Where I'm From

At Women's Retreat, we usually have an ice-breaker on Friday night where we can share things about ourselves. This year we had a fill-in-the-blank poem about where we come from. We enjoyed this activity very much, and here is how I filled out my poem.

Daylight Creeping

Some of my lessons end at 5:00, and the last week of December, the lessons end in dark. I tell my students that when I see them in January, it won't be quite as dark at 5:00. As I look outside now at 5:05, it IS a little lighter. Hooray!

"The shortest day has passed, and whatever nastiness of weather that we may look forward to in January and February, at least we notice that the days are getting longer. Minute by minute they lengthen out. It takes some weeks before we become aware of the change."

- Vita Sackville-West

Dawn of the Condor

One of the items on my summer wish list was to write a poem or a song. I decided to write a poem. One no longer sees condors at Machu Picchu, although they used to fly there. I imagined what it would be like to see one first thing in the morning.

National Haiku Poetry Day

Today is National Haiku Poetry Day, smack dab in the middle of National Poetry Month. The Haiku Foundation encourages public haiku-reading events, and the closest celebration to Claremont, an open mic night, is in Sierra Madre at Bean Town Coffee Bar from 7:30 on.

The last kid picked

running his fastest

to right field

- Mike Dillon

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Day 17 - Clutter Cleanse: 

Old black pants 

waiting on the back porch

for new home

Of National Poetry Month and Baseball

"Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things." 

- Robert Frost

Coming through the entire month of March offers its rewards for me, and I don't even live in a place where we get real winter. But after the short month of February and before the glorious greening of April, the long, long month of March stretches out.

And now it's April, and there is baseball to watch, baseball to listen to, and every team has a clean start. This is the next year for which we've waited.

April is also National Poetry Month, which often means little to the general public, but for the occasional NPR stories. 

In honor of baseball season and National Poetry Month, you can peruse this website which has complied baseball poems and songs.

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Day 3 - Clutter Cleanse: I found a little salt and pepper shaker combo that I don't even remember getting. Who needs more than one set? Donated.

Spirit of Women - As Exhibited in the Arts

Celebrating women at church yesterday included the morning service with litany derived from the poetry written at the women's retreat, an anthem sung by Joyful Voices (the women's choir) and a hymn composed by one of our members.

In the evening, the Spirit of Women dinner featured a presentation by one of Claremont's artists, Eleanor Scott Meyers.  She showed us a number of her paintings, some of which can be seen at her beautiful website. Her art style of Plein Air comes from the French "in the open air" as the French impressionists who paid particular attention to the effects of light in their paintings.

Eleanor Scott (the name Scott is part of her first name, not last) is another example of the tremendous talent at Pilgrim Place, and another reason why it would be great to retire there. I would not mind owning one of her works.

Song of the Coyote

On Tuesday I wrote that I would be leading a poetry-writing session with women from my church. Today was that day, and I was immensely pleased and impressed with the variety of poetry that the women in the group wrote and shared. Using some Walt Whitman as a prompt, the "assignment" was to write a poem where you invite someone to come with you to and to share your secret power.

In the wee hours last night while out at the women's retreat at the Oak Glen Retreat Center I heard coyotes, and they were the inspiration for my poem. Here it is:

Song of the Coyote

Listen to the howls of the coyotes.
The song is in them,
  the song is in me.
You do not know it yet, but if you come with me,
If you come with the coyotes into
  the dark of the night
  you will know the song of the
  coyote in you.

We will run with the dark mist
  in our faces as we
  howl a duet
Our tails behind us, rising and dipping

And when we reach the place ...
  we reach that sacred place
where voices and songs of all time
  and before time and voices
  from time yet to come
our song will entwine within
  and throughout
  the communion of
  all breath

Cloud Nine

Soon I am going to be leading a poetry-writing workshop for a group of church women. I have done these types of activities with my daughters and their friends when they were in jr high and high school, so it will be interesting and fun to see what it's like with adults of all ages.

We will be writing our drafts on regular lined paper, but I wanted to have some nice paper for our final draft, and it occurred to me that Claremont has not only Stamp Your Heart Out for scrapbooking, but also this upscale paper store in the Village. I decided to look into Cloud Nine on 2nd Street, and I came away with exactly what I was looking for. Small pages of a variety of colors (I hope no one fights over what color they get!) from pastels to rich hues.

 This Queen of Hearts in the window display has kind of a scary look in her eyes...

Reflections on Inaugural Arts

Four years ago, I was enchanted by the quartet of Air and Simple Gifts performed at Obama's first inauguration. The small kerfuffle about the musicians air-playing to their own prerecorded performance did not bother me (how can one play instruments in such freezing cold weather?). It certainly didn't hurt that I already enjoy the music of Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma and John Williams, as well as the Shaker hymn on which this piece was arranged.

This year I was taken with the poem (only the fifth inaugural poem in history). I did not know the poet, Richard Blanco (aside from the NPR piece on him I heard earlier this month), but the poem reminded me of Walt Whitman, a poet whose work I've known most of my life. Hector Tobar (author of recently mentioned The Barbarian Nurseries) wrote his reflections on the poem and poet for the LA Times here.

