This poem was written for a collection of poetry penned by southern California poets immediately after the recent 9.0 earthquake/tsunami in Japan. The collection is being overseen by several Cal State-San Bernardino graduate MFA students, and they will be hosting readings that will raise funds to send to Japan. My poem was inspired by the story of the 83 year old woman who rode her bicycle away from the tsunami.
Memory
when you had gone, the wind came, as I suppose it would high, but lonely - Emily Dickinson
she comes again,
old bones breaking free, she’s 83 years old
she comes again,
all she’s sutured together, coming undone again
she comes again,
an elderly woman making her ocean of rounds
she comes again,
riding her bicycle past the waterlogged lost and found
she comes again,
riding through the rice fields scorched by 1945
She comes again
swimming through the memories as they rise and fall
she comes again,
remembering what it was to love inside the flames
she comes again,
not forgetting, having traveled nowhere at all
-Ruth Nolan
March 13, 2011
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Friendly Fire: a poem about 2 runaway girls, a shotgun and a jackrabbit cabin
Forthcoming next month in Heyday's new literary series, "New California Writing 2011" http://www.heydaybooks.com/upcoming/new-california-writing-2011.html
FRIENDLY FIRE
by Ruth Nolan
The attic door opened easily
that pearl smooth August night
after a day hitchhiking in dusty wind,
no real labor, no hard breathing.
One push, we climbed on the roof,
two sunburned, runaway teenage girls,
a backpack full of cheese and fruit
stolen from the market that day
We'd broken into a desert cabin.
I shot a window with my father's gun.
No one had been there for so long
the refrigerator was propped open.
We crawled through splintered glass.
You worried that there might be
a dead baby or rattlesnake inside.
I found an unopened bottle of wine.
I held the buck knife, and you held
the fruit. I sliced the salami and
licked my sticky fingers, then you
twisted the corkscrew and laughed.
We sifted through the box of jewels
stolen from our moms. You clasped
a silver necklace on my burnt neck
and I slipped an old ring onto you.
We shared an old wool army blanket
and a man's extra-large flannel shirt,
talked about all the guys we shared,
cock and breast size, abortion cramps.
You wanted to know what it was like
to fight fires; I told you I had no sisters.
I popped the cork, you passed the bottle,
I thought I could taste your tongue,
delivered like the silent rise of moon,
punctuating spaces between stars,
I watched Venus, Orion’s Belt fade
while you spread oysters onto rye.
New California Writing 2011 is edited by Gayle Wattawa, who edited "Inlandia: A Literary Journey through southern California's Inland Empire" and also my terrifice, wise supervising editor for "No Place for a Puritan."
FRIENDLY FIRE
by Ruth Nolan
The attic door opened easily
that pearl smooth August night
after a day hitchhiking in dusty wind,
no real labor, no hard breathing.
One push, we climbed on the roof,
two sunburned, runaway teenage girls,
a backpack full of cheese and fruit
stolen from the market that day
We'd broken into a desert cabin.
I shot a window with my father's gun.
No one had been there for so long
the refrigerator was propped open.
We crawled through splintered glass.
You worried that there might be
a dead baby or rattlesnake inside.
I found an unopened bottle of wine.
I held the buck knife, and you held
the fruit. I sliced the salami and
licked my sticky fingers, then you
twisted the corkscrew and laughed.
We sifted through the box of jewels
stolen from our moms. You clasped
a silver necklace on my burnt neck
and I slipped an old ring onto you.
We shared an old wool army blanket
and a man's extra-large flannel shirt,
talked about all the guys we shared,
cock and breast size, abortion cramps.
You wanted to know what it was like
to fight fires; I told you I had no sisters.
I popped the cork, you passed the bottle,
I thought I could taste your tongue,
delivered like the silent rise of moon,
punctuating spaces between stars,
I watched Venus, Orion’s Belt fade
while you spread oysters onto rye.
New California Writing 2011 is edited by Gayle Wattawa, who edited "Inlandia: A Literary Journey through southern California's Inland Empire" and also my terrifice, wise supervising editor for "No Place for a Puritan."
Friday, February 11, 2011
A Desert of Cathedrals; A World of Churches
Save the California Desert from Ruin - NO to proposed solar & wind Industrial Zones!
by Ruth Nolan – presented on February 8, 2011, Indian Wells public hearing to the federal government's fast-track solar/wind installations in the California southwest.
copyright (c) 2011 Ruth Nolan.
