 Thank you for joining us at the Mechanics Institute. I'm Laura Shepard, Director of Events. And we're very pleased to welcome you to our program with Kavara literary readers, one of the most stellar journals of literature and visual arts. This is our second presentation with Kavara, and we're just delighted to be co-sponsored by Kavara once again. If you're new to Mechanics Institute, we were founded in 1854 and we're one of San Francisco's most vital literary and cultural centers here in the heart of the city. We feature our general interest library on the second and third floor, the International Chest Club, which is right down the hallway, and our ongoing literary and cinema programs that are ongoing throughout the year. So please visit our website at my library down the floor. Also, as mentioned before, please join the availability and also join the availability for Kavara magazine. I'd like to also introduce Katherine Sigerson. I'm going to introduce our guest speakers and our program tonight. Katherine is the founding editor of Kavara Literary Reader, based in the new Tannery Art Center in Santa Cruz. Katherine Pryorches has worked with two other literary magazines, including Zoetro All-Store and Isabelle. She has been the editor of Kavara for the last 11 years and also for 10 years has run the Tannaran Writers Conference, which happened on Pebble Beach in the 10th of the summer. I'm sure if you'd like information on all of these programs that they have through the Poetry Award and the conference, please go to the website for more information. But first, I'd like to welcome back Katherine Sigerson. Welcome. Welcome. We're based in Tannery, and it's so wonderful for us to be able to come here to San Francisco, especially in this lovely and historic building. It's got such a great history and it's been a library since 1856, I hear. So it's a pleasure to bring our poets and writers here to read their works of that. So this issue is our 42nd issue of Kavara. We just did our 11th year of the magazine. So it's really, really to present some of our contributors and hear their work live. We have readers that have come from San Cruz and from the Greater Bay Area. So I hope you enjoy our program tonight. I've also brought my managing editor, Elizabeth Mackenzie along. She's going to help me introduce the speakers tonight. She's been with me since the very beginning. So it's really fun. She's evolving and getting better. So, yeah, and we have some people that attended our conference here tonight and we've been doing that conference for 10 years. So it should be funny. So without further ado, I'd like to introduce our first reader, which will be John Briscoe. He's a San Francisco poet, author, and lawyer. He has received the Oscar that was awarded to the American Institute for Surprise and Top Shelf Award and other literary fiction. His law practice for more than 50 years has included representing countries in disputes with other countries and international courts and inviting the United Nations to the aftermath of the Gulf War. He is a distinguished fellow at the University of California, so please welcome John Briscoe. Thank you for having me, sister. My name is John Briscoe. I was born and titled of Devin Starr's epic novel 50 years ago. And as I said, it's also the westernmost point of Cornwall. And throughout the world, hundreds of problem-corridor states and points of land that only those living out of this home which was here a few years ago on Catamaran, is called the Plants. Here, as I said, cows were nearer where oats were grown as the tines appeared. Grades and ridges and brows down its slope. This is 15 walls, perhaps. Five of those brown, spotted, white with small downed porches. Loathing again in those discernible forests. They shambled off with some of the young to some place, perhaps, to see. The loathing sun swims between the sea. Indigo washes all the seas once for recents and all the most western scum. My cows stay back playing with this day to day with the purposeless energy of bounding ponds. Gambling and plucking right into the house of three unkind, heedless students and a calf returning black-spotted down into the dust equally with the recent. About 15, 16 years ago about 15, 16 I can shout easier than I can talk into the microphone. About 15 or 16 years ago that Shamus Heaney made a poetry reading here in San Francisco and then he and his wife Mary were traveled with them. Went to a very late at the conclusion of which Shamus, who won the Nobel Prize in 1994 said to his wife, Mary, Mary, would you please come with me to a short poetry reading tomorrow evening. My heaney said, Shamus, there's no such thing as a short poetry reading tomorrow evening. I want to switch to an essay that I wrote for a calendar about four years ago and read you the whole thing. I will read you the whole thing. The essay is here under the title The Ancient and Honorable Heart of Life First. The editorial staff changed the original title which was Death Watch. The Ancient and Honorable Heart of Life First. You see from the beginning of our Western Literary camp which is what everybody really had home. That's the beginning. Obviously the literature before we don't know what it was. It has to stop. Life first, humorous first has to be here heavily in our poetry in our literature. Book one of Iliad if you don't remember read it again. Book one, this is right at the beginning of Western Literature okay? There is a scene