Up Bear Creek / 7feb26013 / Poetry Ascendant after Imbolc

LAUREATE ON TOUR … As my two years as the Western Slope’s first poet laureate will come to an end with the Third Annual Karen Chamberlain Poetry Festival in Carbondale next month, I’m delighted to take a poetry tour with my friend and rising national poetry star from Grand Junction, Wendy Videlock … We’ve been invited by the state poet laureate David Mason to come to Colorado College in Colorado Springs where he teaches, and give a campus performance of our work. We’re both excited to do that tonight, Feb. 7th … As it happens, I also have a guest lecture slot in Dr. Patricia Limerick’s Center for the New West class at the University of Colorado at Boulder this same day. It will be my third year coming to speak to her history students on Western Slope politics from a Green perspective (not at county expense). It’s a chance to dip a toe in the academic world that once intrigued me so as a student at San Francisco State College (now university). And apparently the students, as least, find it intriguing … Then Friday, Feb. 8^th, Wendy and I will join Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer of Placerville and Danny Rosen of Fruita for a poetry performance in Salida’s Steamplant at 7 p.m. Legendary North Beach poet Jack Mueller of Log Hill Village, whose new book Boxwork is about to be published by Lithic Press, will be performed in absentia. The show’s called Birds of a Feather, and references a poetry festival called Sparrows that happened for many years in Salida … And in case you missed it this week, the Talking Gourds Poetry Club meets on the first Tuesday of every month at Arroyo’s here in Telluride. Rosemerry and I are hosts, and we try to pick themes and favorite writers to read, and encourage others to do so as well. It’s free and open to the public, not just for poets.

Up Bear Creek / 31j13 / The Talking Gourd

Climate Change

If it’s at all odd

the weather this year

on Wright’s Mesa’s uplifted shores

it’s gotta be the chill

before the January thaw

Ferns & transplants

can tolerate summer swamps

but a cold spell

clamps down on bones

like a box turtle’s jaw

Up Bear Creek / 31j13i3 / Confessions of an Energy Pig

Well, I keep chipping away at my energy consumption piggyness. My latest San Miguel Power bill for December at my ramshackle Cloud Acre home in Norwood shows a total kilowatt hour (kWh) usage for the past 12 months of 6,708 kWh, with a monthly average of 519 kWh

That’s down from a total usage calculated in February of last year at 10,580 kWh, with a monthly average of 881 kWh

Compare that to my December bill two years ago of 11,452 kWh and a monthly average of 954 kWh, and finally to my bill for August three years ago when I had a whopping total yearly usage of 16,118 kWh and a monthly average of 1,343 kWh

Getting conscious of my energy use and working to reduce it, I’ve been able in three years to cut my energy guzzling by more than half. Imagine the carbon footprint savings we’d have if everyone in the county could start getting energy conscious?

Up Bear Creek / 31j13i2 / Gun Control

Photo from Radically Christian website

A hot button issue, red/blue conflict written all over it. Or is it? I find myself, living in Norwood for some 30 years now, having watched my neighbors, most of whom have guns, be respectful, not harm anyone and not negligently allow arms access to their youngsters, so I’m having a hard time endorsing a letter supporting Pres. Obama’s gun control measures in this country, when this is the same president who’s using drones to kill terrorists and terrified children in foreign nations, in open violation of the U.N. Charter (why host an international alliance if you aren’t going to honor its charter?) 

Okay, that was kind of a non-sequitur. But I think we have to face up to the facts. Ours was a nation born in revolution. We owe our independence to a citizenry who threw off the yoke of a King and founded a democratic union wherein they had the right to bear arms – not just for hunting or for sport but for self-defense and against ill-doers or (goddess forbid) a government coup.

Yes, I’ve walked for peace in Telluride on the 11^th of almost ten years’ worth of months. I deplore state violence beyond our borders, except for the most egregious situations – of which ‘Nam, Iraq, and Afghanistan did not qualify in my book. And as a commissioner, I’ve sworn an oath to uphold and defend our state constitution, as well as our federal one.

But I also think, as Americans, we have a responsibility to defend ourselves, families and friends and a duty to defend our nation. Let’s start giving our society new tools to prevent mass killings (mental health programs, youth mentoring, etc.) rather than taking away our rights to defend ourselves.

Up Bear Creek / 31jan26013i1 / Jill Stein, Pres. Obama & Drones

Green Presidential Candidate Jill Stein

 I told my friends I wouldn’t start criticizing Barack Obama until (and if) he won a second term. I voted for him a second time, even though the Green Party had a wonderful, competent and visionary candidate in Dr. Jill Stein of Massachusetts. But it feels like we’re still semi-trapped in the social and economic collapse of the Bush/Reagan dynasty, and it was important to move this nation off center right, and back to center left. I think the swing won’t be complete until the Dems regain control of Congress.

Then will be the time to mount a hard push to the left to enact a New Green Deal like Stein was advocating – putting America back to work with a Full Employment Program to be co-developed locally and nationally; moving towards green energy and sustainable small businesses; regaining public control of our domestic monetary policy; abolishing corporate personhood; instituting regulatory safeguards for voting rights; championing local control over federal pre-emption, defending civil liberties; and financing new programs by cutting military spending in half; closing our 700+ American military bases around the world; and starting a new round of nuclear disarmament initiatives.

But with the president formally inaugurated into a second term, I have to raise my voice in public opposition to his use of drones -- officially UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) – a program begun under the previous administration and continuing now into Obama’s second term.

Extra-judicial state murders of suspected terrorists, with its collateral damage of civilian casualties, is illegal, unethical, and just plain wrong. It violates the U.N. Charter, and constitutes a thumbing of Uncle Sam’s nose at international law – just like the previous administration used to do. If George W. Bush should have been charged on the world stage for war crimes, and Ronald Reagan likewise for his Contra War in Nicaragua, funded by covert illegal drug smuggling, what should we do with Barack Obama’s drone strikes?

According to the website Global Research, an estimated 800 or more innocents have been killed by UAVs in Pakistan, including up to 168 children, and only 22 Al Qaeda commanders. And according to the Council of Foreign Relations website, by 2010 there had been 79 drone accidents, costing $1 million each

 Maybe we ought to stop trying to limit Americans’ citizen access to guns, and stop slaughtering innocents in drone attacks world-wide. Just because we don’t see it, don’t read about it in the corporate media, and it doesn’t happen to us or our neighbors doesn’t mean a terrible thing isn’t happening -- paid for by our tax dollars

Former President Jimmy Carter has come out publicly and voiced opposition to Obama’s drone assassination policy. So must we.

Up Bear Creek / 24j13iTG / The Talking Gourd

The Death of a Fly Fisherman

After his death

she tidied his desk,

all but the vise

which she lovingly left,

his last fly untied.

-Kyle Harvey

Fruita

Up Bear Creek / 24j13i3 / GJ Art Mag

WESTERN COLORADO JOURNEYS 

The amazing Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer at a reading in Grand Junction

Kat Rhein of Wild Kat Media has published a second edition of the Grand Valley’s premiere regional art, media and poetry guide. There are marketing sections on all the local hotspots surrounding Grand Junction, luscious photographs of impressive artwork, arts-related stories, and a selection of regional verse from place-based poets.

To get your own copy of what are quickly becoming collectors’ items in their own right, or to learn more, visit westerncoloradojourneys.com and enjoy the work of Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Malcolm Graeme Childers and Frank Coons.