Word of the Year 2013: Turn

Resolutions so rarely work for me that I gave them up ages ago. Still one wants to the honor the New Year with some sort of fresh direction. So I’ve joined that merry band of folks who chose a word for the year – or rather, allow a word of significance to choose them. The idea is that the word will resonate in some way throughout the year, maybe giving a bit of direction or providing some measure of clarity or understanding of one’s self in one’s world. No guarantees of course, but I’m always surprised at the correlation between the word and the events of the year. When I remember to do it, that is. I skipped last year, or at least I didn’t write it down, which is pretty much the same thing.

This year TURN has turned shown up. It’s a rich word, with both noun and verb  (transitive and intransitive) chock full of nuances and uses. My baby OED (DK Illustrated) devotes two columns to it sans illustrations; the Free Dictionary definition including all turns (oops) of phrases runs to 8 pages single-spaced.

Whew, I must be anticipating a busy year.

Turn has strong and clean bloodlines, coming from Old English tyrnan, turnian, from Latin tornare, from tornus 'lathe', from Greek tornos 'lathe, circular movement'. I like the sense of the lathe paring away the excesses, revealing the true or desired form; it feels so appropriate. Especially when I’ve vowed to absolutely de-clutter my studio room. Someday. Soon.  But I'm also interested in paring away the un-necessary baggage of living and getting down to a simpler, more authentic sort of existence. 

Turn: The basic definition is to move in a circular direction around a center point; but this movement is modified in many ways: turn over, turn around, turn up, turn in, turn aside, turn away, turn down, turn inside out, upside down. We take turns, make turns; we get turned on, turned out; we turn turtle, turn a profit, turn a somersault. All meanings that indicate a sharp,  distinct change in direction.

This year I am turning (ok, I'm giving in now) one of those big corners in life: retirement from my job as office administrator and a re-turn to life centered around writing and the outdoors. (See what I mean? Turn is everywhere!) I plan to turn over a new leaf in my writing discipline and practice, and of course, turn my rough drafts into finished pieces. I want to turn away from an out-grown mode of living and turn onto a new path, turn into new patterns of functioning. 

But right now I’m going to turn this into a blog post and turn in for the night.

The Hundreds Game

Neat and tidy is not exactly the way I roll, but there always comes that time when my study sinks into Hoarderville. Embarrassingly so. Even for me. Stacks of books interleaved with stacks of papers until they resemble a sliding mesa; notebooks from several different projects wide open and sprawled across the desk; paid and unpaid bills covering up the misplaced debit cards that must be here somewhere. This place is an Official Mess. I mean, only a bloodhound will be able find those cards (and the wallet they escaped from) in this wall-to-wall clutter. Though I’m sure they're close by and probably in plain sight. Somewhere. Like, oops, right there, under the collection of postcards I've been intending to mail, ahhem, sometime (cough, cough) soon.

But cleaning up and putting things away, jeepers, it’s just so bothersome, especially when you can’t even figure out where to start. Not to mention that you could spend all weekend on the project and barely make a dent in the accumulations. 

So lately, I've been playing a little game with myself that I call The Hundreds.  No, not where you get yourself down to one hundred things in your life (as if! ); this is getting one hundred things out of my study - each week. It's tidying up on the installment plan. Hmmmm, I could probably start with getting one hundred things out of my purse. Maybe then I could carry it without groaning. And maybe my wallet would fit in it and not be sliding around here on my desk, disgorging debit cards.

Here's how it works: I give myself a point for any one thing, big or little, that I put away or get out of the room. That useless lamp? To the curb! That collection of cups? off to the scullery with you! That spill of paper clips? Hie thee to the Clip Cup! And oh, yes, a piece of paper counts. I mean, let's get down with the motivation here.  One hundred pieces of paper is no small thing - there's a bankers box in front of me with at least that many pieces of paper waiting to be filed, recycled, shredded, re-gifted, mailed, framed - or simply thrown away. No points for just putting it in another pile to deal with later; no, no, no. 

For my first hundred points, I weeded the pen caddies - tossing out funky fountain pens, dry ballpoints, pencils less than an inch long with no eraser (a quick thirty points); then gathered a dozen or so working pens to share with the pen-starved faculty at work; threw several small hills of stickies blackened with illegible scribbles into the recycle bin; shelved thirty-five books that I lugged in from the car three weeks ago and were just sitting by the door in their box. 100 points, easy peasy!

  

Mailing postcards and thank you notes count, too, because those cards are outta here. An unanticipated bonus of my Hundreds game: postal treats from me: an irrelevant post card or a long overdue thank-you note. 

The best part: I’m not spending my whole weekend in a cleaning and sorting tizzy, pissed off at the clutter, pissed at myself for letting it get that way, and super-pissed off a spending a fabulous best-weather-of-all-time weekend dealing with it. Or getting really, really pissed off should anyone (especially someone in a familial relationship to me) make even the slightest joke about it. Seriously. This tidying-up stuff is not funny.

Now, there is no way I’m posting project-start pictures of my whole office; it’s pretty pathetic and someone might call social services. But I will post a Before and After picture of some select areas to prove my point. They're but not the same spot, so you have to use some imagination. But, once upon a time, before the Game began, the tidier spot (where the wallet was hiding) resembled the messy spot (where anything, even a bloodhound, could be hiding). 

So what do you think, magic, right? (and no, the stuff wasn't just pushed from one spot to the other! No points that way!)

... the  messy spot ....

... the more-or-less tidied-up spot ....

Less Than Three

I've been mystified lately about a particular thingy that I've been seeing all over the Interwebbys, particularly on Facebook posts.  Sometimes it shows up in a series of three or four in a row. (I can't type this thingy into my post to show you because it seems to read as some sort of HTML directives and my post gets completely screwed up.)

But for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how "less than 3"  had anything to do with the topic at hand. And why "less than" ? why not "more than" ? Why not 5 or 33 or 113? I didn't quite get it.

Until one morning, when the caffeine hadn't kicked in yet and my eyes were still gluey and half-shut, I realized they were supposed to be hearts. Lying down hearts, but none the less loving for all that.

Just sign me:
Too Much Math at an Early Age.

Here's a snap of three thingeys

Snack&Bath on B Street

My friend, the oak titmouse, at a more bountiful moment. 

I hadn't filled the bird feeders yesterday afternoon, though I should have; they were pretty low. A glance this morning through the window over the sink and I saw they were all seriously empty, even the bench where I place bread crumbs, mealworms, those little red peanuts. The backyard was still and barren, rigid in the pearly morning cold; no flutter of leaves or bird wing, no whistles or chirps. Everything had given up  - I felt empty and unresponsive myself, quiet and cold. And yet, there was one lone grey bird, an oak titmouse, bulky with fluffed up feathers, perched patiently in the bare branches of the runty plum tree.

Okay, I get it, my birdy friend, but first, coffee. And a smackeral of breakfast.

By the time the coffee had spluttered to its end, the whole darn crew had descended upon our yard to join the buzzy-voiced oak titmouse; white-capped sparrows, house finches, purple finches, blustery scrub jays. They were perched everywhere, on the sorry-assed plum tree, the bedraggled apple tree further back, the tomato cages laced with brown vines and frozen tomatoes I haven't taken down yet. Little fluffy sentinels of reproach, unmoving, just sitting there.

The toast popped up and I buttered it - but I couldn't take it anymore. I slipped several layers over my pj's and out I went into the new morning; the birds, as usual, fleeing as the screen door banged shut behind me. I worked swiftly (it was barely above freezing; my hands were stiff and achy), filling up the two depleted feeders, dribbling the little red peanuts and dried mealworms along the bench, promising the goldfinches that I'd get more nyger seeds for them later on.


Back inside, nibbling on reheated toast, hands hugging a steaming coffee mug, I glanced through the kitchen window. All was still, no avian buzz and chatter. Had they decamped in disgust for more provident pastures? But by the time I plunked my plate in the sink and poured another cup, the back yard was a fluttering tableau of birds; finches squabbling around the tube feeder, sparrows making quick work on the mealworm bench and everyone taking baths and drinking up - another fabulous morning at the  Snack&Bath on B Street.

I'd never felt that birdfeeder's guilt so strongly before. I've always figured, you know, birds: they're opportunists, they'll hustle on to their next stop, they'll find something else and come back later. Today, even though I wasn't able to recognize any one single particular bird, it's as if they were my "regulars" waiting patiently outside the plate glass windows and doors of my cafe, while I dilly-dallied around in my felted slippers and fuzzy robe, late to open.

It felt good to open the doors. A new morning, a new year.

