The one muddy patch on Poly Canyon road, just past the DWR pipeline, drew me toward a little watercourse heading eastward up the hill into an oak woodland I’d never explored. Led by it I came to a fence bordering La Cuesta Ranch and slipped underneath, then followed a well-trodden cowpath into a grove of immense live oaks, their central trunks fallen over centuries ago and since then growing their branches into forests of vigorous verticals.  I came out into the clear and stopped at the base of a small chapparal-covered peak shaped like Chico Marx’s hat.

The ecotone separating it from grassland is wide and empty, evidence of much furtive animal activity.  This is where the coyote chorus I’ve heard during many nights in Poly Canyon originates.  I found a seat with a good prospect, outside the dripline of the oaks, which I fear will drop ticks.  The quiet swells after I stop moving and then gradually is broken by the sounds of activity.  A bunch of big birds on thick branches of the oak across the streambed, probably quail. Now they drop to the ground  and resume feeding on bugs and worms, occasionally cackling.  Five magpies glide from the tall sycamore below into the brush above.  Jays scold and chatter.

First stage of the fast: hangover listlessness of caffeine withdrawal upon awakening, exaggerated by sinus infection.  Hardly able to speak or pack before I left this morning. Now the second stage: hunger, fatigue, dullness.

10:30 An hour has passed. Under the oak the quail have been joined by two grouse, a rabbit and many small brown birds.  It must be a luxurious plentiful buffet.  Sounds of cheeps and and warbles and a woodpecker’s tap, then a gopher’s warning chirp sends the quail into the cover of the brush.  I’m alert now after a 45 minute reverie. The fog has lifted to reveal the Citadel and Rockslide Ridge across the valley, but the sky is still overcast; there are no shadows.

I open the Bible at random to Isaiah 6.1 and read the description of God sitting on a throne above the ark in the Temple. He says:

Go and tell this people
You may listen and listen but you will not understand
You may look and look again but you will never know
The peoples wits are dulled
Their ears are deafened and their eyes blinded…
How long O lord…
Until cities fall in ruins and are deserted
Houses are left without people and the land goes to ruin and lies waste…
Even if a tenth remain there, they will be exterminated.

11:30

I’ve sat zazen 45 minutes.  As I open my eyes, a white hawk lands in the top of an oak. Quail chattering close behind me earlier, but now they’ve ceased.  Overcast breaking up.  Pieces of blue sky against the yellow gold grass on the ridge.  Colors emerging.  Monkeyflower, this years shiny oak leaves, sage greens of Artemesia and Black Sage.

More ground squirrel cheep, like a smoke alarm with low battery. No traffic sound here, bermed against the freeways and town.  Not moving for two hours.  A fly crossed my brow slowly, explored the furrow between my eyebrows, my irritation turned to enjoyment.  Mood changed to alert and content.  Colors brilliant, shadows black where the sun breaks through cloud.  I take pictures for a panorama.

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Looking at the oak, I want to draw the flowing curve of a branch’s shadow on the grass.  At twenty five I took a life drawing class.  That was it.  My father, especially in his later years, spent a lot of time sketching landscapes.  He would have loved this spot.  If he were still around I’d try drawing with him.

1:50

Climbed through the oak forest up the steep slope behind me, enjoying movement and the changing angles of motion and perspective. At the top of the ridge I could see east along Cuesta Ridge and over much of Poly Land.  The sky is blue with patches of cloud moving fast west to east.

Sitting in dry grass near the top, I read the first chapter of EAARTH, Bill McKibben’s sequel to Isaiah, which I’ll lead a discussion on for the faculty book club.  Earth needs a new name to indicate we no longer inhabit the hospitable planet we used to.  The consequences of our excess have started to snowball.  It’s still not perceptible today here, nor in B.C. this summer, but his prophetic descriptions make it real. What is perceptible is the continuing failures of political systems at all levels. And yet Jan is running for Mayor and I knock on doors for her.

3:30

Ninety minutes of zazen and a little chanting.  The fast now makes it easy and pleasureable.  The mind less busy.  Afternoon light is almost supernatural.  Colors are radiant, including the blue of cloudless sky.

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4:25

Psalm 104:
From thy high pavilion thou dost water the hills
The earth is enriched by thy provision
Thou makest grass grow for the cattle
And green things for those who toil for man
Bringing bread out of the earth
And wine to gladden men’s hearts
Oil to make their faces shine…
The trees of the land are green and leafy…
The birds build their nests in them
High hills are the haunt of the mountain goat
And boulders the refuge for the rock badger…

The breeze of late afternoon rustles sycamore leaves and then quiets, but a long twisted branch still shudders.  The shadows lengthen and the sun creeps below the tree tops.  The fragrance of cow dung returning to its source in grass and dirt.  A magpie sings his complaint.

Back to Bill McKibben.  My attention drawn from his warnings by the loud chirp of a groundsquirrel close by.  Twenty yards away a coyote lopes silently along the cowpath, the edges of his fur red in the sun.  Higher on the hillside, three more coyotes run in a line. A moment of apprehension, then I go for the camera, but they are gone.

I’ve been thinking about hygiene, since having my teeth cleaned on Wednesday and going to Dr. Malotte on Thursday.  My morning ritual lengthens, reminding me of my father’s: hot bath to reduce joint pain, three medications plus nasal irrigation with nettie pot to reduce sinus infections, water pik and electric toothbrush to reduce gum recession, shaving to reduce decrepitude, 35 minutes meditation to reduce depression and anxiety. But even with the new cushion and posture instruction, its not good for me to sit cross legged, I’ve discovered after several months.  Bending the right knee laterally produces swelling and pain.  Experiment leads me to relief with proper adjustment of the new desk chair. All of this therapy within my power, controlled with habit.

But tonight is Yom Kippur, the annual holy night. I intended to observe by sleeping out, but reneged because of my cough.  Tomorrow I will leave early for a day of outdoor silence.

I have again started searching, taking on a little of  the restlessness and frustration of a lover.  Meditation is not just hygeine, it’s an effort to be open to something more, to clear resistance, to be ready for help if it should come.  And gardening is full of longing and gratitude and fear, and eating is a little sacramental.  The preparation of next Spring’s course is leading me back to classical music.  Attending to Beethoven, Brahms.  Buying some CD’s, listening for texture and structure, a struggle to attend, like to attend to breathing and walking and the sound of waves.  Another title, Mishima’s novel, reading books, finding patterns and meanings and details.  Trying to connect with the books lining my walls, towering over me.

