CHAINBOUND STORIES

I grew up amid chainbound stories 

adorned with dark family secrets 

like the phantom itch of severed limbs, 

the stories my family carried to this country 

in carpetbags and unhinged suitcases 

with broken clasps bundled with leather belts 

made of discarded bridles, the horses long dead.
The stories that held us captive 

were whispered around kitchen tables
littered with an ancient tongue that was not shared
but hinted at—we learned secret words but not syntax,
the whiskey glasses jumped like startled hares
as fists punctuated each rebel sentence,
and under darkfall, munitions were gathered 

in basement cellars and jail evidence lockers,
sent home in shipments of potatoes

by way of Liverpool and Enniskillen

to fund the long war against the Crown.
I grew up with unspoken stories of freedom 

a tongue loosely translated in a homeland, 

a war not my own, a puzzle of the past 

leading us inexorably forward.

Write On! with Susie Terence 

An Béal Bocht

As I mowed the lower field, filled with timid yellow clover hugging the ground, and robust white clover, I was reminded of my grandmother who chose another country at the age of 19 because the country of her birth held no future—under the thumb of Britain. They were second-class citizens in their own country. 

She didn’t realize that she’d still be a second-class citizen even in San Francisco. America’s melting pot did not include the Irish or anyone from the Mediterranean because, Catholicism or orthodoxy. It all went back to Luther nailing that reform on the church door, giving protestants free rein to persecute those who clung to the old faith.

My grandmother brought with her the seeds of freedom and supplanted them in the garden of her heart because the real garden was decades from fruition. She brought with her small shamrocks. the seamróg (sean- óg) the young clover Trifolium dubnium that John Gerard identified as an English white-flowered species—not the yellow-flowered Irish shamrock, but the white one. It seems that the Elizabethans had to colonize the shamrock too.

Linnaeus noted that the Irish ate it—not realizing that Ireland was in a prolonged famine that would end with the Great Famine, An Gort Mor, not famine, but genocide. An béal bocht, the poor mouth, the Irish were reduced to eating the grasses where even the cattle could find no nourishment.

The Irish took to eating the grasses when there was nothing left to eat, and as I cleared the lower field, I thought of my grandmother who passed down the stories of how her family survived the famine, how her father‘s family ate the massive mangles, turnips meant for the cattle. The shamrock became a badge of courage.

Spencer referred to them as an anatomies of death, condemning the native Irish, those second class people in his adopted homeland, who lived a hand to mouth and their existence as bandits. He said all this to justify the superiority of British rule. The land that gave him The Fairie Queen. He said the Irish drown their sorrow in shamrocks and whiskey. The downfall of the Irish sham of history created to assuage British occupation. It became a symbol of freedom and of resistance like the Thistle of Scotland. 

And when Queen Elizabeth visited Ireland with tiny shamrocks embroidered on her gown, she could not erase the sordid history of the crown. The shamrock and the harp on the flag of Ireland— blue for the freedom of the sky and the gold of the sun because that’s all there was left.

My grandmother sent money home to her sisters and brothers to bring the next one out. Then she joined the ancient order of the Hibernians because the poor mouth could not be silenced.

Missy the Deer

I’m being stalked by a mama deer and her new twin fawns. She thinks I have the answers, to what, I haven’t a clue. It’s not about food. She keeps checking me out. Following my voice. Trying to figure out what humans are about. Perhaps she’s writing a PhD thesis on our vagaries.

I couldn’t believe it when the mama deer brought the baby right up to me so I just sat down on the ground and slid in the dirt by my car and watched them. My camera was in the car. I was too afraid to breathe—let alone, move, so these photos were surreptitiously taken after she had moved along.

I had to run across the road to chase a neighbor’s bully cat away, and damned if the deer didn’t gallop along, and follow me to see what was up, with her confused babies trailing behind her. What an entourage—me, stomping up a cloud of dust in flip-flops, my cousins’ cat with her newfound Dutch courage chasing the bully cat, followed by the mama deer and her twin fawns chasing after me. I felt like I was auditioning for Dr. Doolittle. 

The things you do in order to get a photo. But most of the action was when I didn’t have my camera in hand. Sometimes you just have to be there.

Remembering Donald Sutherland

I first met Donald Sutherland on the big screen in 1967. I was in Bijou, Lake Tahoe, watching The Dirty Dozen. Most of the movie was beyond the scope and comprehension of a 13-year-old, as going to the movies was still a big deal, but I remembered his face. 

During the late 1970s I became close friends with Donald‘s sister, poet-painter Boschka Layton (née Betty Sutherland) who looked a lot like Donald—those eyes, that wry, wicked sense of humor. Every time I saw Donald on the big screen, I couldn’t help but think of his sister Boschka. They were like peas in a pod. So Donald’s death reverberates on many levels.

Donnie, as Boschka/Betty Sutherland always affectionately called her little half-brother, was someone I heard funny stories about as a child. Donnie was a sickly child (polio, scarlet fever) so to entertain him, Betty and her older brother “Jamie” John, also an invalid who suffered from TB, used to write little swashbuckling plays that they produced. So you might say he was bitten by the acting bug at a tender age.

Quirky Donald, with 200 movies under his belt, was unafraid to take on any role, no matter how big or small, and he made it indelibly his— from his nonspeaking cameo bit in The Dirty Dozen, to Hawkeye Pierce in M*A*S*H to the Machiavellian President Snow in The Hunger Games.

Kiefer Sutherland wrote, “With a heavy heart, I tell you that my father, Donald Sutherland, has passed away. I personally think one of the most important actors in the history of film. Never daunted by a role, good, bad or ugly. He loved what he did and did what he loved, and one can never ask for more than that.”

Sutherland was familiar to younger audience as President Snow in "The Hunger Games", he sought out the part.

In a GQ interview, he said,"The role of the president had maybe a line in the script. Maybe two. Didn't make any difference, I thought it was an incredibly important film, and I wanted to be a part of it."

In a recent AP interview, Sutherland reflected on dying onscreen, for real.

"I'm really hoping that in some movie I'm doing, I die — but I die, me, Donald — and they're able to use my funeral and the coffin," Sutherland told the AP. "That would be absolutely ideal. I would love that.” AP, Mercury News

A consummate actor to the end. The passing of a legend. A true Celt, he chose his exit on the summer solstice. May the light of a thousand bonfires light his way. Heartfelt condolences to the family. Max Layton, Jess Layton ❤

GRIM REAPER

At the beginning of summer solstice,
the tall grasses sizzled in the morning heat,

that snapped and hissed like snakes as I swung the scythe. 

When the shining blade bit hidden metamorphic stone,

the pendulous power reverberated back up the arm like an echo. 

My flanks and arms ached with the long history of a slow dance,

as I wielded the ancient tool, unchanged since the Middle Ages. 

Soon the horses will come down to graze on the bright grass. 

The stout oak-handled scythe, long since replaced 

by a plastic lime green battery-powered strimmer, 

to fell the wild oats and rattlesnake grass reaching skyward.

After a long, wet winter, they are taller than me.

The horses are long gone, at night the deer will browse 

and check on my slow progress as I clear the upper fields. 

Generations of tree swallows attempt to return to the eaves, 

sealed off for decades, genetic memory that deeply embedded.

The crows are upset because I put up the summer tent,

at dawn they share raucous displeasure from the safety of trees,

a hawk circles the deep valley and keens for her lost fledglings, 

the woodpecker drills and probes the depths of the dead pine.

Douglas firs grizzled with lichen, encroach upon the vestiges 

of open space where my grandmother once tended the garden.

Poison oak and coyote bush protect saplings of live oak and pine.

I wake to a primeval silhouette of bachelor deer on the tent walls.

