What Can I Call This Potluck of a Post?

Intriguing window treatment, no?

Bisbee, AZ

It post is a miscellany, but I'll back and start with our 2021 trip to Bisbee, which is where my eye was drawn to that Kafka book set against a brown paper-covered display window. Some of you might remember a time when I warned against going to Bisbee on a Monday. Lesson learned. So this year we prudently waited until Tuesday to make the trek -- and found the town was closed up just as tight! The high point of the trip was being allowed to sit on the outdoor gallery of the public library (library itself closed; pickup only) to try to read a New York Times (available nowhere else in the county) in the wind. 

There are always interesting sights to see while walking around Bisbee, however, so the long drive was not a complete loss. There was that Kafka book in the window, after all. Not many posters advertising events, but a utility pole studded with staples caught my eye. And I don't remember this attractive building from other visits to Bisbee.

Now home of a recording studio, we were told

The amazing part of this thin-on-plot story is that we didn’t acquire a single book the whole day. Library, FOL bookstore, and Meridian Books (down the Rabbit Hole), all highlights of former trips to the county seat, were each and every one closed and locked. But yes, we do have plenty to read as it is. 

 

Reading -- and a Book Review

 

In general, I’m not one to observe a lot of official days and weeks and months, but I’ve made more of an effort for Black History, Women’s History, and National Poetry Month this year – really, don’t you think history should be inclusive every month of the year and that poetry should be part of our daily lives? Anyway, be that as it may, think what you will, I’ve been reading Thomas Lynch, Jim Harrison (always), Judy Juanita (below), Marge Piercy, and Anne Sexton the past couple of weeks, and it’s Judy Juanita I want to write about today. 

 

When a young friend asked me once, “What were the Sixties really like?” I told her it depends on who you were, how old you were, and where in the world and country you happened to be. Virgin Soul, Judy Juanita’s semi-autobiographical novel, published in 2013, was my first introduction to her writing, when an ARC from the publicist found its way to me at Dog Ears Books. Like her fictional protagonist, Juanita found herself “where it’s at” during her junior year of college. She had joined the Black Panther Party in 1967, and when Huey Newton was jailed he appointed her editor-in-chief of the Panthers’ newspaper, which began as a strike journal, resulting in the first Black Studies program in the United States. Since then Juanita has published a number of plays, poems, and essays, and now a new book of her poetry, Manhattan, My Ass, You’re in Oakland. 

 

The title is a preview of the poems in the book: Here is a poet who pulls no punches. Whether her subject is love, sex, or friendships, violence against women or racial injustice, her distinctive voice tells the story in a way you’ve never heard it before and might not have the nerve yourself to repeat. She has the nerve, though. Her voice is clear and unhesitating, her command of a variety of poetic forms sure, as she uses those forms in her own new ways. Juanita has performed her poetry on occasion, and though I’ve never seen her in person or heard her with my ears, I hear her voice in my mind when I read her work. I’m not alone, either. Kirkus Reviews has called her poetry “unsettling, important, and unforgettable.”

 

Manhattan, My Ass, You’re in Oakland

by Judy Juanita

EquiDistance Press

Paper, 101pp

$9.95

 

Horse and Dog Stuff

WJRA lineup

It isn't only books that take me to exciting places, though, and the Artist and I don’t have to drive all the way to Bisbee to have a good time. This past weekend was once again WJRA – Willcox Junior Rodeo Association meeting out at Quail Park. As we were leaving, after a very satisfying couple of hours watching and admiring and walking around with my camera (see my completely incomplete visual story here), I said with a happy sigh, “There’s nothing about it that I don’t like!” My happiness of the day included a very dusty little dog that reminded me of a smaller and much older and wiser version of Peasy. “Wouldn’t this be the perfect life for Mr. Pea?” I asked earnestly. 

old dog at rodeo

For now, however, we are making the most of our silly little snuggle-bug, whose "pack time" personality could never have been guessed by the skittish, fearful performance he put on in that cold, bare cell at the pound. 

silly boy at home

How Can I Make It New -- For You?

This is my third (nonconsecutive) southern Arizona winter, once again in the Sulphur Springs Valley of Cochise County, in our little ghost town cabin between Cochise Stronghold in the Dragoon Mountains and Apache Pass in the Chiricahuas, and once again the Artist and I find ourselves making expeditions through rocky, jaw-dropping Texas Canyon to the west or up north through the equally beautiful and blessedly much longer Stockton Pass. The winter’s Junior Rodeo season took place over the past weekend, again giving me opportunities to relive childhood dreams as I identified with young cowgirls weaving between poles on horseback and thundering back to the finish line. But in this third winter, sharing scenes that have now become familiar, how can I hope that what I continue to find so thrilling will evoke the faintest echo of first-time glamor for you who read Books in Northport? How can I make it new for you, these events and sights that never grow old for me?

Because, for the Artist as well as for me, it never does get old, the daily drive from Dos Cabezas past the playa to Willcox. Every day is different — different light and shadows, variations in atmosphere and in our sightings of wildlife and livestock along the way — and so, too, the trips through the mountains and down among neighboring sky island ranges. A year ago, we were only arriving for the winter in Dos Cabezas on the first of February. This time around, as January nears its end, we are beginning our seventh week here. Would five months feel too long? I wondered. Well, it doesn’t seem too long at all. I look forward to spring’s new leaves in the wash and blooms along the roadside but am not at all impatient for the weeks to pass: for now I bundle up each morning for the first dog walk of the day and shed layers as the sun climbs into the sky. The cactus wren’s morning greeting is nothing new, but that little bird makes me smile every day. And how could a sunset ever grow old?

