tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58220080078744603542024-02-28T08:05:25.422-08:00Joan Logghe Santa Fe Poet Laureate Emerita 2010-2012Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger119125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-22692776677945403642020-03-18T08:41:00.000-07:002020-03-18T08:41:54.476-07:00Bad Anne FrankI always knew that I would be a bad Anne Frank. She was my hero,<br />
smart, a writer, honest, brave, deep, and Jewish. I worried if I were in the attic<br />
how obnoxious and impossible I would be. I think many of us felt that way.<br />
<br />
Now, over a week in seclusion with supplies, books, running water, my husband<br />
and daughter next door, I am already exhibiting signs of what a bad<br />
Anne Frank I am. We sequester on a luxurious, rustic, six acres. The 18 chickens are oblivious.<br />
The robin splashing in the bird feeder knows nothing of virus. The week of daffodils,<br />
when I was supposed to be seeing my brother and wife in Florida, is ending now.<br />
I would have been traveling home tonight. ten days ago I fretted about the late arrival, and now<br />
any arrival except the one of this virus, would be welcome.<br />
<br />
How have I been bad? I have been so anxious already, one long week of solitude<br />
I have blown through enough stress to power a car. I have been cooking three meals a day.<br />
I am trying to make something special each day. Today I think I forgot an ingredient<br />
because my blue corn, blueberry muffins were a little rocky. If you slather butter<br />
and home made jam, it's edible. Today my daughter went out for us. She went<br />
to four stores with our "wish list," as my youngest daughter calls it. When she got that bag<br />
of flour she located out, she turned into Miep Gies, the friend who helped Otto Frank and family.<br />
There was a heroic vibe around my daughter. She grew mythic. She wore a wool cape. She is style itself and knows how to dress for any occasion.She delivered the bacon to non-kosher cheers of praise.<br />
<br />
I am stressing myself out already as is my want. Today I was up since four AM and it was not a good day. The news freaks us out. They said if we over-react, that might be the good news. Two of my kids are working out in the world. That is worrisome. Then some don't have work. That too is fraught.<br />
I have three kids. What was I thinking, that there is safety in numbers?<br />
I have done some good deeds. I use only two squares of toilet paper. I posted the poem "Pandemic" by Lynn Ungar that went viral to my beloved Santa Fe Girls' School and heard back from a dear student. I got in touch with Lynn Ungar herself to thank her. I laughed at Wolf Martinez' FaceBook letter to Toilet Paper.<br />
<br />
I laughed a deep laugh at Don McIver and wife dancing in their home for ST. Patrick's. They were alive and spontaneous. I was laughing like never before. I don't know how come I got them LIVE, I just did.<br />
They showed me what it means to be live, not this faint replica of my hero I have become. <br />
<br />
My youngest daughter tells her six year old Kaleia that these are blue iris she bought in Pittsburgh's Trader Joe's where it used to stay "See Yinz soon," the Pittsburgh equivalent of y'all.<br />
"Virus?" my granddaughter says. My second cousin twice removed told me people were weird.<br />
She saw an old Hispanic lady with a shopping cart with only a box of matzoh. That image is my image<br />
of the week. What do you take into the desert of the unknown? Unleavened bread.<br />
<br />
I'll try and track my behavior and see if I do more good than bad. There. I wrote something.<br />
The robin wrote it for me.<br />
<br />
The robin, splashing<br />
in the bath knows nothing<br />
of virus. Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-62580768283627321762019-12-16T19:24:00.001-08:002019-12-16T19:33:14.003-08:00Christmas Spirit @ Lowe'sCorina and I rarely hang out one-on-one. She's my eldest daughter and lives next door, the familiarity and ease works because we live such separate lives. Today she joined me as I walked to the mailbox and as we both had mailings to get out decided to go to Santa Cruz Post Office together.<br />
<br />
After we mailed, I thought I might find a small Norfolk Pine at Lowe's in Española. I once went there with my youngest child and bought a dying pine that grew its spindly self into the family tree, one with a few long branches, a family joke. Our personal Charlie Brown tree had served for ten years. Time for a new one.<br />
<br />
I have never gotten the hang of a full-tilt right-on tree. As a child we had a Chanukah bush which was the Reform Jews caving into the peer pressure of Christianity that is America. My adult trees for the kids were clumsy and unaesthetic, but I love my children's ornaments and collect hearts and angels.<br />
<br />
We found our three foot high tree right away, the exact small Norfolk pine of yore, for $20. It will would surely live on in our greenhouse. Corina had already charmed the check out man who had a shaved head on one side and a poof of curly black hair on the other. He was smiling, as everyone does to the charming and beautiful Corina who flirts with the world. He said, "I won't lie to you," one of my favorite phrases because I never thought he would lie, "but someone always steals my spirit. I get it and then someone just steals it." I said that you get paid to put up with those folks. He said he gets paid to put up with them but not to have them steal his spirit. He said he wouldn't lie to us again. I looked at his name tag as we were leaving the store, JESUS I said, "I didn't know who I was dealing with. We'll send extra spirit your way." He liked that. Corina kept smiling. We loaded the small pine into my Subaru and indeed felt the spirit of the holiday. Wild hair style, smiles, small tree and all.<br />
<br />
I won't lie to you.Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-86126197857482922342019-11-07T11:35:00.004-08:002019-11-07T11:35:31.007-08:004928You're interested in the history of the house<br />
and there are few things I know, being<br />
a being who thinks history is minutia, not<br />
wars and subdivided lands, burial mounds<br />
<br />
though I must admit the Jewish cemetery<br />
on Blackador holds my two favorite corpses,<br />
Let me give history a whirl, which is so opposite<br />
a spin. Not political but personal, as Pittsburgh<br />
<br />
is a city made of people people. I love Rodin<br />
and the Burghers of Calais who, apart from nudity<br />
look like they are standing on Penn Avenue lamenting<br />
the price of fish or the late delivery of chipped ham.<br />
<br />
There was a Carriage House out back with a pump<br />
where with a few gestures spit out black tarry oil<br />
and up the ladder newsprint from the 1930"s.<br />
Then the dreams where I lived in a remodeled version<br />
<br />
I secretly always wanted to be in exile, live there,<br />
after the tennis balls against the brick house, the ice rink<br />
down the blocks, and out toy version on the patio.<br />
Did I tell you a night watchman came by twice a night<br />
<br />
and my father slept with a shillelagh by his bed<br />
we always though he won in a card game. There is no<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2RFvkdlNU0a2egobshsMiyBGf1jF-Ty3sHkJ9x3sgpz8kHXGwfEoupZrwbE5DKzw9jNOSViCiEFxLY8jk7RizGpglQPBeGloZIv8xdm6GYKNgKlwugGuvoA57o3b44kdPhABoTiPTb2_x/s1600/shopping.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="215" data-original-width="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2RFvkdlNU0a2egobshsMiyBGf1jF-Ty3sHkJ9x3sgpz8kHXGwfEoupZrwbE5DKzw9jNOSViCiEFxLY8jk7RizGpglQPBeGloZIv8xdm6GYKNgKlwugGuvoA57o3b44kdPhABoTiPTb2_x/s1600/shopping.jpeg" /></a>chronology here as in my books. I date the pages,<br />
the basement stairs where my brother and I sat<br />
<br />
before there were treads we played train. He always<br />
was the engineer and I a passenger. Or when I chocked<br />
on popcorn before there was Heimlich and he thought he'd done<br />
me in which is maybe secretly what every sibling wants.<br />
<br />
This is veering dark, when I feel light around you, dear house<br />
with your 68 year old Japanese maple tree, a bonsai set<br />
in concrete. Did you know the famous lecturer lived next door<br />
who looked death in the eye, saw his life, and backed death off?<br />
<br />
The friends who still live there for me, Judy, Marlin, Peggy Lou.<br />
The autumn Marlin and I lined the streetcar tracks with buckeyes<br />
and the police or some official came and we feared jail.<br />
The streetcar was my totem animal, all charge and growl<br />
<br />
and bell, and that left swing that brought me home. You wanted<br />
history and I invented dreams, where monthly or weekly you appear.<br />
My history channel for nostalgia or nest or acorns planted<br />
to see if what I left could grow where lightening struck once.<br />
<br />
The Carriage House is gone, revealing an apartment<br />
two Europeans in the window eternally taking tea, discussing W W III<br />
I tried to find a way back, walked and walked the block. <br />
Good Bones an architect might say. Dear house who owns you now?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-66357946077779730642019-10-24T14:10:00.001-07:002023-12-06T09:36:48.560-08:00Small Miracle on Yom Kippur<h2>
<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="color: white; font-size: large;"><span>Dear Chavah,</span><span><br /></span><span>I went up to Taos after missing last year and felt so at home, though I only slightly know a handful of people. I was asking various folks, Bobbie, Rose, Bonnie, about you and feeling so much the threads of beautiful, accessible Judaism you spun in Taos. I remember bringing Hope, now a mother of two, with me. I just felt such gratitude to you and close. I though of you with love countless time during the Holidays. I also appreciated the new Rabbi, Judith Ha-Levi and my driver and husband, Michael.</span><span><br /></span><span>When we got home I had a package. I order my books that are out of print to keep some stock, and this time I ordered from a new vendor, ABE books. The package was a copy of Blessed Resistance, and sometimes, since they are second hand books, they are signed copies so I always check. When I opened this books, minutes after coming down from Taos, this is what I saw.</span><span> To Myra and Ben,</span><span> The parents of my favorite Rebbe on this planet. Carol (Chavah)</span><span>gave me the title for this collection, & really reconnected me </span><span>to what I love in Judaism. </span></span></h2>
<h2>
<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="color: white; font-size: large;"><span> All Blessings --Joan Logghe 1999</span><span><br /></span><span><br /></span></span></h2>
<h2>
<span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="color: white; font-size: large;"><span>I don't know if your parents are living, but I do know this moment was one of awakened holiness, and wanted to tell you this small miracle.</span><span>I remember how proud of you they were when they got the book, now twenty years ago, </span><span>They loved that you were mentioned.</span><span> My Tashlich poem, written after a day with you for Rosh Hashanah, was printed this year in the Taos Jewish Community Newsletter.</span><span><br /></span><span>So, that's one of the many miracles. Let me know what you think. If you want the signed book I am glad to send it. But for now, I send much love. Joan</span><span><br /></span><span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36);">I heard back from Rabbi Chavah immediately, and she </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 36);">agreed it rated the miraculous designation. I mean 20 years, right??</span></span><span>This week is the year anniversary of the Tree of Life shooting </span><span>in Pittsburgh, and I have barely written since my response to that.</span><span>So this year, the tree of life is glowing outside my window this first snow of the year, red crab apples, cerise apricot leaves, and the glowing gold of valley cottonwoods.</span><span><br /></span><span>A belated Happy New Year.</span></span></h2>
