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Humboldt County. Lost Coast. The Wild Cat.
I let the dogs out into the beautiful garden. The Little Dog caught and killed a large rat in the orchard. Dude tore it out of his mouth and shook it until its guts were all over his red fur. They looked very pleased with their murderous selves.
Daisy and I huffed and puffed up the steep hill to The Tower. Her father collaborated with local craftsman to build this beautiful space. Originally built to disguise two ten thousand gallon tanks fed by spring water this tower can now be rented (click here) on Airbnb.
Alexander died less than a year ago. It is a strange and wonderful experience living in his comfortable home.
We have been exploring. All weekend we dropped in at community events: private and public parties. The Mattole River Restoration cookout and dance, a wonderful wedding anniversary party where they made their own Grappa in a copper still. A young cook from Oakland roasted pig and served it by an open fire under white canvas awnings.
The following day they called us to taste the gin they had just made in the same still. Last night a local intellectual cooked us home-grown free range chicken and home-made pink grapefruit sorbet. On Sunday morning we bought basil mayonnaise, catnip and tomato starts from the Petrolia Farmers Market.
Most of the Lost Coast is designated wilderness within the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park and the King Range National Conservation Area. Remote beaches backed up by steep cliffs and mountains. King’s Peak reaches an elevation of 4,088 feet only three miles from the Pacific Ocean.
The King Range has risen 66 feet in the last 6,000 years due to the meeting of three tectonic plates: North American, Pacific, and Juan de Fuca, just off the white cap coast. The land on the North American plate is being piled rapidly upward. Its grey crumbly sandstone creating beaches of pristine, black sand.
On the beach we meet a few passers-by. We meet hikers who, by law, keep their food in locked plastic containers. Bear proof. The containers looked like the barrels atomic waste is stored in.
We needed cleaning supplies. We drive an hour to get them. The road from Petrolia to the Victorian town of Ferndale is perhaps one of the most beautiful roads I have ever traveled. Hogweed, ancient ferns and Douglas Fir.
Ferndale was founded by Danish settlers. The 19th century houses are really well-preserved. The history of the town inextricably linked to tinned salmon and logging, both of which have gone forever. The trees cut down, the salmon extinct. We saw two huge trucks loaded with old growth tree trunks but apparently they come from small ‘sustainable’ forests.
Daisy’s father said:
Start with the word “sustainable.” These days fund-raisers and grant-writers string it round each sentence like an adjectival fanny pack, bulging with self-congratulation. Mostly, the term is meaningless or a vague expression of hope. In the case of timber, it’s a haphazard and often highly debatable designation that amounts to little more than a vague pledge that the timber is not virgin old growth.
We stop in at the lumber yard to buy laminated boards for Daisy to paint. We are served by a fresh-faced youth. I ask him if he’ll ever leave Ferndale. He says, he’s a small town boy. He doesn’t want to leave. I understand why.
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Daisy Cockburn
I promised that I wouldn’t write about where and who I was staying with… it feels like I am boasting. But… here I am staying with Daisy Cockburn on The Lost Coast. We met thirty years ago at Phil H’s house on Langton Street, Worlds End, Chelsea.
Daisy’s house/compound, filled with unusual and beautiful things collected by her father Alexander Cockburn, leaving his only child this house in Petrolia. Alexander was a disruptor, a magnificent political writer. Alexander died last July after a long illness.
Collecting the most extraordinary ceramics, eclectic paintings the decaying house is a warren of red wood improvements and additions. James built a tower on the hill… I’ve not yet visited. The ceramics are mostly by LA based ceramist Jim Danisch.
Daisy’s mother is the writer Emma Tennant. Her cousin is Olivia Wilde.
I drove from LA. Through San Francisco. The last 60 miles along perilous roads in the dark. Tarmac Roads that suddenly give out to treacherous gravel. Past the magnificent redwoods that even in the dark… are extraordinary.
I slept in a huge bed built on a wooden platform. I slept like a giant redwood log. At night, I can hear the Mattole river moving quickly over tiny gray pebbles. This morning we all… dogs too… swam in the cold clear water.
More pics tomorrow.
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Bradley Manning: Silenced by Poverty
The perception amongst most Americans is that Bradley Manning should never have told us what was going on because he was breaking the law.
A U.S. diplomatic cable made public by WikiLeaks provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.
The perception of most Americans is that Bradley Manning is a traitor.
More so, I imagine, than the man who shot 17 Iraqi women and children as they lay sleeping in their beds.
If a journalist with a degree had uncovered this information I believe most Americans would be ok with that.
His expensive education would somehow allow him the privilege of exposing the wrongs of the nation.
We are shooting the messenger because the messenger is poor white trash… who the hell does he think he is?
That’s what I’m hearing. That’s what’s really going on here.
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Venice Realness
It is a black day for the international LGBTQ community.
Clément Méric is as good as dead. His brilliant, 18-year-old queer brain mangled by right-wing thugs on the streets of Paris.
He is presently kept alive by a tangle of opalescent tubes.
In Russia activists are targeted by government sponsored bullies.
In London intellectuals are beaten to the ground by members of the EDL.
In NYC a black man is shot in the face and killed.
