Kate Campbell's Word Garden

Riding With Eddie and the Drifters

2018-03-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

Long before LaVerne died and Eddie lost his anchor, he was a drifter. LaVerne used to say Eddie was the kind of man who was gone before he got there. Then she’d open her mouth and laugh halfway down her throat, showing the sweet gap in her front teeth.

Eddie had heard her talk about his wandering ways too many times to laugh, but he never tired of seeing the gentle roll of her belly under her dress when she chuckled at her own remarks. With friends, laying back on the couch waiting for the football game to start, he’d study the toes of his boots and smile at her over the rim of his contentment, a cream-licking cat stroking his whiskers.

East Bay Dragons Motorcycle Club, an all-black,
all-Harley-Davidson riding crew. Photo probably from the 1960s

On Saturday mornings before the end, she kept her eyes closed when Eddie got out of bed before the sun. She’d fit the familiar sounds of his movements as he prepared for a run—the rustle of jeans pulled up and zipped, the predictable clunk of a dropped boot--to her memories. She’d hear the squeak of leather and pull the pink comforter tighter under her chin sensing it was time. She knew he had his gang colors on, but she wasn’t afraid. He always made it back.

In the half light before dawn, her mind swayed with the rhythmic prelude of his leaving, reminding her of when they used to ride together, when she’d clung to his back, hands locked around his hard belly, fingers warmed by the furnace of his spirit. He set the pain pill set by the bedside. She registered the soft closing of the bedroom door, then hot cracks from the bike firing up. The horn’s one short beep signaling he was off. She rested in familiar images of Eddie in the saddle, stretching to his full height in the brightening morning light, then slipped into the darkness of her pain.

Bessie Stringfield, born in 1911 in Jamaica, was the first woman
to ride a motorcycle across the the U.S. solo. She was inducted
into the Motorcycle Museum's Hall of Fame in 2002

After 27 years of marriage, Eddie’s heart crashed and burned when she slipped away. He laid his bike down, throwing sparks and spinning out, broke his ankle, sat expressionless in the front row at the funeral home, cast resting on a chair, shook hands, said thank yous. He left his old gang and hung up his colors.

About a year ago Eddie sat doodling at the kitchen table where he and LaVerne used to drink coffee and eat cinnamon rolls on Sunday mornings before she got sick. Back then they’d go back to bed on Sundays for some extra sweet stuff. This morning sunlight cast its gold across Oakland and the streets were still, then the silence broke and he heard a far-off rumble, probably a flathead Harley, he thought.

Without realizing it, he designed new colors for the back of his riding vest – a flaming red and orange heart. He found some new boys – professionals and businessmen like himself – and they put on the colors too. Today they’re running to Capay Valley, following the course of Cache Creek spilling down the Mayacamas Mountains, the water searching for the Sacramento River, but halting the easy flow where the road connects to Interstate 80 and the gang rumbled back home to Oakland.

I met Eddie at the Jack-in-the-Box in Vallejo, where Highway 37 crosses Highway 29. I was running late for a Saturday writing workshop and he saw my impatience, let me order ahead of him, leaned forward, paid for my coffee. We talked and he told me about where he and the boys were headed, asked me if I wanted to ride sissy.

I shook my head, glanced at his bike, started to say no, but he interrupted, said if I waited, all I’d get is older. Seemed like he knew what he was talking about. I believed him when he said all I had to do was hang on tight.

Next Saturday Eddie and the Drifters will run someplace and I’ll weigh anchor, drift.

History of Black Motorcycle Clubs: Who Paid the Price for Black Bikers Who Ride Today?

It's true I met Eddie and members of his motorcycle club at Jack-in-the-Box in Vallejo on the way to a workshop on writing personal essays. Eddie and the Drifters MC were on a run, decked out in riding leathers and heavy boots, more splendid than rodeo cowboys. Eddie was kind and funny when we talked. He bought me coffee. I felt a wistful sadness in him and tried to guess the source, prompting this essay, fueled by a dip into the fascinating history of Black motorcycle clubs in Oakland, CA, in America.

10 Steps for Stripping Down in the Garden

2017-03-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

This is the briefest guide to simple living, but it’s a place to start if clearing the clutter, reducing the load and building community is what you’re after. Perhaps the most personal way to make it simple is join the fun on World Naked Gardening Day – yes it’s a real thing. (Maybe it's just me, but barefoot spade work doesn't sound too appealing, likewise running a rototiller or trimming the blackberry canes,)

But, here's the truth: For more than a decade, people around the world have been dropping their socks and everything else on the first Saturday in May – in 2017 it’s May 6 – and heading to the garden in their birthday suits to plant, weed, prune and frolic in the buff.

WNGD observers say there’s plenty of friction, dissatisfaction and fear to go around these days. Resisting these forces takes courage and tenacity, the naked gardeners say. And, they claim one way to find strength for the long haul is to strip away the things that weigh us down and live lighter and brighter – unclothed – as nature intended.

SEASONAL INTERCHANGE

by Michael Aitken

In Winter, when the trees are bare,
We mortals don our winter wear.
In Spring, when trees begin to dress,
We mortals then start wearing less,
Until, for some, with Summer's heat
The role reversal is complete.

Whether or not naked bathing is appealing, here are 10 simple steps you, your family, friends and neighbors can take to use less energy, become more mindful about choices, and build stronger bonds within your family and your community.

1. Build community. Relationships are the foundation of resilient communities. Get to know your neighbors by organizing a potluck, sharing something, or simply stopping by to say hello.

2. Grow some of your own food. You can start simple by growing in containers on a patio or windowsill or renting a plot in a community garden. Or, if you have access to land, start a garden or go all out with a permablitz, a way of bringing the community together and turning a suburban house into an urban homestead... in a single day.

3. Share and repair. Two simple and rewarding ways to reduce consumption and save money are by sharing things you don’t use all the time (vacuum, car, tools, etc.) with friends and neighbors, and by repairing items when they break instead of buying new ones. The New Dream Community Action Kit is all about sharing: everything from starting a tool library to organizing a solar cooperative, from holding a clothing swap to launching a time bank.

4. Minimize waste by buying fresh and bulk foods to avoid extra packaging, and start composting organic waste.

5. Help keep wealth in your community. Buy local when possible, and consider switching to a local bank or credit union.

6. Reduce home energy use and save money by hanging a clothesline or conducting a home energy efficiency audit.

7. Conserve water. Fix the leaks, take shorter showers, sheet mulch your lawn, and install a greywater or rainwater harvesting system.

8. Green your ride. Walk or get a bicycle, learn how to use public transport, or redesign your routine to minimize your drive.

9. Build inner resilience. Cultivate meaningful relationships, practice mindfulness or spend time in nature. The Japanese call it “forest bathing,” a cornerstone of preventive health care and healing in Japanese medicine. http://www.shinrin-yoku.org/shinrin-yoku.html

10. Join a Transition town or community resilience initiative near you, and start transforming your community!

Here is the "Simple Living Manifesto" http://zenhabits.net/simple-living-manifesto-72-ideas-to-simplify-your-life/

Information about World Naked Gardening Day is online at: http://www.wngd.org/

Table-top Diplomacy & American Style

2017-02-27T09:49:00.000-08:00

If the White House is supposed to be, among other things, a showcase for American hospitality, then it would seem food and flowers produced in America would be at the heart of every party. That didn't appear to be the case last week at the Governors Ball.

Call me picky, but I'm a Californian and prickly as an artichoke when it comes to where table grapes are produced in February in the U.S. Likewise, cut flowers and foliage in the varieties showcased on the nation's dinner table for U.S. governors. The varieties I see didn't grow in winter snow and rain. Most likely the table-top decor highlighted at the new administration's first major social occasion came straight off a plane from South America.

Sec. of State Rex Tillerson at the White House Governors Ball
in February. The table-top decor featured imported
table grapes and flowers.

Truth is, regardless of the season, there's always food and flowers grown in the U.S. worthy of gracing the most important occasions, as well as the humblest family gatherings -- domestic fruit, flowers and greenery abound.

The Californian Table Grape Commission notes the state's farmers have been cultivating grapes for two centuries and offers this brief history:

"Grapes have been around a long, long time. In fact, the first grape varieties might date as far back as 6000 B.C.

But for California, the fresh grape boom hit in 1839 when a former trapper from Kentucky, William Wolfskill, planted the state’s first table grape vineyard in the Mexican colonial pueblo now known as Los Angeles. An agricultural entrepreneur, Wolfskill was the first farmer to ship fresh grapes to Northern California. R.B. Blowers expanded the idea and sent the first 22-pound box of California grapes to Chicago via the new transcontinental railroad in 1869.

The gold rush may have ended, but the grape rush continues. Today, over 99 percent of grapes commercially grown in the United States come from California. With over 85 varieties grown, California grapes come in three colors – green, red and black – and are available May through January.

During the 2015-16 season, California's table grape growers harvested their third largest crop ever, sending 110.5 million boxes of grapes to more than 55 countries around the world, and setting a new record for crop value at $1.83 billion."

Photo By MEG PEROTTI

The commission's website offers creative ways to decorate table tops with grapes at http://www.tablegrape.com/DecoratewithGrapes.php

So, if the intent of the new administration is to make "America Great -- Again," starting at ground level makes sense by using the products actually produced in America. There has long been complaint by U.S. flower growers that in international trade deals low tariffs on flower imports have put them at an extreme disadvantage. Perhaps in negotiations, flowers have been seen as a minor sacrifice to good trade deals. But for hardworking Americans who make a living producing them, it's about economic survival -- jobs, innovation and growth.

Flower farmers have been fighting back, however, emphasizing the importance of their products through the "American Grown Movement." In recent years growers around the U.S. have been hosting "Farm to Vase" dinners in their greenhouses and on their farms, featuring locally grown food by top local chefs and floral arrangements by leading designers. Pre-dinner, floral design professionals offer guests workshops on arrangement techniques, as well as tours and entertainment. The dinners have all been sell-outs The list of dinner dates and locations is online at: http://www.americangrownflowers.org/

Campaign organizers say the American Grown Flowers brand symbolizes a unified and diverse coalition of U.S. flower farms representing small and large entities across the country. Together, they want to give consumers confidence in the source of their flowers and assure them that the bouquets and bunches they purchase come from a domestic flower farm.

ith less than a month to go until the first stop on the 2017 American Grown Field to Vase Dinner Tour, F2V announced the lineup of the all-star floral designers who will lend their talents to the tablescapes and other floral designs at each of the upcoming seven dinner tour locations.

Photo courtesy of F2V. Design by Carly Cylinder of Flour LA, Inc.
and author of “The Flower Chef: A Modern Guide to Do-It-Yourself Floral Arrangements” (named to Best Books of 2016),

All the F2V designers are acclaimed in the floral design community and organizers say consumers have seen their work in magazines, on television shows, at celebrity weddings and all over social media. The Field to Vase Dinner Tours offer a chance to experience their work first-hand.

Sorry, couldn't resist these floral purse and shoes by Francoise Weeks of European Floral Design,

John Jay Chapman (born March 2, 1862, New York, died November 4, 1933) was an American poet, dramatist, and critic who attacked the get-rich-quick morality of the post-Civil War “Gilded Age” in political action and in his writings. Ancestors on both sides of his family had distinguished themselves in antislavery and other causes, and he sought to continue that tradition among the upper middle classes, whose integrity he felt had been eroded by the upsurge of big business. He wrote:

"If you are to reach masses of people in this world, you must do it by a sign language. Whether your vehicle be commerce, literature, or politics, you can do nothing but raise signals, and make motions to the people."

