Etsy Showcase: Joaquin Miller

Etsy Showcase: A weekly presentation of poetry accompanied by items from Etsy artists. Click on the image to visit the artist's Etsy store. To see earlier showcases, click on the Etsy Showcase label at the end of the post.

I learned about Joaquin Miller recently, when reading about poets from the Bay area. He might have been speaking of Byron here, but I find this poem interestingly contemporary. We seem to want our heroes to be one dimensional, which is normal no doubt. But unrealistic.

This adorable bear named Byron seems to get the point, yes?

BYRON by Joaquin Miller

In men whom men condemn as ill
I find so much of goodness still,

Amber Alexander

In men whom men pronounce divine
I find so much of sin and blot,
I do not dare to draw a line
Between the two, where God has not.

Be Happy (for the gardeners)

Back when I had a garden, one of my favorite winter activities was planning what I'd plant (or move or divide) that coming spring. I'd curl up with books, magazines, and catalogues, photos of the yard, and dream for hours.

I wonder, out here in temperate Northern CA, where the gardening's easy all year, if winter provides a similar season of dreams. Maybe their fallow season is summer, when dryness makes it hard to plant without lots of watering. It's hard to imagine, though. Even though it's only misted twice in the two months I've been here, the flowers are such a continuous explosion of color that one just has to walk outside to experience a world far beyond what any catalogue could provide.

But back home ... winter dreams rest in a comfy chair. By a window. With a stack of magazines in hand.

For those of you interested in such things: The whole collage is built on watercolor paper and then adhered to a block of wood. The base is made from ads for various gardening items (plants, bulbs, tools) from 1950's magazines. On that is planted a chair--that I layered with tissue paper and then painted. The flower, also painted, is from an old wildflower book, and the words are snipped from here, there, and the other, mostly painted and inked. I love layering these cut-out words--it creates a texture that writing them myself won't provide.

Around the Bend

In a recent post about the joys of travel, Crazy Aunt Purl provides excellent advice about how and what to pack and how to travel alone without getting lonely. But mostly she offers a glimpse into why she travels.

Here's how it starts: "One of the things I love best about traveling is that it gets me out of my head."

I feel the same way about day hikes.

I don't know about you, but I fall way too easily into living my life on autopilot. Take driving. When my students stumble and grumble while trying something new, I remind them of the hyper-consciousness of learning to drive. Then I assure them that the learning curve won't always be so steep.

"How many of you," I explain, "got home yesterday and don't even remember driving there? The car just knew the way home." They laugh--and all nod in agreement.

But on a day hike, the horse stays home, and whoever's on the hike has to venture on a new path, with new eyes--and ears and smells and ideas that sizzle as we pass a sheer rock face or cross over a wooden bridge or stop to eat a bit of apple at the most amazing vista ever.

On a day hike, I'm always at the end: Easily distracted, I stop to pick up a rock with a streak of blue or green, turning it over in my hand before dropping it back to its chosen life. I lean in close to admire a tiny flash of fuchsia or buttery yellow and wonder what wildflower that is, wishing I'd brought along a book so I could look it up. I take photos here and there (and over there, too, and behind that tree, and, oh, look at the clouds...). And then I look up, seeing the backs of my hiking partners for the day and hurry to catch up, laughing to myself.

In old 8-millimeter family movies, the camera often pans back down the path and there I come running, little Jenni, the cow's tail, as they called me then, hurrying to catch up.

I love that about hiking. Getting lost in the moment. Really seeing.

Living.



P.S. Curious about the photos? They're all on hikes near Lake Tahoe: The first and last are at Echo Lake. The second is Spooner Lake; the third is coming back down from Martis Peak.

Balancing Act

Here's the latest of my collage adventures with cutting out words. I decided to go with intuition more than thought on this one. The chair came first ("oh, that's cool," I thought), then the woman (loved the dress, which I embellished with tissue paper polka dots), then the birdie. I had other words in mind ("balancing act"), but those weren't in the magazines I had brought out here, so serendipity ruled the day.

The background ... well ... it just happened, too: Whatever tissues and napkins grabbed my fancy at the moment. Put it all together and you have ... amazing magic. ;-) It sort of reminds me of my cyber friend Dana's wonderful post today. Click here to read it.

(But, dagnabbit, I can't seem to get a good photo up here in my sublet--too much glare or not enough light or ... whine whine whine).

On another note, I woke up to a huge truck screeching down the street against the tree canopy (hello, you are TOO BIG for the street, duh). Then went to wash my face ... but ... no water. Nope, not in the shower either. Not in the sink. Call the landlord ... not in the house at all. Now half the street is blocked with trucks and digging equipment. Seems a watermain burst. Oh boy.

