PAUSE

Tomasito, 2009, Tanya photo.

Dear Friends of Imhotep Construction Company:

We are moving and so will not publish this blog for a week or so.

Best wishes and we'll see you soon,

Tomasito


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 6

SIX

Weeping Women: It is evening when I arrive at this disappointing border so I find a place to camp for the night beneath some huge rocks at the foot of the mountain near the fence.

I make my usual tiny cooking fire, prepare some tasty “hedge soup” from some roadside plants I have gathered, roll up in my blanket and settle down to sleep. A quiet hour or two passes but then I am awakened by the sound of a woman weeping nearby, apparently somewhere above me in the rocks.

It’s eerie, but stranger still, the crying and sobbing are soon joined by other wailing women’s voices. Uncanny. Frightening. I wonder if some local people have noticed me slip up into these rocks to spend the night and have chosen this bizarre way to scare me away. If so, they’re doing a pretty good job of it. It’s weird. It sounds like a dismal and noisy wake. The voices stop for a while; then the wailing begins again. It’s unnerving but I am so tired from riding my bike all day that I soon doze off and before I know it, the crying has stopped and dawn is breaking.

(The mystery of the crying women is solved sometime later when I mention this strange incident to my new Orthodox monk friends. They say that the sobbing was merely a few of the wild jackals which live in the stony crags of the peninsula serenading me.)

I peddle down to the dock where a small number of other Greek pilgrims, all male of course, are climbing into the passenger boats that will take them to their destinations--but no skipper will take me aboard without a Holy Mountain visa.

That’s the law. I must return to Thessaloniki and get the necessary document if I want to visit Holy Mountain.

Tomasito, 2009

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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 5

FIVE

Arrival in Greece: It took me many months of casual peddling to get from my friend’s quaint old house in southern Germany to the City of Thessaloniki in Greece, partly because I took a long detour to another traditional pilgrimage city-- Santiago, Spain. I then spent the winter months helping out at another friend’s small hotel near Florence, Italy.

But when I eventually rode into Thessaloniki, the famous city looked like any other unwelcoming, crowded, dirty old hive.

Nevertheless, I managed to find the Office of the Administration of Holy Mountain.

I had read somewhere that a pilgrim to Holy Mountain needed to get a special visa from this office—so it was in this office that I first officially declared my desire to visit Agion Oros, though I had been on the way for almost two years.

I soon learned several things: first, a foreigner (non-Greek) is only permitted to stay four days in Holy Mountain Autonomous Republic, and second, only three foreigners with reservations are allowed per day and, unfortunately, though it was early July, the foreign visitor reservations were filled until late September.

Not good--since I can’t seem to learn much of anything worthwhile in a four-day stay anywhere—that’s just about enough time for me to find out where to eat and sleep and use the toilet and I’m not kidding.

For me these two-week tours covering four European countries are useless. It often takes me four days just to ride my decrepit old bike fifty miles and it often takes me a full day in a strange town to find a reasonable place to sleep. I can easily spend one whole day exploring two rooms of a museum and twelve hours resting on a quiet, sunny hilltop.

Some kindly Italian Yoga students had donated about eighty dollars in a variety of currencies for my pilgrimage so I was not exactly penniless, but sadly, city living is always expensive, even in Thessaloniki, which is no Paris. I could stay in this bleak town and see what fortune would bring or bicycle on to Holy Mountain.

I thought perhaps I could get in without a visa since I am sometimes lucky that way so I decided to ride on.

Daphne, the small harbor village where you board one of the little ferry boats that carry pilgrims, monks and supplies to the monasteries scattered around the Holy Mountain peninsula, is not very far from Thessaloniki, but it takes me two full days to peddle there.

I think perhaps I can just ride my bike right out onto the peninsula, but when I get to the border, just beyond Daphne, I am stopped by cyclone fences with barbed wire on top, a plowed “no-man’s land” and no road or entrance gate at all.

However there are big warning signs posted on the fences in half a dozen languages advising that there are armed guards with savage dogs inside the fence which will welcome you not.