The newspaper and the radio and even the emails on my computer create a world of gloom hard to reconcile with the light on the mountain, the sharpness of the horizon line, the laughter of my grandkids and the returning college students.  Desperation and deception, cruelty and violence, denial or trivialization of what we are doing to each other and our planet.  So much misplaced energy, problems constantly worsened, speeding toward disaster.  And no way to detach from it.  Driving fifty miles a day to keep a little contact with my grandson, putting up yardsigns, watching movies.

What do I want?  The connection with inner and outer worlds that produces the abundance of feeling that finds expression in creativity.

I wont let my alienation from the University–latest outrage disbanding the CSA- alienate me from Poly Land.  I’ve been wondering about the red blanket of vegetation on Poly Mountain since June.  Is it dried monkeyflower or buckwheat?

As soon as I slip into my West Coast Trail boots, my mood lightens and my legs urge me to get started, like the dog when he sees Jan lace her runners. I stride through the silent foggy streets, climb over the fence, and feel the spring of my footfalls through the grass.  The sensation of freedom in the question, which way to go? Feet find a trail of cracked soil showing through trampled grass pointing straight uphill.  Breathing muscles mobilized.  The absence of the forty-pound pack makes the steepening ascent effortless, and the mixture of tarweed and horsemanure pleasures my nostrils. The trail continues beyond the fence.  Two strands of barbed wire slack enough to allow me through.  The sun is a faint disk penetrating the fog, recalling its appearance at Klanawa River.

Perhaps I’ll go to the tree house and sit there and write.  I’ve done it before. The trail winds through the chapparal right to it.  A new resident?  Entering the secluded clearing under the great  oak, I see a  spade and a rake leaning against the twenty foot ladder that reaches the lowest branch.  Ten feet above the tree house a large improvised hammock hangs atop another ladder. As I stare I hear a sleepy “hello?” Not wanting to trespass, I say “Hi, my name’s Steven. I come here every few months.  Do you know E.C. the guy who built this house?”  “Yes, met him once,” answers a voice whose origin seems to be a pile of blankets in the hammock.  I ask if it’s OK to come up, and then mount the lower ladder. At the treehouse platform I see a mop of hair at the edge of the blankets above and try to build more trust.  Yes they know M, they’re his students.  I wrote in the guest ledger here on previous visits.  I climb the next ladder into the bedroom.  Two people snuggle under the blankets, K. and T.  They work with the same environmental organization I do.  I  built a hammock like that forty years ago for kids on our farm in B.C.

After fifteen minutes chat I descend the ladders and continue up the mountain,  serpentine boulders providing foot and handholds.  The fog  now just a ribbon draping Bishop Peak. The dark red scrub I’d been wondering about from the house and while approaching SLO on the freeway is neither monkeyflower nor buckwheat, but deerweed stalks, all the leaves and flowers gone. A huge exclusive patch, easy to walk through. Three years after the fire, it’s choked out all the poison oak.

The Cal Poly Crop Science Department’s decision to kill the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Program may have been cruel and ill advised, but it did provide an effective display of raw power (“Harvest of disappointment,” Aug. 25). Its execution with blitzkrieg haste at a time of year when the university is deserted was well timed to maximize the shock and bewilderment of the many students, faculty, employees, and customers who held a stake in this real community institution.

One wonders if any of the decision- makers has ever shared my experience as a 10-year CSA member—being personally connected to the elemental process of planting, cultivating, harvesting, and cooking food grown by people they knew, in soil they loved. One wonders if these agriculturalists were aware of the decades of dedication invested in this program by visionary volunteers as a tiny offset to the servitude of most of the College of Agriculture to corporate industrial-chemical interests. One wonders if these crop scientists had considered the impact of being left in the lurch mid-season on several local small farmers who had partnered with the CSA.

One also wonders if their bumbling explanations, insulting to any person of intelligence, convinced their own authors or were just a smokescreen for a show of force. The only statement that made any sense in the letter sent to the press and to CSA members was that the program has been running a deficit. Apart from the fact that innovative, educational, and community service projects should not be judged simply by the bottom line of short-term profitability, a reasonable approach to the CSA’s financing problems would be for Cal Poly to activate some of its educational resources and opportunities—for instance in agricultural marketing and distribution—to help it thrive.

The last meeting’s moderator was Rob Rutherford, Professor of Animal Science, Director of the Sheep Unit, veteran Sustainability activist, voracious reader whom I liked to call our Good Shepherd. He’d selected a book called Resilience Thinking, as our text for the day. It introduced a concept new to me, which for some people was replacing the idea of Sustainability at the cutting edge of environmental discourse.  It emphasized 1)observing processes from multiple scales to understand how very small and very large changes interacted and 2)studying universal cyclic stages of growth, solidification, decay and reconstitution. I’d found the book poorly organized–often redundant, yet in several places too dense in its use of models plotted with three dimensional calculus.  However, its elaboration of the idea of tipping points–when systems lose the capacity to absorb disturbance and flip into conditions with new baselines of equilibrium–seemed applicable to the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill two weeks old at the time, after which the return to the kind of stability implied by “sustainability” seems increasingly unlikely.

Rob had suggested that instead of meeting in our regular location on the fifth floor of the library, we get together at Cheda Ranch, the home of the sheep unit, where he would show us around a landscape that embodied some of the resilience concepts and where he could serve us some of its highly sustainable fruits: fresh lamb, bred, raised and barbequed by his students.

I biked out a little early on that glorious May morning, approaching the ranch through a gate across the road from the Poultry Unit, one of those notorious CAFO’s, which kept five hens in each two foot square cage, which I had visited with my Cal Poly Land students a few years ago.  The sight of the old Cheda barn nestled in the vegetation around Stenner Creek and guarded over by the monolith of Bishop Peak, recalled the many times I had made the pilgrimage to this historic hardly known corner of the University’s large land holdings.

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I crossed the creek and sat on a haybale in the old barn making some notes for the seminar, and glanced at the student historical project framed on the wall,

used on the website that one group produced to spread the word about this place after Rob had given them a tour

and introduced them to the idea of holistic management.

A red shouldered hawk fat from hunting gophers that lived in the barn’s basement settled on a fencepost,

reminding me of the hawk in Mary Oliver’s poem that my environmental literature class read by the little reservoir up the hill while watching the raptors she described

This morning
the hawk
rose up
out of the meadow’s  browse
and swung over the lake—
it settled
on the small black dome
of a dead pine,
alert as an admiral,
its profile
distinguished with sideburns
the color of smoke,
and I said: remember
this is not something
of the red fire, this is
heaven’s fistful
of death and destruction,
and the hawk hooked
one exquisite foot
onto a last twig
to look deeper
into the yellow reeds
along the edges of the water
and I said: remember
the tree,  the cave
the white lily of resurrection
and that’s when it simply lifted
its golden feet and floated
into the wind, belly-first,
and then it cruised along the lake—
all the time its eyes fastened
harder than love on some
unimportant rustling in the
yellow reeds—and then it
seemed to crouch high in the air, and then it
turned into a white blade, which fell.

