Scrambled Grandma

Yesterday I got to pick up my granddaughter, Kaylee, at 7:30 and have her wonderful company for the day. On the way to my house the subject of imagination came up and she frowned her forehead, as only I could have done as a child, and said she had lost hers. Maybe I was ranting about screens and TV's and Ipods. She kept asking me which device was on, for pretend, my Ipod (don't have) or my phone (don't have one that does anything interesting).
So that became our theme for the day. I explained that when she pictures something in her mind, that was her imagination. She claimed she couldn't picture a thing. Which led me to Little Red Riding Hood and her basket of health food goodies. When she met the Big Bad Wolf it threatened to scramble her, according to Kaylee and it got to grandma's house and did scramble her up.
I wasn't sure if this was what she had in mind for my house, but she decided she wanted to decorate it.
She made me a new refrigerator art piece. Her work always has a structural sculptural aspect that involves string and tape. Then we made a wonderful paper chain with alternating white stock and
manilla paper. I loved its simplicity and elegance. We hung it from an old plant hook over my desk, a patch that covered where the Ashley Wood stove once sat, decades ago. She added a red string, a manilla rectangle with her name in pink, and a sticker of a bunch of grapes dangling on a smaller string. The piece moves in the air right by my computer like a little imagination ghost.
Later that day, after some Sesame Street screen time because I am human and always have important computer screen things to do myself, we had a big discussion about mortality and about every day it is important to do your best. As I was getting dressed for town I heard her singing. She sings little songs constantly. For this one was she was flipping the tiny pages of Peter Rabbit, a book with a Pittsburgh address label it is so old. I got my tape recorder and found the back of a tape that was empty and asked her to sing again. With no hesitation she opened Peter Rabbit and sang a song to go with Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail. The song was about decisions and finding your path and your home. It ended as the book ended. She almost turned inside out with joy

when we played it back, and that was the highlight of my scrambled day.
Her mom said that she has been worried about her imagination, an odd coincidence because it has been the topic of our Arts Education Committee. In fact there is a panel on imagination on June 16 at 5-7:00 at Warehouse21, Santa Fe's award winning teen center. I know some has been scrambled by the screen, but I also know, in myself and in Kaylee, that it is a strong force and that a woodsman may come and chop it out of the wolf of technology. And there they are, grandmother and child, whole and imagining.

My Books!! & Readings and dates

THE SINGING BOWL, UNM PRESS, $20.00

LOVE AND DEATH: GREATEST HITS, TRES CHICAS BOOK, $15.00

I have two new books. Available from me, Collected Works, or on-line.
I just forgot to mention it on the blog, but my kids reminded me.
Also, upcoming events in the tri-city area. e-mail me for info, joanlogghe@gmail.com

May 21, Saturday, 12-2:00 – New Mexico State Poetry Society Annual Luncheon and Reading at The Cooperage, 7220 Lomas Blvd. NE, ABQ.
RSVP mechistle@gmail.com, 505-889-4672, must purchase own meal.

May 29, reading at the Unitarian Universalist Church, 107 W. Barcelona Rd, Santa Fe, 4:00 PM

June 2, Thursday at 6:00, Collected Works, Love and Death:Greatest Hits launch with Miriam Sagan and Renée Gregorio.

June 12, Sunday at 2:00, reading with Mary Mcginnis at the café on Santa Cruz Plaza, Española. Coffee, tea, and we.

June 18, Santa Fe Community Gallery, Mining the Unconscious, writing workshop with Joan and Jane Lipman to focus on The Redbook Show, 11:00-3:00 PM FREE. (Note time change from original posting).

Reading of Mining the Unconscious workshop participants Wednesday, June 22 5:00-7:00 PM at the main branch of the Library.

WRITE LOCALLY, SHOP LOCALLY, READ LOCALLY, LOVE LOCALLY, DREAM LOCALLY

PL Moments

I have my dry cleaning in my arms, and a man and child stand at the crossing of Hidden Chicken and Chow's Chinese restaurants.  Somehow(!?) we are talking and I ask the girl how old she is.  She is six, and so of course I have to recite A.A. Milne:

"Now I am six
as clever as clever.
I want to be six
forever and ever.

The man, is he her father or grandfather? One doesn't want to presume, tells me he used to live
near Robert Frost's house.  And that leads us to talking about all the poets at inaugurations, Frost at Kennedy, Maya Angelou at Clinton, and then we recite Frost together, "Whose woods these are, I think I know..."  Between us, line by line, we have it all.  At some point, of course, I have told them I am Santa Fe's Poet Laureate and I give them my card.  The little girl is looking up with awe or surprise on her face.
I walk away, all of us smiling, and think, how wonderful the invisible moments of these two years are.

