Thanks and Farewell…
Posted on February 23, 2019 by Places Editor
Greetings
!It was a good thought, but sadly Our Place is closing due to lack of interest. Thank you to Rich Soos, Cynthia Anderson, Nancy Campbell, Ruth Nolan and Tyler Goodearly who were good enough to support my effort. Maybe another time.
Au revoir.
The Place is Closed.
Ginny
Untitled Poems by Tyler Goodearly
Posted on January 19, 2019 by Places Editor
Tyler Goodearly is a graduate of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. An aquatic biologist, he is glad to be back in California and is busy discovering the desert.
From sea to river,
Torpedoing up the falls,
Glistening crimson
Weightlessly gliding across the water’s surface,
The feathered beast scans through the depths
In search of tonight’s dinner.
It cranes its long neck oblivious to the surrounding
Chaos.
I long for its ignorance.
Desert Preserves…a recipe by Laurel Jernigan
Posted on January 11, 2019 by Places Editor
I received one of the best Christmas presents ever this year. Aside from having some of the most able and enthusiastic assistants out at my Preserve, I have some super talented ones as well. The following poem was presented to my by Laurel Jernigan, who is finding the oasis inspiring to her own creativity.
Desert Preserves – A Recipe
Antique seas wash the desert
dissolve into
crispy white crusts of salt…
a cleansing that lasted for untold years.
Endless suns gaze down
glaze the basin
like pottery in a kiln…
a ceramic of fossils and shells.
Water slips through new cracks
pushes upward
through no fault of its own
giving birth to a new oasis.
Purple fruitlings,
pods of honey
roots with flowers
carefully chosen by Nature…
simmer and bathe in bountiful batches.
Fan palms with aprons
ladles of fronds
watch over the stew…
not spoiling the pot with too many cooks.
Hills bubble up
smoke trees froth
in the streaming wash…
As the desert offers up its kitchens.
Unkind but well meaning ravens
other birds wings
flap along their way…
fanning off the hot desert heat.
Pockets of tiny mice
side slithering snakes
tamper and seal the sand….
like a thin coat of paraffin wax.
Footprints trod upon
flash floods descend
cutting through the desert jelly…
spreading it thinly.
Savor the sweetness
ingredients
of a desert preserve…
while the recipe lasts.
Are We Loving the Desert to Death? by Ruth Nolan
Posted on January 1, 2019 by Places Editor
Ruth Nolan has lived in the California deserts for most of her life and is an author/professor at College of the Desert. She’s also a former wildland firefighter for the US Forest Service and BLM California Desert District. She is the author Ruby Mountain (Finishing Line Press 2016); editor of No Place for a Puritan: The Literature of California’s Deserts (Heyday Books 2009); and co-editor of Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California (Scarlet Tanager 2018.)
Two years ago, my daughter and I headed out for a hike to one of our longtime favorite desert places, Cottonwood Oasis in Joshua Tree National Park.
To our surprise, not only was the parking lot at the trailhead full, but cars were spilling out along the roadway. In 30 years of hiking there, I’d never seen that before.
I learned later that spring that the Park, already listed as one of the most endangered of all National Parks, has experienced a huge uptick in visitors in the last few years, a number that continues to increase.
Unfortunately, I have realized that exponential increases in tourism to our region aren’t limited to Joshua Tree National Park: it’s desert-wide.
Maybe this wouldn’t hit so hard if I didn’t have to endure gridlock traffic on Interstate 10, and even Highway 111 for most of the month of April, the result of the Coachella and Stagecoach festivals, wildflower season, and all manner of other large-scale festivals, events and wildflower super blooms.
Maybe I wouldn’t be so annoyed if I hadn’t been rudely “asked” recently to move out of the way at Tahquitz falls by a group of tourists who wanted to take a group selfie to post on Instagram.
Maybe I’d be in a better mood if I hadn’t had to fight for parking at Thrush Park last spring to get past the hordes of visitors gawking at Desert X artwork – a months-long installation last spring (due to return in 2019) that included large art pieces across a 50-mile span of desert – just to go on an after-work hike.
There’s a disturbing implication afoot that this desert is up for grabs for any and all takers who want to profit financially or otherwise from our open spaces and quickly-vanishing sense of solitude and peace.
