Still waiting for the release date of The Etruscan Smile

 

Still waiting for the release date of The Etruscan Smile....here’s the trailer. You can see Neil in the party scene to the right of Brian Cox, out of focus, Look for the white hair. I think that me standing sideways to the right of Neil.

• On the set of Etruscan Smile

AFTER THE STORM

AFTER THE STORM

Lost by the side of the road
A pair of flightless gloves
The color of bluejay wings.

Each new pot hole
Waits like a hungry bird
To pierce a tire.

On my way to work
I crossed three watersheds
Marveling how water
always seeks its own level.

Trees take on new angles a possibility.
It’s a race against gravity.
And we know gravity always wins.

The bright green promise of grass
Beguiles the eye with false allegations of spring
while herons wade along the clement shores
of new lagoons.

2/28/2019

I made a new art blog

I made a new blog, Maureen Hurley Art, to showcase some of my most recent art. Two new blogs in as many months, not counting another blog I made in December. A friend wants me to create an Etsy account and begin selling my work. So this is a stopgap. I may backfill with earlier art at another time. My artwork is lost in this massive blog. I’ve  managed to post most work when it was created, but when I post the older work, I’ll be lucky to get the year correct. Work is posted by month and by medium. As the river crests, during the record-breaking Pineapple Express storm that threatens to rival the 1986 Valentine’s flood, I am surrounded by floodwater. Massive slides, multiple road closures, the only way out is through art. So below is today’s offering, a pastel of  the Nicasio Reservoir from the spillway side.

Driving West County Roads

Driving West County roads in the dark was a nightmare—backroads were impromptu creekbeds. I hit a few water walls, watusied & forded a few new streams. Rural driving skills, no longer dormant.

Two pastels, Elephant Mountain

Two pastels, Nicasio oak & rock

Chalk pastel. I usually work wet, so this is a learning curve.

Oil pastel, same place, same day, different mediums.

Channeling the clouds on Elephant Mountain

This morning the mountain was completely enveloped in fog. It was a transcendental experience watching the lake emerge from the flat planes of the pewter mist, and the myriad possibilities of fog and light emerge and recombine minute by minute. I never grow tired of watching it. Why did I never find the time to seek out and observe such beauty? It fair takes my breath away. It seems I am channeling the master cloud painters Frangonard, Watteau and Turner—with the clouds posing like that.

Black/Elephant Mountain is made of Franciscan strata and pillow lava, volcanic extrusions from under the sea—a child of the San Andreas Fault. Meanwhile, down the valley, in the distance, I could hear the call of a flock of Canada geese on the move, and a cow bawling for her errant calf. The cacophany of wild geese grew nearer—They were accompanying a lone bicyclist, blithely unaware that the wild geese gods were overhead protecting him on that empty stretch of road. The redtail hawks are flying low, zoning in on the chickens that are digging for worms in the pasture. A flash of red against the green grass, and the intense yellow of mustard. Somewhere, just out of sight, the bald eagle is circling. Leaping bass make concentric coinage on the surface of the lake. Grebes bob on the ripples, tree swallows crochet the air. I may be living somewhat feral existence well out of my comfort zone, but I am doubly blessed when it comes to a matter of light and fog on a lake at dawn.

The bicyclist and his entourage of wild geese.
They followed him all the way around the lake.

A bird and a half a day. Cats and bird deaths—an inflated fact?

Photographer friend Jerry Downs posted a lovely photo of an orange spotted housecat sitting on a car hood enjoying a rare bit of sunshine during an otherwise bleak and rainy week. And of course someone had to go and spoil it all by stating how every single outdoor cat was responsible for 500+ songbird deaths in North America. (To the tune of  3.6 million birds a day, or 1.3 billion birds a year). A bird and a half a day per cat? Do the math. Who comes up with this stuff?

To wit, I replied—The cat bird-kill statistic is somewhat inflated....that would be something like a bird and a half per day per cat. I don’t think so. Besides, not all free roaming house cats kill birds. In fact, most pet cats are clumsy lummoxes. Easy targets like lizards and mice run in front of their noses and they hardly know what to do with them. They’re not the ferocious hunters they’re cracked up to be. Besides the males (he’s orange, therefore, has an 80% chance of being male) rarely, if ever, hunt.

Since the 1970s, most of the bug population too has plummeted—especially butterflies and bees. Birds eat bugs and pesticide-laden seeds and other birds. They are apex predators. But when it comes to bird deaths, people’s free range pet moggies are unfairly bearing the brunt—convenient scapegoats for all the bird deaths. 

We’ve also systematically killed off or destroyed most of the wild birds’ natural habitat, and also their predators—from kestrels and hawks to cougars and bobcats to foxes, coyotes and wolves— which was never factored in on the annual estimated bird population death counts. 

Instead look to climate change, bird habitat loss, exposure to chemicals, fertilizers, insecticides, and collisions with man-made objects—from cell towers, windmills, airplane engines to cars and windows. A billion birds a year die from colliding with windows. Human impact (and the continued use of pesticides) is the real threat" to songbirds.
 

That said, I’m not for vast colonies of feral cats. They don’t belong here. They should be eradicated. But when someone’s pet moggie sitting outside on a car hood enjoying a spot of sunshine, being held responsible by proxy for massive bird deaths, is a bit over the top. Talk about killjoy.

RARE SNOWFALL, IMBOLC

After the rain, A surprise snow, it’s 36 degrees—
not cold enough for snow to stick in the valleys
but all the ridges are dressed in white.
Well it did snow anyway, through the night.
But this morning, not a trace,
even though the temperature dropped to 24º.
A friend who lives in sonwcountry scoffs,
says, barely cold enough for a jacket.
Black ice on the car. Traces of fallen snow—
clumps on the windshield archived in ice.
Driving north on Wilson Hill Road, today—
Geyser Peak and Mt. St. Helena,
all the peaks of the greater Bay Area
are grizzled white with snow.

