Chasing sundogs and sunbows again (photos)

A right-handed sundog hid behind a sunbow, refused to show its face, but the lake saw it.

Neither my eye or camera could see the left sundog, but Nicasio Reservoir captured it.

At Wilson Hill, a right-handed sundog hid behind a cloud, refused to show its face, it was a long wait.

Driving north to Two Rock, I had better luck capturing the right sundog hiding behind a cirrus cloud.

Chasing sundogs and sunbows again. They were elusive as sprites. A sunbow—aka a parhelic circle, is formed by ice crystals in the cirrus clouds, refracting light like prisms. I could only capture one sundog at a time, aka a parhelion, it was so bright. I thought I could capture them at sunset, but they disappeared. So much depends upon the angle of the sun in the sky and the time of day... and timing is everything. I took an entire afternoon off to chase the rare sundogs.

Since neither my eye or my camera could see all the sundogs at once, I resorted to using lake reflections to capture the left sundog. The lake was a vast mirror. But the sundogs were distorted by the cirrus clouds. They were way more intense than in these photos. The invisible left sundog was trapped on the surface of the lake. I had to use a bush to block out the reflection of the sun, and was nearly blinded for my efforts. The upper and lower sundogs remained invisible.  

Driving north over Wilson Hill Road to Chileno Valley, I had better luck capturing the left sundog hiding behind a cirrus cloud. It was a long wait but worth it when it reappeared. But as the sun set near Two Rock, the sky turned all dirty rainbow as if tinged with smoke, on both sides of the sun. Impossible to capture.

I am still searching for that elusive moment when the sky is covered with myriad rainbows and multitudes of sun dogs with long arms. I saw something like that once in the 1990s, the buttermilk sky was like a shimmering sequined dress made of rainbows and diamonds. I may have attempted a photo but in the days of actual film, we were much more stingy with our media. And knew what wouldn’t adequately record well on film.

For a better explanation of parhelia see my other post Facebook) or here on my blog: Chasing sundogs (photos) You can see the parhelic circle more clearly there. There is always one sundog on either side of the sun, connected by a circular rainbow. The parhelic circle extends from one sundog to its twin, which is part of a much larger arc. They are like angel wings of the sun. But timing is everything.

Memorial service for Michael Collins at Saint Raphael's in San Rafael

 Memorial service for Michael Collins at Saint Raphael's in San Rafael.

random FB fragment on teaching and time

I have been teaching kids poetry & art since 1980, and I don’t seem to run into too much of that widening gulf of language redundancy between the old and the young. Possibly because I’m working with their language base. But your column, though it made me feel somewhat chagrinned, was wittily entertaining. Carolyn Forché mentioned the reality check gulf when her students didn’t know what snow angels were, and she gave a JFK reference—where were you when JFK was shot? They said they weren’t born yet. Now, for you, it’s those born after 9/11. Most of my students were born after Frozen came out. Foggetabout The Princess Bride, or understanding the immortal lines: “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” The gulf between 1969 to 2022 is as far apart as 1969 is to 1916. Such strange watershed times we live in.

Flex? OK, I cowp. What is it?

Tongan Tsunami steals trash cans from Santa Cruz harbor

Tonga sends volcanic greetings to North America with a mighty wave. Santa Cruz harbor leapt its banks early this morning, the tsunami stole all the trash cans in the parking lot. They’ve headed out to sea riding on the first surges. Wonder if the ocean will return them back to shore on the next surge? Yes, let’s have a little tsunami arrive at the same time as super high tide. Let that high tide also be a king tide, just because it’s 2022.

What I learned today is that tsunami advisory means any wave action under 3 feet, no classic 10 foot tsunami waves. Tsunami warning means the real deal with big waves. Port San Luis Obispo, CA, got 4 extra vertical feet of ocean all at once. There’s a really interesting photo of the 2011 tsunami rolling into Richardson Bay in Sausalito. Luckily this is not as big. And the US National Weather Service San Francisco Bay Area/Monterey California says we probably haven’t hit high water mark yet. It may arrive later today.

Chasing sundogs (photos)

Late afternoon sun, one sundog, and a sunbow—aka a parhelic circle, which is sort of like a fogbow, caused by ice crystals in the cirrus clouds refracting light, at Nicasio Reservoir, Elephant Mountain, and lake reflection. I could only capture one sundog, aka a parhelion, it was so bright.

There was one sundog on either side of the sun. See the vague horizontal band of light coming from the sundog? The parhelic circle extended from one sundog to its twin, and was part of a much larger arc. Poor iPad struggled, didn’t catch the sundog reflections in the lake. It was like being inside a large prism or Fresnel lens. 

Each ripple on the lake carried a small reflection of the sun and sundogs. Today it was a case of trying to take a photo of one thing, and getting something completely different and unexpected. Hence, the synchronicity. Sometimes you have to let go of the idea and go with the flow. Truth be known, I didn’t see the sundog right away, until after I had taken a photo, it was so bright.

What I originally meant to capture was the reflection, I was intrigued by the little ripples so like sketch lines. Sometimes you have to let go of the idea you’re planning to take a photo and go with the flow. Truth be known, I didn’t see the sundog right away, it was so bright. A rainbow is a symbol of an end of a rainstorm, while a sundog is a harbinger of more rain, or snow on the horizon.

I had a hard time capturing it. it was so bright. There was one sundog on either side of the sun. See the vague horizontal band of light coming from the sundog? The parhelic circle extended from one sundog to its twin, and was part of a much larger arc. Poor iPad struggled. Didn’t want to use my camera, as I once burned out the imager on my favorite camera taking photos of reflections one winter afternoon, late. I underestimated the power of the sun. So I may have just sacrificed my iPad camera. But sundogs are so rare.

Didn’t want to use my real camera, as I once fried the image sensor on my favorite camera while taking photos of late afternoon reflections at Schooner Bay one winter afternoon, when I underestimated the power of the low December sun. See how the sun blasted out the image when I tried to capture both sundogs? I could barely look at the iPad screen, so I was practically shooting blind. So I may have just sacrificed my iPad camera. But sundogs are so freaking rare…. ya hadda be there. So, a ew days later, there was another sundog. Chasing sundogs and sunbows again (photos)

LEARNING TO FLY

LEARNING TO FLY

In the dream, the yellow school bus 

dropped me off at the highway at the bottom of the road.