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Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-88323996677289812852019-09-29T14:29:00.001-07:002019-09-29T14:29:22.877-07:00Poem :: Our Lady of Sorrows Fiesta: Small Things<br style="font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13.333333015441895px;" /><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Does this work? Go to Miriam Sagan's blog listing belo to see the poem<br />
I was prodded to write for 100,000 poets for change. I am not too active on<br />
Facebook or my blog, but Miriam invited me to this even, which had 20+ poets<br />
and was well curated. I even had my grand daughter with me. Not the happiest<br />
of topics but for reals.<br />
<br />
xx Joan<br />
<br />
<br />
<a data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://miriamswell.wordpress.com/2019/09/29/poem-by-the-indomitable-joan-logghe&source=gmail&ust=1569878620074000&usg=AFQjCNESavyG3_WPBeiY3bI1B-avUwAhaw" href="https://miriamswell.wordpress.com/2019/09/29/poem-by-the-indomitable-joan-logghe" target="_blank">https://miriamswell.wordpress.<span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><wbr></wbr>com/2019/09/29/poem-by-the-<wbr></wbr>indomitable-joan-logghe</span></a>Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-74776962755580220732018-11-04T11:56:00.000-08:002018-11-04T11:56:41.020-08:00Falling in Love with Pittsburgh This is what I want you to know. I left Pittsburgh in 1965 and went to college. I left again in 1969 after the Woodstock summer after college. My mother kept asking me when would I return and I silently said, "Never." They sold he house, they would have gladly given me. I always visit.<br />
Then my father died, then my mother. That was long ago. My brother got a bad diagnosis there four years ago. Then my daughter, Hope, moved to Pittsburgh while her husband, Leland, is in grad school there. Having them move away was a blow.<br />
Then I fell in love with Pittsburgh and it's where i want to be when not here.<br />
I was already crying, when my grand daughter was born there and died, in a four day beauty flash.<br />
My heart is speaking Yiddish. I am falling in love with so many people there I could at least<br />
imagine living there. The midwives, the woman at Farmer's Market, the grandma at Blue Slide Park from Russia. My brother is falling in love with my children, and our third grandchild, Luca.<br />
My great niece, Lauren, and I already fell in love. She named me Amazing Tante Joan.<br />
This is what I want you to know. My brother was Bar Mitzvah at Tree of Life. In those days Rodef Shalom did not have Bar or Bat Mitzvahs. They joined Tree of Life Synagogue, though it was on Craft Avenue, same as the Pittsburgh Playhouse. I went to Rodef Shalom, not far. My little grand daughter went to pre-school there and my mother's perfume still in the halls. <br />
I was, during all this, a Jew. Even though, Even though we were taught not to let it show so much outside the house. I couldn't blame them for teaching this, with Anne Frank in every diary written by every little Jewish girl. She was the back story of out lives more than Hitler. He was behind the back story.<br />
So now this. eleven people gunned down on Wilkins Avenue, the street where we lived from my birth to age three. I remember the Bar Mitzvah, just a scene in the new house, and the woman with the blue tattoo on her wrist. I helped take her coat. I have a selective memory, don't you.<br />
What I want you to know is nobody says, "A good Jew" as they easily say "A good Christian."<br />
We say a mensch, which means a human being. My grand daughter now goes to a Jewish Day School and got a mensch card for her good deed. How do we carry these children forward?<br />
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Her school and home are one mile down Shady Ave. One mile as the crow flies.<br />
I almost said bullet. I almost said, the Jews could be mistaken for crows, with our<br />
black garments for mourning. This is what I want you to know, my grand girl carried by her other Grandpa, Charlie, who happened to be there for all of this. I thank him, the sweetest of men who went to Rwanda for Peace Corps retirement. We are so lucky to have each other. He was with us for Passover too, and when baby Jade on life support, he held her little hand all night for several nights.<br />
My mother watches over Pittsburgh. We are so lucky to have threaded the needle of Holocaust and made it here. Sadly the eleven elders are gone.<br />
The youngest one not old enough, the oldest, 97, still too young. A minyan, ten needed to say mourner's Kaddish. Eleven died. The singers sing, "we will build this world from love."<br />
A man videoed the march and I watched in twice. One if us can't stop crying. One of us is numb.<br />
At a Bar Mitzvah, age 13, the boy becomes a man and is morally responsible for his choices. My childhood friend said her son, not raised Jewish but Jewish by birth, made his own Bar Mitzvah by hiking alone in the woods.<br /> At least, tag very least, I am finally writing something, numb as I feel. Obsessed as I cam. In love, deeply and very, in love.
<br />Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-14362582254184072782017-08-30T17:17:00.001-07:002017-08-30T17:17:38.501-07:00Four occurrences with birdsMy daughter, Hope, and her four year old left yesterday after a delicious month of their company.<br />
They lived in the new TeaHouse and came up for breakfast most mornings. I felt like the luckiest person. We are all trying to remember happy again after digesting sadness last year. I have been thinking of grief as a machine, an engine that chews its way through the dense material and manufactures something more refined. Maybe an alchemy or an assembly line, not sure.I read that every grief is the most important one.<br />
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<br />
As we are leaving, driving to the airport, Corina comes up and finds a large bird in the house. She has no idea how it got in but nabs it in a bedsheets and sets it free. That's one.<br />
<br />
Then today Mike goes to get eggs, and comes across a mother hen and a clutch of chicks. She must have sat on the eggs in the weeds outside the chicken coop and yard. I wonder out loud if they will escape the hawks and coyotes. That's two.<br />
<br />
I stop to tell Myngo, my neighbor about the chicks. He has been seeing so many bluebirds, the ground is a carpet of blue. Blue birds are signs of a healthy ecosystem, or so I've been told. That's three.<br />
<br />
This morning, sitting in the house we hear the familiar and dread bird-slam against the window. There should be a word for bird hitting window despite a decal silhouette of a hawk. We go and look and it is a hawk, taking a few last breaths. On my table the book <i>H is for Hawk</i> sits unopened. What's going on, Corina wonders.<br />
<br />
Before Hope left she found a tiny rabbit, carried it in her hands, though I am fearful of rabbit fever. It was the cutest of creatures, and after she put it back, the mother seemed to reclaim it. Who eats who? Texas is flooding, we are now in a bird wonderland, they are feasting now on the refilled feeder.<br />
<br />
Creatures coming and going all around us. My daughter is flying back to my old home. The hawk to hers, the hen making herself at home. We are cleaning the house, grateful to have one. My friend's husband about to or already crossing over. <br />
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And of course, our spirit baby, Jade Bird. Her ashes buried here in the best garden on our land.</div>
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Succulents and petunias and morning glory. A hummingbird feeder still a-buzz. That's the place I go and feel most alive, into the sadness and the vitality.</div>
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That's invisible and indivisible. That's another One.</div>
Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-59376427639942211492017-04-23T11:01:00.000-07:002017-04-23T11:01:06.448-07:00Perked UpMy now four year old grand daughter Kaleia told me one late night avoiding bedtime, that she was perked up, she illustrated with thumbs up. She wasn't perked down, her two thumbs pointed the reverse. This has been my months long effort. My friend Sharon taught me one can control one's attitude. I am trying.<br />
<br />
Today is sunny, not yet windy, the dishwasher humming, the birds fed, the hummingbirds on schedule. We have 20 baby chicks and two baby turkeys in the greenhouse. Yesterday we went to Earth Day at Northern New Mexico and as we sat through talks on solar building, we nodded to one another. We had done almost everything right. Of course, there's room to improve but this lecture sure helped me perk<br />
<span id="goog_87618044"></span><span id="goog_87618045"></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhskXCj2ek5X7giR-bAZbn5lx3Tw63_Q75ypXSus4tam5Mw7yR5HG6Ky4cMpSY94h3BnYlI50ZHRcZ1Ihi50tfr1Ks7Nd0GaS2xLnMfWRPU-lxoqtBFJRVTLkZx1cCZaj7DjE1nLTrn-Y8u/s1600/20170420_193304_resized.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhskXCj2ek5X7giR-bAZbn5lx3Tw63_Q75ypXSus4tam5Mw7yR5HG6Ky4cMpSY94h3BnYlI50ZHRcZ1Ihi50tfr1Ks7Nd0GaS2xLnMfWRPU-lxoqtBFJRVTLkZx1cCZaj7DjE1nLTrn-Y8u/s320/20170420_193304_resized.jpg" width="180" /></a> My friend Julie Bennett took this Singing in the Rain photo after writing class at Pueblo of Pojoaque Library. It's right by the Wellness Center where I swim and which locals call "The Wellness." I am perked up after I swim. My inspiration and role models are Osh who told me he's 85 and sometimes swims a mile. He does a leisurely back stroke, all the time in the world. He dresses well and is cheerful. He is living a perked up life. I like also Helente who is in that age range. Sometimes she arrives with her lanky Australian friend in his Speedo. I want one of those guys to help me perk up when I am in my Eighties. I notice all the folks older than I am who are perked up. <br />
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I always felt perked up after a visit to Barbara and Alvaro. Life was worth living and the Truchas immoveable feast they provided uplifted and inspired many. I bet many feel that he was a very close friend, as he had the gift of attention and heart. Today I go to Alvaro's memorial It has been hard to grieve enough for how I deeply feel at this loss. He died in August at 89. Our last talks were that he wanted to do a ZEN service and make a Japanese garden at the grave of Jade Bird, our beloved birth and death grand daughter. He's the one who told me, "Short is short, long is long, each life is complete." I recalled those words in the Children's Hospital during the most baffling and dire of times. I think we wrote it over her crib. There were moments of perking up even then and this Alvaro teaching which he passed on from his own Zen teacher did help.<br />
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He twice insisted he would do a Zen Ceremony and the kids said, "Say yes , Moma. How can you say no to that offer?" Even though I knew he was in no way up to his generous nature and impulses, I said yes. He wrote to apologize he would be unable, as his own son died.<br />