2/4/19, rev 2/4/20
from a Facebook post
It got so extensively revised, I moved it to a new post.
Snow in West Marin

BLACK ICE & GRAUPEL two haiku

Black ice on the car. 

Traces of fallen snow—

clumps on the windshield 

archived in ice.

Driving north on Wilson Hill Road—

Geyser Peak and Mt. St. Helena 

grizzled white with snow.

Their lovely sparseness was eradicated when I turned it into a poem

• RARE SNOWFALL, IMBOLC

I have a Blogger stalker

Dear cerebellum, get a life
Quit stalking me.
If you don’t like my blog,
don’t read it.
So simple!
Move along now.
Nothiing to see here.

NATAL WATERSHED

NATAL WATERSHED

Like the returning salmon, I only feel at ease

when I return to my natal watershed.

The moment I cross the rise over the Tomales Bay watershed.

I let go of my tight breath, and sigh. I know I am home.

The farmlands rise up to greet me like old friends.

Without judgement, without frame, 

the convolutions of road, space and time 

take me back to a place when anything was possible—

even love.

1/31/19

Black morph hawk (photos)

I disturbed a hawk who was eyeing the La Franchi freerange chickens in the field across from the Nicasio Reservoir. Somehow I don’t think the Alsatian guard dogs will be able to keep this fellow at bay. What kind of hawk, it’s like a Mexican hawk, brown all over. Cooper’s hawk comes to mind. Not a red tail. Darker. Not striped, so not a red shouldered hawk, more like a red tail hawk, but melanistic. There are several dark hawks along Nicasio reservoir. I have many photos of them. He was upset with me because I was too close to him—and his  coveted chickens....he turned around on his post to give me a baleful stare. If looks could kill. I was shooting from inside the car but clearly that didn’t fool him. He stood his ground. Geoff Davis said, Yearling redtail—only ONE stripe on tail feathers, immature and hungry and been wet. I thought maybe his fishing expedition failed, and he was trying his luck in greener pastures.

Fort Worden Centrum summer writing conference, 1979

Fort Worden Centrum Writers Conference, 1979—with thanks to Jim Heynen

Jim Heynen posted a Facebook photo of the Fort Worden Centrum summer writing conference, from 1979. It was before my time there but the stories from that conference were still circulating in 1980 when Sharon Doubiago, Leonard Cirino, Susan Abbott, Tobey Kaplan and I crashed the Writers Conference in 1980.

The photo evoked such memories. I wrote to Jim: Ah, Sam Hamill with his curly red mop (I have a photo of him from the 1980 conference), and Bob Hass as a longhair. Migod, Levertov, and Kumin. Robert Bly was born old? We were all reading Thomas McGrath’s Imaginary Letters during those years. A hero of mine. What a handsome man. Can’t believe Bly was a belligerent asshole to Tom (hahaha). Shocked! Simply shocked, I am. We heard about that embroglio when we attended in 1980. And something about the baseball story with Levertov.... I don’t remember any of the details.

Tree Swenson and Kathleene K West. I miss her. Ever the chameleon—she said she reinvented herself every ten years. She was kind to me, got me on the Montana Poets in the schools roster. We reconnected on Facebook right before her death....I had no idea she was in such anguish. She sold me her old cellphone for $15 but never cashed the check—its name was Gravity. I deleted her pictures of New Mexico, thanked her for the phone, then I heard the news.

Jim Heynen replied: Mo, I guess Bly was actually quite good in his workshops, but he tormented McGrath during McGrath's reading by yelling from the audience, "Read the Tomasito poems!  Read the Tomasito poems!"  McGrath finally addressed him firmly with, "Patience, Robert.  Patience."
At a social event, Bly insulted Levertov by telling her she was being too hard on people in her workshops.  She started weeping and came to me, exclaiming "What a horrible man!"  But Levertov had no tear ducts to shed the tears she was feeling--so her eyelids just bulged and got red.  Another tidbit: Bob Hass was reluctant to come and teach a workshop because, he said, "I don't know how to do it."  Then he did a great job.  One exercise was having participants do an exact imitation of a poem they liked--the same number of syllables per line, and accented and unaccented syllables exactly as the original.

I told Jim, thanks for the backstory. I was standing with Tess Gallagher and Ray Carver, as they, and others were recounting the stories, which became interwoven with ours...a mythos of sorts.

I only remember vague fragments of the infamous Levertov story of baseball players, drunken writers conference parties and the dropping of the f-bomb. And something about Kumin too that made the gossip train too. The stories that survived.

Where am I?

Someone posted a quote from The Prisoner.

I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own!

I am painfully reminded of all the cool places in Wales to visit, my ex partner’s sister dragged us to the fake village where The Prisoner was filmed. I was fit to be tied and asked W H Y with many question marks. We were there for six hours—it was truly a life sentence. The unanswerable questions arise. Questions are a burden to others; answers a prison for oneself. 

Be seeing you, Number Six.

iPad dictation fail

A case of iPad dictation fail!

My iamb having number.
I was in about an hour.

About the only useful thing I can say is at least it wasn’t in imbic pentameter.

