Posted in Place, Poetry, Practice, Wake Up, tagged cities, micropoetry, Minneapolis at night, night owls, rivers on May 11, 2013 | 1 Comment »
Minneapolis At Night: Crossing The Mississippi, Droid Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 2013, photos © 2013 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Lost city of lakes—
an Instagram river ignites
your Polaroid skies.
Mississippi churning
across the dark drive home
a mist quietly settles.
-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, May 11th, 2013
Posted in Bones, Dreams, Life, Love, Photography, Poetry, Practice, Wake Up, Writers, tagged Archive 365, haiga, keys, letting go, Letting Go of What Cannot Be Held Back, life lessons, pensive days, reflective, Royal typewriter, senryu, the practice of poetry, the writer's life, turning the key, vintage typewriters on March 2, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
Royal – 152/365, Archive 365, BlackBerry Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota,
February 2011, photos © 2011-2013 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Midwestern writer
pretending to understand –
what love left behind.
-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, March 2nd, 2013
Posted in Life, Nature, Place, Poetry, Relationships, Things That Fly, Vision, Wake Up, Writers, tagged birds, circle of life, eagles, humans & nature, living in the moment, opening, poets, poets as inspiration, red Ravine Guests, Silver Grey Fox, the power of poetry, Theodore Roethke, things I learn from Mother Nature, wakefulness on February 28, 2013 | 7 Comments »
By Silver Grey Fox
This morning driving along a section of pines
the roadside vista reminds me of my glimpse
of the piney woods sections outside Houston
in Texas with the mixture of pines and shrubs
and the temperate nature of the forested area.
Then, rather suddenly I notice a bald eagle,
its white head distinct above its black raven-
colored body, sitting atop a solitary pine.
And, for a moment I pause on a turn-off
to observe its falcon-like instinctive pattern
of behavior when searching for and seeking
prey. Only for a moment, so it seems, am I
privy to its activity as it circles, then swoops
down earthward to snatch what I can’t quite
see until it climbs back above nearby brush.
Then, there, visible in its talons, is one of the
larger snakes I have seen in this section of
South Florida. Oh, sometimes I wish for the
spontaneous nature of such feathered creatures–
for the eyesight, for the instinct, for the ability
to move so gracefully at times and then also
having the speed to so naturally snatch its prey.
Ah, with the eagle nestled back somewhere
now in this piney woods to enjoy its catch,
I continue my drive back into my morning’s
activities—banking, shopping, laundering…
a far cry from my moment’s enjoyment with
the eagle sighting. Such is our connection,
my bird and I, such is our likeable difference.
About Silver Grey Fox:
As a writer-poet, I continue trying to gain an understanding of the enigma that is mine and that which was the late Theodore Roethke’s own. He once said, “What I love is near at hand.” Thus, there is so much yet left to be explored; plus, as he noted, “Being, not doing, is my first joy.” What with nature’s beauty all around, and my continuing to reach out and touch, feel and appreciate such, along with having opted to re-open myself to love and life, I continue seeking to more fully define my identity, so I write and write some more.
Links Of Interest:
On Theodore Roethke — Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) — Poetry Foundation
On Gary Snyder — Gary Snyder (b. 1930) — Poetry Foundation
On Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones — Amiri Baraka/LeRoi Jones Bio
On Black Holes — Black Holes — NASA Science Astrophysics
-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, February 28th, 2013
Posted in Art, Haiku, Practice, Wake Up, tagged Archive 365, haiga, senryu, shadows & light on January 6, 2013 | 7 Comments »
Car Wash – 188/365, Archive 365, BlackBerry Shots, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, February 2011, photos © 2011-2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
below blue water
underneath her deep veneer—
bundles of wet light.
-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, January 6th, 2013
Posted in Culture, Dreams, Haiku, Holding My Breath, Holidays, Home, Life, Love, Place, Poetry, Practice, Reading, Wake Up, tagged A Child's Christmas in Wales, Christmas, Christmas Eve, Dylan Thomas, haibun, haibun for Dylan Thomas, words to the close & holy darkness on December 25, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Santa At Holidazzle – 178/365, Archive 365, Droid Shots, December 2012, Downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Christmas Day. Presents opened, eggnog half gone, phone calls East and West. Longing, joy, gratitude, loss. What to leave behind, what to keep. Emptiness. Love.
Reading Dylan Thomas aloud, Christmas Eve. The moon-buried sky over a village churchyard in Laugharne. The close and holy darkness must have haunted him. A child’s sugarplum dreams—tufted hooves flick mediæval snow off the rooftop Castle of Abercorran.
Waiting for Santa—
the frigid windless night
soothes and comforts me.
Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept. –Dylan Thomas, A Child’s Christmas in Wales
Laugharne is a town in Carmarthenshire, Wales on the estuary of the River Tâf, and home to Dylan Thomas from 1949 until his death in 1953. Thought to have been an inspiration for the fictional town of Llareggub in Under Milk Wood, the Township was originally known as Abercorran. The name was changed to Laugharne after the English Civil War.
-posted on red Ravine, Tuesday, December 25th, 2012
Posted in Bones, Death, Dreams, Gratitude, Holidays, Nature, Practice, Seasons, Wake Up, tagged Ancient Trees, celebrating Winter Solstice, Christmas traditions, Christmas trees, circle of life, famous trees, future memories, memories of trees, navigating winter, shadows & light, value of trees, Winter Solstice, Yule tree on December 21, 2012 | 6 Comments »
Yule Tree, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2012
by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
No snow buried the ground the day we cut the Winter Yule. Huffing and puffing, we took turns severing trunk from tangled roots. Last summer we had a landscaper install a French drain that streams into the concave hollow of a rain garden we will plant next spring. The energy company marked the lines before digging; that’s when we discovered the blue spruce growing over our gas line. It would have to be removed.