Last winter, a limb from the dead pine sheared off the corner eave 

of the old house, leaving it raw and exposed to the elements.

Nothing much left of the garden except volunteer cherry plums, 

a dying pear tree we cannot save, even with severe pruning,

and the golden delicious apple tree is so far gone, 

only a thin cambium ribbon threads the roots to branches, 

the heartwood of the tree exposed, hosting shelf fungus,

the black cankers having already done their job decades ago. 

How many decades are measured in this garden, the cultivation 

of lifetimes, but the wilderness returns of its own volition.

On Facebook lockdown for two more days

I am still on Facebook lockdown for two more days in quasi-jail (I can like comments, but can’t comment), punished for editing one of my own comments on horses. You try spelling Przewalski’s horse correctly on the first or second, try. It’s nothing like  how it’s pronounced.

When will this ridiculous Facebook AI censorship bot patrol stop, or at least be upgraded to be a useful tool to fight hate speech and racism, versus a stupid cause, like spelling or grammar. I am dyslexic, or as they say, neurodivergent, and I struggle to write clearly. It does not come easy.

Who is being protected from my aberrant behavior, that is, from correcting my own comment too many times? The punitive measures of the Facebook Alt-father is like being sent into a closet for something that you didn’t do. 

I’ve been sent to jail for posting a photograph of Einstein’s desk, a photo of a leucistic chicken and a horse, myriad spelling errors, a video  of friends singing Gregorian chants at my cousin Mike Collins’ memorial, the list goes on. 

There’s no rhyme nor reason, and certainly no learning curve. And  these punitive measures don’t cure us of any habits because none of us actually knows WHY we were sent to Facebook jail to begin with, and there is no way to challenge their utterly asinine decisions. 

Whatever happened to let the punishment fit the crime? Clearly, I am a bad article.

Yet another epic Facebook fail, this time over Przewalski's horses

So, editing one’s own comments goes against Facebook community standards. I was correcting my typos, which were partially Facebook’s fault. I was responding to someone’s comment and then went back to clarify the difference between a purebred Przewalski's wild horse and the modern horse and possible crossbreeds or, to be hyper-correct, hybrids.

I added, “The Przewalski's horse is stocky, short, and pot-bellied in comparison to its domestic cousins. It has a spiky mane like a zebra. All Przewalski's horses have a light belly and darker back, with a dark stripe on the back from the withers to the base of the tail. They also have more chromosomes,…” etc. 

Just as I added the clincher, a hybrid Przewalski's horse and modern horse results in a horse with a floppy mane—a DNA indicator, like donkey ears on a mule—Facebook shut me down. Understand that I am dyslexic, or as they say these days, neurodivergent, so I struggle to write clear, nuanced sentences. Writing does not come easy, I have to work at it. I edit everything early and often

Could someone please explain to me how this editing process could possibly go against community standards? Other than Facebook is allergic to facts versus fiction. I was not over-posting or spamming or over-sharing. I certainly wasn’t being obnoxious or belligerent. I was correcting and clarifying one comment. I am allergic to typos. So, yes, I do fix them whenever I spot them. Well, bollocks I say, because I can. I will not be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator of unintelligent comments. and I will not let the sleeping typos lie.

For some peculiar reason Facebook constantly changes what I write— especially after I post a comment —so I have to edit my comments early and often. Gaslight much? I am beginning to suspect that Facebook AI bots are anti-intellectual, because it puts me in jail every time I am on a scholarly bent. No name-calling, not being derogatory, merely facts— Sometimes with supporting links. This time it was about horses.

The last time I most memorably was thrown in Facebook jail was for posting a photograph of Einstein‘s messy desk on the anniversary of the day he died. Facebook, of course claimed it was going against community standards, and that it was pornography. The only real pornography I could see was the formula written on the blackboard: some segue of e = MC2.

 It looks like I can post status updates on my own page, and like posts, but that’s about it. See you in a week. Be very, very bad, all of you. Be obstreperous. Edit and change your posts early and often. Down with the fasciestest regime. stet.

Oh, and for the record, I document everything—because I can.

We’ll Always Have Parrots!

The United States was once a haven to many native parrot species, but we managed to kill them all off within two centuries, except for two species. The thick-billed parrot (aka the thick-billed macaw, or conure) and the green parakeet are the only living members of the wild parrot family still extant in the US. So, the uptick of expanding feral parrot flocks thriving in LA and San Diego is pretty cool—even if they aren’t native as they are fast disappearing from their native ranges.

The green parakeet habitat ranges from Southern Texas, into Mexico and Nicaragua. When I was traveling in Oaxaca, Mexico, and in the Lacondon jungle, young boys would try to sell the caged birds to the tourists. We would make jokes and tell them in Spanish that we would buy one when the green parrots were ripe. They sheepishly got the joke, Spanish being their second language as well.

There are nearly a dozen permanent feral parrot species residing in the urban wilderness of California. San Diego’s wild parrots divide their time between Mexico and the San Diego beaches, LA has the most diverse large flocks of wild escapee parrots, and San Francisco runs a close second. Homeless musician Mark Bittner wrote a book, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill which was turned into a PBS documentary of the same name by Judy Irving in 2003. The two met, fell in love and were married in 2008.

The San Francisco parrots, the chatty cherry-headed conures or red-masked parakeets, are native to northwest South America, especially Ecuador and Peru, while the mitered conures hail from Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru. And apparently there is one lonesome blue-crowned conure in the mixed species flock as well. These raucous and saucy urban creatures have resided on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco, since at least the 1980s—possible escapees from a pet store. 

THE DANCER ON THE LEOPARD ROAD

—an ekphrastic poem after DCastro's The Dancer

The eye of the sun leopard follows the dancer,
her saguaro arms raised high, the oculi, the false eyes,

like oilspots on the road, follow her every move,

while ox-eyed daisies sway in the aqua air 

filled with dreams of red jalopies of another era 

that take to the skies like a swarm of bees 

seeking a new home on the horizon. 

The open road disappears into the distance 

mountains pierce the sky, letting all the air out 

until we droop like flat tires waiting for a bicycle pump

to clock a little more mileage under our belts. 

The hazel-eyed sun and its sunspots—beauty marks—

watch us as the exuberant dancer cartwheels up the road. 

But there are also ghost dancers on the plains. 

A woman carries a parcel while her sisters rise up 

like a dense winter ground fog hiding in the rushes. 

And the dancer on the leopard spotted road 

with her three legs, and starburst chamise,

is prancing like a runaway circus pony, 

while spinning vortices or black holes 

are waiting to draw us all in.

6/7/24 CPITS workshop with Jessica Cardenas Wilson

The Milkman

Sometimes I feel like a friggin' gameshow host lost in my own reality show, you know the kind where Vanna White comes out all dolled up, stalking across the set in impossible high heels, and her red polyester dress has its own chorus of crazy going on like cicadas in the wings shrieking up a storm. Only I am never dressed for the part.

Meanwhile, I’m wondering how I got here, why I was chosen for this particular drama, and what the premise is. Someone forgot her notes, luckily for me, faking it is second nature—not like those anxiety dreams when I was in second grade. 

I often dreamed that I took off my snazzy red woolen coat I've had since I was four. It's a bit too snug and threadbare—only I forgot to put on a dress. I’m wearing knickers and one of those wife beater undershirts, trimmed with lace and a tiny bow on my chest to feminize it. It could be worse, I could have been in my pajamas. 

Realizing my error, I hide in the alcove, afraid to come out of the closet—so to speak. I can’t stay in there all day. The teacher is taking role and is about to mark me tardy. Story of my life. Either I’m always missing the bus, or I forget to dress for the part. 

