ALL AS ONE ~

Quit School

The workers

each one

smiling

talking

joking

faces

in the

sun

the boss 

listens

grimaces

worries

can’t wait

to get

back to

work

He’s Our Son

He’s our son

I’m very proud of him

especially today

he’s come out to work with me

in the woods, along the river

on an island damaged by flood

he’s been gone from home 7 years

been married & divorced

rebuilt his life, now a new girl

he’s also becoming overweight in

a little episode of life we can all make fun

of since he could slide it off in a matter of

weeks, he’s young! out of shape for

the work we are doing — lugging firewood

off this island, across bedrock, fording a creek

and then climbing up stone stairs of the river bank

to the road and dumping our loads countless times

into the back of the pickup truck

countless times, all morning, and it’s all over

his great young man face when he looks at me all

sweaty when we’re done and he exclaims “Jesus!”

Picking His Spots

There’s nothing like coming to bed

on a late summer rainy night

and my love is dead asleep with the rain

and the big male cat is

asleep on my side

All As One

We brought home the wood  —

it’s a tradition older than these hills

we brought it from

—————————————

Bob Arnold

BEAUTIFUL   DAYS

Longhouse

DAVID HONEYBOY EDWARDS ~

A JAR OF WILD FLOWERS ~

ZED BOOKS, LONDON  2016

A     J A R     O F     W I L D F L O W E R S

LOLLIPOPS ~

PAULINE KAEL ~

F R A N K     R I C H

O N

P A U L I N E      K A E L

The Library of America

2011

MY WAVE ~

Farewell, Chris Cornell

20 July 1964~17 May 2017

STEPHEN BATCHELOR ~

M O R E !

THOMAS MERTON ~

T H E     T H O M A S     M E R T O N      C E N T E R

New Seeds

2006

READ MASHA GESSEN ~

R E A D     M A S H A     G E S S E N

M O R E !

BEING ALIVE IS ALL THERE IS ~

After The Flood

The yellow birch logs split tough

Those are the trees standing after the flood

The sycamore splits with ease

Dies with ease

The Searchers

We didn’t ask for any help

where we worked in the woods

along the river and we worked

steadily for weeks on end, no

one ever came by to visit or to

lend a hand, except for a stranger

who said he was a rock hound, he

hunted for precious rocks, and he

was curious to investigate our river

land where we worked, even showed

us special containers where his findings

shimmered, and since we were working

on the damage caused by a flood we in-

vited him down with us and continued our

woodcutting huge driftwood trees, as he

drifted off, young with shaved head bent

searching and dreaming as miners do

Being Alive Is All There Is

Maybe you saw him too —

the happiest person in the world

not more than a boy

being interviewed

and his father was

interviewed too and

he was clearly not a happy man

he was but a man

with all the thoughts of men

I had a father just like him

I bet you did too

and this boy must have known

something, because the way he

told his story was that he one day

jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge

in San Francisco, and somehow he

lived to tell his story, and I think he

lived because we were supposed to

know, and now that we do

now what do we do?

River Flows

After the flood

it took four very long weeks

for our woods river to clear

no longer muddy

no longer murky green

no longer running toxins

people drowned in such a river

houses were destroyed

gas tanks, hot tubs, ATVs went down

trees by the 1000s, animals lost, and

just by its thundering new sound

people were frightened for miles

especially in the pitch dark woods —

then one day the river cleared

the sun played in it again

you sat down beside it

lifted off you boots

and stuck your sore feet in

————————————

Bob Arnold

BEAUTIFUL   DAYS

Longhouse

MY ONE AND ONLY LOVE ~

DAVE ETTER ~

Henry Lichenwalner: Living in the Middle

Here in Alliance, Illinois,
I’m living in the middle,
standing on the Courthouse lawn
in the middle of town,
in the middle of my life,
a self-confessed middlebrow,
a member of the middle class,
and of course Middle Western,
the middle, you see, the middle,
believing in the middle way,
standing here at midday
in the middle of the year,
breathing the farm-fragrant air
of Sunflower County,
in the true-blue middle
of middle America,
in the middle of my dreams.

____________________________

Dave Etter

Alliance, Illinois

Spoon River Press 2004

KATHLEEN RAINE ~

Counterpoint 

Berkeley

2017

M O R E !

"If, on the other hand one takes not the materialist approach —
man's rights — but the spiritual approach — man's duties — the
poet has his place. It is not the State who should support the
poet, but the poet who should save the State — the poet together
with the saint and all lovers of the three verities. For civiliz-
ation depends finally upon those who give more than they receive."