where Susan Hera have a Ralph and as you read any translation you want from chapter two brand new about a Ralph and Alice brand new. It's the same scene. The same comedy. This fantastic man has gotten the benefit of fighting his wife with and while just as Ralph and Alice would do it. Faith for Aristophanes centuries later to increase and bring the comic play this is from this is a poem that is acted out in the States. This is from this is the middle of the Peloponnesian war and the plot device is a woman I figured out in the war how by going on the sex and they do and it is comic go on beyond all the weeks. Same moving out to English Chaucer. Some of the most comic books in the literature are Chaucer, Shakespeare Jabberwocky in the 19th century is that the Oxford book of English verse is nonsense. It was really unsightly but it was never in control of the way all the music was done It's like silly verse here in San Francisco there's always been a hotbed of light verses. The most famous black verse poem and as a matter of fact the most famous poem in America for a good period of time was close here in 1896 by the lead verses from the purple cop it was estimated that 50% of all Americans knew of my heart and 75% of all Americans knew of it, had a bed 1925 The New Yorker was founded as a sophisticated literature, sophisticated humor magazine and along it staffed soon were three of the greatest practitioners of life for us heaven. Two great women poets from Harvard and a great part of the nation. Today anyone of you submit some light verses to the New Yorker or the Atlantic or Harpers or I dare say got it right as a referee reader and you're about to be consigned to the junk file for all of you heard of it. Once last time you read in the serious literary magazine so our question to you is I am I did one of the magazines and it's been one of the highlights of my literary life and I'm very pleased to be presenting the magazine towards the characters and I would kind of associate with them greatly Our next reader is Dianna Rowley Dianna Rowley's debut collection, Go Stalks was run around and it was published in several awards including the Eric Hopper Award The second book saddens of the events that will be published by the University of Wisconsin Twitter show that has been covered by Miranda Foster Her work appears in Missouri where Dianna Rowley is the son, rabble, narrative and her slowdown She facilitates private workshops most of the podcasts at the high of poetry collective and is the reader of the catalogue She splits her time between a ranch and assesses these messages and I would like to welcome Dianna Rowley Dianna Rowley Thanks everyone Thanks for being here, do I sound okay? Yup. Okay. Thanks Catherine So I suppose you believe the catalogue I would say I think it's the most beautiful literary journal It might be It might be So this first poem I'm going to read is the one of them The deluge came from the skies and the sea So the Washington Post last winter January 20th For decades I had waited for this as I walked the cliffs Imagine the Pacific walls 5 million dollar mansions gasping as they fell A flood for a while Something changes You see what happens when the neglected surge They have a voice What they call a vengeance After years A man colonial in their oppression A king Tied Yes What was described as a skydiver size of the Mississippi dumped down on houses a mud brown tide lifted over a meter bank high as a man I remember the rain last year This one is about my different Susie, she was like a sister when I was throwing up I just can't seem to stop writing about her Oh, black water Susie I wanted to tell you how frequently I passed the apartment behind the supermarket where we street danced to the Doobie brothers Shocking as the fog lifted front-dark roses iridescent in a salt-gray seaside morning You died What? 10 years ago? Not at once, though the hills turned to crickly It began, I think when we were children without knowing why we wanted out of that rural beauty the narrow valley and gleaming stream summer spent diving off crumbling cliffs the nearest to death was the closest we came to living Your step-dads buried fingers my mother who loved to touch the sweaty chests of her daughter's teenage lovers Nowadays everything is a different kind of dangerous rain stays away June mist sucks away too soon sunlight prays through before it should What I want to say Susie is a moment gone 50 years is just a moment but you're still here unflashed in brightness elfin jittery wand our arms lewd as we turn tight circles round and round your eyes locked on mine Here, Susie One is about when I adopted the town of Bellingham when I first moved there way back in the 70s In Bellingham I lived in a shanty on a ridge in Bellingham facing the same sea the other a span of cedars their scaly leaves a ceaseless thicken on my roof I choreed a man to let me live there He fished in Alaska June to September placed the keys in my hand like a velvet bag of diamonds He was in love with me but I didn't want him He hustled mushrooms hung drywall never learned to read or write but could fix anything stooped over the murder of his model A his bare back muscled and pelted fingers light on the influence murmuring rich to the right lean to the left At the time I was in love with a Seattle man who designed high rise towers made of glass I moved norms to escape the sight of him with his red-haired girlfriend her son flecked skin in