A Desert of Cathedrals; A World of Churches
I was 10 years old in 1973 when my father first drove me in his old Volkswagen Bug from my hometown of San Bernardino, imbedded in the smog of southern California sixty miles east of Los Angeles, up the long, steep grade of Interstate 15 and over the four thousand-foot lip of Cajon Pass. I held my breath as we reached the top and saw, for the first time in my life, a land that was as wide and vast as the sea. There, at the edge of the Mojave Desert, a long necklace of headlights stretched east for forty miles; toward the west, the sky was lit with rose and orange hues. We descended towards the small town of Victorville, racing past Joshua Trees whose thick-needled fists etched gracefully and fiercely against the sunset. I knew then and there that I’d found my place, my calling, my landscape. I stuck my head out the window and looked up: there was the evening star, a slice of moon alongside it. I was instantly and forever smitten.
This was an empty and imposing land, rife with danger and thrill. I sensed that an entirely new adventure lay in wait for our family there, where we intended to re-locate to be near my father’s new job. My intuitions were confirmed when my mother opened a kitchen drawer to find a baby Mojave Green rattlesnake; when I went to bed serenaded by a symphony of coyotes every night; when my brother went to the hospital with dehydration after climbing a harsh rock peak near our house on an August afternoon. The desert was as silent as a church during a funeral and as wide open and empty as a schoolyard on a Sunday, but it was never, ever boring.
It’s essential that President Obama, in his swiftness – and rightly so - to shift the country’s energy needs to renewable energy, considers how easily a tragic irony may prevail in the current rush to establish massive industrial zones that will harbor renewable energy facilities in the California deserts. We now see the damage and that our dependency on fossil fuels has done to our planet. To repeat the large-scale energy production facilities for any type of energy, including “renewable,” which requires the types of massive technological zones that have already been approved or are pending approval under Obama’s “fast track” renewable energy plan in the California deserts is to foolishly and tragically follow the same swath of destruction caused by fossil fuel technology. In other words: in our rush to embark on a new era of sustainability, let us not destroy in order to procreate. Renewable energy production can, and must, be implemented in a responsible manner that doesn’t leave tremendous carbon footprints, and does not take more than it gives.
On that day when I was 10 years old, the road that we drove on layered over a network of extensive and sophisticated Indian trails, used for thousands of years by different desert Indian tribes to traverse the Mojave Desert, following the entire 150 mile length of the sporadically-flowing, northern-seeking Mojave River, sometimes weaving between forests of cottonwood trees, and more often not, to its final resting place at Soda Dry Lake. The road we drove on was interwoven atop a trail network – just one of many that traversed every nook and cranny of the California desert - that had myriad village sites, culturally important, and well-established geographic notations throughout their vein-like expanses. In other word, there was and is no part of the California that is not known or has not been known and lived in and used as a culturally crucial and a sustainable way – to the various Indian tribes who have lived here since time unknown.
Little did I know, on that first drive to the high desert, that this region, largely seen to that date as a waterless wasteland ready for the taking and wonton raping, through widespread and reckless mining and military usage, for example, was, in even in the 1970’s, just beginning to be approached, investigated, researched, and understood for the environmental, cultural, archaeological and internationally significant region that it was and is. Millions of visitors come to the area every year from throughout the area, to visit our national parks, and also from the hugely populated urban areas not far from our desert’s westernmost edges; that our area is so attractive to others, as a one-of-a-kind geographic icon, and also so much in demand as a recreational outlet for southern California’s masses, not to mention that the deserts are home to many endangered species, wildlife corridors, Native American resources and spiritual-cultural sights, such as those named in the Salt Song Trail Ceremonial songs of the Chemehuevi Indians, should only give more importance to the extremely careful consideration of disturbing and forever destroying what little of this precious area that still remains under the fragile care of our collective hands.
As a child, I perceived that the desert was a place of wildness and possibility, quickly learning the nuances of rock hunting and tortoise sightings, of flash floods and dry waterfalls, and to succinctly endure long months and seasons when rain doesn’t fall. As I grew older, I came to see that this was also a peopled place, and as I read about my adopted homeland as widely as I could, I learned that this was a land rife with stories of courage, despair, a land where hopes are endlessly fulfilled and countless dreams are dissolved. I learned that the desert is not some desperate, completely waterless void: in my hikes and explorations, I learned that thousands of springs and waterholes grace it. They are often hidden, detectable only to the longtime desert resident—by a lone cottonwood or sprig of weed in the Mojave, and by a cluster of native Washingtonian Fan Palm trees tucked into deep canyons of the Western Colorado. Likewise, instead of being easily diminished to the tiresome caricatures dominated by a literary canon that favors cities, farms, and forests, the human character of the California desert defies the stereotypes created by those writers who have tried to tuck it into a neatly categorized place.