I got to read at Boise High School, in the library, and then lead a Creative Writing class taught by my friend over the years, Sharon Hanson.  I ended up reading poems about death, many of them are, and one where a boy dies in a freak sledding accident.  I asked if any of them had lost peers and two hands went up, of the thirty brown bagging it for poetry. Afterwards the librarian said it was perfect that I read that poem.  They had lost a student two weeks before.  Earlier it would have been too raw, but talking about the poem as the container for grief and joy felt spot on.

Here is a poem sent to me by Merrit Salathe:

When I was born

the world curdled

and a film was skimmed off the top.

When I turned eight

my dad would make me cappuccinos

in small crackled cups.

He and I flew to New Orleans.

In the French Quarter

I wept at the loss of two perfect pearls-

hastened from shop to

shop,

only an image in my mind:

Easter, poisonous Ebony, white out

on the family tree.

He and I sat in a café

drinking café au lait

that saturated beignets

into an aphrodisiac meant for

ten years later.

We walked on ground

sick with dead water

and FEMA trailers.

Shimmering heat miraged my white tambourine

but all I wanted was to hear its negative

sung once live by my

favorite artist turned scientologist.

We drove through vacant spray painted suburbs,

the water lines

etched in like a filthy skin.

“There’s the house where I was born,” he said,

“The Catholic school where the talking

icebox man and I dropped a conch.”

I was born post-earthquake

But hurricane threats flow in my blood. 

 My third recent PL moment came after a rare Tres Chicas Books meeting.  We had been taped for a radio show to publicize our new book, Love & Death:Greatest Hits, and then met for dinner and planning.  Afterwards Renée Gregorio and I decided to hit Ross Dress for Less and check out the nighties.  We have shopped together a few times, always memorable, Pennys in Taos, The Cottonwood Mall in Burque, and now a Santa Fe jaunt.  You must realize there are about ten years between each shopping episode.  At the De Vargas Mall there was a man in Hastings Books and Music, just sitting there next to his stack of books.  He was my age, nicely dressed, and looked how I often felt at a lack-luster poetry event.  I talked to him, bought his book for good luck, and headed into Ross.  "Did you tell him you were Poet Laureate?" Renée teased?  Of course I did and that I had a reading tomorrow.  Then I engaged in some altruistic shopping where in the depressing Ross dressing rooms I gave the skirt I loved and lusted after to a woman older than myself, shopping alone who said She came in to cheer herself up and now she felt worse.  She loved the skirt, and found another the same style.  I realized that altruistic shopping is right up there with altruistic Scrabble as mentally questionable.  How will I get ahead?  Ayn Rand is turning over in her self-righteous and self-centered grave.

The guy with the books came by my reading, couldn't stay.  Turns out he lives in Mexico, passing through, and is tennis partners with our friend, and Tres Chicas author Tom Ireland.  "Nothing good is wasted" I learned from a folk tale from Gioia Timpanelli.  Michael and I err on the side of give away. When he does it I can get agitated, but when I choose to give, it seems just right.  At least with giving poetry it doesn't wreck the bank account.  Neither does altruistic shopping.

Boise, You Betcha

 So, here's my link to Amanda Turner, interviewer extraordinaire!  It captures the joy. It is long, so I recommend multi-tasking if you want to hear it.  I wouldn't want to presume anybody would be interested in a near hour of me.
http://radiowritersblock.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/the-writers-block-for-april-28th-joan-logghe/.


