Henry the frog and the gangster cats

At this point, 95% of the Rana sierrae have died off.

To their credit, a couple of the scientists I contacted the other night about Henry the frog immediately wrote back. Of course, both asked for a photo but I don't have one so, for now anyway, that's that. I did see him once last spring. He looked just like the Rana sierrae in the photo and he sure sounds like one. But if he is, he's a ways from home. The Rana sierrae generally live in mountain ponds above 6000 feet but Henry is down here in the valley at 5000 ft. in my desert dirt back yard. And thanks for asking, Roy. If Henry resurfaces, you'll be among the first to know.

The gangster cats have left the building

But I do have some really GREAT NEWS. The gangster cats, scourge of the Bird Park, those furry assholes who ate baby quail like they were popcorn...are GONE. Their family finally finally loaded their crap up and moved away. A repair crew has been over there for the last week gutting and repairing the place. If the broken blinds in the front window and the perpetual mess they had in the front yard and on the porch are any indication, they must have left the house a wreck.

5th Friday photos & slideshow

There was a good turnout for the 5th Friday event at Comma Coffee in Carson City. The evening included dance, drama, poetry, weird fiction, comedy, and an open mic.

Comma Coffee before the show

Four Ash Canyon poets read during the open mike segment and they were excellent. I mixed a track for my reading. It worked out pretty good so I may do more of that in the future.

Lucky Pierre

The biggest event for me was that a long time friend from the Ashland days, Barbara Bonomo showed up with her charming friend Pete the dog. It was great seeing them. She made a special point to drop in for the show on her way home to Arizona. They were at the Comma when I got there that night. Pete sat up and watched Scot Sarni's rendition of Hamlet but slept through most everything else.

Monsieur La Chance and Lucky Pierre

Rita Geil was Mistress of Ceremonies. Poet Susan Botich read. Dave Fritz performed original music. Ellen Hopkins, Lindsey Stoeberl, Roman Valenzuela, Zach Trippiedi read from Impulse. Susan Priest did a performance art piece as Palisades. Also, every time I turned around, Lucky Pierre was sitting somewhere else.

Ellen Hopkins and Haley Bennett reading from Crank.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was how much June Joplin, the proprietor of Comma Coffee, liked the show. Afterwards she emphatically encouraged us to go on but at this point, it doesn't look like we'll be doing another show. Too many personality clashes putting it together. I'm just not into that kind of thing. It got to be a big drag. Anyway, glad we did it. Glad it's done.

Barbara, Pete the dog, Lucky Pierre and Monsieur La Chance

Barbara posted photos and a slideshow from 5th Friday on her blog The First Chakra. Check it out.

Walkabout and dirt bath party

I was in Carson City twice in the last couple of days running errands and naturally brought my camera with me so it ended up being a photo walkabout as well.



I also stopped by Comma Coffee to talk with June about relocating a portion of Bill Cowee's poetry collection there. Sadly Bill, Godfather of Ash Canyon Poets, is in failing health and is in the process of moving into a care facility. One of his primary concerns is to find a home for his vast, wonderful collection of poetry books, journals, little magazines and obscure, single run chap books. He has an amazing collection. Ash Canyon poets get the first pick. After that, the majority of the books will be donated to public and school libraries.

The remainder, six book shelves worth (shelves included), will go to Comma Coffee. This is the lovely little library that Bill used to house at Carson City's Brewery Arts Center where Ash Canyon Poets have met every Friday night for many years, that is until recently when the center rate hikes forced Ash Canyon to seek a new home. For the last several months the Brewery Arts books have been tucked away in Terry Breedon's basement. Today I was hoping to make the final arrangements with June to move them to the cafe but she was too busy to discuss it. I stayed for a while anyay, had coffee and read. I am finally in the last thrilling pages of volume 4 of the Otherland series. Good read.

It was a blue sky day in Nevada. The quail were certainly enjoying it, especially as just a few days ago they were scurrying around in a blizzard looking for whatever frozen seed they could scratch up. To celebrate the warm weather, they had a dirt bath party in my back yard.

Dirt bath party

01:03

Submit and then submit again

It's not that I haven't published before. It's just that it's been a long time. Why I stopped is a bit complicated and not a subject I feel like going into at midnight. I have been published. I have been a publisher. I stopped. Now I've started again. For that Bill Cowee, impresario of Ash Canyon Poets, gets a lot of credit. He's very encouraging. So today my yield was one poem and I'm still running on it. Then tomorrow and tomorrow I can do it all over again.

