Flight: a poem

I wrote this poem for my friends Miranda, a Search & Rescue dog handler, and Marcy, her search dog. I knew Marcy all of her fourteen years. She served well, with dedication and verve. They were a dream team.

Flight

Cadaver dog was her moniker. 

She sniffed out bones.

One sultry summer in the South Pacific
she searched for Amelia Earhart
on a desert island no bigger
than a Mack truck hubcap.

And she did find bones.

For the sake of the story, though,
let’s say she found just one:
long and pristine, the bulbous end
peeking out from the gleaming white sand
beneath a nodding palm.

But it was not Amelia’s.

People had actually lived on that tiny island,
scraped out gardens, existences.
A war had been fought there.

The bone could have been anyone’s. No one’s.
And Amelia remains nowhere to be found.

Some mysteries may be better left that way.

But Marcy was no mystery:
a black-and-white border collie
with a goofy grin and ears akimbo,
she lived to fetch, to chase after a tug-toy,
her reward for a job well done.

Off she would fly, eyes bright.
More! More!

                                                                 RIP 3/19/21

Geocaching while hiking—and vice versa

These are a couple of my favorite things to do: walk/hike and geocache. Yesterday three of us went out to Pacheco State Park, on the Santa Clara/Merced County border; today a somewhat different three of us went to Coyote Lake–Harvey Bear Ranch County Park, in a different part of Santa Clara County (it's a big county). In each place we hiked some 8–10 miles and did some geocaching.

The caches for the most part weren't especially remarkable. But the places were glorious in their springtime green, and wildflowers were (subtly) popping. The weather was perfect, and we could see vast distances—from Pacheco, all the way to the Sierra Nevada in the east and Mt. Umunhum in the west. Here are some photos I took.

First, Pacheco State Park, once a Mexican land grant and still used to graze cattle; it is also home to a pretty impressive wind farm and is bordered by a major reservoir (click to view larger):

There in the distance is San Luis Reservoir—
and even farther, the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada

Someone gave this cow skull some gussied-up antlers

And here is Coyote-Harvey:

The newly leafing oaks (not sure what kind)
were glorious!

Looking west

Happened to spot this nest hidden in the grass—
western meadowlark is our guess

And here is proof of the geocaching part of the adventure—David and Alastair (aka FifiBonacci and Mimring) going literally above and beyond:

Above

Chuckles

Beyond

Teamwork!

It was a couple of really nice days, in good company. And now: I will rest.

UNESCO World Heritage Sites

I love lists. That doesn't mean I'm especially good at making lists, and ticking off items on them. I try, but honestly, to-do lists don't seem to be in my DNA. I am finally learning to accept that.

But lists like Top Ten Books of the year—those, I need to dash out and buy. (I don't actually do so. I have some restraint.)

Or Top Twenty-One Roads to Road-Trip On—because I do love to road-trip.

Or bucket lists: mine includes seeing all the kingfishers of the world, though I seriously doubt that will happen.

But I continue to be intrigued by the 1,121 sites listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites—places of outstanding universal value to humanity. I've visited a few of them (knownst or unbeknownst): the Urnes Stave Church ➚ and Røros Mining Town in Norway, Tongariro National Park in New Zealand, the Netherlands' Waddenzee, Masada and the Old City of Acre in Israel, Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe . . .

The United States has a few such sites as well, mostly national park–like places:

Ones that I haven't ever been to? They are now on my radar: the Everglades, Independence Hall, Mammoth Cave, Cahokia Mounds (MO), the Statue of Liberty for crying out loud, Monticello, Carlsbad Caverns, the Monumental Earthworks of Poverty Point (lower Mississippi Valley), and the San Antonio Missions. Papahānaumokuākea ⬉ —never mind: I will never get there.

That's a simple list of nine sites. I could do that. But that stinking Papahānaumokuākea sort of throws off the possibility of a perfectly checked off list. Darn it.

Book Report: The Queen of Patpong

17. Timothy Hallinan, The Queen of Patpong (2010) (3/24/21)

I have been slowly working my way through Hallinan's Poke Rafferty novels, set in Bangkok (I reported on the third one here in 2017). This is his fourth, and it is rich, both in terms of story and in language: Hallinan is an excellent writer. 

The story is relatively simple: in an early chapter, Rafferty's wife, the Isaan-Thai former bar girl Rose, is shocked to encounter a man she had thought was dead. This man, Howard Horner, faintly military, proceeds to send menacing messages her way, and Rose is plainly rattled. Poke doesn't know what's going on, and so Rose must explain a part of her past that she has kept hidden: the story of how she came to Bangkok and became a hostess in the "leisure district" of Patpong—and how she came to be mixed up in such trouble. That revelation is sandwiched within the suspense of tracking down and dealing with the bad guy. 

Throughout this, too, Rafferty and Rose's adopted daughter, Miaow (or Mia, as she now wishes to be called), is rehearsing her role as Ariel in a school production of The Tempest—which provides a diversion from the tension and allows for some metaphorical riffs. 

