, it has lost the urge. Mute attestation. I thought maybe that fishing line filament caught up on its leg, but I never could get close enough to see. I thought about calling a wildlife rescue for it, but it seemed to be managing OK. Besides, can you imagine trying to wrestle a swan? I’m no Leda. Now, the laguna is only a mudflat, the lake is gone—and on the opposite shore, I saw what looked like a dead swan. A one-legged swan, stuck in the mud, sans lake, wouldn’t stand a chance of survival. I’d have to seriously trespass across the mudflats in order to cross the lakebed in order to verify it. I wasn’t quite brave enough yesterday. I did walk a third of the way across the lakebed. Yesterday, I found the tip of an old yellow fishing rod in the mud right about where this photo was taken. I imagined a scenario that the swan was anchored to that same spot via that fishing pole. It grew used to its confinement. Maybe that’s why it didn’t join the others when it eventually broke free. It couldn’t. Someone said the leg looks dislocated. Perhaps the bird eventually broke free of its mooring—perhaps dislocating its leg in the process. A one-legged swan, stuck in the mud, sans lake, wouldn’t stand a chance of survival. There used to be a lot of fish in the laguna. Bass, catfish, sunfish. Michael from Petaluma stopped to talk, and told me fishing stories of his youth. The one that got away. How he threw them all back. No fish now. Only the memory of fish. There are several new Turtle Crossing signs. At least the western pond turtles can burrow in the mud and hibernate. Can catfish hibernate too? I didn’t see any fish carcasses in the desiccated and cracked mud. But then I wasn’t looking for them. I could see on the far shore, a dead bird and it looks like a swan just by its girth—whether it’s that swan in question, I have no idea. As I stood in the middle of the lakebed, a white feather came tumbling toward my feet on the breeze. Perhaps a parting gift. And yet I mourn its loss.

Dear Google (again)

DEAR GOOGLE,

Today I received even more emails from you telling me what was wrong with my blog.
URL is not on Google

This page is not in the index, but not because of an error. See the details below to learn why it wasn't indexed.

Server error (5xx) I GET THIS ONE ALMOST WEEKLY
Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt

First detected: 11/1/18
Status: Warning

The following issues were found on your site:

Viewport not set

Text too small to read

Clickable elements too close together

Redirect error

I am using normal text size, Georgia font, the default font for Blogger so I seriously doubt that my text is too small to read on a mobile device as it is bigger than 12 point. What are clickable elements? Are you referring to URLS? Most of the flagged pages are merely poems. Poems, I tell you. And short prose pieces. No URLS involved. What do you mean, viewpoint not set? The redirect error issue is entirely on you, Google, not me. You don’t even like my use of tags and it’s your freaking system.

Recently you deleted 13 of my posts saying that they went against community standards. They were poems, they didn’t even have swearwords, let alone, any hate speech—so I’m baffled. To your credit, you did re-install those 13 posts. But not the ones you deleted from the previous purge. I won’t mention the fact that you also put a red flag window over my blog so I couldn’t see it, saying that it was a fraudulent site. What do you think am, a Russian hacker? Back off.

At this point, I get more emails from Google telling me whats’s wrong with my blogspot than I do from my friends. I am at my wits end. I can’t take this anymore. I am considering taking down my blog and all 4000+ posts. This is utterly draconian. 

Your redirects and your explanations are useless. Telling me to see my webmaster. You ARE my webmaster. And the irony is that I have been using your software since day one. I am not using any add-on software. Just standard text. June’s myriad posts from you were relentless. Ditto that with May’s posts from you. Do you want to drive me away? Is that your endgame? 

Today, you also sent me yet another email, this time for site overview in order to improve my site, and to get more insights about my content. I don’t care how to improve my site so that more people can discover it. That’s not my goal, nor is it why I write. There is nothing wrong with my content, it doesn’t need improving, but clearly, there is plenty wrong with your software and sniffer bots.

Dear Google, please see my posts…

• Dear Google, why do you keep flagging my posts? I ...
• Dear Google, why do you keep flagging my posts?
• DEAR GOOGLE, Coverage issues have been detected an...
• DEAR GOOGLE, My woodside play is missing, looks li...
• DEAR GOOGLE, Google’s Blogger took down my memoria...
• DEAR GOOGLE, Blogger removed 13 of my blogposts fo...

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