Who am I on this international day of women?

March 8, 2023. Who am I on this international day of women? I am of Ireland where every place has a name and every name has a meaning. I am of four generations of strong Irish women: my great-grandmother, Jane/Sineád Rose Sullivan/Ó Súilleabháin (dark/hawk-eyed) (Walsh/Breathnach-from Wales), from Gortnascreena/GortnaScríne (place of the standing stone), Drimoleague (Droim Dhá Liag, ridge of two stones), near Skibbereen (An Sciobairín, a place of small skiffs). 

I am of Ireland. Her daughter, my grandmother, Jenny/Sineád Walsh (Reilly/Ó Raghallaigh-valiant), from Coom-anOre/Com an Óir (hollow or Valley of gold-as in a goldmine), really another place of standing stones between the River Bandon (Abhainn na Bandan, ban-dea, as in Tuatha Dé, the goddess), near Dunmanway (Dúnmaonmhuí, Dún Mánmha, the fort of yellow haired? women) and Bantry (Beanntraí, place of Beann's people (ban/ben = peak, point, prong, horn or top), Co. Cork (Corcaí/corcach, marsh). 

I am of Ireland. My grandmother, who begat Maureen/Máirín Reilly (Hurley/O hUirthile-descendants of some warrior dude, ok, it means sea-tide), San Francisco, and my mother who begat me, Maureen Hurley, Máirín ni hUirthile of San Francisco. 

Ich am of Irlonde,
Ant of the holy londe
Of Irlonde.

Goode sire, praye ich thee,
For of sainte charitee,
Com ant daunce wyt me
In Irlonde.

Medieval Irish Lyric, circa 13th-14th century AD)

I am of Ireland. Come and dance with me. What’s in a name? I can trace my mothers back to six generations of strong Irish women. My great-grandmother’s mother was Kate Connolly/O'Conghaile (descendant of Conghal, fierce wolf/hound), also born in Gortnascreena, whose mother was Julia Downey, or Devney (no v or w in Irish, O'Dunadhaigh- keeper /defender of the fort), from Esk, Kerry (an Eisc-the Fish? Or uisce?) Esk (a place of waterfalls) is a mountain near Glengarriff, overlooking Dingle, on the Beara Peninsula. 

Kerry is Ciarraí, or Ciarraighe, meaning the people of Ciar (the dark ones), the name of a pre-Celtic? tribe. The legendary founder of the tribe was Ciar, son of Fergus mac Róich, the son of great stallion. That takes us back into the mythological cycle. And there the trail ends. 

Who am I? I am all these women The entire maternal side of my family is 100% Irish, a rarity, despite the Walsh name. I guess you could say my ancestors came from between a few rocks and quite a few hard places. Then there’s my father’s side, also from near the River Bandon. But from there, the trail leads across the sea to Antigonish, and becomes murky, from Boston to SF, where Viola Mae Heaney, my other grandmother was born of a dysfunctional family, and so the generational trail of mental abuse ends with me.

The cultivated history of daffodils as we know it

A daffodil admiring itself in the mirror, ca. 2008. I forgot to date it.

Note bene: This blogpost began as an excerpt from a letter I wrote to novelist Gregg Dunnett who emigrated to Spain from Britain and was missing his daffodils. I never did get around to reshaping my notes into a blogpost, until a year later, so these notes are convoluted. 

Lechyd da! Those daffodils that everybody bashes over their neighbors’ heads in Wales on March 1 may not be native to Britain because daffodils, as we know them, along with rabbits, originally hailed from Iberia! So get your repatriation papers in order. 

In Wales, the daffodil is known as cenhinen Bedr or ceninn Pedr in Welsh—that which is like St. Peter’s leeks. It’s a complicated simile. The daffodil leaves resembled a leek that rules out daffodils as being native in Wales as they didn’t even know its name. According to a 1630 broadside ballad, the Welsh wore leeks in their hats to recognize friend from foe before the battle won on St David's Day. And ate them afterwards. Crossing leeks and daffodils, the national flower of Wales, could be dangerous as they are, like all lilies, extremely toxic. Don’t tell Saint Dewi.

Sant Dewi stained glass window at St Non's Chapel; note the flowers—daffodils. Wiki

To be fair, there might also have been a “native” plant that resembled the narcissus/daffodil/jonquil in the British Isles. However, I don’t trust the sources (since they’ve all copied each other, warts, and all) though I’ve included the links below. People often confuse the concept of native wildflowers with escaped naturalized cultivar flowers. Like with mustard, forget-me-nots, and Scottish bluebells…. the word “wild” can swing both ways.

But I did find this: “ The only species of narcissus native to Britain is the rather demur Lent Lily…” However, The National Records of Scotland misidentified the daffodil, or narcissus as a member of the Primulaceae family. Ak! Nope. Strike the word, “native,” add “naturalized.” (Unless it is a primrose —not a daffodil.) At least Wikipedia got that part right—they came from Iberia. I should’ve just begun my quest with Wikipedia, and saved myself a lot of grief, but I wanted original sources.

That classification error by The National Records of Scotland led me on a merry Google chase—because despite Easter being movable feast, the idea of a flower named after Lent certainly suggests a long-term cultivation. For the record, the narcissus or daffodil is a member of the Amaryllidaceae family, a lily with six tepals, and not a four-petaled primrose (oxlip looks a bit like a narcissus). And narcissi are not native to the British Isles.

In the middle ages, narcotic cowslips were called St. Peter’s herb. Wiki

And it doesn’t help that the origin and symbology of the daffodil is muddied by the strife between Catholicism and Protestantism. I suppose we could blame Martin Luther who never saw it coming when he nailed his theses on the church door at Wittenberg in 1517.

The folklore surrounding the daffodil is diverse. During the middle ages, narcissus was associated with the Virgin Mary and resurrection. Its leaves were compared to a spear, its sap was a gateway drug to the undiscovered country from which no one returns. Elysian Fields and all that. I can see the leaves of daffodils compared to spears, and Dame Edna (yes, I met him too) said that gladiolus refers to the Celtic Claymore sword. (See Narcissus in Culture.)

Etymology Online revealed that the word daffodil possibly arrived by way of Middle English affodill " (ca. 1590s) by way of the Dutch affodyle), via medieval Latin, via Ancient Greek—to make numb. Narcissi, like all lilies, are extremely toxic. But despite the added-on article, “d,” an accretion from the Dutch “de affodyle,” references cite the word (d)affodil itself as from an unknown source. Another source stated that affodyle means 'that which comes early.’

I tried another approach. First reference in English. Terminus post quem (TPC—that is, the first ever literary mention I could find…) During the “late 16th and early 17th century botanists and herbalists John Gerard and John Parkinson described them as "Pseudonarcissus Anglicus pleno", "Gerrards double Daffodill".

