celebrating new year's eve

sun goes down, another year's done, what are you doing to do. life's a beach.


headlights on shoreline highway, across the lagoon.

looking out to sea along this stretch of the coast,
you can not only see the curvature of the earth, you can feel it.


the year's last sunset was beautiful


as was the entire evening


the comraderie


and the celebration.

there were 17 of us; two of us having birthdays: the lovely nancy, born just before midnight on a new year's eve, the last baby born in lewis county* that year; and the beautiful tosca, the first baby born in the napa valley, last year. two women you'd be happy to celebrate with, new year's eve or any time. happy birthday tosca, happy new year to all!

*lewis county, tennessee; as in scenicruisers, schoolbusses, a teenage girl on a sojourn setting out for the rest of her life back in the seventies, drakes lane, summertown, saving the world one haight-ashbury band one tie dye pioneer one baby born one indigenous mayan one new yorker one mother theresa one midwife crew lots of mud and a whole ton of kids and mothers at time; i'm talking about that lewis county. i said to nancy, who i met on new year's eve- i realized i'd already met her once the minute i saw her, and we figured that out. it was a nurses retreat on mt veeder. but i really met her this night, on her birthday, on the ryans' old pole barge in bolinas. i said 'i'm hearing a twang.' and she said 'yes, i'm from tennessee,' with a big smile on her face. when i asked her where, i was pretty amazed when she said lawrenceburg. lawrenceburg's a pretty small place, or was when i passed through there lo' these many years ago; lewis county is in the middle of nowhere and sparsely populated: some good ole tennessean families, some good old amish- the plain kind, in their amish clothes and ways, and the technicolor kind, which is what the hippies ended up getting called, affectionately, when we moved there. it was a time when the young people were leaving the farms of the tennessee countryside, going to college and moving away. then in we came, a bunch of weird hippies from san francisco who thought they could just plop right down and survive. they would have starved from ignorance and exhaustion had not the locals decided these hippies weren't crazy, just over-educated and really idealistic, and so they helped us, we learned the basics and survived and went on to settle down and try and save the world. i told nancy of my connection to lewis county, having landed there a few years after the caravan did, and it turns out that nancy's uncle was one of a couple of locals who extended themselves to help when the caravan first got there, long before i hopped a bus and hitched a ride to summertown. nancy's from there,a tennessee girl, born right where i had my two kids too. isaac and avie were born on the farm, in lewis county, and now here we both are, nancy and me, nursing in the napa valley and celebrating with the house of ryan on new year's in the 21st c. it's a tiny surprising fantastic world we have.


barging out of 2007 and barging into 2008