DELUGE

DELUGE

Last night’s storm pounded
like a desperate drunk at the door,
and left potholes the size of Shetland ponies.
The Laguna leapt its banks,
and kayaks decorate the new shoreline,
a vast inland sea, a river road
drowning the oaks,
leaving cattle stranded on new islands.
I saw ravens bathing in temporary lakes
in the horse pastures.
Trees and garbage bins bowed
to the untamed gods of wind and rain
while the earth shakes its mantle
like a wet dog at the fire.
They say last night Mary Oliver died.
Today is the anniversary of my former love,
John Oliver Simon’s death. Goodnight sweet prince,
The magic realm of a year and a day
is greeted by bales of hay sprouting green crewcuts,
and fields of young mustard is nodding
their golden mantles to the returning sun.

1/17/19

Learning woes, continued, no math whiz, I

I was, and still am a disaster in math, unless money is owed, or if I need to frame some art, then I’m sharp as a tack. My math teacher, Archie Williams was one of a handful of positive teachers I had at Drake High School. Did I learn foundations of algebra? No. 

But I held his Olympic medal in my hand and learned about Hitler and racism in America. I loved and adored Archie. I hated how disrespectful the class was. Joey Doyle’s spitwads and Rodney Warnerhoff’s rubber band missiles and lame paper airplanes. A sign of the times. 

I remember Archie, who was also a former Tuskegee pilot, picking up one of those failed paper airplanes scribbled with bad math homework from the floor and turning it into a teaching moment. He refolded the plane, gave it a bent nose, and talked about aerodynamics— lift, force, and thrust. Then let loose the plane that sailed like a hungry gull in the late afternoon classroom. 

Was he also delving into geometry? Probably. Like I said, we got much much more than foundations of algebra with Archie. I wrote about Archie many times. I can’t say the same for my other high school teachers.

“My ab-fab foundations of algebra teacher, the late, great Archie Williams was a real Olympic champion. Archie won the 400-meter race. I got to hold his Olympic gold medal. I sucked at math, but Archie was the kindest, gentlest mentor I ever had. Not his fault that math didn't take. Oh, but the stories he told us, of winning the Olympics, of running with Jesse Owens, and meeting Hitler. At 13, we hardly knew who Hitler was, but we held that same gold medal that Hitler bequeathed to Archie. Archie was a a man who broke world records, and race barriers.” Olympic Pride, American Prejudice 

During the 1990s, I had to take the CBEST test and, as expected, I passed the literature aspect with flying colors. I utterly failed the math portion, but I expected that, no surprise there. So, I began my retro homework in earnest with third grade math workbooks, as that’s where I fell off the learning wagon, the year I learned to read. A year of either, or—not both. I clearly did not operate on the proscribed learning timeline. I was madly marching off to my own drummer. I was gifted at art, something that was of no value within our culture. Education had failed me. Writing would come much later.

Determined to pass the CBEST, I had notions of becoming a certified teacher in those days, I worked my way through those old math workbooks. My head hurt in new places, and I literally cried my way up to the sixth grade level. Then, because I was stuck, I found a woman tutor on Craigslist, who was getting her MA in math and needed a guineapig for her dissertation. She was fascinated by my quirkiness, as I was pretty unschooled, as it were.

She had me approach geometry and algebra problems—unschooled as I was—to see how I would approach them—and she discovered that I was bored with lower math, plus I had a form of math dyslexia as well. Though I didn’t get the answers right, I was approaching the concept of higher math correctly. In fact, she was fascinated by how I was resolving the questions, I was innovative, and quirky, at best. I passed that CBEST test second time around. Not with flying colors. But solid.

Passing the CBEST was a big deal, healing an old wound, as I was a whack job math student. Who knew I had dyslexia in math as well? I’ve been known to add and subtract sums in the same column without even catching the error of my ways. 

Ironic, as the math gene runs in the family—my mother‘s cousin, who grew up in Austin Nevada, was a bona fide math whiz. She disappeared after high school. Government job. We never knew would happen to her until much later. She sent us a postcard from places like Alamogordo, White Sands, Chicago. Decades later, after she had died, we found out she was a mathematician working on the Manhattan Project.

Revised from a Facebook post, from the comments for the same one on learning to read, 1/21.

My 19th c. childhood reading list, or learning how to read

When queried about my childhood reading list, I discovered that mine was from the 19th c., not the 1950s & 60s, the era I grew up in. ‘Splains a lot. Someone asked me, what was I, educated by nuns? Practically, with a no-nonsense Irish granny at the helm who had little interest in American bourgeois culture.

It took a while to unravel my childhood reading list pattern. I tried Wikipedia’s year-by-year entries and discovered that I’d read only a few popular books published during the 1950s and the 1960s. I went back decade by decade, from the 1940s to the turn of the last century, and still I only garnered less than a dozen books. Wow. 

Frustrated, I googled the most overlooked children’s books of the 19th c. Paydirt!  I should add that I read the long, unabridged versions. The nitty and the gritty was my childhood reading landscape. No pablum books. Unless you considered Robinson, Wilde, and Joyce to be kinder-fodder.

What a strange child I was. I hated any books that had talking animals, or anything that was properly infantilized for children. I loved fairy tales, the darker, the better. A bonus, those old fairytale books hadn’t yet been bowdlerized. I hated those upbeat false reality books with sugar-coated endings. I hated clever rhyming books, so Dr. Seuss was out. I preferred those boys adventure and sleuth series to the girly books. Hardy Boys, or the X Bar X boys over Nancy Drew or Little House on the Prairie. 

Anything to do with horses, I read it, no matter what the era. No Laura Wilder, no Bev Cleary, and no EB White. No Pooh, no thieving mice, no spelling spiders, nor even Sendak’s wild things—even though he lived in Sausalito. There was no escaping Dr. Seuss, who was trotted out by teachers everywhere. But in my horizon there were none of the usual usual childhood reading landscape popular during the 1950s and 60s. How did I not know this? 