Tomasito, 2009


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 4

Four

When Constantinople, the Christian city that had once been the Eastern capitol of the Roman Empire, fell to Islam in 1453, much of the movable property valued by the fleeing Christians: books, icons, precious relics of saints and so forth, was carted off by the faithful to nearby Agion Oros (Holy Mountain) where the access was difficult and the treasures could be more easily defended from sacrilege or destruction.

These last treasures of the Byzantine Empire are still preserved on Holy Mountain by dedicated, devout, sometimes chauvinistic and even militant monks--but a lucky and determined male pilgrim may still see some of them preserved in one of the twenty or so functioning monasteries which survive there today.

The pilgrim can view the “holy” mountain too, of course, which rises near the tip of the finger, and a splendidly picturesque, if not very lofty, peak it is.

As I have said, women are not permitted; but in the Orthodox Christian tradition, a woman can gain spiritual merit by persuading some man to undertake a pilgrimage to the holy place for her as a proxy. A female friend of mine, a Greek Orthodox American living in California, asked me to undertake the pilgrimage in her behalf and I did. Well, why not? I had a lifetime to spare and nothing else of importance to do.

Another woman friend in Germany gave me a venerable bicycle for the trip from Bavaria and so, with just a five-word Greek vocabulary; the words of the traditional “Jesus Prayer” (Kyrie Jesu Christe eleson mas) and the empty pockets of a traditional pilgrim, I set off from Bad Feilnbach, Germany, to make my pilgrimage. I hope both of these dear women got some spiritual points from the cosmic scorekeeper. I certainly got the experience.

Tomasito, 2009


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 3

On Agion Oros: Holy Mountain, Greece



By Tomasito “Brother Pilgrim”

Somewhere in Belgium: night train from Munich to Ostend. Desultory, weary conversation with a bearded young Austrian sitting beside me. He asks about my reason to be traveling and I mention my determination to be on top of Midsummer Hill in England on Midsummer eve. He remarks that if I am interested in things spiritual I would probably like to visit Holy Mountain in Greece some day. He says it is very unusual and an absolute must for a man interested in pilgrimage. We part in the Ostend terminal but he has planted a seed.
Years later I make my pilgrimage to Agion Oros, Holy Mountain.

On the northeastern coast of Greece, a peninsula with three finger-like extensions reaches out into the Aegean Sea. The Easternmost of these fingers is Agion Oros, Holy Mountain Province. Physically a part of Greece, Holy Mountain is an autonomous Greek province governed by the Greek Orthodox Church and populated exclusively by males. Females and children are strictly forbidden. According to historic tradition, no woman, girl or even young male child has set foot on the territory of Holy Mountain for more than a thousand years. (Though a few female refugees were permitted for a short period during the Greek Civil War.) Does this seem strange to you liberated twenty-first century women? Well, it is a strange place, but interesting, as they say.

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Congratulations President Obama

By Golly, My vote DID count!

Congratulations, President Obama


Tomasito, January 20, 2009




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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 2

Wikipedia map of Greece, showing Agion Oros (Holy Mountain Province) in red.


Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain

The Greeks have invented a great idea for taking care of their elderly men.

Holy Mountain Province is not only an extended “home for Elderly male Greeks”, but may also be a spirit-enhancing refuge for them.

Of course old Greek men have all had years of life experience on the outside and have the useful skills which have allowed them to survive for a long lifetime.

Most of these skills are important for any community’s survival—trades such as cook, carpenter, fisherman, mechanic, even artist and musician and, most important for the continuity of Holy Mountain–– priests and religious men.

Now there seems to be, by design, a special monastery and monastic community for every kind of man and to make Holy Mountain a perfect refuge for old men, no women (old or young) are allowed.

Holy Mountain Province is a religious community, understand, ladies, so it is relatively OK.

And though no females are allowed, the whole province is dedicated to that great mythic female, the ever-virgin Mother of God, Mary.

Tomasito, 2009

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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 1

Simonepetra Monastery Holy Mountain Province, Greece.

Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain

Some twenty years ago I undertook a long pilgrimage as a proxy for two women.

Santiago was the desired pilgrimage goal of an elderly German woman who felt she was too old to make the trip herself and Holy Mountain was the goal of a Greek Orthodox woman, who needed a male to make her pilgrimage because no women are allowed to visit Holy Mountain province, Greece.