Everyone else is properly clothed and primly sitting at their desks with hands folded, the teacher too. I can’t go out there. Is there a sweater, or a pillowcase art smock I can borrow? She calls out my school name. The I'm in trouble name. Not my family name. All eyes are on me. Stagefright is real.

The teacher is both judge and jury, she calls my name, so I slip on my red woolen coat with its frayed red silk lining and black velvet collar, to join the class. She is annoyed, and will stay annoyed with me for the rest of the school year, no matter what I do. 

She thinks she is hiding it well. But I can tell. I will flub my lines. It will become a familiar pattern. I will become excellent at subterfuge and hiding my inadequacies, always dressed for the wrong part—not like the other kids who seem to have a grasp as to what is going on. 

This fugue state will be my modus operandi all throughout school. I'm a bootstrap kid. Myself and I. And the cats. Only later will I discover that the real director of this particular reality show is called dyslexia, not the indifferent teacher. But no one will cotton onto it. They will leave me sitting alone in a corner, punishing me for what I cannot seem learn, never asking why. And so, I will become an excellent actor, fooling everyone, including myself. The mimic.

Danette and Gail are teacher's pets. They always know what to wear. Cute little frocks nicely ironed, and crisp skirts, so they look like upended tulips sitting in the first row. Dennis, the dreamboat, slicks back his dark slicked pompadour carefully with one hand. Later, I realize it’s a studied gesture probably practiced in front of the bathroom mirror. 

He smells like his father Dean, the milkman who is a stand-in for Rock Hudson. During summer I loved Tuesday mornings when he drove up the dirt road to our house in the old Lucas Valley milk truck. I’d come flying down the road in my PJs with my long pigtails wagging behind me. 

He’d pick me up and spin me into the air until I was airborne, breathless. I giggled and it felt like I was soaring with the birds until he put me down on the ground. Did he also do this with his own kids? The other kids on his milk route? I suspect so. The model was at hand.

One time he asked if we want anything other than the usual 2 quarts of milk standing tall in glass jug. I dreamed big and added orange juice and cottage cheese to the list, not realizing my grandmother would have to scrabble next week to pay the bill from my impromptu purchases. Math was never my strong suit.

I sat on the wooden milk box and ate the cottage cheese with two fingers, washing it down with orange juice straight from the bottle. I had no idea how I would explain any of this to my grandmother. See, it was my job to collect the milk before the crows got to it. They would flip open the milk box and peck off the foil and cardboard cap to get to the cream. Strange to think of those black crows wanting white milk. The cats lined up waiting for the spoils.

Sometimes we forgot to collect the milk. It would turn to cottage cheese right in the bottles under the hot summer sun. She’d complain about it, and then strain the curdled milk in cheesecloth, feeding the whey to the hungry cats who scrambled into a furry pile with spats and hisses. Sometimes she made paper-thin pancakes for dinner stuffed with cottage cheese laced with lemon juice and sugar. It was a win-win situation as far as I was concerned.

Sometimes in winter when we forgot the milk overnight, the little foil caps that were perched on top of frozen cream expressed out of the bottle, looking like long-necked swans. I didn’t have a father or a mother figure so Dean the Milkman was like a surrogate practice dad. He was a model, so I could be like the other kids. He said he didn't have a little girl, just two boys, Dennis and Steve. I tell him that Dennis is in my class. Can I be his little girl?

I always looked forward to seeing the milkman. A story that his son, Dennis, would never learn. He will also never know that I had a crush on him all through school. I didn’t want to jinx the situation. But the situation jinxed itself. Driving back up Lucas Valley Road after the bars had closed, Dean flipped his beautiful boat of a white convertible into a ravine.

Dennis hid behind a curtain of grief, dressed in black for the rest of the school year. He still smelled like Dean. I was in a fugue state and thought of my red coat. What about the milk, who would deliver the milk to our door? Who would toss me into he air? It was a closed casket ceremony, said my grandmother. The spotlight shone on Dean like a reality show before the final curtain dropped.

6/6/24 WOW—Wide Open Writing with Franny French

The detritus of memory

Lately I’ve been writing this story in my head from the days before I became a writer, always reminding myself to remember, remember. Whether it was the way the fog rolled in over the mountain, with its chill breath, or the litany of things I saw during the day. Wild animals carried the highest tally, or something my grandmother showed me: how to build a Saint Bridget Cross from the tule rushes that grew in hedgehog clumps following the water table in the upper garden.

I’ve been writing this since I first began to wander afield, collecting an inventory of plants I had no names for, leaving off from where my grandmother, no longer able to accompany me on our early morning walks, no longer instructed. For example, the names of plants. I had to wait an entire lifetime to label and categorize them. All of those jigsaw puzzles of memory became placeholders, waiting for identification, for what knowledge I did not yet have a place for in my head. My eyes remembered those nameless plants, I tucked them away in my mind, a treasure chest to unpack at the end of a long life.

I’ve been waiting for the circle to find its beginning and end, the Ouroboros of memory and history jockeying for position during those liminal moments where you’re neither neither awake nor asleep, where dreams and reality merge like mist, and you can’t tell where one memory or dream left off and another one began.

I’ve been waiting all this time to live my real life, though I’ve been living it all along, but it always felt like it was on hold, waiting for the right moment. What right moment? Maybe it was because I was afraid of change and caution was my handicap, I was always keeping things in obliettes because nothing is ever guaranteed, other than life nor death—other than the struggle between the here and now and the there and then.

Lately I’ve been sharing the stories of the past with new old friends, thinking surely that wasn’t me I was describing a lifetime ago. The inside and outside worlds colliding, head on, and I wonder about all those dropped stitches constantly unraveling the tapestry of our lives, those dropped threads leading us in other directions.

Lately I’ve been gathering in the narration of a life hidden in the dungeon of memory, wondering why I am still here. It seems like there is little to look forward to, but then I realize it’s a habit I’ve dragged with me from the earliest days. The if not now, then when, the what if motif of regret. But there is always the now.

Lately I’ve been collecting the detritus on the shores of darkness, finding odd solace there. The creatures I see become unnamed talismans: a lizard, a young gophersnake or the tree swallows seeking the eaves of my grandmother‘s house. The vents were closed off a half century ago, but home is genetically imprinted in their memory banks, and though untold generations have come and gone, they still swoop and practice landing, banking upward only to be met by steel mesh. I remember the day their babies fell out of the nest and we found a tall ladder to return them to the eaves and the inconsolable parents, swooping and crying.

I am lost and have no ending for this piece. The mosquitoes have been drilling into my forehead, reminding me of the fallout of a wet winter.  I can’t stop thinking about pipevines, for example, the only source of food for the pupae of the rare black swallowtail. How slender the thread of life is. Or the return of the bluebirds after a half-century of absence. The partial reversal of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Near extinction is always at hand.

Lately I’ve been letting go, perhaps returning to the void where we no longer matter. As I face the deep grass of the upper field that must be cut before the arrival of summer, is a race against time because after a long wet winter, the grass is still too wet to cut. And when I when I was young, weed-eaters didn’t exist, so I used a scythe—that father time image—and that zing and waltz of felled grass became an ingrained song of the field..

Lately I’ve been remembering about all the almost lovers I was too afraid to let in, let alone, to let out. I mourn for my amethyst earring gone missing—something I’ve had since I was a teenager, whoever finds it will not know the stories it carried from Inverness. Or the ring of Italian gold, the band so thin after a lifetime of wearing it, like a shaft of sunlight, the chip out of the stone reminds me of a playful kick meant for my rear from Neil as we walked about around above Lake Merritt. I should have left him then, but I waited 20 years to make a move. I wear it to remember, and the pungent odor of wcut grass brings it all back home.

