Moonshine Junkyard

There are days in October that are perfect. Days when friends visit and rains come. Sometimes they are not whole days, but moments. Pulling a chunk from a fresh, hot apple-cider doughnut. A rosy cheeked little daughter poking into the soft fresh earth with twigs. A nursery rhyme sung askew by a baby just learning to sing. Curly heads and calico. October breaks the whole dry, hot, parched world open and pours in whiskey, water, wine. Feeds us and quenches our thirst and whispers poetry on the winds. When were there ever winds before? Every storm feels new. On Wednesday morning Amber and Milla stopped by for a visit on their way up to Tahoe. It was refreshing to sit and talk with these moonsisters of mine. In my heart, always a little warm comfortable bonfire in their presence.  Milla brought us a pretty treat, her handmade salve that smells and feels good as it looks. We had to wave good-bye for a long time. It started to rain as we drove country ...

A couple of excursions lately and the book I'm reading have had me daydreaming about what it would have been like to be a parent to my daughters 150 years ago or so. Living in Gold Rush country, just minutes away from where gold was discovered in 1848 , we encounter "old west" flavored nostalgia at every corner. On our main street we have a (somewhat controversial ) dummy of a hanged man dangling from a noose out of a second story window. Tales circulate recounting the hauntings of miners' ghosts. They say there are closed up tunnels under and behind most of the downtown businesses that led secretive merchants to brothels behind the alley. In a massive digging effort a few years ago in the backyard of the Bookery, collectors excavated medicine bottles, vases, and pieces of pottery that they traced back to the earliest days of the California Gold Rush when this block housed the Union Hotel that burned down in 1856. Local graveyards are full of the bones of Chines...