Ok, that reference suggests that cultivated daffodils were introduced before 1629, as there were notices concerning the introduction of daffodils to the British Isles. This may be one of the earliest citations. (And don’t forget the 1630 Welsh reference to daffodils as Saint David’s leeks). When I looked up the original source, the gardener-monk Gerard wrote that “The common yellow Daffodilly or Daftodowndilly is fo well knowne to all, that it needeth no deicription.” He also noted with almost a nod that they originally came from Spain.

“The double yellow Daffodill hath fmalf finooth narrow leaues of a darke greene colour: among which rifeth up a naked hollow ftalke, of two hands high: bearing at the top a faire and beautifull double yellow flower…The common yellow Daffodilly or Daftodowndilly is fo well knowne to all, that it needeth no deicription. We haue in our London gardens another fort of this common kinde, which naturallic groweth in Spaine, very like vnto our beft knowne Daffodil in fhape and proportion…” —Gerard’s Herbal 1597

Gerard’s Herbal may be a TPQ for the term, daftodowndilly/ daffodowndilly, not A.A. Milne. Move over Winnie the Pooh! But Milne got it right, when the daffodil arrives, it’s a sure sign of spring. Winter is dead. 

Garden historian, Dr. Twigs Way, who is associated with the Cambridge University, gets it wrong too as she too repeats that Britain also has wild daffodils. She goes on to say “Daffodils… have been seen in England since the 17th century; Shakespeare celebrated them as the flower that “comes before the swallow dares”, and bunches of wild blooms were sold by flower girls on the streets of London.” 

The full Shakespeare quote: “Daffodils/ that comes before the swallow dares, and takes /the winds of March with beauty…”, (Winter’s Tale, Act IV Scene 3), which makes the reference date ca. 1609-11. Too late. Not TPQ.

Dr. Twig’s 17th century reference is too late on the cultural horizon, as by the Elizabethan era, daffodils and asphodels were firmly ensconced, if not entrenched in English literature. Somehow the dubious connection with the asphodel and daffodil ca. the 15th c. isn’t exactly a TPQ either. By the time the Daffodil Society was founded in 1898, the greeny asphodel dominated the decorative arts—especially William Morris’s wallpaper. No, not the wallpaper Oscar Wilde morbidly objected to. (And yes, like Winston, I ended that sentence on a preposition.)

I was reminded that William Carlos Williams wrote: "Asphodel, that greeny flower." I always wondered what the greeny asphodel was. (I was lazy and went to school before internet!) You know how the poets are overfond of death as muse. But Milton said it earlier: “To embathe in nectared lavers strewed with asphodel.” (Comus, 1634). And Tennyson wrote: "Others in Elysian valleys dwell, Resting weary limbs at last on beds of asphodel." 

And somewhere along the way, the similar sounding asphodel and daffodil and their death mythology were conflated with each other. cross colonization. Deep botany as we know it hadn't yet been invented. Asphodelaceae (which includes the red hot poker plant) wasn’t identified by Carl Linnaeus until 1753. Let that sink in.

So here’s the rub, asphodel is a completely separate family that got kicked out of the lily family along with aloe and asparagus by the way. DNA never lies. Allo? Who’s your daddy? And they do look like our New World Oenothera, aka evening-primrose. And there were no less than 10 different species of asphodel on the Iberian peninsula. The yellow ones do look a bit like daffodils if you have a good imagination, or need glasses and hearing aid.

Cleric Robert Herrick, in To Daffodils (1648), described narcissi as portents of death: Fair Daffodils, we weep to see/ You haste away so soon…And of course, By the time Wordsworth wrote his famous 1804 poem, I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, When all at once I saw a crowd/A host, of golden daffodils;/Beside the lake…daffodils were thoroughly naturalized and canonized ad nauseam in English literature.

A teacher asked me for a drawing to go with Wordsworth. I got an epic sunburn in Feb.

Digging deeper, I found a vague reference: “Daffodils were introduced into gardens in about 300 BC. The Greek botanist and philosopher Theophrastus listed and described many of the earliest known kinds of narcissus in his nine-volume 'Enquiry into Plants'. Daffodils were brought to Britain by the Romans who thought that the sap from daffodils had healing powers.” (What? 300 BC? Asphodel or daffodil? Whose gardens? Where?)

I found another plagiarized source: “Narcissi were introduced to the UK in about 300 BC by the Romans who later inexplicably abandoned these blooms.” What? Somebody lifted and condensed  the sentence out of context, replete with the arrival date typo. Now, I’m fairly certain that the Romans had not settled in Britain circa 300 BC. That quote should probably read that in Greece and also in Rome people were cultivating daffodils circa 300 BC. In the Mediterranean, not Britain.

Trying to find out the truth about daffodils from the internet is like trying to sort out whether or not rabbits were brought to southern Britain by the Romans, or if they were introduced later during the Norman Conquest. See, that inexplicable line of logic suggests that daffodils were not introduced to Britain at all by the Romans, but much later. Like the rabbits. It always amazes me that people post nonsense and don’t even verify the basics—like a timeline.

A close-up, Mr. deMille, stabilo, pencil, ca. 1994; original drawing was destroyed.

I tried another approach. DNA. Yep, genetics definitively rules out the possibility of there being any endemic narcissi in Britain (see excerpts from a paper, below). Genetics can measure what is lost in the process of cultivation, and defines Iberia as the homeland of British “wild” daffodils. Iberian narcissi have the most genetic diversity whereas the daffodil cultivars of Britain have a truncated genetic pool. And the answer is daffodils were not introduced by the Romans. Certainly not in 300 BC! 

Also, narcissi weren’t even cultivated until Muslim era ca. the 10th -12th centuries. Etymology Online, footnotes daffodil with: “First reference to the yellow, early spring flower we know by this name (Narcissus pseudo-Narcissus) is from 1590s.” So, I didn’t get my TPQ closure as to when daffodils were introduced to the British Isles, but I can surmise they arrived from Holland somewhere around the 15th to the 16th century, and, as they say, the rest is history. at least the Welsh had enough common sense to not conflate the daffodil with the asphodel and made a leeky simile instead. Ceninn Ped. Happy St. David’s Day.

I was playing with backlighting. These daffodils were miniatures from the supermarket.

GRAUPEL

At the summit of Wilson Hill, 

a pale wing of snow slurried over Chileno Valley, 

turned to graupel, painted my windshield & the road white, 

then melted back into darkness.

And then a stray rainbow 

pointed an accusing finger

at Mt. St. Helena and Sonoma Mountain 

blanketed in snow.

3/1/23

READY OR NOT

         In the name of the bee, the butterfly, the breeze. Amen  

                                                              —Emily Dickinson

Let the wind sough through the tall pines on the crest of the ridge, where if you were to climb their heights, you’d see the ocean rising and falling like a great beast nestled beneath silvered quilts.

Let the sky be filled with storm clouds, may they offer you billowing thunderheads, and cumulus towers painted in pastel hues approaching sunset, so that you can see the tender colors are also part of the process.

Let the seagulls and vultures scavenge on the wind, turn and drift like flotsam. They too are fugitives of the storm, let them bathe your eye in the soft comfort of memory. 

