A Journey Into the Mojave Desert’s Old Woman Mountains by Ruth Nolan

There are stories in books, and there are stories in words, and there are stories embedded in the landscape itself. Such are the stories found in the Old Woman Mountains, a “sky island” mountain range rising from the low desert floor to as high as 5,300 feet in a remote area of eastern San Bernardino County known as the Heart of the Mojave, accessible only by four-wheel drive vehicle.

There’s the story of the Old Woman Meteorite, the largest meteorite ever found in the United States, which was found here in 1938. There are stories of miners and ranchers, and stories of the desert’s Native American shamans—holy men—praying for visions inside caves, whose ceilings and walls they painted with ochre designs and carved with petroglyphs. There are stories of the fight to stop a nuclear waste site from being built in neighboring Ward Valley back in the 1990’s, which spills from the alluvial fans of the Old Woman Mountains. This is a deeply storied landscape.

And the stories of the Old Woman Mountains continue to unfold, to this day. One such story is one I am part of. It’s a story of the blessing and dedication ceremony that took place this past May 23, on an unseasonably cool and cloud-graced afternoon, where several dozen adults and children representing several desert and other Native American tribes, educators, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) personnel, local ranchers, Sierra Club volunteers, and members of the desert advocacy and protection group, the Native American Land Conservancy, gathered for a ceremony to dedicate and bless the restoration project at the Old Woman Mountains Preserve, sponsored by the NALC.

On that day, those who gathered in the Old Woman Mountains in the Heart of the Mojave watched as Anza-Cahuilla tribal member Michael Madrigal and Agua Caliente Tribal Specialist and member Sean Milanovich cut the ribbon across the new entrance gate to the 2,500 acre preserve, which was acquired by the NALC—formed in 1998—as part of the group’s long-term efforts to protect and preserve Native American traditional cultural properties, as well as to pass along what NALC Executive Director Kurt Russo calls, “the spirit of place” to both native and non-native members.

On that day, those who gathered, including members of the desert’s Cahuilla and Chemehuevi tribes, as well as members of the Lummi tribe from the Seattle area, grew silent as Madrigal and Milanovich gathered everyone in a circle, at the base of an area of sacred rocks protected by a newly-erected protective fence, and began to perform desert Indian bird songs, using traditional gourd rattles to keep time as a line of dancers standing in front of them followed their lead.

As Madrigal and Milanovich sang, gourd rattles firmly and purposefully in hand, and the dancers followed along, a fat hummingbird appeared above their heads, looking down on those gathered around, before buzzing away. Then, high above, circling into the clouds, two turkey vultures rose above our heads, seemingly drawn into the power and beauty of the bird songs, which have been sung by bird singers here and across the California deserts for centuries by Native Americans who have lived and spent time here in the Old Woman Mountains and beyond, living purposefully and sustainably with the diversity of resources the desert has long provided them.

“It has been a great honor to take part in the dedication project at the Old Woman Mountains Preserve,” says Madrigal. “I feel we came to honor the long-standing relationship between this sacred place and indigenous peoples of the region. The life-giving and healing spirit of the Old Woman Mountains Preserve welcomed us—as we prayed and sang in recognition and thanks for the opportunity to reconnect ourselves with the sacredness of this place where countless generations have come to give thanks, to pray, and to seek greater vision.”

The NALC acquired the Preserve in 2002, with the intent of protecting and preserving this critical Native usage area, as well as providing cultural sustenance and continuity to promote cross-cultural understanding of the value and significance of Native American sacred lands. In addition to opening the Preserve to hikers and visitors, who can use beautiful new kiosks to guide them, the NALC has also created the Learning Landscapes program, which brings Native youth, elders and families to spend time at the preserve, so that the stories long told here can continue to unfold.

According to Russo, the NALC was able to complete the project with a $376,000 grant from the California State Parks Off Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division grant program, and more than $100,000 from the Bureau of Land Management. Members of environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and private landowners also participated in the project. “It was a great collaboration,” Russo said.

As the vehicle I rode in left the preserve for the rugged four-hour journey home after the Old Woman Mountains Preserve blessing ceremony and dedication of the Old Woman Mountains Preserve, I looked to the sky once again. Three huge, red-tailed hawks, the biggest I’ve ever seen, rose into the sky from one of the range’s many peaks, circled above our caravan of SUV’s, looking down on us, then disappeared again into the heart of the range.

Inlandia Founder Remembered by Cati Porter

No one could ever say “no” to Marion Mitchell-Wilson.

After I began attending Inlandia events in late 2007, Marion invited me for coffee. Before my cup was empty, I had agreed to become a member of Inlandia’s Advisory Council.

Smiling, thoughtful and almost always full of energy, Marion had a way of making you want to help with her projects. And you never regretted it.

Marion, founding director of the Inlandia Institute, died a week ago after a long battle with breast cancer.

I never envisioned an Inlandia without Marion. Occasionally she would say things like, “Cati, when I retire,” but I couldn’t think past the here and now.