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When Alvarao died, a few months after this generous offer, my grief hollows had been stretched so big by loss, his death fit inside the emptiness. I was spared the dreaded response I knew I would have. I could handle it. I dread losing Robert Bly, Gerald Stern, Gioia Timpanelli, these dear stars and my own personal best friends, too, I will lose. Alvaro was a true Zen teacher, living so presently and elegantly, and knowing death was always right there, in those Truchas views, in the books that he wrote, in the music that would sound and then disappear, in the paintings he made. He was living between the eternal and the ephemeral. He was one of the best men, to me, I ever knew. He's alive as long as I am, according to my rabbi. His own work will live on, of that I am convinced. He was so focused to finish his translations of Diego Rivers's interviews by his brother. He completed that important project which now has found a publisher. <br />
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Today I am perked up to drive to Truchas and remember Alvaro.<br />
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"The beekeeper kissed me,</div>
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the kiss it tasted like honey."</div>
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"Besome el colmenero</div>
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que la miel me supo el beso."</div>
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translated form Spring Has Come: </div>
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Spanish Lyrical Poetry from the Songbooks of the Renaissance</div>
Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-68848757081436703052017-03-27T11:19:00.000-07:002017-04-05T17:11:31.906-07:00Unveiling<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My daughter Hope sent out a photo of a rainbow over our house. This is not an uncommon sight, as we live where the rain meets the sunlight, but this photo by our dear Carol Neukirk came at a time, out of summer season, but still in grief season. It is the first Yahrzeit of our baby Jade Bird's life and death on April 1-5.<br />
I posted this on Facebook, always with my doubts about bumming people out in this already fraught world. But when I heard back from 83 people,with many amazing comments, my second guessing calmed down. You should see how quiet I have been, in blog, real time, and poetry world.<br />
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My old friend Ellen Schmidt spoke about playing on all the 88 keys, we don't just tinkle along merrily in the right hand of it, but submerge in the left handed bass, all the octaves of emotion. I think of the most famous koan of one hand clapping. I think of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing Maybe if we embrace the darkness and light, we don't get into the politics of denial and separation, we'd have a better chance.<br />
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I also recommend to myself to be kind and open hearted to I and Thou, to not second guess so much and just move. I have all along been saying I am not writing, and doing nothing. I open my computer, sigh, close it. But little by little and since only October when my childhood friend Darry and his wife Tricia, the poet of the<i> Urban Wild</i>, set up my new computer, I have been entering scraps of writing about Jade, and my own reaction to her absolute purity and infinite loss. When I printed them up, with no thought of good or bad, there were pages and pages. The miracle of my own perception of nothing being indeed something. Was Jade nothing, or a being of intense beauty and a gift beyond our understanding.<br />
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In one of the writings I call her a female savior. My husband says she came to break open out hearts and reiterates all the blessings she brought. He has not been the same, and in a good way I think. Sita Jameson, singer of kirtan and sacred chant said that Jade did more in her brief life than many people ever do, At nine months, Hope and Leland came back here to New Mexico, their fourth visit from their Pittsburgh home to their heart home. Their friend would lead a ceremony. People in their community of friends had planted corn in the spring in honor of Jade, a special white corn used in Mayan ceremonies of birth and death. To even see the corn they harvested was a miracle. Noble, large white ears of corn, scraggly little cooked ones four inches long. Hope, my daughter and mother of two daughters now, one on earth and one in the spirit world, said the sight of the corn is something she never expected. It was a great beauty.<br />
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Our right hands did know what the left hands were doing. It was many hands for two days, shucking, roasting, grinding, preparing. This little spirit was so honored in her brevity, so present and so alive in us. At one time I stood full of gratitude for her and knew I would not be the same without her coming and going. Still I sobbed deeply when her story was told. The left and right hand together make corn grow and fire catch and prayer fly. I have felt almost mute, but today was moved to write, thanks to the Facebook "Likes" and responses of friends on this crazy internet world in this crazy life and time of it. Men and women too, both hands. Yes and No, the duality and just us sitting around today with plum tree in bloom, and the flowers we planted a year ago for Jade's burial, blooming again.<br />
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Traditionally everyone would fly in for an unveiling, within the year after a death, to see the head stone and say Kaddish. The cousins, the aunts, they all traditonally gathered to weep a little more and then eat.<br />
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We have a beautiful headstone, which I will keep private for now, and the poems I wrote will be my unveiling for my daughter and family. There was a time last summer when I was so weepy I thought should wear a veil. I read in a grief book that once, for six months to a year women did wear veils to show they were in mourning. I felt as if I had a virtual veil. I too wanted a warning sign that it was not business as usual. I wanted people to stop asking, "Are you writing?" Then, weeks later, floaters descended over my left eye, and days later, my right. I had an interior or somatic veil and could not see well for 6-7 weeks. I am grateful that gradually, during my own trip to Pittsburgh, my eyes cleared. So now I see, gratefully, in stereo. I write to all of you, unveiled.<br />
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A tile of a jade bird Hope found in Mike's workshop,</div>
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another of the minor miracles which reassure us.</div>
<br />Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-54459751294819569682016-12-15T07:57:00.002-08:002016-12-15T08:07:51.726-08:00A Chance to Activate: The No Build OptionThough I want to curl up by the fire and binge watch for four years, activism has grabbed me by the apron strings and said, "Words have Power, Write for your health." <b>By Jan 5th </b>the BLM wants to hear from us. Hunt Power proposes a 33 mile 345kV transmission line through the exquisite Rio Grande Valley. Towers will be up to 120' high, don't get me started! for more info www.stopverdeprojectnm.org<br />
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My letter below has my talking points highlighted. Please jot by e-mail, by hand, or post office a little letter. Volume matters (NUMBER OF LETTERS, NOT LENGTH) and we all have experience or knowledge of the road to Los Alamos, or Black Mesa, or dances at the pueblos. Please read my letter and send yours to:<br />
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BLM_NM_Verde@blm.gov or<br />
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BLM, Verde Transmission Line Project, P.O.Box 27115, Santa Fe, NM 87502-0115<br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">When it’s all gone to money, what do we have?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Our first garden was in 1973, under the proposed “Verde” Transmission line and with the first shovel of earth we uncovered an arrow head, pot shards, and an ax head. I mention this to point out the fragile and special circumstances of this land in sacred and archaeological riches. Northern New Mexico is a rare treasure and should be treated respectfully. I am a writer, and the land and its people have been a main source of inspiration. My ten books all are concerned with the extraordinary gift that is New Mexico. When I taught at UNM in Los Alamos each drive brought renewed appreciation of the view sheds. Views will be the first and most obvious loss, and I implore the BLM to stay in compliance and not make exception for preserving these invaluable visual resources. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> My family has lived in New Mexico since then and we have three native New Mexican children and four grandchildren. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The “Verde” project, with its doublespeak and insulting name, is an affront and can only bring harm to the land and people it impacts.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> This place of cultural pride, the Hispanic and native people, is worth of exceptional protection. If there were a category of National Treasure this should be it, a living museum, holy place, sanctuary, and wild beauty. As it is please ensure compliance with National Historic Preservation Act.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> In the very well run scoping meeting we heard about the statistics of health dangers (a caution that I have been aware of for decades), the wetlands with its birds, the possible impact on bees, Film industry economics, tourism, and the devaluing of real estate. My son and his wife’s family have property right in the epicenter of this project, and they, as many others, have a modest nest egg in this land. Nothing when compared to Hunt, but a livelihood for them. please do not let one corporation degrade the economics of many.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> The Pojoaque Valley with its schools, churches, traditional communities of Santa Fe County, and pueblos is like not place I’ve ever seen. Los Alamos National Lab employees, school bus drivers, teachers, doctors, and workers from a multi-ethnic and socioeconomic pool, live as neighbors. Already this project is dividing people.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> I am sure it is difficult for the pueblos to pass up the opportunity to improve their pueblos by a cash infusion for schools, health, and housing, but in the long long run is this what the majority of their people want? I can’t help but think of the Water Protectors in North Dakota and wonder if this might spark similar response as the word gets out nationally.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"> This electric line has already cost me nights of sleep and anxiety. It impacts all of our quality of life while for Hunt it is cool speculation, they could not even prove that it is needed besides a business opportunity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">The earth remembers us. How do you want to be remembered?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">BLM, please put me on record as voting NO to Verde and Hunt for these reasons.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Joan Logghe</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Santa Fe Poet Laureate Emerita</span></div>
