Ruth Archives

A little archiving for my files and hopefully for your viewing and listening pleasure...and so I don't forget.

April, 2010: My Western Wilderness Conference, 2010, UC Berkeley presentation. Featuring the California Desert and some of my desert poetry as stars: Panel moderated by Malcolm Margolin and featuring Kenneth Brower, Tim Palmer, and Kimi Kodani Hill. Film excerpt by my friend Cyrus Emerson who works at Blackstone Audio.

http://www.facebook.com/#!/video/video.php?v=471563005080&subj=559231276

September, 2008: Interview with poets Ruth Nolan + Juan Felipe Herrera, KCET Arts Block, SoCal. Interviewed by poet Ching-In Chen.

http://www.kcet.org/socal/podcasts/artsblock-live/ruth-nolan-and-juan-felipe-herrera.html

Another goody-item for my blog grab bag

Here is a link to the 2008 Joshua Tree Photo Shoot sponsored by UCR-CMP and Sweeney Gallery....and a writeup of my role in the film I wrote and read poetry for (I just found this writeup....I'll post the entire project description in a separate blog posting)

Escape to Reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps

Once a rough cut of images was assembled, we approached the author of Phantom Seed, poet Ruth Nolan to add her vision of Joshua Tree. Ruth, a resident of Palm Desert, became excited about the video project and set about writing and narrating Joshua Tree Imprimatur (excerpted below). She also recorded footsteps walking and running through Joshua Tree, a place she had spent many days and nights growing up. While Mabel Luhan's memoirs, featured in sub-title form are the voice of Escape to Reality, it is Ruth Nolan's words that are its soul. She paints a picture of the desert that is complex, ironic, mysterious, and beautiful.

The film clip is at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gowJF2HLNYY

Joshua Tree Imprimatur (excerpt)

In Joshua Tree
In the land that crowns its needled glories with sand
In the desert made of pavement fallen from the Milky Way
In the desert made of deep holes, carved by grinding stones
In the desert made of gashed canyons, cut straight through stone
In the desert made of walking rain that the eye can far-off see
In the desert made of fan tree palms
In the desert made of cold
In the desert made of Blinding mirage
In the desert made of light so old it whispers like grooved bones
Where the woolly mammoth and rattlesnake cross time and home,
Oceans of time rising and receding, land quaking in their paths
Where the granite batholiths arch their backs
where the red-tailed hawks vault their hunting songs
by Ruth Nolan


AND HERE IS....

The upcoming California Legacy Project, Nature Dreaming. Sponsored by Santa Clara University & the National Endowment for the Arts - in progress, and I'm one of the invited humanities scholars from the state who will be part of the project:

http://californialegacy.org/radio_productions/Nature_Dreaming/