Day Trip

Steve, Lucy, Vladka and the Foal
The yearling and the pony who wanted to eat my purse
Katka with the Shaggy Arabian mare

Prachatice
Vimperk

Today Steve and I took an auto tour of some nearby towns.  We stopped briefly in Vimperk and then ate lunch in Prachatice.  We had stumbled upon this beautiful town last year.   Like Sušice, Prachatice calls itself the "Gateway to the Šumava".  Both Vimperk and Prachatice had primarily German populations before WWII, which is reflected in their architecture.

We had coffee in Volyně, a smaller town with what I would call a round, rather than a square. 

Finally, we landed in Kadov,  where I rejoiced in reuniting with Vladka and her family. Vladka was wearing the necklace I gave her last year and told me she never takes it off.  After a pivo and čaj (beer and tea) and tasty treats prepared by Vladka's daughter, Katka, we walked with both of them to Lucy's place to see her horses. She has Shetland ponies and "Shaggy Arabians", both of whom had yearlings and foals.  

As we walked through the field, they came galloping over a little rise toward us.  The sun was low in the afternoon sky.  Here words are not adequate to represent the beauty of that moment.  They greeted us, dipping their faces toward ours.  The shetlands leaned up against me, searching out any possible apples I may've been hiding.  I wished I had some to offer, but all the horses were content with scratches and petting.  The foal nipped my thigh. 

I will be headed back to Kadov after the program ends and I look forward to a few days of village life with the good people there.

Czech Word

The most common word in the Czech language is "tak", which means so or well. 

 

first day of PNE '09

Yesterday kicked off the Project with the opening "party" at the Socalovna.  It had rained through the night and continued through the morning.  When we emerged, the sun had, too, in a blue sky that complemented the orange-ish tone of Sušice.  

My camera died on Easter, so it will be awhile before I can post any new pictures, but here is one from last year (for the flavor).

on sestinas, angelica, and then what?

Something got me thinking about sestinas which led me back to thinking about Craig Arnold.

Apparently, he fell down the incline and is presumed dead. Now his last day's web writings keep recurring to me. His discussion of ashitaba, or angelica as we know it, explains that the plant he'd previously found floating in his soup is from the same family as anise, cilantro, and Queen Anne's Lace. And hemlock.

Earlier in the day, he alludes to the danger of the volcano itself, later of being drawn to this danger. The larger context of the quote I posted last week has him saving the life of a "mongoose or weasel", but not his "own".

I noticed that Craig was bound home On April 26, when he updated his facebook status. This was really the first time I'd paid attention to what he was doing in Japan. What I've tried to say about reading his blog can't describe the impression it has made. I am humbled to be reintroduced to the poet in this moment.

May you never be sad again, Craig Arnold.

I remember Craig's fascination with and skill for writing in form, which rather anti-climatically brings me back to the sestina. I believe that in the late 90's there was a general reviving embrace of meter and rhyme, while simultaneously, poets of the language school persuasion continued to articulate an altogether unstructured relationship to words.

Time passes. I am stuck in my own days' patterns. I have retrained my brain to look for evidence, for the persuasive buildup to that oh-so-unsatisfying conclusion.

Words are everything and nothing. Ashes. Dust. But then, umbellifer!

Elizabeth Bishop's famous "Sestina" still gets to me. Today I found another by Albert Goldbarth. This seemed a fitting poem to discover the day of my departure, which will be an unraveling and a suture. Good night.

Sestina: As There Are Support Groups, There Are Support Words

The name of his native country pronounced on a distant shore
could not please the ears of a traveller more than hearing
the words “nitrogen,” “oxidation of iron” and “hygrometer.”
—Alexander von Humboldt, nineteenth-century scientist-explorer

by Albert Goldbarth

When visiting a distant (and imponderable) shire,
one longs to hear the cry “Hygrometer!
Fresh hygrometer for sale!” Yes, and when the fair
sex sidles close and coyly murmurs “nitrogen”
into a burly masculine ear, I guarantee you: the translation
is very easy. The allurements of a local siren,

whispering the kind of patois a traveler like Lord Byron
favors, never fail to comfort, and to reassure,
evoking pleasant memories of one’s own beloved hygrometer
at home, kept fresh in Cosmoline and camphor
and awaiting one’s rearrival back in his native xenon and nitrogen.
Without these occasional reminiscences, any translation

from nation to nation, tongue to tongue, becomes a translation
difficult to sustain. I think of my grandmother: “We're not hirin’
today” “Go away” “Dumb Jew”—her share
of the language that greeted her here in the land of alien hygrometer
and freedom, where she was only one more funny-skirted for-
eigner yearning to hear a lulling Hungarian nitrogen

hum her to sleep. Eventually, of course, the American nitrogen
sufficed. Her daughter could speak, in free translation,
both uranium and argon; and her granddaughter gigs with Fire ’n
Ice, a skinhead punk-grunge group that performs in sheer
black nighties and clown wigs—she plays mean electric hygrometer
in the first set and then, for a twofer,

(very American, that) plays paper-and-comb. Far
out. She’s so fluent in various World Wide Webbery that nitrogen
in a thousand different inflections is her birthright, and almost any translation,
mind to mind, gender to gender, is second nature. “I earn
my keep, I party, I sleep” is her motto. Though she’s for-
tunate in having a lover who’s CEO at Hygrometer,

Potassium, Klein & Wong: it helps to pay the “hygrometer
man” when he knocks at the door. I won’t say that they fear
this guy exactly, but he’s a major badass nitrogen-
sucking cyberwired ninja-kicking shitheel (or, translation:
call him Sir). It makes one pine for a land where the birds all choir in
sweetly trilling melodies on a flower-scented shore,

and a translation sings all night. Row gen-
tly toward it. The tender forests sigh, and the soft whirr
of the hygrometer promises oxidation of iron.