Giving the arts a prominent role in such events heightens the importance of any such occasion, and helps justify what I already firmly believe - the arts are not fluffy extras in education, but are part of the core.

Waiting for Fall

Because I think it is healthy for me (and anyone) to goof off and do things for fun, and because I was inspired by a these articles (this one on a poetry box and this one on a biking poet), I made this little video yesterday afternoon. We are waiting patiently and not so patiently for the days to start cooling down....

On Plums

The Annual Plum Post

Not too many plums on the tree this year. Not very much plum splat. No plum jam or chutney. 

I thought I'd try a new recipe and found something called Plum Clafoutis - no dough which seemed very simple. Of course, the hard part is "quarter the plums". Anyone know a good way to cleanly get those darn pits out? I marinated the rather squished plums with lemon juice, then cooked over low flame in butter sprinkled with a little sugar and cinnamon.  I don't think this is what is was supposed to look like, but plums over vanilla ice cream wasn't all bad.

Haiku Revisions

The Village Pipers has asked me to compose some recorder music to accompany some haiku.  So many possibilities!  The summer will allow more time for exploration, but here is a start.  The ideas in haiku can arrive quickly to mind, but playing around with words and phrasing can make the poem sparkle a little more.

Here is a first pass at one poem.

Here is a revision.  I wonder what the final version will look like.

Schiller!

So, you know that one of our Carleton classmates, Bob Daily, writes for Desperate Housewives.  I blogged about our visit to the set of the show at Universal Studios this past January.

Word has slipped that Schiller will appear on the final episode of the ABC comi-drama, airing this coming Sunday.  Most of you will ask yourselves, who the heck is Schiller, what does he have to do with Carleton, and why should I even care?

I could spend quite a few paragraphs of the details of Schiller, or you could read about the importance of the bust of this German poet at this Carlwiki page.  I will give you a brief summary here.

It is a long tradition that a small statue of Schiller is to be held in secret by some Carl (or Carls) and must be shown at very public events.  Schiller appears at homecoming games, convocations, and other local events, but he has also been known to appear with Bill Clinton at Carleton's 2000 commencement, at the end of the Colbert Report, and at a taping of A Prairie Home Companion.

Also appearing in the final episode, Bob will have a cameo appearance as Moving Man #2 (it would appear that Marc Cherry is Moving Man #1).

For us Carls, this is considered pretty extremely exciting news.  For the rest of you, I promise to return to Life in Claremont  tomorrow.

End-of-the-Year Dinner

The Claremont Colleges are in preparation for the end of yet another school year.  Alumni weekend has come and gone with the various performing groups strutting their stuff.  The Claremont Concert Orchestra  performed, along with the Concert Choir, the Brahms Requiem. (You can read my music blog about the concert and my thoughts on Brahms here.)

As per tradition, the choir and orchestra shared a lovely dinner at Scripps' Malott Commons to celebrate yet another great season of music-making.  Community members of the ensembles (aka "the grown-ups") sit together and enjoy a chance to talk about a number of things.

Portabello mushroom

This year our conversation took a silly turn.  One of the forks at the table had a bent tyne, and that somehow led to a discussion about a runcible spoon. Pretty soon a few of us started quoting as much of the Edward Lear poem "The Owl and the Pussycat" by memory as we could.  When we faltered, someone would check their smartphone and get us back on track.  I had not thought about that poem for a long time, and it certainly produced a few giggles at our table.  Bong-trees, anyone?

Banks of Fog

We always start our day with some NPR (KVCR to be precise) including the weather report for the Inland Empire.  This morning we were warned to be on the lookout for banks of fog.  I thought about that phrase, and it occurred to me that it would be fun to write a poem that had the phrase "beware the banks of fog, my son" (with apologies to Lewis Carroll).  However, the day got away from me with this and that and a bunch of time spent with friends playing music (string trio and recorder group), so a poem never materialized.

But, I DID take a few photos this morning before I went to the gym (and before the fog dissipated), and I DID think about my favorite fog poem by Carl Sandburg. Here's a fun little youtube video of a fast-moving fog bank....

Lemons!

Our lemon tree is heavy-laden right now.  

Enjoy this poem Ode to the Lemon by Pablo Neruda.

Seasonal Haiku

Claremont Haiku

The Claremont Courier is publishing haiku submitted by readers.  Haiku must pertain directly to Life in Claremont (Capitals mine).  I submitted this particular haiku, but it has not been printed.  I think perhaps that it's because I sent it in after the Pilgrim Festival and the content is no longer timely.  At least that is what I've told myself.

Plum Time!

The plums have suddenly started ripening, and I hope we can keep up with them!  I have eaten two this morning, standing over the sink as the juice runs down my chin.  Can jam be far behind?

I am reminded of the William Carlos Williams poem, This is Just To Say which you can read here.

Plums and Peaches

Santa Rosa Plums in June

Heavy with a soft perfume

Red and ripe and overdue

Peaches to ensue