It’s the type of land grab mentality that evokes the worst of the California Gold Rush. It’s the type of land grab that’s caused, in the past decade, large-scale, multinational renewable energy entities and investors – backed by the federal government – salivating to get their hands on open tracts of our surrounding desert lands. Eastern Riverside County is one of the most targeted-areas.
It’s the type of land grab that has allowed well-funded, large-scale culture and arts organizations to site their projects here where they please, seemingly without adequate environmental impact reviews and in highly sensitive areas.
It’s a mentality has allowed Coachella’s producer, Goldenvoice, to trademark the very name of this valley and use legal means to stop any person or entity use the name “Coachella” or even the word “chella” for to anything that might be associated with an event or product for sale.
Do I now live in a desert whose very name, and soul, has, by dint of its mostly-rural and therefore economically desirable vulnerabilities, been commodified, at the desert’s expense?
It’s starting to feel more and more like Disneyland; a sort of designer desert. I’ve lived and worked in the California deserts for most of my life. I didn’t sign up for this.
In the meantime, just down the road, the Salton Sea disappears and the ancient aquifer at Cadiz is on the verge of being siphoned dry, both victims of water-greedy urban municipalities 100 miles away.
I can’t blame people for wanting to spend time in this stunning desert. It’s a world-class place, and offers what I’ve cherished for the past twenty years of living here fulltime: open spaces, transformational view sheds, and unfolding scenic mysteries, as well as a close sense of a vital, ancient past.
I have this in common with every person who seeks refuge here as an antidote to less-inspired places: I love the desert.
But I can’t help but ask a question that keeps nagging at me: Are we loving the desert to death?
This article originally ran in the Desert Sun newspaper on April 16, 2018 and is reprinted with permission from the author.Leave a comment
And Kelp Sings…by Nancy Campbell
Posted on December 20, 2018 by Places Editor
Nancy is a palm poet who also enjoys playing in other habitats and has a decided talent for sitting around. Leave a comment
cut loose by the sea urchin
and that horde’s hunger
for my luscious tangles
hallelujah – I’m free
look ashore
wild hair of the old woman that little girl becomes
who running the sands
will enfold me
amber knots
coils
bits of shell and
reek of fish
will cradle me close on her blond head
our two legs skipping along
And Kelp Sings…was originally published in Nancy’s book Sea Beings published by Conflux Press.
Fruition by Cynthia Anderson
Posted on December 9, 2018 by Cynthia Anderson
A curved seed stalk
arcs above the yucca—
and, dried out,
waves like the wand
of a necromancer—
yes, no, maybe.
Color of sand, seed pods
split and scattered—
the word devour grips me
in a bear hug.
Stalk and curve
draw my eye to markings
on a familiar rock—a code
I never noticed before.
Once I was in danger
of skirting the need o
for help. No more danger.
Help is what I need,
and find
when least expected.
Cynthia Anderson has spent the past 10 years immersed in the Mojave Desert, asking questions and then finding answers that lead to more questions. www.cynthiaandersonpoet.comLeave a comment
Three Pieces by Shioshi imagined into English –
r soos Posted on December 2, 2018
stop by
bring some wine with you
and we’ll dance freely tonight
with the desert moon
we’ll disrobe from pain
and swirl in the happiness
of sharing our lives
♦
the Joshua trees
hang down heavy with their song
praising compassion
♦
the winds through the wash
sing my morning and evening
prayers today
r soos loves to walk the paths in Joshua Tree. From time to time he’ll stoop over and move a rock a few inches – to see if he can confuse the ancient hills around him. chollaneedles@gmail.comEditors Note: this is the perfect opening for our Open Mic. “Stop by/bring some wine with you.” Thank you, Rich, for providing this lovely and welcoming poem to our first presentation in Places & Spaces.
Public Places & Private Spaces
Posted on August 31, 2018 by Places Editor
Welcome to Public Places and Private Spaces. We are an online journal for the American Southwest. Think of us a digital Coffee Shop with an Internet Open Mic. Pull up a chair and enjoy the show!Please read our submission guidelines before submitting. Thank you r soos (of Cholla Needles) for providing our inaugural post. Ginny Short, Founder and EditorPublic Spaces & Private Places An online poetry, flash and artistic OPEN MIC for the Desert Southwest.