In mid-December, I said to Liz, “Let’s make the spruce our Yule tree.” The handsaw wasn’t far behind. The tree is almost 4 1/2 feet tall with a wide berth that tapers to a slight curve at the top. She grew from a seedling, probably dropped by a songbird that made a pit stop on the mature spruce nearby. Trunk rings indicate that it took six years for this tree to grow 52 inches with a one and 1/2 inch base. Trees are slow and deliberate. They are the slow walkers of the forest.
Growth Rings, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Tree lovers like Liz and I will travel great distances to see hardwoods, softwoods, evergreens, and conifers in their prime. We have visited the oldest red and white pines in Itasca State Park in northern Minnesota, birthplace of the Mississippi River. We have sweated under live oaks near Flannery O’Connor’s childhood home in Savannah, photographed an old gingko at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chaska, and attended a community gathering celebrating the life and death of a 333-year-old Burr Oak near the Franklin Avenue bridge in Minneapolis. On a trip to New Mexico, I stood under the Lawrence tree painted by Georgia O’Keeffe at Kiowa Ranch. In Georgia, my mother and I talked family history under a ginkgo by the Old Government House that was planted in 1791 in commemoration of a visit by George Washington.
Saw, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Trees are important to the spiritual aspect of our lives. I can’t imagine a world without trees. Today we celebrate the longest night of the year, Winter Solstice. Tuesday we will celebrate Christmas. The blue spruce in our living room leaves an empty space in the garden. Though wistful when she fell, I am joyful that she gleams from our living room window at the darkest time of year. And that her summer-dried bark will be kindling for next winter‘s Solstice fire.
Home Grown Tree, Droid Shots, Minneapolis,
Minnesota,photo © 2012 by Liz Schultz.
All rights reserved.
-posted on red Ravine, Winter Solstice, December 21st, 2012
Posted in Animals & Critters, Body, Death, Haiku, Holding My Breath, Life, Nature, Photography, Poetry, Practice, Things That Fly, Wake Up, tagged dragonflies, haibun, haiga, Marylin Schultz, red Ravine guest writers, shadow of a dragonfly, Tracy Clark on November 23, 2012 | 5 Comments »
By Marylin Schultz
Dragonfly, Cody, Wyoming, photo © 2012 by Tracy Clark. All rights reserved.
Dragonfly
No audible cry do I hear,
but am drawn to see your plight
mired in mud, frozen there.
I offer a small branch of hope.
luminous lapis blue eyes
recognize reprieve in faceted lens,
delicate pattern of wings against
sky and soft distant mountain.
Freed from earthy prison,
this was not your final sunrise
after all.
On my morning path
as though resigned to her fate
patiently waiting.
About Marylin: Marylin (aka oliverowl) is a freelance writer living in Wyoming. She has written essays for a weekly column in the Ventura Star Tribune and collaborated with her grandson on two illustrated books for children. She currently writes with the Cody Writers. Her previous pieces for red Ravine include the travel essay Rollin’ Easy, Writing Practices Kindness and Cloud, and two memoir pieces, Images From The Past, and Two Little Girls & A World At War.
In 2010, Marylin was published in the book, From the Heart — Writing in the Shadow of the Mountain, a collection of work from members of Write On Wyoming (WOW), a group of authors and aspiring writers living in northeastern Wyoming. Her contributions to From the Heart include two works of fiction, To Love Bertie Lou and The Appointment Book, and a collection of haiku, Seasons in Wyoming.
-related to posts: dragonfly revisited — end of summer, first dragonfly, Flying Solo: Dragonfly In Yellow Rain , Dragonfly Wings — It Is Written In The Wind, Shadow Of A Dragonfly, haiku 4 (one-a-day) Meets renga 52
-posted on red Ravine, Friday, November 23rd, 2012
Posted in Nature, Place, Practice, Seasons, Skies, Things That Fly, Topic Writing, Wake Up, Weather, Writing Practices, tagged Bob Chrisman, change of seasons, clouds, drought, missing the rain, red Ravine Guests, summer heat, the practice of writing, trees, turning leaves, writing about clouds on August 26, 2012 | 2 Comments »
By Bob Chrisman
Clouds disappear in the night sky here in the city. Before the sun sat, gray clouds had covered the sky and now I can’t see anything except a dark gray sky. If I go outside and sit on the steps I’ll be able to see the cloud cover because the spotlight from the disowned Frank Lloyd Wright on the Plaza will shine off the clouds and I’ll know if the clouds have gone away.
The summer has been free of cloud for the most part. We look with anticipation at any cloud that floats across the sky. Rain? Will it bring showers? The cloud floats by and leaves the ground dry.
The clouds have passed over us, except for a rare sprinkle here and there. You can almost hear the trees sigh with relief as any water, no matter how little, falls on them. They swallow it up and beg for more, but this summer, more has not come their way.
The edges of the leaves have dehydrated as though the moisture had leaked out of them—some leaf vampires have attacked all the leaves on every tree. The victims of these vampires turn brown and fall to the ground. Color has left the leaves and turned them to a dull green. A few have turned a pale yellow, but for the most part only shades of brown are visible on the trees.
We will have rain tonight. That’s what the weather people say. Showers. But, at almost 9 p.m. the air is warm and still. The cicadas saw away in the trees outside, a deafening chorus that arrived early this year.
Everything has come early this year: the heat, the drought, the turning leaves. The only thing that hasn’t come at all is a cloud to relieve the thirsty earth.
NOTE: WRITING TOPIC — CLOUD is the latest Writing Topic on red Ravine. Frequent guest writer Bob Chrisman is joining QuoinMonkey in doing a Writing Practice on the topic.
Posted in 25 Things, Photography, Place, Practice, Skies, Structure, Things That Fly, Vision, Wake Up, Weather, Word Of The Day, Writing Topics, tagged alto, cirrus, clouds, cloudy, cumulus, fun facts about clouds, Luke Howard, meteorology, names of clouds, nimbus, photos of clouds, sky, stratus, the practice of writing, types of clouds, weather patterns, WMO, writing about clouds on August 21, 2012 | 4 Comments »
Missing Ely’s Sky – 23/365, Archive 365, Droid Shots, Ely, Minnesota, photo © 2012 by Liz Schultz. All rights reserved.
Taos, New Mexico, photo © 2007-2012 QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Clouds are connectors. We see cloud formations as recognizable, weather predicting puffs of air. Clouds are classified using a Latin Linnean system based on a book written by a London pharmacist, Quaker, and amateur meteorologist named Luke Howard. In 1803, he wrote The Modifications of Clouds naming the various cloud structures he had studied.
New Hope, Minnesota, photo © 2010-2012 QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
The terms used by Howard were readily accepted by the meteorological community and detailed in The International Cloud Atlas, published by the World Meteorological Organization in 1896. They are still used across the world today.
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) extended Luke Howard’s classifications into 10 main groups of clouds, called genera. These are divided into three levels – cloud low (CL), cloud medium (CM) and cloud high (CH) – according to the part of the atmosphere in which they are usually found. Types of clouds can be categorized by height and are divided up by the following names:
__________________________________________
| Cloud level (ft) | Cloud type |
|---|---|
| High clouds – (CH) Base usually 20,000 ft or above | |
| Medium clouds – (CM) Base usually between 6,500 and 20,000 ft | |
| Low clouds – (CL) Base usually below 6,500 ft |
__________________________________________
The names of clouds are based on their height as well as their appearance. Common cloud names are derived from Latin:
Shadow Leaves, Dusk On The Mississippi, photos © 2007-
2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
__________________________________________
What do you think of when you say the word cloud? Do you see the Universe, fog hanging on the mountains, the sky over the prairie? How many types of clouds can you name. Or maybe cloud to you is not that literal. Is your iced tea cloudy; are there clouds in your coffee? Is there a cloud over your day or your mood? Does your past cloud your vision of the future?
Get out your fast writing pens and write the Topic Cloud at the top of your spiral notebook (or start tapping away on your computer or Smartphone).
You can write a haiku, tanka, or gogyohka practice and post it in the comments.
Or you may be surprised at what you discover when you follow the rules of Writing Practice —- Cloud, 10 minutes, Go!
__________________________________________
Cloud Spotting Guide — UK Met Office
Cloud Types for Observers — Reading the Sky — UK Met Office
Common Cloud Names, Shapes, & Altitudes – Georgia Tech
Cotton Cloudiness, Top Of The Cedar Avenue Bridge, photo ©
2008-2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
-posted on red Ravine, Tuesday, August 21st, 2012
Posted in Bodies Of Water, Culture, Death, Dreams, Holding My Breath, Life, Obituaries & Epitaphs, Photography, Place, Seasons, Wake Up, tagged 35W Bridge Remembrance Garden, bearing witness, bridges, community as witness, dealing with tragedy, honoring life, honoring the dead, I remember, I-35 Bridge Collapse, names, ordinary as extraordinary, rivers, slowing down, survivors, writing about names on August 5, 2012 | 6 Comments »
I-35 Bridge Memorial – 36/365, Archive 365, Droid Shots, 35W Bridge Remembrance Garden, Minnesota, July 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
I passed by the 35W Bridge Remembrance Garden three times over the last few weeks. Wednesday, August 1st, 2012 marked five years to the day since the I-35 bridge collapsed. The third time I drove by, I was traveling home from the Guthrie with Liz and her mother who was visiting from Wyoming.
Ironically, on August 1st, 2007, Liz’s mother was in the air on her way to Minneapolis when the bridge collapsed. Liz and I were folding laundry and doing last minute preparations for her visit, when we received a phone call from my mother in Pennsylvania asking if we were okay. Confused, we quickly turned on the TV to see that one of the busiest bridges in the Twin Cities had fallen into the Mississippi and was a twisted mass of concrete and steel.
Thirteen people died that day; 145 were injured. They had been going about their lives in what was until that moment, an ordinary day; it could have been any one of us. The Memorial to the victims and survivors of the 35W bridge collapse sits on the west bank of the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis, next to Gold Medal Park. There was a dedication and opening ceremony for the 35W Memorial, August 1st, 2011. It is a quiet place where water falls over a granite wall inscribed with the names of the 145 survivors, and the words:
Our lives are not only defined by what happens, but by how we act in the face of it, not only by what life brings us, but by what we bring to life. Selfless actions and compassion create enduring community out of tragic events.
Last week, I listened to survivor Lindsay Walz tell her story from the perspective and wisdom of the passing of time (you can read her story at this link). On August 1st, she painted details on the back brace she wore for injuries sustained when the bridge collapsed. In addition to a broken back, she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. She states that everyone’s recovery is as unique as their experience on the bridge that day. Some people are still dealing with ongoing crippling pain and can’t work. They can’t do things they used to take for granted. The survivors stay connected through a Facebook page; they are still there for each other.
The night I passed by Bohemian Flats, under the new I-35 bridge, and around the bend to the Memorial, I saw 13 steel girders lit in neon blue, one for each person who lost their lives. I felt compelled to slow down from all the busyness of summer, and remember their names. (To learn more about their lives, there are biographies at the links.)