Well, I'll take a page from Dana's blog post and just be thankful I have a roof, windows, nice chairs ... Internet access ... and a car to go elsewhere if needed. Life, as they say, is good.

Thoughts on Angel Island . . . and Sonia Sotomayor

Watching today's start of the Senate inquisition confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor provided a bizarre juxtaposition to my trip to Angel Island yesterday.

I mean, does Sessions even hear himself? Does he realize he's from Alabama, the land of George Wallace, for Pete's sake? It's beyond ironic.

But back to Angel Island, sometimes called the Ellis Island of the West. It started as a simple Miwok camping and fishing site but later served less humanistic purposes: A garrison to turn back Johnny Reb in case he decided to follow the Gold Rush around Cape Hope and attack the Union from the West. Later a camp for U.S. soldiers (and even later POWs) during the Indian Wars, the Spanish-American War, and World Wars I and II. Although abandoned by the infantry after WWII, the Cold War brought a Nike missile battery until 1962.

With all this military history fresh in my mind--and in the midst of listening to puffed-up white guys pontificate about what they claim to be Sotomayer's racism, I couldn't help but wonder what happened to the Miwok. You guessed it: Population estimates put the total of both coastal and land-based Miwok at 11,000 in the late 1700's. By the 1930 census, that total was 491.

Then there's the other story of the island, the Immigration and Quarantine Stations. Here's what the brochure from the island (now a state park) says:

"From 1910 to 1940, this was the entry point for approximately 175,000 Chinese immigrants. Most were detained on Angel Island from two weeks to six months, until their applications were approved. Many were denied entry. By contrast, European immigrants and first class passengers usually faced only an inspection on board the ship and were never detained."

I get it, you know. It's essential to carefully question anyone offered as a candidate for the Supreme Court. And racism, no matter what its origin, is unacceptable. But it's not uncommon--even in the Senate. And it's certainly not foreign to the foundations of our country. We've been working hard to overcome the thinking that eradicated the Miwok, that quarantined Asian immigrants and, as I learned yesterday, even segregated the playing fields of Asian and German detainees during WWII. We're a different culture than the one that created the "White" and "Colored" water fountains of my youth.

But that doesn't mean these Senators get to pretend it never happened. How amazing it would be if they presented their own--and their predecessors'--biases as cautionary tales to explain their concern. But, no. They pretend they're unbiased. Untouched by privilege all their lives. Untainted by the political creatures they have become.

It's disheartening. As if the lesson were simply reversed, not learned.

Etsy Showcase: Robinson Jeffers

Etsy Showcase: A weekly presentation of poetry accompanied by items from Etsy artists. Click on the image to visit the artist's Etsy store. To see earlier showcases, click on the Etsy Showcase label at the end of the post.

My apologies to Jeffers' purists: This poem is really one stanza; I broke it for ease of blog reading and to highlight more Etsy artists.

Today Sweet E and I took the ferry to Angel Island and hiked the 5-mile perimeter trail. How beautifully our day embodied this amazing poem. Photos of my own tomorrow, with a few thoughts along the way. Today belongs to poetry and art.

Sign Post, by Robinson Jeffers

Civilized, crying: how to be human again; this will tell you how.
Turn outward, love things, not men, turn right away from humanity,
Let that doll lie. Consider if you like how the lilies grow,
Lean on the silent rock until you feel its divinity
Make your veins cold; look at the silent stars, let your eyes
Climb the great ladder out of the pit of yourself and man.
Jean Vadal Smith

Things are so beautiful, your love will follow your eyes;
Things are the God; you will love God and not in vain,
For what we love, we grow to it, we share its nature. At length
You will look back along the star's rays and see that even
The poor doll humanity has a place under heaven.
Aliette

Its qualities repair their mosaic around you, the chips of strength
And sickness; but now you are free, even to be human,
But born of the rock and the air, not of a woman.
Papermoth

In Summer, the Song Sings Itself

William Carlos Williams said that.

And I heartily agree, as the collage I made yesterday, with a jumble of summer-inspired words, demonstrates. Spending the summer where the temperature encourages a wondrous bounty of flowers provided the perfect inspiration.

For those who are interested in the specs: The woman comes from a 1920's Cashmere Bouquet ad, the flowers from an old gardening book, the butterflies from an old encyclopedia, and the words from here, there, and everywhere. The base is a collection of snippets from vintage letters, tissue paper, and inked swirls. I also inked and painted some of the words. It's coated with a clear acrylic and layered on a wood block (well, it was after I took this photo).

And for another view of summer--the crystal clear water of Lake Tahoe: