Mockingbird

I am currently reading a biography of Harper Lee, entitled Mockingbird. This is because I am teaching In Cold Blood as a nonfiction novel for English 1B, and heard that there was a chapter on Harper Lee's contributions to Capote's work.

Her perspective, according to the book, is fascinating. She saw the Clutter family in a different light as portrayed in the book--she felt that the family kept a stiff upper lip in light of Bonnie Clutter's emotional illness, but that it really affected Nancy Clutter--whom my students posited was a bit of a workaholic, probably as a coping mechanism. Harper Lee also saw Herb Clutter as far more controlling and perfectionistic than he was portrayed in Capote's book, and she viewed Bonnie Clutter as a woman who had originally been creative and capable, but didn't really fit the social structures imposed on her and considered herself a failure due to her inability to meet certain expectations (both her own and that of the community).

Probably this wasn't the very best book for me to be reading right now, as Harper Lee never wrote another book again after To Kill a Mockingbird, for multiple reasons. Still, it's an interesting read.

My other activities this week have included trying catch up on grading and working on
a somewhat maddening knitting project--and, oh yes, working on my book, planning my garden, and trying to write in my journal every day.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Enlightenment

I love taking yoga classes--even though I can't do a lot of the more complex moves, I still chug along, and have enjoyed increased flexibility, stamina, and calm as a result.

At the end of most yoga classes I’ve taken, there is a time called shivasana, literally translated as “corpse pose,” which is to be a time of deep relaxation and meditation. I always enjoy this time, though it’s invariable that someone in class falls asleep and starts snoring! Last night was no exception—I heard someone snoring, and then, when the meditation was over and everyone was rolling up mats, putting away props, etc., I noticed that there was a man still sleeping in the center of the big yoga studio! He was stretched out on his mat, with all his props around him—a folded blanket, a bolster, a strap, and a yoga block—and was sleeping peacefully away. The strangest thing was, the teacher didn’t try to wake him! I didn’t wait to see if she just left him there, sleeping the night away in the yoga studio (can you imagine the scene when he got home—“But, honey, I fell asleep at yoga!” “Yeah, right!”). For all I know, he could be there still.

I have a stack of papers to grade, so I haven’t been writing much (also, my laptop died, and needs a brain transplant, which Mr. Strega will shortly perform). Mostly, it’s just been hard work with writing, with chasing down submissions, and with teaching—not very interesting things to report, at least not right now. I am knitting
something interesting, though--click on the title of this entry to find out. This project has taught me a lot about patience (if you note the directions, they say to "string 108 seed beeds" onto some of the yarn)! Yes, it's possible--I did it.

While working through writing stuff, I did notice something—when I went through my list of submissions to poetry magazines and whatnot, I realized that 90 percent of them were online submissions (not to online magazines, necessarily, but electronic submissions). What a difference from the “olden days” of wrestling an envelope through a printer (or a bunch of labels) and, at least in my case, choosing the right stamps for the submission and making sure everything was perfect—and then the suspenseful moment when the fateful envelope came back. I know that e-submissions save paper, but there’s a whole rite of sending work out via snail mail that I enjoy and may miss if it all goes the way of the dinosaurs. My students are amazed to hear that I composed 20-page papers on a typewriter—they had no idea how people corrected their typing mistakes on such things!

Well, back to the remainder of my lazy Saturday.

Life Being Life

I have to admit that my blogging has been low lately and I apologize to all of my faithful readers--I am teaching a class at the alma mater that I've never taught before, which is always a challenge. I've also, on the heels of my mother dying, lost a wonderful friend a week or so ago, a woman who had bravely fought lung cancer which had metastasized to her brain. So it’s been a sad time for me. I’ve been through the deaths of three major people in my life in the last six months and it is very hard to go through (and hasn’t done much for my creativity).

