things are going grape !

grapes just starting, farmer's market at copia, late may

meanwhile ... we two pilgrims have moved to wine country.



it's even starting to feel like home. but i did leave my heart in san franciso,
somewhere near the corner of winfield and eugenia.


another beautiful day in the neighborhood, SF


and a beautiful day in my napa neighborhood, view from my kitchen door..

napa's kind of cool though, i have to say; and anyway, SF is still there and so close.
I'm there all the time. giants games, visiting athena, family dinner, the opera,
blue bottle coffee, and the slanted door, all only in san francisco. we have a
san francisco neighborhood restaurant in our neighborhood here in napa
now though, how cool is that !! gene, kelly and stephen barber- the barber of the grill-
(figaro, figaro, fiiiii-g-a-ro) have saved me by coming to napa and opening
a great place to eat. and mark's even working there. likes school, loves his job,
liking napa. thank you god and all our friends and family and the folks in utah.
it seems like a miracle, but all props to mark. he's worked so hard.



i'm still birthin' babies... it's as awesome as ever, and the people in ob/gyn in napa, the nurses, physicians, midwives, folks - i'm thrilled to say, they're all pretty wonderful. i love my work here. (where have i been and not loved birthin babies, though ...)


mark and children in belen (means 'bethlehem'), the poorest place in peru
(as with any photos on this blog, click to enlarge; back button to
return to the blog. this is a good one for taking a better look.)

mark had a great summer. he went to south america: twice.
june took him to quito and guayaquil; august, to lima, iquitos, and belen.
in belen, you'll find only abject poverty up against the floodplain
of the amazon, on the other side of the river is the vast rainforest
(la selva.) the houses are built on stilts, the amazon floods this district
for a few months a year. the children are all too poor to have shoes.

the clowns of the gesundheit institute (a health care collective started
many years ago by patch adams md and a host of other equally
wonderful people who haven't had robin williams play them yet)
come a few times a year to do work and bring color to an existence
that is mostly the drabness and squalor that is life in the mud and the dirt
and the deprivation of the poorest slum in peru.

mark's one of this intrepid merry band now, the clown doctors of the
gesundheit institute, and the trips are all humanitarian missions. the
twenty or thirty who come from all over the america because of their
association with patch are joined by other groups of clowns from ecuador
and from peru. it must be quite wonderful when the ninety of them
fly from lima into iquitos and come to belen, painting houses and
having clown parades and giving classes on juggling, dance, and art for
the people, blowing bubbles and blowing minds with their outpouring
of true love. mark, a drummer, taught drumming class and also worked as
a muralist the whole time. check it out. and mark can hablar like a native
now; he notes with pride his nickname with the south american doctors
and clowns is 'el frijolero blanco.'

click on the mural below, you can see mark working on it, far left.





el frijolero blanco en belen

you can see mark in the left of this picture, back to you, in his black shirt and his black cap (with a bold orange embroidered SF right on the front.) he's using a stencil he made and adding another element to the mural. he would take a photo, in this one it's a little girl,
and photocopy it to bring out the contrasts. then he would be able to scale draw it to life size, onto paper. then he'd make cuts in the paper to make a stencil - it all takes hours. i really want to go and see it.

what a beautiful mural of belen. the houses are all colorful now, like in the mural, because the clowns always bring buckets and buckets of paint and brushes, and they paint and they paint and they paint houses the whole time they're there, as many as possible, (around 150, this trip.)

that's a joyful noise, right there.


los dos muralistos

never goes anywhere without his rubber chicken and his groucho getup;
raised him on the classics, we did.


natty dread and newly-buzzed head in the teepee circle at camp winnarainbow

in between trips to south america, markie was, as always, at camp winnarainbow
for a good part of the summer, clowning around and working in the kitchen, loving it.
i made it up there quite a bit myself.

wavy gravy, ascended high geezer, circus clown, beatnik poet, ice cream flavor, psychedelic relic and married to the wonderful jahanara romney (the surpassing wonderful director of camp winnarainbow) - wavy gravy is as great as ever- greater than ever, even. today he's at speedway meadow, even stephen gaskin is there. i could go say hi to him, too, and ask him why he was such a freaking idiot when walter abducted my eight-month old daughter from stephen's spiritual community, the farm, where 27 years ago i was a single mother and fledgling member of the midwife crew - and i didn't even see my baby again for ten more years, and even now, she's still lost to me- thanks stephen, yeah what a great leader - but i didn't go. the bay bridge is closed for repairs, traffic will likely be a drag, and it's so quiet and peaceful here in this gorgeous valley of grapes. so i am skipping wavy, stephen, music, poetry, hippies in the park; skipping the tribal stomp being held today in celebration of the 40th anniversary of the summer of 67, the summer of love in san francisco. i stomp with my tribe, that very same tribe, quite often, though; if you know me, you know that. besides- jerry's not going to be there.


jerry and mountain girl 1967

ciao for now. thanks for reading and catching up. peace love and pedal steel, friends.