This is their promise so that the birds playing hide-and-seek, will know that there is more to this darkness than indigo seeking the endlessness of imploded stars.

Maybe the dawn will find you seated among the clouds, or even on the shoulders of time. Remember they are always seeking new forms of expression. It too is a form or prayer. 

Watch the snow falling on clement shores, notice it dance with the surf and sea foam—those frothy herds—the horses of the sea god Manannán, my grandmother said. Charon, she said, mind the penny.

Let the amphorae of grief collected under duress, wedged into cold cellars of the heart, or maybe even dark corners of the soul, be catalogued, emptied and scoured clean. Let them be daylighted.

Think of them as cold storage, containment devices, so necessary at the time. But it’s time to break those jars and let it all loose. It is not a case of Pandora’s box. You will survive it.

No need to curate the past, the outcome is the same. It is a vessel, something you collected, then moved on from. It served a purpose and gave you tools. A hammer, a shovel, and a bell.

However flawed, grief is no longer a question waiting to be answered. Notice how the morning sun strikes the distant ridges dressed in snow light, blinding you with beauty.

Remember, whether you’re ready or not, transformation is at hand.

1/3/23 Write On! Susie Terence

Pádraig Ó Tuama developed a writing exercise called a Collect poem, where the poem becomes a homily or credo. See hymns to swear by. This poem prompt was from a David Whyte poem, Winter Grief.

• OH, WIND

Oh, Wind published in Fly Like the Clouds of Time, 2022 California Poets in the Schools Statewide Anthology

Oh, Wind published in Fly Like the Clouds of Time, 2022 California Poets in the Schools Statewide Anthology. Available from CaliforniaPoets.org and Amazon. I was late submitting and didn’t realize it was selected until today’s Zoom reading. I had never read it aloud before. Until today.

And one of my student’s poems was selected for the CPITS newsletter and book announcement. I had ten student poems from four school, selected.

Write invoice for a life past due

1. In the morning my voice feels like a lost horizon, a longshoreman headed for home at daybreak. The sun warming the edges of the ridges to the west. The stars weren’t quite ready to let go of all that indigo serenity. Perhaps the moon is setting, the lump in my throat reminds me to stay in the present tense, this day, this new beginning, is all that there is. Beginning now.

When I was a child, my voice was soft as warbling birds and singing was a second nature. My voice was a thin, reedy wind coming down from the ridgetops, its sighing having emanated deep in the pines. Those sighs followed me, my voice took on the stubbornness of stone, like the layers of ribbon chert laid down long ago beneath the seafloor. All the detritus of living transformed into metamorphic rock, into these mountains I call home.

My voice is closest to the earth, when I dream, because in dreams, my voice becomes the wings of small birds, escaping on the wind as I traverse the landscape of my psyche.

My mother, tired of hearing a child’s monotonous sing-song, told me to either sing or shut up. I love to sing, my voice was like the blackbirds in the cattails lining the pond. So I put it away in a box never letting it out of sight. But my voice wanted to scry on the updrafts and thermals, circling the valley of memory and the past.

Collage fragments

I dream of a child’s whispered prayer, a wild cry in a dead language. I dream of metamorphic rocks and the odor of petrichor. The direction of the sun and the scraps of the old days, bright and blinding. 

That raft of impossible clouds sets sail across the blue sensibility of sky. Only the slender come hither finger of the horizon beckons. That orchestra of light emanating from the clouds at sunset, what I once called the godlight, a celestial hand reaching down from the sky, but one can never see far beyond that first light.

My voice is made of the silence of hallowed bones, and hoarfrost. The fog rallies up like a sleepy dragon from the deep valley. There is no sound of mercy gasping for breath from the hangman’s noose. Other than that of surety and swiftness. I prefer the untamed daughters of laughter, resolution, and memory. An epiphany, the lark singing of the earth.

Today, the currents are relentless, I think of that deep force within, the voice of truth, the undercarriage of justice. I think of the voices of strong women, not born of Adam‘s rib, navigating history without Diogenes’ lantern leading the way. Grasping for traction under the thrashing waves, that gravelly look you get when you’re blinded by the sun and spluttering for air.

An elder of the community, a writer of wisdom, spoke, but you could hear the beginnings of another voice calling him home where there is no tomorrow. What is revealed, what is lost. All there is, is, what is. Will he wait for me at the end of the path?

The muddied track, the work of clay and loam, and flowers wilting in the hot sun. A child’s hand grasping all that fleeting beauty of meadows. The dark void waiting to swallow us up at the end, no transparent workarounds or bribes offered, no star maps other than that of a shaft of godlight at sunset after the storm.

2/25, Patrice Vecchioni, Write your voice

WINTER VIOLETS

WINTER VIOLETS

I admire the winter violets and snowdrops 

that arrive each year, even though no one 

is there to witness them, or to marvel 

at their tenaciousness in the lower garden bed, now

a rampage of weeds, tangle of mint & miner’s lettuce. 

I miss the the lily of the valley, and the tiny daphne, 

a gift from a neighbor. I miss the hoary lavender bush, 

the grey-eared sage that grew by the rusted spigot 

down the hill from the tank, to water the herbs 

that seasoned our dinners and gatherings. Gone.

Even the gnarled rosemary bush, I had sense enough 

to clone, its progeny still cling to the hillside. 

The lavender & rue where she spread pillowcases 

out to dry, they took on the odor of our dreams. 

Pillowcases made of flour sacks, the flour logo, visible 

decades later. I miss those long winter nights 

where we stewed rosy rhubarb stalks with ginger & sugar, 

so tart it made our teeth ache, and me, stirring the pot, 

learning to cook with that hunger of a child’s sweet-tooth.

The scent of violet brings me back to those earliest of days 

where the future was unimagined and unfathomable, 

with only the weak sunlight tending the soul of the garden.

2/22/23 Write On! Terri Glass

AFTER ALL THE LOST HOTELS OF PARIS

Everything is a bargain, but we are always alone, 

and we mourn for those lost boulevards of Paris, 

or the goatpaths of Greece, and the canals of Venice, 

yet another place among many where I’ve never been. 

Lost stars keep sifting through the hourglass of time. 

What finds us is not the keeping of memory that’s at stake,

but it takes it away, asking not what it can do for you 

but what is more than enough for you,

or perhaps it’s all too much to remember.