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Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-16874365542711989552016-10-20T11:32:00.001-07:002016-10-20T11:32:12.643-07:00A loss is a loss is a lossIt's been so long. Haven't had the combo of calm and emotion that I like to launch each blog entry, but today I am allowing myself pajamas at noon. Silk and dotted with maroon hearts of all sizes. I think they are silk, discover in a clothing exchange by my eldest daughter. In case you don't know, my youngest daughter lost her second child, Jade Bird Guthrie at 4 days.<br />
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I want to be like Maira Kalman, focused delightfully on the ordinary even after she lost her husband and partner Tibor. If you don't know her, you probably do and don't know. She did many New Yorker covers, including the famous "Newyorkistpan" one after 911, remember Kvetchnya, Pashmina, and Botoxia? She has the gift of humor after loss, and a humorous approach to life.<br />
She also illustrated Obama's inauguration for the New York Times. I first found her in Bill Gersh's house, the children's book <i>Max Makes a Million, </i>about the poet dog whose dream is Paris. And guess what? He sells his book of poems for a million and gets to live that dream. Wonder why I love her?<br />
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I recommend her, just Google, she's a vitamin for me, loving the odd and the daily, a man's suit, a paper punch, and hats and hairdos everywhere. Which brings me to Beti again., the hair stylist. My mom on her yahrzeit or anniversary of death. Same date as Robert Winson's so I light two candles. My mom has been gone 15 years which is difficult to grasp. This year I was glad she was not here to endure the loss of our grandchild, Jade Bird. She missed all of my lovely and living grandkids, but we enjoy them for her. Galen's blond tuft of hair we attributed to her expertise in coloring.<br />
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I know it's been six month's since we lost Jade Bird and why I haven't written in this blog. I wanted to experience the processing of grief. This week the lovely Mary Beth came by with a card for Jade. Late, she said. But it was perfect, an acknowledgement that this is real and human and endures.<br />
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As I was deciding to write this two occurrences occurred... My g-mail opened up to the week of Jade's death and the e-mails pouring in and out around it. My heart has been a bit dumbed down due to anti-depressants, one I can't pronounce. Then just now a bird hit the window about four feet away from me. I think it is reminding me to write. Hope, my bereaved daughter, has been writing sporadically and said it needs a warning label. She goes for it. I realized that so much of how I am now is better, and I don't feel compelled to tell every stranger on the street, or man emptying trash at the post office, or bank teller what happened to Jade. But though the outer M & M coating is less crisp and now deeper, maybe a fig Newton, there is still a core of loss.<br />
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So, 45 current blog followers (up from the nine I brag about), if it's too much you can unblog me.<br />
My gift to you is Maira Kalman. Your gift to me is reading this. I met Tess Gallagher after Raymond Carver died and she was still visiting the grave daily, and having people impatient with her. Get over it could be the national mantra. She said there is an ecology of grief, a term which stayed with me over 20 years. She and Donald Hall, and Phyllis Hotch, and Miriam Sagan and Paul Monette and Isabel Allende and Joan Didion and Mirabai Starr all wrote bravely into the grief. A baby that didn't make it, but made it for four days is not a teenager or losing a lover. But a loss is a loss is a loss, and grief will have its wild way with us.<br />
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<br />Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-8172417571379703972016-05-18T12:02:00.002-07:002016-05-18T13:05:08.878-07:00How to measure tearsI don't know if tears can be measured, if anyone has bothered to collect them and see if they have cried a thimble, a tablespoon, a half pint or liter, a bucket. We tend to want to exaggerate and say we have wept an ocean. I think I weep about a medicine dropper a day. I think this is pretty accurate.<br />
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I feel like the world should know, but I have not posted since my worried optimism of March. I am sad beyond sad to report that my daughter's beautiful baby, Jade Bird Guthrie, 7 Lb. 12 Oz. was born only to never cry, or take a breath. She was able to be on life support and many of us got to feel her presence, hold her, and then let her go four days later at the Children's Hospital in my hometown of Pittsburgh. My daughter and her husband feel that they were visited by a little hummingbird who touched down and could not be held. It was the first death at the Midwife Center in 35 years.<br />
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When meeting her small body, all pulse and graph and hookups, I thought
of Alvaro Cardona-Hine quoting his Zen teacher, "Long is long, short is short, Every life
complete." He's 89, and Jade was four days here. I
am on bird wave-length these days. <br />
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It was a fluke, a blessing and a curse, a loss and an innocence, and so I measure my days in medicine droppers. We are blessed that she came and went peacefully. That we were all treated so respectfully and loved so much. That she did not live a life compromised and suffering, I am truly grateful for this. But each day is rough, taking homeopathy, Bach Flower remedies, herbs for grief. My kids planned their own wake, cremation, flight home to New Mexico, and burial of ashes, or a Good Bye Ceremony as one friend named it. Jade's ashes are here, with a Golden Rain tree planted by them, a hummingbird feeder I fill every day or so. I watch the birds come and go, Scarlet Tanagers, finches, and hummers.<br />
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I learned to tend cut flowers, do laundry non-sop for the bereaved, that I was able to rise up and hit walls and crash, only to rise up again. Each person, both our family and Leland's, gave from their very core and genius. One might be playful with our 3 year old "big sister." One might order egg-rolls or buy plane tickets. The giving was non-stop, round the clock blessings. People got in cars and drove all day. People wept all night and stayed by her in the NICU.<br />
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Yesterday we attended a mass for Valentine, an 8 year old son and grandson of family friends. He was a little hoop dancer from Pojoaque Pueblo, injured in a car accident a year ago, and finally was ready to be released, no more surgeries after 14 of them. I saw him dance once and never forgot the vitality and charisma. We grandparents exchanged hugs and sorrow, we had been neighbors at the bus stop so many days and years ago. So here I am, wordless for all these weeks. My kids, Hope Logghe and Leland Guthrie, speak so eloquently on their Facebook accounts, you can go on and scroll down to see what they have to say, how they frame this great loss. Or my page, down about four entries, their language. <br />
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This is what I can say, finally after sadly seeing the last blog posting and letting it silence me. Hope posted her own pregnant beauty on her birthday, and her strength helps me be able to face up and find my own. Thanks for sharing this moment with me, and the tides of sorrows we all have felt, may they wash us a little bit cleaner, more core and source. Every person I meet meets my pain with their own story. I agree with poet Jack Gilbert, that this is paradise, right here in each other's eyes.<br />
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<br />Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-53745667184515604952016-03-27T08:32:00.001-07:002016-03-27T08:32:15.189-07:00Shrine on a String<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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We put Corina on a plane this morning to fly out as support for her sister as we wait for little girl #2. She was supposed to fly last week, but a flu and 102 degree temperature caused a delay. We thank Southwest airlines for understanding. Mike and I feel related to Southwest as both the airline and our marriage occurred in 1971. We are both celebrating our 45th.<br />
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I don't know why I am not in Pittsburgh now, I really don't. I think to keep my worry energy contained and 2,000 miles away. Hope has always read me and I'm contagious. Last week Hope and Leland had a baby blessing, inviting their Pittsburgh friends to their Pittsburgh house to each bring a bead. My niece, Lisa Slesinger, and my childhood friend, Nancy Tapper Smith, were there.They read some of my poems, and I sent eight pink rose quartz beads from my mother's necklace. Rose quartz carries love and heart.<br />
<br />
Here is the necklace, so beautiful and carrying meaning, prayer, and our New Mexico ways into this new place, my old love and home. There was the woman, Eileen, we met at Squirrel Hill farmer's Market with its two strong quartets and juice bar. There were friends from La Leche League and Hope's Crunchy Moms group. One woman said it was one of the top ten hippiest things she had done in her life. My dear ones called with a good report. Hope and Leland are magnets for gathering interesting folks.<br />
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I am in prayerful times, pilgrims Friday and Easter morning today. Hope herself was born in this house on a spring morning, Mother's Day in 1985. I sit and stare at this one photo of a wedding my cousin Amy Friendman Doran sent me. Beti is the glam blonde and Harry the tallest. These are my peeps, not so crunchy but definitely glittering and glad to be alive. I am living every day as my first/last. The necklace is a shrine, each bead has a wish and an intention. <br />
Time to make my house shrine to welcome the baby, New Mexico style. <br />
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My Father's side, I recognize nine. Beti and Aunt Clara, the last two of the trio above.<br />
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<br />Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-7876023852812572412016-03-20T09:00:00.001-07:002016-03-20T09:00:34.097-07:00Hi Ho Silver Ghazal<span style="color: #ffd966;">Hi Ho Silver Ghazal with photos</span><br />
<br />
What I keep forgetting is I keep forgetting<br />
Every time I stand up, it takes a day to sit down<br />
<br />
The first blue bird is bathing in between robins<br />
We're waiting for the tanagers to flit down<br />
<br />
All year the word cancer keeps whispering<br />
to some it is shouting, screams till she bit down<br />
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The old poets I love don't live in China, they long</div>
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ago left Japan, to visit me, stroll Forward Ave. a bit down</div>
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He said "I never heard of Nepal</div>
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now people go there like downtown" </div>
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My mother is persistent from beyond this life.</div>
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Just now I order a matchbook with her name written down.</div>