Even after she officially “retired” in 2012 to work on getting well, she continued to be present for me, whispering suggestions and offering solutions, serving as Inlandia’s institutional memory.

Many of us have fond memories of Marion, and how she got us involved in promoting the Inland area’s literary life. We’ll share a few thoughts here from several Inlandia board members and local writers.

FRANCES J. VASQUEZ

Marion Mitchell-Wilson cared passionately about many things and all things Inlandia: the people, their stories, and the literary expression of our regional voices. Multi-talented, she was a wonderful gourmet cook who loved to share her bounty and her kindness with others.

One Friday, I helped Marion with preparations for an Inlandia member reception being held the next day. Her amazing menu included a favorite recipe for asparagus spears roasted with orange slices in lemon-infused olive oil and orange vinaigrette. And, a reconstructed whole poached salmon with cream cheese, cucumber sauces, and other delicacies.

During several hours of washing, peeling, and slicing fruits and vegetables, I spilled water on the kitchen floor. I asked for paper towels or rags to wipe the floor with. Marion, in her efficient way, quickly turned to a drawer and handed me a large cloth towel. I bent over to wipe the spills when Marion stopped me. “No, Frances. Don’t bend. Skate like this.”

Marion tossed the towel on the floor, stepped onto it with both feet and skated gracefully around her kitchen floor. We both laughed heartily and continued with the food preparations.

ELIO PALACIOS

I met Marion at last year’s Advisory Council workshop. My first impression was how unassuming she was considering the part she had played in creating and shaping Inlandia. And her love of and dedication to Inlandia was also very apparent as was her knowledge and wisdom.

KAREN RAE KRAUT

Marion and I met in 1990 when the California Humanities Council sponsored a series of public programs on the theme of “Place” and its effect on how we experience our lives. How’s that for foreshadowing?

Our expanding group of interested people went on to receive a grant from the Humanities Council to locally sponsor the American Renaissance Chautauqua, which resulted in the formation of a non-profit organization called the Inland Empire Educational Foundation. IEEF (rhymes with leaf), as we fondly called it, sponsored reading and discussion groups and public programs for the next five years.

Marion was an important part of all these free programs, and her vision and common sense contributed greatly to their success.

ELLEN ESTILAI

It was impossible to be part of the Riverside arts and culture scene and not know Marion Mitchell-Wilson, but I really got to know her after she invited me to a meeting with Malcolm Margolin at the Riverside Main Library to talk about the literary landscape of what we would eventually come to know as Inlandia.

That meeting helped lay the groundwork for Heyday’s book, “Inlandia: A Literary Journey through California’s Inland Empire.”

When the anthology was published, no one in the community wanted that journey to end. Marion was the engine that drove the bus, and she cajoled and sweet-talked fellow travelers into hopping on.

In 2007, I retired from the Riverside Arts Council to devote more time to writing. I was hoping for a respite from meetings and committees, but Marion was having none of that. She told me she wanted me to serve on the advisory council of a new organization, the Inlandia Institute.

“It’s just a few meetings a year,” she assured me. When I demurred, she said, “There will be liquid facilitation.”

I’ve now been in for eight years, as a council member and board member, but also as a writer. Luckily for me, the Inlandia Institute emerged just as I was learning to be a writer. I cannot imagine writing without Inlandia’s support. Like many others in this unique literary community, I am indebted to Marion for her vision, strength, and yes, occasional liquid facilitation.

ENDOWMENT

When Marion first learned the cancer had returned and was terminal, she met privately with Inlandia board members and staff, sharing her one big wish: that an endowment be founded in her name, so she could ensure the future of the organization.

In keeping with Marion’s wishes, the family is requesting donations in lieu of flowers.

Contributions can be made via PayPal, using donations@inlandiainstitute.org, through CrowdRise and by mailing a check to the Inlandia Institute, 4178 Chestnut St., Riverside, Ca., 92501.

And save these dates: Aug 28 for a memorial service at the California Citrus State Historic Park, and Sept 18 for a special endowment kickoff party in Marion’s honor at the Riverside Art Museum.

In the Faerie Tale Forest of Genealogy by Myra Dutton

I have been researching my family bloodline for about a year now, trying to understand what my mother, a genealogist for thirty years, had uncovered. Encouraged by a lengthy conversation with an archeologist/historian, I sent for a DNA test kit from a reputable online genealogy website, swabbed the inside of the cheeks of my mouth, shipped it off, and waited. Eight weeks later, the results arrived. I was 56% Scandinavian, 33% Central European, and 11% British (Isles). The genetics lab at the University of Arizona had uprooted my family’s long-held belief that we were mostly German with a bit of Danish ancestry. Instead, we were part of a lineage far bigger and older than we had ever imagined. Rather than explore the paternal lineage, which had already been done, I began to focus on the maternal bloodline.