Most people are certainly familiar with stories of the rugged desert survivalist, the consummate “desert rat” or gold miner, grizzled and worn by sun, who wears a rattlesnake-skin headband and roams the desert with a bag of tools. However, the stories of the earliest people, our desert Indians, whose very languages, creation stories and songs depict an active relationship between the landscape and an early and enduring people, such as the many locations named and form a crucial contributions to historical and contemporary American literature. In stock desert literature, stories of rugged western settlers, gunslingers, and stagecoach riders, who brave the desert’s harsh expanses and pray to make it to water, have been greatly emphasized. In contrast, the true stories of our state’s deserts are as rich and textured as its geography, which covers 25 million acres, comprises one-fourth of the state’s expanse, and includes all or parts of seven of the state’s largest counties.
I’ve been told by biologic resources that the California desert is second only to the Amazonian Rain Forests in terms of its plant diversity. Scientists are still trying to learn what treasures reside here. Further disturbing of desert topsoil that is necessary for mass installations of renewable energy facilities will not only rob the entire southwest of the CO2 formation that naturally occurs in the living, biotic “desert crust,” but will pose a tremendous threat to the respiratory health of millions of southwestern residents and create an uncontrollable “dust bowl” and sharply influence the inevitable increase of such viral diseases as the dreaded “valley fever,” already on the rise in the area; the disaster of Owens Dry Lake comes to mind.
The California desert is a very windy place, and it doesn’t take long for disturbed desert to stir up and create hazardous dust-zones. In addition to posing serious health threats, there is the issue of freeway visibility. Already, on various places along Interstate 10, a major east-west artery involving traffic and heavy truck travel from Los Angeles to points east, dust storms are ea problem. This area includes the corridor in eastern Riverside County where proposed renewable energy sites have already been approved, have large yellow warning signs that say “warning: dust storm ahead when lights blinking.” I’ve been on the freeway in the area when the blowing dust has been so bad that I’ve had to pull over.
In the desert, “church is on the face of the land itself,” and to scar its essence needlessly is, in essence, to tear down a world of churches and tear down a vital part of our human and national and global heart. In the desert, an old-growth Joshua Tree is the equivalent to an ancient redwood tree in our state’s northwestern forests. In the desert, the sacred desert tortoise, a federally-protected species, is what the great white whale is to our Pacific and Atlantic oceans. In the desert, the golden eagle and red-tailed hawk will be among the thousands of birds who live and migrate here on important migratory corridors who stand to lose their lives when they are sucked into windmill farms. We all know what happened in the Gulf of Mexico and the widespread environmental and cultural havoc created along out southern coastlines this past year with the BP Oil Spill. To install massive, technologically experimental and highly polluting, noisy, destructive renewable energy facilities in the California desert is to spell disaster that will have no relief.
Rather than exploit the California deserts, I’d say let’s do more to protect them, now and for future generations; to protect precious aspects of our country’s heritage so important to all of us, as a country and global community, that once gone, can never be replaced Let’s not destroy virgin desert lands, what little of them remain, and forever desecrate this very special area that is still so largely unknown, a place that motivates spiritual and personal renewal and inspiration, a region of uniqueness that can never be duplicated. Let us not forever destroy the cultural and archaeological artifacts of our desert’s Native American people, many which to date remain scantly known and little understood. The California deserts are filled with heritage and wisdom that we can’t afford to erase. At a time in human history when so much has been irreparably plundered world-wide, it would be in our best interests to sustain that which might very well serve us in our efforts towards survival on our heavily overtaxed planet.
The desert hums with the pulse of overlapping human lives to form a river of sound, a complex and richly-woven conglomerate of human voices that sometimes overflows its shores with terrible roars, gathering momentum to overrun the dry wash, and at other places, dissipates entirely, only to relieve the eyes with the gracious vision of water, that may or may not be a mirage, later on. I invite you to step in, lightly, if you please, with great reverence and curiosity and respect, to share its mysteries, its rough edges, its infinite tranquilities.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
I could write of this:
Life is an amazing diaspora that continues to unfold. Stories, being lived, can I rein them in? I could write of you. The ephemeral you that says "I love you, I will love you forever," the universal you of desert tortoise kingdoms and cinnamon-tinged coffee, vegan dinners from Native Foods and new hikes on the Bump n' Grind, patching together an old quilt with side trails freshly-excavated. Walking the earth up and down, sky to body to earth, the way it's always been. Joshua tree recognitions, Indian trail discoveries, splintered quartz offerings gleaming their prayerful words, giant desert ironwood forests in a vast, dry wash.