Of course, most of my unauthorized childhood reading material came from what was on the bookshelves in the basement. My grandmother’s musty old bookshelves. Ones that survived the onslaught of eight boisterous children, and a permanent move from the San Francisco Victorian on 3rd Ave., to the old summer house in Forest Knolls.

Also, another significant source of my reading material came from thrift stores, whether from our next-door neighbor’s sister Borg, or my aunt Toddy who used to bring me books in 50-pound potato sacks. I remember one late winter afternoon, sobbing in the hedge over Lassie Come Home. It was very rare to get contemporary new books. My aunt once gave me new books at Christmas. I cherished them. One was about a flivver.

During the 1950s and early 1960s, most kids watched TV to keep themselves entertained, but I read books, as we didn’t have a TV, and reception was at best, tricky in the valley. This was before the era of cable TV. Our neighbors, the Stones, had a TV so we watched Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, Sea Hunt, Rawhide, Bonanza when the reception was working. There were two to three broadcast channels, with lots of snow—depending upon the vagaries of weather—and there were few programs to watch. 

But in the Stone’s old milking barn, on a high shelf, I discovered the entire Wizard of Oz collection (1900-1920) that must have belonged to Stephanie Stone’s mother—books that would’ve been considered old when she was a child. I plowed through the dusty tomes in record time. I didn’t ask for permission to borrow them, I surreptitiously snuck them home, one by one. I was transported. A baker’s dozen wasn’t enough, I wanted more. And, no I hadn’t yet seen the movie. No TV.

I also ordered armloads of cheap paperbacks from Scholastic Book Services. They were probably out of copyright, ergo older titles, not current ones. They were cheap. Most titles cost ten cents, hardbacks were 15 cents—a dollar bought an armload of books. I did chores for the neighbors in order to buy those books. Every dime represented an hour or two’s escape from reality.  

When my monthly SBS book order came, kids jeered at me, saying no way was I reading all those books, but I read every single one before my next order came. And no, I never read Clifford the Big Red Dog. It was The Little Witch, Pipí Longstocking, Black Beauty, and stories of ghosts, lost dogs and ponies. I gave away boxes of SBS books to younger friends.

Our school library was very small, we didn’t have a local public library, so the Bookmobile was our main source of books. I remember checking out a beautiful gilt-edged 1903 first edition, with an embossed cover, of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farms (but not the story), to give you an idea of how old some of those books really were. 

What makes this all so funny, is that I didn’t even learn to read until the end of third grade. I hated Dick, Jane and that stupid dog, Spot. I was bored to tears with them and their goddam dog, I think I was insulted, and stubbornly refused to learn how to read. I wanted Allingham’s The Fairies. I can still quote some of it.

My mother said I was already singing my alphabet and reading in pre-kindergarten. I briefly attended a French nursery school, so I knew some things. I could count the stars and sing nursery rhymes in French. But when I went to Lagunitas School, kindergarten was for babies. And I said so. Lagunitas was regressive. They wouldn’t let me paint, school felt like pure punishment. All I wanted to do was play, or paint. I liked singing, the teacher sometimes banged out simple songs on piano. 

My mother was an artist so art was my first language. Even though I was the youngest one in the class, I was bored out of my gourd, and I dropped out of kindergarten. For real. It was also a long way from our house down Arroyo Road, to the highway. It was a whole mile, and I was only four-going-on-five years old, with very short legs, and an even shorter attention span.

Best thing my grandmother ever did was not forcing me to go to back to school. However, there was hell to pay in first grade. That negative karma followed me all through school. I had trouble learning. But I do remember the day I learned to read in third grade. 

Sometime in April or May, it was as if a switch had been thrown. And suddenly I could read. Breakthrough. The secret was simple, Miss Lenz left me alone in a corner with the new science-based SRA reading card series. I was off and running. I was a house afire—mad for reading. 

In two months, I read all those laminated SRA cards I could get my hands on—through to the 5th grade level. I learned about echolocation and sonar. But I couldn’t answer the quiz questions. No one knew that I had a learning disability. Then, when I was 30, I discovered I had dyslexia. Bingo. It all fell into place. 

In the past, I was routinely sent to the corner during reading time, with nothing to do. Punishment because I couldn’t keep up, or on track, during the reading aloud circle. I loved when Mrs. Bryce read aloud from The Phantom Tollbooth after lunch. But to this day, I hate to be read aloud to, unless I’m held captive in my car.

When I was in my 30s, I made up for lost time and finally did read some of those childhood classics from the 1950s-1960s, so that I could relate to what my young students were reading. I was teaching kids how to write poetry and it seems only fair that I was familiar with what they were reading in the classroom. I must admit that I loved reading about The Chronicles of Narnia, and Island of the Blue Dolphins. Still haven’t read any Cleary, Norton, or Sendak. 

What were your favorite childhood books? 

Revised from a Facebook  post 1/21.

SGVCC Ninth senior lunch group art show

RAIN HAIKU FOR LITTLE CHRISTMAS

RAIN HAIKU FOR LITTLE CHRISTMAS

It’s raining like mad.
atmospheric rivers
raging in the sky.

The rain pounds us down
to its level—a sea change—
salmon swimming home.

A rapid tattoo
beats a primal tympani
on roof and windows.

The old potbelly
groans like an arthritic dog—
last log on the fire.

The Epiphany
Three kings lost in the rainstorm.
A king cake of thought.

1/6/19

California Impressionism

Inspired by a desire to capture “impressions” of everyday life, avant-garde French artists, whose work was considered unacademic by the Salon, changed the face of art—from upholding the neoclassic ideal (think photo-realism) to focusing on the vagaries of weather and intimate life by using a bright palette, and quick, broad impressionistic brush strokes.