Still, I noticed a sweet surprise at work the other day—there’s a blossoming fruit tree right outside my office window, and there were a few fragile white blooms on it. It’s always hard to believe in the hope of warmer weather and sunny skies after such a hard winter. Winter’s not done with us here in Santa Cruz, either—yesterday, high winds blew down power lines on the upper road here and we were without electricity for hours.
The weather was cold and crisp, but I found myself taking out all my seed packets and looking at them, like a box of hoarded treasure—there are poppies, Lumina white pumpkins, giant and Thumbelina zinnias, Sunspot sunflowers, Moulin Rouge sunflowers (the packet promises “a rich velvety deep red” that will “steal the show in your gardens and bouquets,” “nest egg” gourds, which really look like Easter eggs, Heavenly Blue morning glories, cosmos, chocolate flower, Autumn Beauty sunflower, strawflower, Rosie O’Day and Oriental Nights sweet alyssum, Violet Queen cleome, Chater’s Double hollyhocks, butterfly flower, Virginian stock (an incredibly sweet-smelling flower), and bee balm. I got 90 percent of these seed packets from a woman who brings them to African dance class for free! Gardening has been perpetually important to my process as a writer.

And, as an update on Mr. Strega and me, we had a lovely Valentine’s day—he brought me pu-erh tea from Chaikhana in Santa Cruz (I’m kind of a connoisseur of tea these days, and pu-erh is one of my favorites), and I gave him a box of mini Reese’s Peanut Butter cups. It’s amazing we even had it in us to give each other our presents—we both have the world’s worst colds right now!

So, life is just being life these days. I found myself unable to work on my book after Mom died, but am picking this back up—I have literally about 20 pages to go, plus three or four recipes to compose.

So, that’s the update from the Ponderosa these days.

Some Thoughts on Asha Veil

I haven't blogged in awhile, dear readers. Teaching has started for me, and
is difficult this year because I had to go back so soon after my mother's death.
I am, however, so happy to be back with my students and am learning to be grateful
for what I have now in life. There's a tool in recovery which is always extremely helpful to me, to make a list of things I am grateful for every day. I rarely go
to bed at night without having made a list of at least three things.

I wanted to make a sharp turn from my preface now. I have been very patiently watching
the news and message boards, trying to follow the Asha Veil murder case and see if there have been any updates. For those of you who are new to this blog, Asha Veil was a young woman in her final trimester of pregnancy. She was murdered in September of 2007; her unborn daughter died along with her. Asha's body was dumped in the woods surrounding Love Creek Road in Ben Lomond.

It has been nearly a year and a half since Asha and her daughter Anina died, and I fear that this case will never have any sort of resolution. I know that one suspect, her coworker Michael McClish, is in prison now for rape. Perhaps this is why those in charge of the case are biding their time--they have a suspect in jail, so why hurry?

Still, this unsolved case has left our community heartbroken and angry. There's some horrible, lingering sense at this point that maybe Asha and her baby's lives don't much matter to the District Attorney here, that because she was "just" a cashier and an immigrant, her case has been shuffled to the back burner. I personally can't read the minds of the investigators and those responsible for naming and prosecuting a suspect. I am just reporting on things I've heard in the community, and I am extremely sad to hear this.

Asha Veil mattered. It is immaterial whether she was a market cashier or a Silicon Valley executive. She was a human being with the absolute right to live, to have her baby and be a mother, to enjoy and pursue her life. Asha was also a very sweet person who always said hello to me at the market and others (who knew her better than me) always say that she was an extremely nice, caring person. She died without ever holding her baby in her arms; she was dumped in the woods, still in her market uniform, like someone's trash that they couldn't wait to get rid of.

If this case turns cold, Asha and her baby will essentially be left in the woods forever. I don't want this to happen. There has not been an update in the Santa Cruz Sentinel, our main paper, in months. What can we, as a community, do when there is so much silence now, a silence that can be interpreted as indifference?
I don't have the answer for that. If there is a suspect now, why not begin to pursue this case aggressively? If there have been changes in the case and the investigation, these should be made public so that our community can be kept updated.

I have no answers today, only sadness over how long it's taken to make an arrest in this case.