Daughters inherit an identical copy of one of their mother’s X-chromosomes. It is the continuous thread woven into DNA: a mother-to-mother lineage passed down through the ages. An old bloodline may have a family tree of grandmothers, 35,000 years old. Their experiences can guide descendants on a cellular level in mysterious and intuitive ways. It is an invisible, innate survival skill, one that modern day, fast-moving, urban-dwelling people rarely acknowledge.

Current findings in the field of epigenetics reveal that RNA, which is sensory, triggers DNA to remember. If we see, hear, taste, smell, or touch anything that our ancestors perceived, a download of genetic memory occurs. This extensive cellular database provides information about things we have never personally encountered. It offers the unique insights and wisdom, compiled by our ancestors and made available through our RNA and five senses.

For over 20 years, I searched for Baltic amber, particularly in its most rare form: natural amber, turned red by exposure to the elements. Shortly after I found the piece I had been looking for, my mother told me that several branches of our family had lived for centuries on islands in the Baltic Sea. I read about the women who went to the beach to gather amber there—Baltic amber that had washed ashore from the bottom of the Baltic Sea—and equated my search for red amber with theirs. I could easily visualize my grandmothers picking up pieces of amber that they had found, glowing on the sand, and feeling the amber’s warmth, marveling at the bark imprints on its surface—the Baltic Sea rising and crashing before them.

Recently, my husband “googled” his full name and found his entire family genealogy, posted by a distant cousin. He and our children are part of a direct lineage of Viking kings, dating back to 165 A.D. William the Conqueror, Charlemagne, and royalty all over Europe and the British Isles flow through their veins. It is part of their very nature. One morning, years ago, our three-year old daughter awoke, quite upset, banging her fist on the table, and said, “I just wanted to be the queen and they wouldn’t let me!” She often dreamed about living in giant castles and would describe the countless rooms in great detail: the giant European bath tub that was so deep the water went far over her head, the huge candles on the walls used for lighting, the closet full of rows and rows of beautiful dresses, the woman who was always at her side, but was not her mother. I had never read her princess stories since it was not the trend at that time, and we didn’t have a television.

Our five senses can magically re-create the past in the present. Rich lore, incredible stories, and fantastic dreams arise from genetic memories. They are a treasure trove for writers. Within the faerie tale forest of genealogy, the unconscious becomes mystery, mystery becomes myth, and myth becomes reality as we move closer to our true source—connected, timeless and one.

Literature in Idyllwild by Jean Waggoner

The words of a good story jump off the page to charm, cajole, reason and wrestle with the human imagination. They carry us away, while anchoring us more profoundly to our world. In summer, libraries entice young readers with prizes for significant amounts of any kind of reading, as adults, too, search for new flights of brainy experience.

Riverside readers live in one of the largest counties in the country. When joined with San Bernardino as the Inland Empire (Inlandia, as some of us prefer), our locality is about as big as the state of Rhode Island. We have plenty of places to go and things to see, as well as a huge library system to draw upon for reading, listening and viewing material. Nonetheless, those of us in the county’s rural parts, like Idyllwild, don’t have easy access to a good book store without driving some distance, or as Mount San Jacinto’s people say, “going off the hill.”

Sure, there’s online shopping, but what can a literary-book or CD-gifting auntie do at two O’clock on a Wednesday afternoon to get a birthday present mailed to a thirteen-year-old in the county seat by Friday, when no such virtual store delivery has arrived?

Idyllwild readers know how to find good reading material, of course. Our library offerings include used book sales and several of the town’s thrift and “junk-tique” shops carry old books. The Nature Center or Forest Service offer selected new books on topics of outdoor interest, including publications by Inlandia members Myra Dutton and Sally Hedberg.

For Mackenzie, who turned thirteen on July 10th, this auntie broke from tradition and selected writing, instead of reading materials: a journal and a booklet of flowery sticky-notes from Idyllwild Gift Shop (whose proprietor has often posted Inlandia workshop fliers on her bulletin board). Tactile and old tech, the gifts brought back teen memories, a spiritual link from one generation to another.

The shopping excursion also elicited some community appreciation of what we do have in Idyllwild. We’ve got organizations that promote the arts in our schools, often drawing on retiree talent. In the literary arts, we have theater, writing and book club groups. The Idyllwild Arts campus, a fine arts high school, also offers summer classes for kids and adults.

Although we have no literary laureate who writes specifically about our mountains, quite a few published writers work or vacation here, and luminaries like Ann Rice have stayed awhile, somewhat incognito, among us. Local stories have been collected, showcased and archived by our highly acclaimed Idyllwild Historical Society and Idyllwild writers continue to add local color to literary writing. The literary climate is alive and well, here!

Sadly, long-time Idyllwild resident Myra Dutton will no longer serve as co-leader of our Idyllwild Inlandia Writing Workshop, after this summer. We understand, and we value the gifts she has inspired us with, including her “daughter of the plains’ meditation” on the Andrew Wyeth painting Christina’s World, which she shared in this beautiful poem:

Riding the Sacred

I have heard the secrets here,

felt the breath and beat of wind

across the grass-maned prairie,

and I climb on the back of this Earth,

as if I had journeyed centuries before,

her wild hair twined in my hand.