________________________________
| Sherry Engebretsen Sherry Engebretsen knew how to take care of details, especially when it came to her daughters.
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| Artemio Trinidad-Mena Originally from Mexico, Artemio lived in Minnesota for about 10 years, and worked at New York Plaza Produce in south Minneapolis for almost a year.
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| Julia Blackhawk Julia Blackhawk had recently taken a new Indian name. The 32-year-old from Savage was given the name Thunder Woman during a pow-wow at Easter. Her uncle, John Blackhawk, is a Winnebago Tribal Council member. He says Julia was a kind person who always showed respect for her elders. And he says she had one attribute that was very special.
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| Patrick Holmes Patrick Holmes, 36, of Mounds View, was found dead at the scene of the bridge collapse that same night. He was on his way home from work. His wife, Jennifer, heard the news a little after midnight.
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| Peter Hausmann Peter Hausmann, 47, was a computer security specialist worked at Assurity River Group in St. Paul. The company’s president says Hausmann was a quiet leader and a man of faith.
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| Paul Eickstadt Paul Eickstadt drove a delivery truck for Sara Lee Bakery for 14 years. He was just beginning his shift, on his way to Iowa, when the 35W bridge collapsed. Eickstadt, 51, lived in Mounds View. He is survived by a brother and two sisters.
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| Greg Jolstad Greg Jolstad’s friends called him Jolly “because of his name, and because that’s just how he was.” Bill Stahlke remembers ice fishing almost daily, as teenagers, with Jolstad and Jim Hallin on Knife Lake, near the Jolstad family farm. The three haven’t missed a winter on the lake in the nearly 30 years since they graduated together from Mora High School.
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| Scott Sathers On Aug. 1, Scott Sathers left his job in downtown Minneapolis at Capella University, where he worked as an enrollment director, approximately 40 minutes later than usual. Sathers called his wife Betsy at 5:50 p.m. from Washington Ave. and 35W, where he was about to get on 35W to go north to his home in Blaine.
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| Christina Sacorafas Christina Sacorafas was running late, and called her friend and fellow dance instructor, Rena Tsengas, to say she would be late. But Sacorafas never made it the Minneapolis church where students in her Greek folk dancing group were waiting for her to begin class.
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| Sadiya and Hanah Sahal For Ahmed Iidle, the I-35W bridge collapse has brought a double loss. His daughter Sadiya Sahal, 23, and her 2-year-old daughter Hanah were headed to a relative’s house when the bridge crumbled beneath them.
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| Vera Peck and Richard Chit Vera Peck and her 20-year-old son Richard Chit were traveling in the same car when the bridge collapsed.
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________________________________
Related to posts: 40 Days, 8 Flags, and 1 Mennonite Choir, Memorial — Day & Night, Bridge To Nowhere — The Great Connector, Fear Of Bridges, Thornton Wilder & Bridges, Minneapolis At Night, The Name Game (What’s In A Name?)
Resources: Hundreds turn out to dedication of 35W Bridge Memorial, New 35W bridge memorial honors those who died — and the community that disaster brought together, Remembering the Dead, Bridge survivor on 5th anniversary: ‘The day I got to live’
-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, August 5th, 2012
Posted in Animals & Critters, Body, Bones, Death, Dreams, Family, Gratitude, Growing Older, Holding My Breath, Life, Love, Obituaries & Epitaphs, Personal, Practice, Relationships, Wake Up, Writing Practices, tagged Accept loss forever, animal spirit guides, caring for chronically ill pets, courage, dogs, Elizabeth Statmore, Fromage, going nuts for a while, letting go, Letting Go of What Cannot Be Held Back, losing pets, love & loss, Mary Oliver, Mother's Day, mourning pet loss, peaceful warriors, pets, precognitive dreams, the difficult work of grief, the practice of writing, writing as healer, writing through grief on July 9, 2012 | 8 Comments »
By Elizabeth Statmore
Fromage died on Saturday, May 12th 2012 at 11:30 p.m. at All Animals Emergency Hospital, surrounded by us and our love. He was dehydrated and disoriented, with a temperature of 105.6. Normal temperature for dogs is 101-ish, with 102 being in the high fever range. So Fromage had a raging fever, probably from a combination of a brain tumor (or nervous system tumor) and end-stage kidney disease.
We knew it was serious when he couldn’t do anything with a Beggin’ Strip — his favorite treat in the universe. And I’d dreamed Wednesday morning that he died. I knew it was a precognitive dream, but I didn’t know how or when the end would happen.
He did his utmost to stay alive for me — to support me and love me through this disorienting chapter of my life. He showed the same heroic courage and love he had shown us all his life. He was an impeccable warrior to the end, but in the end it was time to let him go.
It was the night before Mother’s Day.
It’s the little things that really punch me in the gut — the moments that interrupt my conditioned habits, such as automatically tucking the newspaper bags into the plastic bag collection next to the front door, only to realize that I don’t have a need to save dog poop bags any more.
I put his sterling silver tag on a chain and started wearing it around my neck last night as I went to bed.
He was the only being who has ever called me his mother. On our first Mother’s Day he bought me a pair of dog socks.
He was the dog of my life.
He was the dog of my heart.
I somehow left my favorite fountain pen at school on Friday, but I was too stressed-out and worried yesterday to deal with it. But this morning, all I wanted to do was write, so I drove down to school and back to retrieve it.
When we got to All Animals, Fromage had a fever of 105.6. This was a raging brain fever. He couldn’t even walk down our front stairs. I carried him in my arms down the thirteen front steps — all 60+ pounds of him. David carried him into the car. He was dehydrated and disoriented and scared. He was dying.