Today: a blustery November in the low desert, sunlight so bright when I look out the window and see color behind brilliant clouds, I can't decipher if the sky is black or blue, and realize it's blue.
I could write of talking with Tarah on the phone, rain in Palm Springs, she's nestled against mountains and her new husband in a one-room apartment, living on discounted cups of noodles with two cats, Ducky and Pepper, and asks me to come over to help her do the dishes. I meant to do NaNoWriMo but I've gotten caught up in trying to save the California Desert. A foolish task, a necessary impulse, I'm meeting amazing, incredible people in my efforts: homeland security! Hey everyone, magic lives out here! Consider that. What do I do with myself, now that I'm merely a background mom? We barely had a few sprinkles just 10 miles farther out into the desert here in Palm Desert. Lots of wind, which I love. And when the rain does fall, it's for moments of prayer, of holding my hands open wide, in a moment of thanks. It's something that longtime desert people tend to do. When it rains after months of going without.
I haven't seen Tarah since my family birthday dinner last Saturday November 13, with mom and dad, freshly back from Italy, and Alex and Tarah and a handful of light presents. I bought myself a sheet cake, I've done it before, and had my name written across the bottom and top, but I insisted on no happy-birthday singing until we left the restaurant. Sammy's wood fired pizza on El Paseo at the Gardens in Palm Desert.
This being 22 stuff is so new. The four year overhaul. Living alone gets more familiar but filled with agitations, restlessness, I'm suspended between lives, and bounce along, wondering what is next, all the while living so fully, on the road from Blythe at the Colorado River to Riverside for writing workshop to Palmdale to give a Puritan reading and lecture, and back, pit stop at College of the Desert for intensive creative writing and freshman composition lectures and workshops, and back home to feed the dogs, wash a few clothes in my disheveled home, sleep, and start again.
I could write about how I picked up a copy of "Just Kids" by Patti Smith, a must-read, at Barnes and Noble at the Palm Desert mall, a place I rarely go except for my friend Patricia's monthly poetry readings or when I have a specific book to buy. How I saw the moon fragment behind pocket-clouds last night, odd browns and lights, not quite clear, and deeply present. How I woke at 4 a.m. to stiff wind, and the clear moon to the west out my bedroom. I sleep in Tarah's old room now, on the new bed I bought early last spring, flattened on the floor, with my high-end road bike parked across the sliding mirrored closet doors, an ironing board full of white cotton shirts to iron, and a drafting table holding various books and copies of various tabloids that I'll soon pass on to my mom. And Mom came over yesterday, bless her heart, to again help me go through my piles of bills. Almost there. Almost caught up. After the financial and emotional summer drought.
What else could I say? Tracing ancient intaglios and geoglyphs in the desert near Blythe. Singing my heart and footprints on the Mastodon Peak Trail in Joshua Tree, photographing along the way and grateful for the October rains that have made things bloom out there: ocotillo suprises, Indian village site down the dry wash (not on the visitor's map), a red glowing bush whose name I don't know...glowing barrel cactus and yellow-leafed cottonwood trees in November drawl against the lowering sun. Time change and I try to adapt. The months of darkness coming early, and I sleep better than before. Music has filled my house the past week, my friend Ben came over and played piano while I played several different flutes and guitar - we had a really fun jam. Hanging out in Riverside at Tio's Taco's with writing workshop friends Lorraine, Peter, Steve- my magic sax man! - and Mike. Driving home again on the familiar through-the-Badlands-route and offering my usual silent prayers for Phil, whose life ended there.
Autumn in the desert revives and renews. Magic footsteps, I could write of this, I try to bring it all into one, and I pray for desert preservation, to remember the deep grooved, storied landscape before it's gone.
And now it's time to broaden into sunshine. Outdoors for light-splash. Remember one of thousands of mother-daughter walks: Tarah in her baby backpack on Fry Mountain. Tarah climbing ahead of me in the Wonderland of rocks. Camping with my girl on a trip through Topock Gorge. The day Tarah decided to stay home instead. "I love you forever," I say to you. I can taste a few persistent raindrops on my mouth-opened tongue, and remember what water felt like not so long ago, and I know I will remain in this for however long it takes to fill.