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"Can you imagine silver in her house?" my bro asked, meaning my abode.<br />
"Yes," my stepdad said. "Hi Ho Silver." That old clown.<br />
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We are awaiting the next baby. It is a long road<br />
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all have taken, between the heart and the crown.<br />
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Today we will visit a farm, a library, some new<br />
folks who braved the elements to land in this town.<br />
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Last week we helped clean road for the pilgrims to walk down.<br />
Easter Sunday, plum blossoms, the water in the ditch pours down <br />
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Life is indeed full, you old fool Joan Logghe. <br />
There are three of us, just Google us, now sit town.<br />
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<br />Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-61750950606264943572016-02-21T07:33:00.001-08:002016-02-21T07:33:24.668-08:00Unpunctuated Awe This Whole WeekMy new book arrived, hot off the print-on-demand press and published by Tres Chicas Book.<br />
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Hey, isn't that my own press with Miriam Sagan and Renée Gregorio? Isn't that my own photo on the cover, taken by my stepsister-in-law? Is the song, "She's so vain, she probably thinks this song is about her?" playing in the background? Yes, yes, and yes. I am in the big yes of a new book with its two years of taking notes in Santa Fe and another two years of getting it together as manuscript. Make that four years but who is counting? We are at the time in life where every ten minutes it is Friday.<br />
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Friday again, we say, and by now it's Saturday and we're driving to Taos to honor Natalie Goldberg whose book <b><i>Writing Down the Bones</i> </b>is 30 years old. It's a little writer's reunion with Eddie Lewis who grew up five houses from me in Pittsburgh, Elaine Sutton who I met at the very first Natalie class I visited on Don Cubero, Elaine weeping as she read about childhood, and Sawnie who we published with Tres Chicas, and Iris Kelz, <b><i>Scrapbook of a Taos Hippie</i></b>, and Rick from Brodsky books and Rob Wilder and Mirabai Starr. It was a love fest. The celebration felt a lot like a memorial only the dearly beloved was sitting in the front row with a wild smile.<br />
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After the celebration and chocolate cake, gluten free, I wanted to give Elaine a snapshot of the two of us from 1998. We ended up looking at my poem- holders, giving her my new book, giving Natalie my book, and selling two to Brodsky books in the parking lot. It was a normal scene for me, the back of my car full of potholders with my poems inked on and cartons of books. A poet's way-back of her Subaru Outback. Here I am peddling at Ghost Ranch last summer.<br />
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The whole week was alive and whole. I gave away my best in poetry teaching to over 200 elementary students grades six and fourth for ArtWorks, the aesthetic education program out of Lincoln Center where I've been delighted to work for about eight or nine years. When I first met Natalie Goldberg I was a poet in the schools, and now, thousands of teaching days and nights and hithers and yons later, I am still poeting in the schools. My mentor in ArtWorks has died, the indomitable Lorraine Schecter whose act of generosity, her brilliant<i><b> My Last Picture Show</b></i>, not only fund-raised for ArtWorks but showcased the depth of her as an artist. Every piece of art from her life sold for $100 or less. I got four pieces. I hung a work on paper over my bed. It has a Mary Oliver quote:<br />
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"Look, I want to love this world<br />
as though it's the last chance I'm ever going to get<br />
to be alive and know it." Mary Oliver, "October"<br />
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I've been looking at this week on the calendar, my Day.Timer with every little green lined rectangle of a day filled. I have been afraid of this week, and the upcoming one, and yet thanks to the Tao and good weather and health and school kids waving their arms in the air in response to poetry it has been a total joy. I even had energy to go to the Upaya Zen Center on Wednesday and honor Natalie Goldberg then too, and eat good Zen food next to strangers. I found out later that the man across from me is the Zen calligrapher I wonder if I'm brave enough to study with. And this whole week has been saying Yes!!<br />
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I even zipped out of my last Friday class of the student packed week and zoomed up to Espanola for Silver Sneakers, an exercise class that is free with my insurance. I am aging. I am in reunion mode, in happiness when I can be. Natalie's presence in my life has been stellar. I am glad she is alive, and super glad I am alive, and wildly glad for my family's vitality, all eleven of us and new baby a month or so away.<br />
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And I'd be delighted to sign and send out my new book, <i><b>Unpunctuated Awe. </b></i><br />
Just e-mail me at joanlogghe@gmail.comJoanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-28137461565324085252015-08-29T16:46:00.002-07:002015-08-29T16:46:44.123-07:00Whatevah<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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"I have new eyes," Kaleia announced to me in her Pittsburgh House. Then she said, "I have new eyes, and new eyebrows." I thought of e.e. cummings who says "the eyes of my eyes have opened." She is 2 1/4 so the whole world is new, but I believe she is seeing Pittsburgh with new eyes after a tiny lifetime lived in New Mexico.<br />
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I have just returned from a week in Pittsburgh to celebrate my birthday
and see my family. My family now includes not just my brother,
sister-in-law, Niece, and great niece, But Hope, Leland and Kaleia, our grand child. The lens of seeing Pittsburgh is not just the
view after the Fort Pitt Tunnel from the airport, but a little bit
teary view of my family in new surrounds.<br />
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On the way from the airport when she insisted I sit by her, with great serious intent she announced that "Babies don't wear shirts. Evah." My brother said she sounded like a New Yorker, and "evah" became our word of the week. Kaleia is the latest family campfire we all gathered around, so it is hard to find our center. Luckily I have a class at UNM to teach and the Girls' School waiting. A new baby is growing in Hope and that's another focus. Kaleia said she has two babies in her tummy and that she has a nephew who is two months old. She has become what Hope calls a teller of tall tales.<br />
Kaleia runs down the marble halls of my old Temple to her preschool class hollering, "It's my school." She visits the family cemetery plot, we shop at Trader Joe's where it says, "See Yinz soon."<br />
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Her interest has changed from obsession with her baby dolls to her backpack bear. She insisted I photograph her with her bear. What you don't see is the front porch on Tilbury street where a cast of characters pass by. The Orthodox and Hasidim on Saturday since they don't drive. There is a park, hills, a back yard with sod her other grandpa planted. She calls that her Pittsburgh Yard. It is the size of our guest room.<br />
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I got a birthday card from my nephew wishing me the best birthday, "Ever." "Ever," I told my nephew, "how did you know that ever is the word of the week?" Then at my party, I meet a new friend with Ghost Ranch connections. Will is my niece's nurse in the hospital and everybody loves him. After chatting with him we discover that his late father was my program director at Ghost Ranch and is sorely missed. What are the odds? They invited him to come celebrate my birthday and meet my young family.<br />
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We totally hit it off at my birthday party. It happens to be, in this land of coincidence and meant to be, that it is Will's mom's birthday the same as mine. His sister is at my party also, a lovely young woman named Eva. She explains it's pronounced "evah" as in "whatevah." I guess my family is meant to be in Pittsburgh. I'm home, trying to land here while they are trying to land there. Where is happily ever after anyhow? I have to think, whatevah. <br />
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Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-31727563868370595422015-07-13T07:12:00.002-07:002015-07-13T07:12:19.725-07:00Tunnels and Bridges22 days and counting until my youngest daughter, her husband, and family take off for Pittsburgh. I may have slightly mentioned this to you before, dear reader, dear friend tired of me going on and one and on about this, but my little family is taking off to my very own Hometown so Leland can pursue a PHD in clinical psychology at Duquesne University.<br />
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Fine and dandy except they are the movers and shakers in family dynamics, the ones who lived in a yurt 3 years on our land, the ones who threw great parties, had forty hour baby labor, sweat lodges, and have the youngest child. You know how the baby in the family is. At two years and three months, Kaleia is in some sort of peak of adorable. Adorbs, as the kids say. She speaks in unintelligible but meaningful baby talk, waves her hands like her Italian ancestors ("Logghe" is an Italian name after all, traders from Venice via Flanders), and has our hearts firmly in said hands.<br />
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Last week, and we are trying to squeeze in Kaleia time, I could not get her to settle for a nap. Mike's breaking out the chain saw while I was pushing her in the stroller, how she usually crashes, did not help. By about 4:00 she was punch drunk and marching about the house talking about tunnels and bridges.<br />
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I thought it was very advanced and interesting, since we have nary a tunnel, and a few bridges here in New Mexico. Then I realized, what is Pittsburgh but tunnels and bridges. She is rehearsing for her next act.<br />
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If I weren't going back east for my birthday and then later my high school reunion, I would be even more bereft. Some days I just weep a little, others more. But as a person who has been accused of never leaving Pittsburgh by her spouse, this is a tricky time. All along I go to sleep and rise early, as if I never left Eastern Standard Time.<br />
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My night dreams have always been set at least 25% in Pittsburgh. I have probably spent more time at the family house in dreams than when I lived there. Last week I dreamed we bought the house, the house that I lived in from age 4-after college and marriage and kids, the 1980's. The house was the same with a light flowered sofa instead of the deep purple one. But the big change was that now we had to feed the horse who lived in the back yard.<br />