The French impressionist movement of 1874 was controversial because the subject matter was not Salon approved—no allegorical subject matter. It did not instruct. it was art for art’s sake, or rather, it found god in the sublime.

And instead of painting in isolated studios, they took it outside, to the fields, thanks to pioneer landscape painter, Papa Corot. Also, the invention of tube paint changed how painters painted—in plein aire.

By the turn of the century, however, Impressionism was widely embraced, with artists making pilgrimages to study with Paris’ finest painters.

The movement was embraced by California artists who also emulated 19th-century French landscapes for inspiration. Society of Six, William Keith. Maurice LeMue. Unlike east coast impressionism, California Impressionist works did not solely revolve around the vagaries of weather, or the grandeur of sublime landscapes (think Bierstadt) instead, they showcased the atmosphere and emotion of scenery—using lots of juxtaposed color swaths.

Impressionism and the California Impressionism school has certainly affected my own sense of art. We grew up with a WPA mural in the Lagunitas school office, which was later discovered to be a mural by Maurice LeMue. It became an unconscious reference when I began to photograph landscapes. So, I owe my vision, in part, to that school.



(Well, I found the article I was reading to be so clumsily written that I wound up rewriting it, so no quotes. So I guess this is now my writing. But there is art!) See the link here. From a Facebook post. Perhaps I will expand it into a full article in the future.

POST NASALTUDES

I’m not liking this new year  at all.
I’ve been sneezing so hard it feels like
I’ve blasted myself backwards into yesteryear.
And all I want to do is to curl up
tighter than a tortured hedgehog
& sleep in until tomorrow,
and tomorrow and tomorrow.

1/19

End of year writing stats 2018

I have fewer posts for 2018, than for previous years. But despite several major life-altering derailments, I managed to eke out some 60 poem entries (my goal is 52 posts a year)—a post a week) some poems are repetitions, or rather, revisions from April Poetry Month posts. I did very little by way of pulp fiction reading for my Amazon Reviews writing. The thrill is gone. No time or inclination to read, sadly.

My old boyfriend John Oliver Simon died in January, that left a deeper hole than expected. I also had to jump into the fray and manage his two California Arts Council grants, and there was little money to pay for my time as the majority of the funds were tied up in residencies. So I was poor as a churchmouse most of the year, with the CAC money tied up in knots. Then, the man I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with, ended it—after 20 years. Just like that. I’m still reeling from that one.

So, I’ve been living rough on people’s couches. No fixed abode. Which also means no fixed job. No income. I’ve been living thin. I had to give away most of my possessions. I still need to rehome my books and art supplies. So, keeping up appearances has not been on the list. I wouldn’t wish that kind of year upon anyone. So, 2019 will be my year of massive change.

On the blog timeline front, I’ve managed to add a few old bits from those lean years. But it’s been slim pickings. I picked up a few posts in 1980, 1982; 1997, 1998, 1999; 2000, 2004, 2005, 2006. But I still  haven’t reached the magical formula of 52 posts a year on those lean years. I've come to the conclusion that I may never reach my goal.

However, I did manage to pick up a few odd post entries—mainly posters of readings—for those early years when I created the Russian River Writers’ Guild blog (a big scanning project—still not finished, but the bulk of it is done.) Most of the RRWG memorabilia was buried within this blog, so I’m pleased that the extended RRWG memorabilia is now a different entity. I also began scanning work for Herman Berlandt’s memorial blog as well, but it’s under construction (not posted).

If I ever am able to gather up my old  pottery and ceramics pieces from the 1970s, and take photos of them, that’s on the back burner to add to this blog. But it’s extremely difficult for me to return to Oakland to get the rest of my stuff—let alone, my mail. Besides, I have nowhere to put the rest of my stuff. My books, art supplies and plants, especially.

I don’t have it in me this year to do a deeper Bill Jamesian-detailed statistics spreadsheet on my writing progress. Perhaps another time when I’m better dressed, emotionally speaking.

see 2017 stats

For some reason, an unknown twat named Susan sent me a comment, not once, not twice, but thrice stating it’s my karma. Of course, I marked them as spam. She has no other posts, no other comments, not even a blog. Why would people even do such a hateful thing?

On learning language equivalencies

Equivalencies. My mind is a bit like like Swiss cheese, full of holes when it comes to languages. I took the equivalent of two years modern Irish at UC Berkeley one summer, nearly 20 years ago, but I bottomed out in July, as my learning button broke. My head no longer worked, and the thing is, I’m usually pretty good at picking up languages. Possibly the toughest course I ever took was modern Irish. Bar none.

Our Irish teachers, Joe Nugent and Breen Conchubhair were pushing us so hard that many of us lost the thread. I gave up somewhere around the cupula. The class was supposed to be the equivalent of one year of Irish crammed into an intensive summer course. They opted to give us the equivalent of second year Irish, too—and my head broke. I couldn’t absorb any more. I’ve never had that experience before.

I later took a year of Archaic/Old Irish in order to translate the medieval Irish epics (it was all bookwork), alas, I still can't read Irish—other than to recognize words and occasional phrases here and there. People from Ireland assure me that I still know more Irish than they do....

Sometimes foreign words arise unbidden, I’ve no idea where they come from. Or even what language. It’s all a mystery how we acquire language. I mean, it’s all nice and textbook and ordered in a classroom—but that’s not how we acquire language. You have to create memories. It’s messy. You know, like go down to the pub and raise a jar or two. Get stinking blind drunk. That’s when my Russian comes back. Chut-chut.

