Postmodern Manger

On the brink of 2012, all things are possible--even a log-cabin creche in which one finds a melding of poultry and hoofed beast.  Manger in French is to eat.  In English a manger is a trough housed in a stable and used to hold feed or fodder for livestock.  In this scene the duck lies down with the lamb.  It reminds us all things are possible.  All resolutions can be made and kept.  We can resolve to stop global warming.  We can have world peace. 

California

Chainsaw totem from Highway 128 In September, I had the great pleasure to serve as Writer in Residence for The Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska.  http://home.gci.net/~island/index.htm. "The Island Institute cultivates uncommon conversations about the nature of vital communities -- the web of human relationships and responsibilities, and our connections to the greater natural world." Before I departed California for Alaska, I wrote a version of the following musing, emailed it to friends in a newsletter, and pasted it to my website: Who knows how change comes about?  Sometimes we change in great surges that seem obvious; sometimes we find ourselves altered in increments so tiny we don’t recognize them any more clearly than we can see the forest for the trees. What a surprise to discover that I’m one of the trees.  Why has it taken me so long to see that?  The forest is changing—taking on more people, warming, losing numbers of species, acquiring great new voices.  Jordan’s work is taking her further into classes she shares with fiction writers of all inclination.  My own change is taking me north to learn about community—how art is used to create dialogue in one small town in Alaska.  Because I’m so close to the California community I’ve inhabited for the last twenty years, I’m going away to view my home from afar—and let those at home see me in a new light, too. I’m going north to write about water: in fiction, in our lives, in our future.  I’ll spend the month of September on Thimbleberry Bay on Baranof Island, witness to the migrations of great ocean creatures that pass in channels off the Pacific.  I plan to use the time to write deeply, as I’ve always taught in my own workshops and practiced when I can.  From the residency time I intend to bring home an honest work about water as I see it. I’ve experienced water from the river’s waves, under its surface, above streambeds gone dry, from boats riding on ninety thousand cubic feet per second, and from boats dragging through cobbles on 1/1000 of that flow.  Now I’ll see water in a northern world, helped by dialogue with those who live there year round. While traveling Route 128 between Cloverdale and Mendocino with my daughter last summer, I found this chainsaw totem by the side of the road.  It is to the art of tree carving as the remaining redwood forests are to the Tongass National Forest in southeast Alaska--pale in comparison.  But, reluctantly, I admit I love this rough-hewn face--and, reluctantly, I admit I still love California.  Now I'm home and writing about the Sacramento River, California.  Many know that California is an island too.  In fact it is said to be named for Queen Calafia, who ruled a colony of women on the Island of California before explorers found it was indeed connected to the mainland.  And it is.  Sort of.  As Baranof Island is sort of connected to Alaska.

My blog

© Rebecca Lawton 2011

Confluence

The Sacramento River near the confluence with the Feather is a place of sedimentation, old marinas, and salmon fishing.  With photographer Geoff Fricker (these are not his photos; his are much better!), I visited restoration sites installed by the nonprofit group River Partners, designed to allow the river to go overbank in flood.  Pungent mugwort, thriving sycamore, sign of beaver at work, more birds than we could count--those are the gifts of these installations.  Out on the water, the clouds reflect back into a blue sky turned cold by the first snowstorm over the Sierra.  A good day to stand by the joining of two rivers--two streams of water from the north, where the ducks and geese are settling from their long autumn flights.

View

Virginia Woolf said that for a woman to write fiction she must have two things: a room of her own (with key and lock) and enough money to support herself.  E.M. Forster's heroines in the pensione in Florence insisted on a room with a view.  My view is: it helps to have a room of one's own with a view. 

Here is the view from the window in Sitka, Alaska, where I wrote fiction 99% of the time, nonfiction 1%.  When I looked up from my work at the kitchen table, there were whales, ducks, gulls, mountains, forested slopes, and fishing boats on the move.  The tide was always there to remind me, too, that the earth has a pulse.  Helped me stay alert and focused as I wrote about water and our relationship to it.

Thank you Carolyn Servis and Dorik Mechau of the Island Institute, Dave and Marge Steward, Joan VanderWerp and Bob Ellis, and the friendly community of Sitka.  It was a remarkable time.