The Charm of the Chickadees, the Music of the Season

Here's a link to a piece of mine just posted on the Sonoma State Newsletter. Pictures and everything!

The Charm of the Chickadees, the Music of the Season

Tis the Season - for Novels

It's November and novelists are tucked into every corner of the coffeeshops, lurking in libraries, pounding the keyboards.  For those of you still wavering on the fence on the the importance of this Novel-in-a-Month idea, Catherine Thorpe, has written an insightful blogpost on that very subject: Beyond the Purple Bar.

And you know, there is still plenty of time to sign up for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)...and grab a table at your neighborhood coffee & tea establishment.

Teardrop Trailer - or Vacation in a Can

Vacation does something to you; rearranges your brain molecules, restructures your thought-habits. After a week out of the office and camping out by the beach,  I'm trying to ease back into town-life as slow as I can.  Yes, laziness is a by-product of vacations. 


We read bunches and bunches - first of all, because we could and second of all, because it rained the first day and night. What goddess prompted me to rent, in August, a Teardrop Trailer for our October vacation?  "Rain, schmain " we said, warm and snug in our little bug. 

The Teardrop trailer, named The Chili Pepper, a.k.a. our savior

(Rented ours from Vacations in a Can in Penngrove, CA. Great design, excellent craftsmanship; you won't be disappointed)


We camped at Bodega Dunes State Campground, one of our favorites go-to spots along the Sonoma Coast.  The campground is set back from the Pacific ocean beach, hunkered behind long dunes; our campsite was bordered a thick stand of eucalyptus and a creaky hallway of old and dignified cypress, planted as windbreaks by farmers long ago. It's beautiful even in the rain, and especially beautiful from the cozy-warm hella-cute super-fab little tag-along.

Eucalyptus in the mist

A faint path wends its way between
two rows of cypress

Our morning espresso cart - a bit soggy,
 but serviceable. Yay for canopies!

Reading nook extrodinaire! Note plenty of cubbies
for all your books, munchies, spare glasses, pens, notebooks.  

Serendipitously, we had tickets for the Picasso exhibit at the de Young Museum in San Francisco for that unexpectedly rainy day - perfect timing, eh? The drive to SF from Bodega is about about an hour and a bit, but heck, we were on vacation, but what else did we have to do? And nothing much better than a museum on a rainy day, I say.

So, after a few doses of camp coffee - note the espresso pot on the propane stove, 'cause that's the (only) way we  roll, strong coffee, sraight up - we drove into P-town for breakfast, drove to SF for the exhibit (fabulous, of course - thanks, Stephanie!), drove back to camp and scurried into the Teardrop, visually provoked and culture-sated. And we still had plenty of time to read a bunch more before we went out for dinner at a seafood/Mexican place just down the road.

Still raining, before, during and after. Not a hard, sluicing rain, just relentless, thick and starting to get on our nerves. But, look, ma - no muddy tent, no soaked clothes, no damp sleeping bags on a cold mat or sagging air mattress - which, swear to Jumping Jupiter, starts to deflate from the moment you shove that little plug into the air vent.  Much as we loved camping, that was the main reason we'd given up on it: our grouchy backs just couldn't take it anymore.

The next morning, the rain was over. A full moon graced the skies that night and the rest of the week was sunny, breezy, just about perfect.  

We're so smitten with The Can, we're plotting ways to procure our own. Because between staying dry and sleeping on a real, very comfortable mattress, it feels like we can camp again. 

Hallelujah!

Second Poem: Green Hills

Here's my second re-orient-the-brain dual-purpose poem,*

Green Hills
by Kay Ryan

Their green flanks
and swells are not
flesh in any sense
matching ours,
we tell ourselves.
Nor their green
breast nor their
green shoulder nor
the languor of their
rolling over.

If that isn't the perfect rendition of the hills of West Marin and Sonoma, I don't know what is.  Ryan captures our attention by telling us that the "green flanks and swells" really aren't body and flesh. And just when we are mentally contradicting her because yes, they do look like shoulders and thighs and the sway of reclining backs and hips, Ryan goes one step further and animates those green hills in that clever play on the rolling hills ... magnificent.

p.s.  occasionally they do roll - like when the earth quakes.

links to photographic evidence:

green hills 1

green hills 2

• see previous post

Dual Purpose Poems

Work has become its own beast lately, with a steep adjustment curve to new paradigms and programs.  In an attempt to cope, I've started to memorize a poem a day, hoping to divert the obsessive part of my mind from continually rolling down the grooves of irritation, which with repetition, will only become deeper, the negative reactions more entrenched, more intractable. I felt that if I could interrupt the process, I could block the high hits on the Stress-O-Meter and halt the accompanying rise in cortisol. Plus give myself something pleasantly literary to think about. And liven up my little grey cells.