Not noticing me, Rob drove a little cart past the barn entrance loaded with folding chairs and tables and headed toward the sheep paddock where he’d arranged for us to meet.  Down the road from the reservoir four members of the book club came racing on their bicycles and scaring off the hawk.

Four more people moseyed over from the parking lot. Rob returned to lead us by foot across the creek and riparian corridor which had recently been returned to health as a result of proper sheep grazing management after decades of degradation caused by earlier overuse and later neglect.  Last winter two good sized steelhead trout were observed there, illustrating the principle of resilience.

At our meeting place upstream, Rob had placed paper bags full of raw wool (yessir, yessir) on chairs for each of us arranged to enjoy sunshine or shade.  This was the perfect fibre, he noted, stronger than steel, durable, waterproof, and produced by animals transforming vegetation created from water, soil and sunshine with no other inputs. I said nothing about the classic account of the effect of sheep on landscape and rural economy found in Thomas More’s Utopia and cited at length by Vananda Shiva.

We exchanged widely divergent impressions of Resilience Thinking, a couple of people planning to assign it in their classes, others having no use for it.  The sheep flock came as close  as the electric fence permitted, occasionally bleating their opinions.

An hour later, three students arrived in the cart and set barbequed lamb, chopped heirloom tomatoes and other fixings for pita pockets on the white linen covered table.  Even those of us who’d recently converted to vegetarianism couldn’t resist partaking of the marvelous offering grown in our own back yard.

On the walk out to the paddock, Christine had handed me her tabulated results of the questionnaire.  It’s taken me several weeks to consider them. As opposed to student evaluation forms, which I rarely found useful, there was no way to discount the opinions of faculty colleagues.  Ten questionnaires were returned out of probably about twenty distributed by email.  Twelve people were “presenters,” that is actually enrolled in the program, recipients of free books and a stipend and obligated to moderate one session. Seven respondents identified themselves as presenters and five identified themselves as “participants,” regular attendees who were not enrolled.  The non-response rate suggests that the results were skewed positive. Eight respondents were ladder faculty, two were lecturers. Five respondents had been here five years or less and five ten years or more.

Evaluation questions were answered with a number between 1 and 5 along a scale from Disagree to Agree

1.  The readings and discussions were useful to me.    7 fives 3 fours
2.  The time and effort required to participate was well spent.    7 fives 2 fours 1 three
3.  I liked the overall format of the discussion.    7 fives three fours
4.  I would participate in a continuation of the Sustainability Book Club next year with the understanding that copies of the books would be supplied but that stipends would not.  5 fives, 2 fours, 2 threes, 1 two
5. I would recommend participation next year to colleagues.  7 fives and three fours

Two discursive questions followed. “What did you find valuable about the program?” elicited these responses:

• I had two motivations to join the book club – I wanted the encouragement to read new books and I wanted the opportunity to meet and better know colleagues across the colleges who are interested in sustainability (broadly defined). I met both of those objectives.
• The opportunity to read about sustainability from a different perspective.  It was also wonderful to learn that others in our community were interested in advancing their knowledge about sustainability.  Finally, I really enjoyed the conversations.
• Networking… breaking down the Cal Poly silos…
• The presentation of books that I would not read outside this opportunity.  The presentation by other participants and the opinions about issues raised in the books.
• The discussions by colleagues from different colleges, and the monthly schedule for reading one book by all.
• I am roundly enthusiastic about my experience in the SBC and might list any number of things here.  In broad form, it was most illuminating to have a truly interdisciplinary conversation about a series of excellent, often challenging books and ideas.  I learned as much from my colleagues as from the texts and am grateful for the various perspectives to which I was introduced.  My whole notion of “sustainability”—what it is, who the stakeholders are, to whom it applies, etc.—has been significantly revised and expanded over the course of the last year and a half.  This workshop has been extremely important to the development and reinforcement of my research and pedagogical interests and approaches.
• Discussion with colleagues from other disciplines that I didn’t previously know.
• A few books like Biomimicry and Deep Economy
• Books I wouldn’t normally read, perspectives from other members I wouldn’t have thought of myself, getting to know (just a little) instructors from other areas of the university
• Hearing other perspectives because of the interdisciplinary membership.  Presenters did an excellent job.

Each of these echoed my own positive responses. I was nervous before the meetings and excited by them from the first minute to the last.  Having an extended voluntary conversation on a shared topic allowed me to appreciate the wit and wisdom of colleagues. Reading the books closely, whether or not I liked them, offered bracing mental exercise and brought me current on important topics.  A high standard was maintained by each moderator’s prepared introduction of the book, which was preserved for useful reference on the wiki, along with detailed notes on the discussion, outlines of the books’ content and some written reflections by seminar members, including Alypios regular trenchant reviews.

The second question, “Which aspect(s) of the workshop could use improvement?” yielded these comments:

• Attendance was very spotty.
• Quality of the books.  The content was at times more rhetoric than useful, and the essence also got repetitive which became boring.
• More discussion/work on how to tie to curriculum.
• Connection to curriculum development
• Would like to know if there was any consensus on the learning gained and how the learning is going to be actually utilized.  What has the core decision making group achieved.

They also confirmed my assessment. Spotty attendance was partly due to people being away at conferences and having conflicts with teaching schedules and partly to voting negatively with their feet.  However, only one session, last May’s, drew fewer than ten and most drew fourteen or more.

Another concern for me was a sense that a number of attendees hadn’t done much of the homework. This was partly due to the uneven quality of the readings, some of which were poorly edited, overburdened with rhetoric, and overlapping in content. Even two classic Sustainability books that felt like world-changing prophecy when they first came out, Biomimicry and Cradle to Cradle, seemed overly optimistic or questionably argued when reread in the cold light of recent history.

Conditions two years ago, at the time this project was planned were perhaps more hopeful.  Sponsored by the Academic Senate Sustainability Committee, itself an outgrowth of Cal Poly’s becoming signatory to the Talloires Declaration and joining the burgeoning Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education(AASHE), one of the Book Club’s stated intentions was to be an incubator of a large university-wide Introduction to Sustainability course.  A year ago three Club members met to start planning such a class.  Implicit also was an aspiration to follow the strategy for institutional transformation of the kind proposed in Peter Senge’s “The Necessary Revolution.”