Food and flowers are the signs and symbols of style, culture, art, prosperity, dignity, humility and diplomatic acumen.

If we are to make America gracious again, it's best to start from the ground up, embracing American grown food and flowers to showcase our nation's regional diversity and seasonal bounty!

Thoughts? Comments? Share? Thanks for visiting the garden.

Zen of Barometric Pressure

2017-02-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

Just lost power for an hour in Sacramento/Natomas and spent time on my cell checking the weather. Got curious about what barometric pressure actually means. Barometers were used in the old days to forecast weather, long before there were satellites and computers and all kinds of sensors.

U.S. Weather Service says barometric pressure in my area is currently at 29.22 and falling. Lowest pressure ever recorded in Sacramento was 28.95 on Jan. 27, 1916. So, things are getting pretty funky low-down around here.

Science.com says barometric pressure rarely increases or decreases more than 1 inch of mercury above or below the 30-inch mark unless weather conditions are extreme -- or will be in a couple of days.

Weather experts say pressure readings are most useful for forecasting weather during the next 12 to 24 hours -- as in telling us what's about to happen. In general, a falling barometer indicates the approach of a storm. Forecasts for Northern California call for a big storm Sunday night into Monday, which barometers seem to confirm. Just hope it's not too big.

If the mercury continues to fall, atmospheric scientists say the weather will worsen. When the mercury level is between 30.20 and 29.80 inches and dropping rapidly, (like it is now) expect precipitation. If the reading is less than 29.80 inches and still shooting down, expect, my words, to get walloped.

But not to worry, as of 2010, the lowest air pressure ever recorded for a hurricane was Gilbert in 1988. Its air pressure was just above 26 inches. Hurricane Sandy in 2012 hit a barometric pressure low of 27.92 over Atlantic City, New Jersey. Things could be worse and California water experts say we'll likely be able to ride out the next series of storms without further damage to Oroville Dam

“Just as a solid rock is not shaken by the storm, even so the wise are not affected by praise or blame.” ----The Buddha.

Riding Carousels in the Garden

2017-02-21T18:41:00.000-08:00

Don't know about you, but everywhere I turn, someone is either having or has just had a baby. It's an outbreak worthy of a public health alert, an echo boom of sonic proportions.

Perhaps it's just spring fever or the pastel chick and bunny themes or the Cadbury cream eggs lying in wait at the grocery check out stand that makes me think of babies. No, it's Easter and that means babies.

To name a few recent instances of fertility run amok, consider this: My Grandniece Adi was born in December and I was privileged to attend the birth. Ellen at work is sporting a darling baby bump and is due in a couple of months. My friend the Lovely Vixen, advice columnist Catherine Gacad, is due in a few weeks. Very exciting.

And, my friend, the travel writer Amy Gigi Alexander has just returned from an amazing trip to Morocco to resume her job as a nanny. She's working on potty training with her young charge and preparing for the birth of the family's next child in August, which eventually means more potty training.

Adi's first Easter bunny photo

So you get why I feel surrounded with discussions about this most delicate of human endeavors -- peeing in the pot. I've been credited with being a potty training expert, but it's not true.

Once this tale of my legendary skills took root, however, it has become impossible to dispel. Women come to me wringing their hands, imploring me for answers. I insist I'm no guru on shaping toddler toilet habits. Not at all. But, in their anxious state, they never believe I don't know the magic tricks.

Tales of my unusual expertise began to spread after an adventure with my niece 25 years ago. She was a bit late coming to the level of control one desires in the civilized. At 3 1/2 she'd just let go of herself and then her mother would fuss and clean her up. Her mother was at wits end about what to do. Katy was indifferent.

Katy in complete control

About that time, my niece came to my house in Berkeley for the weekend and I took her, along with my son of about the same age, to Tilden Park to ride the steam train and carousel. My son had been trained since about age 2. I put training pants on Katy and told the truth. No diapers. If she had an accident, we'd have to go back home.

Gosh, we had a great morning. It was early fall and leaves flitted onto us as we rode in the little open train cars. We dawdled by the duck pond before making our way to the carousel. As we stood in line, she tugged my sleeve. She had to go.

I pulled her out of line and my son protested about losing his place. But, we ran hard to, it turns out, the crummiest public bathroom I can ever remember. The child really, truly, had to go. My arms ached from holding her over the commode so long.

Later, at home, we played and ate dinner, went potty before bed. She went home that Sunday afternoon and her parents later told me she never peed or pooped her pants again, ever.

What I get from this experience is that a child, like most normal people, will pay attention and conform to expectations if there's a compelling reason to do so. Once the desired objective has been achieved, it becomes clear that other objectives can be attained as well. Bye, Bye Pampers, hello pedicures.

Honestly, I did not train Katy to go potty, I showed her the benefits of doing so. She was ready to take advantage of the opportunity --

The best carousel ride ever!

Flattened

2015-09-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

This morning I'm fighting off a bit of depression, going over things that aren't working in my life. If I focus on it, the list gets very long and the load of dissatisfaction grows heavy, too heavy to bear. But then I bounce back, well, claw might be a better word. Kinda like crawling hand-over-hand on slender vines while dangling off the side of a cliff. I glance down at the rocks and the sliver of water and keep pulling myself up, thinking about what a mess I'd make if I let go.

Before my surgery, right after Christmas, I had an amazing experience that helped put the perils of the abyss in perspective. Before Christmas, I'd been running around filled with the need to do this and that for the holidays -- clean, socialize, plan, wrap, visit, love, catch up, worry, intensely practice yoga, kiss, hug, dance, sing, sometimes even brush my teeth and comb my hair. Sleeping little, sometimes spinning my wheels, I was happily engaged. Confirmation of breast cancer Dec. 22 changed the tone of my holiday ruckus.

In January, two days before my holiday vacation ended and I went back to work, I went to bed, mind whirling, unable to sleep and found I couldn't get back up. It was like a lead weight pressed me down on the bed. The room spun. I was hallucinating wide awake, aware that it was happening, but helpless to make it stop. I checked the bedside clock, considered calling 911. I've never want to disturb emergency dispatchers at an ungodly hour, that is after dark. Just seems too presumptuous, but it felt like I'd lost my grip on sanity, what would I say? "Help, I'm nuts!". So I waited and the experience continued with increasing vividness.

I clearly saw my sons, everyone in the family -- my grandchildren, my nieces and nephews, my siblings, friends, co-workers, myself.

I realized everyone was growing and changing as I looked deeply into all our lives -- into the past, forward to the future. It became joyful and reassuring, kaleidoscopic, voyeuristic, and I also realized there's still much work for all of us to do, that it's getting done despite my impatience and meddling. I saw everyone handling their own life business very well, thank you.

I tried to shut down, go to sleep pinned to the bed as I was, unable to lift arms or legs, but couldn't. So I envisioned a warm and healing white light focused on my body. I often do this visualization during yoga meditation.

Then from the left side of my mind came an intense white light, pure, strong and overpowering in its brightness. I stepped closer to it, looked for its source, for the energy behind the emanation, but could not penetrate the light, could not see beyond the engulfing brightness, and was afraid. I stepped back it gradually faded. Alone in the dark of my room I slept deeply, woke up feeling rested for the first time in weeks.

I don't understand this experience. I've never felt like that before. I've tried to explain it to myself -- fear and stress from having breast cancer and facing surgery, lack of sleep, too much yoga, over stimulation from the holidays, overwork to make the holidays special, worry, anxiety, anger, disappointment.

What I clearly saw is that everyone was growing into better lives, better selves, transforming in beautiful ways -- even me. It was reassuring to see and understand. I saw my work as a writer, met characters I want to know, learned stories I need to tell, sensed feelings I need to express.

It's a lot of work, my work, and I'm growing and changing. I felt washed with knowledge and amazement, cleansed with a deep understanding that everything is fine, working just as God has planned for me, our family, you, our world.

Say what you will about this experience. I don't feel fit to judge it. I can only report truthfully what happened on the other side and be amazed. When you have a moment to talk, I'm here waiting. Love you.

P.S. Nearly a year has passed since I saw the light. Went to the oncologist last week. She said, "You're cancer free." They caught it early through a routine mammogram, caused minimal damage to my body. She said, "You're a writer. You need to tell people routine mammograms save lives." In my case, the discovery did more than save my life. It cracked me open and gave me a glimpse of a new life.

Grace and the People of Walmart

2015-09-06T09:39:00.000-07:00

He wiggles his fingers through the sole of his work shoes, suggests I take him to Walmart to buy a new pair before he busses the dinner shift at a neighborhood restaurant. Parenting adults is a tricky dance, I always check myself—am I helping or enabling.

I try to remember my dead husband, how he’d say with assurance that poet Kahlil Gibran said parents are the bow, children are the living arrows they send forth, and wonder why this twentysomething kid can’t go buy shoes without my help, why he can’t be a straight arrow.

He knows time is short before his shift starts, that Walmart is a quick drive away, but I’m on to his ploy. I tell him it’s busy on Saturday. He says he'll pay for the shoes himself from the money he has saved from tips. I relent, stiffen myself for the people of Walmart, undoubtedly in full bloom on a holiday weekend.

I mentally prepare to run the gauntlet of morbidly obese shoppers blocking aisles with their carts, the disabled banking around corners in motorized chairs while holding barking Chihuahuas, teens mooning over engagement rings in the center aisle, transvestites with runs in their too-short pantyhose, middle-aged couples buying patio supplies and sex lubricant, children swaying an already broken birthday piñata. I park. My son struts ahead.

This time I don’t care about whether he’s embarrassed to be seen with me. I pick up the pace, find him in the work-shoe section, way in the back. He can’t find tred-safe black shoes in his size. I reach up on tippy-toes, hand him down a pair. He tries them on.

I hold myself back from checking the toe room like when he was a child. They’ll do, he says. We go to the check-out line snaking into ladies intimates. A woman with a mounded cart of merchandise signals us to go ahead, says, “If that’s all you’ve got.” My son, ever impish, looks over his shoulder says, “Come on, kids!” They laugh. I’m not amused.

While waiting, he strikes up a conversation with the woman in line ahead of him. He tells her he’s buying work shoes, works at a restaurant. She tells him her son works at Hot Wings in Chico, that he’s a student there. My son tells her it’s a great school, like he actually knows this.

He explains he’s just a busser, that he’s saving for a car. After the clerk rings up her order, she moves to the carousel of full plastic bags at the end of the counter, begins loading. My son asks the clerk how much for the shoes.

“They’re paid for,” he says and nods toward the woman loading her cart to leave. She scurries away before he can say anything more than “thanks.” He helps me to the front doors because my eyes are blurry, tells me under his breath, “I think I need to go to church.” I tell him: “You’re already there.”