However, I can swear profusely (and rather inventively) in several living languages, and a few dead languages. When I combined the words sabaca/dog and pizdah/cunt in a spontaneous invective, let's just say I brought the Russian house down. I lived one summer in Switzerland, I didn’t pick up much Switzerdeutsch, but let me tell you, I could swear like a troll of the highest arcana with a mere handful of words.

I also studied a semester of medieval Welsh, but my heart just wasn’t in it. I was completely ADD as it was during the 9/11 crisis. We were all out to lunch—as it were. I remember that we held class outside on the DOE library steps at UC Berkeley because the building was shut down... So surreal.

Medieval Welsh is much easier to learn than Irish, no doubt. But there's not that much crossover with learning Irish. Brythonic vs. Goidelic. And of course all the extra "vowel" types and double consonants are maddening. But I can do a pretty good hll sound, as in Llewelyn.

Even Russian is easier to learn than Irish. I remember looking longingly into the other classrooms, that summer at UC Berkeley, where other students were learning easy languages like Spanish, Latin, and Russian, and it seemed like the students were all wearing PJs and comfortable slippers by comparison. I could understand what they were saying with little effort, just by standing in the doorways like a demented peeping Tom.

Learning Irish is hard, very hard. At least they don't conjugate prepositions in Russian. I mean—prepositions fergawdsakes. I get conjugating verbs and nouns.What kind of language needs that kind of precision that directional words need to identify who is speaking? And what direction is involved? Just never attempt to explain going up or down stairs in Irish. Just don’t.

I lived in the USSR for a while during 1989 to 1991, so I had to pick up Russian fast. Talk about total immersion. If I wanted anything I had to learn how to ask for it. Food. Beer. Necessities. Black market. Also, when I was traveling illegally to Leningrad, I had to watch my Ps and Qs. Everyone thought I was from Kazakhstan or somewhere exotic. I was labeled “ethnic. And I’m ethnically Irish, that’s as close as it gets.

Though I heard Ukrainian spoken often enough, I was living in Cherkassy, near Kiev for a while, I never picked it up. Like with Dutch, Ukrainian just didn’t stick. Ukrainian is sort of like Welsh with all those extra vowel-y things running amok and creating havoc with your eyes.

I lived in Amsterdam on and off during the early 1990s , and because everybody in the Netherlands either bi-, or tri-lingual, not counting several dialects. However, they all spoke to me in English. Whether language, or dialect, the Dutch seamlessly code-switch between linguas francas. It’s kind of fascinating, really watching the Dutch effortlessly slide through the indo-European continuum.

I regret to report that I was lazy, that I merely learned the usual sound bytes, but not the language. Hooey Dag, bedankt, dank u wel, and alstublieft. And place names. I can even say Scheveningen perfectly. I’d never be mistaken for a German spy.

Weirdly, I can mostly make out the meaning in Dutch, if it’s in print. Ditto that with Latin. Church Latin, that is. I never studied Latin. Just 15 years of church Latin. Ecum spiri tutu o. I barely studied Spanish either but at least I’m fluent in Spanish—unless I panic. Then it’s curtains.

You should've seen me in Portugal right after 9/11. I was waving my arms like helicopter blades trying to achieve liftoff as I spoke a a bastard Portuguese-Spanglish to the taxi drivers. Everyone thought I was Italian. The only Italian I picked up was when I was a child living among immigrant families. Random words. Food.

But in Portugal, it really was a matter of survival. We didn’t want anyone to know we were American for fear of reprocussion. So my cousin and aunt were schtum/mum while I was gibbering on like a polyglotted gibbon while waving my arms as if to take flight—to the taxi drivers who didn't know what to make of us. I was negotiating the equivalencies between languages to create a pidgin dialect of survival.

Wild Apples

The apples are good from this feral volunteer that chose to grow on a rocky outcrop

An otherwise lovely story on apples in The Guardian that appeared last May, claimed that all apples came from Kazakhistan. My immediate knee-jerk reaction was that the statement was wrong on so many levels.

The geographic origin of the apple can be traced to modern-day Kazakhstan but the Romans are the ones that popularized it the most. Gardens: why we need to protect Kazakhstan’s wild apples

And the more I delved into that sentence, the more wrong it seemed. My second thought was: What were the Romans doing in Kazakhstan, anyway? Did I miss that history lesson? And what about the native apples of Asia? Merely hearsay? The chase was on.

I agree we need to protect Kazakhstani apples, but the birthplace of the modern apple is Central Asia, specifically the Altai and the Tian Shan Mountains—which includes not only Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Xinjiang in Northwest China—in other words, the Silk Road. The sentence should have scanned: "modern apples." And my hackles wouldn’t have been raised. (See the Smithsonian article for a more accurate history.)

Despite popular belief, a species of wild apples (Malus sylvestris) were already in the British Isles long before the Romans arrived (they just brought bigger, better apples). Circa 98 AD, Roman historian Gaius Tacitus reported that the Briton Druid Ovates carried silver apple boughs with bronze, silver, or gold bells. And in Ireland, Otherworld apples also feature prominently in Echtrae Chonnlai which was recorded in the 8th or 9th c., but it's a much older tale. And in The Song of Wandering Aengus, Yeats made famous the lines lifted from Irish folklore, The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun. 

But the wild European crabapple was native to the British Isles long before the Romans or Christianity reached its shores. In fact, there is evidence that wild apples grew wild in Ireland and Britain during the Neolithic era. It’s a Northern Hemisphere circumpolar boreal plant along with raspberries, salmonberries and roses, buttercups, crucíferos plants, hazels, and vaccinium species including cranberries and blueberries.