National Poetry Epoch by John Bender

If April’s really the cruelest month, per our old American expat T.S. Eliot, why is it National Poetry Month?

One month is too short, and poetry desires thoughtful reflection, emotional investment and delight, not brief periods of frenzy—post one poem a day on Facebook, maybe someone will notice amid all the social-media noise.

So, given the power vested in me as this week’s grumpy, yet hopeful, Inlandia Literary Journeys columnist, I hereby declare 2015-2016 as National Poetry Epoch. Forget April. We have a great year ahead of us.

Skeptical? Well, at least for the Inland area, this year already has proved momentous.

The Library of Congress recently named former UC Riverside professor Juan Felipe Herrera as poet laureate of the United States for 2015-16. He officially begins in September with events at the library’s National Book Festival.

Herrera, who just finished his term as California’s poet laureate, becomes the second US poet laureate with strong ties to UCR. Best-selling poet Billy Collins, who served as national laureate from 2001-2003, received a masters in English from the university in 1965 and earned a doctorate in Romantic Poetry at UCR in 1971.

So forget about the people from LA who look down on our area. Forget about those on the East Coast who don’t even know we’re here. We’re no literary wasteland. We can boast of two poet laureates who lived here, worked here and breathed the same smog we breathe.

I’m not familiar enough with Collins’ work to know whether his time in the Inland area is reflected in his poems, but I know that this area’s stark beauty and working-class mixing bowl of huddled masses have informed Herrera’s poems.

And I know that Herrera will welcome our help making his time as US laureate a tremendous time of poems and poetry—an epoch of enthusiasm!

While he was at UCR and during his time as California’s top poet, Herrera joined then-Inlandia laureate Gayle Brandeis, Inlandia Executive Director Cati Porter and me at a guerrilla reading in downtown Riverside.

Our aim was to surprise the workers and businessmen at lunchtime with a surprise poetry reading. It wasn’t as guerrilla as I wanted it to be, because when the state’s poet laureate is going to read, you alert the city fathers.

And so, amplified by a small public address system powered by a battery from a defunct 1963 Buick—the whole contraption contained in the back of a child’s wagon—we brought poetry to downtown Riverside’s pedestrian mall.

During that November 2013 event, which you can find on YouTube by searching for “California Poet Laureate holds impromptu-style reading downtown,” Herrera was the pied piper of poems, the ambassador of allusion—clearly a guy who relishes sharing poetry.

He released more energy than that Buick battery, inviting passersby to compose their own poems on the spot. He made me and his other co-readers feel like the most important poets on the planet, even translating one of my lines into a cool Spanish phrase, “¡Raja la calabaza!” (which of course I’ve incorporated into the text of the poem.)

During his California term, Herrera brought poetry to other unexpected places, reading at the re-opening of the Oakland Bay Bridge and inspiring hundreds to join him in writing “The Most Incredible and Biggest Poem on Unity in the World.”

I have no doubt that he plans even bigger unifying events during his term as national laureate, so why wait?

As poets, literary fans and readers, let’s all pledge to share poems with others during the next year. Let’s invite friends to breakfast and give them a reading while they digest. Let’s volunteer at schools and teach the children to write poems, let’s give free readings at hospitals, bus stops!

Let’s go to readings wherever they’re held. Let’s buy poetry books, attend poetry workshops.

Let’s write love poems for poetry.

It’s our turn. It’s our epoch. Juan Felipe needs our help. We have work to do.

To learn about upcoming readings and Inland literary events, go to inlandiainstitute.org

Young Poets Have Lessons for Us All by Timothy Green

For our children, summer means trips to the beach, barbeques, and long stretches of glorious boredom. School is out, the days are long, and the possibilities endless. For this poetry editor, summer vacation also serves as a break from publishing adults, focusing instead on children, as I work to compile the annual Rattle Young Poets Anthology. With the help of their parents and teachers, thousands of children age 15 and younger share work with us each year. Listening to their voices is as soothing as ice cream on a hot day.

When most people think of “children’s poetry,” they think of poems written by adults for kids—they think of Shel Silverstein or Dr. Seuss. They don’t think of children themselves as poets, and it’s very difficult to find any anthologies of poems written in the other direction, by children for adults. That’s unfortunate, because, as I’ve quickly learned, children are absolutely brilliant wordsmiths.

This shouldn’t be so surprising. The early years of language development are magical. No other time in life is full of such wonder, such imagination, and such playfulness. Young poets don’t write out of habit; they haven’t yet learned how to be cliché. They write with a natural spontaneity that adults have to work hard to achieve. “The cents of a penny/ is less than your love,” writes Zoey Sheffield, age 6. Lines like these seem as effortless as they are abundant.