Canines

Now that the bear's teeth are painted on the Baranof pole, the canines I thought were missing can be seen easily.  Canine means "pointed tooth," comes from Latin "caninus," meaning "of the dog."  Hair of the dog that bit you?  You can say you've come down with Caninus.  A canine tooth is also called a cuspid, dogtooth, or fang.  

A mother brown bear from these woods, protecting a cub, charged one of my neighbors last season, according to friends here.  The neighbor tried to escape the charge but fell to the ground.  The mother bear came on, overtook her, and opened her great jaw.  She gently squeezed the fallen woman's arm with her canines.  A little warning nip.

Bear

Bear in the northwest legends are powerful and human-like.  You can marry them if you like.  A brown bear as dark as many black bears--except for his blond ears--has been fishing the stream out my window, scooping up pink salmon as if his hand were a fork, and tossing back the ones that don't pass the sniff test.  He sits in the creek when it's deep from the tide "like a man sitting in a hot tub" (P. Christo).

This wooden figure has bear-like ears but no canines.  The canines are optional, according to some books.  "The minimal tail of the bear is generally ignored."

Frog

Frog in one's throat, fine as frog hair, frog on a musical instrument, spring peepers in ditches and drainages!  The frogs in Pacific Northwest totem poles generally "display a wide mouth with no teeth.  They have no ears, but they do have large round eyes and toed feet" (Hilary Stewart).

Yesterday I checked on the progress of the Baranof frog, coincidentally when a cruise ship of over 2,000 tourists had stopped in Sitka Sound.  The gentleman repainting the pole, a man I hadn't yet seen working there, looked carefully at my hiking shoes when I rushed up in the rain and remarked, "You're making great progress."  As if my lack of rubber boots identified me clearly as one just off the boat.

"We're only painting it," he said, puffing on his stub of cigarette, thinking I suppose that I believed he was actually still carving the pole.

These photos show the Baranof frog receiving more paint throughout the week.  After I took this last one, a woman from the ship also photographed it from the same angle, realizing I guess that it was one of the easiest faces on the pole to shoot.  "You're living up here?" she asked me.  I explained my month-long residency plans.  She in turn described life on the cruise.  "You eat, and eat, and eat, then you sleep because you've eaten so much, then you eat some more."  I remarked that they must need the rest, remembering my own snoozing over a book on the ferry ride up.

Sound

September cruise ship shuttles sightseers to the town of Sitka.

There's the auditory meaning of the word, and the connotation that something sound is in good condition.  There's also sound as in body of water, an embayment too deep, wide, or rugged to be called a cove.  Sitka Sound is that kind of place, an opening to the North Pacific with a clear, cold surface so alluring one could watch the comings and goings of whales, sea lions, cormorants, eagles, and murrelets all day.

The Baranof Totem Pole undergoes rehabilitation: removal of bolts that once held it together, repair of cracks that open in the wood after years of standing in the weather.

Frog gets a new coat of paint during the Baranof Totem Pole rehabilitation.

Pink, or humpback, salmon use their last strength to swim to the streambank after spawning.

Eagle from the George Benson designed raven-and-eagle canoe in downtown Sitka.

No Thoroughfare Bay off Sitka Sound during a warm autumn wind smells of spruce and alder.

Opening

I was born in Portland, Oregon, a city I hardly recognize now.  It hums to the engine of movement: cars, planes, bikes, pedestrians.  Paul and I walked much of the downtown, enjoying the corner gardens, renewed brick buildings, curbside sculpture, and wide sidewalks.  It's a city of detail--utility hole covers worthy of art shows, lovingly detailed signs, windows filled with 'zines we'd need weeks to read.  Pallet gardens decorated the breakfast room at the Ace Hotel.  Early morning grilling had commenced outside the Whole Foods.

The word port takes many meanings: the larboard side of a vessel, a city's opening, a very sweet, strong wine.  Portland is the opening to a great land, the northwest corner of my country, the end of the outbound journey for Lewis and Clark, the mouth of a massive river that churns at bridge piers and dams.  It was also the portal for me to enter this life in a downtown hospital, barely waiting for my mother to step off the elevator and into the birthing room.  Four a.m.   