his slender arms most nights I hiked home slow on Seaholm Hill my body hot inside a skinny wall the double coated nylon of my coat the cabin was cold quiet I banged a fire fall asleep thinking about those two men one who dropped me off or good on a dark street the other worthless his eyes stitched with light Thank you Here is Jeff Ewing Jeff Ewing is the author of The Big Apples and the short story collection The Middle Ground His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in Crazy Horse Southwest Review Dizzy by Love of the Scream Subtract, Thick, Booty Reader Charity Treatment like three or four times in camera before this and Liz Safferman who came all the way from Safferman Please welcome Jeff Ewing The first one I'm going to read is from this issue in camera and it's part of a series that's called in Norway Could you raise your microphone or use the handheld to start your well life Is that better? Yes This is a well-made door He fashioned a soft whisper of wood against wood to hush the breath to hold himself as the world outside was pushed to step back cut and vetted in the first days of their marriage when care was taken with substance wondering now is it wrong to look close and gore it was pride in those that took it's silence for safety who worked every squeak from the latch how he whizzes now at a slam-like thunder sometimes the night it was scratched ran in claws at the onset of winter you'd see the marks in the morning the girls it was very strong falling the mound in the storm they would go and they would give him a chance so he buried the bulls, curled bodies good ways off from the trees and still they followed out came in and in he grew in thick with a swallow word well the bones under the beach offered up one room for some foxes dinner so much then for a door grass not up tarnished he just froze it on the tens even the wind better than the company and this is for a load to a drive-in theater in Sacramento it's long gone it's called Audio Swiss Inner Drive-In so much for dust why should we dance to banks offenders as well as cresting and running breakers rind with grass maybe we're done waiting with necks and soles craning well Hans Zimmerman and Lionel Newman play us for fools and the ghosts of our shadows and the snack bar past past mouths poised for kissing how could we not be dwarfed by those earned faces lips fat and red as pepper slices ties like sauce pans even break to a recalls of a crackling banner as gargantuan glands from the sun dying in love we know better he's trying to say but more to the point we don't the jackrabbit study us dumping and frustration we must be falling ass backwards to their lives with the volume crank fumbling sure hands and not the puzzles above us and our exit music settles like do on the start this little note and this is this one I wrote not long before my daughter was born called a wager a low and held crop of black lava that bent the tracks made the train wheel shriek between the loose spree of the embankment and the soft sponging grass of the river bank I made a wager with myself I caught one that morning brown rainbow cutthroat didn't matter which if I could land just one fish the baby would be healthy was a little game I played with myself nothing more an illusion of control where there was no control only chance of turning over of cards the cliffs on the far side lean clothes breathing haze under the water the long cut bank was still in shade I stepped in cast up toward an eddy folding the current along hidden rifts and awaited knowing the strike would come but caught all the same the pale belly flashed and the leader in the line went dove toward the memory of deeper water I set the hook lightly out of caution too lightly as the trout turned downstream counting on the current to draw it away the fulfillment tangent defeated treachery there every muscle straining against the pool its will compressed into one thought it grasped its head and drew the hook when the line went slack I didn't reel in right away I stood where I was and let the current bitter cold with the last year's snow pushed against my legs I looked into the ripples where the light disappeared among polished stones and waited for the end I laid in the guise of a bent-nosed monster to wait upstream for Reno and collect to force me to go on to live without my finger tightly clenched just once by a hand too delicate for a line in me I thought I had lost everything I thought I would be held to my wager then I began to argue if the world of the wager were true if that was my daughter silvering away downstream then the twist of head freed the hook and the stories no one else's and I thought I'd better get used to that because one day a day like this a day full up with sun and loss the clear water in view was she'll turn her head smile and go and won't have the time even if she wanted to watch the brush go pale with heat to feel the weightless lines while I guess it's on the surface still to know the house is forgiven on all debts to join me on the long old coat on this last one as the crow flies from sufficient height we make a kind of sense the designs we scratch the dirt and dry grass appear reasonable yesterday the white stones like rows of teeth roads like knotted shoelaces we move in a way that presses the crow's belly two fences one stone one woven slabs rise and fall across street back swells under clouds that print more than they can deliver rain falls with a repairability and