I escaped a bedlam of screaming kids, the taunting, 

and the torture of spitwads and rubber bands.

But when I stepped off the bus, it was so silent,

my feet couldn’t touch the ground, as if repelled by gravity. 

I entered a parallel world, my legs dragging in laden air, 

as if I were paralyzed. The ground misbehaved like oil & water. 

It was like being in the Barbano’s pool, just up the bend, 

when I was 10, learning how to swim after a near drowning.

I experimented with weightlessness, hands cupping the air. 

I struggled to get my bearings. It was a long road with no birds. 

Man had not yet walked on the moon. My home 

was another world where my grandmother stacked wood, 

buried ashes in the garden, argued with Cromwell in empty rooms.

I tried the breast stroke, then the Australian crawl 

all those strokes I learned in that saltwater pool. 

At least in this dream I could breathe. No fear of drowning.

Not like the tsunami dreams filled with fish and shoes.

I pulled the heavy air to my chest in hard thrusts, 

gaining traction, but I couldn’t leave the road. 

It was as if I was chained to that roadbed, 

hovering a few feet above it like Chagall’s floating women. 

No chance of effortless flight like the redtail hawks & vultures. 

I had to work hard to gain momentum. Nothing was given.

The road was my body, my guide, my mentor, my map. 

But I couldn’t stray from it. My arms grew weary. 

Like Gulliver, I was chained by invisible ropes. 

Frost rimed the new grass. A pale sky verging on white, 

the beginnings of spring circling the dark drain of winter.

1/12 CPITS Write On! Terri Glass class

GOAT & DEER haiku

Piebald nanny goat
squats on a berm, morning pee
steams in the sunlight.

Must be a theme

eight does on the horizon

taking turns to pee.

Tule fog rises

from the dew laden winter 

grass, jeweled sunlight.

Little Christmas, a.k.a. Nollaig BheagLittle Christmas, a.k.a.

A card my cousin in Kerry sent me.

Today is Little Christmas, aka the Feast of the Epiphany, Orthodox Christmas, and Nollaig Bheag. AKA Women's Christmas (Nollaig na mBan), where Irish men traditionally take on all the household duties for the day. Women are instructed to stay abed late, hang out with friends and generally be pampered and waited on hand & foot by their menfolk in appreciation. A spa day might be in order. As my grandmother said, it is the last day of Christmas to get those cards and gifts delivered. Tomorrow you can take down the tree. Or not.

Eating the bull’s heart

Most storebought food, and especially junk food, including coke and potato chips, never graced our threshold. My granny was too old world (and far too poor) for any modern prepared convenience food, or junkfood. We ate whatever was served. When a neighbor’s bull was slaughtered, or a goat or deer, we pretty much ate everything. But sometimes my grandmother would venture forth, read an exotic recipe and become inspired. Some culinary adventures like the salmon croquettes were lovely, however frozen squid in its own ink, was beyond atrocious. And menudo. Ugh.

I remember watching my grandmother skinning the cow’s tongue after she boiled it. It looked awful on the platter, but it made good sandwiches. Good disguise. I found the beef heart to be more of a challenge. Our neighbors had bumped off Thumbelina, a nasty misnamed stroppy Hereford-Jersey bull calf that grew up to be a menace whenever he escaped the corral, which was often. One time he treed me up a poison oak-infested utility pole. That was the beginning of the end of his demise. So, in compensation, we were gifted the heart and tongue. She boiled, then baked that heart with garlic and rosemary. However, I must admit, we ate his heart with gusto.

1/7/22

The world as we knew it

It’s hard to fathom that yet another year has rolled by. Here we are, still in sequestration, more or less, as the latest variant of Covid rolls through us. We no longer get the news as to how many people have died worldwide. But at least 800,000 US deaths related to Covid have been recorded during the past two years. I have been vaccinated three times since a year ago, January, and the last booster shot will not protect us from the workarounds of the latest version of the virus. When this all began in March 2020, I saw the writing on the wall, that darkness, the world, as we knew it, will never return again.

1/5/22

Not Protea but Silverswords

Jerry Downs posted a photo of protea, and something I remembered that twinned it to another equally rare plant, arose unbidden. When I descended into the aeolian slopes of the cinder crater of Haleakalā, Maui, on the Sliding Sands Trail, I thought of South African protea, not having a namebank for the tall cones of silverswords that greeted me. The ahinahina (grey-grey) that evolved from ancestral California tarweed, greeted me with rosettes of tiny red suns. I later found out they only grow on Maui's tallest summit — and nowhere else in the world. In an extreme high desert, they live up to a hundred years, their final act, to flower once, then die, scattering their seeds to the vagaries of the wind. I imagined that Haleakalā had roped all the days of the the sun and anchored it to these silverswords, but each night they cut the bonds so that the sun rose again in the east. Not Protea, but with similar extreme survival skills.

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

The mountains perceive me 

as one of their own long lost kin. 

I know this because when I reach the summit, 

they welcome me with breathless vistas. 

A small corner of my raging soul finds 

slivers of peace embedded in archaic ice 

and in the reflections of distant lakes. 

And sometimes, if I am lucky, I take back 

a small part of my lost self as I descend 

into the dailiness of the mundane world.

The mountains do not have a name for me

because to name me would be to separate itself

from itself, because we are all part of this earth.

My baby name I kept secret for years, 

even decades. It still yanks me back in time

whenever I hear it and I don't know what age I am.

It was my private family name, Irish for baby,

once called out in affection, not in anger. 

Not my school name. My friends 

have taken the shortest possible route 

to my public persona, calling me Mo, 

as if the Three Stooges, black sheep, 

and other permutations of my nickname mattered.

My true name is something hidden, 

something I search for amid the scree, 

and the detritus and ruins of civilization.

Look, there it is, a small water-worn stone

buffeted about in a desert windstorm,

sand whittling me down in case a small ember,

a jewel, or perhaps, stardust, was trapped inside.

The morning calls me slowly 

as if to waken me from dreams 

while the night thinks only of itself, 

its wants and its needs.

The past calls out to me, 

a constant companion to what was lost. 

