National Poetry Month 2020: April 23 — COVID KITTENS!
Everyone needs cute kittens to keep them company during Covid-19.
Who wants to help bottle feed these four week old foundlings every five hours?
We’ve fostered kittens before and put the word out months ago that we were available again. On Tuesday, April 21, we were asked by the Foundling Kitten Society if we could take on three kittens that had just turned four weeks old. They were small, malnourished, and sick with an upper respiratory infection.
In short, a handful.
But my teen promised to help, and my husband was amenable as long they stayed FOSTERS and so we off went to pick them up and get a refresher course on bottle feeding and dealing with the infection. We’d had kittens before that we thought we might have to bottle feed but they took to the food we offered– they were hungry!
Bottle feeding three kittens sounds fun and reasonable until you’re the one staying up until 2am or waking up at 3 or 4 or 5am to find them; it takes almost an hour to prepare the food and feed all three, and clean their faces too.
I’m happy to say that these three are thriving so far. Their eyes are clearing up, they’re putting on weight, an the vet yesterday said they were doing great with normal temperatures. Dr Sisk gave us some more tips and tried to recruit us for the Ojai Valley Humane Society’s brand new kitten foster program; check it out here. They had it all set to start when everything was shut down due to Covid-19. They as well as Ventura County Animal Services can’t do adoptions and groups like the non-profit Foundling Kitten Society are stepping in to the fill the gap.
How you can help NOW: if you have any experience fostering kittens, especially bottle feeding them, now’s the time to step forward. If you can provide a safe harbor for an adult kitty, fosters are needed for those as well.
MAKE A DONATION! Taking care of these kitties takes a lot of time energy, and money.
How you can help later: Sign up to learn how to foster!
NOTE: April is National Poetry Month so every day I’m writing one ore more American Sentences about life in the time of corona. American poet Allen Ginsberg came up with the idea as an American version of a haiku. Like a haiku an American sentence is 17 syllables. I learned about American Sentences from Paul E. Nelson who I met at the Taos Poetry Circus in 2000. According to Paul, the key to writing a good American Sentence comes from Ginsberg’s notion that poets are people who notice what they notice. He has been writing one a day since January 1, 2001.
Learn more about American Sentences and how to write good ones from Paul here.
Happy 50th Earth Day: sorry we couldn’t go because covid.
April is Earth Month and April 22 is Earth Day. This year is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day but nobody could go to the party because of COVID-19.
April is also National Poetry Month, and again no one can go to the party or even to a poetry reading because of COVID, although many poets are dong their part and sharing their work online in different ways. For me, to mark the occasion of National Poetry Month as well as the days of covid-19 I’ve been writing one or more American Sentences every day.
Cheers! 
what my hair felt like sans comb
I didn’t have a comb so I couldn’t comb my hair.
There are worse things than a comb to be missing when you’re at 12.2k’.
On your way up Marangu Route, Kilimanjaro, Tanzania.
Some people would say I’d clearly lost my mind long before this, and certainly proven by being up here in the first place. Read more…
National Poetry Month 2020: April 20 — COVID is this?
Is this dry cough COVID? Is this itchy rash COVID? I’m worried too.
National Poetry Month 2020: April 19 — LET’S GO
LET’S GO says teen and I agree: sick of home because of corona.
Today’s American Sentence. Pictured are three books I got my spouse for our anniversary; I bought them on sale at AAA before lockdown not realizing their significance two months later.
American Beat Poet Alan Ginsberg came up with the idea of American Sentences: an American sentence is like a haiku in that it has 17 syllables but it’s not three lines in a stanza but one line. As a haiku offers an image that generates emotion and conveys a moment in time, the best Sentences do more than just offer a sentence in 17 syllables.
I learned about American Sentences from Paul E. Nelson who I met at the Taos Poetry Circus in 2000. According to Paul, the key to writing a good American Sentence comes from Ginsberg’s notion that poets are people who notice what they notice. He has been writing one a day since January 1, 2001. Learn more about American Sentences and how to write good ones from Paul here.
National Poetry Month 2020: April 18 — 17th Anniversary
Good Friday April 18 we married — happy anniversary!
Covid: we celebrate seventeenth anniversary at home.
Life in the time of the corona… during National Poetry Month. Daily I am writing and posting one or more American Sentences. Beat Poet Alan Ginsberg came up with the idea of American Sentences: an American sentence is like a haiku in that it has 17 syllables but it’s not three lines in a stanza but one line. As a haiku offers an image that generates emotion and conveys a moment in time, the best Sentences do more than just offer a sentence in 17 syllables. I learned about American Sentences from Paul E. Nelson who I met at the Taos Poetry Circus in 2000; my friend who turned me on to the Baudelaire quote above I also met at Taos. According to Paul, the key to writing a good American Sentence comes from Ginsberg’s notion that poets are people who notice what they notice. He has been writing one a day since January 1, 2001. Learn more about American Sentences and how to write good ones from Paul here.