where won't we root ourselves deeper douse blind to hard man what madness can rival the sight of a scrabbling over a ridge of marine and crow feathers his wings a verse of black lie above the country bent under its load then feathers word like cars and spokes the shrill cry gravel on tin rattles down slow small wonder in his straight flight from A to B confounds us we hunch over cooling coffees arrange our chairs on listing decks while all the tumbling glaciers carry on without us at last having had our say an error born in error life's gone out in my headless chickens we move such delicate dead by sheer nerve memory out upon the bluffs brimming with lupin the blue on black wing flapping overhead our follow gentle not to wait for the civic from the stream of us he has published extensively for journals and anthologies including Caterinage, Quarterly, and most recently Hunderbilt review, the North American review and Simmerall review two of his essays have received notable instincts at best American essays originally from a small working class city in southeast Los Angeles County he taught for many years how to stay at East Bay and can stand to live at East Bay since retiring he also has news about a new book too maybe please welcome Steve Gutierrez I have to do this but I'm never getting good at it can the year be okay? thank you thank you I'm not in the current issue with the fall 21 issue I'll read from the essay I'll read the last the last part of it the last third or something like that I think all the themes will be apparent but setting the church setting the church there you go this is Chris I am ready for unhappiness I am gloomy by disposition and wary by experience but worst is yet to come I live my life on that premise I was my outlook to put it blankly I know that I will face another trial in time I will be tested before I sit directly into my grave I hope that all of them will come with respectful attention so I don't tip out of the coffin and they can ask myself in the ground I face very to the dirt look at Steve was he dead or alive or in between both as I've always been long before calling back in get a right this time boy I'm tired my heart is in over comedy is fun but I expect black flowers and hurricanes I attend mass not as insurance against calamity of the road but as food positive to be presented to whatever form I can to God who often cooks this trial of mine coming up with a simple claim whatever disaster that falls in the future that is far or near whatever life has in store for me in the misery department or has already brewed up visitors on my head to bring you there to the seat of God's judgment I stayed faithful I never fell back into old habits and plotted plans against it in my favor expecting to come up on top like I would with it I kept my promise did I not I kept coming back coming back just to show I was not a pleasant God religion and all the rest the official spiritual bag not the mindful rules not the spirituality mode not religious but spiritual not anything but a God on the long political line grasp the treasure the peace that passes all understanding that calms you down with life it sounded like a good deal but it wasn't that bad to see that not me bad it was more closer I was at mass then and I'm there today suffering the rabbi communicates of the altar I'm bringing up essays trying to keep a straight face I'm drifting, I'm attentive I'm fighting my own internal battle I'm there I participate in shaking hands standing up and kneeling down and saying barely I'm terrible I'm never bored never too antsy that I want to speak like in high school I gave my word I would have to trust me to guarantee my presence but I'm good for it I'm soft on details I only remember my commitment entered in too shortly after I parked my car and burst into the church in a state of disrepair and observed for a nerve-racking moment a mass in progress people in sync the best gift of the Lord I'm saluted for no third reason but before performing the sloppy signs across and brought me to my knees right there on the floor get up, now get up, I'm slowly enlose I'm crept solidly to an MPC at the end of the pew as it reserved for me the broken one that's one way to end an essay but another way is more truthfully I made a stricter model I made a stricter model I never called myself a bigger, better than it I never forgot my place in the bargain I got big headed again and crowned myself the picture over it, like God, fate, whatever name suits it for a force no, ever, ever in my mind or in my heart fancied myself the rival of it the worthy foe the better man because I was so full of myself and I'm chasing because I was so full of myself and I'm chasing down a theme my own disillusion I can continue in this vein I can enumerate instances of my vanity it's necessary to essentially capture the rock in me and engage the depth of my spiritual degradation but only a full grown crisis computer of which has remained secret and will stay closed I'm open I'm resilient I'm mad handed with the future, surely but even turn upside down in my head if God's rough callous hand I can say I never reported what older versions would be I never underestimated life I never played games with it oh no, baby, not you I never mocked it and taunted it and, can you believe the fool I was stuck my tongue out and added in a mirror big bad life I never sat back and got drunk not too much anyway as company is rare and fraught and full still