The future is silent, perhaps 

it's passive-aggressive,

with cake crumbs on its lips.

What's in a name? 

I know I've answered this question before 

and I will answer it again and again. 

It hounds me, this attempt at definition of self 

especially during this time of mass extinction.

Exodus, inspiration, we are breathing together

right down to the very last stargasp.

1/5/22
Terri Glass’ Write On ~ a Generative Poetry Gathering

Remembering Mark Rasmussen

Mark Rasmussen, Class of 1967 reunion. Jim McElroy photo

I received a message that all schoolmate Mark Rasmussen had died. As I tried to investigate it, I find much by way of an obituary. So this is what passes for memory. Mark’s father Stu Rasmussen, was a playwright and director of the San Geronimo Valley Players; in the early 1960s, he and another parent, Barbara Scott produced musical plays for us, at Lagunitas Elementary School. I played the female lead in San Geronimo! Mark was tall, I don’t remember his role. Probably José Revere. Mark was our leading man at Lagunitas.

Mark majored in drama at Drake (Class of 1967), and College of Marin with director Jim Dunn. He and several of his CoM classmates went onto Julliard, including Robin Williams, Joel Blum, and James Harper. I think…. anyway, they escaped and broke the mold. I was thrilled to work in the costume dept. and be wardrobe mistress and usher at all the plays—just to watch them perform.

Mark, as Tony Wilson, was in the famous hot tub and peacock feathers scene in Cyra McFadden’s The Serial. We all traipsed to the Fairfax Theater to see Mark on the Big Screen, thrilled and mortified as the idea of Marin being equated with all things kinky with peacock feathers became a trope.

According to IMDB, Mark Rasmussen’s film credits include bit parts on The Streets of San Francisco (1972) Parking Lot Attendant / David, painter; The Serial (1980) Tony Wilson; and The Second Coming of Suzanne (1974) chauffeur; Mark was also an uncredited extra in the airport scene in the movie Bullitt with Steve McQueen. Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind (Documentary) playing himself, 2018. 

But it seems he also kept up his acting chops on live stage. I don’t have a stage credits list, but I found this:

marinij 2016/05/04 › theater-review...

May 4, 2016 — David Abrams as the Fool and Mark Rasmussen as King Lear in the COM ... This “Lear” is very much a star vehicle for COM and Julliard alumnus ...(what I could lift, behind a fierce paywall.) 

“The supporting cast was excellent, but it was the astounding performance by veteran actor Mark Rasmussen in the lead role that lifted this show into the stratosphere. Intense, uninhibited and fully committed to his role, Rasmussen was the best Lear this reviewer has ever seen.”. — Barry Willis

I got a message from someone that Mark Rasmussen died from a fall off a roof in Oregon—an aneurysm. Does anybody have any information, an obituary? She said she couldn’t find one. He is listed in the Julliard memorial section. I would love to pull a Samuel Clemens epitaph here…

Jim McElroy photo

End of year writing stats 2021

When I began working on this blog post, mid-December, I only 32 poems, I hadn’t counted or added in the prose poems yet, as this was the year of dangerously morphing prose poem posts and straddling genres. So I guess so much depends upon what passes for a prose poem vs. poetic prose, sometimes disguised in journal format. Elevated reportage. I did eventually reach my 52-poem goal but I had to stretch. Note to self, that’s 4.3 poems a month. Get on it.

The good news is that I now have 153 blogposts. A miracle, considering I was having trouble breaking 125 posts mid-December. Not like last year’s 2020 Year in Recap where I managed to break my own personal best record with a whopping 227 posts. Of course, it was the year of serious sequestration, which had something to do with my prodigious output. Some scrambling ensued. I don’t know what happened in May—only four blogposts? And they were all rants against Google for destroying old posts. I have 4,160 posts, many of them not backed up, so I was understandably freaked out. I raided several Facebook posts to bump up my writing stats. And I suspect Facebook Memories will add a few more errant posts next year.

Links to horse posts. Blogger keeps removing the link

Other horsey bits. The new and improved Blogger keeps removing the link and pasting in a link to blogger# dashboard every single time I try and fix a link or add a post, so this is a placeholder.

Becky Dart: Born to Run

Connemara pony origins

On the ambling gait of horses

Kiger mustangs carry rare Iberian Sorraia mtDNA

The jockey's baton
B/G Sandwich Shops plate, or the tale of Ralph Moody
Eating the Wind
Helgar the Horrible

Letter to Sigrun in Iceland (Helgar the Horrible)
Mexico Journal: Aug. 19, San Juan Chamula on horseback
The Little Shits
Shetlandish Escape Artists
Shetland foal, H.M.S. Salt
Horse Chestnuts
Horses in Heaven
Sitting Deep

While Reading Essays by Robert Hass
There is so Much We Save from Childhood

• BLUE RIBBON SPECIAL

FIRST SWIM
NEW MOWN HAY, 

RAISED BY HORSES, 

ODE TO STEPHANIE,...
AFTER THE SOLSTICE, MACHU PICCHU
STOLEN RIDE
WILD HORSES IN THE RAIN

LATE HOUSEWARMING POEM TO WM.T.WILEY
HORSES RUNNING THROUGH THE STREETS OF ZENIA AT NIGHT

BEGIN AGAIN AFTER THE STORM (3 haiku)

BEGIN AGAIN AFTER THE STORM

A deluge of rain,

lost salmon return to streams,

nosing natal beds.

Creeks roil and churn, froth

a muddy milkshake of foam

and new beginnings.

 

Fish traverse rapids,

seek natal pools they build redds.

Storm scours them clean.