I held him in the back seat while David drove. He lay quietly on the back seat, watching where we were going.
He had kept himself alive so he could support me. And now I knew it was my turn to support him by letting him go and by easing his passage into the next world, into his next life.
Fred always said that Fromage was my spirit guide.
Now my heart just aches. David’s too. Fromage loved David so much, even though David felt hurt that Fromage was always so freaked out and demented these last few years. David hugged him and loved him too, even though there was so much dog hair. By last night, no one cared.
I can’t put away his old beds or mats yet. I am still processing the fact that he is gone. There is a giant Fromage-shaped hole in my heart — one with one stand-up ear and one flappy ear. The stand-up ear is his right one. It has a bite taken out of the tip. My lips and fingers know the shape of that missing spot instinctively. Completely. Like a fingerprint.
He’d been staying alive to get me through this tough time. On Wednesday night I got the word that my layoff notice had been rescinded. He went downhill fast from there.
I loved that dog so much.
He loved me more purely and wholeheartedly than I had ever been loved before. It was a healing kind of love. He healed me. He made me whole.
When Crystal and I saw Mary Oliver the first time at the Herbst a few years ago, Mary had recently lost her longtime partner, Molly Malone Cook, and had been writing about it for some time. A woman in the audience asked how she’d gotten through the devastating loss. “Well,” she said, first you go a little crazy. You go nuts for a while.” That thought comforts me now. I am going to have to go a little nuts for a while while I grieve.
The loss feels cavernous.
It’s also tinged with fear and shame that I might not be experiencing appropriate gratitude for the gift of his life. I *do* feel a bottomless gratitude for his life. It’s just that right now, this is the part where I have to take in and let out the hurting — the loss and the groundlessness of impermanence.
In legal terms, I rescued him, but the emotional truth is that he is the one who rescued me.
He was a magical dog, a magical creature. In mythical terms, he was my magical helper-being.
“A dog lives fifteen years, if you’re lucky,” Mary Oliver writes in one of her dog poems. In so many, many ways I’ve been very, very lucky. Fromage was in good health and good spirits until this very last week. He enjoyed long walks and Trash Night and giving David five and ten and eating Beggin’ Strips until the very last day of his life. He watched for my return through the glass in the front door every single day of our life together.
As we left the hospital room after it was over, I kissed him behind his flappy ear — where, even in death, he still smelled like a puppy — and I whispered to him, “Okay, Puppity, guard the house.”
Then we left the treatment room and closed the door behind us.
I did not look back.
Fromage at the Dog Garden, Dog Garden, San Francisco, California, April 2004, photo © 2004 by Carlos Hillson. All rights reserved.
About Elizabeth: Elizabeth Statmore is a San Francisco-based writer and teacher of writing and mathematics. She is a long-time practitioner and teacher of Writing Practice, which she learned from Natalie Goldberg. A frequent contributor to KQED-FM, Elizabeth’s last posts for red Ravine include Seed Starting, a piece about writers as gardeners, and Writing The “Remembering Grace Paley” Piece — a step-by-step tutorial on how she turned a raw piece of writing into a finished radio commentary. Elizabeth was also one of our first guest writers, contributing the post Abandoned Is… Fromage was her dog and spirit guide of almost fourteen years.
Long is Part I in a series of three Writing Practices about the love and loss of Fromage.
Posted in Art of Rebellion, Body, Bones, Culture, Death, Fotoblog, Haiku, Holidays, Jugular, Life, Photography, Place, Poetry, Practice, Secrets, Wake Up, tagged American history, Archive 365, Camp Savage, fences, flags, Fourth of July, freedom, freedom of speech, haibun, independence, Independence Day, Japanese Relocation Camps, July 4th, language, Minnesota history, Nisei, symbols, the importance of words, war & peace, warriors, World War II on July 4, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Camp Savage – 4/365, Archive 365, Camp Savage, Savage, Minnesota, June 2009, photo © 2009-2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Independence
Banging fireworks against pre-dawn chatter.
Red night, white galaxy, blue smoke
in the air, flowers made of fire.
Freedom does not rest
or sit softly on her laurels.
She is war-like and stubborn,
not blind to the truth.
“Fight for what you believe in” she liked to say.
Independence remains passive,
13 stripes, 50 stars
but fiercely springs to life
when freedom is stripped away.
never rest easy –
in the dawn’s early light
there is much work to do
ABOUT THE PHOTOS:
Liz and I stumbled on Camp Savage in 2009 while out on a day trip to take photos. I was shocked and surprised because I had no idea such a place existed in Minnesota. The Nisei (second generation) at Camp Savage were translators of language, maps, and documents during World War II. When Marylin submitted her piece about her childhood friend whose family was sent to a Japanese internment camp, I was inspired to go back and take a look at these photographs again. It’s the first time I have consciously written haibun (more about the form at haiku 4 (one-a-day) meets renga 52). I like working in the format of both prose and haiku. Independence Day in the United States reminds me of all the ways that people fight hard to gain freedom, independence, and equality, even within our own country. Below are the words on the plaque at Camp Savage:
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Independence, flag at Camp Savage, Savage, Minnesota, June 2009, photo © 2009-2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
During World War II, some 5,000 to 6,000 Japanese American soldiers, members of the U.S. Army’s Military Intelligence Service, were given intensive and accelerated classes in the Japanese language at Camp Savage.
Their subsequent work translating captured documents, maps, battle plans, diaries, letters, and printed materials and interrogating Japanese prisoners made them “Our human secret weapons,” according to President Harry Truman, who commended them following the war.