So when I feel the anxiety rise, I resort to the poem, reciting it under my breath like a verbal amulet or a Spell for Protection.  It seems to be working; I don't feel so wound up in the morass of a SNAFU which is not of my making and which I can not change. Recalling the poem is sometimes all I need to regain a more tolerant and reflective state. Or at least get me though the next half hour without incident, embarrassment or name-calling. 

There have been some unintended (though welcome) consequences of this practice: getting this close to poetry and language is firing up my desire to be swimming in the deep end of writing and literature. (More on that later.)

Because I so love her work and because she is one hella tight poet, I've started with poems by Kay Ryan.  I'm enthralled with her imagery, rhythm, metaphors, the way her poems cinch right up at the end.  There is never any doubt that you've landed at the end of a Kay Ryan poem. Doesn't hurt that they are often short; my old gray brain just ain’t what it used to be. And oh, yeah, the poem-a-day quickly became a poem-a-week. 

So here’s the first poem, which has already stood me in good stead several times so far:

A Cat/A Future

A cat can draw

the blinds

behind her eyes

whenever she 

decides. Nothing

alters in the stare

itself but she's

not there. Likewise,

a future can occlude:

still sitting there, 

doing nothing rude. 

Such plain-song, everyday language -- except for the tight arrangement, the rhythms, the internal and sprung rhymes: blinds, behind; stare, there; eyes, decides; occludes, rude. And except for the word occludes, which captures our attention at once: it is the mystery door into meaning.  To occlude means to obstruct, shut off, block.  The future is occluded, hidden from us as if by blinds; we can’t really see it -- we can only imagine it. It sits there, merely one second, one day, one year away, but unknowable, blocked off from us until it happens.

And in another way, the future itself occludes: our tendency to plan for the future can sometimes prevent us from noticing the beauty of the moment, the realities of now.  We are so focused on the future, we become blind to the present.  We project our imagined future in front of us, as if on a screen, but a screen that hides the only known future that awaits us all: the inevitable, unknowable end of our tunnels. That future is definitely there - but not there, because we prefer to (or need to) ignore it.

By the end of this poem Ryan has layered meaning onto object; has melded the cat and the future, both “still sitting there/doing nothing rude.” Sweet!

SFGate

MacArthur Fellow

Sonoma County Book Festival ( with Napa Valley Connections).

What better way to spend a September Saturday in Sonoma than browsing the 12th Annual Sonoma County Book Festival? It's less then two weeks away (Sept 24th), so you still have time to pencil it in ~ and then do it!  Courthouse Square in downtown Santa Rosa will bloom with tents, all filled-to-bursting with books, readings, panels, signings and all things literary.  Events usually spill out of the square into venues nearby, with readings and panels at the Central Library Forum Room, Corrick's, Mary's Pizza Shack, La Rosa's Tequileria. Plenty of kid's activities and throngs and throngs of poets and writers milling about. What's not to adore?

Just published!

And among the throngs ~  Maxine Hong Kingston, Jane Hirshfield, Ann Packer...as well as Francisco X. Alarcon, Belva Davis, Zoe Fitzgerald Carter, Gaye LeBaron, Andrew Lam, Michael David Lukas.  Some (like moi)  might notice that the festival is seeded with Napa Valley-ites, both faculty and workshop attendees. Jane Hirschfield, one of our faculty stalwarts, and Ann Packer, faculty in 2008, will be reading at the Central Library Forum Room. I know of at least two alumni with reading slots, poet Judy Halebsky, from this past summer ("Sky=Empty") and Michael David Lukas, (2009) whose well-received debut novel "Oracle of Stamboul"  came out in paperback just this September.

Judy Halebsky

There are probably even more, but I'll let you discover them for yourself. So pack up your spectacles, fleece for the morning fog, parasol for the afternoon sun and be ready to indulge in literature, writers and words all the live-long day.

9/11/2011

The Harvest moon rises tonight on a nation as yet un-healed; ten years ~ not nearly long enough for our wounds to seal.