   But I want to tell you a small moment of my trip, which falls into my Tales of the Synchronistic.
   My dear husband, Michael, wanted to reach a friend of his in Boise, an acupuncturist named Peachy. He called Luna and didn't hear back from her. He looked in the phone book, asked around, and even went to the chamber of commerce and made friends with the staff. We figure it is some sort of nickname,
as we know many folks with a nom de moment, or a Burning Man Name, or a spiritual name.
    Meanwhile, my friend Diane Ronayne was encouraging me to get a massage,
and though I sort of didn't need one, I figured a little self help in the middle of a busy week would  be nice. 
   The morning before my massage, around our semi-communal breakfast table, I was busy messing up a joke I have known for a dozen years.  I said it was the only joke I could tell, and I only remembered the punch line.  I told it like this, "When a guy from the Middle east marries someone from Minnesota, or the twin cities, what do you get?''  Pause.  Confusion.  "Yassir, You betcha."  Ha ha, I laughed at myself for flubbing a joke.  I went on to say my mother was a great joke teller, she called them stories, and her key to remembering them was the punch lines. She'd write them in a notebook, and after her death I found one little flock of lines.  And here I was with a punch line in hand, and I couldn't remember the set-up.  
   Then Diane drove me for the massage, carrying my dress-up clothes for the rest of the day, two readings, one workshop in poetry and one workshop for therapists.
We pull up at the lovely but unassuming massage site, and on a plaque, as there as anything it says "SEAN PEACHEY, ACCUPUNCTURE."  Diane and I are beside ourselves, whooping with delight, and Dominique Tarif, my gal for the hour, says there are two Peachey acupuncturists.  This one has dreads.  Must be the guy I think.  We send his card back to Mike.
  While I have no need to exclaim what a wonderful massage and cranial-sacral
treatment I receive, and I did, there was one detail I want to document.  Dominique was working on my sacrum, the far end from this cranium, and to something I said she answered, "Yassir, you betcha!"  I went nuts, told her I was just telling the joke this morning, an hour earlier.  She said, "A Palestinian man marries a woman from Minnesota.  What do they name their first child?"   We conferred that we had both heard the joke on Prairie Home Companion's joke night, I don't know what year she tuned in.  I can't recall if Dominique said she laughed her ass or her head off, but laugh she did.  The entire rest of the treatment I would burst into a smile.
   Now I am home, and as I type this I think maybe my mom is at it again.  Maybe this is her punch line, that it will be okay.  My youngest is in massage school and I tell her the story, and how it showed me that a massage therapist can be the psychics and healers of our time.  My daughter nods, she already knows this.
Diane says that others have had similar experiences with Dominique. I am listening to her music this week, and can she sing and play mandolin?  You probably know the answer is, Yassir, You betcha!"  And was Peachy the right Peachy? Ditto.

Basking in Boise

http://radiowritersblock.wordpress.com/2011/04/25/the-writers-block-for-april-28th-joan-logghe/




That's the place you can hear an interview I did that hits the highlights on my visit to Boise.
I did four readings, five workshops, one interview, one meeting about PL with their arts administrators and community.  I am landing at home again, the snow has melted and I think I am melting a bit as well.


I cannot begin to write about all my Boise adventures, so I will give you some highlights.


My friend, Diane Ronayne, a consummate activist and community organizer, outdid herself.  In fact she almost outdid me or did me in, but no, I had a grateful blast and it all went smoothly.  We weren't even late one time.  I got to teach poetry to elders, teachers, high school students, therapists, and my old friends.
I got to read at a bookstore, coffee-shop with my second cousin playing a mean guitar,  a school library, and a literary center. I was on the radio, took a few good walks, and introduced WS Merwin, the US poet Laureate.


A lanky girl, i later found is named Sophia, came up to me on the street, "Are you the poet?"  She had to make up a test and so missed my reading.  I gave her my poem typed on a tiny piece of pink cloth, "Dressing Down for Love."  I told her to promise me if she had a poetry emergency she would call me.
Her teacher wrote me this morning that she came into school with the poem, much treasured.  Maybe that was my favorite thing.


Honestly, it was all my favorite thing.  I have said it before, Boise is my Holy Land.  Or is travel just the chance to get out of our patterned ways and become more whole?  I don't travel much, so not so sure.


I fell in love with another poet, loved having Michael meet my friends, and got so tired I had to lie down on a rug.  Now I am home, the world is changed with Bin Laden's death.  Teaching poetry makes me happy, and divisions between us make me sad.  I am not waving any flags, though feel solidarity with those who have fought, lost dear ones, and yet saddened by circumstances that cause us to hate one another.


If I can figure out how to send you any films we took I will.  If you want to hang out with me a while, check out the site above, a great young interviewer indeed.  Love to all in Boise, and to my arranged love, Santa Fe, I'm back.   XXX JL

DATES TO DATE, Living La Vida Local

Call me if any questions,  505-459-3482   and come on down!

April 17 -  Reading at Acequia Booksellers, 4019 4TH ST,  505-890-5365 in Albuquerque for UNM PresS Book The Singing Bowl. 3:00 WITH MICHAEL C. FORD, EMMY AND GRAMMY NOMINATED POET

April 21 – Benefit reading for Santa Fe Girls’ School with student readers and Poet Laureate celebration. 6:00 at 333 Montezuma Annex, near Guadalupe. The girls are awesome.

April 23, Poetry at Paul’s, 6:00, Songs from the heart, chant, drumming, poetry with Sita Jamison and Gregory Gutin.  see Poetry At Paul's, potluck, reading, and open mic.

April 25- May 1-  Boise Idaho, appearance on radio, Boise High School, therapists, Osher Institute, three readings,  and intro of US Poet Laureate, WS Merwin.

May 6 – Los Alamos, University Women, 4:30 reading and tea at Bethleham Lutheran church in Los Alamos

May 7^th, Southwest Writers, 10-12, 275-2556, Reverberations, writing inspired by others-- derivatives and homage.