 12/30/21

MoSt challenge 1

THE IDEA OF HOME

THE IDEA OF HOME


The idea of home is difficult when it is tied to childhood,
and someone else lives in a house fallen down upon itself
like dog-eared slippers tossed on the garbage heap.
When it gets too cold to sleep outside in the tent,
I move in my brother’s old room, used as storage for decades,
My cousin Sinéad restored it to a habitable state,
repairing the walls, staining the bare floor, a miracle—
but it's more like a 2nd class hotel room than a bedroom.
The heart is empty. The hearth, full of my mother’s ashes.
Last summer, we restored her room, once my old room.
We fixed the holes the woodrats made to let in the light.
They built a nest in the basement, on top of our old photos,
framed pictures of Jesus & filled it with Xmas ornaments.
Some things never change. The ladybugs have returned
to hibernate in the corner in huddled orange masses.
This house, no longer a home filled with memory.
Her brother sleeps on the living room couch.
The house is filled with his rubble, car parts, tools,
the floor is buckling, the tiles have breached.
I cannot understand how people can live like this.
Or why he won't move into the clean bedroom
so we can get on with fixing up the rest of the house.
Once this house was a home, things had their place.
I despair each time I visit, but in order to make a living,
this is a temporary waystation to hang my head.
It is not without its problems, he is volatile, depressed,
has no social skills, no filter, and so I walk on eggs,
the floor creaks and warbles, because the joists are loose.
When I sleep in my brother’s old room, I fear the wind,
and listen for the old cypress tree to come crashing down.
It died long ago, yet it still stands during this epic deluge.
We dig ditches to reroute water, to save the driveway.
I am reminded of my childhood again and again,
how, in winter I followed my grandmother outside
to deepen the ditches, to move the water down the hill,
& how each year I got sick, chilled to the bone.
Such a profound melancholia emanates from the past.
I cannot bring it back no matter how hard I try.
In this way I am reminded that nothing belongs to us.
We belong to the earth, and nothing more.

12/30/21

MoSt challenge 3

Read it at the MoSt Zoom reading 1/11/22

LENINGRAD, MID-WINTER

LENINGRAD, MID-WINTER

I remember Leningrad, mid-winter, 

before it became Sanct Peterburg, 

before the fall, where we watched the ice boats 

open and sluice the black arteries of the Neva River, 

how the rostral column of the Viking ships 

with its severed boat prows, bled into the sky, 

held asunder to the pale clouds 

where light reflected off snow 

falling, perhaps somewhere in Finland. 

The ancient windows of the Hermitage Palace 

were warped and buckled with age, slumped glass 

seeking the currents and eddies of the river, 

having survived the siege and revolution. 

I remember how the babushka greeted me 

when I entered the room, she said Matisse’s dancers 

righted the world, kept everything in motion. 

They were wrapped in a fulcrum of time. 

I was homesick, stuck in an exotic place like this 

always brought the unbidden ache 

for what was familiar and safe. 

It's almost as if we can never be satisfied 

with where and what we are—perverse memory, 

that thread of loss, like a red fishing lure

tangled in the back reaches of the mind. 

Valera the rock singer, took me out walking afterwards 

onto the vast frozen lakes of Ozirkii. 

We were far from shore, the bleak ice 

moaned and cracked and hissed beneath our feet. 

The distant shouting in a loudspeaker,

the red flag warning as we retreated 

to the marching song of an unseasonable thaw.

The dark eye of the lake opened up 

to the color of death and distant skies. 

Not now, not this time, the lake said.

12/29/21 CPITS Write On! Susie Terence class

LOVE IS NEVER FINISHED

LOVE IS NEVER FINISHED 

      —for John Oliver Simon

We had rented a VW Bug, but where were we? 

Why him, an old ex-lover, why now? 

It was hot and dry, perhaps we were in Glen Ellen, 

Valley of the Moon, or some place in Northern California. 

Or was it Mexico? John and I made some epic journeys

together, it defined who I was as a poet and an artist.

The late afternoon air was seething with heat. 

The sound of trees creaking, interrupted crickets. 

We got out of the car, lazy, I left my luggage inside. 

Stiff with travel, we stretched and lumbered up the steps,

marveling at the woodwork on the porch of the old house. 

We went inside, our clothes sticking to our backs.

We blew our forelocks up off our brows like teenagers.

Drank from the kitchen faucet, settled in like dogs at the hearth.

But we heard the car rev, spattering stones as it disappeared.

I couldn’t believe that a thief stole the car with my backpack inside. 

John ran down the dirt road after them. I never saw him again. 

I wailed, feeling abandoned, and bereft. No money, no phone.

What was it that Yehuda Amichai said that love is finished again? 

Or was it love is never finished? I stood alone on that verandah

having to navigate in a foreign land without him. Some vacation.

The penny hadn’t yet dropped, I was in the land of the dead

with no way back home. Only the past, like a river, beckoned.

I dreamt all of this on the day that John died. 

12/29/21 CPITS Write On! Susie Terence class

Modesto-Stanislas Poetry Center NY 13 Prompts

Modesto-Stanislaus Poetry Center

I suppose I should post this thread under 12/29, as that’s when I received the poetry prompts. But the writing marathon began 12/15. Either way, that’s not much time to respond, but here goes as I am a few poems short of 52 for the year. I will post them here for now and move them later when I've had a chance to revise them. —MH

Donner summit, circa 1973

Coming from a farming family, I learn to ski late. There were no models at hand. Our Norwegian neighbors used to ski in Washington state, but gave it up after Agnes shattered her ankle at Dodge Ridge.  The first time I went to the snow I was mesmerized by the tump and soft thud of snow falling from pine bows, the glistening sugar drifts that had gathered during the night, transforming the world into something shiny and new. Out of the darkness, the winter light took on a balance of light that was nearly blinding. The sharp stinging of the wind, laden with snowflakes, kept us in time present as we trudged towards the lift, and to the old car, chilled to the bone after the last long run down the slopes. I was newly arrived to the concept of skiing, having learned late, at age 19. I was eager to leave the bunny slopes and the snow plow behind. But I had to pay for my lack of experience. See, I never had a bike, one Christmas, a shiny new bike with tassles was in the driveway, so unexpected, like a unicorn. But I no sooner saw it, then I had to give it up. My cousin had polio. He needed it for his leg, they said. When I tried to learn to ice skate in college, it was the same thing. I never roller skated either, skates were not particularly useful when you grew up on unpaved country roads. I was all knees, it was not like riding horses at all. But I was determined, though I was the most awkward skater at Raydine’s ice rink, I persevered, and by the end of that semester, I graduated to a passable figure skater. And then, one day it gelled, I was flying across the rink, spinning like an imploding star, opening my arms like a super nova. The dizzy world of lights and stars over me. I transferred that skill to skiing. I was racing down the slopes of Boreal Ridge. It was if a light switch had been flipped on. I was elated, over the moon, skiing all day and well into the night. The full moon rose over a transformed white world and the tump of snow falling from the pine branches, the stillness and the silence of the night became a refuge. The freedom and ease of the wind that burned my ears as I tore down the slopes with my newfound skills. You’d think those years on horseback would’ve given me a leg up, but curiously they didn’t, as riding a horse is a partnership, you take care of each other, while skiing was pushing the limits of gravity. There is only yourself defying the odds of trajectory and speed. I knew the physics and geometry of my body and the angle of slope. That season we skied Boreal and then outgrew its tiny slopes. We were addicted to speed and developing mad skills. My boyfriend and I, having learned to ski so late in life, we had to overcome our grown-up sensibilities to define the angle of slope and depth of snow. That year we skied the double black diamond runs of Sugar Bowl, and Squaw Valley, leaving behind the tame intermediate slopes of Sierra Ski Ranch, and Homewood, but we always came back to Boreal Ridge where we first learned to ski, having slept in the car in that parking lot too many nights, too poor to afford a room. We saved our money for lift tickets, ski rentals, and gas. There was no budget for food—save forman occasional hot chocolate. We were snow crazy voracious skiers. We even skied off Mt. Tam during a rare snowstorm, ruining our skis on rocks. Winter weekends we threaded our way up Highway 80 from the Bay Area, hungry for the slopes, carefully avoiding all mention to that somber monument to the Donner Party.

