Morning from the backroom

Comma Coffee is constantly changing.

Can you spot the new parlor grand piano?
Clue: look for the shinny flat surface.

In fitting Comma fashion,
the old upright is now on the wall.

 Back in the back.

"Women and children first"

MITT ROMNEY:
"THROW 'EM OVERBOARD!
NO LIFEBOAT,
NO LIFE VEST FOR YOU!"

Republican version of women and children first then the world.

Here's Romney's proposal:

• Make contraception less available to poor women by getting rid of Planned Parenthood.

• Make the option of abortion illegal by signing a Personhood Amendment.

• Make access to prenatal care and pediatric care less available by gutting Medicaid.

• Then force mothers out of the home so that they can't even raise their own children.

• Gut public K-12 education.

• Gut grants for College Education.

• Continue outsourcing jobs to third world countries where people will work for .50 a day.

• Gut Medicare and Social Security.

• Gut the environment upon which life as we know it depends.

The Mizpah at last

I'm just back from my spring trip to the lovely semi-ghost town of Tonopah Nevada. 

The desk clerk told us they sometimes hear
children talking who are not there. That made
the strange miniature furniture look really eerie.

The big news this year is that the Mizpah Hotel has finally re-opened.

Last year...outside in.

I've been photographing the place through the windows for years.

Now I finally got in.

This year...inside out.

There have been other changes around town as well.

That photo I found a few years ago of the guy posing with a beer is gone.

Gone....

It was in the cave/cabin on the floor with all the junk so, for safekeeping, I stashed it between some stones in the rock face of the "cabin". However, this spring it was gone so another face disappears into Tonopah's fading past. Also, the abandoned tailor's shack up the street that still housed some wonderful antique equipment is gone.

Little remained of tailor's
shop from days gone by.

I'm hoping the museum folks rescued the equipment. I don't think it was in the rubble but then I didn't dig around.

Tailor shop today, collapsed and gone.

And, as I mentioned before, the little store Hippies of Tonopah is gone, not the building itself, but Hippy. Graffiti inside reads "Ur Gay". So much for love in diversity. 

But no time to mourn to past.

The ghosts of Tonopah Present haunt us even now...

Goblin of the Fifth Floor

...not only the goblin that accosted us as we explored the hotel...

The Lady in Red

...but the ghost the Lady in Red herself. Legend has it that she was stabbed to death by a jealous lover in the hallway outside of her room, 502, and haunts the hotel to this day. Naturally, we tried reserving her room for our stay next fall but it was already booked. But we will be in room 501. Close enough. I'm already spooked. The building itself is morose and vaguely threatening. I was happy to get back down to the lobby and glad to re-emerge back out under the blue desert sky.

I posted more photos of the Mizpah here.

New Madhuban

Going through papers on my desk this afternoon, I came across some things I wrote years ago that I'd been thinking about, and forgetting to, do something with. As you might guess, I wrote it during a particularly difficult time in my life. Anyway, I'm posting an excerpt here and at Anna Sadhorse.

New Madhuban
West Virginia


this forest,    
planted for a loaf of bread
and a dollar a day, 
is a solemn place
the hill it has taken possession of
drops sharply
to a holler     too steep for pasture
a place where small skeletons   slowly turn to stone
this is a good place to be alone

the sun seldom finds entry to this grove
is a stranger here     off his path  
from a world that does not exist
his probing beams
only deepen the darkness
and threaten to ignite the brittle trees

one may only be here carefully    
this forest has no need of company
birds know it   they do not nest
or sing among its spiney branches
there is no undergrowth   
nothing pierces the needle mat

and the pines themselves
have shed their lower branches
becoming heartless    
pitch steeped trunks with shattered limbs
they offer no place to rest
who comes here must stand alone
who comes here to dream must dream
indifferent as the dead


asha
West Virginia, 1975 - Excerpt from Sunday Feast

Trees were planted in this area during America's Great Depression of the 1930's as part the New Deal.

First dance

My niece Maren's wedding last month in Portland was a very sweet affair.

Maren, Thea and Mama

Uncle Papa Jim conducted the ceremony. Before meeting and marrying my sister, he was a fourth year novice at a Catholic monastery so priestly duties are natural for him.

He did choke up though when it came to the part where he put Maren's hand in Drew's. For a moment, we all held our breath.

Papa Jack, Mister Leo, Jeannette and Uncle Papa Jim

Unfortunately, I'm one of those crappy amateur photographers who waves the camera around in the air and hopes for the best. It's like trying to catch a swarm of butterflies with a bucket. I took a lot of photos but, unfortunately, these are about as clear as any of them get.

Big Girl Thea teaching cousin Leo to dance

Penny Robin meets Mme. Chanceuse

Adrienne Rich

So sorry to see you go. 

"We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear"

—

Adrienne Rich, "Diving into the Wreck" (excerpt)

May 16, 1929 – March 27, 2012