There’s more to young poets’ work than just the strange and beautiful ways that they construct language, though. Children are writing about most of the things that adults do, with a depth of understanding and attentiveness that deserves more respect than it’s usually given. Eight-year-olds are responding to climate change. Eleven-year-olds are trying to processes the graphic terrorism of ISIS. Four-year-olds are thinking about their parents’ struggles with anxiety and depression.

Until I started reading these poems, I never realized how rich and complex the interior lives of children really are. Consider this short poem by Briar Sprungin, age 8, and the level of emotion it captures:

The Woman

I was racing down the stairs,

a woman of white caught my eye.

She had two braids down to her toes.

She was mumbling something.

I asked if I could help her

but she didn’t say a word.

Then she whispered in my ear,

“Survive,” and disappeared.

It turns out that children are also great teachers of poetry, of what poetry is, and what it can be. In compiling these anthologies, we ask the young poets why they love poetry, and their answers provide some of the best insights I’ve found.

“I think of poetry as an art to transfer our thoughts about the world or imagination that lives around us onto paper,” writes New Zealand’s E. Wen Wong, then age 11, “[O]ur minds are search engines constantly producing ideas to make an impact on the world, whether it is big or small.”

Madeline McEwen, also age 11, says that poetry “gives us beauty even when the world seems ugly.”

Meanwhile, 7-year-old Cody Dane likes “making new rhymes,” and has the profound realization that “you can learn more when you’re rhyming.” His contribution to the 2015 anthology is this three-word poem that would make any concrete minimalist proud, exploring the way perception becomes awareness (through rhyme):

My Cat

Fur Purr Her

In a conversation with Rattle many years ago, Pulitzer Prize-winner Sharon Olds remarked that “There isn’t a bad poet in the 1st grade.” The most amazing thing that I’ve learned in editing this anthology is just how true that statement is. The thousands of poems that we receive for the anthology every year are but a tiny fraction of what is produced. Everywhere in the world, from the Inland Empire to Africa to Singapore, children are writing moving and memorable poetry—doodling with words for classes or for fun, but making so much more than refrigerator art.

These are small but powerful voices—we only have to listen and learn.

Forgotten Rooms by Ellen Estilai

I am overdue for that dream, the one in which I stumble upon a secret room in my house that I had forgotten about or maybe never knew existed. It’s been years since I’ve been visited by that kind of dream. The last one I had was not just about a room but a whole apartment—a series of dark rooms connected to one another, fully furnished—including an ungainly plaid couch I would never have chosen myself. Sometimes the rooms are dark, sometimes they’re full of light, but they always contain surprises—and cobwebs.

These dreams are a gift. I feel energized afterward, full of possibilities, but also enervated and melancholy. I spend the next few days revisiting the dream, yearning to be back in those rooms.

I was reminded of these forgotten room dreams by recent stories of two cultural finds. The first was the discovery of a long-lost manuscript by Harper Lee, the reclusive, famously unprolific author of the beloved classic, To Kill a Mockingbird. Since her first book’s publication in 1960, the author’s legion of fans have waited in vain for another novel, but Lee saw no need to give them one. She explained she was overwhelmed by the attention surrounding Mockingbird, and that she had already said what she had to say in that book. She was done.

Done, that is, until late 2014, when Lee’s attorney found a long-forgotten manuscript in a drawer. Go Set a Watchman, the precursor to Mockingbird, is set for release on July 14, 2015. It’s not clear just how much the choice to publish was Lee’s own, since the 88-year-old author is deaf and blind and has been confined to an assisted living facility following a stroke in 2007.

Critics point out that 55 years ago, her original editor rejected Go Set a Watchman, telling her to write the story from young Scout’s point of view. That version went on to become a Pulitzer-Prize-winning bestseller, while the first version languished in a drawer, like many first novels—and perhaps rightly so.

However, her current publisher, HarperCollins, says that the book will be published as is; it needs no editing. The fact that publishers almost never say that only adds to the dreamlike quality of this “forgotten drawer” story. We will have to wait until its launch to see whether the book should have stayed in the drawer. Will the novel have literary merit or will it be merely an artifact for critics and scholars to study? And why is Lee publishing it now, after so many years of silence?

For me as a writer, the more immediate issue is the silence: how could Lee not publish for 55 years? How could she forget about a 300-page manuscript? What makes a 34-year-old, first time writer decide she has nothing more to say? Why did she stop doing the work? For those of us toiling away at our computers, hoping that tomorrow will bring the elusive phrase, unique insight, or epiphany, the thought of nothing more to say is chilling—like a death, like a forgotten room that is sealed forever.

The second cultural find was Vivian Maier, whose entire life was a forgotten room. That room was unsealed in 2007 when architectural historian John Maloof bought a box of hundreds of her photographic negatives at a Chicago auction house. These images of Chicago streets scenes, taken in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, appeared to be the work of an accomplished professional street photographer whose work was on par with such mid-twentieth century giants as Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, and Weegee. However, Maloof’s Google search for Vivian Maier failed to turn up any record of exhibitions or other evidence of professional activity. When Maloof posted links to a few of Maier’s photos on social media, he received thousands of enthusiastic responses, but no clues to the photographer’s story.

