060.366 - 2016 project and leap year babies

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

leap day babies and the adults they grow into

imagine having a birthday every four years.  your baby brother has had three birthday parties before you get your first.  grownups try to convince you that this makes you special.  you were born on a day that disappears for three years at a time.  when you're older and learn about Gregory, it's hard to appreciate the cleverness of his complicated rule, you just see it as adding more years when your birthday is hidden.  and some clown friend tries to make up for it by calling and wishing you a "happy birth-instant" at the very moment between February 28th and March 1st.  right.  but you do learn patience, and good will, and tolerance, and celebration.  those are virtues, right?  happy birthday, leap day babies and adults who were once leap day babies!  thank you for blessing us with your presence.

059.366 - 2016 project and journalists

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

journalists

now I have heard that there are journalists, television reporters, newspaper reporters, and reporters, but since I don't know those distinctions, I lump them all together, and ask you to forgive me and, for this paragraph, lump them all together too.  you see, our founding fathers were experienced men, however idealist they may have been also, and they knew you can't count on a government to police itself.  government and freedom are antithetical, although they can be symbiotic.  in any case, they drew up a document which reserved a lot of freedoms to the people (which meant rich white men at the time, but has since been extended - more or less).  but when it came to explicitly guaranteeing important rights to the people, they had to write ten amendments which we call the Bill of Rights.  what, you might be wondering, has any of this to do with journalists?  I was coming to that.  you see, one of the freedoms the Bill of Rights guarantees, and one which we mostly haven't trampled too badly, is freedom of the press.  The founding fathers couldn't count on a government to police itself, but they could count on those pesky journalists ferreting out egregious behavior, at least some of it.  and they could count on at least some editors and newspaper owners having the courage to print what the journalists ferreted out.  and they could count on newspaper readers gossiping.  and they could count on rabble-rousers demanding redress for the egregious behaviors that newspapers exposed.  and they could count on frequent enough elections getting rid of at least some of the egregious behavers.  it doesn't always work, but it works well enough sorta.  and all of that counting on hinges on journalists.  they protect our freedoms as much as anyone does.  thank you, journalists.

058.366 - 2016 project and Brasilian language, music, dancing, women

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Brasilian language, music, dancing, women

probably I romanticize or fantasize, but glory!  I love the sound of Brasilian Portuguese spoken, even if I only understand a word here and a word there scattered in the stream.  I love Musica Popular Brasileira almost generically - if you work diligently you may find an exception.  I love bossa nova and samba.  I love watching Brasilians dance, for instance at Carnaval in Rio or Sao Paulo or Salvador.  ah Salvador!  last night I watched ten Brasilian women celebrate all women but particularly Brasilian women - poems, songs, dances, their lovely selves!  OMG!  it brought back so much!  (I lived in northeastern Brasil from roughly 1944 to roughly 1954.  it was wonder, it was adventure, it was magic, it was childhood and freedom with grownupness closing in.)  thank you, blessed ones, for a blessed night!

057.366 - 2016 project and Galpin Honda

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Galpin Honda

Damn they have taken care of us!  Lindy had driven her 1985 Honda CRX for years and years and years and years, to the point where finding replacement parts had become difficult.  She got the last so-and-so, then the next-to-last such-and-such in the world for that model.  A man offered to buy her car so he could rebuild it, and she warned him of the problem.  He wanted it anyway.  She sold it and we went to Galpin to get a new Honda, not just any Honda but a Honda Fit.  I don't remember all the selling points, but there was more usable room in it than in some RVs and it had ten cup holders.  Galpin Honda made buying that car so pleasant we damn near floated out of the lot.  We owned it - in the sense that one owns a car that one will be paying off forever - for about eleven months, I think, then Galpin Honda sent us a letter offering to move us up to a new Honda Fit for damn near the same cost per month.  We accepted, and owned - same caveat - that car for a few weeks, or that's what it felt like.  A woman who had celebrated her birthday a little too vigorously crashed her car into ours, and drove it into the car parked in front of us, and drove those two into the next car parked in front of them.  This was not much after 2:00 am on a Sunday, so no one got hurt, but our Fit was totaled.  Oh man!  Sometimes it seems like insurance companies piddle around and piddle around settling - we waited six months.  We rented a car the first month, and the cost was amazing.  Galpin Honda heard about that and loaned us a vehicle.  Yes, loaned us a vehicle for five months!  I had never heard of such a thing.  Then when we finally had insurance money and could afford to buy a new vehicle, they once again made it such a pleasant experience that we felt like brand new customers again!  We certainly felt that way.  So yes, Galpin Honda, thank you for customer service way beyond reasonable expectations.  We salute you!

