Back from Whidbey

Yeah, I know, I have been MfB (Missing from Blogland) for awhile now, but, you know how it can get. Real Life just takes over sometimes. In a Good Way.

This last chapter, which I am going to write about first in order to build the suspense...(you haven't had pictures of the Corn Tiger for awhile...), takes place at Fort Casey on Whidbey Island, Washington, where I spent nine days, August 13-22nd, for the time, at the Whidbey Writers Workshop Summer Residency.

I am still in the after glow. What a wonderful, nurturing time we had! And I am sure I do not speak for myself alone.

Many of us, including the teachers, live in the "writer's quarters" on the fort (left picture below), old officer's base housing and/or barracks, from which it is a quick walk to class (right picture below, discussion after the Fiction Workshop class).

We attend small group lectures with writers such as award winning non-fiction authors Tim Eagan (right picture below, being watched by David Wagoner; books: The Worst Hard Time, Breaking Blue, etc.) and Scott Russell Sanders (books: Hunting for Hope, A Conservationist's Journey, etc.), contemporary "laugh out loud" novelist, Mary Guterson (books: We Are All Fine Here and Going to the Dogs), poet Marvin Bell, who taught for forty years at the Iowa Writers Workshop and has retired to Port Townsend, WA, (books: Mars Being Red (Copper Canyon Press) , Rampant, Nightworks: Poems, 1962-2000, etc.), CYA and adult novelist Anjali Banerjee (books: Sea Glass Summer, Invisible Lives, etc.) and Virginia Euwer Wolff, author of the award winning, young adult series Make Lemonade.

We learn more techniques for the crafting of fiction, poetry, non fiction and children's literature from teachers such as Kathleen Alcala, Bruce Holland Rogers, Wayne Ude, David Wagoner, Carolyn Wright, Lawrence (Larry) W Cheek, Ana Maria Spagna, Carmen T. Bernier-Grand (right hand picture above) and Bonnie Becker, who have collectively won too many awards and published far too many books to list here. Go check out the faculty page for the Whidbey Writers Workshop here and/or click on the links inserted at their names above.

During breaks and after workshop, lectures, readings, and meals, we walk on the beach or up to the lighthouse, ride bikes and get together to socialize. This year was the 1st Annual W3 Polar Bear Swim -

--see the hardy souls getting ready. They said the water was "not that cold",

and the first, well, at least in my experience, bonfire at the beach --

It was a beautiful night and a fabulous residency. Can't wait to do it again next year!

Keeses,

N2

Jr Space Ranger

Let's see, how do you start this thing?

Maybe pressing here and here...

OK! Turn this way for Saturn...

Uumm...Nana...

You're standing right in the middle of my space field...

This boy makes me giggle.

Keeses.

N2

Possibilities

From Free Will Astrology by Rob Brezsny

Leo astrology reading for this last week

for all Leo birthday celebrants out there

in which good company I also count myself.

According to Hawaiian mythology, the soul leaves the body during the night to seek the adventures known as dreams. The place of departure and re-entry is the "soul pit" (lua’uhane), which is located in the tear duct of the eye. During the next few nights, I'd love for you to send your soul flying out though your soul pit for some daring exploits that will revitalize your lust for life. Take your backlog of stored-up tears along with you, and pour them down like rain on the secret garden you've been neglecting. The garden will respond to the downpour with a big growth spurt.

The garden seems to be responding.

How are your dream and real life gardens growing?

Keesses!

N2

Young Love

Time is a flyin by here. Met up with the Dear Daughter and Corn Tiger a week ago to introduce him to my friend Anne before she flew the coop for France. She left this past Wednesday. See what I mean about time and flyin?!


Anne and I have led somewhat parallel lives -- oldest daughters of large families with three boys (hers, 6 kids, mine, 10), still occupying the same apartments we moved into in SF in 1976 (hers in the Inner Mission, mine in the Richmond district), and have both been spending some months in southwestern France for the past few years, in the same little village of Soreze (look up in the right corner of ye blogge; I changed the slide show to give you a glimpse of the village).

Due to different schedules of residence in that little village, we just met in France last year, and have since been meeting up in San Francisco while we have both been on this side. Anne is a talented painter and you can get a feel for her work at her website: Anne Subercaseaux


Didn't even get to see my Little Love in person last week (this photo is from the week before), only talked to him on the phone with commentary by the Daughter. He is very talkative for such a little guy, not quite 4 months old now, but then, he is growing as fast as weeds in the summer garden.

And he already has his first crush, on his beautiful mom. You can see it in the look on his face in the picture below. Doesn't that look just say "Ah, there she is, the One!" And, of course, the feeling is mutual, you can see that too.

I went by to see them on my way out of the city. Corn Tiger was nappin on the boob, but woke up while his mom I were talking. They share that same coppery shade of red hair. (Six out of ten kids in our family had red hair, contrary to the "recessive" nature of that gene, and CT's dad has red in his beard.)

And the love! Oh My Heart! Gotta get my hands on those two this week.

