Captain's Log #22
11/12/17
“But there aren’t any pictures!”
I was one of those kids in junior high who walked to school
reading a book, probably a Ray Bradbury or Robert A. Heinlein. I volunteered to
work in the school library, better to discover new adventures. The librarian
invited me and a couple other kids to attend a book fair! A whole auditorium
filled with people talking about books! I don’t remember the featured speaker
but the subject was to encourage young people to write and tell stories.
In 5th grade my teacher displayed a couple of 8
by 10’s of different scenes and invited us to compose. Something attracted me
to the mixed evergreen forest. The Creative Source grabbed me by the arm and
dragged me into the forest. It was like hearing voices in my head, scary. The
theme was some convoluted, emotional story about a half-wild, vengeful
girlchild. I certainly wasn’t going to share that with the teacher. After
struggling to get some control, the story had a mind of its own, I gave up and
got another zero in the grade book.
Ah, the Bookmobile… A musty truck full of books delivering
fantasies to children: Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland, Beatrice Potter’s little gems: my best friends.
Somewhere along the line I lost track of books and reading.
High school, Les Miserable for crying out loud. Reading as… punishment.
For years my Auntie Ed gifted us a subscription to National
Geographic and I luxuriated in images of tropical birds in jungles, elephants,
lions on the savanna, early man, sunken bronze-age ships, dinosaurs. I never ever
read the articles or captions. Only when I saw my 4-year old son struggling to
read a caption I figured maybe I should except his challenge.
My former husband, Dave, subscribed to the New Yorker
magazine - slim and slick bursting with tiny serif-font. “How can you read
that? There aren’t any pictures!” I’d flip through and read the comics, and try
to make sense of the little images in the middle of the page, the ones that
break up the sea of text. The art work is inspiring, but all that a text is
intimidating. Now I subscribe. With each new issue first I flip to the table
of contents, at the bottom is the title of the cover artwork, always a tasty
explosion of joy.
In other news, it’s been one month since the fire. It feels
like a week. I seem to have lost the month of October. Today we’re having a
‘female rain,’ in the Navajo culture a gentle rain with a soothing effect. “It
is said by
wise ones that if you have no respect for the rain, and your thoughts and words
are bad while it rains, the sacred forces will punish you.” Only good
thoughts here. I’ve learned a little about ash, black, the good kind, indicates
the fire was low intensity and cleared out the grass and understory plants, and
white, from a hot, destructive fire. Where I work I can see the edge of where
the fire stopped: lush and green here, black and toasted there. During the week
of the fire everyone said “Stay safe” now I’m hearing “Fire is a natural part
of this ecosystem.” I guess that’s an attempt at resilience. Jose Altamira, the
founder of the local mission, complained that he saw Indians set fires in
Sonoma Valley in late June and July which annoyed him because the horses he and
his entourage were riding needed that grass. Early explorers described this
area as park-like: large oaks in lush, grassy plains with enormous herds of
elk, antelope and deer - because of annual Indian-set fires.
Spent a delightful day in Point Reyes Station with Brian at
the Fibershed Symposium yesterday. The best part was Evan Wiig’s Soil Your
Undies video, as a way to measure the health of the microorganisms in your
soil. I couldn’t find his video but here is The Soil Conservation Council of
Canada’s https://youtu.be/wmEvNuYqWmA
It’s a hilarious, somewhat embarrassing concept to introduce people to
soil science and soil health. Humor teaching…
Thanks for hanging in there with me J
Many blessings,
Karla, mom & k.j.
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