056.366 - 2016 project and exploring space with robots

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

exploring space with robots

not artificial intelligence robots, not nearly sentient robots, but robots we controlled with commands from earth.  I worked on the flight team for the Lunar Orbiter project, the Viking project, and the Voyager project.  we planned the trajectories for the spacecraft, tracked their flights, planned and commanded their orientations in flight, their articulations if they had "arms" to do that, the pictures they took, the measurements they made, and we got the data back for the scientists to observe and understand.  I don't know how other people did it, but I gave myself to the missions, I was there to serve the project, it was a commitment in which I learned the meaning of commitment.  and it was so goddam much fun I never thought of it as sacrifice!  we explored space remotely, and sometimes I virtually was the robot!  I still smile looking back on it.

055.366 - 2016 project and the internet

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

the internet

Google; Facebook; Skype; gazillions of websites, some of them knowledgeable, most of them not, just like us; more information to look up than I could in a lifetime; more junk than I want to hear, see, read in forever; it's like a busride that you almost can't get off (except you can if you just will); but when you want to learn something, someone has almost surely provided it and all you need to do is find it; when you want to read poems by so-and-so, you can almost always find them; if you want to buy a book or a screwdriver or a painting or a Russian bride, they're all there; if you need to look up a word, it has a dozen or more dictionaries; if you're looking for communications from a friend, there's email and maybe fifty other ways to read or hear what they sent; it's chaotic; it's organized; it's fun; it's terrifying; it's commercial; it's seductive; it's paintings and photographs and movies and videos and symphonies and rock'n'roll and mimes and how-tos and kittens and wild animals or people acting like them; it's so goddam human!

054.366 - 2016 project and a special kind of hero

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

a particular kind of hero or heroine

once upon a time, I claim, a caveman or cavewoman convinced the people around him or her to use one syllable, let's say "blit", instead of "bingladhugehmeineroogbahferoxensismagbar" which was a word they'd constructed that meant "great big huge I mean bigger than a man bigger than two men maybe bigger than three men cat with gigantic round teeth hanging out of its mouth that kills a man with one swipe of its paw and we don't know how to kill yet except when we get lucky" or as we might say now "saber-toothed tiger" (they didn't have sabers yet and they didn't have tigers either nor AK-47s).  it was a miracle!  a man or a woman need only say "blit" and mothers herded kids into the caves and hoped this time the men got lucky soon while the men put down the bones they'd been gnawing on and quit telling the tall tales they'd been entertaining each other with, grabbed up their spears and clubs, and made up whatever formation they'd invented to bring them luck when they defended the caves.  I'm guessing the cavepeople who used "blit" had a huge time advantage over the groups who used constructs like "bingladhugehmeineroogbahferoxensismagbar".  and then there was the caveman or cavewoman or caveboy or cavegirl who thought up "bow and arrow".  or the one who thought up "spear-thrower".  the one who came up with hand signs, or the one who came up with "map".  the one who came up with "poem".  the one who came up with drums, or with a reed instrument, or a flute.  I don't know how to characterize these heroes, "inventor" seems too paltry, the people who came up with bomb-shell inventions, like the button or the pocket, before we knew anything about bombs.  oh you special people, of thee I sing!