I began the pilgrimage on foot in England and continued by bicycle from Germany. In this next series of blogs I would like to describe some of the things I experienced and learned in the Holy Mountain portion of the pilgrimage.

Tomasito, 2009


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Me Born Lucky

Mount Lassen, California USA (Tanya photo)

Me Born Lucky

“In order to see famous hills and rivers, one must also have predestined luck--unless the appointed time has come, one has no time to see them even though they are situated within a dozen miles.”

Chang Ch’ao, China, mid 17^th century CE, Lin Yutang Translation

Tomasito 2009


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Adieu Penngrove

Memory Oaks (Tomasito photo 2009)

Adieu, Penngrove

Well, it is time for us now to turn loose of Penngrove!

It was sort of a cute little place in an earlier chapter of my life—but as they say, time certainly does NOT stand still--and the almost fabulously picturesque village of Penngrove of lo those many years ago--tucked away in those pretty green hills of my memory--has up and vanished just like those picturesque fishing villages on the Mediterranean coast of Spain which are now your standard tourist traps.

Depend on it: nothing—good or bad—lasts very long these days!

These days—if you can maintain for even a little while—sometimes as little as a few weeks or months, your bad trip may become heavenly—OR--your good trip just might become awful! (Since it seems to work fine both ways!)

The things I remember best as being good about Penngrove itself are gone. The green hills are covered with houses, the little lane is jammed with commuter traffic—the cozy little temporary buildings of Sonoma State College just a few pastures away is now Sonoma State UNIVERSITY with all the pomp and circumstance of a major player in the state university bureaucracy.

So it is—and so it always is!

But it all happens so fast, and doesn't anything ever change for the better?

Does it always have to change for the worst?

Tomasito, 2009


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Return to Penngrove 6

Johnny Petrified

Since that first experience as a “professional teacher” I’ve been in classrooms full of VERY naughty and downright BAD kids—being taught by VERY good teachers––and the classes have been great, quiet, disciplined, and organized––well, my class wasn’t like that at all. It was fun, exciting––and I do believe the kids learned something and enjoyed the experience, but , for me, easy it wasn’t.

I worked like a dog every day to keep up with all the things I thought the kids should do and learn––and there was one boy––Johnny ****** (and his last name I remember very well and will never forget but which I will leave out of this memoir since he has probably become the respected CEO of an important company) who kept the class on the exciting edge of chaos every day.

Johnny was never absent! He LOVED school. He was cute––all the girls loved him, and athletic––all the boys admired him and I even liked him myself, but what a pain in the neck he was to me. In many ways it was more HIS class than mine! He only missed one day the entire year and that day was scholastic paradise for all of us. Relaxed, we went about the daily routine without wondering what sort of mischief Johnny would come up with next!

I did get a sort of revenge on Johnny though. I had the class put on a play one evening for the parents and the rest of the school and the play I chose was “The Sandalwood Box”, an adaptation of one of Washington Irving’s “Tales from the Alhambra”.

The story of the play is that of the quest by a young man into a magically enchanted cave to recover a sandalwood box. Of course the enchanted cave is filled with treasure and is guarded by a black slave with a terrible sword. But (!) the slave-guard is also enchanted and cannot move or speak—“only his eyes can move” I as the director instructed Johnny! So the whole time the lead of the play was in the enchanted cave, Johnny had to stand still as a statue with only his eyeballs moving!

I thought it was brilliant casting and gripping theater––and Johnny was happy because he got to carry a huge wicked-looking scimitar made of cardboard and tinfoil.

Tomasito, 2009


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Return to Penngrove 5

Tomasito Socrates (Tanya photo 2008)

My Life Work

Oh, what to do to earn a living?

Oddly enough, I had never really thought about what lifetime occupation I would hold to provide for my family. (What I would BE.)

Though higher education was just beginning to organize itself into relevance for careers, some old-fashioned people, including me, still regarded university education as a way to become wiser and not just as a more or less guaranteed way to land a better job.

I had my degree and sort of thought in the back of my mind that I would someday write something people would like to read—but the daily grind of writing under a deadline and the blatant snoopiness of newspaper work didn’t really interest me very much and I didn’t think enough in terms of plot and characters to write novels or plays. I sort of liked to read published journals of adventures like Dana’s “Two Years before the Mast” and Mark Twain’s “A Tramp Abroad”, and Melville’s “Typee”, but I realized that my own small-time adventures were too tame to interest anyone.

