October 2015 - Page 4 of 4

Maureen and i are home.

We flew into San Francisco last Thursday for our annual visit with Alan, Maren, and Eleanor Hicks in conjunction with the incredible experience of “Hardly Strictly Bluegrass,” the free three-day concert in a bulging Golden Gate Park.

Alan had already picked up Cy Fraser (his wonderful Julie was attending a relative’s pre-nuptial event in Los Angeles, and regrettably, we missed her) when they gathered us up for the trip to their home.

Alan, Maren, and daughter Eleanor, an attorney for Google, have this wonderful home in Forest Hills, our headquarters for the weekend. On Friday, the guys arrived at the park around 8:00 am to stake out a close-up spot at the Banjo Stage, the main performance stage out of seven throughout the park. On Saturday and Sunday, Eleanor joined the early birds. Our usual routine is to claim our territory, walk about half of Hellman Hollow to grab some the first breakfast burritos from a concession stand and get coffee or latte’s on the way back. Then, we read or take naps until showtime, noon on Friday, and 11:00 am on the other two days. This year, Jim Hicks, Alan’s brother and long time fraternity brother of the trio, made the old guys a quartet. Friends of Alan, Maren, and Eleanor joined us throughout the days.

i left early with a several others on Saturday around 4:00 pm, but we had someone there every day until closing around 7:00 pm. The three-day total attendance apparently did not reach the 800,000 i predicted. Official attendance will be published in the next few days. But Saturday had to have set a record. Hellman Hollow was so full, it took at least 45 minutes to walk to and from the port-a-potties about 100 yards from our spot, an important statistic for an old man to know as the day wore on and the beer consumption increased.

The attendees cut the swath of race, country of origin, religion, persuasions, age, and every other possible categorization in every way possible. Booze flows freely. The aroma of marijuana hangs over the hollow like a haze. Yet in the six times we have attended (i think Alan and Maren have been there for 9 or ten years out of the fifteen), we have never witnessed a fight. It is people getting along with people.

i have discussed the music before, but it is rather incredible: eighty-six groups or solo performers sang and played. They all were of the highest quality.

The festival is fantastic, but time with our friends and their friends is even better.

We cannot thank Alan, Maren, and Eleanor enough for letting us share the experience. We cannot thank Cy, Jim, and the others for sharing the time together. And we are especially grateful to Ralph Lavage, our neighbor, who insisted in taking us to and picking us up at Lindbergh Field.

i have run out of superlatives for the experience.

But it was long, and honestly, we both were glad to get home.

Thanks, everyone…and see you next year.

This is one of a couple of books i’ve been working on for a long, long time. i have decided to publish them, even though they are working drafts, as serials on this website, much like Charles Dickens and many others did with magazines and newspapers a couple of centuries ago.

i know me well enough to admit the likelihood of me actually publishing these books is highly unlikely. As for mainstream publishing, i have no desire, after gathering information on the process, to submit to the publisher’s requirements, the political maneuvering, the required marketing efforts, or the effort required from this procrastinator to meet deadlines – just ask Jared Felkins, the editor of The Lebanon Democrat.

i have also proven to myself that self-publishing as my daughter Blythe did so amazingly with her wonderfully funny poetry in Something Smells Like Pee, is a challenge because me learning to use publishing software programs looks more like a scientific research project involving mice and mazes.

Finally, my experience with print-on-demand and co-op publishing was not pleasant. I have eliminated that route from my options

Thus, it finally dawned on me i can publish them on this website.

This particular book began as a poem to my daughter Blythe when i reluctantly was going through a separation and divorce while stationed at Texas A&M’s NROTC unit. In the summer of 1978, the Navy decided i would be an excellent choice for running the second-class midshipmen surface indoctrination at Little Creek, Virginia for the summer. Flying a puddle jumper over North Carolina, i mused over the fact that the close day-to-day relationship with Blythe was changing forever, and there was nothing i could do responsibly to change that. Looking out the window at the clouds, the beginning thoughts of this poem came into my head, and i had written the poem, intact, by the time i had landed.

Over the years, i wrote a number of poems to Blythe. Then when Sarah was born (seventeen years later than Blythe), i began a new batch of such poems. Since grandson Sam was born, i have written a couple of more and gave him a pamphlet of all of the poems a couple of Christmases ago.

Sarah is working on illustrations for the “book,” and her drafts will be included with the poems. Obviously, i need to work on the graphics and layout.

You might say this is a work of love.

Sarah's opening drawings — Sarah’s opening drawings

Willie Nod and the Silver Bird

Willie Nod rode the wings of the silver bird
high in the clouds;
he laughed at the night wind
when it threw the rain.
Willie Nod smiled and rubbed the neck of his bird.
He laughed because he loved people and
the silver bird.

Writer

Jewell In The Rough

Monthly Archives: October 2015

A Pocket of Resistance: A Rather Wonderful Weekend

Willie Nod: Silver Bird