The word apple is embedded in many insular place-names that predate Roman occupation in the British Isles. Anglesey, the Isle of Apples, Avalon. Anglesey (Ynys Môn) was sometimes called Afallach, or rich in apples. Geoffrey of Monmouth called the island Insule Ponorum, or the island of the apples. In Immram Brain, a síd woman gives Bran a silver branch in white bloom—a cróeb dind abaill a hEmain, or ‘a branch from the apple-tree of Emain. Emain Macha was sometimes called Emain Ablach. –The Apple in Early Irish Narrative.

When I was living in the Ukraine, I was struck by how similar the word apple яблоко yablacko in Russian is to the Irish (genitive) Ablach, clearly a shared Indo-European ancestry.

From Old Irish uball, ubull (Scottish Gaelic ubhal), from Proto-Celtic *abalom (compare Welsh afal), from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ébōl (compare English apple, Lithuanian obuolỹs, Russian я́блоко (jábloko), Serbo-Croatian jȁbuka). —Wictionary

And the Celtic apple of the day would've been a quasi-domestic relative of the wild European crabapple Malus sylvestris, aka the small forest apple, not the ancestor of the modern apple, Malus sieversii (native to the mountains of Turkey and Kazakhstan).

The symbol of the apple wasn't necessarily a tradition borrowed from the Middle East. Or the mid-way point to the Far East. Greek historical references to apples predate Roman cultivation, and the role of the apple is central to Bronze Age Celtic lore. Even Homer's Odyssey refers to apples. Then there's the apple tussle of Aphrodite, Athena and Hera to consider. You know, like, Who's the most beautiful goddess of all, and the sour apples of discord? (Those apples may have been quinces, native to the Caucasus.) Fairytale heroine Snow White chokes on an apple and falls asleep for a very long time.

The Greek word "μήλον" for apple or any kind of globular, or round fruit, and fat-bottom girls—is malon, or melon. Think generic. Sort of like asking for a Coke and getting orange soda. In Homeric times, "μήλον" also referred to sheep or goats (my mind wanders to that tree of goats photo). Pomaceous: anything-apple-shaped. Round. There must've been some seriously fat goats. Poet Sappho of Lesbos likened a young bride to an ‘sweet apple’ (gluku’malon). Better than being compared to a fat goat.

When does the word apple enter into the English translation of the Bible as THE depicted forbidden fruit? Bede? (late 7th c.) Aldred? (10th c.) John Wycliffe? (late 14th c.) King James? What was the Latin word: fructus, or malum? Or was it the more drought-tolerant quince? (The Irish monk-scribes would've been reading the Bible bits in Greek and Latin.)

There were certainly native European crab apples in the British Isles since the last Ice Age, but the problem is even thornier than that. Get this: apples, indigenous to cold northern climates, weren't even a Levant fruit. Too dry and too hot. Even way back then.  (They're now carefully propagated in the Golan Heights.) The so-called "apple" of the Holy Land was most likely a sturdy, heat-tolerant quince, popular in the Levant. The apple would've been an unknown fruit in the Middle East during Biblical times. There goes the old Tree of Knowledge metaphor.

I also discovered that the word "apple" was used as a generic term for ALL globular (foreign) fruit and some vegetables (not berries or nuts), as late as the 17th century. Tomatoes were called love apples, cucumbers and potatoes, earth apples. Even oranges were referred to as apples. Because they were ROUND!

The two words for apple and evil in Latin are also a tongue-in-cheek pun: Eve ate a malum (apple—or something fat and round), and became mālum (evil). The Arabic for apple is tuffah, Hebrew is tappuach, from the Aramaic. But it was probably a borrowing, as the so-called apple of the Holy Land was most likely a quince. The apple would've been an unknown fruit in the Middle East during Biblical times.

Also, it's a western European concept to associate apples with the Tree of Knowledge. (When? Probably since the late Middle Ages. The apple is depicted in art during the Renaissance.) So, the much maligned apples were not necessarily considered to be the forbidden fruit during the 6th - 8th centuries. 

It's a muddled idea, at best. Or perhaps it's all muddled old road apples.

The modern apple, Malus pumila, or M. domestica, related to the wild forest apples, the Asian Malus sieversii, and Malus silvestris seems to have had a wide geographic distribution from the British Isles to Central Asia, and then some, and there are no less than four other malus species in North America. It's probably a circumpolar Ice Age relic holarctic plant species like vaccinium.

So, if apples came from Kazakhstan, how in the bleeding blue blazes did they arrive in North America before Columbus, or, say, Lief Erickson? And don't tell me Johnny Appleseed, hero of cider makers everywhere, planted them all. He did sow the Northwest Territories with apple trees. Since he used apple seeds, gawd only knows what wild varieties sprouted since apples don't seed true to form.

In fact, crab apples are also native to the entire Northern Hemisphere. (I had previously learned that apples were brought to the New World by colonists, and scholars still erroneously note European apples originally came by way of Kazakhstan, or China, along with the peach, which really messes with the myriad apple references embedded within Medieval Celtic mythology.) 
 
I am fascinated by the evolution of the apple. With the streamlining of marketable apples, we're down to a handful of tasteless eating apples with names like Fuji, Pink Lady, and Gala. Our Italian neighbor, Mary Bianchi, in Forest Knolls, had cooking apples (monstrous sour things), plus a variety of eating apples including striped winesaps, Gravensteins, and also bitter cider apples.

"Hard apple cider was hugely popular in early America, and cider vinegar was an essential home ingredient." According to Oregonian heirloom apple hunter, David Benscoter, “It is estimated that of the 17,000 named apple varieties originating in North America, only around 4,000 still exist today." —Apple detective finds five more apple varieties thought to be extinct...

