Beaver Archivist
life and work on the left coastComing to a library near you!
I am so excited to have this book finished and out there soon. Libby and I worked so hard on it over the last 18 months and to have it ready for sale in February of next year is just wild. We are really indebted to the 25 archivists who shared their stories and tattoos with us. The fact that we are all sharing individual stories together makes the book both personal and communal.
Don’t let the price scare you! $130 is a lot of money, but encourage your library to order it and you can read it for free! Or wait for 18 months and get a paperback for a lot less (around $40ish is the word on the street).
Writing a book has been a dream of mine for a long time and thank you Libby (for those ideas 13 years ago) and the fabulous Bloomsbury team of Jessica and Emma for making it a reality.
Race in Language
Look back a generation, I look back
Ten generations on my mother’s side
Further, to England and to Ireland
Knowing ten words they knew, a thousand words
Knowing the language they, my ancestors
Knew on my mother’s side, in Ireland
In England. I look back two genera-
tions on my father’s side, his mother and
His father, and I’m sure I know them, most
Of the words they knew. I can’t look back and know
Their fathers or their mothers. I can guess
Six generations back, or seven, too
Many far back past seven, back at eight or
Further, I might not, if I stood before them
Any who lived in Africa, I might
Not know a single word. What could I say
What object could I, if I stood before
Them, any ancestor, what object could
I gesture to, to start to learn the language
Wherever I have met them, if I stood
Before them, any one, if there were trees
There, I could touch a tree, say Tree, then point
To them, then back to the tree, or thump my chest
And say my name, or say You are my aunt
Or say You are my father many fathers
Before him. What are we? What is your word
For you? What do you know about the ocean
If he lived inland. If he lived beside
The ocean, if whatever carried me
Through time to him could keep us there forever
I could stand listening forever, between
Him and the ocean. I could stand forever
by Shane McCrae
Laschamp Excursion
I’m sitting here typing three and a half years after the pandemic’s explosive birth rerouted all our lives. For some time now I’ve wondered about its long term effect. Not on my body That kingdom has already crumbled. But on my mind. And more specifically on my psyche.
While SAD has been a real thing for me, summer and spring and fall sadness has not. For most of my life I’ve enjoyed being with other people, feeling uplifted by the company of both friends and strangers. I’m not always a chatty extrovert but would always choose being with people over being alone.
When I started as an archivist back in the olden days, colleagues could sit happily alone for days or weeks, processing collections and taking a lunch breath between arriving at a collection in the morning and leaving it at the end of the day. I find myself strangely drawn to this life right now. I spend long parts of days working in solitude with no other human for companionship.
I’ve wondered if this is just a part of aging. At some point in the future (hopefully a little ways off), maybe I’ll just die in the backyard, surrounded by flowers and bees, unconcerned with the lack of human connection. But I don’t believe that’s it. I’ve observed enough old extroverts to know that aging isn’t a sole cause for that dramatic of effect.
I don’t know (another phrase that I’ve become increasingly familiar with!) but I suspect that the isolations flowing through the pandemic triggered some bend in my vertere from outward to inward — like an inversion of the magnetic poles.
The last time this occurred on Earth was 42,000 years ago. The North Pole meandered through what we now call North America, visiting New York and Oregon before shooting down to Antarctica for a few hundred years before returning to its more common residence. New theories link this effect to megafauna die-offs and humans forced to live in caves, away from increased solar radiation.
It was a short-lived change. The world returned to its accustomed polarity in a blink of geotime. As I hope mine will be. I have grown accustomed the the regular companionship of comrades and am unimpressed this current quietness. But until then, I’ll sit in solidarity with my introvert siblings, enjoying a little time to myself.
life’s a beach
I’ve lived within an hour and a half of the beach for 98% of this ever lengthening life. I can’t really imagine life where a trip to the beach can’t be done on impulse, during a day. There’s something soothing about the expansive sandscapes, the relentless murmur of the waves, the salty smell. In my youth, I lived on tropical beaches. They had the appeal of swimmable seas, pretty seashells, picturesque palms, and warm nights. I’ve come to love the beaches of Oregon, though. Dramatic, powerful, enigmatic, and an occasional agate that feels like treasure. To be honest you can’t go wrong with either.
They ain’t heavy. And even if they are, carry them anyway.
I saw this poem written by Sara Rian and was reminded of how much carrying I’ve received in my life. I like to imagine that I am strong and self-reliant, and sometimes I am. But many times I’ve been hurt, wounded, sick, and weak. In those times, people from all parts of my interrelational web have stepped in to carry me, sometimes for a few feet, sometimes for what seems like miles. I would not have made it if not for those folks. I work to do the same.
There’s a level of trust involved in this; a willingness to be vulnerable enough to let someone help you. There’s also a suspension of toxic fairness. Some people need more help than others. Some people are able to help more than others. To look at how we all succeed together means to be clear-eyed about that in any given moment, abilities and needs are not evenly distributed.
So carry when you can. Be carried as you need. That’s how we get each other to tomorrow.
WTF Facebook?! Notes were useful
I used to post a lot of poetry to Facebook via the “notes” feature. It has been jettisoned. While “poke” still remains. That’s some serious fuckery, kids. I guess they’ll either go here or on my tumblr. I know, old school, but I can barely make snapchat work for videos of the grandkids and tiktok is beyond my ken. Anyway. here’s the poem.
