Thursday, August 28, 2008

blackberries


I include a photo of a blackberry that remains along Thea Foss waterway. Today a story in the News Tribune

tells how a developer expects to remove growing produce from a site within a few weeks. Blackberries are pretty hardy, the blackberry canes develop fast and are thick. But the story is about agriculture, berries and pumpkins, the remaining growing things in Fife. It is sad that between two large cities, Seattle and Tacoma, farmland close at hand can no longer be present. Next Friday the Puyallup Fair begins, so many people are drawn to the experience that can no longer mean what it meant. The lost farmland is experienced as the drapery of grief - white in Japan, black in Western culture - grief for the actual removal of color. I think of songs - (I saw Bob Dylan perform at the Puyallup Fair one year) the song, "The Man in the Long Black Coat" or the Rolling Stones "Paint it Black". All that color and beauty gone. Others may experience the removal of developed produce as a deranged waste of food, in a time when the price paid is so high and it is so wrong to waste food. In this situation, the farmland is destroyed, so the loss of one crop, one season, cannot be evaluated when the actual time element is "gone forever".

Monday, August 18, 2008

A Swedish stamp shows art by Bror Hjorth, a portrait of Walt Whitman, Christ, and Socrates. I saw a relief by Bror Hjorth at Liljevalch's Konsthall that featured Walt Whitman when I visited Sweden in 1990.

Friday, August 15, 2008


There was some rain during some of the poetry readings at Showcase Tacoma. Some of the students hurried along the walkway beside the light rail tracks with flowing cloth painted in tie dye colors, a little like a dragon.

Saturday, August 9, 2008

Showcase Tacoma

The state poet laureate Sam Green will be at Showcase Tacoma today. When the Urban Grace group reads poems I will also read one poem. Showcase Tacoma is at the U of W Tacoma Branch.

Thursday, August 7, 2008

The months of May, June, and July I blogged twice a month and in August I think I will blog from time to time. There are reasons to recognize a priority for participation in electronic writing. Outside the library the trees are green and filled with sun.