this was supposed to be a poem but it morphed into prose. Oh, well. Should I try and hack a poem from it? 

Terri Glass’ Write On ~ a Generative Poetry Gathering

CHRISTMAS ANGEL

CHRISTMAS ANGEL

When I was 10,
it snowed in the coastal hills of West Marin.
On the morning of Christmas Eve
I awoke to a white world, transformed.
Never having seen snow before,
I ran out in the snow, barefoot,
my feet turned into blocks of ice.
But I didn’t care. I caught a chill,
but for a brief moment,
I was a Christmas angel
who had momentarily lost her wings,
dressed in a patchwork robe,
caught up in the middle of magic.
A halo of breath for a crown.

I didn’t want to go back inside,

but the cold shepherded me 

back towards the hearth fire.

12/22/2 1

Terri Glass’ Write On ~ a Generative Poetry Gathering

Forbidden foods

We have come a long way since the 1970s towards a monotonous meat diet where we eat hardly anything other than chicken and beef, and to a lesser degree, pork. Forget about rabbits, venison and swans. Disney’s Bambi Complex has taken hold of the American imagination and has culturally banned most of the meats that were commonly consumed a half century ago.

A lot of the foods mentioned in the article are banned in the United States for a variety of reasons, the weirdest being that junk food makes a mess in schools. Cadbury’s chocolate, once much better than Hershey’s, really sucks, no great loss. 

Most, if not all, French cheese is made from unpasteurized milk—the French don’t seem to have a problem with the concept. But we do. True, during the 1940s, before the invention penicillin, people could get TB from unpasteurized milk. My uncle was one of them. But now, you can pick up TB in a homeless camp. So banning unpasteurized milk products that are rigorously tested in France, is somewhat draconian. 

Horsemeat is not illegal to eat in the United States. It is illegal to import it. The butcher in Ross, California was selling horsemeat all through the 1970s. And yes, I’ve eaten it, to my horror, as I was completely horse crazy. But it tasted good. Because horsemeat is no longer popular the abattoirs are not set up to deal with horsemeat. The slaughterhouses that were used to process horsemeat went of business. You can still eat horsemeat in Canada and Mexico.

You could also order bearmeat, venison, and elkmeat from that same Ross butcher. And FYI, Julia Child was a boarder at the Branson School. No correlation that I know of, but she became a champion of French cuisine—cheese, paté, various meats. Sea turtle was on Mexican menus last time I was there.

Haggis, with or without lights, is quite good. It’s kind of like a pate. And the reason why you can’t get real haggis in the United States because of the lights, again, the United States import business is not set up for the concept. But the industrious Scots waste nothing, and use up the entire sheep including the baaa. And some real Italian salami is made from donkeymeat. Any imported cured but uncooked meat is banned in the US. 

Tell the Conch Nation they can’t eat conch. They sure didn’t get the memo in the Florida Keys.

Sushi is a grey zone. Mugu, if prepared wrong, will kill you. But that is another story.

Post Moderna writing

Three days after my Moderna booster shot I am finally ready to get out of bed. I slept the dreamless fugue of Lazarus during most of the first and second days, and I slept late today. I never sleep in. And every old injury awoke to remind me of its halcyon days, including my knee and back. My hands ached and every old injury joined in on the choral litany of pain. The night sweats were like an atmospheric river. I was drenched, couldn’t move my right arm, and the shot, a large angry welt. Getting out of bed required extreme balancing acts. I got dressed, navigating an errant foot through the leg of my knickers took finesse, like threading a needle, as I had pulled my lower back again, this time, the left side, while digging ditches for the coming storm, but I managed, and ventured downstairs for my morning coffee. Only by now it’s late afternoon. I will pay for that late cuppa tonight when I cannot sleep. But when one is in the throes of a boostershot altered state, all time bets are off. And so is time itself, for today is the solstice, the shortest day of the year. My first activity of domestic violence was to vacuum a portion of the carpet where I had spilled my morning oatmeal and perhaps a little brown sugar as well. But that act left me deaf and breathless, as did navigating the stairs, and making the coffee and all the myriad errands it entailed. So, before I even had a sip, I was done and spun for the day. Listening to Billy Collins read Christmas Sparrow I am moved back in time to when my grandmother said to let a bird into the house was to let death enter. In Irish tradition, a wild bird was a harbinger of death. That traitorous wren. Only in Billy‘s case, the cat did it. And it was a house sparrow. And today is the death of the old year. So, letting that small feathered poem in, and then letting it go again, was an act of releasing the old year, with a sliver of a chance for renewal. I am amazed by how short his poem is. There’s something about when a poet reads, how time suspends itself on a meat hook, in the hurt locker, where all manner of things are hidden, and yet are only alluded to in poetry. Ex tenebris lux. The dark and the light together as one thing. Is it because I had the vaccine, and because I knew I would have some downtime? I bought expensive desserts, tiramisu, and macarons for my coffee. Not macaroons but macarons, the French ones, as expensive as a box of See’s Candy. They are small meringue dreams that melt on the tongue like sweet clouds. I am having trouble remembering sequentially. So everything I do requires retraced steps and I am in and out of breath, piffing like a steam train, which only exacerbates the memory problem. Today is not a good day for multitasking. I can’t even remember what it was that I forgot to remember. I have to retrace my steps, making sure I don’t trip and reinjure my back, to find those orphaned trains of thought. They lazily float about the rooms like ghosts cobwebs. Today is a fresh pajama day. Time to shed my clothes and greet my pillow once more. At least the bedsheets are clean. It could be worse. 