The Military Intelligence Service (MIS) program began in the fall of 1941, a few weeks before Pearl Harbor, at the Presidio in San Francisco.
For security reasons it was moved in May, 1942 to Camp Savage, a site personally selected by language school commandant Colonel Kai E. Rasmussen, who believed Savage was “a community that would accept Japanese Americans for their true worth — American soldiers fighting with their brains for their native America.”
The 132-acre site had served as a Civilian Conservation Corps camp in the 1930s and was later used to house elderly indigent men.
Plaque At Camp Savage, Savage, Minnesota, June 2009, photo © 2009-2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Conditions there were extremely difficult in the early months of the war, when the first students studied without desks, chairs, or even beds. By August, 1944 the program had outgrown Camp Savage and was moved to larger facilities at Fort Snelling
Most of the English-speaking Japanese Americans, known as Nisei, were from the West Coast area. Some were already in the U.S. military service when they were selected for the language school, while others were volunteers from the camps in which American citizens of Japanese ancestry had been interned following the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
According to General Charles Willoughby, chief of Intelligence for General Douglas MacArthur, “the 6,000 Nisei shortened the Pacific war by two years.”
-erected by the Savage Chamber of Commerce, 1993
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ARCHIVE 365: Since the completion of BlackBerry 365, I have missed a daily photo practice. There are so many photos from my archives that no one has ever seen but me. So I asked skywire7 if she wanted to do a daily practice for one year, taking turns posting an unpublished photograph from the past.
Archive 365 is a photo collaboration between skywire7 and QuoinMonkey featuring images from our archives. We will alternate posting once a day in our Flickr sets from July 1st 2012 through June 30th 2013. You can view our photographs at skywire7 Archive 365 set on Flickr and QuoinMonkey Archive 365 set on Flickr.
-posted on red Ravine, Independence Day, July 4th, 2012. Related to post: Abraham Lincoln & Nikki Giovanni (On Poets & Presidents)
Posted in Art, Photography, Place, Practice, Silence, Structure, Taos, Vision, Wake Up, tagged Archive 365, black & white photography, collaborative photography, film photography, Kodak, Kodak bankruptcy, Kodak Tri-X film, motorcycles, photography as Muse, photos of Taos, the art of photography, the practice of photography, vintage technology, yearly practices on July 2, 2012 | 2 Comments »
Motorcycle In Taos – 2/365, Archive 365, Taos, New Mexico, January 2003, Tri-X black & white film print, photo © 2003-2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
I miss black & white photography. I recently felt the old pangs for film when I ran into Tricia Vetrone’s work at Ingrained Photography while looking for peers for our Casket Arts 318 studio page (our brick and mortar art and writing studio. Would love it if you Liked us there). She shoots in black & white with vintage film cameras. Beautiful work.
Motorcycle In Taos was taken on one of my first writing retreats in Taos in 2003. It was a talking workshop, long before the silence befriended me. We were walking around the Mabel Dodge Luhan House with Natalie. I didn’t own a digital camera then and was still shooting with a Canon Rebel film camera and trusty Kodak Tri-X b&w.
It’s sad to me that Kodak declared bankruptcy this year. In a long history that began in 1888 with the slogan “you press the button, we do the rest,” George Eastman put the first simple camera into the hands of a world of consumers. He made a cumbersome and complicated process easy to use and accessible to nearly everyone. I’m sure in his wildest dreams he never imagined we’d be taking digital photos on our cell phones. Time changes everything; photographs capture time.
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ARCHIVE 365: Since the completion of BlackBerry 365, I have missed a daily photo practice. There are so many photos from my archives that no one has ever seen but me. So I asked skywire7 if she wanted to do a daily practice for one year, taking turns posting an unpublished photograph from the past.
Archive 365 is a photo collaboration between skywire7 and QuoinMonkey featuring images from our archives. We will alternate posting once a day in our Flickr sets from July 1st 2012 through June 30th 2013. You can view our photographs at skywire7 Archive 365 set on Flickr and QuoinMonkey Archive 365 set on Flickr.
Posted in Culture, Family, Holding My Breath, Home, Jugular, Love, Memoir, Personal, Photography, Place, Relationships, Wake Up, tagged brothers & sisters, California, childhood memories, excavating memories, family history, friends and enemies, friendships, Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Japanese Relocation Camps, life in wartime, life lessons, love & loss, Marylin Biggs, Marylin Schultz, memories, prejudice, Relocation Camps, the 1940s, The Relocation Center, the value of history, war, war & peace, World War II, Wyoming on June 20, 2012 | 15 Comments »
Marylin on Tricycle, Billy, Francine & Terry in Wagon, Johnny in Rear, No. Hollywood, California, 1944, vintage family photo, scan © 2012 by Marylin Schultz. All rights reserved.
When nations form alliances on every continent, it means the lines are drawn and the winds of war sweep across the world, affecting all people, even small children. Two little girls in two very different families find they have been placed in opposite alliances, and this is their story.
The year is 1941. Marylin Biggs was born in New Mexico. She is Caucasian and lives with her parents and older brother. Her mother is expecting a baby in January. On December 7th, America is drawn into the war which is now affecting the entire world. Her father, not wanting to leave his wife with such a young family, is given the choice to work for Lockheed, building war planes, which he accepts. In 1942, the Biggs family moves to California.
In California’s central valley the Nakata family lives on a farm composed of beautiful orchards and vineyards. The children are 3rd generation Japanese Americans.
Little Haruko enters Kindergarten in 1942. One day, out on the school playground, Haruko finds herself surrounded by 6th Grade girls.