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My cousin James Kessler and I are back in touch. We last visited in person when I went to D.C. attending brunch for Mother's Day with my family and the famous Mimi Meyerson, and marching in a Code Pink anti-war protest in front of the White House for Mother's Day. It was a lovely visit but then we drifted back into our own lives. I remember the Cousin's Club in McKeesport, and we don't have one of those with its Hungarian pastries and embarrassing Hungarian old country relatives, Big Pearl and Little Pearl. Big Ethel and Little Ethel, Beti with an "i." Now I long for a Cousin's Club.<br />
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Jim just attended his 50th high school reunion, as I will attend mine in October. Jim, retired from the Army where he orchestrated the Army band, and by now he has done some fifty arrangements for the PBS shows for Memorial day and Fourth of July. Jim went to Taylor Alderdice, a graduation class in the 800's. I went to The Ellis School, with about 50 some girls. Somehow he managed to connect me to some of my elementary school classmates. One person says she went to kindergarten with me. I hope I didn't bite her, or that she wasn't the one who bit me. <br />
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I do look forward to the connections in the world, which hopefully add to the connections in my brain. I have never left Pittsburgh, though we're 42 years deep in New Mexico. My last book,<i> The Singing Bowl</i> which I highly recommend (hint hint) has a section called "So Far from Pittsburgh." Here's to tunnels and bridges. My little family both a tunnel of depth and a bridge spanning distances.<br />
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<br />Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-50087464826473193812015-05-04T07:22:00.000-07:002015-05-04T07:22:22.547-07:00April in Raton: Vitamin W<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I have been home a week now and just finding my grounding. I was able to work two weeks in Raton, NM, on the Colorado border, in Poetry Rocks!! I was alongside two fabulous performance poets, Manuel Gonzales and Esmé Rodriguez-Vandragger, geniuses in inspiring high school students to write and perform their poetry. We met for two weeks with Raton High school students.<br />
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The other poets had been there for some years. It was my first year there. Happily, the kids were open hearted and kind. Even two non-compliant senior guys ended up smiling at me. I had a skate boarder who never participates, join into every class activity and show up as audience for the finale at the 100 year old Shuler Theater. Classes stood up for informal group readings in the library Marathon. I mean, besides the traffic ticket for not seeing a small blinking light while traveling about 20 mph, it went well. Everything goes on your permanent record, not just moving violations,<br />
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It's hard to know if I am the right fit for the job. I had several people comment that I bring wisdom to the mix, but the other poets were not in short supply of Vitamin W. I am grateful for the experience, and I am digesting it all. The beautiful Cheyenne said it best, "I don't dance to impress, I dance to express..." Raton moved me with its mountain beauty and students. I felt both impressed and expressed. Raton has a great swimming pool, friends Sharon and Chuck who cooked for me twice, and John Davidson who helped me get my head on straight for my departure. I also like the Asian Buffet where the three poets met to eat one night. Barbara Riley at Heart's Desire B & B couldn't have been kinder. And Page Gandy who will take over the program for next year with support from the indomitable Christina Boyce were super appreciative of my Vitamin W. <br />
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I don't know if having a non SLAM poet like me is a plus, but I did connect with entire classes and miss their sweet creative energies in early morning. My mother won golf championships in her mid eighties, I told Brianna, a golf star. My mother never gave up. I would like to think I take after her, she who could light up a room. But I know I also take after my father, a dark, kind person who could write a wonderful thank you note and read them to me often. This is my thank you note to Raton, even the police officer who wrote me a ticket and unleashed an hour of tears, ones uncried about other issues, so my friend said he was a therapist. Thanks Tim and Christina who photographed all of us and made us look sparkly. Page who, besides being a wonderful teacher, reassured me that my Vitamin WW, way with words, was an important ingredient. I learned from the Buddhist, Bernie Glassman, how one uses the ingredients you have before you? I think we mixed them up pretty well.<br />
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Thank you Raton. This is my room, the car I drove by every day, and the last picture is Esmé at her house after our final road trip home. <br />
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<br />Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-17471173265950008982014-11-09T10:38:00.000-08:002014-11-09T10:38:51.826-08:00House Guestlandia We have had two sets of house guests this week. My friend and boss, Lee Lewin, always asks me about my week and said, "You have a youth hostel out there." This week a mother and daughter from Milwaukee, Mike's home state, and Mike's brother and his wife and a cat-on-a-leash. The Milwaukee woman is a vegetarian but she comes with frozen veggie pizzas, zukes and potatoes and a pumpkin from her garden so helps me in my vow to stop cooking for everyone. She cooks. Her mother does bring me a nice hostess gift from the Penzy catalogue with a dishtowel that celebrates saving the world by cooking. It goes smoothly and I run out at 8:00 the next morning to teach poetry.<br />
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The next day, marks the arrival of my brother-in-law who looks a lot like my husband and has ever since I met him in 1970. They are 13 months apart. I tell Mike he always calls them <i>Irish Twins, </i>born so closely, but he claims to never have used that term and so I don't know where I heard it. We babysat his baby, Adam, in 1970 and Mike said, "This is fun. Let's get married and have a kid. It'll be easy." They came back to San Fran from his naval base for our wedding, where Adam jammed on a set of drums and my parents refused to eat any of the food served. The cake was whole wheat with avocado sherbet frosting, melting as I wept on the phone upstairs. My cousin Jimmy had called to support me in marrying a non-Jew and I couldn't get off the phone. I didn't know that marrying someone meant you would marry into their houseguests.</div>
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Mike comes from a farm family of 8, all of whom either left the farm at 14 (farmhand/castrator, nun, and Priest/navy) or got pregnant at 16 except for Mike who stayed until university and beyond. We did have a shotgun marriage however, because his sister was pregnant and we wanted to leave the Bay Area in 1971 (Really???) for the Wisconsin farm where we would serve as sort of a hippie support staff as in a weird LSD trip only this one was 20 months in Wisconsin on the family farm.</div>
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But I stray. I want to talk about house guests. Brother Rich and his wife, Joni, (I am Joanie now, changing my nickname from the Joni of my childhood which my mother based partly on her name, Beti with an "i"), have surprised us before on their road trips from their home outside of Portland. Two years ago the cat-on-a-leash came to downtown Santa Fe with us and was a tad whiny, but now Ms Pooh Pooh is shine, nearly twenty, and less traumatized, probably because our cat died and she has the run of the place. Joni is a vegetarian too. They are model house guests and get to see my three kids and two of the grandkids, and pack everything back into their car after a few nights here and leave. They do leave the cat-leash by accident and I am thinking of either mailing it back with a New Yorker 2012 article on "Portlandia" or else having it bronzed.</div>
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I have noticed that not one single house guest comes who does not have dietary quirks. If that is a double negative it is because that is how the combo of houseguests and dietary quirks reacts on me. Half are gluten free and the other half are vegetarian. The Paleo ones look down on all the others, and I think of running into Denise Lamb at Safeway when we had Safeway in Espanola. She said, "When food is the enemy something is wrong." </div>
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Then there was the sweet guy called Harry. Mike meets interesting folks on his journeys and I had a soft spot for this one, handsome and having my dad's name. Harry was going to spend the night, and I was cooking and he went out to meditate on the porch. He came in and said he was told to leave and with lamb chops in the pan (lamb chops are one of the usually "safe" foods allergy-wise apart from vegetarians) he got in his car and drove back to Albuquerque, a good 90 minutes. He was very wise for we had a gully washer so big that we couldn't get out for a day. Harry came again within the week. He had a job interview nearby. Again he was going to stay, and went to meditate. He again was told to leave and asked if he could take a shower before he left. Of course. We have one shower and it is in our greenhouse. He was in and back in a flash, the only person to take a shower quicker than mine. When I remarked on this he said, "Oh, I was just refreshing my aura."</div>
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Then there was the one whose name has changed several times. He was here for at least a week and living mostly on organic chocolate, a kind of chocolate shaman. He was getting higher and higher on his vintage, artisanal, responsibly harvested chocolate and just wafting around the place, occasionally singing and drumming to bless our land. I like when people bless our land, I honestly do, but I asked him if he would consider watering the greenhouse. He said yes and gave it the most misty of spaced-out waterings, never once glancing at the plants which range from the geraniums of my grandma to the San Pedro cacti of the south. I asked him to water a bit more deeply, that it would be grounding. He said, "I don't want to be grounded." I immediately become the cross wife/mom that I so deeply am and grounding related to earth became parental grounding of <i>You can't take the car </i>in a nanosecond.</div>
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Some of the guests come with their rescue dogs. I have heard a bit too much about rescue animals. I want to tell them that you never hear about rescue husbands. I think I will start introducing Mike that way when people tell me about their rescue fauna. Sometimes the comfort of their dogs takes precedent over my comfort. My late friend Don Grolnik said, "Don't make me uptight in my own house." We always quote him to one another, Rescue Husband to smiling wife.</div>
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Houseguests are one thing and we have two rentals which bring a longer relationship. The neighbor. We did not rent to the adorable couple who had a dog called<i> The Golden Love Dog</i> who subsisted on raw grass fed beef for which they would need two freezers. Nor did we rent to the woman who was an animal psychic. I was sure the horses would gossip about us or tell her that we needed to lower the rent. There was also a woman with an inexcusable skirt, the fake patchwork kind I can't abide by. I cannot live next to someone who owns that skirt, I heard myself saying.</div>