Feckless

The brilliant Eric Moes, an architect, works as a handyman at our organization's Watershed Station, "The Shed."  Although he'd rather be drafting, he is wonderful to have around.  An example: we have bats in our bathrooms, and I asked for his help moving one out of the Women's bathroom, into the hallway, and from there back out into the wild.  Eric agreed, found a toilet brush to use to help herd the Myotis californicus, and proceeded to shoo the winged mammal.

"It's not a vampire, right?" Eric asked.  Even though I knew it wasn't, I only ventured that I didn't think so, feeling suddenly vulnerable around my neck.

Eric's waving and swishing with the stiff-bristled brush worked--sort of.  The bat flew out of the Women's, into the hallway, and (rather than out the door) into the Men's!  It reattached, this time directly above the toilet bowl.  Eric seemed satisfied: "If we can't convince them to move, at least we can toilet train them."

He replaced the brush and shrugged.  "That was feckless," he said.  "I hate feeling feckless."  It was a comment no doubt reflecting not only on the lame results of our shooing but also his wish not to be working outside his field.  He shouted, "I am without feck!" and wandered away to move desks or replace boards in our decaying walkway.  "Honestly," he had told me earlier, "making minor repairs to this place is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic."

All of which led me to my dictionary, where I see that the word feckless (meaning "worthless," "ineffective") is rooted in the tongue of the Scots.  A feck is a majority, an effect.  The consonants in feck fall hard on the ear, lodged in our hearing between cad and loch, derived long ago from some other (no doubt) tough-edged word on a cold day on the Island, where one certainly finds no California Myotis to herd.

Cutting the Ribbon

Paul cut the ribbon at Nathanson Creek Park today.  He took loppers to a beautiful white bow, snipped and slashed until the strands of ribbon fell, and shook hands with Mark, restoration specialist who has worked tirelessly to manage and complete the project.  A small group of dedicated community members applauded.  Paul and Mark shook hands and thanked each other.  They remembered Paul's former wife Christy, who envisioned the park years ago, and agreed she'd be proud. 

Cameras whirred, eyes dewed up.  A small boy retrieved the pieces of ribbon from the ground.  With the ribbon cut, Paul is free to celebrate the beauty of a vision realized.  He's in Napa now, doing what he loves best: playing music. 

Dumping without Barriers

It starts with a mattress, thrown to the side of a country road.

Next comes another mattress and box springs--both fallen at an angle to the road's edge.

Then, it's tires.  Lots and lots of tires.  And garbage bags with trash, thrown on as afterthoughts.  Broken open by raccoons, the bags contain language tapes, Ingles sin Barrerras.

How does one say, in all languages so everyone understands, no dumping here above the creek?

Razing Vietnam Era Hospital that Inspired Novel Scene

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/04/08/BAN71IT46O.DTL

 

The razing of the Naval Hospital in Oakland reminded me that it's the facility that inspired this scene in my novel-in-progress, Junction, Utah.  Here's an excerpt.

 

Chris learned something he hadn’t known but only suspected: the Landstuhl medical center was bigger than all of downtown Landstuhl.  A dozen hospital buildings lay north and south of a mile-long hallway, and the facility hosted a thousand beds.  Most beds sat empty during Chris’s visit, but their neat rows reminded him how full the center could be at the worst times.  The front lobby had neon lights, the brightest Chris had seen in all his time in Germany.  Nurse Clark came to meet him in the lobby and smiled, her hand stretched out to greet him.  He noticed she had a faint mustache; her powerful shoulders shook his preconceived image of her as a small, pasty freshman.  “I haven’t talked to your brother in days,” she said.  “He’s not officially checked in anymore, you know.”

“Not checked in?”  Chris felt heat in his cheeks.

“But if he’s in the building, he’ll be in Martin’s room.  Building Ten.”

“Does he know I’m here?”