Waltzing With Birdie

2015-05-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

Uncle Doug was a bachelor. He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses that greatly magnified his watery blue eyes. At 35, he was short, bald and chubby. After World War II was over and his typing stint at Fort Benning, Ga., ended, Uncle Doug came back home to San Francisco. A year later, he and my grandmother used the GI bill to buy a bungalow way up on the hill in Noe Valley. The three-bedroom house, with a tunnel entrance seemed like it was built on stilts, a promontory to the only world I knew – the Mission district down below, the neon Dutch Boy paint sign waving mechanically in the Potrero Districts, and ships, like tiny logs, anchored in the bay beyond.

My mother and father moved the four of us kids into the house’s cavernous basement when my father’s drinking led to the bank’s foreclosure on our tract house in Pacifica. Upstairs, Uncle Doug, Great Aunt Eva and my grandmother slept in the three small bedrooms, huddled together at the end of the long hall. Sunshine flooded in through three big skylights, which eased the despair.

Uncle Doug collected girlie pictures and pasted them into loose-leaf binders like recipes in a homemade cookbook. He kept them on his bureau with all the stats – bust measurements, age, height, weight, other magazines they’d appeared in. Before going to work in the afternoon, Uncle Doug would pace the floor of his bedroom listening to baseball games, calling the plays out loud before they were made. He had a record player and sometimes sang along with Frank Sinatra when the Giants weren’t at bat.

My grandmother said Uncle Doug had “shell shock” from his experience in the war. That was what made him so odd, she said. That was what made him talk to himself and pace like a big cat. My mother rolled her eyes and held her tongue whenever the shell-shock theory was presented. She leaned toward the brain-damaged-at-birth notion.

Sometimes Uncle Doug would go to the basement. There was an old, black upright piano in the back corner, shoved against the cement foundation wall. Our beds were arranged there too. He’d beat the keys, pound out hymns and sing in his thin tenor voice about the love of Christ. My mother would usually take us kids down the street to the park until the music died.

Uncle Doug loved to dance. He went folk dancing on his days off. He’d wear a plaid shirt and tie with a frayed tweed sport jacket. He had high blood pressure and anemia, which he tried to cure by eating raw liver. He picked the ear wax from his ears with a bobby pin and ate it. He smelled like the inside of an old shipping trunk. He never missed a day sorting mail. He turned over his paycheck to my grandmother without discussion.

Everyday payday, my grandmother would add things up and tell him how short we were. She’d go through the bills, figuring how much we could get away with not paying each month. Because we did have a car, we carried paper shopping bags with rags wrapped around the handles when we walked to the grocery store. The rags kept the weight of the food from cutting into our hands when we walked back up the hill. Sometimes Uncle Doug would take my bag and carry it for a while, adding the weight to his own load.

I never heard my uncle complain. He hugged us kids and tickled us, grabbing our legs just under the knee cap and wiggling them back and forth giving us what we called “shinnie, shinnies.” Once he took the four of us children to the Fun House at Playland-at-the-beach. Another time he took us to a roller-skating rink. One time we went with him to watch the Fourth of July fireworks through the fog at Marina Green. He spaded the garden when asked and carried my great aunt to the living room so my grandmother could change her bedding. Then he’d gently carry her back to bed again.

Sometime in 1958, when I was 10, my grandmother began to get phone calls from a bill collector. She’d argue and cry and hang up the phone. She and my mother would go in the kitchen and close the door. We could hear their agitated tones over the sound of the radio. Once I heard my mother say, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard! Is Doug out of his mind?”

Then I overheard my mother talking to a friend. She said Uncle Doug had signed a contract for Arthur Murray dancing lessons. They wanted the $1,500 right away, and Grandma had finally borrowed the money on the house to make the bill collector go away. My mother said they took advantage of Doug, that he wasn’t bright enough to understand what he had done.

Uncle Doug wasn’t home much after that. Once in a while he’d spend an hour with us kids. He showed us how to rumba and cha cha. I tripped over his brown wing tips trying to waltz. He had rubber footsteps he’d lay out for us to follow on the living room floor. He’d play Frank Sinatra records so we could dance. He bought a black tuxedo with a blue cummerbund. He started to smell like Old Spice and White Shoulders.

One day I found his collection of girlie pictures in the garbage can in the basement. Ants were crawling all over the women’s bare breasts. They got on my fingers and marched around my wrists. I shook them off. I closed the lid.

Not long after that Uncle Doug brought Birdie home to meet us. They were ballroom dancing partners, he said. Birdie showed up with false teeth, a lot of rouge and a powder-blue chiffon dress with a fake fur stole. Uncle Doug’s cummerbund matched the blue in her dress exactly. He put his arm around Birdie when they sat on Grandmother’s burgundy chesterfield. My grandmother flinched when Uncle Doug called Birdie “Mama.”

My mother said Birdie was as Okie as the day was long. Killed her first husband with greasy Southern cooking. My mother said the poor man died of a heart attack while they were in the act. To no one in particular, my mother pointed out that Birdie had six grown kids. My grandmother said Birdie didn’t have the brains God gave a parakeet. Birdie ran a mangle and folded sheets in a commercial laundry. Uncle Doug said he loved her.

They were married at Glide Memorial Methodist Church in 1960. The reception was held at my grandmother’s house. We served a buffet of boiled ham and potato salad in the dining room. Then they sprinkled cornmeal on the basement floor and we kids sat on the wooden steps and watched as Birdie and Doug waltzed and tangoed on the open space near the washing machine. My mother said the marriage would never last. My grandmother said Birdie was old enough to be his mother, that she’d die first and Doug would come back home.

Uncle Doug and Birdie bought a singlewide house trailer in a park in Santa Rosa. For years Uncle Doug took the Greyhound bus to San Francisco to sort mail at the post office at night. He bought Birdie a new washer and dryer. They made payments on a refrigerator-freezer combination from Montgomery Ward.

A few years ago I drove up to tell him my mother had died. He’s retired now. He has a deep scar on his cheek where they took out a cyst. His magnified eyes are dim and he has dandruff and gout. He asked me if he was mentioned in my mother’s will. I said no. He asked if I wanted to hear some Frank Sinatra. I asked if he and Birdie still danced. He said yes.

San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday Punch Dec. 11 1994

We Are The World -- Even the Fish

2015-05-10T09:00:00.000-07:00

If you take Michael Jackson’s “We Are the World” concept to heart than it’s not a stretch to believe that the health of the oceans is directly connected to the way we catch, farm and eat seafood. We are the guardians of our oceans, we have a say about what we eat. If we fish too much, the food goes away. Eat a fish tonight that took decades to reach maturity and pretty soon your favorite meal is no longer available.

A new report from Monterey Bay Aquarium notes that a boat load of scientific studies show that despite the gigantic expanse of the Earth’s oceans, they’re increasingly affected by human activities. The aquarium's marine scientists say most commercially important populations of ocean wildlife have been in decline for decades. Food webs are weakening and marine habitats are being altered and degraded. While many human activities strain the marine environment, scientists say the primary factor in the oceans’ decline is our demand for seafood.

Love lobster? It takes six to eight years to reach marketable size. Average time it takes to eat one – about a half hour, if you’re being polite. Pacific lingcod eight and 10 years to mature, while spiny dogfish sharks often served as English-style fish and chips take 20 years to reach harvestable size. Beluga sturgeons, which take up to 20 years to reach maturity and can live to be 100, produce caviar (fish eggs) that sells for as much as $3,000 to $5,000 a pound. But don’t worry about the price. Over fishing, poaching and an active black market have about wiped out the species.

Throughout the world, total landings of wild-caught fish have been declining and now scientists are zeroing in on chowder houses. The idea is that consumers need to know what they’re ordering when they order “fish.” Some are farmed, some are tightly controlled in terms of catch, and some are the bounty of species that in the coming decades may no longer exist.

So, what’s a hungry seafood lover to do? I mean wasn’t buying dolphin-safe tuna enough? No, but the answer is simple mindfulness. It's not hard. The folks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, as well as many others, offer pocket guides to ordering sustainably harvested fish, all tasty and good for you. And, like me, when you do break down and order grilled swordfish, know that the supply is not endless.

But, the experts say there are new signs of hope — we appear to have reached a turning point. On many fronts, new data point to a brighter future thanks to the actions of informed consumers, businesses, fishermen, fish farmers and governments. Through better science and monitoring, we understand more fully the effects that fisheries and aquaculture have on the marine environment. In several regions of the world, proactive fisheries management is preventing overfishing and allowing marine ecosystems to recover.

Here, here, and please – pass the tartar sauce!

Factoid: 900,000 - Metric tons of wasted fish - 28% of the annual catch gets tossed overboard because they are not the desired species.

Check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch online at http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx

Birds, Bees and the Pleasures of Pollination

2015-05-03T20:14:00.000-07:00

With warmer weather and spring bloom, pollinators – bees, wasps, moths, butterflies and birds – are busy in the garden. There are actually about 200,000 kinds of pollinators in the world, but probably far less than that actually visit our own backyards.

The work of these pollinators is to spread the sex around, pollen grains (male) are moved to the receptive female parts, the carpel or pistil, and then seeds are formed that renew plantings the next year, in the meantime pollinators provide tasty fruit and vegetables.

Flower colors and smells are the big attraction for pollinators. And if, like me, you’ve planted butterfly bushes specifically to attract Lepidoptera, (butterflies, just showing off) or if you have citrus, a honey-bee favorite, or stonefruit trees (I’ve got Bing cherry and apricot), then you may want to consult the new booklet from the Coalition For Urban/Rural Environmental Stewardship (CURES). It covers the steps to protect pollinators in the garden and on the farm, which has become especially important as more bees are affected with what is called “colony collapse disorder” meaning entire bee colonies are dying off.

Pesticides play a role in controlling insects, weeds, and diseases on farms and in urban landscapes and researchers continue to look for links between shrinking bee populations and environmental causes. Because areas treated for pests are often shared by pollinators, CURES reminds that using care with chemicals is more important than ever.

Blooming flowers on trees, shrubs, weeds and native vegetation all have allure for pollinators and many species visit multiple plant types for nectar and pollen throughout the growing season. In forested and other natural areas, they help in the production of fruits and seeds essential to the diets of wildlife, especially migratory and game birds.

Added to European honey bees, there are more than 4,000 bee species and various other pollinators in the United States. The CURES booklet provides guidelines to follow before treating an area with pesticides when pollinators are present.

By doing a quick read and following the simple guidelines, the valuable work of these busy garden helpers will continue to benefit your landscape. CURES advises gardeners and farmers to read and follow all pesticide label directions and precautions.

They recommend observing and understanding the habits of local pollinators. Follow good pesticide stewardship practices at all times. Cooperate and communicate with others in your neighborhood or growing area. Recognize unusual bee behavior from accidental exposure to pesticides. Check for specific county and local ordinances pertaining to pollinators, especially commercial beehive locations or designated preserves.

Chrysanthemums and viceroy butterfly

The booklet Pollinators and Pesticide Stewardship" is available free online at www.curesworks.org/publications/pollinators.asp

Ripening Persimmons

2015-04-24T06:17:00.000-07:00

Yi Gao -- illustrator, storyteller

Gently squeeze to see

if fruit yields using a firmly

placed thumb. Astringent

types are yielding when ripe.