—————————————————-
Naming the Baby
I couldn’t bring myself
to read through Breonna’s social
media but some say she believed 2020
would be her year. She even
imagined a baby growing steady
in her belly. I imagine her choosing
the baby’s name with care. Taking
all the months she had to name it
something like Pearl or V or Cheryl
There are a million baby names
to choose from the good book
but what do you name
the baby that never would be
in the year that should’ve been
yours? Do you name her
Revolution? Do you name her
A World Screaming? Do you
name her Fire? Let her burn
the house down—
— Yesenia Montilla
Urban Farming
I’ve always grown things. As a yout, my mom gave me a small cactus and I turned it into a 9×13 pan of desert. When I lived with my grandparents as a young adult, I helped clear their backyard, built raised beds, planted blueberry patches, learned to prune and graft, and even learned how to can.
I’ve slowly been expanding the garden space at my house in northeast Portland (Cully to be exact). The yard is large and somewhat wild. Our regular visitors include raccoons, opossums, coyotes, crows, squirrels, rabbits, and the multitudes of birds at my feeders, We’ve also had a great horned owl from time to time and a black bear was roaming the neighborhood 15 blocks to the west a few years ago.
Gardening is that almost perfect mix of physical work and outdoor experience. In the spring and summer it is almost heaven. The sun beating down, birds and insects everywhere, the rhythm of the work — all of these combine to make the hours flow by pleasantly.
I’ve lived here for nearly seven years now and now have added eight raised beds (cannabis, peppers, zuchinni, cucumbers, okra, peas, eggplant, beets, greens, pumpkins, an summer squash), a blueberry patch, a long row of tomatoes, sunflowers, and marionberries to the food mix. The lot already had existing pear, italian prune, hazelnut, and plum trees. We’ve also put in a a lot of other plants — mostly natives intended to feed animals of all sorts. We do have some plants that exist just to look pretty, but for the most part we’re only adding things that either feed us or feed other animals.
52 pickup
There are advantages to being in an airbnb south of Pahoa, Hawaii for 9 days with very sketchy wifi and absolutely no cell service. You really are removed from things — able to just sit in the sun, relax with a cold drink, and have a warm breeze blow through the palms and over you.
There are downsides, though. One of which is coming back to your regular life and encountering a professional social media shitstorm in mid-gale. #thatdarnpetition, for those of you who missed the show, refers to a petition, legally formulated by SAA leaders, to add an additional vice presidential candidate to the 2020 election slate
At first I was confused. The nominating committee put together an outstanding slate for the 2020 election. This petition process, while on the books for decades, had not been used in any previous election. I really couldn’t figure out what mistake this petition was intended to fix.
Now normally I’d jump in with some sound and fury and hopefully not fuck things up too badly. But many of the signers of the petition are loved and respected friends and colleagues. I felt an obligation to chat with some folks to try and understand the motivation. All this to say it’s taken me a while to respond, but at least in this case not from slacking.
After having these conversations and thinking about them quite a bit, I offer the following observations. I’m really just throwing my voice behind already well stated cases like here or here or here or here or here. These are my thoughts and I’m happy to be challenged about them, to be held accountable for them, and to modify them if my information or brain gets better.
Silence = Death. In the moment and through time.
I am not new to Instagram, I just don’t use it that frequently. With 117 posts in four years it is not close to the output volume of my other old school social media venues. There is one feed I read regularly though. The AIDS Memorial is one of the most moving and connective community archives I’ve encountered. Its tagline is “Stories of Love, Loss, and Remembrance” and while it is all of those things, it is so much more broadly significant.
Posts are made by friends, lovers, family members, and fans. They include pictures of people in sickness and in health, often used to highlight the memories of the poster about the person with AIDS. Most of them end in death (as all of our stories do, I suppose).
The immediate pull is to the subject of the post. They are pictured in healthy beauty. Stories of them are not uniformly positive but mostly so. I am immediately drawn to them as individual humans who are unexpectedly snared by an uncontrollable world.
But after a little reading, the connection shifts to the poster. These people are almost uniformly affected by loss. The holes in their lives are palpable. They openly share their wounds. It is hard not to cry with them over a generation of men and women lost to disease, public distance, and policy disasters.
This feed creates empathy and connection to people I don’t know, both the living and the dead. It brings the stories of individual humans forward and leaves them for us to ponder and to move forward to generations to come. They are hard reads, but so are many worthwhile things. If you get a chance, take some time to meet some people and listen to them whispering wisdom in your ear.
Fall vibes
A facebook post today asked for five bands that could describe my musical taste. I’m not sure that’s exactly possible given the range of music that exists, malleable personal taste, and changing nature of a musician’s oeuvre. But I gave is a whirl with Amy Winehouse, Prince, Black Sabbath, The Weepies, and White Lung.
It got me thinking about what five bands represent Fall. Fall is a strange season. I don’t hate it like Winter. I don’t love it like Summer. Fall and Spring are similar, but for me Spring has a hopeful vibe — the sun is on the way and flowers are blooming. Fall is melancholy — days get colder and shorter as the world dies.
Given that, here are the bands I’d choose. No explanation, but give them a listen and see if you agree:
- Chelsea Wolfe
- Godspeed You Black Emporer
- Tropic of Cancer
- Tyler Childer
- Moon Duo
Beaver Archivist 
