Gary Webb (2)

Gary Webb

Investigative reporter Gary Webb was found dead last friday in his Carmichael home...

I met Gary Webb on two occasions. I made him uncomfortable during both. I don't have a tendency to gush over celebrity, and Gary, it seemed, wasn't used to being approached as one. But when I saw him that first time, in the audience at a Consumnes River production of Bertolt Brecht, I got excited. I had come alone, but wanted so desperately to blurt out "That's Gary Webb!" to anyone who'd listen. I'm pretty shy, but I just had to say something. I was gushing about his book Dark Alliance. It was awkward. And it was only afterword, when the panic of encounter was gone that the straightforward comment I should have said occurred to me: "I just want to thank you for all the work you've done as an investigative journalist." Our second encounter was also brief. Gary had come into my bookstore and was browsing. I was calmer and did say words along those lines. He was working for the Senate Office of Research I think he said, but was doing research on folks like Karl Rove for a future book. I even ordered him a copy of a book on Rove's influence and was excited to be, in some small way, connected with his investigative efforts. What Gary Webb went through to tell his Iran-Contra story gives some insight into the difficulty of being a journalist dedicated to ferreting out the truth. And while I envy and admire people like Webb, or Seymour Hersh and I.F. Stone for what they've done, what they've said, how they've stood on principle... I know there is a price to pay for those who speak the truth in a culture that isn't always happy to hear it.

Rent Girl Review (1)

Saturday was a remarkable evening of poetry and spoken word. So much to say about what happened at the Rent Girl event, but I'll start with this picture. It's a shot of Ruebi Freyja (PFAs #420, 421, 422) through the glass front door at the Brickhouse Gallery. Inside, its packed, the event is underway, and there's Ruebi, in solitude, quietly preparing for her part in the evening.

bookstore mice

About the size of a half dollar, short tail, up by the printer, running along its lower edge, picking up the pace a bit when he sees me, scooting behind, out of site. The food is in the kitchen, by they roam, as if browsing, moving through the stacks, occasionally alerting a customer to their presence with a hustled run from under one bookshelf to another.

Rachel is in charge of the catch-and-release program, baiting traps with peanut butter. The weight of the mouse as it crawls in to eat shifts the center of gravity, the trap shifts and a door shuts. One mouse, captured thus, managed to escape. Having learned that the black plastic box that smells like peanut butter is a trap, he had been able to allude capture, until Saturday, when he wound up in the kitchen garbage. My daughter Ru was delighted. We could lift the clear plastic bag and see the little mouse, safe behind plastic (until he began to gnaw for freedom.)
Mice released by the dumpster have found their way back into the building (clever!) so Rachel and Ru drove over to Sutter's Landing over my protest -- The park at Sutter's Fort is good enough for that mouse! More space, more freedom along the river, they said.

plink a plink a plink

Going to local readings often involve mad-dash moments before it, trying to print, cut, fold, staple PFAs for any of the poets featured that night. This isn't some obligation foisted upon me by those poets, mind you, but rather a driven need to do so by some manic-internal-thingy within that makes it impossible for me to just go out and enjoy a reading. So, sunday night, the PoemSpirits reading at the Unitarian and it's Rebecca Morrison and an hour before I'm frantic, screaming at my machine because it won't print the guts to Upon Eating a Manzanita Berry (PFA #303) at the same time I'm trying to finish the design of the cover of Why He Died (PFA #340), one of the best tribute poems to Bob Kaufman. The printer wins, and I leave with just copies of #340 that will have to be folded and stapled during the reading.

PoemSpirits readings have an intimate workshop feeling. Tables formed into a large "U" shape make it feel like your interviewing the featured poet for a position at your university. (And at "my" university I like to imagine I am also the advisor to the I-TAPPA-KEGGA Fraternity...) I like the table space, spreading open my notebook, the stapler, the small piles of unfinished booklet elements. Unique to this venue is an opening examination of a poet and her/his work and background -- often done by one of the series hosts Nora Staklis (PFA #206), Tom Goff (PFAs #179, 180, 215) and JoAnn Anglin) This month a presentation by Nora on Gerard Manley Hopkins.

Event Notes:
12.05.04 | PoemSpirits | Rebecca Morrison | Talked with Kathy Kieth about last night's "scandal" at the Rent Girl event -- the Julie Reyes poem | Zen peace flags in vibrant colors hang above us in this Unitarian room as Nora read the bio; poet-turned-priest Manley destroyed his poems written before the priesthood; too of the self, too egotistical. | Welsh aliteration shared. | Settee in the city. | K. Kieth | Friths | Morrison | Selinskys | JoAnn | Me | 2 unknown 1.)_______ and 2.)_______ | Morrison: I write a lot of poetry with "surreal nature images." | plink a plink a plink | From the Cache Creek workshop, a general disagreement with others on the moods of Louise Gluck; the exercise: write a poem, sitting in the woods, blindfolded. | T]: Written while Blind | I watch as Rebecca reads, the poem placed on the table, head bowed to place eyes towards the page, but eyes closed, as if reading through the eyelids. | Louise dreams of summers that never came | As each poem is finished, a soft movement of the hand puts the page into a pile at the corner of the table. | Poems written to an Oak Tree, planted a decade ago, now forty feet tall (on property just sold). | T]: Quercus ilex | A Holly Oak | Will your roots push through where my iron shovel failed? | T]: The Desert | !!! | A powerful poem about remembrance, personal, building quietly, then overwhelming. | poems-as-autobiography | T]: Serengeti Dream | on travel to Africa by a girl who's never been | T]: Sea of Bones |("My body as one...") | T]: The Rapture (or why I write) | T]: Venus Over the Rockies | written in-flight, mountains in view | T]: Poem for the Future | Post-apocolyptic squirrel gloves | T]: You are the Ham and I am the Wry | poetry climbers and social gropers | a trophy filled with someone's rancor and jealousy | T]: Child of Mine | an obsessed reply to having read Toni Morrison's Beloved | My Mother's Hands |Furious folds to build 340s; a few open mic readers; akward hand off of poems to the poet --always so much easier to make then they are to present | It's back to midtown for a coffee refill (.75) | James Lee Jobe adds his postscript to the event, as dj, on the radio, relasing the iron butterflies --Inagatadavita | Through the window of Rick's, large slabs of half-eaten, picked over, frosting-slathered cake; enthusiastic forkfulls surrendered to a bodily limit on butter-grease. | Next door, a sad menagerie huddled into the sparse, nameless bar, the exterior painted throbbing phosphorus.

Production Notes:
The faint image of Bob Kaufman on the cover of #340 is from a photograph on display at my bookstore that was taken by North Beach Photographer Jean Dierkes-Carlisle and on loan from the collection of Mariana Williamson (PFA #45). This particular booklet has gone through several design revisions, including several representations of Kaufman. In fact, this may be the most problematic cover in the entire series, which is kind of ironic since all that is really called for is a fucking picture of Bob Kaufman. So I've tinkered with it over the last year, delaying its release. Until now.

Uncanny!

Donald Sidney-Fryer returns