Warm Baby Hugs!

x0

N2

Blue Sunday

It was such a solitary and quiet Sunday after the busyness of the last holiday weekend.

But the flowers kept me company.

Big blue kisses.

x0

N2

First Hickey

I spent some time in a hotel room this weekend with a younger man and we shared our first hickey.

(Mine and his....You have to watch out for those nursing babies, in a pinch they'll latch on to the closest available skin.

And, believe it or not, I've never gotten a hickey before.)

"Wait! You said there wouldn't be pictures."

We have met the paparazzi and they are us.

There were chaperones involved...

As you might suspect from the beautiful bouquet, the Daughter was a member of the wedding party of a dear girl friend who grew up around the corner in the Burg. I was a guest and on Nana duty at the hotel while the gals go ready, during the ceremony outside at the Sand Francisco Presidio and at the reception at the officer's club there. It was a beautiful day and a lovely event.

I didn't get a lot of pictures, since my hands were tied up with the Corn Tiger.

Here's a rather fuzzy shot of two of the gorgeous bridesmaids.

The oldest guest, the bride's granny, wanted her picture taken with the youngest.

CT was done with posing by this time.

Which just meant that I got to do more rocking of and singing to the baby boy.

Gotta get it while I can.

Hickeys all 'round!

x0

N2

A Bunch of Fireworks

Kind of looks like a fireworks bouquet, non?!

Hope you had a friendly gathering and got to see fireworks light the sky.

x0

N2

Silver Moon

Coming back from LC's last night after a mighty fine dinner and a little rockin' to the Friday Night Live dance band, I took River Road and came across the one lane summer bridge with the full moon high in the sky. I had to go back and stop at the side of the road in the No Parking zone (with flashers on!) and get out to try to capture the silver light on the water using my little camera.

These were the best ones I could pull out of the darkness.

Hope you are doin' some spoonin' by the light of this silvery moon!

x0

N2

Baby Therapy

"Suck, little babe, oh suck again!
It cools my blood; it cools my brain
...
Oh! press me with thy little hand;
It loosens something at my chest;
About that tight and deadly band
I feel thy little fingers prest."

William Wordsworth

A quick trip to see the Dear Daughter and the Corn Tiger this week. Got to receive him fresh out of his shower and "do his morning things", i.e. rub him up with some lotion, accompanied by baby smiles and cooing, and get him dressed. The DD pointed out that I put him in a Nana matching outfit, but it was just chance. In my defense, those pants were on the changing table. But we do look in tune, non?

Just three months old (already?!) and I think he's starting to teethe.

Some vigorous chomping going on with those tiny gums.

"This has a certain well-aged flavor."

"Yes! Rub more. Right there."

"Hey! Give that back. I'm not done yet."

Real salve for the heart and soul, this holding and being chewed upon.

Little drooly baby kisses.

x0

N2

Feelin' Blue

Some time ago (can it be fifteen years already?!) I opened a little place in this Burg of ours called The Blue Rose Cafe. It was in a converted CA bungalow, one of the first coffee houses here in town and designed to be comfortable for all ages. We served coffee, really good black and herbal teas with herbs picked from our garden, italian sodas, grilled focaccia sandwiches, salads with my coveted herbal salad dressing, soups, desserts and beer and wine.

It had a "living room" area off the main room, board games to play, books and magazines to read and a back yard with tables where you could eat outside in good weather. We featured local bands on Friday and Saturday nights, mostly jazz and blues, and special events from time to time like Flamenco Sunday, a Belly Dancing night and a Mardi Gras party. My "kids" both worked there, as well as many of their friends.

Sounds idyllic, doesn't it? Well, it certainly had many of those moments. We opened it with such joy and hope. But it was ahead of its time for this town and two other similar businesses opened in that same year. The town just wasn't ready to support all of them. And that winter, three months after we opened, was very stormy and there was flooding in the center of town for the first time in some 20 years which filled the cafe's back yard and under the house with water.

I was capitalizing the business and supporting my family by myself and, after a year and a half, I had to go back to my regular day job to make more money. It just got too hard to work in the city and then come back and fill in and/or do clean up at the cafe week in and week out.

Some people came along who wanted to put a full blown restaurant in the place, so I leased it out to them. They lasted a couple of years, then passed their lease on to another home grown restaurant here in town that needed a bigger space, the Ravenous Cafe. They are still there, after 10+ years, and doing just fine.

The Blue Rose sign was made by a local craftsman, Neon Bob. I did the lettering in my handwriting and Bob copied it in fluorescent light. We hung it on the front of the building and used to turn it on at night before we even opened for business. People would walk down to that end of town just to look at its glorious blue glow.

When we closed the cafe, I had Bob build a box to hold the sign in which to mount it on the back of my house. We turn it on for special gatherings and we had one such get together this last weekend when my Son and Dear Daughter in Law got back from their two months of sabbatical wanderings on the other side of the world.

It made us feel kinda blue, in a good way.

Chloe and Lulu

Dancing in the Dark

Big Blue Kisses!

x0

N2