Call for Submissions: Ukiah Haiku Festival

Photo by Suzy Miller

 

The deadline for haiku submissions for the 13^th Annual ukiaHaiku Festival is March 21, 2015.  Nine categories are reserved for poets from Mendocino, Lake, Sonoma, and Humboldt counties with divisions by age and topic, and with two categories in Spanish.  There is no fee to enter the contest, including for the Jane Reichhold International Prize, which is open to poets from around the world and offers cash prizes. For more information please visit www.ukiahaiku.org.  Entry forms are available on the website as well as at the Grace Hudson Museum in Ukiah or at branches of the Mendocino County Library. The winning haiku will be shared with the community, and their creators honored, at the ukiaHaiku Festival on Sunday afternoon, April 26, at the SPACE theater in Ukiah.

 

Haiku are brief three line poems originating in Japan.  They can be written in the traditional 5-7-5 pattern of syllables or in contemporary form with varying syllable count, as these previous winners illustrate:

 

a strange clicking sound

from high in the mossy oak

dark raven eyes watch

            --Stephen Elsemore, Ukiah

 

inside

an empty room

moonlight

            --Armand Brint, Ukiah

 

Haiku by other festival winners can be accessed on the festival website along with information on crafting haiku, including a presentation by Jane Reichhold, an internationally recognized haiku expert living in Mendocino County. 

 

Ukiah Valley residents were inspired to hold a festival celebrating haiku because Ukiah and haiku are palindromes. It also provides an opportunity to celebrate the area’s natural beauty, a common theme in haiku.  Anyone who has stopped to notice some wonder of the natural world or wants to share a reflective moment can write a haiku.

Forest Restoration and Stewardship Small Diameter Pole Utilization Class in Greenfield on June 14th+15th!!!

Robinson Creek restoration project in May 2013

Being Here in Ecotopia

The big news is pickles.  4 Quarts of Bread and Butter on Thursday....7 Quarts of Dill last Tuesday.  One of those satisfying activities that sets us up for enjoying summers abundance next winter.  We're keeping the long long vines of pumpkins and kuri squash well watered as the days are simmering past 100 degrees.  The capillary action of a twenty foot branch of cinderella pumpkin is impressive as it carries water from roots to tips.  Food and water..... what's counts more in the great scheme of things?  It's a revolutionary act to grow your own.  The perfume of the blackberries in the heat is intoxicating.  Picking up wind fall apples with a little 8 year old friend is being in a state of grace.  Savoring the juice of an asian pear, a gift from Gaia from a tree just two years old.  The generosity of nature....so underestimated, so undermined.

I asked Gaia what was on her mind and she reminded me: Make peace with yourself, grow your own food, share and give thanks ceremoniously in community, take care of all children everywhere. Remember what matters most.  Know what you know.
 
What nourishes us?  Not the empty calories of consumerism but the sustenance from original sources.  Grow some chard and adopt a couple of hens. You will eat and feel like a queen.  Blessings shower down like meteors from sparkling north western skies.   If you are not ecstatic with gratitude you are missing what is right before your eyes......

.....like the Perseid's. Don't go right to bed for the next couple of nights.  Go outside and experience reality in the form of a meteor shower..... a spike in the number of meteors or "shooting stars" that streak through the night sky. Most meteor showers are spawned by comets. As a comet orbits the Sun it sheds an icy, dusty debris stream along its orbit. If Earth travels through this stream, we will see a meteor shower. Although the meteors can appear anywhere in the sky, if you trace their paths, the meteors in each shower appear to "rain" into the sky from the same region. Meteor showers are named for the constellation that coincides with this region in the sky, a spot known as the radiant. For instance, the radiant for the Leonid meteor shower is in the constellation Leo. The Perseid meteor shower is so named because meteors appear to fall from a point in the constellation Perseus.

Catch a Falling Star and put it in your pocket save it for a rainy day
Catch a Falling Star and put it in your pocket never let it fade away
For love may come and tap you on the shoulder
Some star less night
And just in case you're feeling kinda somber
You'll have a pocket full of starlight.

HOBNEELCH FOR HENDY WOODS

*HOBNEELCH FOR HENDY WOODS

 

Grab your *applehead, get a new *hedge, and get out of that *can kicky mood! We're having a *tidrick and it's gonna be a *beemsch.

Dance to Clan Dyken & the Mermen
Saturday, June 16, 8pm, $20
Anderson Valley Solar Grange, Hwy 128, Philo,CA
Local Beer and Wine and homemade foods

*Boontling Translation Key
Hobneelch - Saturday night dance
applehead - girl friend
hedge - haircut
can kicky - angry
tidrick - party
beemsch- good show

HOBNEELCH for HENDY WOODS is co-produced by

Cloud Forest Institute & Pete's Sound Productions
Proceeds will go to help keep Hendy Woods State Park open and promote
the Cloud Forest Institute Mendo, CA & Mindo, Ecuador connection.

Boontling is a folk language spoken only in Boonville. Scottish, Gaelic
and Irish, some Pomoan and Spanish influenced the vocabulary of the
language. Boontling was invented in the late 19th century and had quite
a following at the turn of the 20th century. It is now mostly spoken
only by aging counter-culturists and native Anderson Valley residents.
Because the town of Boonville only has a little over 700 residents,
Boontling is an extremely esoteric dialect, and is quickly becoming
archaic. It has over a thousand unique words and phrases. The Anderson
Valley, of which Boonville is the largest town, was an isolated farming,
ranching, and logging community during the late 19th century. There are
several differing versions as to the origin of Boontling. Some assert
that the dialect was created by the women, children, and young men in
the hop fields and sheep shearing sheds as a means of recreation, and
that it spread through the community as the children continued using it
when they grew up. Myrtle R. Rawles explains that Boontling was started
by the children of Boonville as a language game which enabled them to
speak freely in front of elders without being understood.It is believed
that the language originated from Ed (Squirrel) Clement and Lank
McGimsey, in or about the year 1890.