6/6/24 Write On! with Susie Terence

Submitted poems & prose

Submitted two new, and one old poem to Mendocino Women Poets Spirit of Place 2

BIO: Maureen Hurley is a Northern California photographer/artist/poet whose work is widely published in print and electronic media. She’s won awards for her work, she was nominated as the first Sonoma County Poet Laureate, and received several Pushcart nominations. Former photojournalist for North Bay alternative newspapers, her work has appeared in The Paper, Coast Peddler, Ridge Review, and artist tabloids, ARC/ Rural Arts Services, with editor Ken Larsen. She spent considerable time in Mendocino County during the 1980s and 1990s—especially on Navarro Ridge, Albion Ridge and Fort Bragg. She has poems forthcoming in Peace Press, and her photos will be featured in an upcoming documentary on Berkeley street-poet, Julia Vinograd: Between Spirit & Stone.

FIRST LIGHT

NAVIGATING THE STAR ROADS

PRAYER FLAGS

and to the Wide Open Writiing Blog

Seamus Heaney's Last Words (May)

and The Milkman (June)

SEEKING PARADISE

Sometimes, if I’m lucky, I can see the landscape, 

how it once was before civilization tamed it. 

I imagine my eyes, focusing split-level, 

like the eyes of gobis, mudskippers and frogs 

as they navigate the twain worlds of water, mud and air. 

Call it split vision. Or invoking the ghosts.

Seeing the dual landscape was a coping mechanism, 

something I had learned at an early age—

while trying to plumb the old stories of then versus now. 

A distant then, a then that never was 

in the case of fairytales and myths 

harkening back to another age, 

another era where anything was possible.

Call it paradise, or call it a garden 

but even that is a tamed landscape.

Sometimes it’s like a time warp. 

For example, the land of my childhood,

before the houses, before the invasive species, 

both plant and animal. I imagined 

vast tracts of land, the hills painted with wildflowers.

Or Hanamua Bay before the coral bleached. 

It was a veritable garden from whence we came.

But then the tourist arrived in droves and loved it to death. 

In fact, we have gone and loved the entire world to death, 

it is like an addiction, seeking out paradise on the brink.

And then we lament and wonder why it’s no longer pristine.

And we have only ourselves to blame.

5/22/24 Write On! with Nels Christiansen 

DEATH IN RAGS

See how Death is depicted as an old woman, 

dressed in rags, old beyond reckoning, 

from beyond the borderlands of time, 

always waiting in the wings 

like a carrion bird patrolling the land 

for those too young to know that their very lives 

depend upon camouflage or divine intervention. 

Pity the mother holding the child against the wind, 

not the east wind toward the birth of dawn, 

not the west wind to the end of the road, 

but to the north, where the chill winds,

unseasonable in late spring 

slither across the corners of the soul 

seeking prey among the fallen, 

especially those sleeping rough in the streets 

and those plagued by disease or the infirm. 

But sometimes she hunts for live prey, 

more like the eagle, not the vulture 

waiting to give us wings to those unwary souls 

who think she is a myth that time forgot.

5/7/24 Write On! with Nels Christiansen 

Seamus Heaney’s last words

At the Celtic colloquium, some hot young scholar, flexing the biceps of his intellect, presented a thesis on poet Seamus Heaney and synesthesia, insisting that Seamus was unaware of what he was doing. that it came naturally. Everyone nodded their heads sagely as if in agreement. I spluttered. The air was dancing with the images of Klee and Kandinsky, tight little figures dueling in the air, musical notes taking flight. The sharp odor of oranges, a pungent wake-up call. 

But mine was the lone voice of dissent,  the presenter’s words grated like a nail-file, full of grit and dust. The pale afternoon light was a seething beast of contradiction. I said, But all poets mix their senses. It comes with a turf, thinking outside the box. Tools of the trade.  It’s a territorial imperative of sorts. My voice twirled into scarlet ribbons, and bled out on the floor, I thought of the barber’s pole spinning madly. No one was listening.

Just today, I was working on my car and as I jabbered to myself, I realized I was automatically rendering my inane actions into prose, it’s something that goes on in the background, sub rosa, like that orchestra of tinnitus in my ears. No off switch. But the prose began to take on a life of its own, mixing the senses as if trying the idea on for size, dressing metaphor in the aisles at the thrift store. Do I remember any of them? Of course not. It happens on a subliminal level and then I unwind the process later. 

So, besides coming into the writing workshop late, I can’t seem to create an environment where synaesthesia will flourish naturally. Today, I am a bystander. Late late late. But when someone reads about Provincetown, I think of Fire Island, a place I’ve never been, and Frank O’Hara in Why I am not a Painter, wrote a dozen poems on oranges—he doesn’t mention the word orange once, while his friend Mike painted the word sardines on his canvas—and then obliterated it until all that was left was a few  letters. And he called it Sardines. I think of those elusive silvered fish of thought, wishing it was another kettle of fish altogether. I wanted it to be salmon, the fish of wisdom.

I imagined Seamus Heaney in an old dressing gown, and tattered slippers rundown at the heel, squatting  over a mossy pond like Bashō, as if in benediction, feeding the fish hazelnuts. But I am allergic to hazelnuts. The epipen is my lodestone. Wisdom ululating in the sacred well with haloed words ripening on the wind. And language becomes a palimpsest of lost thoughts. Words begin to blur on the edges of the canvas until they swim away into the air.

The fish seeking the secrets of the air, all those wayward words nibbling at the shore of cyberspace. I would’ve written more, finally I was in the zone, but my iPad shut down mid-sentence with a warning that it was too hot to continue. The screen turned black as night with no stars in sight. The thermometer bled down the screen. Not even Andromeda could rescue me now. It timorously asked, Would you like to make an emergency call? I thought of Seamus’s last words: Noli timere. Be not afraid, as a black dalia of blood blossomed in his brain.

1/2/24 WOW Writes, with Dulcie Witman

EL MITAD DEL MUNDO

We were driving after dark, always a risky business in the deserts of Baja California, but we were caught between villages. We thought we were invincible on the gringo trail thinking we could outpace the darkness. First, it was an overturned truckload of jicama roots, like hundreds of blind eyes or small moons seeking orbit. Then it was the donkey crossing the road, then a red steer. Our headlights cut through the darkness like kitchen knives. The stars were brilliant this far from civilization, only darkness and the weeping stars to accompany us the shoulders of the narrow road with potholes large enough to swallow the VW bug. it was a slalom course. And, the headlights were a skein of light cutting the darkness into pieces. Something striped with an impossible long tail—an escapee from a Dr. Seuss book—ran in front of us, and there was no time to swerve, no way to avoid it on the raised road bed, a slender thread built for flash floods, was like a dyke. The wheelwell thump told us it was not a lucky night for that creature. My first and last sighting of a cuatamundi, the felling of a rare animal beneath that carnage. then it dawned on me the warning not to drive after dark was equally dangerous for the local animals as well. 

4/24 Write On! with Nels Christiansen

CONSIDER THE RIVER

CONSIDER THE RIVER

Consider the river wending its way 

from the frozen north to where the old school 

holds onto the old ways, where the rights of some 

outnumbers the rights of those oppressed by race, 

or poverty, or creed. The river brings to those of us 

living downstream a longing for portage across 

that inconsolable distance no explorer will breech, 

no bridge will ever span, and yet we attempt unity

by virtue of humanity. And fail utterly. 

Only the shining river spills into the bay, 

spills into freedom, spills into light.

4/17/24 Write On! with Nels Christiansen

Sebastopo LitCrawl reading

I will be reading with Raphael Bloch, Pamela Singer Yezbick, Judith Stone, Sherrie Lovler and Sally Churgel for Earth Kindness, LitCrawl at The Redwood (West of the Laguna) 234 S. Main St. Sebastopol, Sat. April 13, at 2 PM. More readings about town until 7:30PM.