jokes where I avert the sly hero like the group I overpowered with wit I never competed my asinine act and stared into space and pronounced myself one and the same with it the stars, the sun, all in me like Whitman and now all the philosophers and scientists are saying we're made of the same dust as stars big deal life is real a terrible that even before I retired we're both serenely in a claim with emergent privileges I never inflated myself in a clash with hubris to make a point but in fact, series inside say I am bigger than life no, never not in any context, not even kidding after a rough day fuck life, it's on the ropes I never prospered not since my knees buckled in mass and never cried to strangers oh my and I swayed on my feet what's he saying help him, no, I'm fine I'm sticking to my story as all I got my words, my art, my truths my intent to pull it all together God on top of me God below me, God in me I can't stop on Mr. Narraga the locomotion motivated by the plow of emptiness that I had to eat and fuck off I open up my sadness an inactive part an inactive part that is a big burning engine causing me to clasp it down the thing right now pull it out maybe and hold it up to the sun hold it up to the sun like an old ass to it, yes ah, look I fed myself I'm forever in need of justification to even live I wonder then I called out life I'm lost bullshit I'm saying I never surrendered I never wrote an essay in my life it's all about the holiness and the imagination and what it can teach us it's also real and unreal, isn't it right? I'm on it I'm a fiction writer a short story dude I'm grabbing material I'm reading horror for just a minute reading in and out of my nostrils and great proliferation and getting a hold of myself certainly in this church let me just sit here with you, okay? I just want to bow my head, I'm ready thank you, thank you our next reader is Yahariah Salvatira Yahariah Salvatira's poems have appeared on our forthcoming in Poetry Magazine The Nation Kusashi and Rattle among others her collection Sons of Salt is forthcoming with the BOA edition she's an organizer for the San Francisco International Lori E. Kanto Literary Festival and a security editor for Kusashi she lives in Oakland, California where she's a dedicated educator please welcome Yahariah Salvatira who was published last year it is from it is from the book that is coming out here a woman during a walk I can see a volcano several miles away and almost feel its dirt on the soles of my bare feet or in the trees lifting the lightest parts of me my craving dress of soft red oil the dark wavy tresses of my hair and it unhealed so small so unseen what would happen if one of the roomies in my chest behind a bone fence erupts would I be able to escape unscathed to another room without a wound another volcano so I'll read the first poem from the book it's kind of like it's exploration of pain when something happens to one of our children and then look you to where to turn to and for me it was my dreams and the questioning of who when there is nothing else and what is God Prologue riddling wood with my ribs where are you stranded I have been driving along the highway one winding roads tall cypress trees off the coast of California even somewhere along the coast between point jays and farmlands riddled with cows and lavender colored windpines I was told it was a shipwreck on a beach or marsh wood eaten by a wind in standing with water wood brought dry by sun and sea salt he hoped me oh the story goes like this when the ocean imagined you it stretched a mighty wave reached into my chest broke the strongest rib above my heart to build you I am wounded above the heart left on a shore unprotected seen as I was sparrows filled the emptiness of me with the domed life play nest and laid their eggs I have watched as the shells crack from the inside how each chick took flight not resembling you longing for your song I called to the ocean to send a wave of honey sea salt on a wound the sea sounding in my ear I'm also translating a book of poetry by Julian Poit and I've edited so far she's from the Amazon Kudu and the way that she writes is there a lot of spirits right into those bodies as in hours and yeah I'm just super honored to work with her and translate her words this poem recently was published it's called Wooden Bodies by the banks of the Central River the wooden bodies traveled towards the sawmills from a port I contemplated on this have you seen some merchants passing through the city they looked like napping alligators or broken up islands driven by fair men when these pieces of wood arrived to their destination we are reminded of their conflicts and use the men cut down trees and fabricate lies about what we need municipal seats night stands altars, picture frames dressers, tourist souvenirs they were more than saw pieces these exploited bodies they were bird feedings these thousands of years old shuohakos now laminated and organized they're the last things of an extensive chain thank you this reader chan sayu said in English literature the first to account for new davis he's a writer and woodworker and an owl filmmaker he works in marketing and hence outdoors and often is possible he lives with his wife a third grade teacher his work disappeared in a Los Angeles review a great magazine Sacramento magazine and previously in Caterham in 2016 welcome Sean there's my second appearance in Caterham and each time I tell people about it or