As a matter of fact, the very concept of “my life work” was so distasteful to me that I couldn’t conceive of anything interesting enough to hold me for an entire lifetime! I loved to be active, I liked to be doing things which other people considered to be work, but I didn’t like to work at such things! In fact playing music was perfect for me, though I never expected to be at it for the rest of my life!! I fact, that was my entire attitude toward work!

I LOVED learning to do new things!

In fact, I loved work—and the harder the better—so long as it could be approached as play!

One of the older and wiser Baha’is suggested to me that there was a new program starting out at the new campus of a new college in the new villages of Cotati/Rohnert Park between Santa Rosa and Novato that would train someone like me who already had a BA degree in nothing much of importance to be a teacher of elementary children with a State of California Teacher’s Credential and--most vital--I could begin teaching immediately­­­­––full time–– for pay (!) and take the necessary courses part time in the evenings and on week-ends. Not bad. Also the courses were cheap and I could get a government loan to cover their costs which would be cancelled if I actually taught school in California for a while after I got the credential.

Just the thing! I signed up for the program and was directed to apply to Penngrove School for a teaching assignment

I drove over some back-country lanes and found­--on a hill overlooking pastures and some shabby old wooden stores: Penngrove School–– a nineteen twenties school building with a basement and a couple of temporary classrooms for the kindergarten kids. The harassed principal needed a sixth grade teacher pronto since school was due to start in a couple of days and he had two classrooms-full of sixth graders and only one sixth grade teacher.

I was so new to the teaching racket that I didn’t even know that all school kids in California had been tested and tracked almost from the beginning of their education and the incumbent sixth-grade teacher, who had been there for years, had already reserved the best room, the best furniture, the best books and all the “good” kids for himself. I had all the leftovers, the junk furniture, the ragged textbooks, the misfits, losers, dumbbells and the minorities—in other words, all the interesting kids—in my classroom!

When the actual classes began, I threw myself right into the teacher trip with total abandon. I liked it. I really liked it!

But (and that’s a BIG but!) it took SO much energy!

Tomasito, 2009


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Return to Penngrove 4

Concerto Muy Grosso

Every Friday and Saturday evening I would zoom from Novato to Santa Rosa, “play” my set of drums for a specified number of hours and then zip back home to Novato in the early morning hours.

We musicians have never been known for stability and the other members of the trio: a piano player and “stand up” (old fashioned non-electric) bass guitar man, were no exceptions. The bass player was the leader of the band. He was also the most important member since he was a local boy who had landed the job and who received and distributed the paychecks every week. The piano player was a lean, hairy, morose chap who usually showed up late for work and on some drug or other—but he was an OK piano player.

Our trio played no original music at all—just familiar tunes from the so-called “hit parade” of the day and old dance band standards so we never rehearsed. It was easy, if not very inspired, work—and the steady paycheck was very welcome. Our audience from the motel’s bar and dining room every weekend was made up of a few late night tourists from the motel hoping for some kind of action and locals looking for dates and entertainment.

The manager of the dining room and dance area where we played was also a regular. He didn’t care what we played as long as we only took no more than the allotted 15 minute hourly breaks and did not get too loud. He was always lurking behind some potted plants and a screen loosely covered with plastic vines behind our bandstand, watching us—

But during the few weeks of our engagement the piano player’s behavior got more and more erratic. He arrived later and later for work and was more and more obviously drunk or drugged. The manager warned us that our group could be replaced quite easily.

The leader and I both needed the money badly so we tried to talk some sense to the piano player but he was never in the mood to talk. He was shacked up with some woman in an apartment over a garage and when I accompanied the band leader to his place once or twice to deliver his pay check and to try to convince him to be more cooperative, he and his girlfriend were always in bed no matter what time of day we visited so we would rouse him by shouting under his window until he appeared and came down for his check. He would goggle at us when we asked him to go easy with the drugs and try to show up on time, but I don’t think he even knew what we were talking about.