In this scene from that subplot, the play's director,  the Korean Mrs. Shin, explains:

     "From a Korean perspective the Thais are a little . . . haphazard."
     "We are?" Miaow says.
     "From a Korean perspective." Mrs. Shin emphasizes the words. "Koreans tend to be highly organized. We're planners and list makers. Not particularly spontaneous. The Thais, on the other hand, sort of flow." She sees the confusion in Miao's face and laughs. "Don't worry, I'm not saying anything bad about Thais. It's actually about me, and it has to do with the play. . . . As a Korean, I didn't think that the Thais measured up to me," she says, sitting down on her heels in a posture Rafferty has never been able to attain. "And now here I am, twelve years later, slowly turning Thai and delighted about it. And it makes me think about Caliban."
     Rafferty says, "Ah," and Miaow says, "Why?"
     "We don't like Caliban. We're not supposed to. Shakespeare doesn't like him. Caliban is the only non-European on the island, except for Ariel, who's clearly an upper-class spirit, almost English. But Caliban . . . well, Caliban is definitely not English, and Prospero treats him like a dog."
     Miaow says, "And he's . . . " She falters and puts both hands on the table.
     "He's what?" Mrs. Shin asks. 
     Miaow shakes her head. "I'm not smart like you."
     "You're one of the smartest children I've ever known," Mrs. Shin says.
      Miaow's mouth opens at the praise and stays open. She looks as if she's just been hit on the head.
     "So what is it?" Mrs. Shin prompts. "What else is Caliban?"
     Miaow grabs a breath and plunges in. "He's the only one who doesn't get off."
     Rafferty says, "By 'get off,' you mean—"
     "Nobody forgives him. Prospero forgives everybody, even after they  tried to kill him and his daughter. He sets Ariel free. But nobody forgives Caliban."
     Rafferty and Mrs. Shin sit there looking at Miaow. Then Mrs. Shin says, "Miaow, I am so happy you're in this play."
     Miaow says, "Really?" She's blushing.
     "Really, totally, completely, one hundred percent, absolutely. But why doesn't Prospero forgive Caliban?"
     "He tried to fool around with Miranda," Miaow answers. "She says so herself." . . .
     " . . . You figured out, all by yourself, what the play is really about." Mrs. Shin sits back on her heels, looking pleased.
     "What?" Miaow asks, as though she suspects a quiz. "What's it about?"
     "Forgiveness. It's about the healing power of forgiveness. And do you know why I think Prospero doesn't forgive Caliban at the end of the play? Because Prospero doesn't understand Caliban."
     Howard Horner's face flashes into Rafferty's mind. "That's a very liberal attitude."
     "Well, I believe it. I believe it's impossible to hate anyone you understand. Don't you feel the same way?"
     Rafferty's pause is all the cue Mrs. Shin needs. "Well, perhaps not. But I'm the director and you're the condenser [of the written play to make it shorter], so you have to help me make this work."

Another Day on the Pine Ridge Trail

Yesterday I joined two fellow Volunteer Wilderness Rangers to cut three trees—one of them a gnarly, as in multiply split, redwood—on the main trail that leads from Big Sur into the Ventana Wilderness. We are hoping that trail, which is currently closed because of old damage from a fire a few years ago, will be reopened soon, but the US Forest Service mucky-mucks are dragging their heels. With every day that doesn't see boots on the trail, the more opportunity the plant life has to take over, despite our hard work these past few months. But hopefully in May?

In any event, trees keep falling, and we keep heading out there to remove them from the trail. These are some pictures I took yesterday while I wasn't on the saw.

The view from near the top of Terrace Creek Trail,
our entree into the Wilderness: Double Cone in the middle

Mt. Kandlbinder, from down on the Pine Ridge Trail

Barking that nasty redwood

It was a very, very long tree

The big saw was binding badly, so we had to
finish it off with a hand saw. But we got it!

You can see Dave and Lynn working on a
tan oak waaaaaay over on the right (they are tiny).
That's Double Cone Peak again in the middle.

New leafing of a California buckeye: like little jewels

See the moon?

Book Report: Brief Encounters with Che Guevara

16. Ben Fountain, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara: Stories (2006) (3/20/21)

These eight beautifully written and told stories set variously in Haiti, Colombia, Sierra Leone, Myanmar, North Carolina, and fin-de-siècle Austria manage to capture emotions and, maybe especially, yearnings that are heart-breakingly believable.

I had read the first five stories many years ago, and although I didn't remember the details, once I got going again in each story, each situation, I found myself in a familiar place, with familiar people—for they do stick with you. (Unlike, say, mysteries, where so often I start rereading and it's as if I've never cracked the book open before.)

Fountain has spent a lot of time in Haiti, for research on a novel that never sold. The other places he visited in his imagination and through reading. But you'd never know it, because they all feel very authentic. Or perhaps it's because the people feel so authentic. I especially enjoyed the stories with a lot of dialogue, delineating colorful characters, usually at cross-purposes.

