Late in the winter and early in the spring the snow is covered in miniscule black dots. If you put your face up closely to them, you will see that they are moving, some sort of insect. As the snow melts, they follow it. And if it melts beneath them, they take off across the lawn as a moving carpet in search of more snow.
What are they? I do not know yet but they remind me of the brine flies at Mono Lake. Slow-moving, dim-witted, harmless flies in search of one thing only. They line the shore of salt lake, three, six inches deep and if you stomp a foot near one section of them, they move as one. They are a great, collective fur around the edge of the water.
Also, this time of year the vernal ponds are filled with frogs. But to hear them you would not think of frogs croaking, rather you would think of a flock of Canada geese or wayward mallards. They do not croak, they quack.
Soon, though, the peepers will be out at night and the wood thrush will come home.
This story–Dandruff is as bad for the Earth as it is for your image–is both disgusting and fascinating:
Millions of tons of dandruff are circling the Earth, blocking out sunlight, causing rain and spreading disease, startling new research shows.
This sounds great and I wish I could go to it but I can’t so I’m going to post the release here instead:
Come share a weekend of awakening to the writer’s life, based on tenets from Lynn Grabhorn’s best-selling book, Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting.
Join writers Rebecca Lawton and Jordan Rosenfeld at Creating Space, a restorative retreat designed to help you attract the writing time, inspiration, and life that you aspire to lead.
Creating Space: The Law of Attraction for Writers, Wellspring Renewal Center, on the Navarro River, Mendocino County, California. April 29 through May 1, 2005.
At Creating Space we will share ways to set intentions, take inspired action, and change the energy of wanting through writing and focusing exercises. Discover how 16 seconds of directed intention a day can change your life!
Following principles made popular by the late Lynn Grabhorn, we will share presentations by writers and publishers, workshops to open creative channels, and exercises to shape the writing lives we desire. Grabhorn’s work was based on an age-old concept known as the Law of Attraction, an evocative concept that says feelings have a powerful quality to attract your deepest wishes. This weekend workshop invites you to explore the possibilities of your desires and your writing.
Wellspring’s beautiful, private setting above the Navarro River offers the solitude to write and refill the creative well in the center¹s many hideaways, by the river, and in the forest. The $390 cost includes food, lodging and workshop. To register send full payment by April 18th to:
Write Livelihood
635 E Street
Petaluma, CA 94952
For more information, please email Jordan or Rebecca.
FACILITATORS and PRESENTERS
Rebecca Lawton, nominated for Pushcart awards in poetry and nonfiction, explores the world through journey and journal. Her essays and stories about wild rivers and other earthly wonders have been collected in Reading Water: Lessons from the River (Capital Books). She is online at www.beccalawton.com
Jordan Rosenfeld hosts “Word by Word, Conversations with Writers” on KRCB radio (funded by the National Endowment for the Arts) Her work appears in national and literary journals, and she is a contributing freelance writer for AlterNet, The Petaluma Magazine, The Bohemian, The Pacific Sun, the Sonoma Index-Tribune and a freelance editor. Visit her at: Jordan’s Muse
Susan Bono is a writing coach, editor, and widely published writer. She has edited Tiny Lights, a journal of personal essay, since 1995 (online at www.tiny-lights.com). She is contributing editor for the Pushcart awards, KRCB’s Word by Word, and Sheila Bender’s Writing and Publishing Essays (Silver Threads).
Arthur Dawson is an award-winning poet, author, and teacher of creative writing. He is the founder/publisher of Kulupi Press, which features “publications with a sense of place.” A new collection of his poetry, Saying this Place Right: Poems of Landscape and Language, is due out from Finishing Line Press in 2005. View this article on Arthur.
ai yi yi! This will definitely put a damper on how many stories I send out (and maybe that’s a good thing?): Postal service proposes rate increase
Here’s a cool flash by the one and only Dave Clapper: Missing
I loved Brenda Starr when I was growing up. I sought out her comic strip. She was the kind of woman I wanted to be, independent and fearless. I am saddened today at the news of the death of the woman who created the fiery redhead. Rest in peace, Dale Messick. From reading your obituaries it sounds like you had a great life. One to rival Brenda Starr’s.
It’s wonderful to have some good news for a change–Salinas libraries to remain open:
The libraries in John Steinbeck’s hometown will stay open at least through the rest of the year after a grass-roots campaign raised $500,000.
Three Salinas libraries were set to close because of budget cuts before the fund-raising gave residents a reprieve, keeping the libraries open for 26 hours a week.
This is one of those baffling, stranger than fiction stories–Mother Held by Fugitive Back With Family:
Her husband at her side, her children just hours away, Bobbi Parker headed home to Oklahoma on Wednesday for the first time since she vanished along with an inmate after a prison break 11 years ago.
Parker, the wife of an assistant warden, disappeared with fugitive killer Randolph Dial in 1994 during his escape from an Oklahoma prison. Dial was arrested Monday, and authorities believe he kept Parker from escaping all those years by threatening to hurt her family.
This poor woman and her family. It’s odd to me that people would question how people like this woman and that young girl who was held captive in Utah could be held captive by fear. Why would people question this? Consider the people who keep themselves captive in their own homes because they are fearful of leaving. Fear is one of the strongest motivators we humans have. It is coded into our makeup.
RIP Frank Conroy:
Frank Conroy, who directed the University of Iowa’s celebrated Writers’ Workshop for nearly two decades and wrote a memoir chronicling his troubled, nomadic childhood, has died.
Conroy died Wednesday at his home in Iowa City of colon cancer, said James Alan McPherson, acting co-director of the workshop. He was 69.
The new Gator Springs Gazette is BURSTING with talented writers:
Moira by Kathy Fish
Bildungsroman by Joe Young
Leaving Town, by Phil Jones
Walking Nostalgic by Jonathan Redhorse
I’m impatient, so I think I may have to get one of these Bonsai Potato-Zen without the wait. I’ll keep it next to my pet rock.
myfanwy collins 