Non-astringent varieties

go either way, but note

size and color of each exotic

piece. Place in brown paper

bag with an off-gassing banana,

crumple or nestle together

in a deeply rounded bowl

for a couple of days and long

nights, nesting, entwined. Eat

strawberries while you wait,

sip champagne, embrace, slip

into our luscious sweetness

n Kate Campbell

Note: Scientists in California and Japan have discovered how to sex persimmon trees. Male trees code for a very small piece of RNA that acts as “molecular scissors,” cutting down gene expression to create a female tree. But, the experts say RNA scissors can be “fickle,” and this may help explain why “dioecious” plants that are genetically one sex can also function as another.

Talking Japanese With Cats

2015-04-01T07:00:00.000-07:00

woodblock print, 1934 | Toraji Ishikawa

Plastic grocery bags, coupons offering two-for-one, old shoes dumped in the alley behind the house, broke-down stoves with oven doors hanging loose like panting dogs. All free stuff. Well, the stove was free, but hefting it onto the rotting back porch of the apartment my sister Ronnie was renting at the time, the one with the Murphy bed that wouldn't stay politely closeted, cost me a bottle of pain reliever due to back issues.

She’d decided to snag the stove after studying its abandoned hulk out her kitchen window, which charmingly looks out on garbage bins and incorrigible weeds, for a week and chatting with a guy she'd been eyeing at the coffee shop. He suggested by way of flirting (her words) that it might be fixable, offered to take a look, which involved three hours of hair styling and make up for Ronnie before he showed up in basketball shorts and a crummy "Huskers" T-shirt.

I was there when he arrived for moral support or to call 911 in case the guy went rogue, but I spent most of his quick visit staring at his poorly fitting false teeth. My sister's about as hot as crust on an oven rack so I went along with it in hopes something yeasty would arise with Mr. Fix-it, and truthfully, he had a full head of lustrous, better than George Clooney, salt and pepper hair.

But me—I'm not too enthusiastic about junk. I figure, if it’s free, there’s a reason. My sister looks at life as one grand dumpster dive and can’t help herself, which is how I got Tiger, my orange and white cat, and she got three dates with a University of Nebraska college football fan.

The “garden” apartment where I was living at the time didn't permit animals and Ronnie called after work to let me know she was stopping by the "studio," as she called my cozy three-room apartment in an upscale complex. I've never been a cat lover, don’t enjoy the hair on the furniture and resent their insolent lounging about.

“Why the heck did you bring the thing here? I can’t keep him.” I huffed and opened the box. The thing jumped out and ran under the couch.

“See?" She looked at me like I'm both blind and dumb. "He likes it here already. Made himself right at home.”

I felt impatient, tired after a long day. This was not my sister's first free fiasco. We've been dysfunctional co-dependents since before it was cool. I've been through the foisting of second-hand desires before and I was sure he had mange. It would only be a matter of time until its fur was gone and his teeth fell out. I’m allergic to flea bites, for god’s sake.

“Where’d you get the damn thing?” I got down on my knees, rear in the air, peering under the couch, expecting claws and teeth, some kind of Wild Kingdom reenactment.

“You've got lint on your butt, she said to my backside. “He was free and you know how much I love free.”

“That’s not what I asked.” I stood up stiff, tottered.

“His name is really Tora. Means Tiger in Japanese.”

“Japanese? What? He escaped from a trade delegation?”

“No. I was having lunch with friends. Ardith was paying. You know how much . . .

“I know you love free!” I stepped mincingly around the box, glared, kicked at it.

“That’s not what I was going to say.” She sounded hurt and made pouty lips. “I was going to say I love inari and this place downtown has the best, plus shrimp tempura, teriyaki chicken, steamed broccoli, white rice. Great lunch in a bento box. You ever have a bento lunch?”

“Give me a break. Are you telling me that what’s under my couch is an escaped entrée?”

“It’s not like that. Listen. My friend Ardith goes to pay and I’m getting ready to go out to my car. I found a place to park almost in front of the restaurant and there was still time left on the meter. My lucky day! Free. But, .. . ." She paused for effect, fluttered her false lashes. "I could see through the restaurant window the meter had expired and I didn’t want to get a ticket. That’s when I saw the sign ‘free cat’ with a cute picture. So, I asked the woman really fast about the cat and got Ardith to go out and put a quarter in the meter.

“You got your friend to buy you lunch . . . and pay for parking?”

“Not just lunch. There's enough left over for dinner. I got two meals out of it, actually,. They put the leftovers in take-out containers. Do you want some? Free dinner.”

“Veronica," I said, trying to be reasonable. "Why would anyone give away a perfectly good cat? What’s wrong with him? I mean besides the fact he's under my couch.”

“The woman at the cash register didn’t speak much English. The owner’s mother, I think. She was really old and wore those white socks with the toe split.” She glances down at her wedgie sandles and wiggles her toes to show off her purple polish and tiny daisy decals. “We used hand gestures. She said they already have a cat. But this one, Tora, means tiger in Japanese.

“You told me that,” I’m stood, hands on hips, looking with one eye at the gap under my couch and thought about the day that will live in infamy.

“He fights,” my sister said, all bright and cheerful like the cat also cames with a free samurai sword. “They tried for two years to get him to like their other cat, but the vet bills got to be too much. Since Tiger was the newest one, and they liked the older one better, they decided to get rid of him.”

“And you think I need a vicious tom cat?”

“It’s not like that. He just doesn’t like other cats in his territory, that’s all. You don’t have a cat so he won’t have anyone to fight with. Besides, you’re lonely. You need a pet. I worry about you. I really do. Bye the way, do you have an extra roll of toilet paper? I don’t get paid until next week and it would get me through.”

I stomped into the bathroom and fished out a fresh roll from under the sink, twirled it on my index finger before tossing it to her.

“What about my furniture? Does he shred things, too, I mean just to stay in shape for wrestling season?”

“Stop! The woman didn’t say anything about that. She said he’s a good cat. It’s just that he likes to fight. That’s all I know. I’m sure he’ll be fine. But, I gotta go. He was free and I just couldn’t pass it up.”

We’ve been together now, Tiger and me, for more than ten years. He has gotten a lot fatter and refuses to use a cat box. I bought a little house, which Ronnie calls the “asylum.” But, Tiger knows my ways and waits on the front walk for me every evening and greets me when I come home from work. OK, the truth is he meows until I top off his kibble bowl and set down fresh water and then ignores me.

Ronnie and I don’t talk about his assaults on other cats in the neighborhood or the birds he kills and leaves in front of the patio door, or the time he scratched the mailman. The Postal Service sent a note about mauling, but I didn't respond. He sleeps on my bed and purrs beside me when we go to sleep. I've gotten a bigger bed, but don't invite overnight guests, or encourage visits by people with small children.

Ronnie is pleased with our relationship, takes full responsibility for what she calls my “bliss.” I remind her he’s just a cat when she comes over to borrow things, which is to say often, and she never fails to mention he is . . . well, quite a bargain.

Hiroshige Woodblock Print,

Baryshnikov’s Feet

2015-03-28T19:00:00.000-07:00

Earth's mass is 6.580 sextillion tons

and we cling to it like lint, endlessly

revolving. But some, they pull away,

unravel for an instant from this

spinning orb and lift with muscled

feet and thickened toes, defying mass

Mikhail rises for us, slides, sweeps,

soars, knobby toes extended en plein air.

Arched feet settle in fifth position. Slide

to second. Plié, Relevé, again

Swimming to British Columbia

2015-03-22T07:00:00.000-07:00

We’d hold hands before falling asleep, twin beds pushed together, blankets mounded in the divide. Across that narrow separation, my grandmother told stories of when she was young, about times when she taught school in logging towns in British Columbia and lots of other things.

These tales from the turn of the century come to mind now for several reasons – I've been reading Alice Munro’s Selected Stories and find in these beautiful jewels reflections of stories my grandmother told-- turns of phrase, vocabulary choices -- evoking memories long put aside. And, since March is Women’s History Month, Facebook friends are focusing on women’s issues.

For various reasons, I've been going through boxes of old family photos handed down to me, mostly without notes or orientation, leaving wide margin for my own invention. I find myself remembering and wondering, making up stories to go with the images from slender recollections. This story comes to mind, told in my grandmother’s dark, dusty bedroom on Elizabeth Street in San Francisco, the smell of face powder and cologne in crystal perfume bottles with fancy stoppers, providing aromatic atmosphere:

Dessalyn Matti King
Probably about 1910 to 1915

“It was a beautiful day. British Columbia was beautiful back then,” she said.

“When?”

“Probably about 1915, but don’t interrupt or I won’t tell the story." She gently squeezed my fingers. "Anyway. It was Sunday and I had the day off from teaching school. I taught the children in one room, in a log cabin. Most of them weren’t very smart and the rules for teachers were strict back then. I had to clean the schoolroom on Saturdays. I didn’t like that, but I did it. And, they wanted you to dress and talk a certain way.”

“Who?”

“Oh, the town’s people. The men who hired me. But, let me go on."

“Where did you live?”

“In a house they provided, of course. It was one room with an old wood stove for heating and I drove a car my father bought me, which they didn’t like. Most people didn’t think women should drive. But, I did it anyway. Do you want to hear this story or not?”

Dolly driving

“I want to hear,” I said, but pulled my hand free. The unnatural angle of our holding made my wrist ache.

“I went hiking by the river and then decided to swim. I was near the chute they used to send the logs down to the water where they’d gather them up in big rafts and float them downstream to the mill. I didn't expect the men would be working on Sunday. I thought I would be alone. But, I heard a rumbling and saw big logs coming down the chute, straight for me in the water.

“I knew I’d be killed so I ducked under water and swam beneath the surface as far and fast as I could go. The sound of the logs hitting the river carried under water and made me swim harder. When I came up, I was far out in the river and the current had caught me. I was carried into the log jam. I grabbed ahold of the logs and pulled myself around, ducking under, swimming with them until I got myself close to the bank. I was afraid the logs would hit the rapids and I'd be crushed in the jumble. I got out just in time and had a long walk back to my clothes, but I lived through it.”

“Were you cold?”

“Don’t be a simpleton. Of course I was cold, and scared to death and glad to be alive.”

“I’m glad, too.”

Dessalyn in the doorway of the one-room
log-cabin school where she taught
in British Columbia.

“You shouldn't ever swim by yourself and you need to be a strong swimmer. You never know what will happen. Now, give me your precious little hand.”

My Grandmother, Dessalyn Matti King Wilson, was born in 1890 and graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in physics in 1910. She was 20 and there were no jobs for women in the field of physics in those days. She went to teacher (normal) school and by 1915 was teaching in one-room school houses in logging towns in British Columbia.

She said she did it for fun, which I took to mean the adventure of being a pioneer. She was the second youngest of 10 children. Her father was a prosperous merchant in St. Louis. All of her siblings were college educated, unusual for that era.

They called her “Dolly,” partly because she stood about 4 feet, 9 inches. She was pretty and quick. She liked to sing and dance and played a half dozen musical instruments, including honky tonk piano, which she played for me and my brothers and sister as we were growing up.

Dessalyn, first row center, with her parents and siblings

Probably about 1900

She liked girls who “stood up for themselves, had gumption.” She didn't like bawl babies, called girls like that "little calves." She loved to walk and smoke and cheat at gin rummy. She was an accomplished seamstress and made all her own clothes and ours until I went to junior high school and rebelled, because no one wore cotton dresses with big collars and crinoline petticoats in the early 1960s.