From Ailurophobia to Wamble; or Fall 2011 Underway

And so the semester begins, with all its fits and starts. Students trying to get into classes, teachers trying to cram students into classes, new faculty and staff coming on board, retirees scampering out, ready to gallivant and giggit about the countryside. The usual office tasks surface: ordering supplies, copying syllabi and oh, ooops! the minutes from the final Department Meeting last semester. Been hustling those meaningless scrawls from four months ago something legible the past two days!

Transcribing minutes can be a somewhat tedious, thankless task. Which is why I try to add some sparkle and flair to them, figuring if I’m distracted into silliness, what about my readers? Don’t they need a little lift now and then? Though, my fun often means I have to attach a glossary to the minutes. For lack of anything more illuminating, I’m posting the most current glossary, just for ducks. You, my friends, get to imagine what sort of minutes I was typing…

Glossary
Ailurophobia – abnormal fear of cats
Borborgymus – the rumbling of gas and fluid in the intestine
Bosky –1) consisting of or having an abundance of bushes, shrubs or trees 2) tipsy, on the point of being drunk
Celsitude – 1) elevated position, high rank; eminence 2) exalted character
Divagate – to wander…though not necessarily lost
Fank- a sheepfold; a walled or fenced pen for sheep
Flub-dub - nonsense
Gallimaufry – jumble, hodge-podge, a ridiculous medley
Gledge- a sidelong glance
Grinagog – foolishly grinning
Hornswoggle – hogwash; to cheat, deceive or hoax
Huff-nuff – a braggart, a conceited, would-be swashbuckler
Nipperkin – small amount
Oculogyric – rolling the eyeballs in their socket (all parents of teens know this maneuver all too well)
Thingummy – a. k.a, dingus, thingamabob, whatchamacallit, doo-hickey, lick-em ups, or wham whams. Capiche?
Tiggy – hedgehog, or, colloquially, “it” in a game
Whippersnapper –a young thing, full of speed and attitude (but really, no match for age and treachery)

Other words I wanted to use, but just couldn’t find a way to shoehorn them into the notes:
Brool – a deep, low humming sound; a murmur, as of a large crowd.
Brimborion – a thing of no value, trash
Fopdoodle –a fool, simpleton
Leam – n) a ray, flash , or gleam of light v) to shine, to gleam
Slubberdergullion- slovenly oaf
Wamble- 1) to move unsteadily; to stagger 2) (of the stomach) to churn queasily

(all definitions courtesy of Foyle's Philavery, 2007.  collected by Christopher Foyle)

D.A.Powell blurbs Paul Lisicky

Napa Faculty folks continue to be busy:  Check out  D.A.Powell's exquisite blurb of Paul Lisicky's soon-to-be-published book, Unbuilt Projects, posted on Paul's blog . One could hardly ask for a more well-crafted and poetic blurb. Here's a tease: "If there's a place for poetry and prose to co-habitate, it's here in Lisicky's world: under the snowy rooftops and inside the empty rooms of apartments built, unbuilt, and destroyed. "

It does everything a blurb should do: it shares the promise of the book; it creates a longing and desire to read it; it's beautful in and of itself. Neither the book nor the blurb should be missed!

 

Doug Powell, faculty NVWC 2011

  

Paul Lisicky, faculty NVWC 2008



Doug Powell

Blog
Poetry.org

Paul Lisicky
Blog
Etruscan Press

D.A.Powell blurbs Paul Lisicky

Blog Tour: PlayAnon

Tooling around the interwebs, I often run into the blogs of great writers (crash, bang, etc- yeah, I'm a bit of a wacko driver, even virtually). I tend to slap them into the BlogRoller list and figure those who are curious will scope them out. Because that is what we do, isn't it? Putter and poke around, twiddle and fiddle away what should have been productive hours.

But I love traveling, discovering new places, new voices, stunning writing. And I don't think it is unproductive when I read someone's fabulous blog. It's inspirational, really; it prods me into stretching my own myself, my own writing. At the very least it counteracts the doom-and-gloom newspaper news, thus restoring my faith in humanity.

So I've decided to introduce the blogs as I discover them, so you'all will have a chance to twiddle away time in an equally awesome but, since I've done the research, a more efficient manner.