But these aspirations never materialized, a significant factor being my own flagging commitment to them.  And what accounts for that?  In the big world, the new Congress and Administration’s being swamped with economic catastrophe and stymied by Republican obstructionism, the failures of Copenhagen, the slowing of progress toward a sane energy policy, the expansion of our wars in Asia, and the general continuation of business as usual in the face of growing crises. Cal Poly history took a parallel course:  budget cuts, threats, and furloughs undermined hopes for experiment and reform, the sudden disappearance of the UNIV program eliminated any institutional framework for mounting interdisciplinary courses, and the Academic Senate Sustainability Committee itself was threatened with dissolution.

Over time, the Book Club itself settled into a comfortable groove. Presenters gave polished introductions, discussion was fluent, strangers became familiar, and  the activity seemed sufficiently satisfying without moving toward goals. The Necessary Revolution was put on hold.

With one exception.  The most prominent theme running through all the books that we read related to food.  Whether in McKibbens call for localism in agricultural production and distribution, Pearce’s account of the water lost and polluted by industrial agriculture around the world, Foer’s expose of CAFO’s and story of his conversion to vegetarianism, Louv’s report on the value of school vegetable gardens, Shiva’s call for resistance to global chemical-food monopolies and rescue of small farmers, all seemed to reinforce the vision of sustainable agriculture and sensible eating habits presented in Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food.  This was amplified in the talks Pollan gave at Cal Poly last October, hosted by our Book Club member, Hunter Francis, and the Sustainable Ag Resource Consortium, recently reinvented as the CAFÉ Center for Sustainability. Cal Poly’s role in the food system controversy put him and fellow member Rob Rutherford in worldwide headlines for a couple of weeks,  highlighted the contrast between sustainability and its opponents, and appears now to be in a state of real transformation.

Our readings on food changed at least two of our members’ behavior in significant ways, turning us from omnivores into qualified vegetarians (fresh lamb raised by friends being an exception, as noted above). In addition they contributed to my tripling the size of my vegetable garden and focusing my own activist energy into developing a working farm, processing facility and distribution system to school lunch and food bank programs on city-owned land. Food seems an arena where on a personal level it’s possible to make strong changes toward sustainability without the major sacrifice of giving up one’s car or one’s  travel plans, and where on a political level, promoting localism can have some appreciable consequence.

The questions on the survey I  had most difficulty answering dealt with the future of this project. Seven out of ten respondents said they would continue in it if offered next year and ten out of ten said they would recommend it to faculty colleagues.  The Center for Teaching and Learning has offered continuing financial and logistic support.  But given my misgivings, do I want to stay involved?

After weeks of vacillating now I can say yes.  Yesterday I started hunting for possible titles and came up with nine books published in the last two years that sound intriguing.  I’d like to try alternate formats for some meetings, such as reading and commenting on blogs like Andrew Revkin’s dot.earth or Real Climate.com, or picking a theme like oil addiction instead of a book to discuss.  So whether or not the Club will meet again next year will now, as they say, depend upon enrollment.

Doris “Granny D” Haddock died peacefully today in her Dublin, New Hampshire family home at 7:18 p.m. Tuesday, March 9, 2010. She was 100 years old. Born in 1910 in Laconia, New Hampshire, she attended Emerson College and lived through two world wars and the Great Depression. She was an activist for her community and for her country, remaining active until the return of chronic respiratory problems four days ago.

I only met Doris once briefly when she visited San Luis Obispo in connection with the Cal Poly Preface Reading Program but she touched me permanently.  As I seek ways to adapt to growing old in a world that feels easy to abandon, her love of life, her pride in her past, her urgent concern with the future, her fighting spirit, and her refusal to give up in spite of disappointment, provide me with guidance and inspiration.  What a sad irony it is that during her last few months, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that, for the time being at least, reverses so much of what she worked for. Finally now she gets a break from that relentless struggle.  Or perhaps, somewhere, her spirit still is on the march.

Two freshman student responses to Granny D’s visit to Cal Poly in 2004

Go Granny Go!

When I got to Cal Poly this fall, I soon learned that not too many people actually read the shared reading book, Granny D., You’re Never Too Old to Raise a Little Hell.  Furthermore, those who did read it did not really like it.  I was surprised because I loved reading the book!  I love to travel and have been to most of the states of our country, so I loved hearing about her adventures in the different states.  In addition, I have gotten really into politics over the summer, and I have loved forming my political identity and views.  Doris “Granny D” Haddock is very inspirational, and she demonstrates what a difference one person can make.

I have looked forward to hearing Granny D. speak since I read just a few pages of the book.  I was very excited to finally have the opportunity last Friday night when Granny D. gave her speech entitled “I am in the Example Business.”  She is an engaging speaker, and it was delightful to hear her.  I liked how her speech started regarding writing a cheaper and shorter book, although I was not one of the students with an “independence streak” (at least as far as this book goes).  I liked how she drew us in with her stories of New England autumns, which I remember vividly from the year I lived in Massachusetts.  Additionally, I loved all the “political stuff” and her stories of life in New Hampshire.  My favorite part of her speech was when she said, “We cannot move the world toward our wisdom and love so long as we permit political systems that run on greed and fear instead of love and ideas.”  At the end of the speaking, I enjoyed the question and answer time.  For example, her sticker that said “Vote Dammit!” and when Dennis Burke told her that a question was “regarding Iraq.”  Throughout her speech, I loved to applaud her and give her standing ovations.

Attending Granny D’s speech was one of the most enjoyable things I have done at Cal Poly.  It was motivational, and I felt “the hero inside my heart.”  Granny D. is one of my heroes, and she is what this country is all about!

Granny D

When I found out Granny D was coming to speak at Cal Poly, I was excited but did not think it would be worth my time. Looking back to the event and reflecting on what she said, I am extremely glad that I decided to attend! As in her book, her speech was filled with inspiration, politics, life lessons, biographical anecdotes, and of course humor. Her opening statement “Had I known that 3,000 of you would be forced to buy and read my book instead of enjoying your summer, I certainly would have written a cheaper and shorter book” had the crowd roaring with laughter. That statement was a perfect example to explain her personality. She is a person who loves life and has made her mark in the world and will continue to do so in the United States Senate if she gets elected.

I enjoyed learning about life in her small hometown of Peterborough, New
Hampshire. Her description of autumn made me want to become a “Leaf Peeper”! Peterborough seems to have a lot in common with San Luis Obispo and through the examples she gave, it made me want to get involved here in my new hometown and find out about local issues since I am a citizen. The fact that a play was written about the town struggles showed what a tight- knit community Peterborough is and how it is good that people don’t take things too seriously in the end. There has to be a sense of humor to get through life and not let differences divide one another. That message was strong throughout her talk.