HORSES IN SNOW

Two dark horses in shaggy winter coats

stamp their feet in anticipation,

seeking an escape from the bed of snow. 

The mountains fold into the valley like fitted sheets. 

The soughing conifers shake their bows free,

spring delayed with no chance of surcease. 

The hardwood fence is a bridge for small rodents 

to cross the blanket of frozen ground. 

The horses pace, each in opposite directions 

as if on a treadmill to move the seasons along. 

They’ve beaten a trail in the bauchy ice,

eagerly await their hay, but it is late again, 

and they worry the fence line as if urging it 

to spring into action, knowing they can’t dig down 

to the dry grasses buried below snowline.

4/4/24 Molly Fisk Poem a Day

MEZZALUNA

A brown child stands at attention 

with her long, dark hair nailed to the wall 

in a reverse sunburst, or an implosion.

She resembles the night studied with stars. 

Her smile reaches all the way to her toes. 

She doesn’t yet know that she is on display.

Will always be judged by the blade.

4/2/24 Molly Fisk Poem a Day

OUT OF SEASON

Once upon a time I bought a princess pumpkin, 

more gourd than orange with salmon red crenelations.

We were waiting for a brace of horses 

to take us to the ball. I had no gown, no glass slippers, 

but soot covered the ground dark as night. 

The Uber horses never arrived. 

They were booked for a more lucrative fairytale. 

So they sent an Easter bunny the color of coal.

Instead of whisking me away, he set to 

eating the seeds, leaving a pile of black eggs 

perhaps as punishment for calling him last minute.

Prince Charming was running late and sent Jack instead. 

But he has two left feet and ate Englishmen for breakfast.

Fairy Godmother was sleeping it off in the corner 

muttering how someone had mixed up her spells 

and everything was coming out all wrong. 

The world had turned to ashes. Needing a scapegoat, 

she blamed the long shadows of crows loitering in the car park.

No one was going to get out of this carnival dead or alive.

4/1/24 Molly Fisk Poem a Day

A yellow card from Facistbook

I am constantly being harassed by Facebook AI bots that manufacture bogus/trumped up reasons to shut me down in an attempt to silence me. Usually, it’s for editing my own comments.

 

The only ding I could find against my Facebook page was a yellow card from a March 23 post about Taylor Swift urging people to vote. The T-shirt was altered, and I even noted that. 

I wrote: “The photo of Taylor Swift in anti-Trump shirt may be doctored, but the threat is real. So, for that reason I stand with her. Vote! Interesting, the Facebook censor bot visited and decided this post needs to be...”

• Public • Hidden from profile”

Facebook cut off the rest of my sentence. I think I wrote, “…at the bottom of my feed.”

Actually, Facebook completely removed the post and my explanation from my page. They didn’t just send it to the bottom of my feed as they had stated. They said it was false information. I agree, and I noted it. 

And then Facebook said that it could pose physical harm. Say, what? How can a T-shirt that tells people to vote cause physical harm? What am I missing here? How draconian.

So here’s the clincher, Facebook completely removed my repost but not John M Disque’s original post of it. It’s still up and on his page. What gives?

I merely shared the post with a caveat. And there’s no way to object to Facebook’s decisions. They’ve removed all recourse. There is no way to complain or disagree with them.

Now watch, I’ll get thrown in jail again for posting this. It has happened before.

More on those historic mercury mines of Marin (the short version)

A rather long note bene: Since I went through so much grief the other night trying to save my old 2020 mercury mine blogpost from Google Blogger AI censorship bots, in desperation I took screenshots of the original post and reposted it on my artist page on Facebook. I also made a very truncated version (below) for the Facebook group, California History as I was afraid the information I had worked so hard for was going to be forever lost. 

The original mercury mine blogpost had its inception Labor Day weekend when I was hiking San Pedro Ridge in San Rafael. We were still in Covid sequestration, and to keep my sanity, I wrote many articles I might not have other otherwise written. 

In this case, I wrote a stub that didn’t go anywhere, no real leads, and then I delved into it again in December 2020. I discovered that I was in over my head with the material, and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t finish the blogpost—partially because I couldn’t find the discrete information I needed. 

And also, I thought I didn’t have the chops to figure out how to present the material. Why a writer, suffering from dyslexia, is a writer is a mystery, but there are many of us out there. It’s not like I’m earning any money off my writing. I’m not getting paid for any of this. I write because I have to.

I suspect my writers’s block, or rather, my revisionist block, was due to the fact that it was too big a subject. The more information I uncovered, the more of the post grew. I was in over my head. I despaired. It was an albatross. But the only way out was through. 

Sometimes I think I can’t write my way out of the paper bag. or, that I don’t have the intellectual  chops. This time I was in one colossal kevlar-lined paper bag, but I persevered. It was probably one of the most challenging blogposts I have ever written. 

My Night Train to Moscow post (which began as an email), my redhead, pacer, bees, and daffodil blogposts also gave me some serious writer’s grief, but at least the posts weren’t banned by Google. 

I face enough unwarranted censorship from Facebook for writing bad similes, or thinking outside the box. I sure don’t need this kind of grief from Google either. I expected better from Google. (Google fail.) I feel betrayed.

The other day, when I made another stab at revising the original blogpost because of a Facebook post on the old mines in Lost Marin, I finally made some serious headway—only to have Google Blogger take it down and literally trash my blogpost, then reinstate it—some 30 times. When Google takes down a blogpost, you can’t even see it. It just disappears into the ether. No warning. Poof! Gone.

A while back, Google suffered a serious systemwide matrix glitch and took down multitudes of my innocuous posts—only to reinstate them later but I had to physically find my blogposts in the trash and then reinstate them. Before that, I didn’t know that Google had previously removed some of my other posts. Sadly, some of those posts are lost forever.

Thinking it was an email spam, I ignored the red warning label Google had slapped on my posts, and I lost my Juanita Musson memorial post, plus others. I reasoned, how could a memorial post be considered spam? It was not logical, as Spock might have said. But it was for real, only I found this out in arrears. 

I was able to salvage some of the removed old posts from first drafts that I had stashed elsewhere, but not all. Not Juanita in the bathtub. I despaired thinking I had lost all my revision work on the mercury mine post. I was 12 hours deep into it. So, of course I fought furiously to save my post, and to get it reinstated. Again and again.

Now I’m afraid to make any further changes on my original mercury mine post for fear of triggering the AI bots. Google no longer adequately warns you that it is removing posts. It no longer uses the red banner. And it took a long time for a Google warning to show up, explaining what the reasons were for banishment: violating community standards.

Google warned I was violating community standards, but it didn’t specifically say what. I had no idea. Googling it did not elucidate or shed any light on the subject. So, I kept removing images, revising, checking on all my links, and nothing worked. I wasn’t over quoting anyone, and it was my own intellectual property, not to mention, photos. And all the graphs I used were from publicly funded agencies, therefore within fair use parameters. I couldn’t remove the ban. I despaired.

A Google email eventually appeared, claiming this time that I was violating community standards by promoting or selling controlled substances. Huh? How is a blogpost on historic mercury mines even remotely considered to be promoting a controlled substance? Maybe it was the word “mine” itself that triggered the bots. So, this post below is a test of sorts.

(I am not trying to bite the hand that feeds me. If it wasn’t for Guy Kawasaki’s evangelical support of Google Blogger, I would not have delved so thoroughly into the new medium of cyber-writing. It all began innocently enough, I had lost some of my earlier poems to ASCII gibberish, and decided to put them online. Then I discovered I could back-post my work. One thing led to another. MySpace was no longer cutting it. It was a grand liberation to be free of the physical page. As it is, I now have 5000 blog posts. I must admit, I feel betrayed by Google at this point.)