Your Ecovillage Awaits

Our friend Tom Wodetski is very kind and very intelligent.  He recently announced that the commune that he helped found in the 70's is for sale.  Since this blog is about living in community I would like to give you the opportunity to gather your affinity group together to think about coming up with a down payment in order to acquire this very desirable homestead.   Here is what Tom has to say and the description of the land follows:

  Hello. Salmon Creek Farm, the commune I lived on from 1975 to 1990 and am still part owner of, is soon to be placed for sale, now that none of us 13 owners live there any more. I'm asking you if you will send out this description below to all your friends and acquaintances who might be interested or know others who might be. We hope to sell it-- 30 rural acres with 8 legalized cabins on the Mendocino Coast-- to good, community-oriented and neighbor-sensitive people. If you could help us find them, we and they would be very grateful.

Salmon Creek Farm

30 rural acres with 8 rustic cabins in Albion, California, on the Mendocino Coast.

1.8 miles from the Pacific Ocean lies "Salmon Creek Farm." This wooded, south-facing, 30-acre property is located at the end of a quiet country lane in the desirable Middle Ridge Road neighborhood in Albion. The village of Mendocino is only 20 minutes  away.

Just inside the front gates in a sunny meadow is Orchard House, a 580-sq-foot cabin surrounded by a mature, well-maintained fruit tree orchard. This fenced open expanse of meadow is an ideal garden location with nearby outbuildings.

Beyond Orchard House are seven additional rustic, legalized, owner-built Class-K cabins tucked away down footpaths in charming settings. Majestic Redwood trees grace the hillsides and beautiful woodland trails wind throughout. A year-round stream bisects the land, flowing into Big Salmon Creek that forms the southern border of the property.

"Salmon Creek Farm" was lovingly settled by a family-oriented commune in the early 1970s and has remained in their hands as a living community for 40 years. This unique commitment to community continues today on Middle Ridge Road with friendly neighbors, monthly potlucks and a swimming pond within walking distance. This is a magical place to live. 

General Information:

Location: 32297 Middle Ridge Road, Albion, CA 

Approx. acerage: 30.5 acres

Coastal Zone: No

Number of dwellings: 8 Class-K owner-built Cabins

Sewer: 2 cabins with septic systems, 6 cabins with gray water and detached privy

Forest: Redwood & Douglas Fir, approx. 750,000 bd/ft. 

Water: Year round stream provides 1400 gal/day, spring box to tanks to cabins

Fire prevention: 8 dwellings have fire hydrants with 20,000 gal of available water 

Electricity: available to all dwellings and water system

Heat: Approved wood burning stoves and chimney systems in each cabin

Cooking: Portable propane tanks in each dwelling

List Price: $679,000 with 30-40%  down

Price per acre: ~$22,600

Photos are available upon request. For more information contact:

David Coddington 

Big River Realty

707 937-3233

DavidC@mcn.org

Flower Moon Pot Luck

At a MendoDragon meeting a couple of months ago we decided to schedule a pot luck dinner on the first Friday of each month. Serendipitously, this months first Friday, April 4, was also the full moon, always a good reason to celebrate. By word of mouth and through email we invite folks to join us for food and music, never knowing who will come. Not only the food, but who appears contributes to the “luck” factor of the mixture.

This was our second potluck and it was populated by many folks we are meeting for the first time. I am reminded about how timeless this practice is of people gathering to break bread. And there was some hearty homemade whole grain bread to break, too, even though we sliced it. Some other delicious offerings were, salad made from garden greens, homemade quiche and macaroni and cheese, pasta salad, guacamole, marble pound cake, lentil soup, homemade brandied cherries dipped in chocolate, sauteed tofu in coconut sauce, home pressed apple juice, and raisin kefir water. Lots of friendly chatter and chewing co-mingled with easy going guitar playing and a little singing.

It was pleasant being with new and old friends from a sister community, Emerald Earth. Soon, Emerald Earth will host a gathering of local intentional communities to compare notes, talk about what works for them, what the challenges are, etc. Anderson Valley is home to at least 6 communities that we know of and I have yet to visit any of them. Something to look forward to.

The Moon was rising as the first couple with young children left at sundown. Luna is up there blessing us and sometimes we hardly take the time to notice. That's how it is with nature, true treasures are ignored and even destroyed as many choose to buy in to the mirage of modern life. In the past, when we had less manufactured distraction, we were more aware of the natural world. This is exemplified by the names given to each full Moon. April's was known as the Seed Moon, Planter’s Moon, Sprouting Grass Moon, Grass Moon, Flower Moon, Egg Moon, Fish Moon, and Moon When Geese Return in Scattered Formation (Dakota Sioux). With just a couple of words each name tells a story about what people observed or did at this time of year.

April’s name is believed to be derived from Aprilis from the Latin word aperire meaning to open. This “opening” refers to the budding and flowering of the perennial plants and trees. May all our eyes be open in gratitude to the beauty and blessings of our Mother Earth. Every day is Earth Day.