It was nice that the forum was opened for questions. It was good to hear about local issues and hear what Granny D had to say. She is a person who knows her stuff and is not afraid to tell you. She has and will continue to fight for what she believes in until she gets what she knows is right. The United States Senate is a good move for Granny. She will be a strong influence and I believe a good influence to the senators. She will make changes for the better. Granny D will make America better and keep its ideals alive and on track.

My notes in preparation for the discussion of Granny D, during the 2004 Preface Program at Cal Poly

I.   Introduction
A.    This is a discussion—an exchange of impressions and ideas
B.    In a good discussion you don’t  expect to leave with the same ideas and opinions that you entered with.
C.    I’m hoping that in the course of this discussion we all will have express ideas and reactions to the book and its subject matter, and then allow the ideas that we came with be modified, enriched, reversed or deepened by listening to others.  One of the questions I’d like to end with is how has the discussion changed your original response.
D.    So no matter how strongly expressed they are, let’s try to take what say and hear during the first part of this hour as somewhat tentative.
E.    Have you talked about this book with other members of your group or with anyone before our discussion today?
F.    What were some of the things you said about it? And what people you spoke to said.  What did you dislike and what did you like?  Was it a good choice for this immense project.
G.    I’m 62,  heading toward retirement, recently turned  grandfather.  I have no problem identifying with this granny.   But is there any chance you can you connect with such an old person.  Is it possible for 18 year olds to do so?   How do you relate to old people?
II.    Genre
A.    Writing a book—what is a book; relation of book to journal
B.    Journaling—142-3
C.    Journey
1.    Beginning, middle and end—road trip; hike;
2.    pilgrimage—Canterbury tales, Divine Comedy, Odyssey—the adventure journey and self discovery
3.    Travelogue—On the road; America—love song to the country and the culture—Jack Kerouac—meeting the people…relation to politics
4.    What makes people go on journeys
a)    Thoreau—death of his brother, goes to the woods
b)    Get out of your comfort zone
c)    Renew yourself
D.    Autobiography—through the introduction of memories
III.    Structure and Plot
A.    Structure and style and genre—on writing
B.    Title and subtitle
C.    Forward, Overture, 3 parts, epilog, appendix, speech excerpts, grannyd.com
D.    Part I
1.    Small quirky band—atmosphere of isolation and ordeal
2.    Isolation in desert
3.    Lack of media attention 29
4.    Crossing colorado river brings Marine corps band playing happy birthday and earns credibility
5.    Almost dies from pneumonia and dehydration—rushed to hospital and recovers
6.    Idea of creating a groundswell of support with the walk
7.    Going from disintegration of community and loss of place at the table to being surrounded by friends 80
E.    Part II
1.    Coming alive—excitement of Texas
2.    New York Times reporter—taken seriously
3.    Walking over the mountains and remembering climb of Katahdin and reflecting on mountaintops and cloudsplitters
4.    Crossing pecos river—center of the world—boundary of the far west
5.    Reform Party address; Ross Perot; Flies to New Hampshire to work with John McCain; crowds along the road; Flies to Michigan
6.    Closing off second section with retrospection and address to tired reader 145
F.    Part III
1.    Into the south, reverse of falling out with Ken and tribute to him
2.    Linking up with civil rights movement—memories and present-day; Dick Gregory
3.    New awareness that there are no parental leaders out there—it’s us  195
4.    Long autobiographical narrative about her courtship and marriage
5.    Making way across Tenn and Kentucky—opponent Mitch McConnell
6.    Hills getting steeper; Alaska story from 1960—saving the eskimos from Edward Teller
7.    The whiteout in the blizzard—death is an illusion  231
8.    The skiing trip in the snow
9.    Arlington cemetery—life and death
10.    Meeting with old friends like heaven  242-243
11.    End of the pilgrimage, parading through Washington [like Canterbury, St. John de Compostela, Jerusalem]
12.    Speech at Lincoln Memorial
13.    Arrested in Capitol
14.    Thankful for the  troubles that have shaped me 257
15.    Happy endings finally reveal themselves and flow slowly into the bright and mysterious river of the divine 257 –conclusion
16.    Thanks reader for spending time with her
IV.    Characters
A.    Doris–Present
1.    Self-assertive, confidence grows, becomes a Moses; elder—authority; nothing to lose
2.    Vulnerable and humble and generous
3.    Repetitious and garrulous?
4.    Righteous but unorthodox
5.    Impious but religious
6.    Self conscious—seeing self in others’ eyes  6  Losing self—ego
7.    No longer a village elder; woman scorned; no place at the table
8.    Flamboyance—parade at Rosebowl; grand arrival in Washington
9.    Pain—hip and back  20 [my aching back]; falling apart 27; coming alive 83-5 (the pains)
10.    Cries herself to sleep with pain and grief for loss of husband
11.    Still sexy—a man magnet—attractions to Ken and other male and females
12.    The culture hero.  Her heroics and daring; people’s  response—hugs and worship; expands possibilities of life
B.    Doris—past
1.    Tuesday morning academy—voluntary association 8—self education
2.    Felt backward because dropped out of college to marry Jim
3.    Dundee 66—more walking
4.    On stage—crescent moon70
5.    Learning the power of her persuasion; regret for Sybil, don’t make fun of anyone  92
6.    Overhearing mother say she was most difficult child—wonder if she’s mine;  Doris’ terrible hurt 126
7.    Mother’s hatred of Germans because of brother’s death in war
8.    Not strong enough to stand up for persecuted minority
9.    Scar tissue from social insecurity and class consciousness from being a servant while in college 187
10.    Courtship and Secret marriage; kicked out of college 197
11.    Alaska
12.    Fighting the Interstate  229
C.    Companions
1.    Doug—quirky vegetarian, looking for his groove 25
2.    Ken Hechler – 84 year-old West Virginia Sec. State
D.    Family and Friends
1.    Jim—developmentally disabled
2.    Supportive but challenging relationship—parent-child role reversal  12
3.    Children, grand children, great grand children
V.    Themes
A.    Journey of self discovery;
1.    mission; ordeal; challenge; accomplishment—having stories to tell and forming
2.    call of the road—wanting to be on the road—jack kerouac, etc. –hitchhiking and adventuring
B.    Walking—using your feet—personal power, human scale, modesty and power
1.    Noticing things, greeting people  58
2.    Political Marches—MLK, march on Washington, pilgrimage
3.    My patented method of putting one foot in front of the other 83
C.    Pain and loss
1.    Of youth and beauty; the walk made her 20 years younger 252
D.    Heroism
1.    Self discipline and training and extraordinary achievement
a)    Getting in Shape  — training and preparation with letters of introduction [Reading this during the Olympics and with victor Plata in mind]
b)    Falling apart in the desert 27
c)    Sleeping the ground; dealing with traffic
2.    Ego and selflessness
a)    She’s being honored as an elder 59
b)    Wanting a place at the table 79
c)    First time in my life not afraid of what someone might think of me 254-5
3.    God does seem to favor gate-crashing heroism  143
4.    Taking on risk  252
5.    The blizzard—hard work  238
6.    Motivational speech to students—your life is not trivial…241
7.    Arlington cemetery—sacrificial death 243
E.    The personal, emotional, political and spiritual-religious
F.    Old Age—life a journey
1.    Loss and defeat—her husband and friend; her own body—but miraculous extension of energy and rejuvenation
2.    Secret to a happy life…help other people until you don’t notice your own needs and pains anymore  39
3.    Nursing homes; taking care of elderly 40-41
4.    Jim had Alzheimers 10 years—finally stops eating 40
5.    Rich past comes back with memories of Dundee in commune  70
6.    The ache du jour—after forty its always something.  But after 85 its always nearly everything  84
7.    Adult children interfering 97
8.    Loss of youth and beauty 127