053.366 - 2016 project and congestive heart failure

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

congestive heart failure

yes.  oddly enough I do appreciate it.  it entered my life back in August of 2012.  one night I had to admit I could only take about 12 steps, then I had to sit down.  if I had to sit down on the floor or the ground, I damn near couldn't get up again.  Lindy took me to Kaiser where I spent eleven days getting repaired.  turns out CHF is not something you get over, get well from.  it's a condition, and you live with it or live against it or don't live.  I happened to pick live with, and so far am doing a good job of that.  it changed my diet, and Lindy has made sure that is not a sacrifice - spices are wonderful!  it changed how I live - I walk or drive instead of riding.  it changed what I drink - I sip water instead of drinking coffee all day.  I came out of those eleven days glad to live a while longer, glad to share my enthusiasms with my friends, glad for what I have and do and am.

052.366 - 2016 project and women

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

women

beautiful women, lovely women, pretty women, tall women, short women, all women - thank you for fascinating me, mystifying me, delighting me, encouraging me, discouraging me, cursing me, breaking my heart, putting it back together, awing me, taking me as close to the divine as I'll ever get, entertaining me, sending me on my way, ignoring me, teasing me, flirting with me, just talking with me, walking the way you do, dancing with me, dancing just for the delight of it, teaching me, showing me, being.

051.366 - 2016 project and history

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

history

thank you Herodotus and Thucydides for inventing this study.  I know, or think I do, that it's mostly just the propaganda of the winners written as if it were true, but it's also what we know of what happened in the world and what machinations produced what happened.  if we waited for truth, well, we'd still be waiting.  ever since before school, I've loved the wonderful stories of history, of Greece doing this and Persia doing that while Egypt did some other thing, of Napoleon doing this, and Wellington doing that, and Czar Alexander I doing something else! how fun to see empires build, expand, endure, then crack up.  and how mystifying to figure out that Africa had no history until the Arabs invaded it, that the Americas had no history until the Europeans invaded them, that Japan had no history before the United States sorta invaded, that China had no history before England France Germany and the United States invaded, that India had no history before England and Portugal invaded, that Afghanistan had no history even after its invasions - somehow one knows these are all just lies, but what a fantastic web of lies! fiction can't do as well!

050.366 - 2016 project and Uncle Buck

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Uncle Buck

I did not really know him, and I should have.  He came along and rescued me at a time when I needed rescuing.  He had no reason I know of to take in a couple of frightened children who had lost their parents and their brothers and knew nothing about what had happened to them.  He'd already raised his own two children and was still putting them through college.  He was the owner, I think, and manager of a radio station on the outskirts of Perryton, Texas, a then tiny town in a huge state.  How tiny?  He walked me through and across much of the town, clear that the only way you learn a place is by walking it.  I met gas station owners, meat plant managers, restaurant owners, cafe owners, the people who made up his customer base, people who might buy thirty seconds or a minute of radio time to advertise their business, but also people who could tell a kid how their business worked and how it fit into the business that a town is.  Or they could tell him the candy-coated version of those.  A kid only needs to know the candy-coated version of how things work.  He never told me that.  I figured it out on my own.  But the neat thing was that he taught a scared kid whose world had exploded what the kid needed to know to stand on his own in a new world, to learn what other people would teach him, and to figure out what that really meant on his own, to listen respectfully but not too respectfully, and to keep learning.  I don't think life treated Uncle Buck very well.  I think he had to replan his life over and over before he could finally retire to his beloved pecan orchard and grow and sell pecans, but he did what he needed to and did it with grace.  This is a belated thank you to him for what he did for me.

049.366 - 2016 project and Keith Wilson

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Keith Wilson

once upon a time, a young man who thought he was terribly smart and bright and maybe even intellectual found a teacher who was wise, who was a poet, who had been an officer in the U.S. Navy, who knew more about the Southwest than the terribly smart young man could ever learn, who had had adventures of life and death and of silliness and love, who published a gob of books, who taught hundreds of us something of what poetry means, of what living a life of poetry looks like, and who could in five years of mentoring turn a young man who knew way too much into someone willing to spend a lifetime learning.

