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.

Old School

1. So a bunch of us went out to celebrate April birthdays, and ended up at one of the classic 'old school' restaurants in SF. It is fitting that, Original Joe's, once an iconic landmark in the 'Tenderloin' district of the city, gutted by a fire which shut it down for four years, has risen from the ashes to reside in it's new locale, the old Fior d'Italia, at the corner of Union and Stockton. That's right, baby, come home to mama...North Beach. With it's signature red leather booths, tuxedo clad waiters, a menu laden with steaks, filets, veal Milanese, linguine Alfredo, a bar that was jammed, and an overflow crowd spilling onto the sidewalk, it was happening on that Friday night. The noise level was off the charts. I could not hear the conversation across the table. But who cared. It gets better, though. A long long time ago in grammar school, my best friend, was a gangly shy tomboyish girl like me. We were an odd couple. She was tall. And I was short. We made our first communion together, and played a parochial version of baseball with tennis balls which we hit with our fist out on the asphalt playground. When I was 11 I transferred to another school. We never wrote. We never made play dates. It was over. Until Friday night. She's the owner of Original Joe's. The evening was surreal. Nostalgic. And just as we were marshaling to leave, Francis F. Coppola walked in and sat 3 booths over from us. That, my friends, was a beautiful wrap.

2. The foie gras state ban in Cali is looming. Make it illegal, and a black market will rise.

3. The greatest 2 minutes in sports is this Saturday. The Kentucky Derby. Creative Cause, Daddy Nose Best, or Gemologist. And, Happy Birthday Alex! You da man.

April showers

1. Gloomy day as I embarked across the high seas into the port of San Francisco. Rain peppering the salt streaked double paned viewing windows, the ferry crawled, through the channel past a trio of container ships. Colossal structures, metallic, Lego trojan horses, hovered over the dock removing and loading containers, blue, forest green, yellow, with names like Hajin, or China stamped on the side, precision choreographed movement I could have watched all day. Legend is that when container shipping was just a gleam in some Daddy Warbuck's eye, the concept was offered to the port of SF, who flipped off the idea. But that's an Oakland tale. The real skinny: depth and navigation regulations doomed the port of SF. Oakland was the first port to build for container shipping, and is now the 5th busiest port in the nation.

2. The Lurline. The Matsonia. The Mahimahi. Once part of the great Matson fleet, cruise liners which crossed from California to Hawaii carrying tourists to the island ports, in the 40's and 50's, and unrefined sugar in the hold on return voyages...in it's heyday, greeted by boats of savvy wahines laden with fragrant leis, and enterprising beach boys diving for coins tossed by passengers from the pristine white ships as they glided into Honolulu harbor, the quintessential transportation of the day, done in by aviation. The Pan Am clippers. Faster. Better. Uh-huh. If you happen to cross the Bay, you might get a glimpse of the once fabled Matson liners. They hover there in the water, stacked with containers, battleship gray, unrecognizable shells of the past. Yesterday etched in fading blue, the name, Lurline on the last freighter before we broke for open water.

3. The Hunger Games raking in the dough. Is it or is it not a 'Battle Royale' knock off?

4. Best damn tapioca sold by 'Donna's Tamales.' Off the truck. Vegan. Made with coconut milk.

Transitions

Adrienne Rich died yesterday in Santa Cruz. She succumbed to rheumatoid arthritis, a condition I had no idea was lethal. My initial contact with Adrienne was by postcard. Typed. Circa 1981. She said she had been reading my works for many years. I had submitted some poems to 'Sinister Wisdom' and she was the editor. I kept the postcard because I was an unabashed admirer of her; her prose, but more so of her poetry. Years later when she moved to Cali, I had the good fortune of 4-5 encounters, all of them warm and each of them memorable. Adrienne was brilliantly prolific; and wrote about the human condition rooted in responsibility, and empowerment; of children and parents, sexuality and loves, simplicity and the complex...of herself, and beyond her self. Many will say her greatest poems were the '21 Love Poems' written between 1974-1976. My favorite poem is one entitled: ' Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev.' Shatayev was the leader of a women's climbing team all of whom died on Lenin Peak, 1974. I have read this poem many times over the years. It is like visiting an old friend. It never ever fails to move me. And it always makes me think of what is possible. Here are the last 2 verses of 'Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev'... 1974.

'In the diary as the wind began to tear
at the tents over us I wrote:
We know now we have always been in danger
down in our separateness
and now up here together but till now
we had not touched our strength

In the diary torn from my fingers I had written:
What does love mean
what does it mean 'to survive'
A cable of blue fire ropes our bodies
together burning in the snow We will not live
to settle for less We have dreamed of this
all of our lives.

Adrienne Rich 1929-2012

March Madness dunks, and musings..