The ordinary, the everyday, is a joy to me here, as it is back in Michigan. To take my breath away and make my heart leap, I have never needed the Grand Canyon. Back in Leelanau County, Michigan, too, the daily scenes are ever new, and we are grateful for each day we are there. “We live in a beautiful place,” the Artist often remarks. He knows I haven’t forgotten. We don’t remind each other of beauty around us because we think the other has stopped noticing it but simply to bring a moment into focus and share it more consciously. 

Right now we are here, and here is a good place to be. As the days and years race by, we make frequent stops to look around and appreciate being alive. We’re here now. It’s good. Can you see it, too?

A Ghost Town New to Us -- and More Serendipity

For one reason and another, we have not been adventuring far from our usual daily track as often as we did three years ago. The Artist’s birthday, though, was a perfect occasion for a road trip. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and we set off down the Kansas Settlement Road for the first time this winter. As things turned out, we never did reach the destination we had originally set for ourselves but instead found ourselves surprised along the way. We had not foreseen, for example, that we would discover another mining “ghost town.” But all in good order....

We had both been curious for quite a while about the name of the Kansas Settlement Road. The name definitely seems to indicate a story, and I thought perhaps a historic monument we had never detoured to see might provide the explanation. It did not. And that only makes sense, since the monument is not on the Kansas Settlement Road but a few miles down  Birch Road to the west. The monument’s story, as you see, tells how the Sulphur Springs Valley got its name, along with the sad episode of the short-lived Chiricahua Indian Reservation. We came, we read, we moved on.

Instead of turning back to the Kansas Settlement Road, however, we kept to Birch Road until it reached Hwy 191, a road we would have come to eventually, anyway. Along our resumed southern direction, however, temptation came along again, and we detoured once more, this time to the town, or “townsite,” of Pearce. 

For a population center that once boasted 1500 residents, there is not much remaining of Pearce, but the handful of buildings are definitely historic in appearance. There was indication of several current, ongoing business ventures — an antique shop, pottery studio and shop, and a local goat’s milk soap production (that last not pictured here — my omission — sorry!), but we saw no OPEN signs and no sign of any living human being. The Artist’s first question in any remote location is, “Where do they go for a cup of coffee?” It looked as if a cup of coffee would be hard to come by in Pearce. 

There was a rail to tie up horses, but there were no horses in sight, either.

[4/5/2018: Correction to paragraph below. It is not Cowboy Mall, but Mustang Mall. See here for more.]

Back onto Hwy. 191 and down on a stretch more familiar to us, we stopped at the “Cowboy Mall,” which is not a mall at all but a combination grocery-convenience store with a glorious selection of tack — saddles, bridles, bits, spurs — and a couple gas pumps out front. A birthday celebration was going on among the women working the counter, the “birthday girl,” just turned 22, being serenaded in Spanish, English, and American Sign Language. When I told them it was the Artist’s birthday, too, his coffee was on the house. What a great place! There is so much to see at the Cowboy Mall (including a couple sections of used books) that we were there a long time and got into conversation with a retired laborer from New Mexico, now living out of his camper. He was a reader and a bookstore lover, too. After a while, though, I left the two men talking and wandered around by myself, looking at more of what was on offer, and so it was that I found, to my delight, goat’s milk soap from Pearce! Very satisfying!

We never did find the elusive road we wanted out of Tombstone and finally decided to save that for another day, but we did not return to our own ghost town empty-handed. We had not only seen another ghost town, but I also managed to find one of its modern products, and that was reward enough, especially since unforeseen, for our day’s exploring.

Sunday afternoon serendipity again played a role in our winter life. All we had planned was a trip to the laundromat. One funny thing did happen there. As I was folding clothes, I was completely inattentive to the television playing behind me, had no idea of or interest in whatever might be on, and then suddenly the word “horses” hit my ear, and I spun around to face the screen. It was some kind of medieval reenactment, nothing I was particularly concerned to watch, but how funny that the single word “horses” should leap out of undifferentiated (to my mind) background sound with such urgent clarity!

When the laundry was done and packed away in the van, I had an idea. We could drive out to the rodeo grounds (officially known as Quail Park but always “the rodeo grounds” to me) and I could let Sarah off the leash to run and then work her through a few commands. We drove out Fort Grant Road, expecting to find an empty field. But that’s what comes, I said to the Artist, of not reading the Range News regularly: it was Junior Rodeo weekend, and we had nearly missed the whole thing! I’d left my camera home, along with my cowgirl hat, but we parked and got out to hang on the rails and watch the calf-roping. Nothing smells as good as fresh horse and cow manure! With all the rain we’ve had, this year’s rodeo wasn’t nearly as dusty, either, as the one we’d attended three years before. 

Well, that was serendipity indeed! Horses, horses, horses! I didn't have my camera with me, but I had my eyes and ears and nose to take in beautiful sights and sounds and aromas. Nothing better in the world! Why would I, how could I, not love a place with so many horses collected together? My heart is not yearning to be anywhere but Cochise County, Arizona, this winter.

Junior Rodeo, Willcox, AZ, 2015