12/21/21

We are the bitches who dig ditches (drought journal)

After digging rain ditches the past two weekends, I ache in places I didn’t even know I owned. It’s a long dark night of 3 AM aspirin calls and an endless stream of gummy lemon square care bears. My cousin calls us the bitcheswhodigditches. Because the related menfolk never think to lift a finger to help us unless we practically shame them into action. Who wants to do that? It blows up in odd ways later. So we carry on. Like with the weekends when we cleared brush. They did nothing. It was maddening. We were racing both the clock and the incoming storm. As I dig ditches and watch the water seek new courses, I think, this is how people become engineers, by rerouting all those puddles. Gawd, how I loved getting soaked to the bone  as I helped my granny channel all that water. The driveway is a swamp. A quagmire. When I was young, we used to dig little roads along the bank above the main water ditch for my brother’s matchbox cars. We elaborated on that transportation theme with tiny trains and even railroad tracks. Unfortunately those drainage ditches have been in disrepair since my grandmother died long ago, and the last atmospheric river—aka Pineapple Express carried an epic amount of water down the hillside. So we restored the old drainage ditches, and helped save the driveway, thus draining a couple of quagmires in the process. A bonus, I found two wheeless matchbox cars with caved in roofs in the gravel. The renovated ditch is ready for the next round of the atmospheric river, the Pineapple Express, which seems to have mysteriously evaporated. Go figure. You really can’t really dig those ditches during the dry season. The impacted ground is like concrete. You need the dirt waterlogged so you can move it, though it weighs a lot more when it’s wet. But it is a work of art to divert and channel and tame that much chocolate colored water, and then to watch it run clear, then tend to the miniature rapids and eddies like a farmer irrigating a field—just like a real creek bed but in a diminutive format. The main source of runoff is coming from a gopher hole in the upper garden, so it’s draining an entire steep hillside like an artesian spring. I write on my Facebook page, Now my left lower back hurts. A lot. I didn’t hurt until after my Covid booster shot. Someone misreads it as a leftover back. If it was my leftover back then I could just leave it behind—along with my behind. Sure, I hurt a little bit after digging ditches, but the strain really slammed me hard after I had my Covid booster shot. It was similar to, but nowhere near as bad as the last time I strained my back scraping old wax off the floors in August. The common denominator for both events is not so much the strain, or work itself, but sitting in the car, or a chair for long periods of time afterwards. A friend advises, Chocolate Cake helps. Works for me. I ask, Do I smear it on my lumbar region? Perhaps with a little ruby portofino on the side? Mark answers, Yes. Devour it with lots of chocolate frosting. Guaranteed to work on your whole body not just the lumbar region. Trust me baby. Hoo boy. Sounds bitchin’. Sounds like good advice to me.

from a Facebook post

Breaking the spine of the drought (drought journal) (photos)

before the deluge

Dec 11, 2021

Dec. 16, after the deluge.

Breaking the spine of the drought. Winter light on Elephant Mountain, the Nicasio reservoir is still way too low—even after last month’s deluge. And all those Mt. Tam reservoirs are overfull. The good news is that water will finally fill Kent Lake and spill over into Lagunitas Creek, which means an actual real salmon run after years of no fish.

The old bridge is underwater, but the old road isn’t 

But both Nicasio and Soulajoule reservoirs are still way too low… Haven’t seen Stafford Lake, but I suspect it too is still low. The drought ain’t over yet. Nicasio may be a shallow reservoir, but in sheer acreage, it’s huge, so, if there was a lot of rainfall all over Marin, it would have filled up fast. But it didn’t.

There is less than 23” of total rainfall in San Rafael, a little over 21” in Fairfax, and 11” in Novato. And less than 13” total rain at Dillon Beach. Not all the stockponds of West Marin have filled. Some are, yes. 

We have been more or less in drought mode since 2010-2011, with two exceptionally wet years in 2014, and 2016—hence all the wildfires. We’ve had more drought years than deluge years since 1975. See how the water is up to the old bridge, left of center. Now, we’re up to the usual low-water mark level of winter. No longer extreme drought conditions. But we’ve still got a long way to go to break the pattern. See that tree line above the water? That is the shore of the lake.

After the deluge (drought journal)

Last night, in the middle of the storm, the power flickered, and went out, so we did everything by firelight. Just like in the old days—except we had no candles or kerosine lamp, just the harsh blue LED lights that made everything seem colder, despite the fire in the wood-stove.  My cousin’s police scanner squawks like a parrot reveling in pure pandemonium, Accidents everywhere. A car was whacked by a pine tree on Sor Francis Drake by the abandoned golf course. Across the counties, the creeks rose with a vengeance, as the deluge punched us down like dough in the bowl. On my way to work, to teach kids poetry in Mill Valley, we are down to one lane as the roadbed gave way in the middle of the night. What becomes the Fairfax Creek has taken out a chunk of Sir Francis Drake and everywhere you look, all the garbage cans are askew, they look like they have lost in a colossal game of kick the can. Downed trees branches, mother nature‘s roughshod pruning service at the ready, has us slaloming the roads like drunkards. In San Rafael, even the flood signs are flooded. The streets are canals, meanwhile the San Rafael Canal is at maximum tide and it is a huge mirror reflecting the sky and overpass. The inlet is challenging the embankments all up and down the coast, a king tide. New alluvial fans in the making, are fanning out like fan dancers up and down the highway. Meanwhile, the sky is an innocent blue with darling puffy clouds as if to say what’s the big deal? Calm after the storm. Drainage ditches along the bay that haven’t seen any water in years, perhaps even decades, are suddenly mirrored snakes weaving their way through the laced landscape. The end of the drought.