"Near Extinct Birds of the Central Cordillera," which was sparked by a news report that the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange had invited some Colombian guerrillas for a tour of the floor, involves an ornithologist who is captured by rebels. I wrote a bit about "Rêve Haitien" here. "The Good Ones Are Already Taken" concerns the young wife of a Special Forces soldier who returns from Haiti married to a Voodoo goddess. "Asian Tiger" is about a second-tier golf champion who finds himself sucked into corrupt politics and business in Myanmar. "Bouki and the Cocaine," again in Haiti, tells the story of two brothers who stumble on large duffel bags full of cocaine. "The Lion's Mouth" concerns a worn-down aid worker in Sierra Leone confronted with an opportunity—though it involves blood diamonds. "Brief Encounters with Che Guevara" is just that. And "Fantasy for Eleven Fingers" tells the story of one, then sixty years later another piano prodigy, each with an extra ring finger on their right hand.

The story lines are lively in their difference and the imagination invoked, which I greatly enjoyed. 

Here is an excerpt from "Bouki and the Cocaine," involving the brothers Lulu and Syto and their nephew, a wheeler-and-dealer from the capital:

     "How much is it worth?" Lulu asked. His eyes shone like lacquer in the candlelight.
     "The going rate's four thousand," Nixon told him. "Four thousand dollars U.S."
     "For one sack?" Lulu cried, delighted, but Nixon frowned and glanced at his friends. Then he turned back to his uncles and spoke very slowly.
     "That's four thousand," he touched the kilo bag on the table, "for one of these."
     When Syto heard that, he assumed he was going to die. There was too much money involved, too many desperate people, but the next moment he was thinking: is this what a black man has to do to get a little respect? Risk your life, as Lulu had done when he denounced the government thieves? As Nixon had done running his contraband gasoline? . . . [Y]ou were either a chump or a thief, those were your choices in this world. Syto despaired, knowing he'd never be able to explain his sense that they were all, however improbably, on the same side.

Ellen Bass, poet

Yesterday I attended a (Zoom) poetry reading and discussion with two poets I admire, Ellen Bass and Barbara Ras. Here are two poems by Ellen, one of which (the second one here, written a few months before her dear dog Zeke died) she read to us. (I have featured Barbara before, but I will make a point of doing so again soon.)

Asking Directions in Paris

Où est le Boulevard Saint Michel?
You pronounce the question carefully.
And when the native stops,
shifting her small sack of groceries,
lifting her manicured hand,
you feel a flicker of accomplishment.
But beyond that, all clarity
dissolves, for the woman
in the expensive shoes and suit exactly the soft gray
of clouds above the cathedral, does not say
to the right, to the left, straight ahead,
phrases you memorized from tapes
as you drove around your home town
or mumbled into a pocket Berlitz on the plane,
but relays something wholly unintelligible,
some version of: On the corner
he is a shop of jewels in a fountain
and the hotel arrives on short feet.
You listen hard, nodding,
as though your pleasant
disposition, your willingness
to go wherever she tells you,
will make her next words pop up
from this ocean of sound, somewhat
the way a dog hears its name
and the coveted syllable walk.
If you're brave enough, or very nervous,
you may even admit you don't understand.
And though evening's coming on
and her family's waiting, her husband lighting
another Gauloise, the children setting the table,
she repeats it all again, with another
gesture of her lovely hand, from which you glean
no more than you did the first time.
And as you thank her profusely
and set off full of doubt and groundless hope,
you think this must be how it is
with destiny: God explaining
and explaining what you must do,
even willing to hold up dinner for it,
and all you can make out is a few
unconnected phrases, a word or two, a wave
in what you pray is the right direction.

Ode to Zeke

Ellen happened to mention
that this photo, alluded to
in the poem, is on Instagram.

O breathing drum, O cask of dark
waters, O decaying star, my
barking heart, my breaking brother,
what will seep into the space
your body leaves? O huge
eighteen-muscled ears, oscillating
ossicles and cochlea, your busy canals
now hollow caves of quiet. I have said
your fur is black, but you are
silvered, rimed with frost.
You are the new moon.
You are light in the dark house.
How long will I see your shadow?
O heavy hunk of existence, O great flank
I have rested my head upon
when I was too weak for human touch.
Sleek leading man, you debonair dog,
how people on the avenue stopped to swoon.
O splaying legs once faster than rabbits,
canines slashing flesh. Urgent thug,
unstoppable thrust. O happy snapping
at the wind. What do you remember
now that you are mud slide, glacier
melting, cliff collapsing into the sea?
I have memorized your milky breath,
your ballet leaps and whirly-gigging.
Your princely patience, as the children
dressed you—Soccer Zeke
in jersey and shorts, one paw on the ball.
Snorkel Zeke with mask and fins.
Bar Mitzvah Zeke in a yarmulke
and my father’s silk tallit. O my text
of decrepitude, my usher to death,
companion of ten thousand years,
I’ll fry you a fish. I’ll sit by your bowl.
Eat from my hand. I have nowhere to go.