When Maloof’s second Google search revealed that Maier had died in 2009 at the age of 83, he had the beginnings of information he needed to research her life and work. He learned that she had been a nanny for forty years, most of that time with a Rolleiflex around her neck, taking over 150,000 images—most of which were never printed and none of which were ever exhibited. Some images never even made it out of the film canisters. That seemingly selfless dedication to process over product is reminiscent of Tibetan monks who sweep away their sand paintings when they are finished.

Maloof eventually acquired about 90 percent of Maier’s work: including over 100,000 negatives and 2,700 rolls of undeveloped film, as well as a storage locker full of ephemera—hats, clothes, plane tickets, letters, tchotchkes, audio and video tapes—which he used to piece together the mystery of her hidden genius. His Oscar-nominated 2014 documentary, Finding Vivian Maier, co-directed by Charlie Siskel, is the culmination of this research.

Interviews with Maier’s former charges and their parents, neighbors, and photographers create a portrait of a complex, eccentric artist, independent yet dependent, voluble yet tight lipped, aggressive yet reclusive. She demanded that her employers put heavy locks on her bedroom door. “Don’t ever open this door,” she warned them. No one did.

In a recent LA Times article, filmmakers Maloof and Siskel noted that Maier’s isolation from the art world “never stopped her from doing the work of the artist, averaging a roll of film per day for five decades. That’s what artists do, they do the work.”

By the end of the documentary, we still don’t know why Maier chose to live her life closed off from the art world. What is abundantly clear is that, while she was unable to share her work, that work is self-assured, mature, masterful, technically sophisticated, and devoid of clichés. She was an outsider, but her work is not “outsider art.”

It is tempting to wonder what would have happened if Maier had gone to art school. On the other hand, some people are better off outside the academy. I am reminded of the Iranian sculptor, Esmail Tavakoli , known as Masht Esmail, (1923-1994) who started out as a janitor in the University of Tehran’s Fine Arts Faculty. After many years watching students at work, he decided to try his hand. The resulting iron sculptures of figures from classical Persian mythology, monumental and rough, have found their way into museums and private collections around the world. When asked if he wished he had had a traditional college education, he replied that if he had gone to school at eighteen, he probably would have ended up as an accountant.

While art schools can be nurturing, academia in the 1940s and 50s was often an unwelcoming place for young women artists, undervaluing and marginalizing them. Outside the academy, Maier was free to take her work seriously. Whether she took herself seriously is another matter.

Of course, it’s an artist’s business whether or not she writes or exhibits, but it’s hard not to see her refusal to do so as a kind of betrayal. That is why the stories of Harper Lee and Vivian Maier are unsettling. In Maloof’s documentary, photographer Mary Ellen Mark places Maier in the pantheon, citing her affinities with many twentieth century greats. “Had she made herself known,” she says, “she would have become a famous photographer.” The street photographer Joel Meyerowitz says, “She didn’t defend herself as an artist. She just did the work.”

Maier did the work, more than most artists ever do in a lifetime, but did she honor the work? It is very easy not to honor the work, to keep it hidden, to second-guess oneself, to assume rejection. That is what is so disquieting about the silence of these two women artists—one who thought she had said enough and one who had so much to say but couldn’t find someone to say it to. It is so easy to close that door. It is so easy to quit.

In a recent Inlandia workshop, our instructor, Jo Scott-Coe, assigned this twenty-minute exercise: “Why are you writing right now?” My response was this:

Actually, I haven’t been writing lately, but I will write so I don’t have to hear myself say that. I will write to make sense of my experience. I will write to have a conversation with myself—or that elusive intended reader. I will write to fall in love with writing again, as I did when I first started, when I couldn’t wait for the next sentence to see what I had to say, when I stole time from my day job to finish a paragraph, when I was amazed at what my experiences revealed, when I didn’t second-guess myself, when the pieces of the puzzle came together, one jagged sentence fragment at a time.

I am overdue for that dream, but I will not wait until I stumble into another forgotten room. Instead, I will do the work, because that’s what artists do.

Note: A shorter version of this essay ran in the Inlandia Literary Journeys column in the Press-Enterprise last spring.

Verses for Those Lost to Violence by David Stone

Death in summer seems unnatural. Summer’s the season of growth from flower to fruit, but across our country, violence involving law enforcement cuts lives of civilians and police officers, an average of three a day.

Southern California is no exception. With so much death, we feel a need to put into words our loss. We need to make sense of our world. We need to lament.

Later this week I will join other writers in participating in Lament for the Dead, an online community poetry project that will mark with a poem the death of every person killed by police this summer and every police officer lost in the line of duty. The novelist, poet, and Time magazine correspondent Carey Wallace founded and curates this project.