048.366 - 2016 project and story

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

damn, I love story!  ever since I was a kid, I loved story!  I loved story so much I learned to read.  I loved story so much I read them out loud to my sister and my little brother.  (I eventually had two little brothers, but I don't remember reading stories to them by then.  that would have been a different family.)  I loved story so much I read all the kid story books, even the ones without pictures, and started in on the other story books.  hunh!  I didn't understand them so well, but it didn't matter, I loved story and read them!  I loved story so well that once my grandfather, my good grandfather, sent us a year's supply of books and I sat down and read them in six weeks or so.  he laughed and laughed and laughed, I am told.  I was desperate for story, so I made up my own.  goddam!  oh my goodness!  I could make up my own stories!  what a wonderful world!

2016 project- one last inspiration

one more "inspiration" before I stop

once upon a time there was a six-year-old boy who listened fearfully as his father told him what the doctors had concluded after testing him for days about his heart and how it behaved.  "you must never run.  you must never play competitive games.  you must never climb alone.  you must never...."  what he heard, of course, was "you must give up being a boy" over and over and over again.  after the doctors and his father left him alone in his room in the hospital, he stared gloomily at the ceiling.  he imagined his heart swallowing him.  it didn't do that.  it never had.  he'd had the same heart since he was born, and he'd run and played soccer and climbed rock faces that scared him and trees that he'd convinced himself might support him.  now he'd been brought up to be a good little boy, and mostly he had been, so he didn't have quite this language yet, but as nearly as a six year old boy can express this, he decided not to trust doctors ever again, and as for their alleged advice, he said to the ceiling, "fuck you!  I am a boy, and no stupid advice is gonna stop me."  he stuck out his tongue at the ceiling, then closed his eyes and slept, smiling.

047.366 - 2016 project and appreciation

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

Stanley Kunitz

"Immortality?  It's not anything I'd lose sleep over."  Born in 1905 and died in 2006, he wrote poems for nearly 80 years.  He was appointed Poet Laureate of the United States of America.  But I celebrate him because his poems move me, and Bill Moyers' interview of him pulls me back again and again to hear him talk about poetry as legend and myth and the conflict of living and dying at the same time.  He wrote about himself, I think, "he loved the earth so much/he wanted to stay forever."  Stanley Kunitz, poet, human.

046.366 - 2016 project and inspiration

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

work.  do what has to be done.  do what needs to be done.  then you can do something you want to do.  which frees enough energy for you to celebrate!  and start work on the next thing you want to do.  repeat.

045.366 - 2016 project and appreciation - posted late

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

potatoes!

so many ways to fix them!  so many ways they become the meal itself!  so many deliciousnesses!  oh praise the earth for turning a disturbance of itself into such an enjoyable tuber!

mea culpa! mea culpa! mea culpa!

damn!  I didn't post my entry yesterday!  I didn't post 045 of 366 til this morning.  I wrote it yesterday, but I didn't post it.  damn!

posting now.

044.366 - 2016 project and inspiration

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

a butterfly flutters its wings  s l o w l y  while sitting on a flower.  water collects at the tip of a branch and dangles until it 

d
r
o
p
s.  a mother bird feeds her young'ns.  dawn.  your lover walks into the room.  you recognize Orion in the sky.  a Harley rumbles outside your window.  you finally imagine the big bang and get it, out of nothing, everything, all at once.  your mother made you a birthday cake even though that meant no food tomorrow.  surely among these you sparked.  or sparkled.  write!

