Sunken Treasure

So there's this walk I take while I'm making the daily rounds, Mountain View Cemetery, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who was also responsible for planning Central Park, and part of UC Berkeley. The older portions dating back to the early 19th century are at ground level. The landscaping significantly improves at the higher elevations. There is even a millionaire's row with monuments that swallow up the family plot, and loom spatially, like the mansions they were conceived in, gaudy memorials to mortality. When I was smoking, I often drove there and fired up a few while staring at the distant Oakland horizon. I've even bagged my lunch and picnicked, guzzling my soda, and eating my sammies sitting and using the finest carrera marble as my table. But I digress. A month ago, I passed a section which is not on my usual route. Most of the inhabitants were from county Kerry or county Kildare. Sparsely populated. The biggest tombstone was 'Campbell.' Irish? I chuckled. Surely, laddies, a misprint. But wait. It gets better. The next stone over belonged to Ina Donna Coolbrith, 1st poet laureate of California!

Ina. She was as cool as her name. Even cooler. Ina hung with the literati boys of her time, Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Muir and the critic Ambrose Bierce. Ina like Gertrude had salons and introduced and established a young Joaquin Miller to the publishing world. In 1874 Ina worked as a Librarian in Oakland grinding out 6 days a week, 12 hours a day for $80.00 a month, a sum far less than a man would receive in the same position. Employment infringed on her writing. However, it is said that Ina never had a poetry submission rejected by a publisher. Ina mentored the flamboyant Isadorah Duncan, and later helped a 10 year old Jack London to read. In 1906 Ina was named the 1st poet laureate of California. Later in life, almost destitute, Ina was rescued by Edwin Markham and the actress, Lotta Crabtree. One of the last formal portraits of Ina was taken by Ansel Adams in Berkeley. Ina Donna Coolbrith died in 1928 and lay in an unmarked grave until 1986 (JeeezuzH) until a headstone was placed there. Plot 11. Jack London never forgot Ina, and wrote no woman affected him as Ina did.