So far my labors have returned a submissions guidelines from Five Fingers Review, a magazine published in San Leandro, CA. They only accept submissions from June 1 to August 30th and require that you send a SASE if you want to know the issue's theme. I'll save you the trouble of writing. This time it's Intersecting Word and Image. Sounds interesting enough. Look em up online if you want to know more. Besides poetry, each issue contains fiction, essays, interviews, translations, and visual art. They're next.

Until next year

Whew! It's over. The Juniper Creek conference was wonderful, but it was a lot of intensity crammed into one tiny little weekend. It's Tuesday and I still feel like I'm slogging back across mud flats after being swept out by a huge wave.



It was great seeing people I met last year. Nice meeting new people. I learned a few things. I got some good feedback, good direction.
Gayle Brandeis was especially helpful. Thanks again, Gayle. Plus we sold enough copies of Ash Canyon Review to pay for the next two issues! Also, I picked up several new poetry books and journals: Hard Night by Christian Wiman, The Dumbbell Nebula by Steve Kowit, a couple of issues of The Sierra Nevada College Review, three issues of Caveat Lector, and a copy of Quercus Review. I've scattered them around the various places I sit for quiet and a cup of coffee. I've got some good summer reading ahead of me.

The best part of the conference for me however, was that my daughter attended it. I don't mind saying that, besides being a completely cool person, she is a wonderful writer. Contrary to popular opinion, moms are not disqualified from objectively knowing things like that! It was so incredible being there together as writers, friends and mom and daughter. It really doesn't get any better than that!

Juniper Creek Writer's Conference 05

We're mid-way through the writer's conference. Last night Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry Magazine, gave a nice keynote address. He addressed the pitiful irrelevance poetry has fallen to over the last several years. I couldn't agree more. The journal is the oldest in America and, since receiving a 200 million dollar endowment from a dear departed reader a couple of years ago, the richest. Maybe they'll be able to up the stakes a bit. I hope they manage to stay independent doing it. He mentioned he recently wrote an article critical of a government writing program offered soldiers returning from Iraq. He said for about a month after that his life was very uncomfortable, a bit like having Tony Soprano mad at you.

One of my poems was a finalist in the poetry contest and Christian is critiquing it in his workshop today, which is cool. I"m looking forward to hearing what he has to say about it.

Fellowship results

The Nevada Arts Council met today to select the winners for this year's fellowship grants. I didn't even make it past the first cut. Oh well. My poems are rather...mmmm....odd, not tidy little narratives that are so popular these days. Four other poets from the Ash Canyon were there as well so it was fun in spite of the fact that I got the lowest score in the bunch. I did draw about 150 birds though. You may be seeing some of them here from time to time. They are friends of mine from Birdland...of course.
Ps. Happy Birthday Mark! :-)

Workshop, Miles the Dog and Ash Canyon Review

Brewery Arts Center, home of Ash Canyon Poets
The writer's workshop went very well today. We decided we have to do it again soon. Krista's going to lead next time. Some good poetry came out today's session. A couple of poems were nearly ready for submission in the first draft.

The workshop was scheduled for the Comma but the place was closed today due to illness so we trundled over to the Brewery Arts Center (where we meet on Friday nights). There were some interesting people outside the Comma when I first got there though, travelers doing a road trip documentary with their very cool Black Lab, Miles. It's a kind of Travels with Charley thing. They are searching out what there is of non-corporate America and were very surprised to find Carson City is in such a groove. They gave me their card with their URL, but I can't find the damn thing. If you guys happen to read this, send me your address again. I'd like to follow your trip. Thanks.

Ash Canyon Review, draft cover
Also, a quick update on the Review. Susan and I did the (nearly) final draft last night. Rita is proofing it again then, after some last minute corrections to Breakfast with Gothic Girl, we're about ready for the printer. It looks good. If you want a copy, lemme know. We're only doing a tiny run.

Home again

I've spent the last couple of days at the Reno Hilton. Lee's mom was in town and got us a room there so we could visit more easily. It was fun, but nice to be home. I refueled the bird feeders, tossed Minerva some peanuts and now I'm off again for an evening with some Ash Canyon poets. Saturday is our copy editors meeting for the Review and Sunday I do the writing workshop. It's almost like having a life.