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I realize that all of this makes me look a bit conservative and grouchy. I am. Each house guest leaves something, a hairbrush, a water bottle, a leash. They all have healthier diets and I vow to follow in their slightly annoying footsteps and switch to Stevia, coconut water, and massaging the kale. One year, 2008, we had 21 guests from March to August. I made an art piece, a painting of a clothesline holding the name of the guests like clothespins. That was the year I said our place was like a Hippy Theme Park, yurt, hot tub, permaculture garden, and our kids living on the land. I admit, I would be lonely without the houseguests and find something else to gripe about. I once had a writing student who died from houseguests. She was probably my age now and was forever running her guests to the opera or a museum. She died soon after and I knew of what cause.<br />
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If you come, please bring your special tea, strip the bed when you leave, a hostess gift would be nice, and include me in whatever chocolate events you are scheduling. You are always welcome here. After all you could be the Messiah, Buddha, or the prophet Elijah. You could be Quan Yin and have compassion for us all. </div>
Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-40276229939954316902014-10-19T18:04:00.001-07:002014-10-19T18:04:50.206-07:00Carl Jung and House paintThis week I have a houseguest, the lovely Kin, daughter of one of my best friend's and one of my daughter Corina's best friends. Got it? A person who I have known since she was a tyke. She's here for a visit from Maine, where she got married and bought a house which she has been working on all year. Time for a New Mexico break and her birthday with girlfriends.<br />
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Kin and I were talking about her town, and Bowdoin College which is there. It dawns on me that I might have an old friend who taught there, my college roommate and her husband a professor in environmental studies. It has been so long since I spoke with them, I barely remember her married name. In college she was one of the three of us to share a geology professor's house and live off campus, the first class where women were allowed that privilege. She was the one who introduced me to the cereal "Crunchy granola," a term I had never heard. She was the cheerful and reliable one, and in 1969 sane might be the word for her.<br />
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I found her name, Jane, in my tattered address book and said, "She lives in Brunswick."<br />
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"Joan, that is where I live."<br />
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"She lives on Lower Made Up Name Road (protecting her privacy here).<br />
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"Joan, I too live on Lower Made up Name Road." I think that is wild but they probably don't live there anymore, I mean it has been years. I bet they moved away, but the next day I call the number and hear her husband's voice. I leave a message.<br />
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A few hours later my old friend's sweet voice is on the phone. She is retired and so is her husband. She indeed lives a few houses away from Kin. I say Kin has been fixing up the house, painted it, and people in the neighborhood seem to like it.<br />
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My friend asks if they painted the house green. I happen to know that is so. A few days ago, before Kin and I spoke, Jane and Dewitt left a note on the house saying they liked the paint color. Jane's husband and Kin's husband had already had a conversation about the paint color before we discovered this connection. We chat, exchange lives and laughters, easy as in 1968 when we lived in Medford, Mass. She has a 99 year old father taking a turn for the worse, and a daughter's wedding in two weeks. She's busy and it's hard, but she is happy for the reconnection. Corina remembered that the daughter, about to be married used to love saying "silly billy" when she was little.<br />
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I get so excited I run to tell Kin. She had already heard from her husband about some neighbor requesting the paint color. Her husband and Jane's have days ago met while we are out here making the discovery. We are both sort of awe struck about this connection. Kin is indeed a person I have felt deeply about for years, watched her a lot as a child when she and my son played silently for hours, two quiet blond haired brown eyed children, and then she and Corina became best pals. I feel that Kin and Jane will meet, they both promise. They could have been neighbors for years and never made this realization, Kin doesn't especially know where I went to college and with whom.<br />
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I think Carl Jung would be happy with the color of paint. <br />
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<br />Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-43496184420003367072014-09-16T10:53:00.004-07:002014-09-16T10:53:49.450-07:00Arriving at TinkertownWhat I learned form the cowboy poetry reading at Tinkertown, a roadside attraction near Sandia Crest, is this. It came to me as I stood up, facing 30 friendly faces, and about to read three poems on my life out west for a Cowboy Music and Poetry Festival. If the child who loved horses, who rode Mr. Bones at Milt Selznik's stable at Schenly Park on Beechwood Blvd. on Sundays, riding around that ring for what seemed like, and probably was, years, coulda seen me. If that child could have seen me dressed in my pink spangled cowgirl shirt, and reading next to a real cowboy singer, Steve Cormier, a storyteller, Slim Randles and historian, Bob Julyan, she would have been so happy.<br />
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It was my first visit to Tinkertown, and profoundly fun. What is Tinkertown, you might ask and why do you keep repeating the name? It is a roadside attraction, and that is good enough, lovingly gathered or carved dioramas of cowboy gatherings, Navajo villages, and a circus, all assembled by the wild Ross Ward, gone these 12 years from early onset Alzheimer's, but vibrant and well tended as his legacy. It also has a great and award winning book now, <i>Leaving Tinkertown</i>, by Ross's daughter, Tanya Ward Goodman and published by my dear UNM Press. <br />
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Tinkertown with its bottle walls and sailing ship, you'll just have to make the trip to see it. It's a family affair, kept alive by Carla Ward, his widow, and staffed by various family members. I was so touched by the invitation to read, the book, the great welcome with snacks (or "nacks" as my granddaughter says) and the care taken to preserve this roadside gem. I got my fortune read two times by the fortune teller who costs a quarter. We followed around a Chinese family with two engaged and adorable children. Next time I'm taking the grand kids.<br />
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The reading netted hundred of dollars for the local East Mountain High School debate team. I netted<br />
a great day cruising with my side kick, Big Mike, and bought a little tunic at a shop called Heaven in Madrid. When you enter the Belgian shopkeeper says, "Welcome to Heaven." It sorta was that kinda day.<br />
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You CAN get there from here. Go through Madrid, stop for coffee at Java Junction where intelligent and interesting young staff will chat you up, the go another 23 miles to the Sandia Crest Road and another 1.5 miles to Tinkertown.<br />
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That little girl in Pittsburgh is so much happier now. She even recalls that Milt Selznik lived to one hundred and got on a horse for his birthday. He was the Jewish cowboy of my childhood. The day became a heaven of people who followed their bliss, the cowboys, Ross Ward, Milt Selznik, and my own calling to poetry. Viva Tinkertown. Long may it give smiles and fortunes.Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-15144244597262691482014-08-11T13:07:00.000-07:002014-08-11T13:17:04.498-07:00Almost Heaven, Española<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #444444;"><br />
I have been singing that John Denver song<i>, Country Road</i>s, all week. I live on one, and it has washed out several times but my husband, Mike, has been the Awesome Road Warrior and gotten it fixed so Dezbah can get to an interview, I can have writing group here, and that is where my head has been. It's only been two months since I caught up with myself on this blog. I have been lap swimming about three to four days a week and I write lovely blog entries as I swim, but don't have paper in the deep end.</span></span><br />
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"Paper in the Deep End," (Book title?) Anyhow, I want to tell you about Española again. Today as an example. Española i's like that nursery rhyme my parents always said about me: </span><br />
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"There was a little girl, who had a little curl,</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"> right in the middle of her forehead. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"> When she was good she was very, very good. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;"> When she was bad she was horrid."</span><br />
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Bad, we know. Bad is heroin, alcohol, meth, a slap in the face or a gun. I know people who will not go there, not just Santa Feans, but some who live in my hood. I have a line in an old poem I wrote, "You've got to get in and get out before eleven, before the weekend with its steady chug." I think all the bad and sad people sleep in.</span><br />
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Española was exceptional today. After weeding my garden, dead heading the California poppies (Dead Heading? Book title?), and sparring with my husband in the friendliest way, plus not to forget brewing hummingbird juice, I went to the Farmer's Market. It was booking. My friend Sabra Moore is market manager, helped by the divine Norma and her beau, Everett (maybe, not sure of his name).</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">The old guys are standing in a circle with guitar, bass, voice, just wailing away in Spanish. You could be in la Paz, Baja Mexico, where the cab drivers have more soul than poets here. They have played every week for a five dollar token Sabra gives them, all the market can spare.</span><br />
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There were just enough people I know and love that I could get in and out in about twenty minutes. I got five peaches, six ears of corn, a pint of honey, seven squash blossoms, a pint of blackberries, four Japanese eggplant for about $25.00 The honey and the berries and the peaches alone cost about $20.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #444444;">The ambiance, I can't even begin to tell you. Sabra and I hugged and got tangled up, my glasses grabbed her white braid.</span><br />
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Then I went to the outdoor pool and found out we have until my Aug 23rd birthday to swim. The water was the Mediterranean after a squall, a dusting of rain, the temperature of heaven. I swam 13 laps. I talked to another grandma. I missed my kids, wished they were there, but took the half hour for myself. I was, as my friend Kathleen McCloud designated, one of those <i>you deserve it</i> people.</span><br />