9.    Arlington cemetery—sacrificial death 243
G.    Spiritual enlightenment
1.    Fear of death—fear of death leads to fear of life for life leads to death 44 [related to her near death experience]
2.    Journaling and meditation 142
3.    Granny Luck; providential career  142
4.    Eternity in blizzard 231—Thornton Wilder…Old Einstein
5.    Responsibility and risk when taking on leadership 252
6.    Moses had wonderful timing –comparison 235
7.    Fitting in with God’s plan—the towpath in the blizzard
8.    Using up ourselves in a good cause 239
9.    Redemption from sin  240
10.    Happy endings finally reveal themselves and flow slowly into the bright and mysterious river of the divine 257 –conclusion
11.
H.    Practical wisdom
1.    Secret of long and happy marriage: never let sun go down on your anger 30
2.    You need to have a purpose to your life and you need friends.  Friends often come from your commitments, your passions…you need to give yourself away  35
3.    Secret to a happy life…help other people until you don’t notice your own needs and pains anymore  39
4.    See a therapist 41
5.    Managed to stay married for 62 years—great sex is answer, meaning both people enjoy it.  59
6.    Moving from feeling excluded to becoming a leader and thereby making friends 79
7.    Pains and distractions from pains  84-5
8.    Parents need to convey positive self image and also self reliance, character and empathy  126
9.    Meaningful things—202 people have a need to live a life that expresses their values…culture makes us people of great longing for meaning
I.    Values: wanting to be of use  7
J.    Love and Friendship and Family
1.    Husband jim still with her
2.    Her father and his role in the family—kingly power resulting from ability to take care of us, discharge responsibility  90
3.    Together and parting and reunion with Ken Hechler
K.    Political organizing
1.    How to approach people  16
2.    Talking to strangers—sense of community
3.    Talking to media 20
4.    Senator Kyl—a bad guy—she makes him look bad
a)    Luxury office  46  contrast to everyone else’s accolades
5.    Congressman Kolbe—courteous opponent
6.    Power of new york times 93
7.    Meaningful things—202 people have a need to live a life that expresses their values…culture makes us people of great longing for meaning
8.    Politics as personal thing 203—passionate
9.    Max’s connections …access is the soul of politics…should never be sold for cash  225
L.    Campaign finance reform and other populist movements
1.    Lost sense of belonging to America  7
2.    Powerlessness; only money talks
3.    No room of regular citizens
4.    Democratic ideal—populism—small towns, chambers of commerce
5.    Politicians not interested in little people: interstate highway system vs.  small towns
6.    Challenge to take it on –Tuesday academy  9—letter writing campaign
7.    Anti corporate, small businesses
8.    Speech and arg 36-7
9.    Eisenhower’s interstate program he copied from Nazis 38—hates the interstate
10.    Walmart vs. small town 55 annihilate small businesses
11.    Unhealthy vs. healthy communities
12.    HMOs and Drug companies in cahoots with crooked politicians—popular perception
13.    Cloudsplitters: her heros—John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt: populism and progressivism, American Mt. Sinai
a)    Of the people, By the people, for the people
b)    Roosevelt vs. Taft; big money won  102
c)    Progressive party; reform energy
14.    Long X ranch cowboys agree politicians are in pockets of the wrong people 106
15.    The Chatauqua 115—populist education
16.    Val the opponent of nuclear waste dumping in her area  121—representatives no good to her
17.    Reformists all over battling the big bad bullies—cf. Orion
18.    Reform Party—Ross Perot, big money…different from her progressive populism
19.    Dsicovery of public financing of campaigns 153-5
20.    Attack on fundamentalist preachers  155
21.    In the steps of Dr. King 172
22.    West Virginia struggles agains the coal mine owners—labor unions in 1920s, stop mountain top removal today
a)    Ken’s long struggles, black lung disease, Coal King thugs murder Jock Yablonski
b)    Ken as hero  177
23.    Speech at Lorraine Motel—equal opportunity, economically divided—blames laws favoring wealthy passed by their politicians  193
24.    Destruction  of human scaled cities and towns by developers suburbias and family farms and family units by corporate policies 215
25.    Speech in Washington—her march proves that people do care—shame on you senators and congressmen 248
26.    Modest bill against soft money
M.    American culture
1.    Creeping subdivisions of LA  19  pollution and look-alike
2.    Enjoyment of small towns and quirky places
a)    29 Palms
3.    Trailer parks on Colorado River—runaway grandparents—hometowns ruined by too many vehicles
4.    Tapestry of America—SEWING, FABRICS 43
5.    The reservation—
a)    development stops; middle of nowhere.  Good Morning America promises to come but doesn’t show up—typical
b)    outlines the ancient canal system of Pima Maricopas and attributes invention of Maple syrup to indians
c)    a potlatch of gifts
d)    vignettes of impoverished Indians
e)    causes of Native American suffering: unresolved political defeat and inability to discharge traditional duties—diabetes
6.    what’s behind the curtains 61 Sigma chi and biker bar
7.    Membres—free love commune
8.    Being a valued and honest employee and paid accordingly—honest and modest profit  [is this romanticising earlier capitalism?] 90
9.    Disgrace of illegal immigrants dying 98
10.    Baseball and cowboys and stars spangled banner 125
11.    Jeffersonian Hi
12.    Getting to know the alien west and south  149
13.    Black and white—memories of Ida and Dilsey while working at Nantucket hotel; class difference and racial difference—rope on the beach  162
14.    Meaningful things—202 people have a need to live a life that expresses their values…culture makes us people of great longing for meaning
15.    Destruction  of human scaled cities and towns by developers suburbias and family farms and family units by corporate policies 215
VI.    Style
A.    Descriptive and narrative—
1.    opening description on p. 1
2.    the flying hat 5;
3.    dust devil  87
4.    dundee story—lost and found and
5.    crossing the ice with Sybil 90-92
6.    from the heat to the cold;
7.    power of imagination; snows of imagination melted—interweaving of two stories past and present
B.    Dramatization—old man on the road  6
C.    Symbolism
1.    Desert 3-4 and blizzard
2.    Cloudsplitters  99ff  mountainous place memory of mountain go tell it on the mountain  mt. Sinai and Moses; prophetic language 103
D.    Structured by voyage and chronology, but also associational—going from riding in car with son to Tuesday academy discussion, and then addressing reader to put us in position of looking at Jim  11
E.    Humor and sarcasm  “Mr. Plan-Ahead”  12, Jim’s company  14  on Doug  25, confidential gossip
F.    Always a bit of sexual attraction or memory 133, 205
G.    Structure of individual chapters—beginning middle and end
H.    Direct address to reader at  end of each section, but also throughout—catches us immediately if it doesn’t put us off.
1.
VII.    Discussion questions
A.    Is this a big accomplishment?
B.    What about the anti corporate message—how do you feel about large corporations, multinationals
C.    You need to have a purpose to your life and you need friends.  Friends often come from your commitments, your passions…you need to give yourself away  35
1.    Alternative views
D.    What statements do you disagree with
E.    What did you find attractive about her,  her experience, her cause, ; what unattractive?
F.    Corporate wal-mart destruction of small businesses 55
VIII.    Reader responses
A.    Did you not like the book—hate the book?
B.    Old people—any you relate to? –90 year olds
C.    Grandparental relationships
D.    What are Grannys?
E.    What’s nasty about relating to 90 year olds
F.    What’s interesting about relating to them?
G.    What do they have to offer that 40 or 50 year olds don’t
H.    Youth Against Age—both marginal
I.
J.    Read GrannyD.com responses and others—hero worship; what is hero worship
K.    What would you want to ask or say to her?  Would you want to greet or touch or hug her?
L.    What is her religion?  How does it relate to your religion?
M.    Anybody Google her—she’s running for the Senate

