An Australian sheep farmer was unable to attend his beloved aunt’s funeral because of covid. He managed to get his message through:
He lured them into that shape with grain scattered on the ground. Sending love to all the people I know. And to the people I do not know. And to Ben Jackson’s sheep too.
This is peculiar. I only noticed today because I wanted to add to it that my page about Covid-19 is entirely gone. Since early last year I kept a diary of deaths and impressions, news stories, recommendations, and quotations concerning Covid-19. During the chaos that ensued when I tried to update my “theme” this entire page went missing. It was a huge page, and it was important to me. I also discovered that both my “home” pages led to a menu, a literal restaurant menu. (Gone now.) There was a third “home” page which I deleted during the initial chaos. I suspect that was my “Covid Diary.”
It was about 2:45pm, and we were taking a nap when a huge crash blew us out of bed. We knew immediately what it was.
Yeah, it happened again. Another board through our roof. [see “Shaken Not Stirred”]
Continue readingTomorrow is officially spring, but it’s still winter here. Coastal weather is not like inland. When Portland is fretting about 45mph gusts, we’re out walking in it. Sixty-five miles per hour, seventy. That’s typical in winter.
I woke in the night to a bang, but it’s happened so often in the past three months that I didn’t think too much of it. The house to the south is being “remodeled” and the contractor has repeatedly failed to adequately secure the site.
The firm hired to do the work seems not to understand about wind. They stripped off the roofing the beginning of January and since then the felt has torn off three times and plastic tarp has torn off twice as well. Three months without a roof.
And now this damage to our atrium roof. (Not to mention our Miele vacuum cleaner happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gary is uncharacteristically optimistic that it will survive.)
MARVIN BELL’S “POEM AFTER CARLOS DRUMMOND DE ANDRADE”
Poem After Carlos Drummond de Andrade
“It’s life, Carlos.”
It’s life that is hard: waking, sleeping, eating, loving, working and
dying are easy.
Continue reading “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
—The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
My intention was to write a post complaining about two important Zoom meetings, scheduled on the day of the Inauguration. What were they thinking?
Instead, there is hope in the sky, the light, the love I want to wrap around myself like a cloak of hope and beauty. Look up!
Continue reading
We have been going out determinedly and despite rain and gale. Winter began this morning. Often by the time we’ve come home and had our breakfast, the weather clears. The other day was the first morning in months that we had not heard the begging juvenile gull: weak, weak, weak! But it was back the next day. It follows a parent, sometimes inches away, and sometimes the parent manages to put a few yards between them. The “baby” is every bit as big as its parent but hunches down, tips it’s head up to expose the bright pink interior, and begs for food.
This behavior is typical of juvenile gulls, but most of them are over it by mid-summer. I’m not sure this youngster has much of a future. At what point does it fend for itself? At what point does a parent say enough is enough?
We humans are begging too, hoping for safety in a year fraught with threats and for a future warmed by love and family obligations. Maybe that gull is not so out of line. When do we stop feeding the people we care about?
Continue readingAmerican poet Marvin Bell has died surrounded by family yesterday evening, the stereo playing Chet Baker’s “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To.” (3 August 1937 – 14 December 2020)
If you never heard the poem to his wife he always spoke in person and do not know the “Dead Man” poems, you must trust me when I express my sorrow at the passing of a great human being.
—Photo by Sam Roxas-Chua
“Marvin Bell taught 40 years for the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and served two terms as Iowa’s first Poet Laureate. He has published 24 books and is known for his many collaborations with other artists, including Whiteout, an ekphrastic collaboration with photographer Nathan Lyons, and for his influential teaching. Often redefining his poetics from book to book, he is the creator of the ‘Dead Man’ and ‘Dead Man Resurrected’ poems, and has been called ‘ambitious without pretension.’ Bell edited poetry for five years for the North American Review at its rebirth and two years for The Iowa Review at its birth. He began and edited New Poets / Short Books for Lost Horse Press for five years, a series that published 15 poets, three to a volume. He also designed and taught a summer workshop for teachers from the urban program America SCORES for five years. He is a recipient of The Lamont Award for his first book, Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, Senior Fulbrights to Yugoslavia and Australia, and awards from The Academy of American Poets and The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Incarnate: The Collected Dead Man Poems will appear in October 2019. A short interview can be seen online in the ‘On the Fly‘ series.”—Pacific University MFA website
He was an essential part of of my MFA experience, adding immeasurably to my education, and a practical man all the while. He often sang, promoted the arts, and was generous with useful suggestions and kind support.
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Hotchi-witchi is a Romani word for hedgehog. It’s one of the Romani words Gary uses. I had here a sweet video about a hedgehog, an owl, a phantom horse, and more. It is old and the narration is subtitled and I found it on YouTube but apparently without the creator’s agreement. You will likely still find it there, and if I could figure out which version benefits Yuri Norstein, I’d repost. Ten minutes long and all good. Look for Yuri Norstein—brilliant work!
PAR Yuri Norstein is a Soviet and Russian animator best known for his animated shorts, “Hedgehog in the Fog” and “Tale of Tales.” Since 1981 he has been working on a feature film called The Overcoat, based on the short story by Nikolai Gogol of the same name. According to The Washington Post, “He is considered by many to be not just the best animator of his era, but the best of all time.” He mostly uses cut-out paper. Amazing.
*hotchi-witchi: Mid 19th century; earliest use found in George Borrow (1803–1881), writer and traveller. From English Romani hóčiwiči, probably from the English Romani word corresponding to Welsh Romani určos + a second element of uncertain origin, either an arbitrary extension or perhaps a derivative of Romani veš forest, woods (from Middle Persian wešag forest; Persian beša, (in Iran) bīšae), probably with influence from English.
Canadian friends sent us this in appreciation for my photos of the local Cooper’s hawk.
I completed weaving the Olive warp—three distinctly different shawls, none of which read olive and one of which does not read green at all. Now my studio space is a wreck, but if I wrap gifts, bind the last two quilts (and find a place to put the stack of six, and get the most recent one to Linda, which won’t be until January), and invest quality time in sorting and tidying, all will be okay.
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