One night he came to work late as usual and we began to play, but we had only played one or two tunes when he stood up, took out a pocket knife, opened the lid of the piano and started cutting the “harp” strings-- starting with the little high-pitched ones (ping. ping, ping…pong, pong, pong…pung, pung, pung…) continuing until he reached the heavy, lower pitched ones which his knife couldn’t cut—all the time repeating in a low, controlled whisper: “I can’t take this anymore”. Then he closed the piano lid and stalked out.

The manager was watching this unexpected solo performance from behind the vines and when the piano player was safely out of the room he came out and said: “I guess you know what this means.”

We packed our instruments silently, left the “El Rancho” and that was the forever end of my musical career on the mainland USA.

Tomasito, 2009


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Return to Penngrove 3

Fairlane Commuting Back Then

Novato was, in those days, a pretty, little new town about a half hour’s drive north of San Francisco--one of the instant towns that were mushrooming along the almost brand new US 101 Freeway.

I rented a simple two bedroom cottage for about $95 a month, if I remember it correctly, which was cheap even for those days. However, though rent and other expenses were low, finding work was hard.

As stated, I vaguely hoped to continue my drumming and my rock and roll, but the nearest place I found where I could play music for pay, and then only on week-ends, was at an upscale motel, The El Rancho, in Santa Rosa, a bigger small town fifty or so miles farther north on 101.

Commuting in those days was easy and fun since 101 was practically empty of traffic, especially at night.

I had purchased, for $800 cash, an almost new, big, wide, powerful, splendid “two-toned” (blue bottom-- white top!), Ford Fairlane automobile––and cruising to and fro alone in it was pure pleasure for a lively young chap like me.

I joined the Santa Rosa Musicians Union and through that organization found the weekend drumming job with a trio at the El Rancho Motel, which I see is still alive and well in a much, much, much bigger Santa Rosa.

Tomasito, 2009


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Return to Penngrove 2.

Tanya at Petaluma County Fair 2007 (Tomasito photo)

Bahai's to the Rescue

My experience of Penngrove began years ago when I got my very first teaching job.

I was hired to teach sixth grade at the Penngrove Elementary School and the reason for that job was that I had just migrated from Hawaii back to the mainland United States as a sort of missionary (though they don’t have missionaries) for a fledgling religion: the Baha’i Faith-- and I really needed money.

One of the Big Ideas of the Baha’is of those days (and I don’t know what they are up to now) was that they should have a functioning council of nine adult believers in every judicial district in every country on earth so that when the existing political, social and religious systems crashed, which they expected momentarily, the Baha’i councils, as the only functioning political/religious system left standing, would assume local, national and world leadership..

For the Baha’is of those days, the best form of government was a theocracy and there was no doubt in the minds of the believers of those days that a Baha’i state would be a vast improvement on the existing government of the USA as invented by the Founding Fathers of the republic—or any other form of government, invented by mere human beings, anywhere. They also had no doubt that each council would be directly guided in their deliberations by God Itself, so their laws and judgments would be not only good, but the absolutely and unquestionably Best for Everybody Concerned, They also anticipated that an international group of nine Baha’i men and women, soon to be chosen from among their membership and by themselves--- using democratic processes (minus electioneering)---which would have ultimate absolute political and spiritual authority over everybody, everywhere--since that body would represent in their decisions the absolute and literal Will of God for all humanity.

Being young, enthusiastic and eager to change the world for the better, I had returned from Hawaii, where I had discovered the Baha’i Faith, to the mainland USA to act upon what I conceived of as my part in saving said world and, of course, to be a leader in the new world order. After all, it was only a little bit self- flattering to believe that, as a functioning member of a local spiritual assembly, I would be one of the mouthpieces of God when we made our decisions--but obviously somebody had to do it—so why not an exceptionally clever young fool like me?

I had a just received a BA degree in English from the University of Hawaii (quite a long way from London!) and had no idea at the time what a totally worthless document that was. I had been earning a pretty good living as a rock band drummer in Honolulu and had some idea that I could continue in that nebulous line of work stateside, as they used to call the mainland USA.