2/22/23 Write On! Terri Glass

Due rent

Jack Gilbert once said in a poem that the Lord gives everything, then takes it all back again, along with the woman (Linda Gregg), because the rent was too high for our psyches, and that whole memory recollected in tranquility thing bites us on the ass whenever we revisit the past. But it is also filled with bogs of quicksand, where the only rescue is of the self by the self. The easy way out is to not remember at all. So many friends find that memory has already eroded and slipped between the mossy cracks and steppingstones of regret. Things they were so positive they didn’t need to commit to memory—except for the early years. All those first loves, and deceptions, say, a long weekend with your lover, when you said you were with friends—and not where you said you’d be. Perhaps you got busted or tripped up on your own stories. Nothing like clandestine love among the ruins of a society so corrupt, you couldn’t imagine anyone even caring what you did, and with whom. This is all speculative fiction you know. There was no lost weekend, no hotel in Paris where you looked out the balcony toward a future that would never come. You were so impatient, and you could see the light on the horizon, that one that would never arrive, nor would it spin overhead with the wheedling stars. This was long before the corpse of poetry came to visit you. But you’ve never been to Paris, not on a Thursday, or even in the rain. Just those black lines, a deluge on the page, and you’re left wondering when and where the rent is due.

2/22/23 Write On! Terri Glass

LOST INSTRUCTIONS

It’s true I have trouble following basic instructions, even my own. 

Here I am, deviating from the golden shovel exercise, 

as I attempt to excavate the past in order to find some lost words 

let loose in the sugarbowl resting on the sideboard, 

where it sings of the stars, remembering a distant past 

where they dreamed of that lost light gathering like ants,

but they were not seeking an escape, as there is no there there, 

as the poet once said, because memory dictates nonsense 

to itself recollected in tranquility, and we have a little else to do 

but to decode it as best we can, pretend it all makes sense

as we chase our dreams, the only memories we really own.

2/22/23

I’m in Facebook jail again…and again

Let’s see, Facebook threw me in jail for leaving an objective figurative comment on a bad misleading video that was attempting to pass itself off as a real video about finding a bodybag floating at sea. All that drama over some garbage. Why wasn’t the video flagged as it was a fiction that misrepresented the truth? It was also a colossal waste of time to watch, and was, at best, a bad prank. Luckily I could scrub through it. 

I was pretty irritated. So I agreed with another commenter, and added a dicey simile. The prerequisite bimbo on a boat babe, had a nauseating laugh that put shrieking parrots to shame. It seems I am always being called out by Facebook for my figurative use of language. Facebook actually gave me 13 window’s-worth of admonishments. And, I’ve been thrown in jail. A red card jail, the highest award in Facebook-land, I tell you! And, not even for making a pithy political comment. Since when is wanting to “strangle someone’s voice,” considered hate speech or a crime against humanity when the woman’s incessant whining throughout the entire video itself, was a crime against humanity? OK, so maybe it wasn’t completely benign.

 There are Facebook sanctions—and I do mean “sanction” in both terms of the word: certain taboo words, of which, no one knows the complete list, that cannot be used alone. And here’s the clincher—to modify another word, or idea. OK, fine by me. I’ve been sanctioned for going too fast, or liking posts and comments too fast, I’ve been sanctioned for posting my own links on my own page—marked as spam.

And I’ve received multiple yellow card warning sanctions against use the use of unusual figurative language. Only, this time, the card was red. Let the punishment fit the crime. In the klinker for making mixed metaphors. Now the AI sniffer bots scrutinize my every post—like dogs sniffing assholes. See, that’s an example of figurative language. 

What would the Facebook AI bots do if, say, James Joyce was on Facebook? O bhuel. It just means that I have even more time for writing. Let me begin my writing retreat by writing this piece now.

PS Oh, I got even more restrictions for posting my restriction notices on my Facebook page. So I got dinged twice for using the same figurative language once. I’m beginning to think of wearing this badge with honor. 

I won’t tell Facebook that whenever I share an URL on my artist page, I strip all Facebook tracking ID from it as well. Baby steps of revenge.

Fowlish humor of the peacock kind

Roman votive lamp, Museum August Kestner, Germany, Christian Tepper photo

My Facebook friend posted a cool Roman bronze and enamel oil lamp from the 3rd-4th c. AD. And my first naysaying thought was, did peacocks really make it to Rome that early on?

And the answer is unequivocably yes! As I let my fingers troll the starship that is Google, I got far more than I bargained for. I had no idea, for example, that there are three different species of peacocks—and not all are from India. One is from the deepest Congo. Another is from Southeast Asia. They got around. The Wiki entries are practically peacock porn. And they are all flashy, fleshy pheasants, peasant!

Think massive fancyass chicken (or the seriously misnamed Latin American turkey). Junglefowl, all. We are so habituated to barnyard chickens, we tend to forget that they are related to these exotic jungle fowl, or that they are cousins of pheasants.

Pavos paving the way for dinner since the 6th c. BC. Forget all about that enlightenment of the buddhas and the peacock’s myriad eyes. We’re talking over-the-top ostentatious feasts here where the bird was served in its jammies and feathered cloak.

This votive candle from the 3rd to 4th century A.D. was also about the time the Romans imported peacocks to Britain. Imagine the spectacle of those big birds in drag running the countryside. Forget the countryside, imagine peacocks on a tediously long sea voyage screaming help in your ear all the way from Rome. Gives me hysterical, I mean, historical pause, thinking of those over-amped birds scaring the cows and horses, not to mention the natives, who tattooed themselves blue in solidarity.

The first peacocks were brought to the continental United States in 1879, when Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin brought 3 pairs to his San Gabriel Valley ranch in Southern California. (I say continental because in 1860 Frances Sinclair brought them to Kauai’i, the Garden Isle, and from there, they spread to the other islands of Hawaii—which wasn’t yet a state, so that doesn’t count. 

The thought of peacocks in full drag, and those prim Scottish presbyterians dressed in woolen to the neck commingling in the churchyard, is a startling concept. Maybe they thought they saw God in all those eyes. Or maybe it was the pakalolo.) Ancient Hawaiians revered birds as aumakua, or ancestral spirits, and the ruling ali‘i dressed up in feathered capes and helmets. There’s a statue of Princess Kaiulani in Waikiki feeding the peacocks, she was dubbed the peacock princess because she loved them so much. But not everybody loved them. In 2009, after one sleepless night too many in Waikiki, a woman was arrested for clubbing a peacock to death because it wouldn’t shut up. 

Unforseeable music

When I was young, I was asked if I would like to have a piano, and I said no, behind my crocodile tears, I wanted to play so badly, but sadly, I said no because all the piano tuners and musicians I knew were blind. Because I thought you had to be blind in order to become a good pianist, I said no. One of the musicians was Lennie Tristano, the famous jazz musician. I went to school with his son, Steve. And Kent Weaver was the local piano tuner. An early image I have of them is strolling down the low road to Lagunitas, a small country road, arm and arm, with someone who was sighted, leading the way. One time my friend was at a party in a little shack, deep in the woods, the weed was good, but it began to rain on their parade, the shack leaked, and it was too dark to see their way home, so Kent, the blind piano tuner, led the way home by heart.

Sea Hunt, or learning to swim

Of course, I did not do the writing assignment. I was too much of a flibbertigibbet to settle into it. The problem always was that I never admired the celebrities. Somewhere along the way, I had learned avoidance. And so I avoided the writing assignment.