She wasn’t hurt by my decision. Instead, she took me shopping in downtown San Francisco wearing white gloves, patent leather shoes and ankle socks. She shopped at Hales, The Emporium, City of Paris and the White House, called the sales ladies “Petty,” and insisted they go into the stock room and bring out the best “goods.” She picked at the merchandise and complained about the quality and price, made a big fuss. Sometimes she'd call for the manager.

Out on the sidewalk with our bags, she'd excuse her behavior by say something like: "I'm a business woman and know good goods. I'm not going to let them cheat me." We'd walk to catch the J Church street car back home to Noe Valley and hold hands as we crossed Market Street, her fingers slender and childlike, but gripping my hand as strong as a jumberjack.

Historical Note: Most of the earliest teachers in rural communities of the West were men. When the teaching profession developed and required that teachers have some formal training, more and more women entered the field. Communities were happy to have female teachers because they would work for less pay than a male teacher.

They were often young -- sometimes as young as some of their students -- and did not stay for very long in one school if they could find another teaching position in a better location or which paid a little more.

As the country moved West in the United States, the need for teachers, male or female increased. By the 1870’s, 25% of all American-born white women had taught school at some time in their lives. The community had an advantage in hiring a woman teacher, though. Women were paid 40-60% less than their male counterparts, making $54.50 a year to a male teacher’s $71.40 on average in the 1880s.

https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/schoolhouse/008003-2100-e.html

Frontier Teachers: Stories of Heroic Women of the Old West

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/frontier-teachers-chris-enss/1100305442?ean=9780762748198&itm=1&usri=9780762748198

Information about the early days of logging in British Columbia and historical photos are archived online by the Campbell River Museum at http://www.crmuseum.ca/logging-jungles

Boiling piss on St. Patrick’s Day

2015-03-14T18:43:00.003-07:00

Went to the grocery store to pick up corned beef for St. Patrick’s Day. A gaggle of old folks gathered around the meat cooler, turning over the shrink-wrapped meat, picking and choosing, taking their bloody time. What were they looking for? It’s all the same, right? Why are all the purchasers of this traditional Irish meat just old folks (me included)? Good questions. I’ll get to them.

In the meantime, here’s another question: Everybody celebrates St. Patrick’s Day, right? Green beer, green rivers in Chicago, green lights on the opera house in Sidney, green parades in Canada, green pubs in Buenos Aries where not a single person of Irish decent shows up. There are jokes on the Internet about drunks in yoga positions. “Kiss me I’m drunk or Irish or whatever” T shirts. On March 17 the whole world is Irish and few people know why.

Never mind. I’ll cook corned beef today in honor of the part of me that’s Irish, wear orange on St. Patrick’s day for the part of me that’s not. No one will give a rip about what I wear and I’ll wipe my hands on the seat of my pants while cooking – in my Irish way. People don’t know the history of what they’re celebrating, don’t care, they just want somebody to pass them another Guinness stout.

But, you see, just like every Hispanic is not Mexican, every Jew is not Polish, every Swede is not blonde, everyone of Irish decent is not Catholic. I’m Presbyterian, which has been an issue in England, Ireland and Scotland since before the 1600s

My ancestor Archibald Campbell, a stout member of the Church of Scotland, which became the Presbyterian Church, was beheaded on the 'Maiden' in 1661 for his religious and political beliefs. People in Great Britain have been killing each other for religious, economic and political reasons for more than 500 years. This conflict helped launch the founding of America.

The Maiden. Courtesy: National Museum of Scotland

“I love Highlanders, and I love Lowlanders, but when I come to that branch of our race that has been grafted on to the Ulster stem I take off my hat in veneration and awe." Lord Rosebery, 5th Earl of Rosebery, 1st Earl of Midlothian, British Prime Minister 1894.

Until 2010 in America, I was part of this stem, this distinct ethnic group of immigrants identified since the founding of the nation through the U.S. Census as Scots-Irish. In 2010, Scots-Irish citizens comprised 1.05 percent of the U.S. population. The government no longer recognizes this minority even though more than a third of all U.S. presidents had substantial ancestral origins in Ulster, the northern province of Ireland.

President Bill Clinton spoke proudly of this fact, and his own ancestral links with the province, during his two visits to Ulster. Scots-Irish Presbyterians founded what is now Princeton University in the U.S. as a seminary for its ministers. Mark Twain and Elvis Presley were Scots-Irish, for heaven’s sake.

If this marginalizing of a minority had happened to Puerto Ricans, 1.52 percent of the U.S. population; Chinese, 1.12 percent; or Sub-Saharan Africans, 0.9 percent; there’d be a huge outcry from Americans. For the Scots-Irish—not a peep.”

Here’s a Wiki list of famous Scots-Irish Americans – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scotch-Irish_Americans that may be a surprise.

We’re talking a lot of history here. For example, during the American Revolution, Scots-Irish troops fought successfully to prevent the British from taking control of the Hudson River Valley during the Saratoga Campaign. George Washington said of the American troops who fought those fierce battles that, if the war was lost everywhere else, he would take a last stand among the Scots-Irish of his native Virginia.

The Surrender of General Burgoyne at Saratoga by John Trumbull. The painting was completed in 1821, and hangs in the rotunda of the United States Capitol in Washington, D. C.

He saw the Highlanders’ heart, knew the Lowlanders’ tenacity. After the Scots-Irish successes in battle, Congress declared December 18, 1777, a national day "for solemn Thanksgiving and praise;" the nation's first official observance of a holiday with that name.

So, keep in mind that Saint Patrick’s Day is a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics in Ireland. It’s also a feast day in the Church of Ireland. The church calendar avoids the observance of saints' feasts during certain solemnities, moving the saint's day to a time outside those periods. St Patrick's Day is occasionally affected by this requirement, when March 17 falls during Holy Week.

So, not everyone of Irish descent is obligated to go to church or get drunk on Saint Patrick’s Day. Not everyone wants to wear green. Not everyone wants to kiss leprechauns or idiots who have no idea what the holy day of remembrance is about.

I guess it’s the loss of history, culture and tradition that bothers me most. People assume I’m Irish, which is true, but I’m also Scottish, which they don't seem to get. I’m a two-for-one American with history that literally stretches back to the late 5^th Century and some say the Campbell's are descended from the Briton Arthur the Hero King, the one in the Knights of the Round Table myth.

I guess I’m miffed because these days being Scots-Irish doesn’t mean much in America anymore. I get what's going on, but only pinch me for not wearing green on St. Patrick's Day if you're looking for a fight.

Under every kilt are Irish genes.

Now, about that corned beef. Here’s the deal. The old people at the grocery store know best. They take their time looking for a firm, rounded cut of brisket with no sign of gristle and a good balance of fat for tenderness. They will, as my mother used to say, take the beef home and “boil the piss out of it,” throw onions, carrots, potatoes and cabbage in the pot.

The meat will be tender and sweet, make great sandwiches on rye bread the next day, and remind me and my family we are Scots-Irish, enjoying the leftovers.

Post a comment, I'd love to hear from you. Éirinn go Brách Ireland Forever!

Why Childhood Memories Matter

2015-02-18T06:00:00.000-08:00

Sunnydale housing project, 1941
[Photo: SAN FRANCISCO HISTORY CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY]

A child ran from the playground at Sunnydale Projects in the early summer of 1955, beating on doors, breathlessly telling grownups that I’d fallen from the monkey bars and couldn’t get up. When she finally found my mother behind one of the uniformly plain front doors, she explained and my mother came running. Trying to learn how to circle the bar and come upright like the older kids, I misplaced my hands on the bar and crashed to the ground, dislocating my kneecap.

I hobbled most of that summer from my bedroom to the couch. The doctor said my leg had to be immobilized and my mother made sure his orders were followed. There was no TV in most San Francisco homes. Commercial TV broadcasts didn’t extend to the West Coast until 1951. Instead, I colored, played with paper dolls, listened to the radio with my mother, and meditated on the swirls and flourishes in the burgundy oriental carpet. I went from cast to elastic bandages, my mother wrapping my knee tightly several times a day. Eventually I was allowed to walk without crutches, then permitted to go outside.

That’s how I met her. After walking dutifully for days around the projects, I went to a building beyond the view of our unit’s windows, and ran as fast as I could up and down the narrow sidewalks, testing my knee. A woman came out and asked my name and where I lived. I was only about six and answered truthfully. I went on running. When I got home, my mother said a nice lady had stopped by. My knee stiffened and I sat down, waiting for the wrath because I'd been running. The lady asked, my mother said, if I could come and play with her daughter, who couldn't go outside because she had polio and couldn't walk. I knew very well how that felt and agreed to visit.

This fuzzy, black and white, memory comes back to be because of a recent conversation with my niece. She lives in Orange County and just had a baby. She’s leaning toward not vaccinating her infant daughter. She asked me what I thought about that decision. Trying to remain supportive of her parental prerogatives, I said it was her decision, but the memory of the day I met my playmate kept coming up.

My mother dressed me in nice school clothes and walked me down the hill. We were welcomed, I went inside. In the living room was a large metal cylinder, horizontal sunlight through Venetian blinds striped the gray tube. Only my friend’s head extended beyond the enclosure, a mirror positioned above her so she could watch the room. Shocked, the girl’s mother sat me down at a children’s table. She brought me crayons and a stack of coloring books, children’s playing cards, board games. She explained her daughter, Eunice, couldn't walk or sit up, that she had to stay in her iron lung, but she could watch and she wanted to see me play. I caught her eye in the mirror, sensed Eunice’s wariness as it slipped into indifference.

Eunice’s mother fluttered about, brought me red Kool-Aid as I colored. She adjusted me in the child’s chair so I could be seen through the mirror. I don't recall her speaking. She just made animal sounds that signaled her mother when she needed attention. The polio vaccine had not yet been invented.

Members of Rotary International volunteered their time and personal resources to help immunize more than 2 billion children in 122 countries during national immunization campaigns.

It became available when I was about 10. We all got it, everyone, including my parents and grandmother. About 1962, people lined up around the block to receive the vaccine on sugar cubes in the Alvarado Elementary School auditorium in San Francisco. There were long tables of nurses passing out the doses to grateful families, every member chewing the sweet protection.

“I respect your decisions about what's best for Adriana and support you in whatever you decide,” I told my niece, knowing she will make decisions based on solid information and complete love. I told her I had my sons immunized because I'm old enough to remember when immunizations were not available, perhaps with the exception of small pox vaccine, which my mother received in the 1930s as a girl.

Today, the U.S. Centers of Disease Control says about 30 percent of measles cases develop one or more complications, including pneumonia, which is the complication that is most often the cause of death in young children. Ear infections occur in about 1 in 10 measles cases and permanent loss of hearing can result. Diarrhea is reported in about eight percent of cases. These complications are more common among children under five years of age and adults over 20 years old. As a child, I knew children who were deaf from the effects of measles, the twisted beige wires of their hearing aids draped across their chests. There was no licensed measles vaccine in the U.S. until 1963.

“Your father had the most horrendous case of mumps I've ever seen in my entire life,” I told my niece, hauling up another memory. “His head was literally the size of a basketball. He was very, very sick for weeks, literally. Joyce, Steve (my siblings) and I also got mumps. There was no vaccine at the time. Joyce and Steve were very sick. My case was mild and only put me in bed for a few of days.”

Chicken Pox: Because there was no vaccine, we all had it, I said. My own sons had it.