See, during one of those rare moments, when I could actually re-access my ephemeral albeit temporarily reinstated mercury mine blogpost, I took screenshots of it and posted it on Facebook so I wouldn't lose my work completely. I also made a truncated version for a Facebook group I belong to, California History. I have previously taken several of my blogposts and revised (shortened) them for the group. 

Then I realized that the revised post I wrote for California History  is also a separate entity. New work. Probably closer to what I had hoped to originally write. It’s posted below. Now watch, Google Blogger will ban this blogpost too. Don’t worry. This time I have a link to someone who works at Google and I will complain mightily. How’s that for throat-clearing? Are you still there, Dear Reader?

Historic mercury mines in the North Bay (below is a truncated version of my original post. Click on the link/title for full post and research notes).

When I was a child, I was fascinated by my uncle’s old mining survey maps of Bolinas Ridge and Mt. Burdell dotted with old cinnabar (and copper) mining claims. Curiosity got the best of me.

Our red California earth is oftentimes a sign of the presence of iron /hemitite, or cinnabar (Remember Napa’s Silverado Mine on Mt. St. Helena, made famous by Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1884 novel, The Silverado Squatters?)

There are several historic cinnabar mines in Northwest Marin, including four at the Gambonini Ranch, near Solajoule Reservoir, some sites on Mt. San Antonio, and also on the ridges above Novato. The old mine shafts on San Pedro ridge in San Rafael seem to be gold claims. But where there’s gold, there’s cinnabar.

During the Gold Rush, cinnabar ore mined in California, for mercury, was originally used for silver and gold extraction. The crushed ore was processed in high-temperature smelting ovens. 

Those unstable leftover cinnabar tailings are what has caused the mercury runoffs into our watersheds, including in the San Francisco Bay—destroying one of the most fertile marine ecosystems in the world.

There are numerous historic cinnabar mine tailings throughout Marin and Sonoma counties, some that have also added to the high mercury levels in several of our reservoirs, including Bon Tempe, Solajoule, and Nicasio reservoirs and their drainage watershed, Tomales Bay. 

The fish warning signs that rim several of our reservoirs serve as a grim reminder that mercury poisoning is cumulative. Tomales Bay in Northern Marin County has higher mercury levels than San Francisco Bay—and it’s not from naturally occurring cinnabar deposits, as the mineral mercury oxide is inert unless it’s been heated and extracted.

According to the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), there is an fish advisory or warning that Nicasio and Solajoule Reservoirs contain methyl-mercury, as does Bon Tempe Reservoir on the slopes of Mt. Tamalpais, which once hosted several historic mines, including mercury, copper, gold, and even a nickel mine.

I assume that the rest of the Marin Municipal Water District (MMWD) reservoirs (our drinking water supply) also contain trace amounts of some form of (inert) mercury too as they’re all downstream of Bon Tempe dam and empty into each other, exiting via Kent Lake into Lagunitas Creek that drains into Tomales Bay. 

Naturally occurring mercury oxide does not enter the food chain the same way manmade methyl-mercury does. But at the Nicasio Reservoir methyl-mercury pollution is significant enough to trigger OEHHA advisory warnings about cumulative mercury poisoning from carp, sunfish, black, and large-mouth bass species (apex predators such as bass contain the most cumulative methyl-mercury in their systems). 

Why Nicasio? It doesn’t butt up against any known mercury mines, it doesn’t share the Solejoule Reservoir watershed to the north where there’s also an OEHHA advisory warning for black bass and crappie.) Why am I mentioning Solejoule? because in 2000, it became a Superfund cleanup site.

In a nutshell, in 1964, a PG&E subcontractor, Oakland-based Buttes Gas & Oil (BG&O), ran a lucrative open pit mercury mining job at Gambonini Ranch near Walker Creek in northwestern Marin. 

But in 1970, when the price of mercury fell, BG&O pulled up stakes and left the open pit mercury mine tailings exposed to the elements behind an earthen dam that epically failed during a series of fierce storms in 1982—which dumped ungodly amounts of leached methyl-mercury into Tomales Bay. More than in San Francisco Bay! 

BG&O had leased the land from Alvin Gambonini’s father from 1964 to 1970, never disclosing to the Gambonini family the potential dangers involved with the toxic heat-processed mine tailings to extract the mercury, or that the leftover toxic mercury particulates leach out of the rock tailings whenever it rains. (I wanted to ask, what about all the cows?) 

BG&O never sealed the four mines, nor capped the tailings. It took nearly two decades for the EPA to discover the mishap. It triggered a $3 million Superfund cleanup in 2000. 

Back to Nicasio Reservoir. The methylmercury is coming from somewhere. Not from abandoned mercury mines upstream that I know of, or from the isolated Solejoule Dam which empties into Walker Creek. Question is, from where?

However, some of those old red earth mine sites really were manganese, or hematite, a type of iron, not cinnabar—like the Sausalito mine, and the prehistoric hematite site on Mt. Burdell. Inert red dirt. Sometimes a red rock quarry is just a red rock quarry. Just don’t eat the fish.

Google Blogger keeps flagging and taking down my mercury mines post

I thought Facebook AI bots were bad, apparently Google Blogger also is using the same idiotic AI bot workforce. Are they in cahoots? I was revising an old post from December 21, 2020 that I had started working on when I was staying one summer on Aquinas St. in San Rafael—it took a long while to gel. 

When I hiked up San Pedro Ridge, I could see the characteristic telltale red earth—which piqued my curiosity about mercury mines. I banged out a rough draft, then, later, I began to research it and ran into multiple dead ends. It seems no one has ever written an overview of mines in the north bay.

I have worked on this particular blogpost intermittently since 2020, due to a lack of stamina and a lack of information, and suddenly the post was flagged after being published for four years. Hindsight? I thought it was photos or graphics that was triggering it. Not. 

No, my violation of community Standards was: Regulated Goods and Services policy. “Regulated Goods and Services. Do not sell, advertise, or facilitate the sale of regulated goods and services. Regulated goods and services include alcohol, gambling, pharmaceuticals, unapproved supplements, tobacco, fireworks, weapons, or health/medical devices.” 

DEAR GOOGLE: Huh? You mean my writing about historic mines goes against Google’s policy of portraying regulated goods and services? How so? Just because the military once used mercury, then deregulated it, doesn’t mean I am facilitating selling something illegally. Maybe it’s the word “mines” that is triggering this flurry of censorship flags. Of course Blogger doesn’t tell you what it objects to.

I must be getting onto something significant. Nothing like raising the interest of a journalist to do more investigation. Am I willing to go down with the ship for my writing? You betcha. Mercury plays a huge role in California history from the gold rush to the Cold War. I write in order to learn. I didn’t know enough about the historical background of mercury mining, so I sat out to teach myself by writing about it—only to get slapped in arrears (pun intended) by Google. 

Well, the good news is the erroneous flag forced me to rewrite portions of the blogpost, so at least it’s finally in a semi-finished format. Alas, no writing is ever truly finished. I did change the title from Mercury Mines in Marin to Historical mercury mines in the North Bay to include Sonoma County as it shares many of those mine sites near Petaluma.

Thinking it was the graphics that caused the flag— Google doesn’t tell you why it flags a post—I went back and researched all my sources, trying to figure out why the blogpost was flagged. But my sources were from publicly, funded agencies and organizations, I am not breaking copyright. Besides, there’s this thing called fair use. 