Wallace says, “The topic of police violence in this country is incredibly raw, and the dialogue around it is filled with pain, rage, and blame. Victims of police violence and police who are killed in the line of duty very quickly become symbols in the public mind, either heroes or villains. As we shape them to fit our arguments, they’re stripped of their humanity, and we forget to cry for them.”

“Lament is a poetic form of public grief that gives us a language beyond what we hear in the public sphere,” says Wallace. “Strategy, argument, and reckoning are all crucial to change. But to heal, we must mourn.”

According to the project’s website, “When poets join, they do not know whether they will be lamenting the death of an officer or someone who is killed by police. Poets commit to writing on a specific date, and compose each poem in less than 24 hours, based on the events of the previous day. Death notices are posted as they are reported in the press, according to the time of each death, and then replaced by a poem.”

Robbi Nester, the first Southern Californian poet to participate in the project, says, “The article I received initially didn’t have any name on it or details. After doing a search for other sources, I found the man’s name and a photograph that inspired my poem.” Kenneth Garcia, 28, of Stockton, CA died on June 14.

“I wanted to participate,” says Orange County poet Nester, “because I, like so many others, have felt helpless to do anything about the terrible trend of violence in the streets, with police becoming increasingly militarized and alienated from the public, especially people of color, and the price of life seeming to be so cheap.”

“Garcia was not the kind of person I might have thought of as representative of these problems,” says Nester, “yet writing the poem forced me to recognize that a life is a life, and this person, like all others had unspoken tragedies and trauma that may have led to his violent behavior.”

Claremont poet and retired psychologist Karen Greenbaum-Maya received an article on the death of Kris Jackson, 22, of Peretuth Lake Tahoe, CA who died on June 15, 2015. Greenbaum-Maya says, “Kris Jackson turned out to be a very unsympathetic character. In fact, my first reaction was, ‘No loss there.’ However, that wasn’t the project. I took a long walk and thought about how lamentable his life was, how much had gone wrong, rather than his death—caught myself thinking, ‘I have so many questions’—and I realized that those questions were what would make the poem.”

Greenbaum-Maya’s lament titled “Interrogation, or, Questions No One Asked Kris Jackson” artfully lists a series of emotionally charged questions, leaving a reader connected to Jackson as a fellow human.

Los Angeles poet Judith Terzi wrote on the June 16, death of Jermaine Benjamin, 42, of Gifford, FL. Terzi says, “There was scant info about Benjamin or the incident, though I did search the net to find out when he was born and if he had had any prior incidents. I found out that the police had been called to his house something like 70 times already in 10 years.”

“I decided,” says Terzi, “to write the poem in the form of a prayer using repetition and the second person. Like an ode to him. At the last minute I got the idea to include the epigraph from “Wayfaring Stranger” because staring into his photo, Jermaine Benjamin seemed so lost and forlorn. I began to feel pity for him.”

Laments allow us to see the human commonalities that bind us, to recognize how we all have added to the world and harmed it, to preserve another’s memory, and to comfort those of us who remain alive.

Almost as surely as the heat of summer rises, so will the toll from police violence. Don’t let the news reports be another number. Go to www.lamentforthedead.org and grieve another human life.

Swapping Stories by Victoria Waddle

To paraphrase bestselling author Jane Smiley, you either love the work or the rewards, and life is a lot easier if you love the work. In her either/or construct, I believe Smiley meant ‘money’ when she said ‘rewards.’ Hers is a truth any author understands because, despite Smiley’s own financial success, there’s not much in the way of monetary rewards in the world of literature.

I’ve always been compelled to write and have found joy in the process. Yet as I make my final edits on a novel, I am questioning the either/or construct of work and rewards as it relates to writers. A delight of having my short stories published in journals has been the thought that, finally, someone will read them. To fabricate a world inhabited by characters of the imagination, to sweat through drafts of refining that world, is to answer to a passion. The ultimate goal of writing fiction is not to be published (with the possibility of its monetary reward)—that’s just the means to the goal. To connect with a reader is the actual reward a writer seeks; to find someone else to inhabit her world and share her passion. Achieved, it makes both life and the work a lot easier.

The problem for the serious writer in making connections with readers is that there are just too many others trying to do the same thing. Full-time promotion of one’s work on social networking sites appears to be a necessity. I’ve noticed when joining any online readers’ group, there’s always a caveat to members: don’t expect to promote your book here unless you’re willing to promote others. I have no issue with promoting the writing of others. I’ve maintained a book review blog for several years; as a teacher librarian, I spend many evening hours reading others’ work. When I feel that a writer has made a connection with me, I buy multiple copies of the book and chat it up to students, hoping to create new fans for the author.

The problem with the culture of author self-promotion is that book groups now appear to be more about trading favors than they are about reading. They remind me of the ‘independent consultants’ that I so often find among friends and colleagues. They invite you to a party—but not really. They want to sell you their products—kitchen gadgets that you’ll never use, fingernail wraps that you won’t bother to apply, candles never to be lit. I think that those who go to such parties are those that expect repayment in purchases when they have their own ‘parties.’ No one actually cares about any of this stuff; they are just trading favors. I imagine that few of the many book trades among authors actually result in novels being enjoyed, worlds mutually inhabited.