May 8th, Church of Beethoven, 10:30, 1715 5th St, Albuquerque, $15, classical music and poetry, come at 10:00 for coffee

May 11-  Collected Works,  Launch for The Singing Bowl, 6:00 PM with didgeridoo by Leland Guthrie, Free

May 21 – New Mexico State Poetry Society – Albuquerque, lunch reading, 12-2:00, Cooperage, 7220 Lomas,  make lunch reservation mechistle@gmail.com, 505-889-4672

May 28^th – Unitarian Church  107 W. Barcelona in Santa Fe, reading, 4:00,  992-0665

June 2, Launch for Love & Death: Greatest Hits, Collected Works, 6:00 with

Miriam Sagan and Renée Gregorio

June 18, Mining the Unconscious, free poetry workshop at Community Gallery on Marcy Street  with Jane Lipman and me,  11:00-3:00 PM,  Poetry Reading by Particpants June 22 5:00 PM

at the Community Gallery

WRITE LOCALLY, SHOP LOCALLY, READ LOCALLY, LOVE LOCALLY, DREAM LOCALLY

Feeling Fluish

So, what I meant about the confetti that as I thought about all the various appearances in town I have made, and by town I mean Santa Fe (minimum 50 miles round trip) to Albuquerque (180 miles round trip) often for a five minute reading, I was thinking, what I am doing?  And I thought, confetti.  Then that word keep appearing in the way that pesky, light colored words blown by wind will do.  And I started to think heavier thoughts, and then I got the flu.

See, I was cleaning my desk area which takes over the dining area, an upstairs bedroom formerly lived in by each of my kids, sometimes in bunk beds,  let's face it, I am messy and hate cleaning.  But I was having a very good time and sorted all my pencils and made a cup with a broken handle for writing materials and a matching cup with a broken handle for art supplies.  I would be organized.   But then there is always the moment when a molecule of dust, a smidgeon, a speck, an inhalation comes into my throat and I get sick.  Like that!  And sick I got, with fever  of 101 and two horizontal days, and still I am dizzy and woozy and unfocused.  I am violently allergic to house cleaning and this is day five.

Then yesterday I went out barefoot, gingerly, to pick some jonquils before the winds brought them to submission.  That is how flowers grow here, the bulbs poke up, open, and then are destroyed on their first day.  It's a wonder I have skin at all.  Dear Oil of Olay.  But as I moved toward the blooms I would cut to uplift my spirits, I stepped onto something spiny, and horrible, a pufferfish or hedgehog on the lawn... But no, it was a Datura seed pod left by the curious Raw Food Men who were here earlier, feeding me flax seed crackers and raw chocolate by the pinky finger-full.  All day I limped, sure I would be growing datura from my sore foot, and I needed Frida Khalo more than O'Keeffe for that image, and so it has been a most puny and un Poet Laureate week, until today.

Today, when talking to my friend Cecile Moochnek  and the call waiting buzzing and I look at caller ID.  Gerald Stern, no other than, my poetry darling, my inspiration, and fellow Pittsburgher.  Jerry is my most inspiring teacher, though today I realized it was 20 years ago.  I loved how he sang when he came into class, how he danced, and how he flirted.  He was a notorious runaround, but I loved his voice which sounded like a cross between my brother and an uncle, pretty much any uncle,  if they had been poets.

When I must have hung up on him in my call waiting frenzy, he called back on the cell. He loved my book, or so he said.  He liked the Pittsburgh poems, and he really seemed to like the entirety of The Singing Bowl.   Or so he said.  He also said he was a Mongol, and later a Crypto Mongol, the first Poet Laureate of New Jersey, proceeding Amira Baraka who managed to get the program killed the the gay governor who soon after resigned.  But what I loved most about the call, besides the fact that Jerry's writing inspires me like none other, was that he and his beloved, the poet Anne Marie Macarie,  live four blocks apart.  When, after talking over a half hour, the call waiting buzzed him he left for dinner.  That seems so perfect for a fluish person. Four blocks. He loved my book.

The phone call hooked me up to Poet Laureate Central, I am picturing a Crypto Mongol at the switch, laughing.  I wanted to call everyone and say, "Jerry Stern and I were talking only today about the crypto Mongols."  I think I am on the mend.  My ego is recovering from the swift allergic blow, and the datura set-back.  The confetti, not the dust, is rising and I feel ever so slightly happy.

Tomorrow at 6:30 Mt Time I will be on Living Juicy with the estimable Rhea Goodman, streaming live on www.KSFR.org.  Check me out. I think I'm back in the game.  The wind is down, and there are two books in hand, not just all that colorful falderal.