HEADED TOWARD THE LIGHT

HEADED TOWARD THE LIGHT 

        Without light there wouldn’t be darkness, 

       without the darkness there cannot be light. —Unknown

The old porch light gleamed in the darkness, 

flickering like an ember, a moth to a flame. 

A ghost halo of fog gathered its nimbus in 

like a ballgown, invoking traditions lodged 

in the hagiography of the Saints. 

We moved towards the solstice, to sing a litany of light. 

The nights are drawing in, my grandmother said. 

The long nights rob us of sleep.

This, at a time when we should be sleeping like bears. 

Instead it becomes a spiral dance of angst. 

Don’t go towards the light, someone said. 

Light becomes both our salvation

and our final curtain call. Our destiny awaits. 

But this year, the fruit trees, still dressed 

in raiments of bright fall leaves, bleed, 

and burst into blossom. The seasons are colliding.

I am trapped in the darkness and I can’t will myself 

to go back into the hearth where the flames 

once caressed my face until my cheeks 

glowed and throbbed in unison with my heart.

There, where the light of the domesticated fire 

was like a cat comforting you, a distant cousin 

to the primitive fire in the cave of mankind, 

the hieroglyphs on the ochre-stained walls, 

the story of night we shaped and fitted 

into a new wardrobe for the coming spring.

Not the light of a waiting ambulance.

12/15/21

Terri Glass’ Write On ~ a Generative Poetry Gathering

Woodies under the floorboards of the Woodpussy (photos)

Note the size of the large brass screw above them, for scale.

As I was cleaning up trash and the last of the old Woodpussy sailboat floorboards, preparing for the upcoming storm, I was startled by a pair of tiny hibernating baby woodies, the somewhat rare reclusive Marin forest, or wood scorpions. I carefully replaced the floor boards after I took their prerequisite Cecil B DeMille close-ups. They were too cold to even move, so I had a captive audience. Note the large brass screw behind the second one for scale. Such exquisite, if scary, perfection. And yes, of course I screamed. I usually do, as I am initially repulsed by them. They are the stuff of nightmares. I was haunted by recurring dreams of finding scorpions in attics. I got exasperated and invented a new ending where they didn’t sting me. I must’ve been reading too much Levi-Strauss for my folklore classes. Luckily, these little guys don't know the fable of the scorpion and the fox that it’s inherent in the scorpion’s nature to sting. Startled, surprised, and absolutely gobsmacked by them, and I am also in utter awe to catch a glimpse of these shy little creatures. I can count the times I’ve seen them on one hand. Well, maybe two. That rare, yes. We grew up with them but never even knew of their existence. I remember rolling a rotted log down by our old oak tree and there was a family snoozing under the log. I screamed and climbed the hogwire fence. They eventually waddled off. I felt so betrayed, somehow. Then the penny dropped, they were also under the house where I used to play, when I crawled to get the cats….and they never once stung me. I got inpetigo, and other odd ailments, but not scorpion stings. Most people will never see an Uroctonus mordax, no matter how wood-wise they are. When I look at their incredible beauty, I am in awe that such complicated creatures even exist in this world. And I get to witness it. They are fairly docile, you would be hard-pressed to get them to sting you. And even if they did, a beesting is much worse. And if I had a UV light, they’d fluoresce teal blue vs. yellow. These little guys were too cold to move away from the direct light. They just watched me warily, scuttling in a circle to face me, as if to say, I’m too small. Not a tasty snack. Apparently they taste like very tiny lobster. A good thing I don’t like lobster. I guess I’ll be leaving the rest of the Woodpussy boards in situ until they move along.

• Scorpion under a pot for Earth Day
• Camping in Baja
• The Wood-Pussy

Listening to the Apollo Murders audiobook by Col. Chris Hadfield

I’m listening to The Apollo Murders…Love it, they’ve landed on the moon and I’m learning lots. And remembering. Sometimes the Russian pronunciation isn’t as clear as it could be but that’s probably the muddled interpretation of the audiobook reader. I find myself repeating phrases. But the Russian-English accents are great. As is Nixon’s accent. Reader does a bang up job, but needs to go to a Russian language school, his Russian is mushy—horasho!

Col. Chris Hadfield is a good, solid writer. No waste, no fluff. Good reportage. Solid science. For example, I never thought of moondust as sharp. No erosion. Of course! why didn’t I think of that? And he knows some cool obscure words, like “rills” and knows how to handle a metaphor, so, as a writer, I am over the moon! 

Since I’ve met Chris, I can also hear his voice behind the words. And it’s a kick to see glimpses of his autobiography in the storyline, bits of which Ive read, or heard him read. Mitchell cranked up Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon. LOL.

Audiobooks is a fairly new thing for me, during the early days of the pandemic, I had the attention span of a newt. I couldn’t concentrate long enough read a sentence little in a paragraph. I couldn’t retain anything as my mind was a sieve, more like blotter paper. But I found I could listen to audiobooks, which I formerly hated being read to. Go figure.

I’m bummed that I didn’t have the dough to buy Chris’s biography when he read at Book Passage in Corte Madera. But I had some astronaut freeze-dried ice cream which he kindly autographed. Someone took photos, but you know how it goes, I’m always the one behind the camera…so whenever anyone attempts to take a photo of me, it’s always out of focus. Like with Amy Tan, and Mary Robinson, the President of Ireland, FFS! Oh, and Chris speaks Irish too! Le do thoil.

I’ve seen one of the Apollo 11 test capsules on the USS Hornet in Alameda, CA. And once when I was teaching an Elderhostel class, one of my students was a NASA engineer. He brought me a moonrock collected from the moon’s surface, to hold. It was a piece of basalt—with sharp edges.

Persimmons (photos)

Ripe persimmons hanging from a bare tree like small fiery suns, are a poignant sign of winter. These Japanese Diospyros kaki or Hachiya persimmons, were picked on Arroyo Road in Forest Knolls. How many times did I pass that tree and never noticed it when I was walking home from school? Unripe hachiyas are astringent and inedible until they are soft as an over-ripe tomato. My grandmother always said, you’re not supposed to pick them until after the first frost. But this year, the frosts have been so light, I got tired of waiting for winter to come. 