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Desirae, the head life guard and pool manager, then told me the good news, an extra week of swimming. There was enough money for chemicals to keep the pool open. That is my birthday gift. I can't recall when I enjoyed every lap, no, most every stroke, as much. I was in pool bliss, my country club, a far way from the privileged Westmorland Country Club of my youth, and I felt more at home here then I ever did then and there.</span><br />
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I stopped at my daughter's. In the two months I haven't blogged, my daughter and her son moved in next door into our little rental. I was keen to get home and make stuffed squash blossoms but wanted to say hi. She said she'd feed me. There on the table were fried blossoms with a side of goat cheese. I ate four, left the rest for Mike. It's how we have been since she moved in. A charmed summer.</span><br />
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Saturday, at a nearby wedding, I wore a dress hitched up by safety pins on the side. I scrambled to find a few more pins before I left. I was sure to locate and pocket some pins so I wouldn't lose the dress style when dancing.</span><br />
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I arrived at the wedding and Corina, my beautiful eldest, was the first person I saw. She said hi, her smile containing all the Hungarian beauty of My Aunt Ethel and the optimistic mother I had. She said her skirt was falling down. She needed a safety pin. I reached into my pocket.</span><br />
<br />Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-74272083555118058112014-06-14T15:53:00.002-07:002014-06-14T15:53:17.526-07:00What Makes an Activist?I am being an activist by staying home and not budging for over 24 hours. I once called it my <i>Petrol Sabbath,</i> not burning any gas for a day. I still try and take one day a week to not go anywhere. That would be today, only I went to pack produce at our little adorable Española Community Market, my only second time volunteering there. I usually just support by spending money, but this was actually more fun.<br />
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I was about to leave and I realized we had left a bit of a mess in the lettuce packing, so I tidied that up, snagged the plastic bags about to be thrown for my use, and when I came out you were there. My dear husband and side kick of 44 years and I was thrilled and a bit fluttery, I liked the surprise element. You were buying a sweet roll which sounds like a blues song. Then helping our son move. You help someone on an average of every single day. You deliver wood in winter and barely cover the cost of gas. You do dump runs for neighbors, ditto. You are helping our kids reconfigure as two of the three are moving this month. When a neighbor calls, you are the ghost buster. You know who you are.<br />
I consider you an activist. You built our house.<br />
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Today, after I came home, I readied the house for the folks coming to write with me tomorrow. I am doing three Sundays this summer instead of my usual eight nights in town teaching poetry. I spent a good part of today, after the gazpacho from market produce was blended, in rifling through my poetry books. I got to revisit poets I love, fiddle with my copyright breaking handouts, and find my deep center of poetry. It's good because due to allergy to the glorious honeysuckle, I have been foggy and brainless, sort of a Lucille Ball of poetry. <br />
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But today I found my center, and also found out that I have accumulated lots of mixed media works, artists' books, and informal paintings that I have done when I teach or just play around. I have a whole book trying to paint Anna Akhmatova, and failing miserably. I did do about a dozen retablos of poets, and by a fluke the one of Robert Bly came out very much in his spirit, set of mouth, and wild hair. It was done in 2006, scanned for Santa Fe Poetry Broadside by Miriam Bobkoff and made into a poster by photographer Pierre Toutain. Blessings to dear Miriam B and thanks to Pierre.<br />
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A few weeks ago, I heard from documentary filmmaker Haydn Reiss, that could he, maybe, possibly, use the painting in his Bly documentary. You might imagine how pleased I was, am, and hopeful.<br />
The Bly image has been over my desk for years and now maybe gets a life off the wall. I am a great believer that if you just make many exposures, as in photography, you will get some good shots. I also like my Jack Gilbert painting and Neruda is close, but no cigar, So I wait in the possible to see what transpires.<br />
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If you want to support the Bly video which is near to conclusion here's how: <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/robert-bly-a-thousand-years-of-joy/x/1233025" rel="nofollow nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #3b5998; cursor: pointer; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, 'lucida grande', tahoma, verdana, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/robert-bly-a-thousand-years-of-joy/x/1233025</a> I did for good luck, to support the project, and because I try to cultivate the activist heart of the world. Haydn made a great Rumi video, one of Stafford and Bly, and one called "Every War Has Two Losers." All of them excellent.<br />
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In the heavens, Maya Angelou may be wondering what kind of an activist this is. I love what Bill Clinton said. That she had borrowed God's voice, and now God wanted it back. That fits in with Judaism, that the Divine has broken into sparks, and that we are mending the brokenness of the world, Tikkun Olam. We each do it in our own way. Today it was laying low, finding center, and even the allergies seem to scamper off. I think, too, that we each share in that divine breath. Being alive. That is one of the names of the Creator. Breathe for the breathless. Love to you all.<br />
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<br />Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-70005718552458031462014-05-21T08:38:00.000-07:002014-05-21T08:38:40.488-07:00I Heart Quilt<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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My daughter had one big wish for her Big Birthday. Corina had been a devoted participant and master seamstress on all of our Chimayo Friendship Quilts for I don't know how many of our grandkids, twenty maybe. Her son's, twelve years ago, was the first time we stepped back in as grandmothers to celebrate our kids' kids. I was so shy to start up the tradition that I only invited nine people to sew, a wallhanging more than a bed covering.<br />
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So when Corina asked, how could we refuse, even though we took a side trip to make a beautiful healing wall hanging for Jessica, on the mend from major health issues. Corina wanted a quilt, but when expressing it out loud to Willa realized Jessica was a priority. So we rallied for both of them and I must say, they were a total success. 24 people contributed to Team Jess's efforts and the same number for Corina's all hearts all the time quilt. Corina thought a theme for this community art project would be interesting and challenged us to incorporate a heart in every ten inch square.<br />
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Highlights include a beaded anatomical heart by Lyssa Elder, a real museum quality piece. Willa Roberts, who is a self avowed couch surfer in New York right now, managed an intricate batik that would make any batik artist proud. The kids' former grade school teacher, Julia Hudson, from the John Hyson School where she taught for 40 years, made her square represent the entrance to the school where Corina, Jess, and a slew of others attended. Julia stayed for the day! All of us expressed our love for Corina, for each other, and for this project that is decades deep. Here is her quilt. I can't find Jessica's right now.<br />
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People came and went all day so I don't have a good group shot, but I counted 26 in and out of my house this Sunday.<br />
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People ask me what I am up to. With my family of twelve and these little projects I organize at the house, I really stay out of most mischief. I like any day I don't get in my car, and so give a holler and come visit. Y'all. <br />
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I'll be part of a group reading Friday, May 30th at 6:00 at the New Mexico History Museum. There will be five of us, two friends and two poets new to me. Come one come all. Let's launch summer.<br />
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<br />Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5822008007874460354.post-79708366906828691202014-04-25T09:37:00.000-07:002014-04-25T09:37:41.518-07:00The Post- Poet Laureate promiseWednesday I read at the Community Gallery surrounded by works of art by children. I called it my Post-Poet Laureate reading and read from the many poems I wrote way back then. Okay, I promised to not have a post-post-poet laureate reading, but I can't promise I won't read from the poems again as they are leaning towards a book. I need to get one of those purity rings to keep poetically chaste or maybe three rings like a notebook.<br />
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The three best things people said to me during my tenure (I love to say tenure for the obvious reason that I will never have another) are this:<br />
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1. "I am so proud of you. Don't lose a bit of it." My grand daughter Kaylee at age four the night I passed the pencil and took my oath of office on the Santa Fe Plaza. I swear she was channeling my mother or at very least my Aunt Chutey or Pearl.<br />
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2. "You still have that new poet laureate smell." SWAI jeweler Kenneth Johnson<br />
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3. "Didn't you used to be somebody?" Carolyn Riman, after the final jot had been jotted, on Lincoln Avenue.<br />
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I had a very nice evening Wednesday, revisiting my post, and everybody seemed happy with<i><b> Odes & Offerings</b></i>, the book Sunstone Press published of my final project of visual art inspired by 36 poems by 36 poets. People were so sweet. I forgot that people were so much sweeter than my obsessing and Woody Allenesque mind. Besides my black belt in worry, I am skilled in worse case scenario. Open the doors and see all the people.<br />
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Now I am back home and trying to do less sewing and viewing and more writing, or moving poems around on the computer since there are so many wastrel poems in here. I send post-Good Friday love to you all. Thanks if you came to hear me read, and thanks if you are reading this, and just plain old thanks. </div>
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I am busy teaching little Kaleia one year old things like "Block," "bird," and "what does the owl say?"</div>
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Joanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16268173282240297728noreply@blogger.com0