See, we had so many celebrities, mostly musicians, living the San Geronimo Valley with us that I became quickly soured, inured to fame, feeling invaded as they bought up houses, moved in and turned everything upside down with their newfound wealth. As Joan Baez said, a savior’s a nuisance to live with at home.

At an early age, I fell in love with the sea. Lloyd Bridges playing Mike Nelson was my hero, taking us down to the underwater realm in black-and-white, on a neighbor’s old television—when we could get reception, which was iffy. Usually it was electronic snow emanating from the Andromeda galaxy decorating our screens, and the hiss of deep space singing.

Galileo’s birthday

He took up the lute at a young age, his delicate touch, so like the angels, they said. He came into his talent early. His father and brother were court musicians who composed for the king, and also for the birds who gathered on the windowsill each morning. All he ever wanted to do was to play under the warm sun, but the dark chiaroscuro of shadows drew him towards the night’s secrets. He was mesmerized by the parabola of the chandelier as it swung in perfect time to the beating of his heart, and by the poetry of numbers, that pure form leading him away from his medical studies. He told his students it was impossible to understand the world without mathematics. The musical intervals of the lute strings, a divine measurement. The laws of nature are mathematical. They made bets and tossed weights off the tower of Pisa. And the freefall race was on with no clear winners. It seems Aristotle was the loser, something no one wanted to hear. Especially the church. But poverty no sooner slammed one door shut, when another opened in Padua. There was a woman he fancied, they tied a loose lover’s knot punctuated with a son and two daughters, but he never married because the sky beckoned. He turned his telescope on the Milky Way and said there are more stars up there than anyone could possibly imagine. He listened to the music of the spheres, and said the earth was not the center of the universe, shattering the foundations of the known world. And the celestial world was far from perfect: Jupiter had fixed stars. Venus waxed and waned like the moon. The moon was not a translucent pearl, it had holes and craters, for chrissakes. The earth moved, the tides rose and fell with the moon. The spots on the sun were like fertilized eggs. Food for thought. The evidence was clear—Copernicus was right, the earth circled the sun. He named Jupiter’s moons Medicean stars after a student and patron of his, Cosimo of Medci the ruler of Tuscany. But that did not protect him as the church charged him with heresy. The long arm of the Inquisition found him. The earth was the epicenter. And yet it moves, he muttered. Though he could no longer publish or teach, even a lifetime of house arrest did not shake his certainty in a heliocentric universe. He sent his young daughters to a convent where Maria Celeste carried on his studies. He suffered from insomnia, devoutly prayed the seven psalms of penitence daily, but still he went blind from looking too long at the sun. 

2/15/23 weirdly I began this piece on his birthday.

IMAGINE THE STARS

Imagine the stars dancing in the sky, 

dancing, because that is the way of things. 

Because the universe is singing about deep space 

and black holes while Orion hitches up his belt 

and raises his sword to smite another heart.

He strike a blow, because that’s what hunters do. 

It was always about the hunt. Ask Daphne

what bay laurel bursts into song 

whenever she enters the room? 

What clouds gather round the moon 

to be closer to the source? 

All those angels dancing on a pinhead 

have an assignation with the stars.

2/13 with Susie Terence

BONFIRE

The horses crave more than oats, 

the cats crave more than kibble, 

the arroyo willow seeks water 

and will change course to follow it. 

The hawthorne keeps a date with the wee folk

we knew that picking blossoms led to trouble. 

We feared the changelings and built bonfires

while the darkness stripped the cold heart of ice.

2/13 with Susie Terence

ABOVE TIMBERLINE

As I stood alone on the rocky ledge at sunset, 

looking down into the canyon, a thousand feet deep,

the distant sound of water, the steep talus slope

ringing like bells as something above me moved,

and dislodged rocks that fell into the void.

I was stuck, nowhere to go, he stepped into sunlight, 

his white fur glowed with the sun as he eyed me. 

We stood there, for what seemed like an eternity 

as we debated what to do. Each not expecting the other 

in this remotest of places high above timberline 

on the glaciated slopes of Mt Olympus.

I canted back against the warm cliff, 

splayed like a lover as he slipped between my legs. 

I admired his black hooves, his dark eye regarded me, 

as his sharp horns pierced the air.

His soft fur smelled of lichen and moss 

and something wilder as he navigated past my body. 

One false move, and we would both be goners. 

But this longest day wasn’t about facing death. 

It was about emptying the chambers of the heart, 

ridding it of fear so that we may both live another day.

2/13 with Susie Terence

RIP Bliss Buys Cochran

Bliss in Sonoma County, 1982 trying to look corporate.

Bliss Buys Cochran through the ages. I felt it when Bliss passed. I awoke this morning, knowing she was no longer with us. No longer of this earth. The sensation was peaceful, as if she was finally at rest, and more importantly no longer suffering. This shining light, this compassionate rescuer of animals, and all wayward souls.

My deepest condolences to all her friends and to her family. I was blessed to have known her way back in the Sonoma County Stump days, 1979 to 1982. She gave me my first job in the alternative newspaper business because she believed in me, saw something worth cultivating. It surprised me when she said that I was a role model for her, because she was a role model for me. She said she admired my formidable intellect, my drive, and my willingness to get to the essence of things. 

We lost touch, after the Sonoma County Stump folded, we were all jobless. So Simone Wilson and I marched on down to The Paper and insisted they hire us, they were terribly surprised to see us because they were a rival newspaper, but they took us on anyway. Bliss sold ads for The Paper but it didn’t work out so well. Tom Richmond owed her money and didn’t want to pay up, so he fired her. He tried to fired us too, but to his chagrin, we refused to be fired.

And then Bliss later went onto what she appropriately described as the corporate soulessness of the Press Democrat to sell ads— complaining that she couldn’t even wear pants, she had to wear nylons, and this was in the late 1980s. Eventually she took over an antiques newspaper, which led her to Mendocino, and to Gualala, where she met her husband, sailor and musician Jim Cochran, and they sailed off to Mexico in a sailboat, where they settled in San Carlos, and lived for 16 years.

Jim Cochran said: March 17, 1989 was the day we met in  Petaluma, CA at the Irish Pub there. We split the last corned beef and cabbage dinner they had. We felt it was a lucky day for us. We timed all our big decisions for St. Pat's Day after that... and it worked. Right now, I just try to concentrate on what is right in front of me and deal with it. There will always be time for sorrow in the future..

Bliss Cochran, watercolor by Jim Cochran, 1991

Not only did they sing together, and produce an antiques guide for the western United States, but she also rescued animals from the streets of Sonora, rehabilitating, and finding homes for them. If there is a rainbow bridge, surely it is crowded and in danger of capsizing with all the animals that she rescued.

Bliss and I lost touch, but we found each other again on Facebook. And then out of the blue, we reconnected with each other a few years ago when I was reading for the Petaluma Poetry Walk. We spent a few days together at her son, Jay’s house in Petaluma, we drank a lot of wine and I collected some of her oral history, always expecting to go back and finish it. See my blog post. Bliss Buys remembers (oral history) Sonoma County

When I first heard the news that Bliss had a stroke, I literally could not sleep the entire night. I hadn’t heard from her on Facebook for a few days and I had a bad premonition so I went to her page and discovered that she had had a stroke, probably exacerbated by the cancer treatment. Something similar happened to my mother, the chemo gave her a heart attack.