Today: a blustery November in the low desert, sunlight so bright when I look out the window and see color behind brilliant clouds, I can't decipher if the sky is black or blue, and realize it's blue.
I could write of talking with Tarah on the phone, rain in Palm Springs, she's nestled against mountains and her new husband in a one-room apartment, living on discounted cups of noodles with two cats, Ducky and Pepper, and asks me to come over to help her do the dishes. I meant to do NaNoWriMo but I've gotten caught up in trying to save the California Desert. A foolish task, a necessary impulse, I'm meeting amazing, incredible people in my efforts: homeland security! Hey everyone, magic lives out here! Consider that. What do I do with myself, now that I'm merely a background mom? We barely had a few sprinkles just 10 miles farther out into the desert here in Palm Desert. Lots of wind, which I love. And when the rain does fall, it's for moments of prayer, of holding my hands open wide, in a moment of thanks. It's something that longtime desert people tend to do. When it rains after months of going without.
I haven't seen Tarah since my family birthday dinner last Saturday November 13, with mom and dad, freshly back from Italy, and Alex and Tarah and a handful of light presents. I bought myself a sheet cake, I've done it before, and had my name written across the bottom and top, but I insisted on no happy-birthday singing until we left the restaurant. Sammy's wood fired pizza on El Paseo at the Gardens in Palm Desert.
This being 22 stuff is so new. The four year overhaul. Living alone gets more familiar but filled with agitations, restlessness, I'm suspended between lives, and bounce along, wondering what is next, all the while living so fully, on the road from Blythe at the Colorado River to Riverside for writing workshop to Palmdale to give a Puritan reading and lecture, and back, pit stop at College of the Desert for intensive creative writing and freshman composition lectures and workshops, and back home to feed the dogs, wash a few clothes in my disheveled home, sleep, and start again.
I could write about how I picked up a copy of "Just Kids" by Patti Smith, a must-read, at Barnes and Noble at the Palm Desert mall, a place I rarely go except for my friend Patricia's monthly poetry readings or when I have a specific book to buy. How I saw the moon fragment behind pocket-clouds last night, odd browns and lights, not quite clear, and deeply present. How I woke at 4 a.m. to stiff wind, and the clear moon to the west out my bedroom. I sleep in Tarah's old room now, on the new bed I bought early last spring, flattened on the floor, with my high-end road bike parked across the sliding mirrored closet doors, an ironing board full of white cotton shirts to iron, and a drafting table holding various books and copies of various tabloids that I'll soon pass on to my mom. And Mom came over yesterday, bless her heart, to again help me go through my piles of bills. Almost there. Almost caught up. After the financial and emotional summer drought.
What else could I say? Tracing ancient intaglios and geoglyphs in the desert near Blythe. Singing my heart and footprints on the Mastodon Peak Trail in Joshua Tree, photographing along the way and grateful for the October rains that have made things bloom out there: ocotillo suprises, Indian village site down the dry wash (not on the visitor's map), a red glowing bush whose name I don't know...glowing barrel cactus and yellow-leafed cottonwood trees in November drawl against the lowering sun. Time change and I try to adapt. The months of darkness coming early, and I sleep better than before. Music has filled my house the past week, my friend Ben came over and played piano while I played several different flutes and guitar - we had a really fun jam. Hanging out in Riverside at Tio's Taco's with writing workshop friends Lorraine, Peter, Steve- my magic sax man! - and Mike. Driving home again on the familiar through-the-Badlands-route and offering my usual silent prayers for Phil, whose life ended there.
Autumn in the desert revives and renews. Magic footsteps, I could write of this, I try to bring it all into one, and I pray for desert preservation, to remember the deep grooved, storied landscape before it's gone.
And now it's time to broaden into sunshine. Outdoors for light-splash. Remember one of thousands of mother-daughter walks: Tarah in her baby backpack on Fry Mountain. Tarah climbing ahead of me in the Wonderland of rocks. Camping with my girl on a trip through Topock Gorge. The day Tarah decided to stay home instead. "I love you forever," I say to you. I can taste a few persistent raindrops on my mouth-opened tongue, and remember what water felt like not so long ago, and I know I will remain in this for however long it takes to fill.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Western Wilderness Conference, April 10. 2010
I was part of a panel presentation, with Malcolm Margolin, Tim Palmer and Kenneth Brower (grandson of the late environmentalist/Sierra Club founder David Brower) at the Western Wilderness Conference 2010 at University of California, Berkeley. Here I am, reading desert poetry, lecturing from NP4AP, and and poetically describing the cosmic vitality of the desert...a little mashup, if you will, of poet-professor-desert storyboard.
thanks to my friend, writer/audio engineer Cyrus Emerson, for filming this. The pictures are mine, most taken by me and some taken by my friend Philip Helland.
thanks to my friend, writer/audio engineer Cyrus Emerson, for filming this. The pictures are mine, most taken by me and some taken by my friend Philip Helland.