Albert Goldbarth, “Sestina: As There Are Support Groups, There Are Support Words” from Saving Lives. Copyright © 2001 by Albert Goldbarth. Reprinted with the permission of The Ohio State University Press, www.ohiostatepress.org.

Source: Saving Lives (Ohio University Press, 2001)

one week minus one day

Heading back to the Czech Republic in less than a week and I am mighty nervous tonight. In fact the last few days have been unusually anxiety-ridden. I suppose several factors contribute to this state of mind. Since grading was one, I will breathe out as I am finished (save one portfolio) with that task.

The one portfolio and its author are additional factors, but I am responsible for neither.

Another, and much more subtle factor is the disappearance of Craig Arnold. Days before his scheduled return from Japan, he went hiking on a small volcanic island called Kuchino-erabu-shima. He has been missing since April 26.

Craig and I were in graduate school at the same time and recently have been facebook friends, though other than noticing his updates, I have not communicated directly with him.

His disappearance is eerie. Awful for so many who are close to him. There has been a huge outpouring of support to continue the search after Japanese officials had called it off. Apparently, today there was reason for "cautious optimism".

This from the facebook page, Find Craig Arnold

5/7 3:51pm EST: Officials on Kuchino-erabu report that the search team from 1SRG spent all day yesterday following Craig's trail. They believe they have identified where Craig's tracks end at a steep incline. The team believes that Craig went down that incline but they do not believe it would necessarily be a fatal fall. Thanks to the Fund to Find Craig Arnold and the support of both U.S. and Japanese authorities, the family has been able to re-engage some of the original search team and at least one of the Fulbright volunteers on the island and they will rejoin the search today, coordinating with 1SRG, to try to determine if Craig is somewhere near that incline, and/or where his trail leads from there. We are cautiously but determinedly optimistic, and we are overwhelmed with gratitude to the search team, the local Japanese authorities, the Fulbright volunteers, and all those who have been contributing so generously to this effort as it continues.

Breathe out again.

Kinda.

So, I'm going to take a long bike ride this weekend. And I'm going to a bon voyage party tomorrow night with many of my favorite people.

I will keep thinking about Craig's last posts on Volacano Pilgrim

Danger has a way of cutting through melancholy, the real fear blinding you to the fear dimly imagined. If you could only always just escape death, you would never be sad again.

“The aim is to listen and learn about the struggles, the resistance and rebel movements, support them and bind them together to build a national anti-capitalist, leftist program.”

~Subcomandante Marcos

Beehive Tradition

Kindness, Grace and I went to the Beehive Tearoom via TRAX last Saturday.   When they were very young (I believe Grace was three or four and Ki a few years older), we began this tradition. Grace and Ki are both Open Classroom kids and Lisa, the owner of the Beehive was (is?) an OC mom.  

I loved indulging their sweeteeth and listening to the world as they know it.

source

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

~J. Krishnamurti

who knows?

Apparently, Palin's alleged effort to ban books was merely an inquiry, according to factcheck.org and Newsweek.  But Palin's own words demonstrate that she lied when she claimed that her response to Washington was "thanks but no thanks" for the so-called "road to nowhere".  Video of the vp nominee calling the bridge "progress"..when she originally endorsed it (and apparently, kept the federal money). 

Surprises

The right turned the 2008 rhetoric upside down again with Sarah Palin's nomination, once again distracting us from some seriously scary stuff.  

Amy Goodman and two other Democracy Now! folks were arrested last week during the RNC, along with hundreds of other activists and passers-by.  The police raided homes where people were organizing under the title, RNC Welcoming Committee.  Another group, I-Witness, was there to record police behavior during the convention.  Of those arrested, eight were charged with conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism.  They face up to eight years in prison.  

It's not democracy if we can't dissent.  

Today a neighbor sent out a list of the books that then-mayor Sarah Palin requested the local Wassila library to ban.  The list included James and the Giant Peach and the 9th edition of Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. According to TIME, who interviewed Palin's friend and former opponent,

"The librarian was aghast."  That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

This is the woman who is going to rein in Washington?  Get the government out of regular people's lives? 

I don't know what they're doing, but some say Palin is "bringing back the base" and may secure a win for McCain.  A recent poll even showed McCain ahead of Obama.  It's kinda fun, isn't it?  Liking watching a rigged horse race, maybe.  You know it's all a sham, but you can appreciate the moves.

In other news, Gustav did not impact New Orleans like Katrina, but now Ike threatens.  The hurricane battered Cuba with 5-story tsunami high waves.  If it hits the coast it will be the sixth consecutively named hurricane to make contact this season.   

I dreamed about New Orleans last night.  Why are so many who evacuated having such trouble getting home?

And here in Zion, I did something I never thought I'd do--I accompanied Z on a youth chukar hunt sponsored by the Division of Wildlife.  It was a good time, surprisingly enough.  We went with one of the Division guys and his dogs, Jack and Doll.  He was very helpful and a safe hunter.  The dogs were amazing, running with their tongues lolling out of their mouths and then suddenly stopping, completely alert and pointing at a scruff of bush.  A mom and dad and a 10-year old girl also walked with us.  She was a novice but both of her parents are avid outdoors folks--he hunts deer with black-powder muzzleloaders but she prefers her rifle.  I was so relieved to be with pleasant people who knew what they were doing.  My son is one of them. He's an excellent shot and a safe hunter.  He got two birds that are now freezing downstairs.   

When we first got to the site, outside Tooele, I was really nervous.  Then the "educator", Gene, hearing that I was not a shooter, insisted that I shoot some clays with his shotgun.  I shattered the second clay.

I probably won't become a hunter (unless necessity requires it someday), but it meant a lot to Z that I went with him.  And to me.