In a perfect world I would have jumped on a plane and come visit. But I can’t. Teaching obligations, and no passport. I want to say to her son, Jay, thank you for being there. You were central to her universe, a shining star, even way back when during the Sonoma County Stump days. I remember seeing you, a small boy quietly playing in the Stump office. I need to stop now before I weep.

Bliss was a central figure in the back to the land movement, and lived at Morningstar, Wheeler Ranch, and Open Lands. She was a progressive thinker, like her Stump business partner Joe Leary, she was always looking at holistic alternatives to the watered-down Americana experience that was not meeting her needs. In 1992 she went to Cuba, something I didn’t know, otherwise, I would have interviewed her more on it. We kept thinking there was more time.

She was always asking when I was coming down San Carlos to visit her. I kept thinking, soon. Soon. But then, the pandemic. And now she’s gone, but she is still also with us as well. I am sure she is still playing in the band she founded, Angel Wings, playing to a full house on Cloud Nine.

Her hospital bills have been enormous, and there is a GoFundMe page. https://gofund.me/3b130367

Animal Rescuer Extraordinaire Now Needs Rescue

Bliss Cochran has lived in San Carlos, Sonora, Mexico for sixteen years. Eleven years ago she took in her first rescue, a battle-scarred little dachshund found alone on a remote road. Since then she has worked closely with animal rescue organizations in San Carlos, Guaymas and Empalme, while fostering small breed dogs and puppies in her condo and raising donations for local animal rescue groups. A portion of her social security check paid for pet food, veterinarian expenses, and transport for animals to their new homes. Most of her San Carlos friends are people who either brought her homeless animals or adopted one of her fosters. She considers animal rescue the most meaningful work she has done in her life

A week ago, Bliss was diagnosed with rectal cancer. She was shocked and frightened but decided to go ahead with treatment, which will involve staying in a city two hours’ drive from home and receiving daily outpatient radiation and chemotherapy. The treatment is costly, and she does not have insurance. In addition to renting an AirBNB, she must pay out of pocket for all medical services, nursing, and medicine. After years of raising funds to save animals, she needs help herself.

Bliss begins therapy in four days. Although 80 years old, she has an excellent chance of recovery—the cure rate for this type of cancer is said to be about 90 percent. The hospital is one of the best in Northern Mexico, with great doctors, and she feels confident that all will be well, but she needs your assistance. There are still so many more animals in the community that need loving homes, and she just wants to get back to her passion of saving dogs and cats.

To see this page on Facebook with additional photos, go to: https://www.facebook.com/100063475633095/posts/658266872965828/

Califia, warrior queen

Someone on Facebook made a big fuss about Califia, the Amazonian warrior queen that California is named after, as being black. And I was off and running. I said, yes, she was called a black Amazonian warrior queen. But it’s complicated. Also, the term black wasn’t used quite the same in the 15th c. as it is now. Anyone dark-skinned or of another faith was referred to as black, even Levant Arabs, Moors, Egyptians, Touaregs, the Kush/Habesha. (In Spain, it could also be interpreted as a metaphor for a non-Catholic, therefore a pagan with a stained black soul.)

The reference is not always a straightforward reference to Black Africa, or Black America (a different kettle of fish) because the Maghrebine Amazigh (indigenous North African Berbers who’ve lived in North Africa and the Canary Islands since the Holocene), are often referred to as Moors, which also complicates things. The word Moor comes from Latin “Maurus,” later referred to the pre-Arab Berbers (sometimes also called Algerians, Lybians, Tunisians, or Tuareg) from the 3rd c. BC Roman province of Mauretania, which included Morocco and beyond), but later, the term also referred to those with dark skin! Yikes! 

Tulips pastel (NOT) published on Spring Spectrum blog (art)

Don Campbell just published my old tulip pastel as well as the extra heart pastel that I included called, believe in love on his Spring Solution Spectrum blog. It’s nice to get my old art work out into the world, rather than languishing on the hard drive. The digital world gives my old art a new life. There’s a lot more work over on my art blog as you like to go visit it.

Don took the blog down. Unpublished just like that.

MINING OUR WORDS

We find ourselves trapped in the naked ordnance of words. 

We name them, a siren call to arms, where we mine and render

those daunting descriptions of our lives, and reexamine them

like mica and fool's gold, leaving us starstruck and bereft.

A problem arises, traipses its tainted talents across the sky, 

and we quiver, all washed down to bone and marrow, 

truculent, all tangled up in this caustic tempest we call art.

As writers we fail as best we can, we fail magnificently. 

There is no unexamined nuance unworthy of tomorrow.

2/8/23 Write On! Terri Glass 

Driving fragments between bouts of haiku

Driving the back roads to work, we retain some connection with humanity as we wave to each other for small courtesies, whether letting someone else go first at the stopsign, or the way we carefully thread our way around the guy walking down the road. Keeping humanity alive on the back roads.

Swerving storm potholes, I also swerved to avoid a red tail hawk eating his breakfast of jackrabbit right in the middle of the road.

A raffle of wild turkeys turn a sinister desoleil in the pasture. The toms strutting their stuff. Sometimes they insist on doing their dance right in the middle of the road. Why was it OK for the BLM to release wild turkeys in California and yet try to kill off all the wild horses? Both having disappeared from the landscape during the Pleistocene Era. 

Clearly it’s a case of what’s good for the goose is not good for the gander. Why is one species once native to California, being extirpated, when the other clearly is not native? These obnoxious Texas turkeys have no real predators—even the coyotes avoid them. They attack people walking down the street, and have declared war on folks waiting at bus stops or picnicking in the park.

Horses and turkeys were once both native to North America at the same time. But the native California oscillated turkeys went extinct along with the horse. The only ameliorating factor is the wild turkeys didn’t completely disappear from North America. Just from California. 

So we are being held hostage by a population explosion of snarky Texas hold-em up turkeys because the BLM said so. And I'm sure revenue for hunting licenses sweetened the deal. Meanwhile the BLM continues to round up the wild horses. Wish they'd round up the damned turkeys too while they're at it.

AFTER THE STORM haiku

AT THE KOA CAMPGROUND 

Canada geese take
a spa day in the runoff 

ditch after the storm.

ADAMANTINE LIGHT

The sun burns the eye

reflected in the puddles

of a thousand fires.

2/6/23

PAST THE LAKE

The cursory notes 

of a black bird still singing 

in my memory.

2/6/23

AFTER THE STORM

After slaloming 

so many potholes the road 

crew offers respite.

2/6/23

SINE CURVE 

I swerve to avoid 

a redtail hawk brunching on

a rabbit in the road.