I left Honolulu with a great desire to live and work on the Hopi Indian Reservation in Arizona, one of the places in the states which had several resident Baha’is, but no adult quorum at that time-- but when I drove into desolate Tuba City in northern Arizona on a freezing winter day even I realized that with all my cleverness and enthusiasm I would not find work or enjoyment of any kind in such an extreme (for me) place. So I continued traveling, with my then wife and child, to another American township which “needed” a couple more adult Baha’is like us and soon came to roost in pleasant, green, (it was spring) Novato, California, only a twenty minute freeway drive south from the as yet unknown to me, Penngrove..

Tomasito, 2009


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Twelfth Night Special

TWELFTH NIGHT SPECIAL


A Twelfth Night Mossad Visit

There are so many charming “Grimm Brother”-style traditions alive and well in Bavaria today that it is a constant source of delight to observe and enjoy them.

During the Christmas holiday period for example you can take your pick.You can frighten yourself with Grampus and Nickolaus, a furry, horned monster and his mild-mannered saintly keeper, or you can enjoy the goodies brought by the “Weinachtsman”—an old peasant-type gentleman dressed in furs who mysteriously appears annually with a bag of sweets. Or you might wait for the Christ Child to visit your house with gifts.

But the traditional characters I like best are “the three wise kings from the East” who visit every house where Catholics live to make their mark over the front doorway with the chalked graffiti: K.M.B. and the year— like this: “19 K.M.B. 98”.

K.M.B. are the initials of the wise king’s traditional names: Kaspar, Melchior and Balthasar.

Every year on the Twelfth Night after Christmas, three men are selected to costume themselves in the imagined splendiferous robes of oriental magi to fulfill this function. If you are a Catholic in good standing, these masqueraders knock on your door, sing you a song and chalk up their mystic initial symbols which must remain there for good luck until the visit of the three kings on the Twelfth Night of the next year, when the new kings will erase this year’s chalk-marks and put up new figures.

Since it is usually beastly cold on January sixth, it is also traditional to invite the “kings” in for cookies and something warming to drink.

This “three kings” tradition sort of extends the mystery and fun of Christmas for at least twelve days—and closes the holidays very neatly it seems to me. I also like to see the chalked initials on the lintel over the front door whenever I enter or leave the house throughout the year. For me, it is a pleasant reminder of the generous spirit of the holidays.

In fact I like this Twelfth Night tradition so much that, even though I am not a Catholic, I sometimes gather a couple of friends to play the parts of the other kings and the three of us have gone visiting, chalking up the traditional K.M.B.’s and the year on the front doorways of other friend’s houses in parts of the world where this holiday tradition is unknown.

I was staying at a Yoga institute in Ahrensburg, in the far north of Germany one Christmas and asked my friends if they observed the Bavarian three kings Twelfth Night tradition. They said they did not, but it sounded like fun and they wouldn’t mind dressing up as three wise kings and going out with me to mark the front doorway lintel of some of their friends.

So I contacted a small group of friends and neighbors and got their permission to visit them on the Twelfth Night.

I had spoken several times with the Lutheran pastor of the village church and, seeing him on the street several weeks before Christmas, mentioned the custom and asked if he would also enjoy a visit. He agreed to accept we three kings but with his own preparations for the holiday season, probably forgot all about this commitment.

When Twelfth Night came, my friends arrived at my room at about 9 pm dressed very nicely for their roles as temporary royalty. The friend playing the part of the traditional Negro king had blackened his face with burnt cork. The other friend had a neat towel turban and a striped bed sheet robe over his parka. I threw a colorful bedspread “robe” over my winter clothes and placed a shiny tinfoil-covered cardboard crown, which I had made for myself and decorated with a six-pointed Star of David on my head. The friend playing the black king tossed some costume glitter dust over us and out we walked out into the cold dark night.

We had successfully visited all of our appointed houses, singing “We Three Kings of Orient Are” in English to the great amusement of everyone and accepting cookies and cocoa, when we arrived at our last house; the house of the Lutheran pastor.

I knocked lightly on his front door and we began to sing. The pastor opened the door and, smiling, invited us in. But when I came out of the gloom, his smile disappeared and a look of terror came onto his face. He disappeared into an adjoining room and came haltingly back with wine and glasses, which he offered us. When he served me a small glass of wine, his hand shook so badly that he almost spilled it. I really didn’t know what to think, but drank, thanked him and we left.