PlayAnon - Smart Spew, Straight Up is the subtitle and that pretty much says it right there. Catherine Kustanczy, a freelance journalist and broadcaster (currently back in Toronto, but recently nee NYC and missing it very much), blogs about all the usual things that strike one's fancy, like Ai Wei Wei's Zodiac Heads sculpture or attending the Colbert Report taping and letting her Hobbit Flag fly or an update on the Toronto Zombie Walk.  But she also posts insightful interviews of theater and music folks and thoughtful reviews of plays, music, books, you name it. She's a "Journalist, Broadcaster, Writer, Thinker, Dancer, Prancer, Chancer, Vixen (sometimes)"  as she says on her profile and has many radio spots to her name, which you can find at her SoundCloud. I think you all should drop by sometime and check it out.

And hey, if you know of any great writing-based blogs, post them in Comments, er, BaconBits! I always enjoy having a destination when I amble around the Blogiverse.

Conference returned; update a bit late, but worth the wait (maybe?)

Daniel Alarcon, concentrating on one of his workshoppee's manuscript.
We were honored to be Daniel's first summer workshop

The first day is always about the naps and the laundry. And the second for processing all that went on. Words escape me in my toasted-brain state, so I"ll rely on this group of photos to tell some of the tales from the Napa Valley Writers Conference 2011. More photos in a bit!

Jack Leggett, past Director of the Iowa
Writers Workshop,
and co-founder of the NVWC
(along with David Evans),
enjoying the Mondavi winery. 

Novelists and poets: Adam Hazelett  chats with Lan Samantha Chang,
current Director of the Iowa Writers Workshop (foreground).
Background, poet Major Jackson and novelist Lois Leveen.

Angela Flournoy, Ayana Mathis, Michelle Huneven ~ 

watch for novels from each of these writers in the future. 

From left, unknown gentleman, Pat Perini, 

Eleanor Coppola,  Jack Leggett, past Director of NVWC

 and Andrea Bewick,  current Director of the NVWC

Conference Staff, Jeannie Kim-McPherson,
and Christy Pallella, with 

poet Aaron Di Franco

Sue Brown and Janet Constantino, Participantes Extrodinaire.

Somehow It Seems Sufficient

Holy Toledo ~ The 2011 Napa Valley Writers Conference is about to start! Feels like I'm in the batter's box, waiting to get called to the plate.
Last few days have been all about prep: arranging classrooms, writing introductions, finding my suitcase, cleaning my dress-up outfits. Tucked into one of the side pockets of that suitcase, was a much creased piece of paper, notes scribbled all over it, with lines and arrows and exclamation marks*, and this poem from Major Jackson's inspiring craft-talk last year.

(I love how the whole poem rolls down the page, with the slow, intense weight of a running stream, pushed by the commas and colons, the only punctuation until the final period.)


Gravelly Run

I don't know somehow it seems sufficient
to see and hear whatever comings and goings is,
losing the self to the victory of
        stones and trees,
the bending of the sandpit lakes, crescent
round groves of dwarf pine:

for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
    by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and death could never end it:

the swamp's slow water comes
down Gravelly Run fanning the long
   stone-held algal
hair and narrowing roils between
the shoulders of the highway bridge:

holly grows on the banks in the woods there,
and the cedars' gothic-clustered
   spires could make
green religion in winter bones:

so I look and reflect, but the air's glass
jail seals each thing in its entity:

no use to make any philosophies here:
   I see no
god in the holly, hear no song from
the snowbroken weeds: Hegel is not the winter
yellow in the pines; the sunlight has never
heard of trees: surrendered self among
   unwelcome forms: stranger,
hoist your burdens, get on down the road.

                                  ~ A.R. Ammons

* and directions to the Martini House on the back

Parking Ticket Appeal

I am somewhat of a parking zone scofflaw, I admit that. I'll race onto campus, getting as close to my office as I can (because, yes, I'm running a tad late) by sliding into the 30-Minute Zone behind the Library. Then, when I go for coffee at the campus cafe, I'll re-park in something more legal. If I remember that is. Sometimes it can be an hour or two before that gob-smacking moment when I realize I've got to move my car before the Parking Demon slides a ticket under my wiper.  Mostly I make it, because the budget cuts are making for fewer and fewer Parking Demons. Sometimes I fail. And then I'm faced with whether to make an appeal or not. I mean, there's no denying that my car was in a 30-minute zone for 4 hours, but still one has to try, right? At least it delays the painful moment when I have to cough up the $45 for my space-cadet law-breaking ways. Plus I think a good story might persuade them to drop the fine. What do you think....will the explanation below get me off the hook?


