Jack Miller RIP

 

Jack Miller's Shrine at his place on Hastings Mesa.

Friends held a marvelous memorial for an amazing man -- climber, adventurer, explorer, maker and friend to many. Many of us got to tell stories about this gentle giant who was not only a bonafide hero for saving the life of a friend stuck on the cliffs at Yosemite with a broken bone, unable to move.

For me he was the best Green I knew, backing me up when I needed political support. A man of deep beliefs, integrity and action. 

But a wild fellow who led me on an adventure at the legendary kickass cowboy bar in Ridgway called the Little Chef, where we "prosted" with a German fellow late into the day and then made it back to his digs on the Mesa, three of us on a snowmobile, so drunk we fell over every 20 feet, laughing with each tumble.

Lots of stories. Lots of memories. A friend for all seasons.

Jack Miller

Bardic Trails: Madison Gill

 

Madison Gill was our Bardic Trails featured reader for June.  

She received her bachelor’s degree in English from Colorado State University-Pueblo. As a student there, she was involved with and first published in the university’s student-run literary magazine, Tempered Steel. 

Following her graduation, Madison worked for a short time as a freelance reporter and then Assistant Editor of an independent news publication in Pueblo. In that role, she founded and independently managed the publication’s first ever poetry submission column where members of the community could submit their work for publication -- often for the first time.

Her first acceptance outside of an academic platform came in 2019 from a Denver-based journal called From Whispers to Roars. Since then, she has gone on to build her publication history both in print and online with such local, national and even international publications as: The Write Launch, Tiny Spoon, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Sledgehammer Lit, and Pocket Lint among others. She continues to submit her work for publication and share her poetry in person at local readings and open mics. Most recently, her work is forthcoming in a mental health anthology entitled Tea With My Monster published by Beyond the Veil Press.

In 2021, Madison was named the winner of the Cantor Prize awarded through the Telluride Institute’s Talking Gourds Poetry Program -- judged by Donald Levering of New Mexico -- with her poem, Urraca (magpie in Spanish):

Urraca

In the yard, two magpies

fight over the still-warm carcass

of a less fortunate and nameless

bird. Their shrieking uncoils

like barbwire from my mother’s flinching ear. Meanwhile my lover’s

eye glazes over, no longer here

but far from here on one of many custody-arranged road trips

back and forth from Wichita

in the backseat of his grandfather’s car with his brother

scouring the skies and splintered fence

posts for a flash of yin and yang tail feathers. “Urraca!” they’d cry, and grandfather would award them both a quarter

for their retained Spanish – grandma laugh- sighing on the passenger side.

Now my lover and his brother

are older – his brow furrowed

in a wrinkle deep enough

to stick a coin in. And the quarters in his grandfather’s pockets,

if there were any, have long since dropped

onto the cold hospital floor

as a nurse folded them the morning after lightning struck in his chest and took him to the next world. Meanwhile the magpies

go about their brutal business –

softened in the memory of a child. Their long tail feathers like a bridge between worlds – my lover standing at one end, arms outstretched, crying: “Urraca! Urraca! Urraca!”

Light in the shape of his grandfather reaching back from the other, pulling a quarter like a silver tooth

from the mouth of the sun. 

Madison likes to reference William Faulkner’s 1950 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech when describing the nature of her work as: “the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself.” She is a self-proclaimed love poet. Most of her work is deeply rooted in her personal life and includes themes of relationships, family, mental health, spirituality, social justice, and the natural world. A few poets whose work Madison feels has greatly influenced her own include Joy Harjo, Mary Oliver, Frank O’Hara, Ken Arkind, Carrie Rudzinski, Andrea Gibson, and Buddy Wakefield among others. You can find Madison on instagram at @sweetmint_poet where she mostly celebration-posts her publication acceptances and occasionally shares excerpts of her recent work.

Here is A  VIDEO RECORDING of her Bardic Trails  zoom reading.

Broadside created by Daiva Chesonis

Poster by Joanna  Spindler

The Poetic Imaginarium

 

Featured at the stylish Sherbino Theater in Ridgway's trendy Arts District June 1st, Wendy Videlock of Palisade presented a lively, interactive discussion on how we might cultivate the creative process, life-long learning, and the love of sensual experience into our everyday lives. 

Wendy shared a number of thought-provoking excerpts from her recent book of essays,The Poetic Imaginarium: A Worthy Difficulty.  Unfortunately, that book wasn't available thanks to supply chain issues. But her newest book of poems, Wise to the West (Able Muse Press, 2022), was available and she read several poems from there. 

Here in the West

Here in the West, whatever

one's pain

one never complains

about the rain.

What's good for the plains

is bad for the harvest.

What freezes in spring

is sugar-beet borrowed.

The river depletes.

The groves expire.

What blooms

in summer is wildfire.

Afterwards, she opened the floor to questions. That prompted Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer to craft this poem, which she sent out to her followers today:

Fill in the Blank

for Wendy

 

Tonight, the poet with the tendrilled hair

asks us to fill in the blank.

The most important relationship

you cultivate in your life is with _________.

One person says, Love. Says another, Yourself.