about Caterham I have this so he doesn't know it's on a phony article that I've written I wrote this piece it's titled Adam's bombs film vector goodness I wrote this last summer in 2022 and I had heard that a film was being conceived but it's been interesting to see how topical but this piece is about my grandfather my grandfather harnessed the power of the sun in the forsaken New Mexican desert his quiet blue eyes witnessed the zenith of this earth the most powerful tool why it's managed to build the version of destruction it warmed his whiskered cheeks it is aged years as fingers and toes curled like a velociraptors rheumatism of his digits visible arthritis of the utmost severity from exposure to the bomb each test Adam's crashed into his cells they crashed into each other surgery straightened his toes but he opted against the uncoordinated fingers Hiroshima and Nagasaki were good and all but we Americans could break down the dagger of the sun with much more proficiency than those two triumphs and with a ravenous American appetite why stop it too those were merely warm-ups and later we were poached hard enough by the cold soviet sickle ever bringing the nationalism and arrogance to the pitiful nest Powered by me to my grandfather came to Los Alamos to engineer electronic components of years post-Japanese surrender as fellow engineers and scientists at Nancy Congress worked a team of splitting of atoms this vision power weaponry we could study and control if it was to be added to our permanent American arsenal the atomic laboratory was dug site-wide over the hill by semi-knowing vocals lab residents lived among each other like a peculiar summer camp academics with the arm of their camp counselor many had the faintest clue the neighbors ranked their status or patent order a colonel or a physicist or a janitor might be standing in line in the commissary, unclear which is the occupied corner office or held a weapon they may have gone home and swaddled newborns with the same hand but swaddled plutonium spears ours before the atom was split a thunderous water surge in the inaugural detonation race around the atoll until it rose and dissipated into the wide-eyed atmosphere each test gadget bigger than the previous designed it really dropped a different altitude set off in the sea floor retired frigates were anchored around the liqueur so the damage could be assessed from afar Howard told us always with a smirk and a twinkle that he once found himself eating a sandwich on a makeshift open bench of sorts he looked down and realized he was sitting on a bomb gadget in some state of assembly 20,000 tons of dynamite below him while he shoved the balloon sandwich before going back to his post was certainly a fit but we like the image of it only in the atoll in all the atoll was named 23 times they blew the land in the sea to birds and fish invertebrates and backbone creatures like how many albatross and corals and coconut crowds were unwavering decimated or entered romance land just as another rupture was triggered a century later the atoll itself was mostly uninhabitable a scanned few bikinis now lived there as caretakers but the humanities last up the island alongside its pond a bigger seven decades ago the atoll and its islands were inhabited by creatures of all design with thousands of years the bomb destroyed at all in seconds staggering destruction aside what appealing it must have been to contribute and to the most advanced project everyone has undertaken to a change of face over here the human relations of purpose what a distinguish elation a sense of realisation and conquest and resolution though it was seldom mentioned my grandfather tassel lived here the DBA it was many years before the task had been given and completed and as far greater than him or any man who's signature was on the bomb something so astounding and extraordinary its fingerprint on its creation that it was worth its adulation nowadays the summer months bring with them a blushing reminder of the atoll in the greek isles in the southern frames of the big island of mawai in the reference of the atoll and crescent in the two pieces of pastel coloured nylon that adorned its maiden the bikini means place of coconuts similar can be said for the bikini the namesake sunny garment that indeed takes the name from the atoll my grandfather lived in DBA once where he pleaded in the hot water sojourned to my grandparent's house she asked the home he and his cadre had enough to wash the dust from their hair in that desert I had squandered the hog water that I would have thought in my head my hair still damped the grouse cold he gave startled me as the years came and went tripped over each other his time with the bomb quietly faded to memory what did these men of science possibly do with the remainder of their lives after they had devised a false son my grandfather became the chief engineer of a moss cable company he co-founded in the heart travel mountains of Northern California he sowed 50's air of four thunderbird in his garage baking blue a chic reminder of the era of his heyday in that misty desert I never saw him drive it and each man would contribute to the gadget become dead when Howard to the whiskered face fell the warmth of the bombs that seemed to destroy the world today an old list of lava log marks the spot two years ago two days before the turn of the test often I'm again quoted from the father that he did in battle in the forest of the