Immediately after I joined several reading groups, I began to receive notices from self-published writers that I should buy, read and review their work. Some of these appeared to be from authors who really were trying to connect with the right readers. Other messages were just spam. I also received promises of reviews of my ‘published ebook on Amazon’ which ‘looked like a high quality ebook.’ Lest one wonder why she should pay for such a review, one sender leaves the author to ponder: ‘Do you want a quality ebook reviewer or would you rather settle for a mediocre review from someone who doesn’t even know how to write a book review to begin with?’

I started to wonder how any of us could avoid becoming poet Emily Dickinson’s frog—the dreary “somebody” who publically tells “one’s name–the livelong June–/To an admiring Bog!” However, since I don’t actually have an ebook on Amazon, and the offers of quality reviews were just more spam, the question of a mediocre review didn’t keep me up at night.

No. I slept and dreamt about my real worry: how will I ever make an honest connection with readers? Dreaming, I was among adults who were behaving as exuberant children, jumping through puddles of black ink. I wasn’t interested in joining, but when I looked in the mirror, I saw that I had the telltale sign of my own childhood—a bridge of freckles across my cheeks and nose. Surprised at its reappearance, I wondered how I could cover it up since freckles on a grown woman are considered flaws. Looking closer, I saw that on a microscopic level, every freckle was made up of words—each, in fact, was a story. I was delighted.

I awoke not having any better idea how to avoid the author book-trading game. But I’m hoping to find others who are willing to look closely. And find that they, too, have story written all over them.

Theft by Judy Kronenfeld

I hope there is a special place among the lower circles of hell, perhaps among the serpents and the rivers of blood, for the thief who stole my husband’s suitcase and briefcase from our own driveway at the end of May, as we were getting ready to drive to the airport for a quickly arranged flight to New York where my cousin’s 48-year-old son had just died of a rare bone cancer he had fought with uncommon grace and optimism.

“Where are my suitcase and briefcase?” my usually calm husband exclaimed in near panic, coming back into the house. As if I might have gone outside and taken them in for safe-keeping. I wish. A well-trained New Yorker in origin, who knew how to carry her bookbag and purse in a way to prevent theft or groping on the crowded subway she rode to high school, and whose similar habits avoided the purse-slitting incurred by her companions in a market in Toluca, Mexico, I had always warned my husband not to leave anything on the driveway, even for the few seconds required to go back into the house for forgotten car keys (and yes, those seconds did wind up being distracted minutes). “You were right this time,” he said.

We had to go to New York. So my husband spoke to the police I had called, while trying to repack his pills. And I ran into the bedroom and threw clothes for him, in record minutes, into a small carry-on. We made it to Ontario with a half-hour to spare since I usually err on the side of allowing too much time to get to the airport. And aside from trying to compose a list of everything that was missing, and calling our insurance company, and my sending up a silent thank you to the powers-that-be that it wasn’t my suitcase, which I had not yet taken outside that morning, that had been stolen (in which case repacking in six minutes would have been a pipe dream), we shelved this annoyance in the midst of a tragedy, as we entered the world of a family devastated by the loss of an adult child, and a brother—still far too young—a loss putting material losses into the perspective they deserve.

Still, when we came back home, glad we had been able to offer what little support we could to my cousin’s family, the annoyance felt increasingly annoying. The thief—or someone connected to the thief—had tried to use a check from our account (we had forgotten the checkbook when we made our list) for a considerable sum at a local store, so we had to cancel ours and open a new checking account. And, fearing some private information could have been found among our things, we cancelled our credit cards, but the replacement cards, although the package was listed as delivered by UPS, were nowhere to be found. At that point, a sense of being watched or targeted made me feel almost as uncomfortable in my own house as I had been when a roof rat took up residence inside for almost two weeks the previous summer. It turned out, according to the UPS person who successfully delivered yet another set of replacement cards a few days later, that the previous guy had never even been to our house, but had misdelivered packages all over our neighborhood, even dropping a pile of them on the street. A weird form of small solace?

It has taken several weeks, but we are emerging from the woods, are pretty much finished, we think, with all those calls to banks and creditors, those online morasses when we try to change our information—all of which made me coin a new acronym: NEWTWIST (Nothing Ever Works The Way It’s Supposed To).

I think now of a friend whose insurance company was less cooperative than ours turned out to be, and who gave up her claim; some valuable jewelry was stolen while her house was tented for termites (!), but the insurance people wanted pictures.

I think of what it might feel like to be less middle class, less able to deal with the re-arrangements of our finances, the collection and calculation of receipts for the insurance company, the replacement of essentials lost, or to have no insurance, no recourse, few or no “essentials.”

I think of what it might be like to feel targeted or vulnerable all the time.