2/6/23

SIREN CALL

Anxiety is 

an ambulance careening

down the road of regret.

2/8/23

Learning to sing at 70

My former partner was a musician with seemingly perfect pitch, his whole identity caught up in being a folksinger, which left a little room for me to sing. Though he didn’t actively discourage me from participating, he didn’t seem to want anyone to mess with his gig. 

So I became the dog's body. The roadie. I was the one who did all the background stuff from advertising, and social media, to CD design to booth and merchandise design. And I was the one who researched the music, designed the jacket, bought, burned and printed all his CD media as well. I made thousands of CDs over the course of 20 years. We sold them at Highland games for petty cash, they never fully paid for themselves. 

The problem is of course, was that folks were no longer buying CDs. They wanted to download everything—which changed our relationship to being able to make any money at all off of the music. CD Baby was a good idea whose time came and went. No one wanted to buy a business card with a code for a downloadable album.

Most Highland Games don’t pay unknown artists to perform. Neil found it was difficult to break into the game because established musicians were holding down their respective coveted stages, including Alex Beaton who was instrumental at establishing folksingers at the Highland games. But Neil was lucky in that he was hired to be an emcee at a few games. Especially for the Las Vegas Highland Games. But that fee barely covered the cost of travel across the state.

But we were valiant and determined. We began small, closer to home with the Pleasanton Games, and Arbor Day in Fremont. I enjoyed those days traveling up and down the coast to Ben Lomond, Seaside, Pomona, Costa Mesa, Preston, Arizona, and Enumclaw in Washington—even across the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas. I grew to love visiting the desert in spring. I liked being a booth wench and belonging to the Scottish culture circus of a larger roadie family we were all part of. 

Musing on mallows (photos)

Abutilon ssp., Indian mallow, wild cotton—but the shiny leaf is wrong—a Hybridum? 
I searched the web to credit the photographer, nope. Oldest v. was 2021. From Facebook.

An old friend from the Cazadero days, Marc Nassar, now living in Lisbon, posted a photo of a gorgeous globe mallow of sorts on Facebook. In his author photo, he wears a T-shirt that proclaims, in art we trust. He often posts images of pure beauty. 

So I often leave comments on his page, in part, to acknowledge the post, a habit of acknowledging the other, developed during the height of the pandemic when we were all so isolated from each other. But I also cannot resist the fleeting tangibility of beauty. (See Breakfast of campions.)

We stumbled upon each other on Facebook via old photos I had posted of a poetry reading, ca. 1998 at Marc’s house in Cazadero, of poets Mike Tuggle, Jim Dodge and Elizabeth Herron—this, after decades of isolation. It was something like 2 to 3° of separation, but Facebook often works in mysterious ways, telescoping time and distance into time present.

Weak bladder, strong mind

I had a rather sodden thought while sorting laundry: Nothing worse than your bladder thinking of giving it all up for Jesus by baptizing the floor. 

It literally was a line that came to me unbidden. I grabbed it before it escaped into the void. I dictated it to my iPad, knowing full well that I wouldn’t remember it by the time I got the laundry in the machine and back upstairs again. Besides when the Gods of Poetry hand you a line, albeit dubious, you don’t ask questions.

To be clear, I didn’t actually pee on the floor. It’s just I had to go while I was trying to gather up the laundry and there was a maddening sound of running water, which imbued an incredible sense of urgency on my bladder. A line of poetry that came quickly and unbidden, and I just snagged it before I forgot it. Now forgetting things is a whole ‘nother conversation. All those ideas you think you’re gonna remember? Yeah, no. 

When I was young, my grandmother and my aunts used to turn the tap water on, to make me go to the bathroom, I guess I dawdled too much, the aunts were always complaining that I wouldn’t go in public bathrooms. Still true to this day, the sound of running water is tricky. And aging out doesn’t help.

Part of it is the party panic syndrome, my grandmother could not make it out the front door without having to run back into the bathroom, even though she had just gone. Something about crossing the lintel and going out into the world wreaked havoc with her bladder. The poor thing had a children and botched episiotomy, so it’s understandable. And she always said, it’s better to have a weak bladder than a weak mind.

Lockdown drill (Uvalde)

Yesterday, during poetry class, there was a a lockdown drill, we hid under our desks waiting for it to be over, thankful it was just a drill. Utter silence. #Uvalde

I couldn’t help but think how similar this was to preparing for the atomic bomb in the 1950s. I told the kids how we could under our desks covering our necks and eyes from the fallout. This time we are hiding from potential gunman. Uvalde in Berkeley. The teacher locked the door, and we could hear someone rattling the door knob  to get it open. My heart stopped, even though I knew it was a drill.

Normally the school sounds like a big beehive with all the kids buzzing in their classrooms and on the playground. During the drill there was utter silence. Silence equals life. Sound equals death. I couldn’t fit all the way underneath the coffee table with one student, my legs and feet hanging out, my red boots like sirens. Or pooled blood.

Atmospheric Storm #10 arrives

The problem with being wakened by relentless rain hammering the roof during the dead hours, is that now it is a dark, dark dawn, and I needs must sleep. The rain was hammering the roof so hard, it was enough to wake all the dead orcs and trolls trapped in the salt mines. And now I am drop-dead tired. It is difficult to mine sleep, and it is even more difficult to get a jump-start on your day when you are purgatorially half asleep, even after downing a flask of tea. Is it the dead hours, or the witching hours? Those hours nearest 4 AM, the witching hours of gamers and whores calling it a night. Those zombie hours at the tail end of the night and a staccato of rain arrives in torrents hammering the tin roof with its dark hooves.

Seeking the green comet

Comet Kahoutek ready for its close-up, 1973. Trust me, it never looked this good.

I must confess that when I saw Comet Kohoutek it was underwhelming. Kohoutek, aka C/1973 E1, was heralded with much fanfare as the Comet of the Century. Kohoutek turned out to be little more than a faint streak passing by Venus, low on the horizon at sunset. The underwhelming comet was so faint that it looked like a bug smear on the windscreen. 

During the dog days of summer of 1973, we trekked up the mountain and lined up along the Bolinas Ridge Road to pay homage to the celestial event. It was a good excuse as any to drink, or light up while staring directly into the setting sun. If you got lucky, you got to see the green flash at sunset. More like purple spots in front of your eyes from staring too long at the sun.

Kohoutek was nothing to crow about, its name, or rather the name of the astronomer (who was looking for a different comet), means rooster in Czech. Unfortunately Kohoutek became synonymous with spectacular disappointment.

The comet was thought to have originated somewhere in the Oort cloud. Whether it was of this solar system, or from the next galaxy over, no one knows, but Kahoutek was much smaller than Halley’s Comet, aka 1P/Halley, which looked like a bit of cotton lint on your lens. At least it was visible in the dark sky if you knew what to look for. 

One night I was driving up Guerneville Road from Santa Rosa after a poetry reading, I thought I had something in my eye. Then I noticed a bit of fluff was on my windscreen. Forgetting that it was Halley’s Comet, I pulled over to clean my window, looked up and then realized it was the comet. 