precipice in the mountains on the dark great sea in the midst of javelins and arrows in sleep in confusion in the depths of shame the good deeds a man has done before defendant my grandfather was a good man and did good deeds in harness the power of the sun just as it is the instinct of the owl to catch the bull or the bear to winter hibernate it is the instinct of man to split the owl thank you Sean that was some of our summer issues came out at the same time very interesting well we have one more video tonight I also want to mention this slide show me again putting this together it's art from this issue of the magazine I like to curate visual art but it goes with the narrative of the essays and call them to the stories because the visual artists are doing the same thing only they have a different medium than these so it's really nice to see the art being shown with the readings and we have one more reader Dan Hayley he's really well known in Santa Cruz because he was responsible for preserving the Monterey Bay and making the Monterey Bay Sanctuary and so he's our hero in Santa Cruz so it's nice to bring him here and have him read a bit of his personal essay about doing them or elaborate bio Dan Hayley was the executive director of O'Neill Speed Honesty a free ocean going science and environmental program for low income elementary school students he serves on the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary advisory council and is a board member of and secretary for the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Foundation and from 2008 to 2019 he published an ocean call in the Santa Cruz Sentinel please welcome Dan Hayley okay great it's wonderful to be here thank you for having me thank you Calvin for having me in this beautiful magazine this magazine really deserves your support it's incredible work that it's done so the name of this essay is protecting the ocean and a kitchen table slideshow creating the Monterey Bay Sanctuary well it is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then dive to the tide pool again John Steinbeck from the log from the sea and the quartets we stepped off the helicopter that had flown west from Santa Maria over manned for air force states and the ocean and touched down on the windy deck of this offshore oil platform we were immediately instructed that in case of an explosion or fire we were to scramble into the friendly form of escape on right in front of us that would send us off this wooden this steel structure and into the safety of the choppy seas below it was 1991 in Santa Cruz State Council members Scott Kennedy and Don Lane accepted an invitation to our platform Irene the northernmost energy production facility in federal waters off California and they brought me along I was the first and only staff person at Seymour Shores a Santa Cruz based organization that had been hired by the city five years earlier to undertake a campaign with local governments in their fight against offshore oil development for California's northern and central coast I still have an electronic version of a photo that Scott took with his full-frame camera of Don and Dean in a well-companyed supply of foul weather gear the sea behind us thinly veiled spiles of mischief on our faces a century earlier John Stingbanks and Ricketts who operated a marine lab next to today's Monterey Bay Aquarium spent time doing research on the site holes along the shores of Monterey which resulted in the book being seen between the Pacific tides while his line provided rich material for Stingbanks homework the two of them piloted a chartered vessel the western flyer to the Sea of Cortez which Stingbanks would later use as a basis for his book along from the Sea of Cortez Ricketts contemporary he drove mayor and neurobiologist Julia Platt convinced the state legislature to establish California's first marine reserve in 1931 just off its shore her effort was an early forerunner of Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary which today over 6,094 square miles off of one quarter of the California's coast the 1,100 miles from his beautiful complex coastline feature rock out puffings sandy beaches tide pools sea stars and enemies and crafts and beautifully productive wetlands that like climate change offer ocean generated erosion and serve as wildlife nourishment the coast north of Santa Barbara County is also defined by what we don't see on the horizon offshore oil platforms so just over 3 decades ago ocean waters between San Cruz and San Francisco and of San Luis Vista County were high value targets for the oil industry the coastal southern California near my boyhood home posted drilling for decades beginning with wells off the beaches in the 1890s I thought the platforms in the Santa Barbara Channel in all 19th age and long age were as much a part of the landscape as the trees and wildlife I encountered on my hiking trips with my father and his voice scout crew in the San Bernardino Mountains the outpours seemed a great escape for us but they were not immune from the flaws of technology and the tragedy of human error thank you great job, ready to go? now I can say history, San Francisco and California history and also thank you Catherine Sigerson editor and publisher for Santa Barbara literary readers just beautiful literature and the graphics and art that comes with all of the collection so we have our Santa Barbara for sale now we'd like to pick up a copy of the event for next time