What a horrible way to force a rewrite. And the hours of undo stress the Google flag caused because I couldn’t fully access my post (or changes) in order to save it off-line. I am increasingly unhappy with Google. Their parting email shot: “We encourage you to review the full content of your blog posts to make sure they are in line with our standards as additional violations could result in termination of your blog.” They brought weapons to a tea party. Shades of 1984 and Doublespeak. 

I wonder who in Facebooklandia flagged my post? I had posted it in a Lost Marin group hoping to get more leads and help with revising my post. It looks like my link and post was removed. 

I am reminded how poet Ron Silliman was harangued by Google and his poetry blog was taken offline because someone had flagged it— And Google would not divulge which particular post was considered offensive or why it was breaking community standards. At least I knew which post was the offending post. Small mercies. I also now make an archive of my writing.

• 
  

  

  Dear Google, have you any idea how many times you have flagged this post within the past 24 hours and how many times you have reinstated it? Shall we go for an even 30 tries? Every time I make a correction on a typo you flag it take it off-line again. It takes me upon average of five attempts to contact you before you reinstate it. Will it hold?

  
  
I finally resorted to taking screenshots and posted them on my Facebook artist page in order to preserve my blog post. I think that 30 attempts to remove my blogpost is a bit excessive on Google Blogger’s part.

Facebook AI bots blocked Michael Collins’ memorial video of a medieval hymn part 2

And once again I am being harassed by Facebook for “copyright infringement” that was already resolved in my favor weeks ago. Note the assumption that there’s a rightful owner to this music. It’s a private post, no one else can see it. I can’t make comments because I’m still in jail except for status reports. Clearly, Facebook AI censorship bots patrol my Facebook page early and often.

#trolledbyFacebook #FacebookFail #MetaFail

Reason: Public domain

Additional details: we've been through this before: this is the second time you flagged 12 century medieval church music. You do not own it. It does not infringe on any known copyright. These are Gregorian Chanters singing at a memorial for their dead friend, my cousin. Please stop. This is harassment at this point. 

I thought I already won this dispute. has Facebook taken to flogging dead horses as well? The 12th century public domain hymn, Salve Regina has been copyright-free since the middle ages. I wonder why Warner Music Rights Management Group AI bots think they owns this music? Are they getting religion?

Dear Facebook,

Your Facebook AI bots are constantly trolling my online activity to the point of actual harassment. I am constantly being blocked and thrown in jail for commenting, or sharing innocuous content.

For example, the last time I tried to correct a typo on a comment, because Facebook had changed the name of noted poet Lynn Hejinian who had died, misspelling it. So I corrected it, and got six days of jail.

Ditto that when I posted memorial photos when equally noted poet Jack Hirshman unexpectedly died of Covid. six days of jail time.

I tried to add the word crêpe with the circumflex to my comment, and got six days. I reported it and got six more days for reporting it. That has happened twice now.

Between Facebook, “helping” me to misspell words, generally substituting the wrong words—AFTER I posted a comment—and my dyslexia, I need to be able to edit typos. I am a writer, and writers revise. I am a horrible typist, so I make typos, and I also want to be able to correct those mistakes. how is this going against community standards?

There are myriad Facebook sanctions against me for wanting to spell words correctly. Literally.

Out of the blue, a year after the fact, Facebook deleted a comment I wrote about botany in a botany group, where I mentioned the seeds of a California palm tree.

Before that you took down a post of mine where I posted a photo of a spotted horse and chicken as an example of leucism and the leopard spotted gene.

Since when is posting about science a crime?

And then I reposted a black and white meme about Einstein’s messy desk on the day, he died, and was flagged for posting nudity. it was a messy desk, and it wasn’t even naked. It was covered with paper.

I posted a comment about historic Gravenstein apples to the Fort Ross site and was flagged for spam. I wrote to them and they were equally horrified.

Twice now Warner has muted videos of my cousin’s memorial service, where his friends who are Gregorian chanters, were singing a 12th century hymn, Salve Regina, which is certainly copyright free and in the public domain. I won the dispute the first time, and yesterday Warner muted it again. Your algorithms are way off. Incidentally those videos were private, and no one else could actually see or hear them. Only me.

Also, I have been thrown in jail for making a comment about another cousin’s death—I was reminiscing when he was a child. Six days in the slammer.

Another cousin who died, I mentioned something about her, also alerting my family. Another six days in the slammer. And when I complained about it on my page, using screenshots, I got six more days. That’s happened several times. Talk about censorship. So we’re not allowed to post anything on each other’s walls when family members die? What are the trigger words? I’m not allowed to complain about Facebook’s AI bots being out of control?

I won’t mention how Facebook retroactively sanctioned me for reposting old Liam Neeson memes that came up in my memories feed. A meme that I have reposted yearly, for over a decade, And yet Facebook did not take the exact same meme down on anyone else’s page, nor did Facebook block them, or throw them in jail, but Facebook did that to me. Myriad times. Clearly Facebook bots do not understand sarcasm, let alone, simile and metaphor. Or, humor. Apparently am not allowed to repost old memes either.

The thing is, nobody knows what triggers the censorship bots. And the Facebook punishment is absolutely senseless. Whatever happened to let the punishment fit the crime? And now you’ve taken away our only recourse to complain about the process.

This absurd censorship has been going on for ages, and it certainly not protecting the community, but lately Facebook trolling gotten exponentially worse. Why are you bullying me? I have never done anything that actually goes against “community standards.” Facebook is clearly monitoring everything I post.

For the record, I have been documenting these Facebook infractions and I have re-posted them on my blog, if you would like to see how your Facebook AI bots are attacking people who are doing nothing wrong. I’ve noticed an uptick of friends not being able to post for equally innocuous reasons.

 

Dear Facebook, you need to control your censorship bots. They are doing more harm than good, and their actions definitely go against community standards.

Daffodils for St. David

Last night I finally got around to finishing my daffodil post from 2023, it was more notes than a blog post. And I put the finishing touches on it today, so I do not have a new post for Saint David’s Day. My brain hurts. I can’t believe that it took me a year before I could wrap my head around my notes and craft it into an article. Not sure why it was so difficult. But today I struck gold while researching daffodils. I was trying to find out when narcissi were introduced to the British Isles and got railroaded with false information, with noted writers insisting there was a native daffodil. I finally put that theory to rest via genetic analysis. Their homeland is Iberia (they have the most genetic variation while the cultivars have a limited gene pool.) It looks like they and the word daffodil were introduced to England sometime during the 1590s, but it could’ve been as early as 1400. The information is lost in the mists of time. But now I can stay unequivocally that narcissi are not native to the British Isles. However, I had a great time tracking down the literary references in the process of writing that piece. and the reason why I write is about discovery.

• The cultivated history of daffodils as we know it

My 2024 CAC artist panel application

Note bene: Each year I reapply to be a CAC panelist and each year I never get selected because—I’m a white older woman? Elder warehousing? This year I was solicited with no less than three emails from the CAC urging me to reapply, saying I was in the panelist pool, so clearly I was accepted in the pool for previous years, but was never chosen. Each year the application form shrinks so we have fewer and fewer words to deliver our sales pitch. This year it was less than 2500 words whereas last year it was at least 3000 characters. I had to get inventive to squeeze it all in. All this on Leap Day! Ribbit.

Because I’ve worked as an artist in residence most of my life within diverse communities, I’ve a unique viewpoint as to what makes for a good CAC-AIR grant. Having written scores of grants I know what to look for as I’ve been an artist in residence for the NEA, Montana Arts Council, Oakland Arts Council, KQED-AIR, so I have direct experience with a broad range of artist grants & organizations.

 I’ve taught artist-in-schools residencies in rural & urban schools in California since 1979. I’ve implemented arts programming, trained poets & artists in rural Sonoma Co. & urban Alameda Co. Clients include inmates at Napa State Hospital, elders, preschoolers. I’ve had 7 individual CACAIR grants in Sonoma & Napa counties & grants from the Montana Arts Council.