According to most definitions, the main difference between a crab apple and an edible, domestic apple is the size of the fruit (and the sourness). But it's more complicated than that. Farmers and cider-makers traditionally waited for the bitter fruit laden with tannin to be kissed and sweetened by the first frost before harvest (similar to bletting).

The familiar edible apples did not grow in North America before the arrival of European settlers. Old World apple trees became established in the New World from the trees and seeds that Dutch and English emigrants brought from Europe. As legend has it, Johnny Appleseed profoundly influenced the spread of apples in North America by sowing them everywhere he traveled, but he was just one of many pioneers who planted apple seeds in the new territories. The original cultivated apple trees also became established naturally through seeds dispersed by birds and mammals. Old World Apples. [For more on Old World apple species, see also "Old-Time Apples," THE WORLD & I, October 1989, p. 388]

Before European apples were introduced to the New World, crab apples were native to North America. Although less familiar than commercial apples, these native American species still grow in the wild. 

In North America, there's Malus ioensis, or prairie crabapple (ioensis refers to Iowa). The most common variety, Malus ioensis var. ioensis, is native to the prairies of the upper Mississippi Valley. Another variety, Malus ioensis var. texana, or the Texas crabapple, is native to a tiny region of central Texas. There's even a Southern crabapple, Malus angustifolia. Then there's Malus fusca, native to western North America from Alaska, with a range from British Columbia, to northwestern California. Flowers are white or pale pink. 

According to a blogpost, Native American Apple, plant taxonomists may quibble over the number of apples native to North America, but most agree that there are four major species. The three eastern species are quite similar to each other. But the lone western species is a bird of a different feather. The western species shares similarities with wild apples native to China, while the three eastern species seem to have Middle East connections—thought to have split off early in the evolution of the genus Malus.

There are an estimated 25-47 different species of Malus worldwide. This number fluctuates greatly due to the ease in which species of Malus are able to hybridize with each other, making the process of differentiation between the species very difficult. Of this number, only four species are native to North America. These species are Malus fusca, Malus coronaria, Malus angustifolia and Malus ioensis. Crab Apple Trees Native to North America.

But worldwide, wild crab apples have become endangered, due to farmers preferring to grow commercial table apples to cider apples (cider crab apple varieties include Foxwhelp, Kingston Black, Yarlington Mill and Dabinett.)

In northern California, there was a wild crab apple tree in the gulch across the way from us where my grandmother used to gather the apples after the first frost. I loved eating them. I never considered it a native species. The diminutive apples were dense, with golden yellow pulp, sweet, but with a bitter astringent afterbite. It was probably a Pacific crab apple or Oregon crab apple. One fall, our new neighbor, in an attempt to tame the land, viciously hacked it down with a chainsaw, and we mourned its loss.

Now, decades later, after I learned that the old crab apple tree wasn't an escapee from some farmer's orchard by way of pooping birds, but a native species, I doubly mourn its loss.

My first depersonalized NYE assault email from Andrei Codrescu, redux

My first depersonalized NYE Assault Email from Andrei Codrescu. It’s becoming a thing. Last assault was in 2010. Better every little once and a while, than never. At least we’re still above dirt line.

Happy New Year 2019!

Dear Friends –  Some of you may be dead. If so, I beg your forgiveness. Everyone else, thank you for your patience. I am now indulging in a 21st century depersonalized assault on everyone I know. I resurrected some old mailing lists and made them One. My dear friends, and most of you are, not in the Facebook meaning of it, but in the sense that we once actually touched. I'm unaccountably giddy. They are legalizing pot twenty years after I quit smoking it. Thanks a lot!  The other day I read poems in public at the Russian Samovar in midtown Manhattan, and there was the silence poets dream of. That night I had a dream that I was in a crowd waiting for an airplane to fly somewhere to vote. A mountain lion was walking around. I asked it: "Hey, what are you doing here?" The cat just shrugged and moved on. If you are in that crowd, the plane will come. Don't fear the lion. It was just walking around twirling a magnificent tail.  Likewise, I invite you to stroll through the my website. Come and pre-order my new collection of poems NO TIME LIKE NOW here. Indeed. My undying affection goes to all, including my dear dead friends.`1` Andrei PS: Don't pretend that you're dead if you're not. There are consequences. But, if you're not, here is a present for you. Lagnappe - listen to the the Valley of Christmas audio play here Naturally I wrote back. Exquisite corpses and all that. Dear Andrei, Well, I ain’t dead yet but thanks for asking. Your missive came just as I was putting the finishing touches, or rather it touchés on an old project on my bucket list: make a blog for the Russian River Writers’ Guild, which was a bit nameless when you were involved. But you do get considerable mention. https://russianriverwritersguild.blogspot.com/search/label/Andrei%20Codrescu Any sundry flyers or memories you might add would be most welcome....still to do, get Gail King and Pat Nolan’s backstories.... I came aboard ca. 1978... I take it you’ve left FhaceBook? Merry Mishmash to you. And may you win the rhyming contest with the Mari Lwyd. Maureen A note to Andrei Codrescu on Life of Crime 2010 A note to Andrei Codrescu on the launch of his Plague Diaries 2020

Black Mountain after the fire (colored pencil drawing)

Feeling more than a little blue today, so I drew yet another view of Elephant, or Black Mountain....it kept me in the present tense. This view is from a hike I took with my cousin on Olema Ridge, to the old McIsaac Ranch, Point Reyes. We went to see the extent of the fire damage on Mt Barnabe, and this was behind my left shoulder—I actually gasped. It took me by surprise to see it so close, and from this angle. So sensual, so stark. From a photo I took in September—before the relationship shit began hitting the fan.