Monday, November 15, 2010
California Legacy Project: Nature Dreaming
Nature Dreaming: Rediscovering California's Landscapes borrows its title from lines of a lyric poem by Robinson Jeffers, "The Beauty of Things":
. . . man you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant—to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
I am one of the featured scholar/writers for this new California Legacy Project radio/Internet program, Nature Dreaming, with writers/writing from around our state. Several of the interviews and readings are posted, and updates are being added (including my humble interview on the California Desert, my scholarly and literary work and poetic affiliations with my Mojave homeland) soon. Thanks to the amazing Terry Beers of Santa Clara University for putting this together.
http://californialegacy.org/radio_productions/Nature_Dreaming/
This program is inspired by the nature-based poetry and prose of the late Robinson Jeffers, whose Big Sur coastline/northern California writing rests large among our state, and country's, literary giants.
I can't wait to hear the entire show! We are at such a crucial time right now, in moving forward with California desert conservation and protection, given the onslaught of massive wind and solar projects already ok'd and being ok'd by the California Energy Commission and President Obama. 43,000 acres already signed away, and reports that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has said that he wants to make the California deserts - and southwest U.S. - the source of all wind and solar for the country. Endangered desert tortoises and fragile, vulnerable ecosystems are already being plowed under as I write this, never to be recovered again. We MUST act now to severely curtail, and reconsider, the Solar Gold Rush, which threatens so many levels of ecosystem, balance, and survival.
This is the time where I find myself so gratefully and determinedly joining a growing contingent of dedicated California desert conservationists and activists - Alfredo Figueroa, Preston Arrow-Weed, Chris Clarke, Terry Weiner, Laura Cunningham, Kevin Emmerich, Bob Ellis, Pat Flanagan, Tom Budlong, Steve Brown, Larry Hogue, Robert Lundahl, Joan Taylor, other Chemehuevi, Quechan, Mojave, and other Colorado River Indian leaders, including Charles Wood and Philip Smith, and others in the best, presssed-for-time grassroots campaigns that we can to make the public aware of what is at stake here in our precious California desert, and why we can't afford to lose this forever to the interests of corporate power mandating how "sustainable" energy implementation will go down in our deserts.
In other words, we can't afford to "murder to dissect," as the great philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said, in our efforts to shift how we produce energy. Murdering the California desert by invading, blading, and forever destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine land - home to endangered species such as the California Desert Tortoise, the Joshua tree, and so much of the magic of our landscape and heritage - that we are still barely learning about - in the name of "sustainability." To do so would be the most tragic form of irony, with no comic relief, that I can think of. I am posting updates and information as I receive it, best that I can, to Mojave Desert Watch on facebook; feel free to visit and "like" this page. Also, visiting there will allow you to connect with other sites such as Basin and Range Watch and other sources of information, including filmmaker Robert Lundahl's excellent series about the Blythe Intaglios and other archaeological sites of the area.
here I am at the Creator's Throne, an archaeological site near Blythe, CA, at the edge of the proposed 10,000 acre Millenium Solar Project. Much of the landscape behind me, which contains invaluable archaelogical features, is slated for destruction. Thank you, Alfredo Figueroa, esteemed historian, elder, activist, and who has been sounding the alarm on what stands to be lost longer and more vocally and with more passion and compassion than anyone else I have met - for sharing this treasure with me, on behalf of my heart and my love for my Mojave Homeland.
NATURE DREAMING PROJECT: in-progress and to be completed by early 2011. Featured writers-scholars include: David Mas Masumoto, San Joaquin Valley organic farmer/writer and award-winning author of Heirlooms, Letters to the Valley, Four Seasons in Five Senses, Harvest Son, Epitaph for a Peach, and Wisdom of the Last Farmer; and also writer-scholars Georgiana Sanchez; Gary Noy; Shaun-Ann Tangney; Kevin Hearle; and Juan Velasco.