Deadlines

What's the most important thing for a writer? Gary Short had a two word answer for that question recently. A deadline. That's certainly true at around here. Today is the submissions deadline for the first issue of Ash Canyon Review and we've got a fine magazine lined up. Gary and Bill (Cowee) reviewed the final picks yesterday. They are the editors. I did a mock up of the issue and gave it to Cowee last night at the Brewery. He's ecstatic. My god, he's fun to work with. His enthusiasm for this project is boundless. Everyone's excited. And he's right. It's going to be a great issue!

New territory

I applied for a Nevada Arts Council Fellowship this year. The council awards $5000 to six individual artists – two in literary arts, two in performing arts and two in visual arts including media arts (film, video). The deadline was Friday. I hand-delivered my 5 sets of 10 poems about 3 hours before the cut-off but I wasn't the only last minute entry. Tim Rhodes, another Ash Canyon poet, passed his envelope through the door at 5pm, just as they were closing. Ah, the drama! Cowee tells me the winners are selected in June at a day long, public event. Until I went through my files looking for material, I hadn't really appreciated the work I've done in the past year. I must say it's mostly due to Ash Canyon and especially Bill Cowee. He kicks everybody's ass into gear.

Bill Cowee, one of poetry's true honky-tonk angels.

Ash Canyon Poets

Okay, I just uploaded the website for Ash Canyon. It's not done but check it out anyway. Cowee loves it. He thinks I'm some kind of magician. Actually, he said "witch" but I don't care for that word. So many violent crimes have been committed against people, because someone accused them of being a  witch or pagan.

It's funny how delighted Bill is. I down play it but, actually, I enjoy his reaction. I'm excited too, and happy to do it. I owe a lot to Ash Canyon. Not only are they fun to hang out with, because of them I've written several new poems. I also set up a couple of blogs for Ash Canyon, but haven't done anything with them yet. I am swamped.

-----------------------------------------------

Postscript

Bill Cowee died of heart failure on October 16, 2009. We will always, always miss him. 
Obituary, Reno Gazette Journal

Bill Cowee
Comma Coffee garden
Carson City, Nevada
photo: Asha

 


Do Not Resuscitate


We must record the wishes
of our passing
the Advanced Directive,
not the killing of slaves
with their baskets of wheat and dates,
but absence of feeding tubes

or hand pumping our breasts.
Only the sipping of drugs
to ease the journey.
Let me go
into the great lake,
into my own time, my soul
wrapped in its swaddling
with the spices of my life.
My body like a reed
of its own papyrus
ink still wet
with the blessing
of having written.

~Bill Cowee, Carson City, Nevada 2009

-----------------------------------------------

The Ash Canyon website is currently on indefinite hiatus but the group continues. It currently meets from 7-9 PM on the third Friday of the month at the "The Bric" building located at 108 Proctor Street in Carson City, Nevada. map

More details about Ash Canyon Poets meetings.
Some of my own poetry can be found at AnnaSadhorse.

Birthdays and lesser events

I've got a ton of things to do but here I sit, fiddling around with flickr and blogging about what I should be doing instead of doing it. Really annoying. The most important thing, second only to breathing, is wrap and mail my daughter's birthday box. Mus'n't be late. No no. That would never do. Today, my sweet. Today I mail the rest of the gifts.


Birthday Girl (with floppy, gray ears)

I already mailed the main one straight from Amazon. Couldn't resist the free shipping. Always the cheapskate. All the more for my little darlings, I say. Anyway, the rest of the goodies have to get in the mail, tomorrow at the latest. Notice the little shift in the deadline? And this in only one paragraph. I am poison to myself.

But, as long as we're on the subject, I want to mention the website I'm working on for Ash Canyon Poets. I started working on it here but I'll move it to it's own address, ashcanyon.com, once everything is set up. With the second Juniper Creek Writer's Conference coming up this summer, Cowee agreed it's now or never. He is completely jazzed about it.

Also....he, Susan and I met yesterday to start working on the Ash Canyon Review, which we will publishing this summer. Now or never. It's not like I'm looking for more things to do but it's just time. The conference is going to be very good and Ash Canyon needs a journal and a website to go along with it. Simple.

So back to the schedule. Birthday box... oh and vote for your favorite blog (Deconstructionist) in the Hellman's Hottest Blogger Award contest.