Nurse Clark stopped to talk to a serviceman on crutches, one of the many wounded who lined the hallway.  They sat in wheelchairs and rocking chairs or walked with casts.  They lay on gurneys with tubes in their necks and nostrils or they sat up in wheelchairs.  Many were missing limbs.  They were all kids, Luke’s age and younger, some with burns that covered their skin in red or brown; some with their heads and faces masked; some with miles of bandages.  Chris flashed on a thought: if he unrolled all the gauze in that building, it’d take him back to Utah.  Nurse Clark gave everyone a smile and kind word, and Chris followed her lead as best he could, even with his stomach roiling at the sight of it all.

Nurse Clark led Chris past some Frauleins in uniform: Girl Scouts, or the German equivalent.  They huddled together singing O! Tannenbaum, their big eyes on each other, not on the wounded.  Their rabbit-faced terror implied they could catch some injuries of their own by being near those so badly hurt. 

“Please, Nurse Clark.”  Chris asked again, “Does Luke know I’m here?”

She pushed through double doors marked Building Ten.  “I haven’t had the chance to tell him.” 

Chris breathed in as he followed her past an empty stairwell.  They wound through a crowd of medical personnel speaking German and English all mixed together.  They passed the Girl Scouts again—or so Chris thought—who were now singing Silent Nacht.

“Are we going in circles?” he asked.

“No!” said Nurse Clark.  “That’s a different group of girls.  There are three or four different choirs here every day this close to Christmas.”

He stayed with her, though he wanted to bolt.  If all these men looked so bad, how would Luke be when they found him?  Doctor Swanson had said, “Luke expressly told me he doesn’t want to speak to anyone.”

“Even his family?”

“Especially his family.” 

Wackos

Interesting that a gentleman driving a green Prius, looking every bit like a normal human being with a calm heart, older than I am (if that's possible--he is a member of the Great Generation, actually), should feel free to roll down his window and call me a Wacko.  An Environmental Wacko, no less.  "One of those Environmental Wackos who works on the creek."  Was I minding my own business?  Yes.  Was I working on the creek at that moment?  No.  I wasn't even fully awake.  I was doing as I'd been asked to do--to help direct hikers toward the parking area for a docent-led exploration of a spring wildflower preserve.

You can park up ahead, I said.  There's still room.  But parking and hiking were not on his mind--heckling and spewing invective were.

I'm awake now.  He's inspired me to use him as a character in a story or play.  I won't post his license plate number--I will save that for the Sheriff should this gentleman return to harass me or my colleagues again.

Oh, yes.  Some name-calling is considered okay; it's a sort of cultural institution.

Keep moving, buddy.  We Wackos want to get back to work.

On Novels and Italy

Sculpture of Romulus, Remus, and the wolf
(December 2010, outside the Capitol Musei, Rome, photo by Rebecca Conrad Lawton)


I've been away from blogging since before Christmas -- when I was finishing a draft of my novel and preparing to go to Italy -- and for all of January -- while my mind and back were recovering from having spent multiple ten-hour days at my desk and emailing off my baby book.

My novel manuscript is in the able hands of Torrey House Press now, a start-up press in Utah.  The THP partners, Mark and Kirsten, share my passion for the land and great stories about it.  I'm looking forward to moving the book to print with their able guidance and long-held love of place.  Have a look at their website and blog and post your own love of the West and words!  www.torreyhouse.com.

As for Italy at Christmas time?  The weather was wintry chilly, the food inexplicably delicious, the pace of our days languorous -- all in all, an amazing time and place.  Florence, Lucca, Rome . . . the high-speed train . . . kisses on the cheek at first meeting new friends . . . the frescoes, sculpture, paintings!  We brought back a decisive feeling of change and determination to stay un-rushed in our daily living.

(Bronze birds by Giambologna at the Bargello, Florence, photo by Rebecca Conrad Lawton)

I've been extending the Italian experience through reading.  Here are some fun books I've enjoyed that you might like.  What are the books about Italy that you love?

1.  Room with a View by E.M. Forster
2.  Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes

3.  The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
4.  Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare
5.  Much Ado about Nothing by Shakespeare
6.  The Taming of the Shrew by Shakespeare
7. The Merchant of Venice by Shakespeare
8.  City Walks--Rome: Fifty Adventures on Foot (Chronicle Books)
9.  Village Walks--Tuscany: Fifty Adventures on Foot (Chronicle Books)
10. Rick Steves' Italy 2011 by Rick Steves and team