Dennis’s Burke’s Eulogy for Granny
Dublin, New Hampshire, March 14, 2010

Thousands of news services, from Peterborough to Bangkok, from personal diaries to the New York Times, have reported these last few days on the life and death of Doris Haddock. In her life, she did not cure a disease or end a war. She did not write ten symphonies or do whatever normally occasions such notice. So what did she do? It is worth thinking about in this moment.

If people no longer spoke aloud, or if they no longer looked at things with their own eyes or through their own thoughts, if they let others do those things for them, then they would take it as unusual if one among them suddenly spoke up and dared see the world independently, describing without filter or permission the vivid colors and true conditions of the world.

It is difficult to understand why a lady from New Hampshire who did little more than take morning walks–though she sometimes did so without coming back for several years–should be so lionized in death, unless we also consider what has become of the world around her that made her exceptional by comparison. She is seen as exceptional perhaps because the rest of us have become a little too reticent, a little too slow-moving, in response to these times of high challenge.

A thousand people have told me that, when they reach her age, they want to be like Granny D. I have always agreed with them, but we have had it a little wrong. We must not wait until we are 90 or 100; we have to be, even today, a little more like Granny D. Our challenges will not wait for us to age.

Walking down long highways, I remember that sometimes she would want to look at the small things killed beside the road that others could not bear to look at. She was a great artist in fibers and colors, even in how she dressed. No one had a better sense of hat. She would see rich beauty in places where some would never dare look. She seems to have turned off her hearing aids for the lecture when the rest of us were told we must not look here or there, and told how some things must be presumed beautiful or ugly, true or false. She simply and always wanted to see for herself.

Too often we are told what to think, even about ourselves. We are encouraged to trivialize our lives; to participate in our own reduction to mere consumers of products, passive witnesses to history. She wanted to see for herself what she might become, what she might be capable of doing that was helpful to the people she loved, whom were honestly everyone. She could see no defects in others without measuring them against her own shortcomings. Her anger was real and righteous, but it was about things and actions–it never lodged in her heart for long against people, even those whose actions she most opposed.

Because she could see our present democracy clearly, and because she could remember in properly punctuated detail the conditions of this self-governing country in her youth, this young lady of Lake Winnipesauke, this product of New England’s town halls, this elder resident of the lanes where Thornton Wilder wrote “Our Town,” this friend of ours who will be more durable to history than any Old Man of the Mountain, was the truer granite measure of where we have been going as a people and where we must go, one step at a time, into the American future.

The important thing Doris Haddock would have you remember was that she was no more special than you, and that you have the identical power and the responsibility to make a difference in the community and the world.

She received tens of thousands of messages from people who told her they had decided that, if a woman her age of bent back, of emphysema and arthritis, could step forth to be a player on life’s stage, to make a contribution, then so could they, and so would they. And so they did. Those people live all over the world. We can never know what good that legion of people has done and will continue to do.  Have they cured diseases, ended wars, written symphonies?  Remarkably yes, they do important work now all over the world, and they live their lives, by their own accounts, with more satisfaction and meaning because of what they learned by watching our Granny D. And politically, if you care to trace the origins of the present progressive movement, you will find at its root a bare handful of people, including Granny D.

Her youthful energy lives on through those she touched, just as the youthful energy of the people who raised her and taught her many years ago continued on through her. You could hear the voice of Jesse Eldridge Southwick of Emerson College of Oratory in Doris’s every word, and see in Doris’s constant energy the creative joy of her Laconia High School teacher, Grammy Swain. If Doris was partial to the poetry of Robert Frost, it was because she knew him. He was her husband’s freshman English teacher at Amherst. If you ever heard her recite “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” as I did on a desert road, you may as well have been in Frost’s presence. All of those people lived on past their own lifetimes through her.

She was an extension also of those much younger than her, who are with us today. She was an expression of Jim and Libby Haddock’s supportive love and many sacrifices, enabling her to become what she became. Her grandchildren and great grandchildren were her inspiration to keep working for a better world for them. She was an extension of the love and learning of her study group, led by Bonnie Riley and a remarkable circle of friends. Beyond their warm living rooms, Doris traveled on a river of their love and energy. If there were ever a list in marble of the names of the people in her personal world who supported and propelled her, who, in turn, were inspired and loved by her, it would extend three thousand and two hundred miles across America, and then across the seas.