I am beyond humbled and floored to be included as part of this series, representing the great California desert and its magic, mysteries, allure, power, indigenous genius, and known and unknown writers and writing.
. . . man you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant—to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
I am one of the featured scholar/writers for this new California Legacy Project radio/Internet program, Nature Dreaming, with writers/writing from around our state. Several of the interviews and readings are posted, and updates are being added (including my humble interview on the California Desert, my scholarly and literary work and poetic affiliations with my Mojave homeland) soon. Thanks to the amazing Terry Beers of Santa Clara University for putting this together.
http://californialegacy.org/radio_productions/Nature_Dreaming/
This program is inspired by the nature-based poetry and prose of the late Robinson Jeffers, whose Big Sur coastline/northern California writing rests large among our state, and country's, literary giants.
I can't wait to hear the entire show! We are at such a crucial time right now, in moving forward with California desert conservation and protection, given the onslaught of massive wind and solar projects already ok'd and being ok'd by the California Energy Commission and President Obama. 43,000 acres already signed away, and reports that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has said that he wants to make the California deserts - and southwest U.S. - the source of all wind and solar for the country. Endangered desert tortoises and fragile, vulnerable ecosystems are already being plowed under as I write this, never to be recovered again. We MUST act now to severely curtail, and reconsider, the Solar Gold Rush, which threatens so many levels of ecosystem, balance, and survival.
This is the time where I find myself so gratefully and determinedly joining a growing contingent of dedicated California desert conservationists and activists - Alfredo Figueroa, Preston Arrow-Weed, Chris Clarke, Terry Weiner, Laura Cunningham, Kevin Emmerich, Bob Ellis, Pat Flanagan, Tom Budlong, Steve Brown, Larry Hogue, Robert Lundahl, Joan Taylor, other Chemehuevi, Quechan, Mojave, and other Colorado River Indian leaders, including Charles Wood and Philip Smith, and others in the best, presssed-for-time grassroots campaigns that we can to make the public aware of what is at stake here in our precious California desert, and why we can't afford to lose this forever to the interests of corporate power mandating how "sustainable" energy implementation will go down in our deserts.
In other words, we can't afford to "murder to dissect," as the great philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said, in our efforts to shift how we produce energy. Murdering the California desert by invading, blading, and forever destroying hundreds of thousands of acres of pristine land - home to endangered species such as the California Desert Tortoise, the Joshua tree, and so much of the magic of our landscape and heritage - that we are still barely learning about - in the name of "sustainability." To do so would be the most tragic form of irony, with no comic relief, that I can think of. I am posting updates and information as I receive it, best that I can, to Mojave Desert Watch on facebook; feel free to visit and "like" this page. Also, visiting there will allow you to connect with other sites such as Basin and Range Watch and other sources of information, including filmmaker Robert Lundahl's excellent series about the Blythe Intaglios and other archaeological sites of the area.
here I am at the Creator's Throne, an archaeological site near Blythe, CA, at the edge of the proposed 10,000 acre Millenium Solar Project. Much of the landscape behind me, which contains invaluable archaelogical features, is slated for destruction. Thank you, Alfredo Figueroa, esteemed historian, elder, activist, and who has been sounding the alarm on what stands to be lost longer and more vocally and with more passion and compassion than anyone else I have met - for sharing this treasure with me, on behalf of my heart and my love for my Mojave Homeland.
NATURE DREAMING PROJECT: in-progress and to be completed by early 2011. Featured writers-scholars include: David Mas Masumoto, San Joaquin Valley organic farmer/writer and award-winning author of Heirlooms, Letters to the Valley, Four Seasons in Five Senses, Harvest Son, Epitaph for a Peach, and Wisdom of the Last Farmer; and also writer-scholars Georgiana Sanchez; Gary Noy; Shaun-Ann Tangney; Kevin Hearle; and Juan Velasco.
I am beyond humbled and floored to be included as part of this series, representing the great California desert and its magic, mysteries, allure, power, indigenous genius, and known and unknown writers and writing.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
HELP! Mass Destruction...in the Mojave...happening now....
People PLEASE read this and SPREAD THE WORD! Only a small group of people seem to know what is going on in the Mojave Desert as I write this. A massive LAND RAPE. All in the name of "go-green" which in this case is the rhetoric of sustainability being used in a twisted way. 5-10% of the species of the Mojave Desert flora and fauna remain un-discovered and un-named.