"Although I had every intention of returning to my vehicle within the allotted time, I was held up by several extenuating factors. First of all, the meeting I was already late to had relocated to The CB Cafe; I had to scoot, flying like a mad Banshee down the steps leading from Darwin to CB's. I didn't trip, or fall or break my leg, but I think I was moving so fast I must have slipped into another dimension of the time/space continuum. Well, whatever it was, it was warped. At CB's, my  mates were chowing down on pesto-ciabattas and everything bagels, and gulping crazywild mugs of freeflowing coffee. It was a scene, I tell you, like that scene in the Outer Worlds bar in the Star Trek movie; loud, convivial, everyone wearing masks. I forgot all about my Blue Bomber Honda in the EarthZone. Captain Quigglesbottom finally marshaled us into the Return Capsule; we got back just in time for lunch. Only to find a ticket on my patient car. :-(  I ask, that considering the stress of this unusual experience, this ticket be dismissed."

Readings & Lectures ~ it must be July!

Join our internationally acclaimed faculty of poets and fiction writers for a series of public lectures and readings during the 31st Napa Valley Writers' Conference, which is hosted and sponsored by Napa Valley College.

The eight poets and fiction writers who serve as conference faculty are united by critical acclaim for their work. In fiction, Adam Haslett’s Union Atlantic has been called “the first great novel of the new century,” while Michelle Huneven’s novel Blame was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Critics’ Circle Award. Daniel Alarcón’s novel Lost City Radio prompted Granta magazine to name him one of America’s top young novelists, while Lan Samantha Chang, director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, recently publishedAll is Forgotten, Nothing is Lost, which National Public Radio called “a full and resonant story of the pains and perils, falsehoods and truths of trying to be an American artist . . . unforgettable.”

The poetry faculty includes Jane Hirshfield, whose collection After was shortlisted for England’s T.S. Eliot Prize and selected as one of the top books of 2006 by the Washington Post. D.A. Powell’s Chronic and Major Jackson’s Leaving Saturn were both finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award, while David St. John, author of nine volumes of poetry, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Study for the World’s Body: New and Selected Poems.

Morning and afternoon lectures on the art and craft of writing will be held at the Napa Valley College Upper Valley Campus in St. Helena. Evening readings are scheduled for various venues throughout the Napa Valley. The full schedule of readings and lectures is as follows:

Sunday, July 24
7:30 p.m.: Wine reception and reading with poet D. A. Powell and fiction writer Daniel Alarcón at the Upper Valley Campus, 1088 College Ave., St. Helena
Monday, July 259 a.m.: Poetry lecture by Jane Hirshfield, Upper Valley Campus
1:30 p.m.: Fiction lecture by Adam Haslett, Upper Valley Campus
7:30 p.m.: Wine reception and reading with poet David St. John and fiction writer Lan Samantha Chang, Rubicon Estate, 1991 St. Helena Highway, Rutherford
Tuesday, July 269 a.m.: Poetry lecture by D.A. Powell, Upper Valley Campus
1:30 p.m.: Fiction lecture by Daniel Alarcón, Upper Valley Campus
7:30 p.m.: Wine reception and reading with poet Major Jackson and fiction writer Michelle Huneven, Robert Mondavi Winery, 7801 St. Helena Highway, Oakville
Wednesday, July 279 a.m.: Poetry lecture by David St. John, Upper Valley Campus
1:30 p.m.: Fiction lecture by Lan Samantha Chang, Upper Valley Campus
6:30 p.m.: Wine reception and reading with poet Jane Hirshfield and fiction writer Adam Haslett, Educational Center for the Performing Arts, Napa Valley College, 2277 Napa-Vallejo Highway (Highway 221), Napa
Thursday, July 289 a.m.: Poetry lecture by Major Jackson, Upper Valley Campus
1:30 p.m.: Fiction lecture by Michelle Huneven, Upper Valley Campus
Tickets
Admission to evening readings costs $10. Admission to the daytime lectures is $25 apiece, $90 for the four-lecture series in either poetry or fiction, or $175 for all eight lectures. Tickets for all public events may be purchased at the door by cash or check. Students with valid student IDs will be admitted free of charge to all lectures and evening readings, along with conference supporters and community housing hosts.

For more information about the conference and the reading and lecture series, visit napawritersconf.org or facebook.com/napawritersconference.