Like quinces and medlars, they are completely inedible until they are bletted which is a polite way of saying approaching the rotten stage. Persimmon trees really don’t want you eating a persimmon until it’s beyond ripe. Patience is required. If you bite into an unbletted hachiya, it will take the skin off your teeth, give them fur jackets, not to mention, strip the roof of your mouth, and leave your uvula wizened to the size of a peppercorn, and you will be speechless, I guarantee it. Who had to look up uvula? Not what you thought, right? 

I hated persimmons as a kid, probably because I tried to eat an unripe one. It’s an acquired taste I’m still trying to cultivate, because of their health benefits, I must admit I’m leery, but I am willing to revisit them. Just not raw. When they’re ripe, you can freeze and eat them like custard. Be sure to use a good silver plate or sterling spoon, the acid reacts with metal. Kind of like a battery. I remember watching my granny scoop out the vermillion frozen pulp and eat them on late winter afternoons, with sheer delight. But I never acquired a taste for them.

Or you can make persimmon bread, or pudding, my favorite—an excellent boozy Christmas pudding, but it requires finesse with baking powder, baking soda, soda and buttermilk (or yogurt) to neutralize the oxalates and proanthocyanidins and antioxidant phytochemical enzymes (insoluble tannins and gallic acid). Aka better living through chemistry. (Diospyros means divine fruit of Zeus in Greek). And it also requires a lot of emotional support booze before, during, and after. And then, after baking it, you have to booze-bathe the little puddy weekly. And of course, have a tot yourself to keep it company. It’s a long-term commitment relationship. After all, it is a kind of fruitcake—they don’t like to drink alone. Not to mention the hardsauce. 

I’ve long since lost my granny’s persimmon bread recipe, along with her fruitcake recipe, but here’s one by James Beard, whom she admired. It calls for a lot of bourbon. Here’s a simple version that uses both kinds of persimmons. She probably got her boiled pudding recipe from Bon Appétit! Or if boiled or steamed pudding isn’t your cuppa, you can try their baked persimmon bread recipe, which sounds like pumpkin bread dressed in persimmon pajamas. Or try persimmon bread pudding. No recipe given. You’re on your own here, wildcatting it, as it were. Both persimmon bread and pudding freeze well.

The short, squatty Japanese variety, or cultivar, Fuyus, or Fujus, look like little sumo apples with dimpled bottoms, and  are eaten crisp. No waiting, or bletting necessary. Freezing them will help ripen them too. 

Our native American persimmons, Diospyros virginiana, aka sugarplums, or possum-apples, grow on the eastern seaboard—especially in the greater Mississippi Valley. There is also a southern black species, D. texana, chapote, or tzapotl, from the Nahuatl. There are both male and female persimmon trees (and some are switch-hitters, alternating sexes), like persea, aka avocados, and like avocados, they evolved oddly to entice certain ice age megafauna, such as mammoths, mastodons and giant sloths to nosh away, so they could, erm, well, propagate. The persimmons, not the megafauna. I was told they are all good dried—the persimmons, not the megafauna. Let’s just say they had a unique seed dungheap distribution system. (The persimmons.) As for ripening tips, I’ve never seen any. But they do need to be bletted as well.

There are over 400 species of persimmon, Ebenaceae family, most are native to Eurasia. Apparently the slow growing persimmon heartwood, a species of ebony—think black piano keys—takes a hundred years to form. Patience is required. Persimmonwood also makes the finest golf clubs in the world. Ebony, a rather lousy raft material, is also so dense, it sinks in water. You knew that, right? Fore! Birdy? Or is it a mulligan? Where’s my snorkel? I think I’ve  lost the score. Or was it the plot? Think I’ll have a ‘nother neggnog. Cheers!

See also

• 
  
• True Quinces

• In defense of California Bay Laurel
• Defiant Fruitcakes
• Wild Apples

Happy Birthday Jeff Bridges

LOL, when I was six, I was playing with Jeff in the shallow end of the pool—my mom and Lloyd were in a production of Guys and Dolls at Sacramento’s Music Circus—and Beau, on babysitting detail, would have none of that. I was heartbroken. I also didn’t like Beau. So they mercilessly cannonballed the deep end of the pool while I rocked in their wake in the shallow end. I must’ve been crying. Lloyd—Mr. Sea Hunt—dandled me on his knee, and gave me a crystal star. I was starry-eyed. I asked Lloyd why he named his eldest son Boy, when he clearly was way older than Jeff. Lloyd roared with laughter. It was years later before I found out whey it was so funny. I always had a soft spot in my heart for Jeff. Happy Birthday Jeff Bridges, fellow Sagge. Abide, dude.

Happy Birthday Vampyre Mike

 

Vampyre Mike Kassel was one of my mother’s favorite friends. I first met himwhen I was young. My mom brought him out to my grandmother’s place in Forest Knolls. She went by Kellé Green in those days. And I later knew him as an adult through Whitman “Blue Dawg” McGowan. When my mom died, she had a poster of an event of Vampyre Mike’s, some of his chapbooks, and two audio tapes, one of Pasha and the Pagans, and the other, of Leonard Cohen’s Ten New songs. I figured it was a sign of something or another. Not sure what. Happy Birthday Vampyre Mike, fellow Sagge.

THE LOST NOTEBOOK

THE LOST NOTEBOOK

Somewhere along the way, I lost a notebook,
a simple, spiral affair, perhaps with a blue cover,
scribing my travels, chronicling the paths taken,
the writer’s journeys for the sake of poetry.

I lost a notebook somewhere along the way.
Perhaps it was on a bus, or on the trail of life.
Was it while I was traveling up the coast
to that famous writers’ conference?
Or was it left behind in a dingy restaurant booth?

Ironic, that I lost the notebook
chronicling those awkward poems
and the latest heartaches of spring.
Maybe it was that run-in I had with Bly.
Perhaps it ran off with Iron John.
Or it was jettisoned it along the way
because it was filled with detritus of anger 

and hope.

12/1/21

Terri Glass’ Write On ~ a Generative Poetry Gathering