National Poetry Month 2020: April 17 — Shiny Fish
Eucalyptus leaves shimmer in morning wind: a school of shiny fish.
American Beat Poet Alan Ginsberg came up with the idea of American Sentences: an American sentence is like a haiku in that it has 17 syllables but it’s not three lines in a stanza but one line. As a haiku offers an image that generates emotion and conveys a moment in time, the best Sentences do more than just offer a sentence in 17 syllables. I learned about American Sentences from Paul E. Nelson who I met at the Taos Poetry Circus in 2000; my friend who turned me on to the Baudelaire quote above I also met at Taos. According to Paul, the key to writing a good American Sentence comes from Ginsberg’s notion that poets are people who notice what they notice. He has been writing one a day since January 1, 2001. Learn more about American Sentences and how to write good ones from Paul here.
Do you see the nest?
Prayers yes but we combat COVID with compassion, constructive acts.
Today’s American Sentence is inspired by an essay composed by the Dalai Lama and published on April 14, 2020 in Newsweek and on Facebook where I saw it. The Dalai Lama points out that just praying aren’t enough to fight the Covid-19 pandemic; instead, we need to face the challenge with compassion and constructive acts.
He means, I think, that with compassion, to combat COVID we must get out there AND DO SOMETHING. Don’t just stay slumped on the couch, as tempting as that might be.
Grow something; notice what’s happening in the natural world by you!
I’ve seen a pair of scrub jays at my feeder and perched on the top of my sycamore tree. Today the pair of jays were fending off a pair of ravens (maybe crows?). I went out to disrupt the action and saw above my head the nest the jays had been defending.
I don’t know the fate of the lives within the nest yet, but I do know the jay is back on the regular spot. And now I know why.
American Beat Poet Alan Ginsberg came up with the idea of American Sentences: an American sentence is like a haiku in that it has 17 syllables but it’s not three lines in a stanza but one line. As a haiku offers an image that generates emotion and conveys a moment in time, the best Sentences do more than just offer a sentence in 17 syllables. I learned about American Sentences from Paul E. Nelson who I met at the Taos Poetry Circus in 2000; my friend who turned me on to the Baudelaire quote above I also met at Taos. According to Paul, the key to writing a good American Sentence comes from Ginsberg’s notion that poets are people who notice what they notice. He has been writing one a day since January 1, 2001. Learn more about American Sentences and how to write good ones from Paul here.
What’s your American Sentence?
Matilija poppies with sycamore and fremontia in the background.
National Poetry Month: April 15, 2020 — Busy Bees
Lupine in bloom with bee hives above the Clos des Amis Estate vineyard on South Mountain, Santa Paula.
Busy bees buzz oblivious to our coronavirus concerns.
Oblivious to buzz, Cisco gets bee stuck on his snout; I flick off.
I am fortunate that vineyard work is considered essential, and that there are vineyards just a few miles from my home that need me to help prune and thin the vines inspiring today’s American Sentences. I write monthly about what I do and learn over on Wine Predator, and two days of American Sentences this April have also been inspired by my vineyard and cellar work here and here. Read more on Wine Predator about Clos des Amis, the winery where I have been working and learning.
American Beat Poet Alan Ginsberg came up with the idea of American Sentences: he says that an American sentence is like a haiku in that it has 17 syllables but it’s not three lines in a stanza but one line. As a haiku seeks to conveys an image that generates emotion and conveys a moment in time, the best Sentences do more than just offer a sentence in 17 syllables. I learned about American Sentences from Paul E. Nelson who I met at the Taos Poetry Circus in 2000; my friend who turned me on to the Baudelaire quote above I also met at Taos. According to Paul, the key to writing a good American Sentence comes from Ginsberg’s notion that poets are people who notice what they notice. He has been writing one a day since January 1, 2001. Learn more about American Sentences and how to write good ones from Paul here.
Cisco the Wonder Dog rests in the shade of a tangerine tree after doing battle with a bee. The grenache vines pictured have been chomped on by deer.
California to Kilimanjaro: Roof of Africa Journey Part 2
After waiting
and waiting
and waiting
we finally started hiking from the entrance gate to Tanzania’s Kilimanjaro National Park up to 9000′ Mandara Hut. Read more…
