April in Raton: Vitamin W

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.

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,

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. 

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.

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.

House 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.

     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 Irish Twins, 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.

     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.

     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.

     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."  

     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."

     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 You can't take the car in a nanosecond.

     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.

     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 The Golden Love Dog 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.

     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.

     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. 

Carl Jung and House paint

This 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.

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.

I found her name,  Jane, in my tattered address book and said, "She lives in Brunswick."

"Joan, that is where I live."

"She lives on Lower Made Up Name Road (protecting her privacy here).

"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.

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.

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.

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.

I think Carl Jung would be happy with the color of paint.

Arriving at Tinkertown

What 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.

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, Leaving Tinkertown, by Ross's daughter, Tanya Ward Goodman and published by my dear UNM Press.

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.

The reading netted hundred of dollars for the local East Mountain High School debate team. I netted
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.

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.

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.

Almost Heaven, Española

I have been singing that John Denver song, Country Roads, 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.

"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: 

   "There was a little girl, who had a little curl,
     right in the middle of her forehead.  
     When she was good she was very, very good. 
     When she was bad she was horrid."

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.

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).
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.

 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.
The ambiance, I can't even begin to tell you.  Sabra and I hugged and got tangled up, my glasses grabbed her white braid.

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 you deserve it people.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What Makes an Activist?

I am being an activist by staying home and not budging for over 24 hours.  I once called it my Petrol Sabbath, 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.

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.
I consider you an activist. You built our house.

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.

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.

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.
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.

If you want to support the Bly video which is near to conclusion here's how: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/robert-bly-a-thousand-years-of-joy/x/1233025 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.

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.

I Heart Quilt

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.

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.

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.

 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.

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.

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.