K A T H L E E N     R A I N E

EUGENE OSTASHEVSKY ~

New York Review of Books, 2017

B O M B    M A G A Z I N E 

ISHIKAWA TAKUBOKU ~

COLUMBIA   UNIVERSITY   PRESS

DONALD  KEENE

GEORGE BOWERING ~

JOAN DIDION ~

THE ATLANTIC LOOKS AT JOAN DIDION

Knopf 2017

Joan Didion's "notebooks" are often as well wrought
and interesting as others finished essays

ORDINARY EARTH ~

The Man Who Never Rode In A Plane

Airports just don’t do it for me. I can probably count on one hand how many airports I’ve been to in my life, never for a plane. When I was a kid we used to go out to a small airport (single engine planes) because it was near my uncle Frank’s house, and the airport, for some reason, had huge trampolines out in a field we bounced on through the summer evening. Where’d that life go? All gone. In my late 20s we drove a friend out to the Keene, New Hampshire airport to catch a plane for somewhere faraway. Rented a car in the middle of the night at a Salt Lake City airport, zoomed all night toward Wyoming. Loved the drive. Some years later, we picked up another car in the El Paso airport at midnight and glided all night through eerie west Texas, not a town in sight. Big wind. Jack rabbits in the orange full moon with the tallest ears I still can’t believe how tall. That moonlight shone right through those ears. We slept a few hours in the back of the car, our young son in the front, wind like we haven’t felt since Newfoundland slamming the parked car, then we went a mile down into a cave in Carlsbad the moment the place opened. Came out and had breakfast in town served by the oldest waitresses we’ve ever seen using wheeled dolly carts as their trays. They’re too old to carry anything. Later that day saw the small Santa Fe airport for another car. That may be it. Never been on a plane.

Hounds

Hunting hounds are again across the river barking and carrying on, lost to their scent and trail and blocked by the river. This happens rarely now but it used to happen all the time. We hear the dogs for the longest time and then the hunters get down here with their old pickup trucks and cages in the back bed rattling. They are trying to catch their dogs. The dogs have gotten away from them following a scent and the hunters weren’t aware of the river. They hiked all over the mountain and woods to locate their dogs only to find them long lost and better to take their trucks and catch the dogs where they will be at the border of the river. No way to cross, too deep. But a hunter in high waders can get across, water to his chest. He will carry the dogs across the river in his arms to his truck. The barking will stop. Before this all happens it seems like the mountain is moving horizontally with a wild and strange sound. 

Ordinary Earth

Today I sat on the step stoop at the cabin I built in the woods 12 years ago. A lot has not happened and a lot has happened since then. The helper that worked with me moved away. The twin towers in New York City went down. We lived through a hurricane. A flood. The cabin didn't care, its back to the world. At the dutch door I built and the only door in and where I sit and look to the woods all the woods did was grow, much brush. Right to the door. You sat there and couldn't see a thing, only the brush. So you thought, often deeply, breathing and feeling the brush at your feet. Years of this. One day I got tired of the brush and no view and took my tools and chain saw for a few days and cleared all the brush. Not only at the cabin site but away from the cabin and up through an old sugar bush. Trees too. Made firewood. The more I cut, the more I cut some more, until I was to the top of the hill, looking back at the cabin through a glade of massive sugar maple trees. The sunlight coated the trees now, so did the shadows. It was a splendid work effort. The brush all piled. I went back to sit on the step stoop. The cabin hadn't moved.  

———————————   

Bob Arnold

BEAUTIFUL   DAYS

Longhouse

GLENN GOULD / BEETHOVEN PASTORAL ~

THE FIGHT (DON'T TURN AWAY) ~

People with disabilities are among the most discriminated against in Bolivia. Fed up with being ignored, a group of them march across the Andes to the seat of the government in La Paz, asking to speak to President Evo Morales. They are met with riot police, barricades, teargas and water cannon

Headed by determined leaders, including Rose Mery, Marcelo, Feliza and Miguel, the protesters camp on the streets a block away from the main plaza near the government palace. For the first time in Bolivia’s history, police erect 3m-high barricades, station tanks and hundreds of riot officers to stop the protesters in wheelchairs from entering the plaza.

Violent confrontations flare up between police and the protesters, with officers using pepper spray and water cannon. The government refuses to discuss their request for a pension of $70 a month and the protesters suspend themselves from the city's bridges in their wheelchairs.

After following the protesters on the march, film-makers Violeta Ayala, Dan Fallshaw and Fernando Barbosa gain intimate access to their camp, including up-close scenes of regular violent reactions from the police. The film-makers and other journalists are also threatened. For three months the activists with disabilities attempt to speak to the president but face criticism from the state's official news outlets.

As public pressure grows, can Rose Mery and her fellow protesters win their fight?

Read our article about the changes the protests have caused since this film was shot.

Share your experiences of being a disability rights campaigner

Key credits
• Directors, producers and editors:Violeta Ayala and Dan Fallshaw
• Co-producers: Fernando Barbosa and Andrea Monasterios
• Executive producers for the Guardian: Charlie Phillips, Lindsay Poulton and Laurence Topham
• This video is produced in collaboration with the Sundance Institute Short Documentary Fund supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

The Guardian, U.K.