043.366 - 2016 project and appreciation

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

this morning I woke up alive and glad of it.  for what am I glad?  that I get to create another of these entries. that I get to write another poem.  that I get to share another day with Lindy and with my friends.  that I get to eat these wonderful foods Lindy prepares for me.  that I get to stare out the window and think, or at least think I think.  <g>  that I get to work on a story.  that I get to read poems by other poets.  that I get to see beautiful photographs.  that even though I missed Carnaval, I can go back and find photographic evidence that it happened and that Brasilians expressed joy and delight.  that once more I get to grin back at Death and say, "Not yet."

042.366 - 2016 project and inspiration

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

you were once two cells colliding and becoming one.  that one split, and they split, and so on until you began to take shape.  even then, that was only the possibility of you, but it grew and it grew until it could live on its own if only someone fed it and kept it warm and out of the weather.  someone did!  and the possibility of you grew stronger and stronger.   that possibility learned to sit, to stand, to crawl, to walk and - oh my god! - to talk!  and the possibility of you seemed to burst into the world so fast that someone had trouble keeping up with it.  the possibility of you ran around and around and had the experiences you remember and many you don't, and made a zillion decisions, most of which you don't remember, and voila!  here you are!  thank you!  now write.

041.366 - 2016 project and appreciation

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

Gedda Ilves

My goodness!  She's more alive at 93 than some of us are at 73!  Her latest book - she has published four - has won awards in Paris and London.  When she turned 90, we celebrated her birthday at Beyond Baroque.  Her parents escaped from Russia, so she was born in China, and lived there through World War II.  She lived in Brasil a while and came to Los Angeles in the fifties.  She made herself part of Los Angeles' poetry world in 2000.  She attends readings she can drive to and from safely.  She is warm and generous and kind and thoughtful, and writes damned fine poems! Thank you, Gedda, for gracing us!

040.366 - 2016 project and inspiration

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

in space, a collection of gas and dust swirls into a ball that collapses into itself and heats itself until - flash! - a star is born.  in your mind-heart, a collection of thoughts and emotions swirls into a ball that condenses, getting hotter and hotter, then sparks into a poem.  nurture that.

039.366 - 2016 project and appreciation

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

Dori Marler is a poet and a hostess and a decoration for our poetry world here in Los Angeles, at least out here in "the valley" part of Los Angeles.  She's a bit delicate now, so she doesn't get out as adventurously as she used to.  She was born in a town so wee it was almost a village; it hosted about a thousand people.  With inspiring courage, she rose from deputy sales clerk to buyer for a department store chain.  Her mantra was, "That doesn't look that hard."  Of course that rise took her from tiny town to NYC to Chicago and to Los Angeles, another demonstration of her courage.  And now years later, she writes and presents poems so pretty they might be flowers in another world, for the most part gentle, with flicks of humor and kicks of irony.  Dori does decorate our world, but like a badge, not a swirl of frosting.

038.366 - 2016 project and inspiration

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

listen to other poets.  listen to them when they talk about what they do, how they write, what starts a poem for them.  listen to them when they talk about how they pick their topics, how they know when they've found a poem nugget, a poem kernel.  listen to them when they talk about how they know they have that last line, or that image, or that metaphor.  listen.  something one of them says - probably several things that several of them say - will resonate in you, will make you more you.  suddenly you see, hear, feel, breathe differently.  that!  that's a how for you.  put it to work.

037.366 - 2016 project and appreciation

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

Bill Moyers

what a life!  he trained to be a Southern Baptist preacher, then became a journalist instead, and has succeeded admirably at that!  he must need a separate room to store and display all his awards over the years!  he created his own company and began producing videos for television that let him choose his own stories, or let stories choose him if I understand his bio.  he has produced at least one lifetime's worth of videos in which he explores other people and their work, only intruding to ask questions that keep the discussion on track.  he has several sequences of CDs and of DVDs in which he interviews or just listens to poets.  he does us all a great service.