The next day I mentioned the minister’s strange behavior to one of the men who had been a “king” with me the night before and he laughed.

“Oh, this morning I heard that he had preached an anti-Jewish Twelfth Night sermon at his church just before we arrived—the usual old “The Wicked Jews killed our Jesus” rubbish—and when he saw the Star of David on your crown he probably thought he was getting a little visit from the MOSSAD.”

By Thomas F. Wold (Tomasito), Merced, CA, Dec. 2002


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Return to Penngrove 1

Tomasito returns to Penngrove, 2007 (Tanya photo)

Return to Penngrove

I didn’t plan this.

I never expected to pass through Penngrove again.

When I left Penngrove a lifetime ago I thought I had shaken the dust of the place from my sandals and would never, ever, ever, see its single street, its few faded storefronts or sniff its hay feverish wild weeds or grasses again and I certainly never imagined I would return to live and work in a nearby town.

But-- by the tangled paths of life, the rights and the lefts, the backs and the forths, highs, lows, ins, outs and twisted turnings—here I am again, but with far different company and a lifetime of experience between calls. The why 1’m here now is even a small mystery.

Since a few months ago Dear Bunne and I planned to move our “Earthprobe” from San Luis Obispo, California closer to San Francisco-- to be able to visit the cultural sites and the sounds of the place more easily, but not to move right into the crammed, jammed, expensive City-- I held up a map of northern California and with eyes closed-- Bunne put her finger on a spot—opened her eyes and read a word I don’t think she had ever heard before: “Petaluma”—which initiated our move to this bay area town just a hill and a valley away from Penngrove—that miniscule village I first knew long ago.

That is, Penngrove, CA. 94951 USA.

Tomasito, 2008


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Grass of Parnassus

Sunset Sacramento River Railway Bridge (Tomasito photo )

The Grass of Parnassus

The last time I saw this matched pair, Les and Muriel Bodine, was when I passed through Mineral on my way to Alaska and Russia in my camper in 1998. They let me park in their driveway overnight and use their bathroom as they had often done before.

Les mentioned to me that he had seen some “Grass of Parnassus” blooming beside the roadside tiny spring-fed waterfall outside of the village of Mill Creek and he asked me if I would dig up a bit of it and transplant it to the bank of the little stream in their yard. So I drove over the mountain to Mill Creek and found the pretty little plant being splashed by the waterfall just as he had described it. I dug up a few roots and transplanted them to the brook beside his house.

“Grass of Parnassus” is not really grass at all,” Les told me and showed me in his plant book that it reall was not a “true grass” botanically speaking, “but I like it anyway.”

Les and Muriel have gone on to their reward as they say—and I hope it is a big one, and I hope the bogus grass took root and is still blooming for someone on their side of the mountain.

Tomasito, 2009

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Bodine's Bliss

Tanya Cross Country Skiing --Shasta, CA 2008 (Tomasito photo)

Bodine’s Bliss

When the Lassen Ski Lift opened, most of the little valley slopes between the top tower of the lift and the base became “ski runs”.

There were strict rules about cutting trees in the national park but several were cut so the skiers could have a safer slide.

But off to one side a small stand of little forest trees were left in their natural state.--very dense and very near each other. Adult skiers were not interested in skiing into this forest or through these small trees—but the little kids who used the lift were. The kids turned this miniature woods into a maze of little kid ski paths—none of them machine groomed, of course, and only used by kids.

Since I was the curious type and since this out of the way forest was usually quiet and peaceful I liked to hang out there too—it was most often empty of all humans since there were not a lot of little kids on the mountain at any time.

There were little birds back there flitting about and sometimes calling each other—that was usually the only sound.

The manager of the lift asked me to draw a ski map for the patrons of the Lassen Ski Lift Area which I happily did—I always like to exercise my artistic abilities—and, since I was the "official cartographer", I got to name some of the the different ski runs and special spots on the mountain when I labeled them for the map.

Since I had seen old Les Bodine back on these kids' ski paths once or twice and since he was the only other adult skier I had ever seen curious enough to explore them, I named the little woods and the kid's ski trails “Bodine's Bliss”--and later on, when the management posted professionally lettered signs designating the runs--the sign posted there was "Bodine's Bliss". That pleased him.

Tomasito, 2009

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