Juniper Creek Writer's Conference '05

The second annual Juniper Creek Writer's Conference scheduled for the weekend of July 15th is going to be terrific. So far, thanks to the efforts of Ellen Hopkins and Bill Cowee, we have two outstanding writers lined up to lead the faculty. Christian Wiman, editor of Poetry Magazine will keynote, conduct workshops and judge the national poetry contest. Gayle Brandeis, novelist (The Book of Dead Birds) short story writer, poet, community and environmental activist, will do workshops and judge the national short story contest. Richard Eloyan, songwriter and poet, will do a workshop on songwriting, plus, we're expecting an editor from Simon and Schuster New York, a children's book editor, an agent, a screenwriter and many literary magazine editors to commit soon. It is going to be fun!

We're holding the conference at the Western Nevada Community College campus in Carson City. The cost for the weekend will be $150 although we'll be giving a scholarship to some student at each high school in Northern Nevada. The event will include a poetry reading on Friday night, a Western BBQ and musical performance on Saturday night (it looks like I may be in charge of the vegetarian part), and a literary magazine editors round table.

Bill Cowee, impresario with a heart

An American director who had, along with his troupe (his two wives), nearly starved to death in Mexico told me once that you can claim to have an audience when there is one more person in the house than in the cast. I don't know if that's true. Good thing poets aren't bound by rules otherwise, even counting bartenders and baristas, we'd generally come up wanting. My fall back when doing a reading has always been to include an open mic. However, the Ash Canyon Poets don't do open mics. Cowee wants people to have attended at least one Ash Canyon meeting before reading with us in public.

Bill Cowee, poet
Ash Canyon Poet's beloved Impresario

That said, after the conclusion of our reading last night at Border's Books, Bill invited audience members to read if they wanted to. They were practically falling out of their chairs in eagerness. Cowee has an eternal soft spot for anyone with the slightest interest in writing poetry. Under his enormous wing, I have seen people improve who I would rather have dropped off a cliff. And after that, he invited them to join us at Casino Fandango. It is a garish, friendly place which, as soon as it opened, Bill immediately declared our new Friday night meeting after the meeting institution.

Susan Priest, Ash Canyon poet

Roy Chavez, Ash Canyon poet

The casino's quirky Vegas style jungle theme and pampering staff instantly earned the highest regard a group of poets, or dogs, can confer... Loyalty. Every Friday, we sit under the canopy of its neon jungle talking deep into the night over wine and coffee, lakes of chowder and mountains of fries. It provides perfect hideaway for strange birds and even includes a squawking mechanical parrot that scoots along a ceiling track randomly dropping money on people below. When I was a kid the adults warned me that if I grew up to be a poet I would die drunk and poor in the gutter. I don't know whether or not they'll turn out to be right, but that damn bird never drops a penny on any of us.

Borders Reading

After Hours

We're reading at Borders tonight (Ash Canyon Poets) and I'm at it again, doing a fourth version of my poetry zine, After Hours. Will it ever end? I changed a word, redid my SkyRiverPress logo, tweaked the cover and am printing out a few new copies. For all this, I'll probably just give the damn things away. Madness. Yes. This is madness. If, by some remote chance, you want to actually buy a copy, email me. They're 3 bucks, postage paid. ashaATashabot.com


Old logo


My revised logo. Much better.

After Hours

That's the name of the zine I'm taking to the writer's conference this weekend. I'm putting it together right now. Well, I'm taking a break from putting it together right now. I'm using things I've already written so I'm just doing layout. I hate doing layout. Doesn't agree with me. I'm printing it on some paper I bought way back when I had my letterpress. Been cleaning up my office and it just has to go. It's extra nice. Too nice. The kind of nice that creeps me out. It puts too much emphasis on an insignificant detail. The letterpress days were not that great all around and this paper has followed me around ever since, reminding me of it. In those days, I'd go to the office, do battle with type fonts, composing sticks, brass and coppers (for spacing between words)and after an hour or so, decide I needed a drink. As often as not, I'd get blinding drunk and call it a day..or night. I finally sold the damn thing, three presses in all, two huge cases of fonts, tools. My marriage ended (a good thing) and then my life took another turn for the worse and then a long, slow turn for the better. I'm still in that turn and hope to be for the rest of my days.

There's an old letterpress at the Brewery Arts Center where the Ash Canyon poets meet on Friday nights. The center said it still works we could use the it, if we want to. Bill Cowee and I got pretty excited about the idea. He'd like to do broadsides and I have ink or grease paint or some kind of gunk in my veins so it sounded good to me too. BUT, when I looked at all the tiny, tiny fonts...the press was used by a newspaper...and all the paraphernalia, it all came back to me. Fussy and tedious as doing layout in Word is, the difference between printing with a letterpress and a computer is the difference between sticking needles in your eyes and stepping barefoot on thumbtacks.

