Coyote Crossing

Coyote Crossing Meetup report

tl;dr version: we had a great time and we’re doing it again, so be prepared to visit the desert on the weekend of April 21, 2012. We should have warm days and cool nights around then, and very dark skies.

Friday was a bit of a mess. I’d planned

Final Location for the October 14-16 Coyote Crossing Meetup

After a bit of scouting around with Florian Boyd a couple weeks ago, we found a better location for the Coyote Crossing meetup this weekend than the one adjacent to the Cottonwood Entrance to Joshua Tree National Park.

That location is here.

For

Michael Gordon Show at the Kelso Depot Nov. 5 - Feb. 5

Gordon Postcard

Save The Date: Coyote Crossing Meetup October 14-16

Okay, I’ve been talking about doing this for some time but it’s never quite come together. I’m always talking to you about the desert, but I’m never really sharing the desert with you.

It’s time to fix that.

So mark your calendars, Coyote

Rest well, Mark

My friend Mark Gorrell died yesterday.

It wasn’t unexpected. Mark had been fighting lung cancer for some time, and sometime in 2010 it became clear he wasn’t going to win. In January the City of Berkeley had the good sense to say nice things

Leaving LA

I can confess now that I was keeping a secret, kind of, when I wrote this paean to Los Angeles. Now that The Raven’s most recent job has come to an end, and there’s no further negotiations left to worry about in that department, I don’t have to

As befits the Dia De Los Muertos

I am thinking of, and missing, some who have passed.

My mother’s mother, especially poignantly for some reason this last month, and the love of her life.

The love of my life (four-foot division):

Jonathan “Basketball Jonathan” Montague, a

Leap

Two weeks ago, lying on my back at 7,400 feet watching the stars peer down at me through a canopy of piñon and juniper, it struck me — once again — that I have been fortunate.

I was in the White Mountains, trying to fall asleep after a day of

Bone Worship: a novel by Elisabeth Eslami

This review has been a while in coming, partly because life and the accompanying events have overtaken me, but partly because after finishing Bone Worship: A Novel, I wanted to let it sit for a while before I reacted.

Full disclosure: the author

Googling Carl Buell

I was looking for a particular image by my friend Carl Buell so I Googlimaged him, and was slyly happy that his painting of me and my dog was in the first page of results.

And I then realized it’s been almost five years since Carl painted it and

Letter

I miss you, you know.

I think of you a lot these days, think of you trudging up the hill toward school beneath that canopy of horse chestnuts and ailanthus trees, cocksure and happy. You were very small then and you carted home as many books as

Bailey, RIP

I’m sad today: Kathy Flake has lost her familiar.

When Bailey developed cancer, I finally accepted that our walks would be numbered, our explorations circumscribed by her illness. But I didn’t expect to lose her so soon.

We took her in for

It’s Carl Buell’s birthday

Carl with a short-faced bear acquaintance. Painting by Carl Buell. Reproduced here without actually technically asking permission.

Our friend Carl Buell has completed yet another revolution around the sun. His blog’s been dormant for some time,

Friend or fan

It’s been an interesting week here thinking about things online.

It started off with a coffee date with my pal On The Public Record, whose blog of the same name is a must-read for anyone trying to make sense of California’s arcane water policy.

Paleontology

[Time to haul this one out of the archives, what with all the targazing I’ve done the last couple days.]

Paleontology

“What is it that sets us apart,” she asked,
“from sunset or sierra?
What is the line between ourselves
and the terrain from

Anniversary

… (continues)

Nosy Parker

I have an anniversary coming up next week, as many of you know, and it’s been on my mind as one might expect. Still tough, you know?

This year, though, I have a little bit of emotional support, and so the prospect of remembrance doesn’t seem

Cleft

I walked the other day in Runyon Canyon, a cleft in the Hollywood Hills with a steep short climb. It was good to get my blood flowing again. It was good to breathe hard, to feel the growing wet in the small of my back, and though people half my age

Chile Pepper Lights

[Update: If I believed in ghosts, I know who I’d think did

2008

It all fell apart this year, the affected exoskeleton I’d thought of as my life: the garden and the art, the home, the writing. There was a moment this summer it all sank in. I had been Becky’s husband, the one who walked with Zeke out of the house