Whooping Cough: There was no vaccine available and fortunately none of us kids got it

“If you've ever heard the sound of whooping cough, you'll know it. It's a horrifying sound,” I told my niece.

The CDC says: “Whooping cough is very contagious and most severe for babies. People with whooping cough usually spread the disease by coughing or sneezing while in close contact with others, who then breathe in the bacteria that cause the disease. Many babies who get whooping cough are infected by parents, older siblings, or other caregivers who might not even know they have the disease. Half the babies who get end up in the hospital, some die.”

In the fall of 1955, I attended first grade at Sunnydale School. My mother was president of the PTA. Eunice and I would have been classmates. She died that winter and her family moved away. My parents bought a house thanks to the money they saved living in the projects and we moved away too. But the memory of Eunice, her translucent face and wispy hair spread out on a pillow, her inquiring eyes reflected from the mirror above her head stay with me and flood back whenever someone talks about the dangers of vaccinating children.

I tell you about this conversation with my niece because I survived a time when common vaccines were not available and hundreds of thousands of children were damaged or died. I got my children immunized because in my view the risk to their health and very lives is too great to ignore. I tell you this in memory of Eunice.

How Anti-Vaxxers Ruined Disneyland For Themselves (And Everyone Else)

Heroes Passing Through Our Valley -- U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine

2015-02-15T07:33:00.000-08:00

In remembrance: Heard U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine passed away today. Had a chance to hear him read his poetry a few years ago and at 84 he was spry and funny, charmingly self-effacing.

They called him the father of the "Fresno School of Poetry," and there was a hint of scoffing from the Central Valley poets in the audience that such a thing as the Fresno School exists, and politely shunned the notion. Levine, however, who taught for more than 30 years in the English Department of California State University, Fresno, intimately knew the valley and it's people, it's music and majesty.

He read at American River College near Sacramento to a sold-out audience, announced he had just stepped down as poet laureate; his term ended a mere week before the reading. It was good to see him and visit with my ARC creative writing professors -- Traci Gourdine, David Merson, Harold Schneider, Michael Spurgeon and with friends from the Sacramento Poetry Center.

And, it was delightful to hear a poem about where I live, to hear words capture what happens sometimes in the valley on a hot summer day -- a whiff of salt reminds in an instant that something so powerful even the mountains have no word for it lies just beyond the valley's simmering bowl. I love this captured subtly, this shared intimacy with Levine about a place I know well, this recognition the ocean is only a heartbeat away.

San Joaquin Valley in late spring

Our Valley
By Philip Levine b. 1928 d. 2/15/2015

We don't see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August

when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay

of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard

when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment

you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost

believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,

something massive, irrational, and so powerful even

the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.

You probably think I'm nuts saying the mountains

have no word for ocean, but if you live here

you begin to believe they know everything.

They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,

a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls

slowly between the pines and the wind dies

to less than a whisper and you can barely catch

your breath because you're thrilled and terrified.

You have to remember this isn't your land.

It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside

and thought was yours. Remember the small boats

that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men

who carved a living from it only to find themselves

carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,

so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,

wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

My son Mark waiting in line.

My son Mark bought tickets to Philip Levine's 2012 reading as a Mother's Day gift. He said reading "What Work Is" convinced him we should attend the event.

He was right, but my son was disappointed Levine didn't read the poem that night. Here it is with thanks to my wonderful son, who knows about standing in line and what work is. The poem holds sentiments too many Americans share.

What Work Is

By Philip Levine

We stand in the rain in a long line

waiting at Ford Highland Park. For work.

You know what work is—if you’re

old enough to read this you know what

work is, although you may not do it.

Forget you. This is about waiting,

shifting from one foot to another.

Feeling the light rain falling like mist

into your hair, blurring your vision

until you think you see your own brother

ahead of you, maybe ten places.

You rub your glasses with your fingers,

and of course it’s someone else’s brother,

narrower across the shoulders than

yours but with the same sad slouch, the grin

that does not hide the stubbornness,

the sad refusal to give in to

rain, to the hours of wasted waiting,

to the knowledge that somewhere ahead

a man is waiting who will say, “No,

we’re not hiring today,” for any

reason he wants. You love your brother,

now suddenly you can hardly stand

the love flooding you for your brother,

who’s not beside you or behind or

ahead because he’s home trying to

sleep off a miserable night shift

at Cadillac so he can get up

before noon to study his German.

Works eight hours a night so he can sing

Wagner, the opera you hate most,

the worst music ever invented.

How long has it been since you told him

you loved him, held his wide shoulders,

opened your eyes wide and said those words,

and maybe kissed his cheek? You’ve never

done something so simple, so obvious,

not because you’re too young or too dumb,

not because you’re jealous or even mean

or incapable of crying in

the presence of another man, no,

just because you don’t know what work is.

Red-tailed Hawk and a Fractured Valentine

2015-02-12T06:00:00.000-08:00

I recently got an email from an old friend of my ex-husband,

who now lives in England. He inquired about John's whereabouts.

I wrote him back with the news.

Dear Dan: Thank you for your kind note about John. I'll pass it on to our sons, Mark, 35 and Mike, 24. I know they'll appreciate your remembrance. They've taken the loss of their father hard and they're still getting over it. They were relatively young to lose their Dad and have been rudderless since, as I've been for the past few years. John was always so big and robust, wherever he went he filled the room. It's still hard to believe a mere virus could diminish him, take him away.

John and I had a challenging relationship, as you know, and we were not living together when he died. He died alone by choice and it was a month before his body was discovered. I regret the way he died and miss him very much. He was my biggest supporter and we all wish we had been there for him. But, in the end, big and gruff, he chased everyone away in his bitterness.

As you may have gathered, I'm a writer and have worked as a reporter for many years. My work has often taken me to remote locations. John was always there for the boys and they easily went back and forth between us. He was proud of my work and in many ways made it possible for me to do it. I now live in Sacramento and work as a writer and photographer specializing in environmental issues. After Mike graduated from high school, I began to take creative writing classes -- short stories, poetry -- and I began a novel, Adrift in the Sound, published in 2012, that includes several characters modeled after John.

I worked my day job and worked on the novel nights and weekends. It's set in Seattle in 1973, its about what happened after the "Free Love 60s" ended and a new era began -- end of the Vietnam War, Watergate Scandal, Roe vs. Wade that legalized abortion, launching of the war on drugs, the Arab Oil Embargo, etc. The story is about Lizette, an addled street artist who hooks up with the Franklin Street Dogs, a ragtag tavern softball team, it's about the gritty drug scene and the pristine beauty of Orcas Island, its about John and me and the only thing that really matters. But, remember, it's fiction.

I struggled to find an ending for the story, but it eluded me. One night I had a dream, vivid and powerful. John and I were in bed on a sunny morning. We were young. In the dream, he went to take a bath and I went along to keep him company. In the dream every hurt, resentment, tension, grievance between us was resolved and in that moment only comfort, love and acceptance washed between us.

It was as if John came to me in person. It was 2 a.m. and by 6 a.m. the end of the novel was written, the story complete. I had a strong urge to call John, check in, see how he was doing, but put it off. As best the San Francisco Coroner can figure, he died the day I finished the novel. I believe the end of my story was his final gift to me, the gift of feeling his complete, untarnished love, and a gentle, resolved ending to a grating story. Sorry, but I can't go on telling. It makes me cry.

At John's funeral, we had lots of chocolate and roses and friends from John's days in San Francisco's Haight Asbury. When it was over, I went outside and a huge red-tailed hawk swooped low and ruffled my hair then perched on a cornice of the building. You would think this an exaggeration, but I have witnesses.

The hawk was vigilant, as if guarding. It was still there after everyone left and I was alone with this magnificent bird, standing in front of an ornate and historic mausoleum. I hated to leave him there and my brother had to drag me away. We sprinkled some of John's ashes in the Panhandle at Golden Gate Park where he played baseball as a kid. I have kept the rest.

Find Adrift in the Sound here.

Riding Holiday Waves

2014-12-07T15:00:00.000-08:00

We were late getting there, what with L.A. traffic and a not-so quickie in the truck stop restroom outside Los Banos. The paper towel dispenser was empty. We took the slow lane, didn’t zip up the highway. Why rush? he said and I agreed, air dried my hands out the window, trying to picture the people in San Francisco I'd never met.

By the time we landed on his mother’s doorstep, blankets and bags in hand, the family's faces were blurry, blank. I gushed about his mother’s amazing flat, the hardwood floors, the view of the bay, the double glass doors separating the living and dining rooms, skipped over mention of her recenly departed husband, his photo in the place of honor on the mantle. I fluttered, not finding a suitable perch. She said I had beautiful hands, asked me to sit, patted the spot beside her on the sofa.

His brother talked about flying in from the East Coast and how the guy next to him blew snot on the airline blanket and then spread it over his chest. He said the kids get up early, an unapologetic warning, before slouching off to the back bedroom to assess his wife's migraine. We got the living room fold-out without much padding, the inflexible frame now cutting into my spine.

At first light, she began setting the holiday table at a dogged pace. I watched with one eye, riding my attention up over the bunched pillow like a sneaker wave, spying on her as she fondled each dish. Against the foil light of dawn, she moved in sparrow hops from branch to branch around the room.

She flapped a white table cloth, smoothed it with veiny hands, pulled brown napkin rings from a drawer in the battered sideboard, held a gravy boat up to the dim light, set it down. She stood hunched before the windows, wiping her eyes, twisting the wedding band around her bony finger, staring at the first hints of another day.

I ignored the warmth coming from behind, the knucklehead nosing my thigh. Clearly, his mother, lost in reverie, wasn’t blind. I nudged him away, suspected her hearing was pretty good, too. He kept nuzzling. I relented, arched my back, leaked tears, broke like a wave over the rising grief.

From "Hard Holidays" flash fiction collection, because holidays sometimes provide food for thought.

Intensly

2014-11-28T13:49:00.000-08:00

“Never use so in a sentence. It sounds too girlish.” (college English teacher going over

one of my essays). The Cambridge Dictionary of the English Language

explains so as an intensifier when we mean ‘to such a great extent.’

Personally, I’ve never written or said: “to such a great extent,” but hey, these people are so smart, I’m sure they know what they’re talking about. The Cambridge folks say so is a degree adverb that modifies adjectives and other adverbs—providing a splash of intense color, so to speak, a pretty girl wrapping a hot pink scarf around her neck, for example. So becoming.

So, it happened again – twice in the past few days. I already told Facebook friends about the first time—took a quick tea break at work, looked up to see a Swainson's hawk land on the security light above me. Just now, standing on my patio, a small hawk swooped across my garden, to perch on my navel orange tree. Went to see if it was a Swainson’s hawk, but it flew away before I could be sure.

Hawks are beautiful, vigilant birds, but why now, why twice? Why me? I live in the city, for heaven’s sake. I’ve got way more to think about than the hidden meaning of birds – like washing socks or clearing the rain gutters of all these blasted leaves. Where are my work gloves and the ladder?

So, besides being a visual gift, I still wonder if this unusual and repeated animal presence symbolizes anything? Seeking answers, I consult the modern-day Delphi oracles. I go online. Internet shaman and soothsayers offer this: Hawks are messengers from the spirit world. They call on us to be observant, to look closely at our surroundings. Life is sending signals, things are changing and hawks tell us to pay attention so we can navigate the shifts.