Trans people are murdered every day all over the world, often without investigation.
Have you heard? There is, amongst the general population, a perceived inevitability about LGBTQ equality.
Some amongst us are becoming complacent. Bloated on the success we think we have.
Basking in the support we think we get from the President. In fact we are silenced by him.
His words over deeds have silenced us.
We must speak up. Continue to challenge. Continue to be seen.
We must not shirk our responsibility to queer martyrs like Clément Méric.
Speak up. Heckle.
ENDA (Employment Non-Discrimination Act) is only now being widely discussed after the petulant FLOTUS was confronted by GetEQUAL queer activist Ellen Sturtz.
I congratulate Ellen. Finally, a voice for the queer poor heard over the screaming voices of the queer rich.
As the Great Recession continues in so much of the USA, ending workplace discrimination (especially for trans people) is essential.
Listen to me or you can take the mic, but I’m leaving. You all decide. You have one choice.
FLOTUS
Remember. As we strive for parity there will be those with equal and opposite views.
There will be violence.
There will be those who will kill an 18-year-old queer boy because they can.
African-Americans had to face nearly another century of lynchings before the Civil Rights Movement was powerful enough to push back strongly against violent racists.
The women’s movement of the 1920s, side-tracked for a generation until the 1960s, with so many needlessly broken lives and life expectations as a result.
Queer people are being attacked all over the world: Paris, Moscow, New York, London by increasingly emboldened haters.
As we demand equality in the workplace, the home and in the establishment these attacks will become more frequent.
We must, whether we like it or not, form a true LGBTQ alliance not only in name but in practice.
It is too late for fear to drive us into the shadows. We are out. We are visible.
We need to be more fearless and more visible.
LGBTQ.
This means YOU.
This means ME.
Reading about Clément Méric this morning, looking at his sweet, boyish profile… I began to question my own behavior.
I have, of late, let resentment toward the gays shape my own kind of homophobia.
For those of you who have read my blog these past couple of years the provenance of this loathing may seem understandable.
Today, I need to jettison those resentments.
If I truly believe in this fight… I have to accept those I detest as my queer brothers and sisters.
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Compare and Despair
There is an endless stream of ‘good news’ on Facebook. The parties, the marriages, the births, the home renovations and the ubiquitous instagramed plates of delicious (and not so delicious) breakfast, lunch and dinner. The grandiose exclamations of joy and delight. The boasting, the dressing up… the glitter and sangria.
In between the nihilistic leather soirees and endless travelogues come occasional glimpses of the pain and suffering most of us endure but seldom want to admit. At least… not on social media. Not to those who seem to be having the time of their lives every single day.
Two deaths this week. One old lady I never knew and one young man I did. Sandwiched between bottles of french wine and exotic vacations on the French Riviera is the truth. The young American who can’t stop drinking and the miserable single woman who can’t get the man to stay.
They say, when I post my bits and pieces, that I am angry… lonely… sad. When I don’t agree with a theme they say I am a sullen contrarian. When I post expressions of joy I am inundated with ‘likes’ as if my happiness needs affirming.
My friend’s mother dies peacefully in the hospital bed. He updates us by the hour. Her final words remind us of our own mortality. I am so grateful he tells us so. I learn so much more from her last words than a another blurry picture of enchiladas posted at some obscure Mexican restaurant where my ‘friends’ boast of the wonderful time they are having.
I have stopped posting pictures of parties, of other people in their gorgeous homes. I have stopped reporting which celebrities I have seen and what they were doing. Of late I have been concentrating on injustice. My own and others.
The realtor who engages his powerful friends to incarcerate. We are getting to the bottom of that mucky situation. The way the rich use government institutions to their own ends. Corrupt district attorneys, prosecutors and law enforcement. We are getting to the bottom of that one. Slowly, like archeologists gently removing layer after layer of dirt… getting to what was so carefully buried. For every corrupt official there is another eager to help.
For the time being I have to be obtuse. That will end… sooner or later. I am patient . I can wait.
Bradley Manning, queer hero, his trial starts today. Although I doubt we will get the outcome we desire and that boy will probably spend the rest of his life in jail for doing the right thing… he will not be forgotten. Bradley Manning will not be forgotten.
Paul, my white gay friend, the talent manager. I saw him yesterday. He had been to a Liberace viewing party in the hills. A bunch of straight acting gay boys watching Liberace in the opulent surroundings of an older gay man. Their reaction was as expected… they hated it. They didn’t see what Liberace had to do with their lives. You see, they complained… they wanted to see themselves. Paul couldn’t understand why Scott Thorson (who he knows) had his story told. He described Scott as a ‘user’. He said he thought it was ‘unfair’ that Scott’s story was told rather than a ‘gay hero’.
“Who?” I asked. “Which gay hero?”
His brow furrowed. He’ll get back to me with the answer.
Then it occurred to me why a bunch of boys under the age of 25 drinking free booze in the house of an older Hollywood oligarch might not like the film Liberace. Rather than not seeing themselves… on the contrary, they all saw themselves exactly and hated what they saw.
Like on Facebook the ugly truth is sometimes sandwiched between the glitter and sangria.
No matter how deeply it is buried.
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Garden. Party.