The Ivanpah Valley, California Spirit Run - to raise awareness for this beautiful area of the Mojave Desert located near the California-Nevada stateline....and where the world's largest solar facility is currently being installed, with drastic, horrific implications for the future of the desert and its many inhabitants. Plants, animals, geologic and archaeological-cultural features, many which are not yet fully understood.
http://vimeo.com/16014476
Watch this video:
http://thesunrunner.ning.com/video/shocking-projection-of-mass
Interview with ecologist Jim Andre, Director, Granite Mountains Desert Research Center at University of California. If he seems in shock...well, he is. This has all come down so quickly, so sneakily, and so drastically that none of us involved in desert protection quite knows what to do.
This very precious region is not only barely being understood, but as a desert that attracts millions of visitors yearly from around the world for its fragility, intensity, and wisdom, not to mention beauty and allure....it is being grabbed in what is being termed by desert conservationists as the ugliest, biggest land-grab and archaeological and biological eco-destruction our country has seen since the Gold Rush in the Sierras in the 1800's.
This is NOT good and in fact is pure evil. There is no reason these massive solar and wind plants cannot be placed on land that is already "gone" or on farms anywhere in the western U.S. that are laying fallow.
The Mojave Desert is largely YOUR land. Public land. BLM land, there for all of us to use and enjoy. The BLM has made, and continues to make, dirty deals for minor ducats with corporate robber-barns, on land it is supposed to protect for generations to come. Why can't the corporations barter deals for windmill and solar - which still uses oil and gas and water for production - with private landowners?
Read this article, which I found on a private blog: it's by an environmental writer who really outlines the evils, comparing the solar-wind land grab on the California desert to the fights of the 1950's and 60's to protect Yosemite and nearby Sierra valleys from development of dams.
http://palimpsest.typepad.com/frogsandravens/2010/10/hetch-hetchy-and-glenn-canyon-all-over-again.html
The desert is my home. This hurts. It's unnecessary. Solar and wind CAN be done right. The sickening destruction of stands of virgin, old-growth Joshua trees, which are already endangered, by bulldozers -- to build the world's largest solar plant - is an irreversible decision that will ruin what can never be replaced.
Pass the word along. Let people know. GET INVOLVED. Maybe we can...change this world.
The California Desert...is YOUR backyard.
The Ivanpah Valley, California Spirit Run - to raise awareness for this beautiful area of the Mojave Desert located near the California-Nevada stateline....and where the world's largest solar facility is currently being installed, with drastic, horrific implications for the future of the desert and its many inhabitants. Plants, animals, geologic and archaeological-cultural features, many which are not yet fully understood.
http://vimeo.com/16014476
Watch this video:
http://thesunrunner.ning.com/video/shocking-projection-of-mass
Interview with ecologist Jim Andre, Director, Granite Mountains Desert Research Center at University of California. If he seems in shock...well, he is. This has all come down so quickly, so sneakily, and so drastically that none of us involved in desert protection quite knows what to do.
This very precious region is not only barely being understood, but as a desert that attracts millions of visitors yearly from around the world for its fragility, intensity, and wisdom, not to mention beauty and allure....it is being grabbed in what is being termed by desert conservationists as the ugliest, biggest land-grab and archaeological and biological eco-destruction our country has seen since the Gold Rush in the Sierras in the 1800's.
This is NOT good and in fact is pure evil. There is no reason these massive solar and wind plants cannot be placed on land that is already "gone" or on farms anywhere in the western U.S. that are laying fallow.
The Mojave Desert is largely YOUR land. Public land. BLM land, there for all of us to use and enjoy. The BLM has made, and continues to make, dirty deals for minor ducats with corporate robber-barns, on land it is supposed to protect for generations to come. Why can't the corporations barter deals for windmill and solar - which still uses oil and gas and water for production - with private landowners?
Read this article, which I found on a private blog: it's by an environmental writer who really outlines the evils, comparing the solar-wind land grab on the California desert to the fights of the 1950's and 60's to protect Yosemite and nearby Sierra valleys from development of dams.
http://palimpsest.typepad.com/frogsandravens/2010/10/hetch-hetchy-and-glenn-canyon-all-over-again.html
The desert is my home. This hurts. It's unnecessary. Solar and wind CAN be done right. The sickening destruction of stands of virgin, old-growth Joshua trees, which are already endangered, by bulldozers -- to build the world's largest solar plant - is an irreversible decision that will ruin what can never be replaced.
Pass the word along. Let people know. GET INVOLVED. Maybe we can...change this world.
The California Desert...is YOUR backyard.
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