I’ve administered/taught in CAC multi-artist residencies including Poetry Flash (current), a PBS/KQED AIR grant, & two Oakland Cultural Arts Council grants. I’ve mentored/ trained artists, writers and teachers through several arts organizations including California Poets in the Schools, Young Audiences, Artists in Schools of Sonoma County, and Rural Arts Services.

I’m widely published & won prizes, fellowships & awards for my work. I was a photojournalist for alternative newspapers, writing arts & feature stories. From 1980 to 1997, I produced 100s of literary events in Sonoma Co., for Russian River Writers’ Guild, Sonoma State University, Johnny Otis Club & other venues. I was staff photographer/ workshop leader for Napa Valley Poetry /Bahamas conferences. My photos will be featured in an upcoming Julia Vinograd film.

I’ve worked in Bay Area schools, teaching poetry & art to historically underserved students in Oakland & Hunters’s Point, developing culturally relevant arts programming. I’ve worked with many cultural demographics with a diverse language base & cultural focus, including training Middle Eastern and African health care providers to teach creative writing to their clients. 

Though not fully bilingual, I speak Spanish & can converse in several languages. I also volunteer at the San Geronimo Valley Community Center working with elders. I am a coordinator & current coordinator and emcee for the annual Poetry Flash Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival, as well as administrator of the Poetry Flash CAC AIS John Oliver Simon Legacy Poetry Project grant.

I’ve taught clients in a diverse range of communities of all ages/abilities throughout California. The sites are historically underrepresented in all the arts—I utilize poetry & language from their respective cultures. I also invite guest artists & poets from the community. For example, at Malcolm X Elementary School in Berkeley, we developed a long-term poetry & art project that celebrates racial equity, diversity and inclusion.

Yet another Facebook rant

Another thing you can’t do when Facebook throws you in jail for “going against community standards” is to remove spam posts you are tagged in. My latest crime: I edited my comment, I fixed a typo. Oh, my! Aren’t I the bad girl? 

I know that at least three friends were also singled out by Facebook for editing their own comments on their own pages— on the same day —and who are also in the FB slammer. One infraction was for “going too fast.” Are we supposed to be slow messy typists? Inarticulate, even?

In my case, since it was my second comment of the day on a friend’s page—and only my second attempt to fix a typo on Lyn Hejinian’s name. BAM! The white wall of denial arose from the bowels of the Facebook police state and denied me egress to fix my typos. 

So, “going too fast” can’t be the reason why I am in jail again but I was rather inarticulate on Ron Silliman’s page. Mea culpea. At least I know he would understand. Ask him about how Google censured him for posting about poetry. As for AI authorship, see Dana Gioia’s post on an atrocious IA-generated obit for #LynHejinian.

This is the comment in question. I tried to add Lyn Hejinian’s name, then Facebook misspelled it as Lynn Hijinian. I tried to correct it. In jail again.

I make a lot of typos, or rather Facebook autokrap, I mean oughtacorrect—makes them, and I also write in fits and spurts—sentences do not come to me perfectly hatched. And don’t even get me started on where commas need to go. I also have dyslexia. FWIW We can’t comment on anyone’s posts, including our own, but we can write status updates and repost and like other peoples posts. Heh!

Meanwhile, the real spammers are allowed to continue spamming by tagging us in public forums, and we have no recourse to remove our names. I wonder why Facebook doesn’t shut them down—or does Facebook just have it out for outspoken little old ladies? Facebook is a bully. Reminds me of being back in the USSR.

Don’t worry Facebook, I’m keeping track of all your ridiculous bullying. Whatever happened to “let the punishment fit the crime?” And how, exactly does cleaning up a comment, that is fixing grammar, spelling or punctuation go against community standards? Please explain. Or would you prefer that we were all barefoot, pregnant and illiterate? Not to mention, inarticulate? in my case, it’s too late now. 

I deliberately over-edited my status update post just to see if I could trigger the Facebook AI censorship bots. And I was rewarded with a notification that “We’ll let you know when your post is ready.” Too bad the FB sniffers are AI, meaning no human will read this—except youse guys. My intention is to let Facebook know that this censorship is ridiculous, not to mention unfair. Ultimately, I just want it to stop.  Someday…. 

The gauntlet has been thrown down. I will use my extra jail time wisely. I will remove all ads from my newsfeed. Game on. Doesn’t Facebook know by now that I’m a bad article? Don’t you know that you can’t shut a a baddass Irishwoman up?

I will answer your comments here:

Lauren Boyd McLachlan in for a penny, in for a pound. Five more days.

#Facebookfail

Yet another epic Facebook fail—censored twice in one month for correcting typos!

 

Facebook AI bots really have it out for me because I edit my comments, or post a blog link. In this case, I was responding to Ron Silliman‘s post where Lyn Hejinian had read for our RRWG reading series at the Johnny. Otis Cabaret, that I produced back in 1993-94, and as I typed in her name, I was immediately thrown in the FB slammer again.

Last time it was for trying to add the word crêpes with circumflex to my Shrove/Pancake Tuesday comment. The time before that was because I was commenting on my cousin who had recently demised himself and it also happened with another Irish cousin too. And the time before that was for posting a botany post about native uses of California fan palm seeds.

Apparently the words GAZA and DEATH trigger the FB AI bots. And I guess in this case, RIP triggered the bots too. Or  it was the Google blogpost link itself? I had posted a Press Democrat obit in honor of Johnny Otis. I thought Ron Silliman would enjoy seeing it since they all read at his cabaret. He had mentioned reading there for us. And Kit Robinson too. I do remember Kit’s reading because I hadn’t seen him since the early 1980s CPITS days.

Now I’m just flummoxed. I would love to have the RRWG flyers—and especially the dates of those readings because I made a Russian River Writers Guild archival blog post listing all the poets who have read for us over the decades. It’s a pretty impressive list.

And now I am reduced to writing to my friends in my status update.

Andrew – this will have to suffice as a link.

Zana – no, it is not a friend reporting me. It’s FB.

Marylu and Maxine – this is the comment in question. Alors! I had added Lyn’s name and misspelled it, and when I tried to correct it, I was thrown in the Facebook comment jail. That’s why I’m writiing to you here because I can’t add any comments to any posts, including my own. But I can LIKE comments.

Donald – Tori and I are definitely on Facebook’s frenemy list because we’re outspoken and we have posted about gauze a.

Joan – tell me more, or post the link below. I would be very interested to read it.

Molly- Second time this month in the comments slammer means can’t post poems in your Poem a Day group.

Weirdly I can post photos and a status report on my home page so I guess this is how I will communicate with the world for the next six effing days. I just can’t post, nor can I correct any comments. Oh bhuel.

See, Facebook otto-krect loves to substitute the wrong words in my comments, or add excessive, commas, (case in point), or inserting random periods. mid-sentence after I post them. And I am definitely OCD when it comes to typos. FFS, I’m a writer plying my trade. And yes, I have completely turned off AutoCorrect on my iPad.

So today I am deleting all Facebook ads and reporting them as irrelevant. Sweet revenge. Literally every second or third post is a sponsored ad. Talk about irrelevant ads. Poop ads for cats AND humans! Maybe they come in tandem. A new batch of shitty irrelevant ads, and the Facebook AI sniffer bot—and certainly the word for one’s demise seems to be a trigger as well. I refuse to use the word passed. I wanna say DEATH. Unfortunately, because Facebook is a private entity, there is no recourse for this continued bullying.

Yeah, I’m more than a little cranky now and don’t worry, Facebook, I am keeping track of you. and I won’t be silenced.  #keepingitreal #badarticle