“Hold out your hand,” one of them commands. The small child meekly obeys, not knowing what to expect. The girl who spoke, grabs one of Haruko’s hands and begins to twist and twist a tiny finger until it breaks. Although the pain is excruciating, she is afraid to tell any adult at school and runs home. She never returns to that school.
As it turns out, the Nakata family is also about to make a major move. The huge difference is that Haruko’s family does not have a choice. They are ordered off of their land and become internees in a Relocation Camp, far away.
Marylin Biggs with her Cousin, Wiley Oliver, Glendale, California, 1942, vintage family photo, scan © 2012 by Marylin Schultz. All rights reserved.
Marylin and her family settle down in North Hollywood, and her father drives to Burbank, the adjoining suburb of Los Angeles where he works at a Lockheed Aircraft Plant. The whole complex, including the large parking lot, is covered with a huge netting of camouflage. Russell Biggs rivets together the small, fast P-38 Fighter planes, which are designed to keep enemy planes from attacking the large, slower B-17’s, with their heavy cargo of bombs.
His younger brother, Ralph, was a tail gunner on these Bombers. On his last mission, Ralph’s plane was shot down, but he was able to escape, parachuting safely into neutral Switzerland, where he spent the remainder of the war. That country’s policy was to treat all military personnel humanely, but not to release them until the war’s end. Wiley Oliver, a cousin of Marylin’s, made the Army his career, retiring with the rank of Colonel, many years later.
Marylin also entered Kindergarten in 1942. She walked to school with her brother, Earl, who was in the 4th Grade. The children in the upper grades were given decks of cards that had the images of all the military airplanes on them. They were asked to become familiar with the appearances of the planes and to report any enemy planes that they might see. One day, on their way home from school, a small plane flew overhead and Earl shouted, “It’s a Messerschmitt; hit the dirt!” His little sister instantly obeyed, only to realize, at the sound of his laughter, that she had fallen for another of his practical jokes, and no danger was imminent!
Life in wartime held anxious moments for a small child. The wail of air raid sirens meant grownups hurrying to cover windows. There were billboards that asked drivers, “Is this trip necessary?” This due to the shortage of gasoline and tires. Some foods were rationed, meat, sugar and butter. Marylin “helped” by putting the small packet of orange liquid in the bowl of white margarine, which made it look a little more like the butter it replaced. The family had a large “Victory” vegetable garden.
But changes in the life of the Biggs family were insignificant compared to those for the Nakatas.
Haruko and Marylin met while both were students at U.C. Berkeley. They lived in a large old home that had been sanctioned as a “dormitory.” It housed 30 girls.
Marylin had never learned of the Relocation Camps before the two girls became friends. By 1942, Haruko’s family had lived in California for three generations. Their large farm was one of carefully tended orchards and vineyards that produced an abundance of fruit.
The Nakata family, along with thousands of other Japanese Americans, were notified of their impending relocation. Each family’s baggage could not exceed 100 pounds. First, the “internees” were held in a gathering place, like cattle in a stockyard. Santa Anita Racetrack in southern California was one of these. The wait, at least a month long, was followed by a train trip into the interior of the country.
Japanese American Internees at Heart Mountain Relocation Center, Wyoming, 1943, photo scan © 2012 by Marylin Schultz. All rights reserved.
The Relocation Center, as it was officially named, consisted of rows of barracks, usually divided in half for two families. The whole camp was hastily built in only three months. Coming from a culture that embraces beauty, order, modesty and dignity, it was a shock to be given only one room for the entire family. Sheets were hung within each space for privacy. There was a coal burning stove for heat, but no furniture. The men gathered scraps of wood left by the carpenters, to make crude tables and chairs. Cooking was not allowed. The meals were prepared for them and eaten in barracks, or “mess halls.” They were unprepared for the bitterly cold winters. With quiet dignity they suffered the shame of living behind barbed wire with armed soldiers on watch.
With about 10,000 internees, the Heart Mountain Relocation Center, or “Jap Camp,” as it was called by local residents, instantly became the third largest city in Wyoming. It was located between the towns of Cody and Powell. A school was established for the children, as well as a medical facility. Supervised shopping trips were allowed, and some of the men were hired by local farmers as field workers. There was a shortage of local men, most of whom had been drafted into military service.
Incredibly, the younger Japanese men were asked to serve in the military, and many of them did. Some, though, were incensed by the irony of being imprisoned by their own nation and then asked to enlist. Those who chose to fight for their country did so, wishing to prove their loyalty. Most were in the same outfit, and it was the most highly decorated unit in World War II. Some of those who refused to enlist were actually sent to prison.
Most of the local residents were not prejudiced against these citizens. Boy and Girl Scout troops joined in activities. In fact, former Senators Alan Simpson and Daniel Inouye first met and became friends as young men involved in Boy Scouts, before Inouye enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1943.
When the war was over, the Nakata family returned to California, to learn that someone else “owned” their farm. There was no explanation or compensation given. They simply had to begin again, which they did. It was not easy, but the family prospered once again, and the children all graduated from college and led productive, successful lives.
About Marylin: Marylin (aka oliverowl) is a freelance writer living in Wyoming. She has written essays for a weekly column in the Ventura Star Tribune and collaborated with her grandson on two picture books for children. She currently writes with the Cody Writers. Her previous pieces for red Ravine include the travel essay Rollin’ Easy, a Writing Practice, Kindness, and a memoir piece, Images From The Past.
In 2010, Marylin was published in the book, From the Heart — Writing in the Shadow of the Mountain, a collection of work from members of Write On Wyoming (WOW), a group of authors and aspiring writers living in northeastern Wyoming. Her contributions to From the Heart include two works of fiction, To Love Bertie Lou and The Appointment Book, and a collection of haiku, Seasons in Wyoming.