Yes, I know. Why Word? It's a really bad program to publish with. Well, after all this time, I still haven't gotten around to making the switch to something like PageMaker...so Word it is. One more time.

Also, I made oatmeal raisen cookies for my son today and mailed them off to Fort Bliss. I hope they bring a little sweetness to his day.

Ash Canyon Poets Valentine Reading

I just got back from the valentine's day poetry reading at the Comma Cafe. We all read a couple of our own poems and one by a well known poet. We had a good audience and it went really well. I even wrote a piece for the event called the Doctrine of Sixteen Kisses. It's an adaptation of Chapter 3 from Sir Richard Burton's 1883 translation of Vatsyayana's Kama Sutra. Chapter 3 is the one on kissing. Even though the Kama Sutra has a very upfront attitude about sex it's written in formal Sanskrit, the literary language of ancient India. Burton's Victorian English fits right in. I condensed and loosen it up a bit although even my version still has a formal air. It seemed to be well received though. I put extra copies out for people to take home so they could try the kisses out for themselves and several were picked up.

Sir Burton was an interesting guy and yes, in case you're wondering, the actor Richard Burton (aka Richard Walter Jenkins), took his stage name from him. Sir Burton was an actor in his own right. Disguised as a Muslim, he was the first Englishmen to enter the holy city of Mecca. Biographer's describe Sir Burton as an adventurer, linguist, scholar, swordsman, rogue, deviant, genius possessing wild, monstrous talents and defects nearly as grave". He was a master of 35 languages which allowed him to travel freely, passing himself off as an Arab merchant. Burton translated several eastern texts including the Arabian Nights in 16 volumes. However, along with his partner John Hanning Speke, Burton is perhaps most famous for discovering the source of the Nile River in 1858 although, of course, plenty of people and countless wild birds and animals had been there before they showed up and claimed the lake for their queen. Speke did his best to shaft Burton and claim sole credit for discovery but history caught up with him in the end, splitting the fame between them.

Ol Burton even made it to Nevada in 1860 when he took a stage coach along the Pony Express route which offered a trip from the Missouri river to San Francisco in 8 days. So that means he was right here in Carson City where our Valentine reading took place. Of Carson City he wrote that "revolvers are fired even into houses known to contain 'ladies'" and that during the three days he was here he heard of three murders.

Getting back to the Valentines reading....I started out with Unlyric Love Song by A.S.J. Tessimond, then read the Doctrine of Sixteen Kisses, and closed with my poem, Yellow Shoes, which I haven't published yet, but probably will get around to it eventually. I was surprised to see a guy from the local TV station there taping us. Poetry doesn't usually make the news. Bill told me afterwards that I'm going to be on TV. Ha! I don't even have a television. Anyway, I'm glad this day is over. This thing has occupied space in my mind long enough.

Ash Canyon Poets reading

A few weeks ago Bill Cowee (Ash Canyon Poets), mentioned to me that Comma Coffee where we did the Readable Theatre last month, wanted a poetry reading there for Valentines Day so I volunteered to organize it. I spent the last couple of days designing the poster. I suppose most people would bang one out in about an hour, then get on to more important things, but not me. First I had to look at about a million pictures of cupid, psyche, valentine hearts, cakes and smoothies for just the right images. BTW, some interesting websites pop up when you do a search on the word "smoothies". Then I spent hours tweeking and re-tweeking everything. In the end, I couldn't decided which photo to use, either "Psyche entering Cupids Garden" or a nifty line drawing of Psyche binding Cupid so I made two posters. I put them on my website, if you're interested check them out. At the moment, I'm sick of both of them but I hope you like them.

As for other goings on around the Ashabot, the shrimp died. They were a Christmas gift but didn't live long enough to make it into the blog until now, although I mentioned them in the cockroach diary. Anyway, they're dead. Some "self-sustaining world" that was. I think maybe they didn't get enough light. The damn brochure was so emphatic about not exposing them to too much light, I put them in a room with dim light. Dead. It was kind of sad peering into their little globe and seeing they're decaying carcasses drifing on the bottom. Death Stalks the EcoSphere. Sounds like a cheezy sci-fi.