And long after the question is gone

from the air, long after the conversation’s

moved on, I think about ways

to fill it in. With time. Mortality.

Uncertainty. Peace. And ultimately,

with nothing. How beautiful

to let what is blank stay blank,

a space holder for pure potential.

What if our relationship with nothing

is the most important relationship we have?

I notice how she never fills in the blank herself,

leaving the space for everything.

Nothing is the most generous of doorways.

Now everything is possible.

Ah Haa Youth Show

 

Show Me Who You Are

A Juried Exhibition of Works by Artists

Aged 13-18

Kudos to Ah Haa School for the Arts for reimagining their annual Youth Arts Awards show with a marvelous exhibit of very different mediums from a wide collection of local youth. The show runs from May 3rd to the 27th in the Daniel Tucker Gallery at Ah Haa's new Silver Jack Building digs in Telluride, Colorado.

Leadoff in the exhibit was Soren Scoville's very professional-looking computer and digital designed bookcover. I loved the practical bent of this piece. It was so well done it look me a while to realize it wasn't a real bookcover.

Siri Shoff had a very interesting photo with her University Steps. The unique angle combined with the blue tinge of the sky that rubs off on the building facade was a delight that catches the eye.  Shoff commented that she wanted to highlight the beauty in Mexico when she was visiting there.

Ruby McHarg's Where the Buffalo Roam uses traditional photography as her medium. But rather than  any particular object, it's light that inspires McHarg. As she says in her accompanying artist statement, the photo "captures the mysterious minutes before the sun rises" on the meadow's vernal pool and low hills. "The light is there, but we can't quite see all that goes on, so we are left mesmerized by the golden light of morning.'

Sophia McNamara's  Dark Hair is an intriguing watercolor sketch that captures a depth of feeling and emotion not usually seen in student work.  The faint reddish tint of the lips and cheek play off the same tinge in the figure's shoulder  -- a subtle but effective addition to the introspective mood of the piece.

Sylvia Erickson takes ink lines  into a complex pastiche of illusive detail and shape-shifting forms. She calls it The Infinity Zentangles. Again, like almost all the pieces in the show, she picks her own favorite medium to demonstrate vision and patience. 

The color, the sharp edges, the cartoon-like image that has such a haunting feel to it -- this piece had be staring for quite a while.  It's realistic and surreal all at the same time. Here's what  Onyx Churning has to say about  It's A ...  "What inspired me  to create this piece was honestly a character from  my favorite show, South Park, and the song "It's  A" by McCafferty. What I was trying to show  with it  was that sometimes love can burn your heart and things won't last, no matter how much you'd like them to."

These are only a sampling of the many pieces and quite diverse media used to showcase work from these young artists. I love the freedom that Ah Haa allowed the students to employ in sharing their favorite pieces. Some of the pieces were wildly creative. And used  really interesting things for their art.

I loved how Ah Haa asked each of the artists questions in addition to an artist statement to let us viewers in on the process each student used in creating their pieces. And having everything in Spanish and English was inclusive in a way not seen in gallery shows very often.

Applause all around for the student artists and to Ah Haa for giving us a glimpse of the fine work being done locally by our youth. 

Stop in and take a look for yourself this week.

Puzzling

 

Puzzling

-for Dea

According to Science News (23apr13022), researchers were surprised 

to find “something going on we weren’t expecting”in a study to 

measure the Cosmic Optical Background light, which, explained 

Dr. Zemcon “is where the fun part of science kicks in.”

92yrold Betty 

the microbiologist likes 

to dump the jigsaw puzzle 

pieces in a heap with not a 

peek at the image displayed

She invites you to join her

deep in the playground of

the not-yet-formed

where we begin to guess

digress & reassemble

Close-up photo of a Monkey Puzzle Tree from Patagonia, Chile

Talking Politics

Here is the first interview I had the privilege of doing with Will Evans of Carbondale Public Radio talking politics, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Talking Gourds, listening, reciprocity, Telluride, the Valley Floor (marvelously told in film by Ron Melmon's Forever Wild that just appeared on PBS). Listen in HERE

This Earth Peace Justice flag is a work of poet and graphic designer  Rafael Jesús González of Berkeley, California.

Dolores LaChapelle

 

Thanks to Will Evans of KDNK in Carbondale for hosting a second interview with me -- this time talking about my teacher and friend, the late Dolores LaChapelle of Silverton.  If you ever wanted to know why she is so revered in my pantheon of goddesses and gods, this interview gives you a pretty good idea. Itki's less than a half hour long, and Will does a masterful job as interviewer and radio engineer. I think this may be my favorite interview of all time. Listen HERE

The photo above was taken on a hike Dolores and I did to South Mineral Creek outside Silverton. This was the same spot where the Blair family and I and her son  David scattered Dolores' ashes amid the wild mountain waterfalls she loved so much (as does Will Evans whose motto is "water is life").

The photo  to the right of Dolores framed by the mountains she loved was taken by the writer Jonathan Thompson. 

And this cover shot of Dolores' most important book, out-of-print, but one of the greatest books in my library and one I return to time and again.

To learn more about Dolores, go to her legacy site HERE