Posted in Art, Art of Rebellion, Culture, Holding My Breath, Photography, Place, Relationships, Skies, Vision, Wake Up, tagged #NSPK, @Northern_Spark, building community through the Arts, creative insomniacs, creative spaces, Jim Campbell, lightbulbs, making light of the dark, Minneapolis at night, Minnesota Arts, night photography, nightowls, Northern Spark, nuit blanche, public art, Scattered Light, sleepless night, spring in Minnesota, The Nuit Blanche Movement, the value of the Arts, Think & Wonder, Twin Cities, white night on June 2, 2012 | 5 Comments »
Night On Fire, BlackBerry Shots, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. Original BlackBerry photo June 2011, part of Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche.
Northern Spark 2012 begins next weekend in the Twin Cities at dusk on Saturday, June 9th and ends at the crack of dawn, Sunday, June 10th. Northern Spark is a free, dusk to dawn, participatory arts festival that presents visual arts, performance, films, and interactive media. Tonight at the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis we plan to attend the Pre-Spark Bridge Lighting where planners will flip the switch for Northern Spark’s signature artwork, Robin Schwartzman’s THINK AND WONDER, WONDER AND THINK. They will also be giving out festival guidebooks to preview before June 9.
Last year’s inaugural Northern Spark was magical. In 2011, over the course of the night, there were 50,000 visits to 100 projects by more than 200 mostly local artists at 34 venues in collaboration with 60 partner organizations and sponsors. I have listed a few of the places we visited in 2011 and a little history of the Nuit Blanche (“white night”) movement in the piece Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche.
The three photographs in this piece were taken while I was standing in the middle of Jim Campbell’s Scattered Light installation, part of Northern Spark 2011. In Annotated Artwork: The Making Of Jim Campbell’s ‘Scattered Light‘, Jim says moving from 2-D to 3D art is about “exploding an image, tearing it apart, and spreading it out.” His tips: 1. Pick a spot 2. Grab Source Material 3. Turn it into code 4. Create depth 5. Consider the planet. Honoring point 5, he and his assistants revamped thousands of standard lightbulbs, sawed them open, stuffed them with LEDs, and glued them back together, making handmade, unique, energy-efficient hybrids.
I am looking forward to Northern Spark 2012. At the Northern Spark website, there is a Planning Your Night page with a full list of events, including a link to download their new Northern Spark mobile app. We’ve already got ours loaded on our Androids. I only hope there is enough time to make all the events we’ve listed. It’s perfect for all of our fellow NightOwls! Hope to see our local readers there! If you can’t make it, you can follow Northern Spark on their Facebook page and at Twitter @Northern_Spark #NSPK.
Out Of The Darkness (L), #NorthernSpark – Scattered Light by Jim Campbell 23/52 (R), BlackBerry Shots, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. Original BlackBerry photos June 2011, part of Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche.
-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, June 2nd, 2012
-related to posts: Northern Spark — Twin Cities Nuit Blanche, Suspended In Light (Reprise), Insomnia Haiku: Counting Syllables In My Sleep, Mickey’s Night Owl Sandwich, Dreams Of A Creative Insomniac
Posted in 13 Moons, 25 Things, Art, Body, Bones, Dreams, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Holding My Breath, Home, I Don't Remember, Life, Love, Personal, Place, Practice, Wake Up, tagged back in the saddle, coming home to yourself, feeling exposed, out shooting the Moon, practice feeds practice, red Ravine turns five, taking a break, the artist's life, the creative practice, the creative process, What does writing teach us?, work life balance on May 31, 2012 | 11 Comments »
Liz Shoots The April Moon, Minneapolis at night, Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 2012, photo © 2012 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
It’s hard to get back into the practice of writing for red Ravine after two months away. Where have I been? The business of life. And love. Art and passion. Mr. Stripeypants was sick for a time, a bug he contracted during surgery. He’s fine now. I was sick for three weeks, then it was time for Art-A-Whirl. Liz and I spent hours in Casket Arts Studio 318, talking art and writing and authors. Explaining panoramas on brushed metal and the latest installment in the Writers Hands Series. After Art-A-Whirl, I am so energized by the people that stop by that I want to spend every waking moment in my studio.
My mother went to Georgia without me this year. I missed traveling with her; she continues to research the family tree. I take it up, too, in my spare time. I will never lose my passion for history — the people, places, and things that lived before us. While I was away, the seasons changed. Quickly and without apology. What would normally be Spring has bloomed as Summer. We lost a few limbs on the two cedars in an ice storm. An arborist is coming to give the oaks and cedars a trim on Monday.
Where have I been? I went to see Anne Lamott at a bookstore. And Leslie Marmon Silko at the downtown library. I photographed the clouds with my Droid. I stood on a bridge and shot the Moon with Liz. We are working on a business together. It’s slow and steady, like the Turtle I am. I am working on the project plan. Liz digs into business details. We will meet with a designer soon to begin work on our website. More to come.
I can say I missed you. I did. When I come back to this place, it is like coming home. I have a guest piece coming up soon. And a new Writing Topic. While I was away, red Ravine turned five. Five years and a million hits. I didn’t know when I started writing and posting my art here that years would fly by. That I would be exposed for the gaps in my practice. One year, I took a photograph every single day. Another, I wrote Writing Practices all day long. One year, there was a haiku a day. In 2012, I take time to breathe. And expand within my own absence. I have not lost my gratitude for you. There is no way to explain where the time goes. I always come back to the things Natalie taught me. Continue. Continue. Continue. Get up. Jump back in.
-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, May 31st, 2012
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