I thought of how my grandmother saw this same comet in Ireland, as it visits our galaxy our every 75–79 years. For a moment we were united in time. My grandmother said that Halley’s Comet was bright. A wonder to behold. Of course it was, there was less light pollution in those days, especially in Ireland.  Somehow, I don’t think I will be around for Halley’s fly-by visit in 2061.

Comet Hale-Bopp was the Big Bopper of comet sightings, April 1997

At least Comet Hale-Bopp C/1995 O1 put on a good show. One of the comet’s discoverers, a backyard amateur astronomer, Alan Hale was tracking the night sky from his driveway in New Mexico. Meanwhile, Tom Bopp was hanging out with friends in the Arizona desert and saw something fuzzy in the sky. He didn’t even own a telescope. Apropos of having two backyard discoverers, the Comet Hale-Bopp had two, maybe three tails. It didn’t know whether it was coming or going. But it was spectacular. 

We cheered it on that April foolish night in 1997 when it outshone itself. I was teaching poetry at Alexander Valley School and the night sky was stunning as the Milky Way wheeled its way across the sky. Even the moon didn’t put a dent in its beauty. The comet was probably first sighted in 2215 BC, in Egypt, dubbed the nhh-star, or the hairy star that accpmpanied the soul of the last pharaoh. The thing about comets is they’re like a bad penny, they’ll come around again. Hopefully the pharaohs will stay put.

Comet Hyakutake C/1996 B2, another backyard discovery in Japan, shone bright for about a week, but couldn’t hold a torch to the staying power (18 months) of that two-tailed Comet Hale-Bopp, the Big Bopper of the comet kingdom. That was the year we read poetry with Bill Moyers to a packed house in Sonoma. I was starstruck driving back to Forestville, I thought that was the epicenter of poetry. But the comet following me home was the brightest thing in the sky.

I guess none could surpass the most famous comet of antiquity, Caesaris astrum, or Sidus Iulium, dubbed Caesar’s deification star, it was considered to be the soul of Caesar, with its whopping eight tails. It was so bright that it appeared during the day right in the middle of the Ludi Victoriae Caesaris festival—right after Caesar was assasinated in 44 BC. Apparently Caesar’s grand-nephew, Augustus Caesar rode the tail of that comet to launch his own meteoric career, and issued a coin of Caesar with his rising star. 

Caesar's Comet coin, with an eight-rayed star and its flaming tail pointing upward

The court poets went nuts. Virgil wrote that the diefied star of Caesar has appeared to gladden the fields. "Never did fearsome comets so often blaze." Ovid went way over the top, and said Venus “took up the newly freed spirit of her Caesar from his body, and preventing it from vanishing into the air, carried it towards the glorious stars.” Calpurnius Siculus mutteted something under his breath and predicted that trouble was brewing in Rome. Ya think?

Who remembers the brief bright shining moment of Comet Neowise C/2020 F3 hanging off the Big Dipper? We may have been all collectively howling from Mill Valley to Mozambique at sunset, but I don’t think many of us were looking up into the night sky during the height of the COVID quarantine. We were afraid to go outside. Not even a plane in the sky. I think we all thought it was the end of the world as we knew it. But the Milky Way never looked so good.

Comet Neowise, July 20, 2020. But we were all in hiding with our heads in sand.

This time I didn’t even bother looking for the green comet with its nameless handle, Comet C/2022 A2 (Pan-STARRS) as I’ve been disappointed before by Kahoutek, K2, and co. Every comet I’ve ever seen hovers in the sky, it doesn’t stretch out and spread tail feathers across the sky like in the simulations. I couldn’t see the green comet when I looked for it, but when I was driving home the other night, I noticed something greenish flaring in the sky and I pulled over, thinking maybe I had seen the comet. 

Well, my eyes are no longer so good, so it was hard to tell. I got out a monocular lens to see if that would help. I found that my naked eye was more reliable than the monocular lens. I could see the Pleiades, Cygnus, not to mention the Gazelle Leaps. And there was some hanky-panky going on with Venus and Jupiter on the western horizon. I did not find the green comet with the lens, every breath I took sent the stars scattering across the sky like a a racked-up break and run in a game of pool. No dice, I guess it’s not easy being green.

But while I was busy searching the sky somewhere below Orion‘s kneecaps for the comet, suddenly to the north, a string of lights went galloping across the firmament like pearls. I was witnessing the spectacular SpaceX train headed east. I was both delighted and horrified at the same time, thinking of all the massive pollution and space debris that we have littered the sky as well as planet earth.

2/2/23 Mill Valley non-fiction workshop with Sarah Broderick

2/19/23

I tried to look up a star map to see if I could find more information and the rather unhelpful SpaceX site says I couldn’t see them in the sky, but I sure did. There were a lot of them, and they just kept coming. They were going from west to east in a slight curve in the northern sky. It was very cool to see them, but the whole concept makes me very uneasy. And I can’t help but think how we’ve littered the sky with even more space debris  And then I think what an egotistical schmuck Elon Musk is. #Conflicted

Found it! Find StarLink

past) 6:50 pm, 9 Feb 2023

Starlink-70 (G5-3) (new), DIM (3.3) for 5 mins 

Look from WEST to NORTHEAST (details) 

Elevation (from horizon): start: 10°, max: 35°, end: 27°

Before the storm

As I drove down Hicks Valley Road at dusk, three flocks of starlings converged over me, accompanied by the first drops of rain falling on my car roof. It was astounding to see hundreds of starlings murmurate overhead. I stopped my car right in the middle of the road to watch them pulse and bend and weave a dark curtain overhead. The bursting of their wings as they moved in unison was like ocean waves, or a gust of roaring wind in the pines. I thought: wow, such big drops of rain, the beginning of the storm. Only in this case, I found out it was a shitstorm. Literally. My car was splattered in birdshit, as if the storm clouds had taken up fingerpainting on my windshield.

AT THE END OF THE PANDEMIC

At the end of summer, the grass bends 

and leans towards its own sorrow, 

a tawny mantle draped across the hills, 

like a fine shawl for the coming winter. 

It waves and ripples in the wind, a girl 

letting down her long braids. Time and distance 

crenelated with longing and endless desire.

Sorrow is plaited and woven into the dregs 

of grief and forgetfulness. But summer 

is getting longer. The earth's thirst. We are left 

with unquenched distances opening into a void, 

where the small ghosts of our hands 

push back the future, keeping it at bay, 

dressed in the castoffs of desire and longing 

for a time that may never come. We tailor

time to fit into the crammed closets of the past, 

to find a home among the orphaned shoes 

and detritus we defend and hold onto. 

And yet in the dark, we want to own that bright eye 

of the sun lingering on the cusp of the horizon, 

until the pangs of an unimaginable future become

an iron fist squeezing the ventricles of the heart.

2/1/23 Imbolc, Write On! with Terri Glass