036.366 - 2016 project and inspiration

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

the moon climbs into the night sky.  I know, moonrise isn't necessarily at night, but play along with me.  we'll pick a night when the moon rises after dark.  furthermore we'll pick some place where it really is dark after dark, not the Las Vegas Strip or even downtown Los Angeles, someplace dark, where even a campfire feels like an intrusion.  places like that are cold, so you're already shivering.  the moon climbs into the night sky and releases the earth's horizon.  for a while it looks as wide as the moon ever can.  if you're looking at a full moon, or a nearly full moon, you can almost feel the pock marks of the craters and maria (more than one mare).  you remember whatever lore, stories, and legends you know about the moon, about the moon and humans, and just for the hell of it, you make up one of your own. you smile privately at the moon.  you now share a secret story or legend. you have entered or re-entered the world of the mythmakers.  at some level you want to lean back your head and howl to let her and everyone nearby how special she is.  or maybe you already have out your phone, typing in at least an outline of your story or legend.  take a moment. gaze your gratitude.  she is special.  so are you.  shiver.  smile.  gaze.

035.366 - 2016 project and appreciation

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

the idea of democracy

imagine!  a polity in which none of the citizens has to work!  all citizens gather in a public arena or stadium every day to be informed and to vote on all the minutia that a great polity requires:  budgets, schedules, promotions, awards, contracts, where to place the next stoplight, which sewers to replace, whence the polity will get its water, how the polity will raise funds for its expenditures, what law needs to be adjusted to make conditions more equitable, what streets will be repaired next, and probably hundreds of trivial items I haven't thought of.  no wonder no one can do any other work, not even raising children!  they have no time!   vacations are a silly idea.  so all the work is done by contractors, foreigners brought in specifically to do the work no citizen has time to do, including soldiering, policing, all the maintenances, garbage disposal, merchanting, nannying, teaching, engineering, architecture, banking, stock brokering, grocerying, restauranting, and at least a hundred more than I've thought of.  now imagine the economy that supports a democracy:  for no reason we know of, people for miles around this polity pour money into it so the citizens can live in fine houses when the governing of the day is done, so children of the citizens can be raised and educated, so the citizens can fight their wars and build their dams and roads and streets and sewer systems, and so forth.  yes, democracy is an amazing idea!

034.366 - 2016 project and inspiration

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

Jessica Ceballos

OMG!  5 years ago I didn't even know her, and now I feel like I've loved her always!  Energy?  I go to maybe 15 poetry events a month.  She's involved in at least 10 of them and works on 17 others that I don't have the energy to even get to.  She got sick once and Los Angeles held its breath a moment.  But no, she didn't stop working on her commitments, she just worked while she was sick and got well anyway.  She takes a vacation and works on poetry events for Los Angeles.  And she makes time to write damn fine poems!  Go Jessica!

(this may read like an appreciation, but she's an inspiration too!)

033.366 - 2016 project and appreciation

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

computers

I’m sitting here surrounded by my eight computers.  no one needs eight computers.  well, maybe someone does, but I don’t know what for.  I have eight computers because I love to play with computers, have ever since my supervisor came to me in 1965 and said he had a job no one else wanted but someone had to do and I had the least seniority in the group.  he introduced me to a computer at The Boeing Company and I had to learn to program it.  goddam!  someone had invented a machine that worked like my brain at its best!  I spent the next 47 years getting paid to play with one computer after another!  goddam!  goddam!  goddam!  eventually I retired, but by no means had had my fill of computers.  thank you, computers, for filling most of a lifetime with puzzles for me to solve that I could figure out!

032.366 - 2016 project and inspiration

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that inspires or appreciates

Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, talks about the cosmic perspective, in which you see the earth as a unit, a whole, a wonderful collection of swirls of air, clouds, water, and land and you see it in the enormous background of space with its stars, constellations, galaxies, nebulae.  Your challenge, if you accept it, is to find one of the images of the earth photographed by an astronaut or by a spacecraft that shows the earth that way, and to imagine yourself out there looking back at earth but also seeing it in the universe, and let yourself feel whatever you feel watching that.  Good.  Now write that.  Now live that.