1. Candice Parker, the 6'4" all American center for Tennessee was the first 'girl' to throw one down; that's right, dunk-in-your face, and call your mama cause I'm climbing the net and letting one rip in an NCAA tournament. The great USC all American center, 6'5" Lisa Leslie, was the first player to crank one up over the hoop in a WNBA game. There was a smirk on my face when the 50 year anniversary of Wilt Chamberlin's 100 point NBA game was recognized by the media. As great as it was, these shiny nuggets of dish should light up your day: the aforementioned Lisa Leslie (who was a pain in the ass to some pretty good Cal teams) scored 101 points in one half during a game, and would have continued the barrage, but the other team refused to leave the locker room and take the court for the 2nd half. The final score was 102-24. Another gleaming sliver of memorabilia: USC All American, Cheryl Miller, sister of Reggie, and gold medal winner in the summer Olympics and the Pan American games went 'unconscious' deep into the zone, and once banked 105 points. A couple of nights ago, 6'8" Brittney Griner took one to the house, phi slamma jamma, baby, and dunked one down on Florida.

2. The question is, can VanDerveer and the Ogwumike all World sisters
lead Stanford past Kim Mulkey, Baylor, and Brittney Griner's size 18 sneaks? Can the Cardinal not choke on past NCAA tournament karma, and run the table? There's already been plenty of crying over in the boys brackets as upsets reigned this past weekend. I'm rooting for you Tara to cut down the nets, even though I almost choked on those words. Show em how we ball out here on the West coast.

3. Um, in some sort of senior moment, I've decided to try and memorize a couple of lines of poetry a week. This week, I've chosen the first 4 lines of Lord Byron's,
'She walks in Beauty.' Just saying...my friends, it's not all March Madness here.

Rainy day Tags

1. Northern Cali is currently swamped by a series of storms. Nothing like hunkering down under sweeping bands of wind and rain. In March. Motha Nature sashaying through the global warming beltway, laying down the splash and flurries just in the nick of the time. Atta girl! In Ben Lomand, down the coast, 9.6 inches of falling water was recorded. I swear I saw a paper boat float down the street today bumping up across the curb before it docked against a tire.

2. So everyday there are these geese that take flight. Same time. Same air space. Once in the morning at 7:30. Return trip in the late afternoon. I have tried to count wings and beaks as they stream their way through the corridor over my building. Elusive in their honking. And it is, my friends, loud. As they wing it, so goes the honking until they're off the horizon. But then in some sort of cosmic convergence, I caught a glimpse of this harmonic act last weekend. 2. Only 2 geese in a straight line. In sync. Perfect. The gaggle was on me.

3. The Walking Dead. One of the most creative telly series to hit my living room. Based on a comic book series, it is hard to describe without
sounding like an,um, zombie lover, but this is really about survivors and the journey. The show has set the record for cable audiences over anything else that has been aired previously.

4. The Walking Dead: currently, the Repubs who are in total retrograde. Neanderthal shenaningans. Stone age politics. Women. Back to the kitchen. Barefoot. And pregnant. Oh pleassse...

5. Arizona. The same state that produced SB1070, the controversial
anti-immigration legislation, has proposed a new bill that would allow employers the right to deny health insurance coverage for birth control pills based on religious beliefs. A woman would be required to provide proof that her prescription is being used for non-sexual activity. WTF.

Spanning the Globe

1. Ok, I confess. As a kid I split the cookie apart. Ever so gently so that the middle didn't crack. I placed the halves face up on the table (who needs a plate) exposing the oval coating of
white icing, the plump magical sugary goodness, and scraped that mother off with my pearly teeth. The dunk was for donuts. We didn't need no stinking milk. Manufactured in Chelsea, New York city, in 1912, the oreo turned 100 today, surviving 'lard' gate, and 'hydrogenated oil' gate. Many an afternoon when the work world was buzzing with BS, I'd hustle myself down to the defunct ASUC junk food store and grab a pack of oreos. Yes, my friends if they were good enough for Santa as he made his rounds, hey, they were most def good enough for me.

2. 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' a sci fi movie made in 1959 by the lovable Ed Wood was the Mt. Everest of 'bad, really bad' cult films until yesterday. Wood's script had it all. Flying saucers, grave yards, aliens, and humans constructing a doomsday weapon to destroy the universe. Plan 9 was the resurrection of the earth's dead-zombies, (or walkers, ha!) -to create havoc by the aliens to get the earth's attention. That all changed. Seamlessly. Last night, I watched Robert Rodriguez's, 'From Dusk till Dawn' scripted by QT and released in 1996. Geezuz, Mary and Joseph. Rampaging shark jumping . George Clooney (who would probably like to incinerate this film) and QT are the Gecko bros who rob banks, murder and pillage their way to Mexico kidnapping Harvey Keitel, a preacher, and his two kids, one of them a very nubile Juliette Lewis. The Gecko boys are so bad that you just know shit is waiting for them around the corner. And my friends, it is, in a strip bar, the 'Titty Twister,' which is possessed by vampires sunk in the middle of a barren landscape populated by bikers and bad mofos with names like 'sex machine.' The dialogue, and the plot is so off the chart, so lavishly bad, so incredible that streams of laughter punctuated the footage. In the end, the shark went belly up from exhaustion. And the movie ascended to Everest. Two nice cameos by the great Michael Parks and the under-appreciated John Hawkes. Good last frame before the creds roll.