Doris was always a little confounded by her late-life fame. She deeply believed that she was merely fortunate enough to find herself in a good play with a good cast. The old drama student never wanted to be more than a very supportive player, so that the leaders of our democracy might better move us toward the honest, just and kindly democracy ever just ahead, a vision that she kept as close to her thoughts as that old feather in her hat.

She would have us remember that our country is Our Town, that we each have the power and the responsibility to make a difference while we are alive, knowing that what we set in motion today will make a difference long after we are gone.  Far more important than the old bodies we find ourselves patching up and hitching along, we are each also an idea and a vision of the world. We give the rising gift or dark weight of that vision to each person we deeply know. And that idea, that vision, is like the manuscript that grows from an old typewriter that will soon rust away to earth, leaving but the living manuscript. The Idea of us is the real us. The Idea is the living thing that survives because it lives on in our friends, survives in their hearts to help them better interpret and shape the world.

So, at the next turn of history and of opportunity, will we not wonder what Granny D would have said, would have thought?  It is a part of us now, a measuring tool, something new in us that thinks like her. That is Doris alive and still walking with us.

Finally, she would want us to remember to keep working at things and to take walks every day if possible. To send Thank You notes. To keep asking for and expecting honorable change. To stay strong. After the recent Supreme Court decision that did damage to the bill she walked for, she asked me if I thought she might walk across the country again. I told her that she might only be able to do five miles or less a day. She had last month been in Arizona working on a book and doing three miles a morning.  She calculated how long it would take her to get to Washington at 3 to 5 miles per, and decided she needed a quicker way to fix the Supreme Court decision. Well, now it is up to us, of course, and we won’t let her or our country down.

Thank you Doris. You didn’t fear death very much–you told me so. You needn’t have feared it at all.

I see flocks of snowy plovers on the beach as we stop at Surf.  No people for miles.  Offshore a towering oil platform.

Joe and Amy want us to buy a condo in Ketchum for 350K. Stock market is crashing.  I call broker and tell him to sell 100K. The market goes up 500 points.

Working all week at the computer lab on the Field Guide page layouts.  Mary sits next to Brian and points with her finger at the screen telling him precisely what changes to make in Photoshop and Quark.  Bob H., who wrote the book on Photoshop gives me advice on how to improve some difficult slide scans.  The confusion and misinformation  circulating among us is partially cleared up.  Brian working in the lab till 11:00 p.m. I pick it up there after the concert.

Claire is working as a “bookkeeper” for a friend’s garage.  I’m looking after Ian, whom I take to Laguna lake to visit ducks and playground and then to computer lab.

Train has just rounded Point Conception, heading east now, sun’s out, fog on mountain top, ocean white caps ignited.

I spend today and tomorrow with a printout of the second proof of the book, making corrections, writing notes and photo credits and the acknowledgements and table of contents.  Today Anna assembles the colored printout into a new comp and then Brian and Mary move forward with the page by page image processing and detailed layout. My meditations are consumed with the details and fears of more unforeseen pitfalls. I take little joy in the baby steps of progress, now that the thrill of scanning has worn off. I had no idea how many of them still lay ahead to realize Mary’s uncompromising plan.  All the organization and talent she’s devoted to this I regard with impatience.

I’m also coming down from the 60th birthday festivities that Jan orchestrated on the weekend. Friday night was the dinner party with Vicky T., Melody, Paula, Mike, Lindsey H.  The fresh baked Ahi and salade Nicoise were delicious.  Jan announced the occasion at 10:00 p.m.  After private festivities in the morning, we went to see Oma, who perked up after I found her hearing aid and a missing lens of her glasses. Back home I loaded mulch from the pile in front by bucket to the back yard.  At noon I heard a noise on the patio and spun around to find the silver-haired figures of Caesar and Penny. I hadn’t seen them in over a year—since Claire’s wedding. A fine surprise. Later came Ruth, then Claire, Dennis and the baby and a trip to Pete’s café for dinner.

Scanning my own photos taken with a professional camera in a professional lab with professional equipment.  All slides and negatives in a binder in perfect order with the complete comp version of the book to check against.  After many false starts and rescans, the procedure is now smooth.  Sky has been a wonderful guide and hostess, stopping in four times yesterday to give Mary and me moral support, taking us to lunch in her new Audi at Tutti’s in Montecito, where Mary wanted to go to see movie stars, then to dinner after a 13 hour day at another Italian restaurant in Montecito where we met Richard his his daughter and son.

The feeling now a little like at the end of writing a chapter or the introduction of a book…things cruising, falling into place, producing better than expected yield.  Just the opposite of slogging through and getting delayed and needing to redo.

Richard insists on paying and then we drive to his and Sky’s new house—a palace, which reminds me of J’s house on Edna Ranch where Jan’s bookgroup Christmas party took place last year. Two-story roof and beams, stonework, light arch windows, stained redwood siding, three car garage.

Being in this place and having the help of these folks feels right at this stage of the project…after years of begging and scraping and doing things alone and wrong, and redoing, and going backwards rather than forwards and not knowing what’s next and being humiliated by errors and delays.  How much unhappiness and discouragement and anxiety went into this project.  Not, as they say, a job for the faint hearted.

How will the book turn out? How will it be received?  Shakespeare and the Bible was best I could do, got some fine reviews, also panned.

Taking my own pictures for the book, as commanded by Sky and Mary, has gone from an ordeal to a challenge that I now hate to relinquish.

On the train back to SLO

Sun golden on the ridge of Point Sal.  We creep by the haunted junkyards of Casmalia on  a siding as the dominant freight passes on the right.  The seat is comfortable, the train almost empty.  The cost of taking me home with my CDS and Giggy, my portable hard drive filled with digital images is ten or a hundred times the twenty two dollar fare. I’m in no hurry for this trip to end, though I relish the thought of seeing Jan tonight. Reading “Headlong” by Michael Frayn, the novel she recommended, is a rich indulgence, the narrator like me an academic in constant dialogue with himself.  The gentle rocking movement and the insulated quiet unlike any other form of travel I know.

One slight breach in this contentment: when I met Sky at Armstrong she was pissed that I left scans for her to finish tomorrow morning, since she had so much else to get done and was jetlagged after her return from Thailand.  I had an excuse–I thought she and Mary had agreed to finish them together–but I could hardly bear the shame.

The pink sun was just grabbed by the gray fog.  The sound of the horn as we cross the Santa Maria Valley: muted, melodious, melancholy. Pink-orange glow behind the chocolate brown of fields of blue-green broccoli.  Diner, Eucalyptus, Forests, the Dune Lakes, the crop fields of Arroyo Grande at the base of Nipomo Mesa.

Then in the afternoon light, took a number of vegetation shots, and headed back to campus for field 25 and to try to replicate Dale’s schematic landscape shots in higher resolution.