There is no end to online discussion about hawks as omen – from Judaism, Hinduism to Native American lore. Most conclude: “The hawk comes to you indicating that you are now awakening to your soul purpose, your reason for being here. Hawks can teach you how to fly high while keeping you connected to the ground.”

Here’s more to noodle my twisted brain, which only wants to think about chores and what I’ve forgotten: “As you rise to a higher level, your psychic energies are awakening and the hawk can help you to keep those senses in balance. Its message for you is to be open to hope and new ideas, to extend the vision of your life.”

So, sitting in my jammies talking to you after a big holiday, apple pie crumbs on my chest, I wonder about flying, about looking down on the world, seeing everything in exactly the right place – hearts and hands, holidays and hurricanes. Then I remember I’m in California. We don’t have hurricanes. Hell, it hasn’t rained here in nearly three years. Maybe I should clean the garden rain gauge, all this hawk talk could be a sign.

So, the Swainson's hawk (Buteo Swainsoni) was listed as a threatened species in 1983 by the California Fish and Game Commission. The listing was based on loss of habitat and decreased numbers across the state. Either their numbers are increasing now or I'm very lucky to have not only seen one or two in the past few days, but also to have spent a good quarter hour with one -- a young, light morph female.

What messages do I need to receive? What has escaped my notice? Why do these sightings repeat?

So, God, I’m waiting, listening with so intensified attention.

Lessons from my carpet guy

2014-11-07T07:00:00.000-08:00

Damn sure right! I moved it all, everything I own into the backyard about two weeks ago. OK, not the china cabinet with my grandmother’s Bavarian china and my wedding Lenox and the odd crystal tid-bit pieces handed down through generations or the turkey platter that came over on the Mayflower, I kid you not. It came on the boat wrapped in a petticoat trimmed with tatted lace.

And, I didn't pack all the books and put the boxes out on the scruff we now call in that gentile Tidewater way “the back lawn” in drought-ravaged California. I moved almost everything out myself on a Thursday night, used a hand truck and force of will. Got help with mattresses, couch and recliners the next morning, expecting the carpet-cleaning guy to appear between noon and 2 p.m.

At 10 minutes after 12, the carpet guy was late according to my watch. I checked my calendar to find, actually, knees weakened by the realization, my appointment was actually the following Friday, as in a week away. When the blood rushed back to my head and I started breathing again, I looked around my empty house for someone to blame.

When I recounted this situation – everything I own in the back garden in a jumble – friends asked how mad I was, like I’ve got some kind of internal dial reading: annoyed, upset, steamed, hotter than a dropped penny on a summer sidewalk, Mount St. Helens flipping her lid.

Since I have no gauge to precisely measure dismay and no one but myself to blame, I remained calm and went out on the back patio to survey the wreck of my earthly goods – dusty lamps, ancient quilts, particle board end tables, a coiled and tied bulldogging rope, rocking horse, 5-foot tall candlestick holder, cassette tapes for a player I no longer own.

I rummaged around for a folding chair, sat down. I was mad, yes, but there was more in the gush of emotions--there was fear and disgust, a sense of the senseless. Since I did this to myself, I questioned my sanity, watched senility quietly stalking me, smirking through the hedges at my unsuspecting naiveté. I saw that mocking look hovering over the paltry trappings of my life, my household wreckage and quavered near tears. My heart spoke, pointed out my husband was dead, my children don’t love me and my life doesn’t amount to much. My heart has always tended toward the melodramatic. My gut said: "Get over it."

But truly chastened and humbled, I went back to work, joked about my stupidity with coworkers, explained why I couldn't call the carpet guy to come earlier, that I’d bought an online discount coupon for the cleaning and the company said they were very busy, but agreed to work me in. What I didn't tell them is that it had probably been five years since the carpets were cleaned, that addressing the grim of my life seemed pointless at this point, but there it was, everything I own sitting outside.

Perhaps this will make sense: I have grown sons who for this reason and that have moved in and out with bikes parked in the dining room and cherry and plum residue on their shoes that got ground into the carpet, popcorn kernels, spilled soda, grease and mud tracked in from east and west, cats that have spewed feline fluids, spiders that crept in and set up housekeeping, dust raised along the Western frontier.

There are cake crumbs in corners, rubber bits from popped balloons, curled scotch tape used to fix streamers to the chandeliers, scraps of shopping lists, toenail clippers slipped under the coach. In short, a full life lived boisterously and joyously in a little cottage by the river.

Bringing all the worn and tattered things I've accumulated and lugged around my whole life back inside, only to move them out again in a few days, seemed like a waste. I got a foam camping pad from the garage, made a pallet on the floor in my suddenly cavernous bedroom, bunched my favorite feather pillow around my neck and thought about my life, the things I carry—what to save, what to throw away. I thought about where I am, where I want to go, what I want to touch and see. What is me and what do I want to do about it?

I thought about Mary Oliver’s poem “Summer Day”: “Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

And I began to clean—baseboards, sooty air registers, bricks around the fireplace, chandeliers, light covers, switch plates, furniture legs, tables and chairs. I hauled the recycle bin from the side yard and began releasing things, then more things. I vacuumed nightly, with abandon, scrubbed the kitchen, cleaned the oven, washed bedding, hunted cobwebs, dusted window blinds. I fell exhausted each night on my pallet, got up in the dark, cleaned more in the rising valley heat.

Went to work, studied the garage mess before I closed the overhead door for the day. I questioned everything before the week was through, questioned each object to see if it was sturdy enough or pretty enough or held enough memories to fit my emerging plan for what I’ll do with my one wild and precious life. If I hadn't decided to get my carpets cleaned, I would not have thought about it.

Eric arrived to clean the carpets at the appointed time on the proper day, took one look around and said he’d seen carpets worse than mine, which I'm sure he tells every old lady with a cockapoo. I don't own one, but, I told him the truth: I do not love the carpets, don't worry about stains, that I didn't want the powder blue plush raised from the dead.

Today I’m moving the things I want or need back in. Summer is blowing away on fall winds, winter is kicking at the door. Leaves are streaming onto the clean carpet as I lift the objects I want back inside the house. On the newly polished dining room table are bicycle wheels, tires, inner tubes, a tire pump, spray on battery cleaner, a huge pipe wrench, hammers and a small stuffed panda. I ask myself again and wonder about you -- what will you do with your one wild and precious life?

Visions of Sly Ramon

2014-10-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

Standing at the sink doing Saturday dishes, I looked out on my garden and watched blue jays hop from branch to branch, quarrel in the pomegranate tree. They argued and I scraped dried egg off a plate with a yellow scrubby.

Sly Ramon came then, unannounced. He cut through the garden fence and the wall and counter top, came to stand beside me at the sink.

He touched me gently on the elbow, fluffed hair on the back of my steamy neck, my face flushed pink. He’d been walking along the Sacramento River, he said, when he felt my need.

I don't remember calling or needing or even knowing his name, but I knew, and felt compelled to answer when he asked,“Tell me what trouble the Lord has visited on you.”

Sly settled in a chair, hushing my kitchen. I opened my mouth to speak and the ficus bent its branches, bristled its leaves. I lowered my voice and laid out the situation. It just felt good to talk with him. I didn't pause to wonder.

“It’s Chickenman," I explained.. "He’s hurt. In Mercy Hospital. The nuns are praying. The doctors say there’s no hope. He’s lucky to be alive." I burst into tears, put my face in my hands. "I can’t believe this. He won’t ever be able to fasten his pants or tie his shoes. He’s crippled. We don’t have money. He’ll never get another job."

Chickenman, who loves fried chicken more than Moon Pies and orange soda, was between jobs, when he agreed to help a shifty Irishman jack up a house, a mansion really, in midtown. They were preparing to move the Victorian over a block so they could expand the jail.

As Chickenman was setting wedges around the foundation, preparing the building for the lift, one of the jacks snapped, the structure shifted. His right thumb got caught between house and foundation when it came down. He tried and tried to pull his hand out and with a mighty tug, the meat came away from the bone, the smashed digit left behind. It was horrible, I told Sly, and cried some more.

Chickenman started running around like a, well, you get the picture, until some of the other guys tackled him and wrapped a dirty sweatshirt around the spurting wound. Shortly after that Chickenman passed out before a good-sized lunch crowd gathered to watch the paramedics work. They took him to the Sisters of Mercy Hospital. Which is where he is today, I explained.

Sly Ramon got up from the chair, kissed me sweetly on the forehead, said, "You are blessed," that's all and he walked out through the yard and the fences.

Chickenman said he had a vision as he slept that morning that someone held his bandaged hand. When he woke, his thumb was in its proper place. The Sisters declared a miracle and Chickenman ordered fried wings for lunch. I continue doing dishes now and stare at the gaps in the garden fence, expecting.

From Songs From the Caldera, story collection in progress.

Peddling Poetry -- A Time-Honored Tradition

2014-10-23T07:38:00.001-07:00

Restored peddlers wagon, Ohio

Beyond the flow of mainstream media, where mega-best-sellers barge by creating big wakes, there are quiet bays where writers row in welcoming waters, where a tide of readers wade in and tug their turquoise and yellow books to shore. I've been hanging out in these quiet inlets, splashing in the tide pools of poetic arts, collecting.

I've gathered prickly urchins and violet anemones, shells that play madrigals and rondos. I've taken them home and treasured each one. Many of these collected "chapbooks" include the poems of friends or writers I've heard read their stories at literary events. Some are the work of acquaintances on social media and others passed along by poets.

These slender volumes created by working artists follow a centuries old tradition made popular by "chapmen," peddlers of sometimes dubious character who tramped the byways of 17th century small-town Europe offering housewares and hardware and the occasional booklet to rural residents. These pamphlets included political and religious tracts, folk tales -- and often poetry.

Peddler in modern China

Although the Industrial Revolution brought better printing presses and the chapbook fell out of favor, the publishing method never completely died out. The appeal of inexpensive booklets easily distributed was not lost on thrifty residents of rural towns or on avant garde artists seeking attention for their work -- the American Beat poets of the 1950s and 60s published frequently in chapbooks, for example.

American poet Allen Ginsberg's ground-breaking work "Howl and Other Poems" was originally published this way by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights Books, as were works by Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan, William Carlos Williams and Gregory Corso. Today a first edition chapbook of "Howl" sells for about $600, but back in the day probably cost less than a dollar. There's a lively trade in collectible chapbooks these days and many independent booksellers maintain a special section. Not true for chain book stores, however.

But, chapbooks remain one of the world's most widely-accepted forms of publishing poetry. Given the centuries-old tradition of bringing pots and pans, as well as prose and poetry, to customers worldwide, these minimalist, low-cost volumes don't carry the modern stigma of vanity attached to longer, self-published works. Heck, every American poet from Whitman to Frost initially published this way.

Right now there are a number of chapbooks on my bedside table that I turn to when I settle down for a quick read before sleep. I'll highlight them in coming weeks. The author's aren't household names like J.K. Rowling, John Grisham or James Patterson. Instead, the books are small, personal and beautifully made by real people with something to say. Here's an example:

Grand Slam, poet Alan Kleiman's premiere collection features many of his most popular works, offers deceptively light verse that pops with charm and catches the reader off-guard with unexpected insights. He finds poetic occasion in life's ordinary events: Sardines, a barn reflected, feta dip, sliver removers, wanting girls, slow dancing and kisses.

Kiss me a hundred times

and then a thousand

and then more that that

and then even more

and you will begin

to touch

the spot where

I want to kiss you more.

"It's a pleasure to praise Alan Kleiman's brave and strange poetry, with its various

strands of innocent yearning and worldly resignation. 'The Emperor's clothes don't fit anymore,' Kleiman has found. The result is a whole new wardrobe, this time, without excuses" -- Jeff Nunokawa, Princeton University.

Kleiman, who often works under the pen name Ace Mulvihil, lives in New York City and is as an attorney. His poetry has appeared in publications around the world. Grand Slam is available online from Amazon.

Today I join the ranks of chapmen, rattling my wagon from town to town, calling to housewives: "Hot poems. Hot Poems. One a penny, two a dime. Hot Poems!"

Excerpt: Adrift in the Sound: a novel of betrayal, madness and the power of love

2014-10-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from Adrift in the Sound

Setting: Seattle, WA, 1973

“So . . . You’re here.” Einar Karlson spoke to her through the screen door on the back porch. “When did you get out?”

Lizette stood at the bottom of the backstairs and looked up at her father swaying behind the rusted mesh, saw his wariness and stiffened her own guard. She pulled a wad of damp envelopes from the metal box beside the steps. He put her mail there so she could pick it up whenever she liked, avoiding him if necessary. She sorted out the county disability checks and dropped them into her lumpy canvas bag then studied the postmark on a mildewed envelope—December 1972. “What’s the date?” she asked, without looking up.

“Come in?” he suggested. “Have some tea?”

Lizette shrugged, continued sorting, mostly junk—art school ads and half-off sales from Christmas. She realized the holidays were over, that she’d missed them, but since her mother died, she hadn’t felt like celebrating anyway.

“It’s February 2,” he said. “I presume you know it’s 1973.”

She climbed the steps, paused on the narrow porch. The screen door swung out and her father held it open while she hesitated. The wood felt spongy under her feet, softened from years of Seattle rain and a lifetime of entrances and exits.

He took the pipe out of his mouth, cupped the bowl protectively in his hand as she passed. She noticed gray rime on the pipe’s stem, smelled the cherry tobacco on his blue plaid shirt. He smiled a pained welcome. What am I afraid of? she wondered as she moved past him into the kitchen. He’s old and weak. A pang of sorrow popped up in her chest. At least her mother would never be old like him, she thought, and a ripple of comfort passed through her. She also knew she’d never hear her mother laugh again, not that it happened all that often in this nut house. She looked around the kitchen at the sad walls, at the old cuckoo clock, oddly out of place in a house filled with sculpture, paintings and historic Indian artifacts.

The kitchen felt warm, not from cooking, Lizette realized, but from more than twenty-five years of memories that heated the surfaces – the old green Formica kitchen table and vinyl chair seats, the canisters and potholders. Recollections radiated from the cabinets and walls. Clicks and pings, sounds of her childhood, came from the house’s furnace, the heat closing in on her. She watched her father’s bony shoulders work as he ran water into the tea kettle, thought about how big he used to seem, how shriveled he looked now. His shirt hung from his clothes-hanger frame, its fullness overlapped under his cinched belt. He settled in the chair across from her, his presence too close, pressing on her diaphragm, making her pull for air.

She crossed her arms over her chest and recalled the rumble of his voice when she was a child, sitting on his lap and resting her head against him, hearing the stories, feeling his resonance. Always stories. He told tales of the first people. The Indians who lived here before the explorers came, about Chief Seattle and his people, about the animal spirits who ruled the world. She conjured the energy of the university students who’d gathered in her family’s living room in the evenings, who’d talked earnestly about their theories and research, and she remembered how her father, the famous anthropologist, would listen to their ramblings, amused. They were finding out things he’d known and written about before many of them were born. Her mother would appear at those times like a spirit, offering plates of Swedish cookies, her blonde hair braided and coiled into a crown. Then she’d glide out the kitchen door to her art studio in the back garden.

Lizette remembered sitting cross-legged on the floor beside the couch. He’d bring little treasures out of his study—totems, the two-headed soul catcher that was carved from a bear femur, dance wands, rattles, skin drums with thunderbirds, and finally the chief’s headdress with long ermine pelts attached. He’d always offer to let someone else try on the chief’s headdress, never fitted the elaborate piece to his own head, held it out, acting like an acolyte with ancient sacraments.

Most of all Lizette had waited to see the mask of Watches Underwater. Even after centuries, the colors leapt from the carved cedar, Watcher’s unflinching eyes eternally scanned the upper world for danger, vigilant and prepared to warn the creatures in the sea below of any threats. The mask’s red puckered lips showed the legend perfectly, she thought, and pictured the beautiful woman floating on her back just below the water’s surface, watching, supping air with those voluptuous lips, watching, and she ached now to put the mask on her own face, but knew her father wouldn’t permit it. “It’s not a toy,” he’d said when she was small and tucked the artifact back into its box. She knew he’d deny her now so she let her desire fade. The tea kettle whistled. Her father went to the cupboard and pulled down two mugs.

“What kind of tea?” he asked.

“Uh . . . orange spice,” Lizette said, looking at the blue and white plate above the sink with her name written around the rim: Elizabeth Lena Karlson—April 10, 1947. Her nursery totem. Her middle name, her mother’s name, Lena, cried to her from the Delft ceramic. The plate had hung there for more than a quarter century, she thought, an artifact displayed like it had been dug from an ancient midden, a Swedish custom that announced her presence to those who ventured into her parent’s kitchen. She remembered that when she was small her father had called her “Little Liz,” sometimes “Liz Bit,” eventually transforming her name playfully to Lizette. After that everyone called her Lizette—teachers, neighbors, playmates, and the clerk at the art supply store where her mother had worked and sometimes taught painting classes in the back room.

The store manager had framed some of Lizette’s paintings and hung them behind the work table where the clerks made picture frames. A couple of them sold, and her mother took her for ice cream, told her she’d put the sale money in Lizette’s college account at the bank, that she was going to the Pratt Art Institute in Chicago or the Sorbonne in Paris and she’d grow up to be a famous artist, if she studied and developed her own technique, if—her mother added in an acid tone—she’d stop copying others. Lizette had asked for a double scoop of pistachio and felt she’d somehow done something good and wrong at the same time. Her mother ordered plain vanilla and they sat on wire chairs at a small table, silent, licking their cones.

“Pfeffernüsse?”

She snatched herself back and watched her father reach for a blue tin on top of the refrigerator. He popped the lid and took out a handful of cookies, dropped them on a plate. Lizette picked up a cookie, pecked at the edge, set it down, scattered powdered sugar on the table.

“Where will you stay?” Einar said, sitting down and reaching a veiny hand toward her. Lizette did not reach back. She sensed he wanted to say something, but instead of speaking to her truthfully, she watched him shift away, felt his dodge. “Have you made plans?”

Lizette doubted his interest. “I’ll be on Orcas Island, at Marian’s,” she said flatly. “She has the ranch now, since her father died.”

She looked up and saw his stunned expression. He didn’t know Hal Cutler had died, she thought, and realized how isolated he’d become in the years since her mother died, his life narrowed to an occasional faculty meeting, TV at night, maybe an ambitious teaching assistant between the sheets once in a great while.

“He’s been gone over a year, I think. You know the cabin by the water, below the main house?” He nodded. “That’s where I stay. Marian said it’s mine as long as I want.”

“That old shepherd’s shack?” She heard the judgment in his voice, winced. He tried again. “Good spot. Not the best light, though. Kind of rough. No running water or electricity. But, I guess it’s better than hanging around downtown.”

“It’ll do.” She felt the disapproval in his voice, almost added that it was none of his business what she did, decided to avoid an argument, studied her ragged fingernails, switched tempo.

“What happened this time?” Einar tried to keep his face blank, voice flat. “How long did they keep you?”

* * *

Set in the Pacific Northwest during a time of great tumult in America, Adrift in the Sound is the story of Lizette's journey through this troubled era, it's about madness, betrayal and the redeeming power of love. Adrift in the Sound was a Mercer Street's Books finalist for best novel in 2011, rated 5-stars by Amazon readers.

Order online in paper or e-reader formats. Available to international readers in English where online Amazon service is offered. For a limited time in the U.S., get the Kindle Edition free when you buy the new print edition of this book. Learn more about Kindlematchbook.

Passion Amongst the Willows: Saving Yellow-billed Cuckoos

2014-10-11T08:52:00.000-07:00

I have never seen a yellow-billed cuckoo, except in a clock, but chances are I never will. They're good at staying hidden, but experts say their numbers in California are dropping fast. That prompts government action so you, like me, might one day have a chance to see and especially hear this fascinating species.

Courtesy: Audubon Society

To hear these birds, to know their song, is to witness passion through sound. The experts at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology also say yellow-billed cuckoos are fairly easy to hear, but hard to spot.

In summer, they suggest looking in areas of deciduous forest for infestations of tent caterpillars, as well as outbreaks of cicadas or other large arthropods. Then listen for the species’ distinctive, knocking call, which can be given at any time, night or day. Later in summer, listen more for their dove-like cooing, as they give their knocking call much less frequently.

When the birds have feasted on caterpillars and insects and feel secure, experts say a receptive female may perch with its head up, pumping its tail slowly up and down in a 180-degree arc. Just prior to mating, the male yellow-billed cuckoo snaps off a short twig and presents it to the female as he perches on her back and leans over her shoulder.

Both birds then grasp the twig as they copulate. When they leave their sheltered perch, the yellow-billed cuckoo’s flight is swift and direct, with deep beats of their long pointed wings.

Courtesy: http://www.wildphotosphotography.com/

In California the birds live in willows along streams. Once common in the California’s Central Valley, coastal valleys, and riparian habitats east of the Sierra Nevada, habitat loss now constrains the California breeding population to small numbers of birds along the Kern, Sacramento, Feather and Lower Colorado Rivers.

The species is virtually silent by day during migration, so watch for their distinctive long, slim shape and rapid, fluid wing beats as they cross over open patches below treetop level on their way from one wood area to another. In fall, areas with fall webworm infestations often support yellow-billed cuckoos.

Now, the western population of the yellow-billed cuckoo will be protected as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced today.

The Service determined that listing a distinct population segment (DPS) of the bird in portions of 12 western states, Canada and Mexico is warranted. In the U.S., the DPS will cover parts of Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon and Washington.

The western population of the yellow-billed cuckoo (Coccyzus americanus), is found along creeks in woodland areas, winters in South America and breeds in western North America. Once abundant in the western United States, populations have declined for several decades, primarily due to the severe loss, degradation and fragmentation of its riparian habitat.

“While the major threat to yellow-billed cuckoos has been loss of riverside habitat, we do not anticipate any significant new water-related requirements as a result of this listing decision,” said Ren Lohoefener, Director of the Service’s Pacific Southwest Region. “The water resource requirements for riparian habitat are not unique to cuckoos, and in many cases are already being implemented for other species.”

Courtesy: Dan Pancamo

The Service’s final listing rule will become effective Nov. 3, 2014.

Here's a video glimpse of this increasingly rare bird species: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCtBOzNcaaw