The Sun Runner Magazine, August/September 2009

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The Sun Runner The Magazine of the Real California Desert, published in Joshua Tree, California

August/September 2009—Vol. 15, No. 4 The Sun Runner Magazine 61855 29 Palms Hwy., Joshua Tree, CA 92252 (760)366-2700 • www.thesunrunner.com Publisher/Executive Editor: Steve Brown publisher@thesunrunner.com Founding Editor: Vickie Waite Theatre Editors: Jack & Jeannette Lyons Contributing Writers: Lorraine Blair • David Brown Steve Brown • Olivia de Haulleville Fritz Drumm • Pat Flanagan Delphine Lucas • Jack Lyons Donna McCrohan Rosenthal Linda Saholt • Judy Wishart Andy Woods & all Desert Writers Issue contributors Contributing Photographers: Liz Babcock • Steve Brown Fritz Drumm • Linda Saholt Bruce Squires • Vera Topinka Judy Wishart Advertising Sales: Carolyn Gordon (760)366-2700, advertising@thesunrunner.com Distribution Manager: Sam Sloneker

The Sun Runner The Magazine of the Real California Desert

August/September 2009

Inside this Issue:

Dry Heat, by Steve Brown ... 11 Desert Art News, from the MBCAC & The Sun Runner ... 12 Third Annual Desert Writers Issue The Legend of Ayres’ Gold, by Scot E. McKone ... 17 Cosmos, Desert Tortoise, by Cynthia Anderson ... 18 An Unlikely Friendship, by Evelyn Brown ... 19 The Ramp, by Edd Anthony ... 20 Desert Sky..., by Carol Mann ... 20 Not Even Gloria, by Carol Mann ... 21 A Walk in the Desert at Twilight, by Dawn Huntley Spitz ... 22 The Welcome Home, by Lisa Mann ... 22 There is a Lot Next Door, by Catherine Svehla ... 23 Dissociative Disorder or Weekender?, by Francene Kaplan ... 24 Mojave, by Noreen Lawlor ... 24 Edna in the Desert, by Maddy Lederman ... 25 Sketches of Raven, by Noreen Lawlor ... 26 The Call of the Salt, by Sandi Hemmerlain ... 26 Sheeple Burgers, by Tom Loret ... 28 Noble Intentions, by Lee Balan ... 29 Francesca, by Stephen J. Wersan ... 29 The Stranger, Eric Eats an Artichoke, by Eva Stokes ... 30 In the Desert, by Caryn Davidson ... 31 Desert Winds, by Joanne Bodin ... 32 Desert Book Reviews Magnificent Mavericks, Review by Donna McCrohan Rosenthal ... 32 Death Valley in ‘49, Review by Delphine Lucas ... 33 Gather the Children, Review by Delphine Lucas ... 33 Chostly Guide to Calico Ghost Town, Review by Delphine Lucas ... 34 Nickel$ & Dime$, Review by Delphine Lucas ... 34 Not So Brave, Review by Delphine Lucas ... 35 Palm Springs-Style Gardening, Review by Delphine Lucas ... 35 Desert Destinations Wat Santi - A Thai Temple, by Olivia de Haulleville ... 36 Desert Environment 955 Pristine Acres for Sale!, by Pat Flanagan ... 37 Native Americans Go Native! Pow Wow in Ridgecrest, by Linda Saholt ... 38 Ramblings from Randsburg On the Trail of... Mr. Nagle the hardware man, by Lorraine Blair ... 39 Desert Theatre Beat, by Jack Lyons ... 40 Film Talk, by Jack Lyons ... 41 Remembering Tom Wilkes, by Judy Wishart & Fritz Drumm ... 42 Music News, by Judy Wishart ... 43 Sustainable Living Simple Times in a Simple Place, Clair’s Yurt, by David Brown ... 44 The California Deserts Visitors Association CALENDAR Upcoming California Desert Events, Art & Entertainment ... 46

The Sun Runner Magazine features desert arts and entertainment news, desert issues and commentary, natural and cultural history, columns, poetry, stories by desert writers, and a Calendar of Events for the California desert region. Published bimonthly.

MAGAZINE DEADLINE: Sept. 14 for the Oct./Nov. 2009 issue, for advertising, calendar listings, and editorial. To list a desert event free of charge in The Sun Runner Calendar, please send your press release to calendar@thesunrunner.com, or mail to: Calendar, c/o: The Sun Runner Magazine, 61855 29 Palms Hwy., Joshua Tree, CA 92252. Please include all relevant information in text format.

Notices submitted without complete information or in a wrong format may not be posted.

Event information will not be taken over the telephone.

SUBMISSIONS: The Sun Runner, 61855 29 Palms Hwy., Joshua Tree, CA 92252.

By email: publisher@thesunrunner.com.

SUBSCRIPTIONS: $22/year U.S.A. ($38/year International).

Copyright © 2009 The Sun Runner. Permission for reproduction of any part of this publication must be obtained from the publisher. The opinions of our contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the magazine. We have made every effort to be accurate, but we are not responsible for errors or omissions in material submitted to us, nor claims by advertis- Cover Art — by Steve Brown ers. Advertising, press releases, and public A view of one of Samuelson’s Rocks inside Joshua Tree National Park. A small hill service announcements accepted at the dis- in the Lost Horse Valley hosts a number of boulders inscribed by Swedish immicretion of the publisher. grant John Samuelson in the 1920s.

8 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

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10 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

S

ometimes, it’s good to get out of the desert for a little while and go on walkabout somewhere. New landscapes, new faces, and new experiences can help keep the creative juices all, well, juicy.

For me, that new place turned out to be the stunningly dramatic northeast coast of England—Scarborough, Staithes, and Whitby—along with the desolate beauty of the North York Moors, and a weekend in historic Liverpool. I was there, along with my bandmates Billy Makuta and Ellen Brenner, on a working vacation of sorts. We were on tour with our band There Be Pirates!, and the two weeks were so much of a whirlwind of travel, gigs, new friends, and explorations that I’m still waking up knackered and slightly unsure of where I am.

It was interesting to be immersed in a culture where live music is valued by a broad segment of the population, and people actually turn off the telly and go out to socialize and take in live performances. And it was comforting to encounter a society that deeply valued history, culture, art, science, and exploring their country on foot.

I spent some time at the North York Moors National Park, and noted the integral differences in British and American national parks, as well as how the public is approached by the park systems. And while we’re not comparing apples to apples, you can always pick up an idea or two that can cross over successfully.

In the case of the North York Moors, I found that the British connect their towns via well maintained trail systems (frequently older dirt roads) that are only open for foot, horse, and bicycle traffic (sometimes there will be a farm down one

of the roads, and they use the road for access, but traffic is minimal).

Could we do the same here in the desert? Well, to begin with, we’d have to have a populace who would respect restrictions on trail systems. Far too often here, I encounter unmistakable evidence of off-road vehicle use in areas where they are clearly banned—from wilderness areas to national parks. I don’t necessarily think that the British are inherently more responsible or respectful than we are, but I would bet fines and punishment for violating restricted spaces are exhorbitant, which helps stimulate the juices in the respect gland. Plus, gas is around $9 a gallon. That has to encourage hoofing it.

I would love to see areas of the desert offer accessible trails from town to town for hikers, bicyclists, and horseback riders. Could there be a day when a group of British tourists would arrive in Morongo Valley, hike their first day to Yucca Valley, spend the night, then hike to Joshua Tree, and on to Twentynine Palms? A local service would shuttle bags between motels or bed and breakfast inns, while visitors could hike with a knowledgeable local guide, taking in the history, culture, and natural beauty of our deserts, quietly on foot or horseback.

And meanwhile, somewhere off in the distance, could not another trail—one suited for off-road vehicle use—be operating in a similar manner, allowing locals and visitors variety in how they could explore the desert?

It’s something to think about as we try to balance the survival of the desert with the economic survival of our communities. We have a great deal to work with, but it’s up to us to put it all together.

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August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 11

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29 PALMS 29 Palms Art Gallery 29 Palms Art Gallery presents Desert Diversity III, a group exhibition Sept. 2-27.

A reception will be held on Sunday, Sept.

6, 12-3 p.m. with refreshments. This is the third bi-annual show that features artistic interpretations of the desert in a variety of media and includes 47 local and award-winning artists.

Open 12–3 p.m., Wed.-Sun. 29 Palms Art Gallery, 74055 Cottonwood Dr. (off National Park Dr.), 29 Palms. (760) 367-7819. www.29palmsartgallery.com

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12 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

29 Palms Creative Center “Charlie’s High Desert Polaroid Pictorial III” featuring Polaroids and Goodies is on display Sept. 19 to Oct. 19. A potluck artist’s reception will be held Saturday, Sept. 19, 6-10 p.m. Charlie’s third annual Polaroid Pictorial is upon us once again!

The time has come to grab your favorite dish, bring your loudest instrument, and dress in your charming costume! Charlie will litter the gallery walls with a festive array of Polaroids that she diligently took during the spring Joshua Tree Music Festival. Plus, a limited edition book will be available to have signed by the persons who were fortunate enough to be captured with Charlie’s Polaroid camera. Join the magical musical mystery mini-festival on Sept. 19, Saturday, 6-10 p.m., at the 29 Palms Creative Center & Gallery’s new stage for all musicians from rock (like the Sibley’s) to Christian. 29 Palms Creative Center & Gallery, 6847 Adobe Road, 29 Palms.

(760)361-1805. www.29PalmsCreativeCenter.com

The 29 Palms Inn, Oasis of Mara The Morongo Basin Cultural Arts Council presents paintings by Chris Walters and Anna Houghton at the historic Inn through August. Acclaimed photographers David McChesney and Wally Pacholka will be on show at the Inn through October and will be available to meet in person during the HWY 62 Art Tours, Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 from 9 a.m. to 5 pm. Open 7 days.

73950 Inn Avenue (off National Park Dr.), 29 Palms. (760)367-3505. To learn more about the art tours visit HWY62ArtTours.com 29 Palms Art in Public Places Art in Public Places at City Hall features an exhibit of photography by Bruce Miller through August. The exhibit for September/October will feature oils by Chuck Caplinger and night sky photography by Wally Pacholka, with an artists’ reception on Tuesday, Sept. 8, from 5-6 p.m., prior to the City Council meeting. City Hall, 6136 Adobe Road, 29 Palms. (760)367-6799.

29 Palms Call for Artists The Public Arts Advisory Committee of the City of Twentynine Palms announces a Call for Artists in Twentynine Palms to enter their work in a juried art exhibition entitled “Celebrate 29!” The event will be held during Pioneer Days in October and will tie in with the city’s new “29!” sculpture and the Chamber of Commerce’s 2009 Pioneer Days theme of “Celebrate 29!”

The juried exhibition is open to all artists living in the 92277 zip code area,

and will be judged by representatives from the Public Arts Advisory Committee, the Twentynine Palms Artists Guild, and the Morongo Basin Cultural Arts Council. Cash prizes include $300 for first place, $200 for second place, and $100 for third place, plus honorable mention ribbons. For more information, call the Recreation Dept. at (760)367-7562 or the Arts Council at (760)3662226.

JOSHUA TREE The Red Arrow Gallery “Images of Cuba,” featuring Jeanne Talbot and Janis Wilkins, opens with a reception for the artists Saturday evening, Sept. 5.

The show runs from Sept. 5-27. Red Arrow Gallery is open Fridays 5-8 p.m., Saturdays 12-5 p.m., Sundays 12-4 p.m., and by appointment. 61010 29 Palms Hwy., Joshua Tree. (760)3662519. www.theredarrowgallery.com Joshua Tree Retreat Center Weekly Life Drawing Group. The Morongo Basic Life Drawing League meets Thursdays from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center. Come for a great evening of drawing; bring your drawing or painting supplies and a drop for the floor. The $40 model cost is split among all who attend (usually 5-6) plus $1 for the facility. No membership or pre-payment required. Room locations are subject to change. September rooms to be announced. Contact Janis Commentz at elpres2@msn.com or (760)365-4955.

Crossroads Café Bonnie Brady shows a variety of mixed media paper art and paintings through August. A sampling of art from this year’s HWY 62 Art Tours participating artists will be on display starting Sept. 2 through Nov. 4. To learn more about the HWY 62 Art Tours and participating artists, including Diane Best, Mike Smiley, Steve Rieman, Rik Livingston, Mikal Winn, Mary-Austin Klein, Tina Bluefield, Ellie Tyler, Robert Arnett, Wally Pacholka, Christy Anderson, Davis Murphy, Karine Swenson, and more than 100 more artists, visit HWY62ArtTours.com or call the Arts Council at (760)366-2226. 61715 29 Palms Hwy, Joshua Tree. Open 6:30 a.m. – 8 p.m. Closed Wednesdays.

True World Gallery Gallery owners George and Bonnie Kopp will reopen the gallery after a summer hiatus. Call for information about the September showing. 61740 29 Palms Hwy., Joshua Tree. (760)366-2300. www.trueworldgallery.com Studio Godot Lo-Res Lifestyle, a collection of two years of low resolution photos shot by artist Sydney McCutcheon opens September 19, with a reception beginning at 7 p.m. Follow McCutcheon through a narrative of tragi-comedic subjects aimlessly stumbling into the viewfinder: cancer patients, drag queens, graffiti artists, ballet dancers, petty criminals, drug dealers, d-list celebrities, and homeless ex-pats all receive equal treatment through the lens of the iPhone. 61855 29 Palms Hwy., Joshua Tree. (760)366-2200.

YUCCAVALLEY Hi-Desert Nature Museum The Morongo Basin Cultural Arts Council will present an Art Tours Collective show at the museum in honor of HWY 62 Art August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 13

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Tours 2009. This year’s Basin-wide event, which includes the popular Open Studio Tours, will be held Oct. 24-25 (West End: Yucca Valley, Morongo Valley, Pioneertown, Landers, Joshua Tree) and Oct. 31-Nov. 1 (East End: Joshua Tree, Twentynine Palms, Wonder Valley). The HWY 62 Art Tours encompasses all the arts of the Morongo Basin during the twoweekend celebration, showcasing music, performance, and the best in visual arts.

The Open Studio Tours allows visitors to experience working studios and purchase original art affordably directly from the artists. Visitors and locals can plan their weekends and their own tour—planning the studios and artists they want to see, where to have lunch or dinner, when to take in some galleries or visit a museum.

They can also enjoy live entertainment at a choice of venues, including special events and theatre shows each evening.

The two-weekend event kicks off with an annual Art Tours Collective Show that will be held and cosponsored this year at the Hi-Desert Nature Museum in Yucca Valley and will include art from more than 100 artists from the Open Studio Tours.

Reception for the Art Tours Collective Show will be held Sunday, Oct. 18, 4:30-7 p.m. with refreshments, food, and live entertainment. Hi-Desert Nature Museum, Yucca Valley Community Center Complex, 57116 29 Palms Hwy. Tues.-Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m.

(760)369-7212. hidesertnaturemuseum.org MORONGO VALLEY

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NOMAD VENTURES 61795 Twentynine Palms Hwy. Joshua Tree Park Blvd. & Hwy. 62 (760) 366 4684

14 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

The Purple Agave Art Gallery Call to Artists: The Morongo Basin Cultural Arts Council and the Cactus Mart have announced a new group show titled CACTi at the Purple Agave Art Gallery in Morongo Valley. This juried show will award a variety of prizes including a cash first place prize of $250. All forms of art depicting Cactus or Cacti will be ac-

cepted for this show, including sculpture, painting, photography, etc. Wall art cannot exceed 30" x 30" and needs to be ready to hang. All artists are welcome to enter the show. Drop off dates for art is 9 a.m.5 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 6, and Monday, Sept.

7. The CACTi show reception will be held on Friday, Sept. 11, from 6-8 p.m. with entertainment and refreshments. The show runs through Nov. 8 and will be up and available for sale during this year’s HWY 62 Art Tours. Entry fee is $12 per piece, up to 3 pieces. Arts Council members pay $10 for the first piece and $6 for each additional piece. To learn more about the CACTi show or to become an Arts Council member, visit MBCAC.org or call (760)366-2226. To learn more about the HWY 62 Art Tours visit HWY62ArtTours.com.

Open daily. Purple Agave Art Gallery, 49889 29 Palms Hwy., Morongo Valley.

(760)363-6076. purpleagavegallery.com PALM SPRINGS Palm Springs Art Museum Impressionist and Modern Masters: Nature and Light, through Sept. 6. in the Annenberg Wing. Vigorous brushwork, spirited color, and artistic passion are some of the means by which artists exert a pull on their audience. In works of particular distinction, these fundamentals create a seductive ambiance that renders meaning approachable and effective.

Much of our response to great works of art is intimately tied to the inherent qualities of materials and the artist’s ability to entice us through them.

Lino Tagliapietra in Retrospect: A Modern Renaissance in Italian Glass, runs Sept. 26 through Dec. 27. This famed Italian glass artist will be showcased in this exhibition. Tagliapietra is revered as the master of glass blowing, an inspiring

Action Council for 29 Palms, Inc. is celebrating its 15th anniversary September 5, with a Happy Trails Chuckwagon Progressive Dinner, starting at 4:30 p.m. The organization that has been responsible for most of the murals found in Twentynine Palms, is celebrating with this hayride progressive dinner that will take attendees on a ride from the city’s first mural, The Keys, with a goodbye and farewell toast as the building is slated for demolition.

Hayride participants will travel to a number of stops while being treated to food, drink, and live music. Seven stops later, the attendees will arrive in Bucklin Park where there will be additional drinks and desserts, a silent auction and raffle, mural souvenirs, and a ceremony honoring the remaining members of the original Action Council Board of Directors.

In addition, the book, Oasis of Murals: Twentynine Palms, California – A Cultural Renaissance at the Gateway to Joshua Tree National Park, will be unveiled. The long-awaited book by Sun Runner founder Vickie Waite, will be available for sale at the September 5 event. Proceeds go toward mural maintenance and new Action Council projects.

Advance tickets for the event are $25.15 per person or $43.29 per couple. Tickets are available at the Twentynine Palms Chamber of Commerce (760)367-3445.

For more event information, contact Mel Berlin at (760)367-4477 .

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teacher, and the definitive expert credited with shaping the course of international Studio Glass. The exhibit includes 169 art works from a variety of styles and techniques. Complementary events include a Nov. 3 lecture by the artist for museum members only, a later panel discussion, and other offerings.

Open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Thursday 12-8 p.m.; 4-8 p.m. free admission sponsored by the City of Palm Springs. Located in downtown Palm Springs, 101 Museum Drive at Tahquitz Canyon Way, just west of N. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs. www.psmuseum.org (760)322-4800.

The Wright Image Gallery A local photography show featuring Felix Marquez, Alan Donald, Roccie Hill, Glenn Hessel, Carey Ann Mitchell, Perry Scanlon, Kim Laidlaw, and Nancy Minger is underway through September 15. The Wright Image, 125 E. Tahquitz Canyon #100, Palm Springs. (760)322-5777.

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TWENTYNINE PALMS ART GALLERY AND GIFT SHOP Desert Art Native American Jewelry and Southwestern Gifts 74055 Cottonwood Dr. (off National Park Dr.) Twentynine Palms, CA 92277 www.29palmsartgallery.com (760)367-7819 Open: 12 to 3 PM Wednesday–Sunday Summer Hours: 12 to 3 Friday-Saturday-Sunday

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9:00-6:00 Monday thru Saturday

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Art News, continued Dezart One Gallery Accessing Your Creative Source with an expressive arts therapy experience led by Clare Dune, MPS, arts therapist, artist, and teacher, will be offered August 16, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. $65 includes materials. Dezart One Gallery, 2688 Cherokee Way, Palm Springs. (805)272-5695.

TECOPA Tecopa Basin Artists Group Gallery The Tecopa Basin Artists Group Gallery is hosting a group show, Isolation or Solitude and What I Did On My Summer Vacation, from September 3 through October 7. Tecopa Hot Springs Resort, 860 Tecopa Hot Springs Rd., Tecopa. (760)8524420, www.tecopahotsprings.org.

Get your desert art news in our big upcoming Desert Art Issue (October/November). Deadline for submission of art news and images is September 14. E-mail information and images to: publisher@thesunrunner.com.

16 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

The Legend of Ayres’ Gold

By Scot McKone With all the folklore that circulates in the Hi-Desert, it is sometimes difficult to separate fact from fiction. And while the truth might be stretched in miner’s tales of grubbing for gold in what they described as, “Them thar hills” of the Mojave Desert region, their stories were often entertaining. And that’s where we begin….

I

n 1901, after years of sailing the oceans surrounding the globe with a continuous spray of saltwater and harsh sunlight reflecting off his wrinkled face, an ex-sailor by the name of Bill Ayres stepped off the train at the Gold Crown mining spur near Amboy, California.

And like all prospectors before him who held “gold-fever” dreams of “stakin’ a claim” and “strikin’ it rich” in the goldfields of California’s southwest desert, Ayres found himself in a somewhat different situation. During one of his earlier years’ ocean voyages, a young, inexperienced shipmate hooked and dragged aboard an 8-foot blue shark. But before anybody could get to clubbing the shark unconscious, Ayres had the misfortune to be in the way when the shark slid across the ship’s wooden deck, and with its bony jaw snapping against vicious rows of razor sharp teeth it bit off Ayres’ left leg below the knee!

But this wasn’t the most serious problem that Ayres faced.

After being fitted with an early-day “prosthesis,” or what was referred to as a wooden “pegleg,” Ayres found that while a wooden stump allowed him to get around on hard-surfaced ship decks, it was another matter entirely in the desert. With mountains of sand dunes and deep sandy washes standing

between him and the goldfields, wooden legs with semi-pointed ends are just not user friendly. So Ayres faced two choices: Stay by the spur and hop aboard the next train out where his “strikin’ it rich” dream would remain only a distant memory, or muddle through the soft sand toward one of the local outfitter’s shacks that dotted their way alongside the railroad tracks; he choose the latter.

And this is where Ayres had lady luck on his side. Not even a hundred yards from the spur where he first stepped off the train, he found in the sand the remains of a dried and crinkled leather boot, and it mattered little that it was a boot fitted for a man’s right foot or that it looked rather odd after it was wrapped tightly with twine to his bare left-footed pegleg. And while a grumpy sort of soul who generally didn’t take too kindly to insults, he didn’t seem to mind when a few of the miners who sat in the shade of the shacks teased him on his pair of mismatched, right-footed boots.

In fact, they were a friendly bunch who, after collecting a fair sum of money from Ayres, outfitted him with several pounds of dry-tack goods, jerked beef, a sack of flour, salt, coffee, a pouch of tobacco, a 20-gallon keg of water, pick and shovel, and a temperamental donkey named Gus. And with the helpful hint from the miners that “Jumpin’ another man’s claim” might land him in a heap of trouble, Ayres and Gus headed south toward the Bullion Mountains.

After only a few miles travel though, lady luck vanished when Gus developed a lousy attitude. For no reason other than sheer stubbornness, he stopped dead in his tracks, and no matter how hard Ayres pushed, pried or pulled, Gus reared his head ever higher, dug his hooves in even deeper and wouldn’t budge.

Ayres contemplated his dilemma for a moment, pulled up a rock for a seat, rolled a cigarette, and before he could get to August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 17

lighting it, Gus gingerly took a slow step forward and sniffed the freshly rolled tobacco. This gave Ayres an idea. He handed the unlit smoke over to Gus who promptly chewed it up. Ayres then rolled another one, and it worked better than a carrot. As long as a smoke was held out for Gus to sniff, that donkey followed. Ayres then thought if he could get Gus to sniff out a treasure of gold in the same way that he sniffed out tobacco, he’d be rich and reward his now faithful stead a pound of tobacco to chew.

But things didn’t work out that way. For 14 solid days, Ayres picked, hammered, and shoveled, and for all his labor, he’d only uncovered a nugget less than half the size of a match head. Then, on the 15th day, while working a small outcropping of quartz on a hillside, Ayres eyed a rock that looked out of place. About the size of a small child’s fist, and with a rustcolored scale covering the surface, Ayres found it heavy for its size. In turning it over, a ray of sunlight exposed a gleaming surface of a solid chunk of gold; he figured it weighed 6 or 7 ounces, where in dollars it equaled more than five years pay aboard a ship.

After celebrating his find by hopping around until his pegleg was ready to snap, he staked his claim with his mark, warning others that this was his area to mine, and loaded Gus’s saddlebag with the nugget and remaining supplies. He figured if they made a beeline to Amboy they’d arrive before sundown the next day and catch the train to Banning where he’d trade the gold for cash in the assayer’s office.

On the following day though, disaster: While in the sand dunes east of 29 Palms, a fierce sandstorm kicked up and Gus spooked and bolted out of sight—with the gold! By sunset, after the sandstorm subsided, and with no way to track Gus, with hoof prints covered under a thick layer of blow sand, Ayres had no choice but to make the rest of the journey to Amboy with no gold in hand. By the next afternoon Ayres hobbled into Amboy and found the same group of miners who’d been sitting in the shade a few weeks earlier. Ayres was a sight: Gaunt, thirsty, worn-out tired, and most notably, Gus was not by his side. With the miners expecting another far-fetched tale of how he’d found the “mother-lode,” Ayres could only describe how he and Gus had been separated and offered this reward: To any miner who found Gus and the gold he’d split half the loot and take on a co-partner to share the buried treasure that his claim might produce. Unfortunately though, he found no takers.

Feeling more dejected than ever, Ayres took his last few dollars, loaded up a donated saddlebag with a few meager dry goods, and went back to the desert in search of Gus and the gold; and as desert lore goes, both Gus and Ayres were never to be seen again.

Today though, over a century later, hikers report that upon returning from the desert near sunset, on warm summer evenings when a slight cooling breeze picks up from the west, they have spotted four freshly planted hoof prints, and alongside those, not one, but two, mismatched right-footed boot prints in the sand.

And there is one more thing. Yet to be claimed, somewhere between the rugged mountains of the Bullions in the north and the historic Oasis of 49 Palms to the south, still lays Ayres’ find: His fist-sized, gleaming nugget of gold.

Scot E. McKone is a writer, carpenter, and sometimes actor, as well as an active team manager at Tri-Valley Little League.

Scot is a 38-year resident of the hi-desert.

18 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

Cosmos At twilight, dust kicks up and creosote shakes like one possessed.

An orange glow lights the underbelly of a long, thin cloud— a torso orbited by smaller clouds that drift closer, closer until, at last, they touch.

Across the space of the sky, cleaving it, the windswept mass stays suspended in the window for a short eternity.

Soon it will be too dark to see the end.

But then we have the story of the stars.

Desert Tortoise With the stillness and patience of stone, a tortoise waits by the dirt road.

Drawn into himself, he appears nearly round, his carapace a prehistoric ball.

We take him by surprise.

He will not move until we are well out of sight.

A burrower, he holds knowledge of earth we can only dream—

We call him threatened.

But maybe it’s the other way around.

He could wait as long as it takes for this epoch to finish— Until the dirt road and the humans who walk here are forgotten, And his progeny move freely above and below the ground.

a crust covered by desert dandelions this juicy, redolent spring.

Cynthia Anderson, Yucca Valley Cynthia Anderson is a writer and editor living in Yucca Valley, CA. Her poems have appeared in The Sow’s Ear, Café Solo, ArtLife, River Poets Journal, Stone’s Throw, and others. Her collaborations with photographer Bill Dahl are online at www.rainbear.com.

L

eon grew up a lonely and often unhappy child. His brothers and sisters ignored him; his parents loved him but with worknever had time to spend with him. His only friends were in whatever book he happened to be reading at the time. Finding solace in the desert with its wide-open spaces and a kinship with the creatures that dwelled there, most of his free time was spent surrounded by sand and scrub brush.

He started out early that morning, headed for an abandoned mine he had found two weeks earlier while exploring.

The entrance was overgrown with vegetation and hidden from the world. Leon himself would have missed it if it had not been for the tailings that lay just a few feet away.

Carefully lifting the dead branches of a greasewood, Leon entered his desert hideout. The coolness of the mine was a welcome change from the high temperatures caused by the heat of the sun beating down on the desert floor. Sliding the backpack from his shoulders, he removed a battery-operated lantern to illuminate his way. From the mouth to its furthest point, it only measured about 50 feet due to an earlier cave in.

Running his hand along the rock and dirt that now blocked his way from going further, his mind took flight, seeing men with picks in hand running for their lives as rocks fell at their feet and dust filled the air.

Deciding this would be the perfect place to set up camp, Leon emptied out his pack. Bottled water, sandwiches his mother had made the night before, and a copy of Tales from a Thirsty Land written by local authors. More at home here than at his house, he sat back and reveled in the silence. Setting the lantern on a large rock, he rested against the wall and opened the book to the first story. Only halfway through the second, he began to feel tired. As his chin dropped downward, the book slipped from his hands coming to rest in his lap.

He dreamt he was in the mine when it was in full operation, hearing the sounds of the metal picks hitting rock and the groaning sounds of the men that swung them. The air hung heavy, filled with the smell of sweat and the creosote used to treat the wooden supports. Hearing angry voices, Leon looked to the far wall were two men were fighting over a burro. The younger of the two, a well-built Mexican, stood shouting at the other, a tall frail-looking man with a weathered face that showed signs of years in the desert sun. What he could hear of the conversation, it was not so much the animal, but what it was carrying that was in dispute. The argument came to blows as the young man balled up his fist and slammed it into the face of the older man. Blood splattered the wall from his nose and mouth. Holding tight onto the burro’s lead, he wiped at the blood that ran down onto his shirt. Aggravated, the animal brayed and tried to pull himself free. With his fist once again raised, the young man delivered the killing blow. Just as the man fell to the ground

releasing the burro, a stampede of miners ran past toward the entrance.

Feeling the earth rumbling beneath him, Leon sat up, his book falling to the ground. Not yet fully awake, his vision still blurred from a deep sleep, he looked up to find the thin elderly man from his dream standing above him with the burro at his side, swayed back and loaded down with bulging burlap sacks.

Disoriented and confused by what he was seeing, Leon tried to stand but his legs failed him.

“Who are you?” Leon asked, looking around for some indication this was still a dream. ”Where did you come from?”

“You must get up,” he said, in a distant voice holding out his hand. “There’s not much time.”

“Time for what?”

“You must get up,” he repeated, ignoring Leon ‘s question. “There’s not much time.”

“Time for what?” Leon snapped, trying to rise to his feet once again only to feel his brain explode inside his skull.

Feeling the darkness closing in on him as he began to lose consciousness, Leon grabbed for the outstretched hand before him. The last thing he remembered was seeing the miner’s face and feeling his icy grip.

Waking up in the hospital to find his father looking over him with red-rimmed eyes scared him. He had never seen his dad cry. His mother jumped from a chair by the window and threw herself across his chest, wetting his hospital gown with her tears.

“What happened?” Leon asked, looking down at the top of his mother’s head.

“You don’t remember?” his father choked, looking around for the doctor. “A trucker found you lying on the side of the road off the highway. They say you took a bump to the head.”

“I remember,” he said, stopping himself. If he told them what he had seen, they would only worry and he was sure they would never allow him to go walking alone again. After all, it was only a hallucination, right? “No, I don’t. I really don’t.”

“It doesn’t matter,” his mother said, straightening herself.

“What matters is you’re safe. It was a terrible earthquake and we were so worried when you didn’t come home.”

“An earthquake?” he asked, surprised. “There was an earthquake?”

“Yes,” his mother replied, running her hand through his hair. “But don’t you worry, everyone is fine. You just think about getting better so you can come home.”

Missing the open desert and the solitude, Leon was well enough to go out on his own after a month, and his parents agreed. He was still unsure what happened in the mine that day or how he got to the highway, but one thing he was sure of, he had to go back. Slipping the straps of his backpack, which the truck driver found laying beside him with his lantern and book, over his shoulders he set out across the desert.

Walking to the back of the mine, Leon found the earthquake had brought down part of the wall from the previous cave in, and sticking out from the rubble was the top of a water bottle, his water bottle. Feeling the temperature drop, he turned to find the miner and his burro welcoming him back. This time he knew it was not a dream. Recognizing the miner as a lonely kindred soul, Leon smiled at his new friend.

Evelyn Brown has been a resident of Twentynine Palms since 1987.

She was first published in 1976 and last published in 1989, mainly short stories submitted to periodicals. “I am self-employed and just in the last year have once again picked up the pen and paper. Currently I am working on a novel. I am pleased and honored to be a member of the Desert Writers Guild of Twentynine Palms. I have a book addiction for which I have not found, nor am I sure I want to find, a cure.”

August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 19

The Ramp

By Edd Anthony

S

he was arthritic, but I wouldn’t consider her frail, by any means. She called me over to look at her house. The tiny 1950s homestead shack in Joshua Tree was kept in pretty good condition. The paint was done fairly recently, but the cactus and succulent garden could certainly use attention, unless she was trying to cultivate homes for pack-rats.

Being a journeyman carpenter for 10 years in the Morongo Basin got my name around the residents. She was starting to have trouble getting up the three steep, concrete steps that led to her front door. She wanted to know if I could build her a wooden incline so that the trip from her door to the mailbox on the dirt road would be easier to make. She reminded me so much of the grandmother I never had: good natured, flowery dress under her ruffled apron, offering me a glass of fresh squeezed lemonade.

I walked around, sizing up the grounds to make a bid. After a few minutes, she came to me and was sincere when she replied she would pay me well for the job. She stated she understood how building things these days cost more than it used to, and offered me $100 to do the job. She obviously didn’t understand just how much building supplies have gone up, nor what the current cost of labor was. I did not want to change her smile that showed such friendly crows’ feet next to her eyes. I told her I would take the job.

As I drove home, I wondered what in the world was I thinking? Materials alone would be three times that much. I did not want to burden her with the facts that the rent on my apartment just went up 20%. My daughter needs braces, which is not covered in my self-employment insurance, and the work truck does not go into first gear anymore. I took a deep breath, sighed, and drove home.

She agreed to let me work on her ramp on my days off. It was a job that could be done fairly quickly. As I worked, she would come out and visit with me, smiling at the progress that was being made. She told me stories of what it was like growing up on a farm in the Mid-West, getting up at the crack of dawn to feed the animals before going to school. Her brothers taught her how to throw rocks to hit prairie dogs as they peeked out of their holes in the fields. She boasted about getting three in one day.

By the third day, the job was done, but I just wanted to make this ordinary ramp look special to match this kind-hearted, cookie-giving woman. I found some scalloped moldings to put on the sides of the incline and painted them to match the blue trim of the house. The ramp itself was painted to match the light gray of the main part of the house. I also added stylish texture to the top so she would have better traction. I lined the sides of the ramp with potted flowering, drought-resistant plants to brighten up the yard that was getting away from her. The look of delight on her face was worth a million dollars. She gratefully paid me $100 in cash. We said our goodbyes, wishing each other well, and I left.

Not having a lot of business on that side of town, I really did not pass the house that often. But when I did, from the dirt road I inspected the ramp. Unbeknownst to her, one time I stopped to fix a board that had come a little loose. Other than that, the ramp was always in good shape and kept up.

20 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

About ten years after I agreed to do that job, I got a letter in the mail regretting to inform me of the dear lady’s passing. I only hoped the ramp brought her comfort and ease in maneuvering for her last ten years. Down the page of the letter I continued to read that due to my kindness, I was listed as a recipient to part of her estate. Apparently she had measured the amount of space the ramp had taken up on her property.

She calculated the percent that was of her total property, and left me that much of her estate. It brought tears to my eyes when I read that part. I felt her smile then, and at that point, I knew what good cause to put the funds toward to keep the kindness flowing.

Edd Anthony is an artist, photographer, poet and author of several books. Originally from Philadelphia he came to California 32 years ago to accept the position as director of photography for a multi-media company in Los Angeles. His works can be seen on permanent display in various galleries throughout the United States, notably the Walter’s National Gallery in Baltimore and the state capitol in Sacramento. He has been a resident of Palm Springs for the past 11 years.

Desert Sky… kaleidoscopes above the Valley, players’ roles distinct, a stage infinite.

Night folds the Mojave in its arms, shy rabbits and bold coyotes roam incognito.

Moon appears, its impish face draws long shadows on sand, sky-reaching palms.

The Big Dipper ladles stars, constellations on dark canvas, across the sky.

Cirrus ribbons wrap the moon-lamp in gauzy white glow, out of focus.

Sun waits, stretches its gold onto the sky, walks boldly from behind the mountains into Daylight.

Carol Mann, La Quinta

F

oam sloshed down his fingers as Jingo Sparks grabbed a draft beer from the bar. The ride on I-10 through open desert made his mouth feel like a bowl of dry oatmeal.

Slipping the Harley keys in his pocket, he edged through the Friday night crowd gathering at Rick’s Pool Hall and Lounge.

The hot trip into midtown Blythe was always worth it—beer, pool, and a place to stay cool. He found a chair near the tables.

Boozer Diggins spotted him. “Hey, Jingo. How ‘bout we shoot a few rounds? Twenty bucks a game?”

“You’re on, Boozer.”

While Boozer racked the balls, Jingo picked a pool cue. He needed to hustle a few bucks. His new, high maintenance girlfriend Gloria liked fancy things. Cost him plenty, but she made up for it in bed—where it counted.

He took a long swallow of beer. Man, he loved to flash Gloria around—make his friends jealous, especially Spike Grogan, who’d dangle his little finger and say, “Hey, Wee Willie.

You’ll never keep Gloria.” Oh, yeah? Gloria was his way of saying to the world, “Everything is workin’ just fine.”

Tonight, she was visiting her Aunt Mabel. Bronchitis, she said. Good. Gave him a chance to raise some cash. Last night he took her to the Flying A Truck Stop for a sandwich. She threw a tantrum. Damn near chewed his ears off.

“Well?” Boozer asked, leaning on the pool table, chalking his cue stick. “We gonna play or not?”

They played most of the night. Jingo kept sinking his shots and was soon up a couple hundred bucks. Guys hung around the table, smoke thicker than morning haze on the mountains.

His eyes burned as adrenalin raced up and down his arms. God, he loved this game. Too bad Gloria couldn’t see him in action.

Around midnight, Boozer quit. Before someone else stepped up to play, Jingo went to the head. He slicked back his unruly hair, smoothed his Johnny Cash shirt into his black jeans.

He also tucked the winnings in his boots. Had to be careful about flashing cash.

On the way back to the pool tables, he saw something he didn’t expect. What the hell? Gloria was in the lounge with some guy. Jingo recognized him—the winner of a big pool tourney last month. Lenny “One-Shot” Guardino. He came through town once in a while. A real set of hands—in more ways than one. Hold it, buddy. Gloria was his, Jingo Sparks’s girl. Hoisting his jeans, he walked to the table.

Gloria looked up. “So what are you doing here? You said you were gonna work on your car.”

“So how’s your Aunt Mabel?” he said, not moving.

Goddamn her. Panic punched him in the stomach. He’d never find another chick like her. It had been a great night, all the guys wanting to shoot a game with him. Gloria should be hanging around, sitting on a stool near the pool table. Guys saying, “That’s Jingo Sparks’s girl. Man, he’s one cool dude.”

Jingo stared at One-Shot. Son-of-a-bitch.

“Oh, Jingo, just go.” Gloria waved him away with her hand.

He put his sweaty palms in his pockets, cool-like, shifted his weight. Not so fast. What if… One-Shot was a class player.

Taking the guy on could pull him up the pool ladder, build his reputation. Give him a chance at real money. Gloria’d want to be in his arms, not One-Shot’s. Words flowed from his mouth before he could dam them up.

“Hey, One-Shot. Got a proposition. Let’s shoot a game, just one game. Winner gets Gloria.”

“Say what?” Gloria tossed her curly blonde hair, her face flamethrower red. “Who do you think you are?”

Jingo waved his hand. “Just wait, sweet cheeks.”

One-Shot unwrapped his arms from Gloria, raised an eyebrow, looked Jingo up and down. “You got guts. Tell you what.

One game—open table, real casual. Sink any ball, any order, down to the eight and the cue ball. Then sink the eight. I’m gonna up the ante. The lady PLUS two hundred bucks.”

Gloria stomped from the table toward the restroom.

Jingo swallowed. He was playing for his girl. For all his winnings. He inhaled—and nodded.

They lagged for the break. If One-Shot won the lag, Jingo’d probably never get a chance to shoot. He held his breath. OneShot’s ball lagged short of his. Great. Or was it? Was the guy just messing with him? Letting him shoot, waiting for him to blow it?

In the wall mirror behind the table he saw Gloria move closer to the action, sit on a bar stool, light up. She crossed her long legs, swinging one back and forth. He looked away and chalked his cue.

Jingo called his first shot and potted the ball. He sunk the next and the next. His cue stick lit up, touched with magic.

Onlookers collected nearby as he kept making his shots.

“Go for it, Jingo,” someone said. His gut tightened like a fist.

A murmuring silence settled over the room. Most everyone seemed to know the stakes. He could become a hometown hero—the guy who put everything on the line for his girl, the guy who beat Lenny “One-Shot” Guardino. Or lose everything.

Gloria stood up, put out her cigarette, moved a little closer.

Then it happened. Jingo missed his next shot.

“Choke time,” One-Shot quipped.

Poker-faced, One-Shot stepped to the table. He played fast, the cue stick and his hands a smooth machine. The balls dropped, until only two remained—the cue and the eight. Jingo bit his lip. The man lined up the winning shot—and missed.

One-Shot winked and stepped back.

Jingo shook his head. He’s gotta be jabbin’ me. Thinks I can’t handle the pressure. He glanced over his shoulder. Gloria was right in front. Shadows played on her face, the dimple in her left cheek deeper than ever.

One-Shot left him a lousy pop shot. The cue ball touched the wood railing, the eight ball right in front of it. He arched his left hand on the rail, extended his thumb, angled the stick high, and popped it onto the cue ball. His stomach sagged. The stick hit the cue ball half-assed. The cue ball hit the eight ball halfassed. The black ball rolled, wobbled, hung on the edge of the pocket.

August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 21

With one shot, he’d just become a pool room joke. Guy dumb enough to bet his girl on a game with a pool shark. Jingo bent down to pull the money from his boot.

Someone shouted through the noise. “The damn ball just dropped.”

One-Shot threw two Franklins on the table. “You got hustle, Jingo Sparks. Next time I’m in town, we’ll play a real game, legitimate. You got some money. I’ll get it back.” Nodding at Gloria, he walked toward the door.

Gloria glared at the man’s back. She turned to Jingo. “All’s forgiven, honey.”

One-Shot’s words roared in Jingo’s ears. The guy wanted to play him again. He brushed by Gloria. “Hey, One-Shot. It’s okay. She’s yours.”

Nothing—nothing—could beat this high…

Not even Gloria.

A Walk in the Desert at Twilight

Carol Mann’s stories have appeared in RiverSedge, Cantaraville Six, Atlantic Pacific Press, The Sun Runner’s Second Annual Desert Writer’s Issue, and The Road Taken—an Anthology. She has received the Palm Springs Writers Guild First Place Award in their annual short story competition. Currently, she serves on the board of the National League of American Pen Women, Palm Springs Branch.

I revel in the peace and solitude.

We own it all, my frisky dog and I. Deserted by the winter’s multitude, On this breathless evening in July.

Saffy strains to sniff for living treasure.

Her stubby tail quivers with delight To see the rabbits, doves and geckos Flushed from hedges, startled into flight.

I gaze into the mountains to discover The scorching sun has disappeared from view.

A canopy of clouds now hovers, Radiant with gold and rosy hue.

Birds flit and twitter in the olive trees, Heat shimmers on the lake in fading light, A feathered fleet is floating at its ease, An owl proclaims the coming of the night.

Dawn Huntley Spitz, Rancho Mirage

The Welcome Home The day my brother came home, the summer moon was full, the quiet sizzled.

I climbed into his crib and held his hand, I understood the isolation, the binding to machinery instead of flesh.

I could see the whir of centuries, the past lives still imprinted on his small and barely formed body.

I welcomed him.

I whispered warnings into his ear, breathed hope into his opened mouth And claimed him.

He would grow strong, despite their lack of interest.

He would pluck music from the stars and surprise the skeptics.

He would overcome again and again, transforming pain into vast gardens in impossible climates.

He would face loss and pain with the eyes of the ancients who know this is just a play.

He would later rely on morphine to lift him from the pain of twisted bone and finally return to the desert that cradled him.

He would lay his head down on the warm sand, under a vast sky of blues and whites, of orange and scarlet.

He would dissolve into it, into its memory of comfort and play letting the smell of desert rain wash over him, letting creosote and cactus and wild birds embrace him, hearing the song of a stretched horizon, of incantation, the welcome home.

Lisa Mann, Yucca Valley 22 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

O

n the south side of my house lies a vacant lot where I occasionally poke around. Hardly empty, it is home to dozens of shrubby plants adorned with wind-blown trash, a twirling squash vine, and the frame of an abandoned ten-speed bicycle. Spring through fall, clicking clutches of Gambel quail scratch the dirt, laying down tracks alongside those of little white-tailed rabbits. Birds call. I pick up old metal screws and other rusty detritus that strikes my fancy to make ornaments for the sculptural bare limbs of a small dead tree in my front yard. Once I found the corner of a twenty-dollar bill and page two of someone’s love letter on the same afternoon. I searched for some time for the larger bodies of both.

In the midst of this panoply stands a solitary Joshua tree, the only one in the neighborhood. Actually a giant yucca, the plant got its name from Mormon settlers. They imagined that the tree’s shaggy, expressive branches were the uplifted and welcoming arms of the biblical prophet waving them home. One morning, I again wandered aimlessly into the lot and was attracted to the Joshua tree by the rustling activities of cactus wrens in the dry, spiky leaves. I squatted at its foot. As my eyes focused I noticed the seed pods, some as large as a lemon, in the general litter of vegetation. I counted a dozen or so in varying stages of decay and, suddenly fascinated, selected four and held them in my hand. The pods seemed to contain a tantalizing truth that I had to discover.

Two of the pods were whole, their shells a mild, bleached yellow, wrinkled a bit like a walnut. The other two were much smaller, riddled with holes, darkened, and much deteriorated. I was thrilled by the simple fact that they were large enough to really handle, examine, and carefully cut open. I took them into the house and the mysteries of their intricate structure kept unfolding, layer by layer, like those nesting Russian dolls. The actual seeds were hard, black, and round like a small hockey puck. I told a friend about the two shriveled pods. “They’re desiccated,” I said.

To become desiccated is to dry up, to lose all water, a process that has particular relevance in the arid environment of the desert. People tend to focus on the intense heat and for good reasons. But the reduction of both matter and life force due to dehydration occurs at any temperature. As women living in the desert know, regular exposure to the dry, cold, winter wind puts lines in one’s face fastest. Extreme dryness and low humidity are the basic desert principles; the heat is merely an accessory to the desiccation process.

An effect of the desert’s dryness is its relative barrenness, an emptiness that invites mental clarity and sometimes, too, a deep sense of desolation. Water is necessary to life. The womb is a watery place and water is a primary component of the bodies of all living things. The desired escape from a Mojave summer usually involves a trip to the ocean, rivers, or mountains shaded by tall pines and dotted with wildflowers. But just as physical life is equated with moisture, so is feeling. Emotions gush, flow, pour, stream, or flood. Tears spring to our eyes during a wave of extreme emotion or slowly seep out of a leaky psychic container of loss.

Getting in touch with one’s feelings is important, but too much feeling can become a preoccupation, soft, weighty, and bloated. Water is surprisingly heavy, and drying something out makes it lighter. What is left behind, the husk so to speak, may be more fragile and less stable than the waterlogged body, easily blown about, blown apart, and scattered. But this increased vulnerability can also be interpreted as a heightened sensitivity and capacity for an authentic response to powers ignored by the absorbed self. Purged and stripped down to fighting weight we find the strength to contend with the forces that are always present, pushing and shaping our lives in ways we often disregard to our detriment, or succumb to without a struggle. Life goes on when the pain dries out and the crying ends. Imagination builds the bridge over the rivers of trouble and suffering that threaten to carry us away. Salvation is found in the impersonality of dry land. The inhospitable desert is, paradoxically, a refuge and place of renewal.

The seed pods were crumbling and losing their integrity, losing the soft covering that typifies the advanced stages of desiccation and the stripping down that takes place after death.

Similarly, I have on my kitchen windowsill the fragile curves of a small snake, its death pose visible in the bones. When I find such bones in the desert, arranged in the dying creature’s last posture, I feel my own mortality. Conscious contact with our basic need to breathe, drink, and perhaps find shade can free us from our anxious, determined striving. The desert is full of such memento mori, reminders of what a self-absorbed society strives so hard to avoid and postpone. Oddly, the close contact with the ready presence of death, contained in the very relationship between human and desert, is a relief, a relaxation of the futile effort of denial. The fragility of physical life is a reminder that world and self are transitory. This is a wilderness perspective that one can cultivate, strengthen, and carry inside, a mental touchstone powerful as a feather or a bone.

The Joshua tree seed pods will not last long, but their departure is testimony to another important truth; the perpetual creativity of a life cycle in which everything is valuable, even those things that we have been trained to regard as useless, used up, dead, or painful. The pods and the vacant lot where they fell among faded gum wrappers, the white bones found beneath the dry thicket of a greasewood bush, and the sad, dark holes in the hills that produced nothing of commercial value all contain this tantalizing truth. That is a lot.

Catherine Svehla Ph.D. is a writer, artist, and storyteller. She lives in Joshua Tree and is the leader of the High Desert Mythological Roundtable, which meets the last Tuesday of every month, 7-9 PM, at the Joshua Tree Retreat Center. Contact Catherine via her blog, Cultural Mythology: American Notions of Self and Country, at www.catherinesvehla.com.

August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 23

Dissociative Disorder or Weekender?

By Francene Kaplan

“

Oh – You’re a ‘Weekender’.”

I couldn’t tell if this was said in scorn or envy. Great—I have two houses....Well, at least one house and one partially dilapidated homestead shack. I have employment 120 miles away from my enjoyment. I am a number on a form behind the Orange Curtain as well as a known, active member in the Village of Joshua Tree.

I live parallel lives, each with a different purpose. I have one foot in each psychological world that literally comes with the territory. I feel like the protagonist of Cher Bono’s “Half Breed” song ... not engaged enough in this place, and not surrendered enough in the other.

These lives bleed into each other sometimes. I intentionally killed my lawn in the OC as I learned more and more about ocotillo, yucca, and live-forevers. I have to remember not everyone enjoys seeing thick-soled boots as footwear with my professional attire. They don’t carry a needle-nose nor tweezers to deal with cholla hanging out of their dogs’ tongues.

Bathing every other day is just not understood by Colorado River-fed folks: they know nothing about conserving water that is taken out of our precious aquifer. Have you been to the Oasis of Mara lately?

Three more years until retirement, yet the pull of the desert gets stronger and stronger. My once every so often stay at the Joshua Tree Inn has turned into every weekend at my cabin, usually calling in sick on Mondays. The cabin has its own family of bats. I guess the equivalent in the OC would be the year’s exodus of June-bug beetles, violently jarred awake from their slumbers during the 4th of July’s illegal explosions.

Chicken-brie-cranberry crepes, Tandori, angel hair alla manno, and cream of shitake soup are found nowhere near sand and washes. REAL macchiatos can be found within every mile where the concrete and asphalt are the main ground coverings. Here, too, the multiple story bookstores are open seven days a week (get it—multiple story bookstores). Yucca Valley’s museum cannot compare to the Museum of Jurassic Technology for entertainment value. What I need to complete an art project in the desert is forgotten in Orange County. The bill payment that needs to be mailed as I pass the Joshua Tree Post Office is five freeways away.

In the high desert, I would be able to spend more time at the places where I volunteer.

“Why don’t you move out to JT full time?”

“Job seniority and my dad is 83 in the OC.” I am obligated to live in both worlds.

This disjointed living in appearance seems to be the best of both worlds. The truth is I can never be at peace and relaxed because there is always something that must done or brought to the other location.

I’m torn, I’m torn. From driving I am worn. I guess this will sort itself out the day I turn in the card to forward my mail.

24 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

I know no one in restaurants, stores, entertainment events in the OC, yet two hours away, no matter where I go I see someone who acknowledges my existence. Avoidance on the sidewalk, sneers, or looking away vs. hugs, smiles, and verbal exclamations with genuiness.

Francene Kaplan has served as a science/health teacher for 25+ years in Orange County and for a while was the only licensed psychologist in Joshua Tree. She seeks out the desert to get grounded. She has taught psychology and organic gardening, gives talks “On Being a Green Mother,” is a Land Stewart for the Mojave Desert Land Trust, collects inorganic objects from the desert to create assemblage art and has exhibited in the Morongo Basin Open Studio Art Tours. Writing is a new spark that puts life into all of the little notes put aside in piles.

Mojave Autumn Wind is an ocean which rages Across this desert Sculpting these rock pillars Relentless as the rattle Of that snake, over there Guarding his little patch of shade Winter Snow a foot and a half deep Silvers Joshua Trees, turns Teddy Bear Cholla into grotesque Sea anemones and one green flash Of an iridescent humming bird Searches, weighted white branches For pale flowers Spring The Brittle Bush clumps Itself between the boulders And makes this barren hill A rock garden That the Desert Dandelions weave Into silent yellow Prayer flags Summer Everything dries up, prickles Stings, burns, bakes and bites Snakes and scorpions and huge red ants Come out by day but there are nights When a million stars pour through The cloudy Milky Way

Noreen Lawlor, Yucca Valley

Edna in the Desert

By Maddy Lederman

H

ot sun on Edna’s forehead elevated the “slight queasiness” to “heavy nausea.” She tossed over, optimistic (a change of position might be a relief), but pistachios and beef jerky on a full day of driving did her in. Or, it was possibly what she’d just heard. She doesn’t remember asking to pull off, only hunching over next to the family car, a turquoise Coronet softly rocking as Brandon bounced around the back.

“Are you ok, honey?” Edna’s mother called from inside.

Her father stepped out, saw there was nothing he could do and stepped back in.

“What does it look like?” Edna was annoyed at the interruption. Then it occurred to her that the open desert was a great place to throw up and she continued doing so. Everything would dry out and flake away and it was so much nicer than putting your head near the cleanest toilet, but maybe not so nice for the lizard jumping away.

Later, the map rustled up front. Brandon wielded a machete, a gun, a bow and arrow-with-a-suction-cup-tip and a slingshot. He can attack with any weapon and in combinations.

The arrow flies at Edna, hovers on her cheek and drops.

“Brandon is either very mean or simply not yet made aware, at his age, of how to treat sick people. It could be either or both, I’m not sure.”

“Mom, Edna’s not playing again.”

Joan deflated at the sight of her 13-year-old daughter crumpled in the back seat, and she wondered for the hundredth time what she was doing wrong.

“Edna. Sit up and be nice to your brother.” No reaction from Edna. “This ‘rebellious stage’ is boring and you do seem like a complete...nincompoop. Can’t you see what trouble this got you into? …Edna, I’m speaking to you!” Edna peaks through her fingers to indicate listening under extreme protest, a gesture Joan ignores. “Try to sit up. You’ll feel better if you sit properly.”

“Rebellious implies rebelling against something by not playing ‘Brandon shot me in the face with an arrow’ when in fact I am nauseated, and by your remarks, it follows that you are grossly insensitive or possibly stupid. And ‘nincompoop’ best describes those who use that idiotic word first.”

Joan was speechless. She looked to Edward who shook his head and offered the usual: “You don’t talk to your mother like that.” But Edna obviously did.

Edna’s mother, Joan, was a charm school instructor and therefore a beautiful and elegant version of herself at all times.

Her mother’s perfect example deterred any of Edna’s possible like ambition, as opposed to raising it, which was the desired effect. Lately, Edna’d gotten into the habit of provoking Joan to step outside her wardrobe of acceptable behaviors and, if Edna was successful, raise her voice or even scream. Nowadays this might be called “negative attention getting.” Edna was not aware that she did this because the less perfect Joan was, the closer she felt to her.

“It’s a relatively harmless quirk based on an exacting interest in the subtlety of language which is very interesting.” Or so Joan and Edward assured themselves until Edna became increasingly impossible to discuss anything with and recently had an embarrassing incident at school involving a pair of dirty gym socks and a teacher’s aide. The aide was fired, of course, but when Edward realized he secretly sympathized with the guy and had almost done something similar some months previously, it was time to do something about what he called Edna’s severe case of “wise-ass-itis.”

So, about an hour away from grandma’s, Edna’s parents explained that they’d given it a lot of thought and that that “something” would be for Edna to spend the summer in the desert with her grandparents, starting now. Edward told her that her grandmother was a tough woman and he meant that as a compliment.

Edna’s grandparents lived in a small house on a large acreage in the desert town of 29 Palms, California, but Edna wouldn’t call it a “town,” she’d call it “coordinates on a map.”

Edna knew that this was at least partially because of the sock incident and that in fact her father blamed her for it. It was so unfair. If someone doesn’t know the difference between “strained” and “sprained,” they should not have authority in a school. Besides, the act was pre-meditated, no one could fish socks out of their gym bag that quickly. Edna’d have the memory of that lunatic charging at her and the smell and taste of his filthy socks burned into her brain for life, but that didn’t seem to matter to anyone.

Edna whimpered things like “the whole summer?” and “it’s not my fault!” and that she would “be really good,” but she was still too sarcastic, and anyway her parents had put a militaristic plan into action and they were not going to abandon it.

Joan explained, “I want you to be an intelligent woman, Edna, and I want you to be yourself, but you’re always out to prove something. You’ll find that not everyone enjoys verbal sparring, certainly not Grandma,” to which Edna replied, “What’s the problem now? Because I forgot. Verbal sparring or that adjectives are poorly chosen and that people don’t know what rebellious means and I simply take the trouble to point it out?!”

A panic attack was setting in. Edna was no longer sure if she was breathing. Hopefully she would pass out quickly and then die. Until then, she decided to play it cool and not reveal any further weakness. The main challenge was to keep from cracking again and get away from her entire family as quickly as possible.

Garbled in the background, while this momentous challenge is going on, is Joan’s voice suggesting Edna do her best to get on well with Grandma “and also try to get to know Grandpa.

He can hear and he knows what’s going on. The way to be a good guest, Edna, is to be cheerful, to offer help and to never need to be entertained.”

Edna had no idea why Grandpa liked to sit on the porch for the entire day but that was his story and she certainly didn’t expect Grandpa to entertain her. Sometimes it looked like he was going to get up, but usually that was a cough or a sneeze. He ate on a TV tray Grandma brought and at the end of the day he’d come inside and go to bed. It never occurred to Edna until now that that had been going on, all this time, since the last time she was there three years ago. Edna didn’t like to think about Grandpa and she hardly ever did.

“Grandma and Grandpa came to live out here because Grandpa was very, very sick. That was in 1945, which was, 16 years ago, a very long time ago before you were born, but many August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 25

years after Grandpa fought in a big war that…” Edward asked Joan not to make it so complicated.

This was the speech Joan had been selling to make Grandma and Grandpa seem more human. It was all starting to make sense, the speeches, the extra sightseeing excursions, so much ice cream. This kidnapping scheme disguised as a fun little trip was not appreciated. Edna might have packed more clothes or said goodbye to her friends. Instead, she was going to disappear like some freak. “Grandma and Grandpa have a telephone now,” Joan reminded her.

“It was a very, very, very hard life. For years, Grandma had nowhere to go shopping except for one store. There was no hair salon. No roller-skating. No place to go to dinner—” Edward interrupted to point out that there were a couple of restaurants, not that Grandma and Grandpa go out very much, and he thought they got a movie.

Edna silently gasped against her car sickness and the future. She rested her head on the window so air could rush over her face. The sound of the wheels on the road gave her something else to focus on. Smoke trees whipped past, creating streaks of green ribbon in the sand, and the road sloped up into forever, the pink and blue horizon promising an ocean-of-anything beyond it. Even though hell and, hopefully, a swift and merciful death were in that direction, Edna was hypnotized. For a moment, the whole family was.

To be continued…….

Sketches of Raven Last year, I did an etching of a raven In it the bird is too still, I lost Half his tail and got bogged down In the differences between crows And ravens—art!

What’s a wedge shaped tail anyway A shapeshifter of sorts A group of crows is called a murder A group of ravens an unkindness The ravens are unkind murderers Who are eating the eggs Of the endangered Desert Tortoise Ravens are tricksters, they tricked The eagle out of his voice or at least That’s what the Navajo say.

Here, I watch the patent leather Trickster strut on the green, green lawn Like some tuxedoed tango teacher.

At home I’ve seen one sitting all alone At the top of a Joshua tree overlooking Miles of rocks and sand as if it is the end Of the world and his the only kindness left.

Noreen Lawlor, Yucca Valley 26 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

A

s a result of various natural and manmade disasters, many consider the Salton Sea an uninhabitable wasteland, an errant blight on the Southern California landscape. Even the California Governor’s office is threatening to close its State Recreation Area as part of their proposed state budget plan. After all, who would notice? Hadn’t the apocalypse already happened there?

By now, I think most Southern Californians know the history of the Salton Sea—the Colorado River overflow, the avian flu, the annual tilapia die-offs, the rising salinity. And since no one really knows what the Salton Sea’s future holds in store— especially if Schwarzenegger gets his way—it’s important to know what it’s like at the Salton Sea now.

I first encountered the Salton Sea last September, when my friend Edith was pointing at a map and said, “What’s that?”

After a bit of research, she declared, “We have to go there.”

“A big dead sea?” I said. “What’s there?” Edith proceeded to explain sunken buildings and abandoned trailers and lots of wildlife. Driving east out of the Anza-Borrego Desert State Park, I was convinced to explore the inland saline sea staring out at us from the desert hills as brightly blue as it did when we first spotted it on the map.

Naively, we thought you could just drive there and see what there is to see. We didn’t realize that we’d be driving in circles in a maze of unpaved roads and few buildings except for Superburger. If you don’t know where to look, you won’t find much more than feathers, fish carcasses, and salt-stained driftwood—all historical markers for the disasters that have plagued the Salton Sea for the last several decades.

Salton City was supposed to be the next Palm Springs. The Salton Sea was supposed to be a desert Riviera. Millions of dollars were spent paving roads, laying out plots of land, and laying pipes for sewage and running water that would never be used, never be built upon.

“Is this it?” we asked each other.

It took two more trips for us to uncover many of the treasures that the Salton Sea has to offer. Just north of Salton City in Salton Sea Beach, there’s still a working marina and houses and trailers, but it’s tough to tell what’s lived-in and what’s abandoned. At the old Palms Motel—one of the few still-standing structures open for business during the sea’s heyday— there are now flocks of pigeons living inside, layers of their droppings on the ground, and a resulting stench. Mixed with the heat-induced funk of the sea, it’s almost unbearable outside the motel, not to mention inside the rooms. A sign posted recently warns that the structure is unsafe and not to be used by humans, but it’s hard not to take a peek.

Nearby there are a number of abandoned trailers, most the classic 1950s kind, permanently parked on the side of the road or in the middle of an empty plot. Some are empty, stripped of their scrap metal, but others still show signs of life: a television, a tape recorder, some old boots, even a bright turquoise stool, waiting for someone to take a seat and make it their home. Since it rains rarely, and the trailers have been far enough from the water’s edge, their metal (or what’s left of it) isn’t completely rusted out—just faded from the sun and disuse.

Closer to the water, at another marina, the ruins become even more human. Rather than paddles, motors, tools, or equipment, there are shoes and white leather shoulder bags and an empty box of Titleist golf balls. Who wouldn’t take these small items? What drove these Salton Beach residents and business owners out so quickly that they left a trail of their belongings behind them?

On the other side of the sea, down the shore past the State Recreation Area, Bombay Beach is a community that has seen its share of disaster. Most of its current inhabitants were born there or lived there most of their lives, as much as 80 years. The place to go in Bombay Beach is the Ski Inn, where regulars start drinking their screwdrivers-and-cranberry and rum-and-cokes at 7 a.m. and, by lunchtime, don’t show any signs of leaving. In the summer, they spend hours swatting flies. They can’t imagine what New Yorkers would be doing there—“Normally we only see the snow bunnies on a detour from San Jacinto,” they explain—but they’re more than happy to buy us drinks and talk about their lives, the jobs they once held, the sea they once knew. They hope for the sea to bounce back, but they don’t think it’ll be in their lifetime. Regardless of whether it gets better or worse, they won’t be leaving.

Just east of the last road in Bombay Beach, the sand rises up in high banks accessible only through two roads—one that looks impassible with a “Beach Closed” sign, and another paved one with a dangling chain swept to the side, allowing for easy entry. Rising over the crest of the dike, there lies the land of sunken trailers. This—the area that had been flooded in the 1970s by a combination of unusual storms and aggressive irrigation runoff—is the holy grail for artists, photographers, and urban explorers alike.

Many of these beach towns have been subject to flooding over the years, but this was mass destruction, of biblical pro-

portions. This area suffered most when the sea swelled. Unlike the hard, white salt flats of, say, Mirage Dry Lake or Badwater, this part of Bombay Beach feels new, as though the water could come back at any time, either from the sea itself or from the mushy, seabed ground below. These trailers had been completely overtaken by the advancing water, causing its residents to flee. But unlike in Salton Beach, there are no belongings left here. Perhaps they’ve been washed out to sea, or picked off by fisherman. Or perhaps they are buried in the sandy bed that has overtaken everything else, even the boats.

A graveyard for certain, it is the deadest place I’ve found in the entire Salton Sea area. Seeing it, for the first time I felt more than a morbid fascination with this apocalyptic setting.

As I walked away from my last photograph at the shoreline and my flip flops left their impression beneath me, I felt guilty for being there, for disturbing the area, for making any light of what these people went through.

The Salton Sea is teeming with ghosts, and haunts its visitors even after they leave. Maybe it’s the hope for a renaissance that still causes residents to buy up plots of land (some of which are available for sale on eBay). Or maybe it’s the 13year-old boy—the only young person I saw for miles—who jogs home in 100-degree heat, letting the sweat soak his sunstreaked hair and grinning back at you as he disappears around the corner. There is hope. There is life.

Sandi Hemmerlein has been traveling to California deserts for over a year, seeking respite from her world-weary life in New York City. As this summer’s Artist in Residence at The Desert Lily B&B in Joshua Tree, she spent a great deal of time exploring the Hi-Desert, photographing its landscape, and writing about her personal reflections.

Sandi regularly contributes travel writing and personal essays to her blog Avoiding Regret, www.avoidingregret.com.

August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 27

Sheeple Burgers

By Tom Loret

O

utside the torch winds wailed.

They blew suffocating blankets of white hot sand across a scorched and battered landscape. They are a delirious, lateral wind that makes litter of the ordinary and shreds all semblance into tatters. They are a seasonal beast that race through here like the wild, untamed hoofs of pandemonium all unleashed and with such unrestrained fury that daylight turns into a gray, insufferable time, a shroud of imponderable time that drives the pitted gaze of its high-desert dwellers inward. That is where we have learned to grip the bitter edges of our own terrain, to grasp at anything at all. Even high hopes and promises of a better day will do to keep a person hanging on, from letting go into the arms of swirling, howling madness. It is a desert trait, an expression worn by those who share the clime.

I think it is born from awe made inexplicable by the limitless expanse of the desert’s horizon. It makes certainty both doubtful and suspicious.

Inside, a series of TVs hung from their wall and ceiling mounts where they all mimicked each other and screamed like replicated idiots trapped in the dimensions of their own over-amplified asylums. In unison they disgorged the news, “…and so I can stand here tonight and say that America does not torture.”

A mid-aged man sat by himself at the left end of the bar. He came in to have a burger and from there could watch the griddle. He shook his head in dispute and leaned forward towards the TV. He gave it an impatient, irritated look and said, “Wha’d ya’ mean, we don’t torture? It’s what we do, all we’ve ever done.”

An older gent with white hair sat two stools down to the right. He said, “What do you mean, ‘Wha’d ya’ mean?’ You heard it, the man said so right there on CNN.” The three remaining clientele huddled together at the far right end. A woman sat between the two men. She wore a red windbreaker with an Elk’s club logo on the back. A country-western track blasted over the blaring TVs. Together, they created an artificial deafness too loud to think and too loud to hear, as if to drown out the otherwise mute, sullen air of a vacant afternoon saloon.

The man on the left took another drink. “He might as well have said, we 28 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

don’t lie, steal, rape, murder or pollute neither.”

The man with white hair replied, “Huh? What you say? I can’t hear you.”

Meagan worked the bar. She spoke with the white-haired man like they were old friends or maybe family. She stepped toward the stranger. “You want another while you’re waitin’?” She wore a white apron with white ruffles sewn all around the edges. With her boots on she looked real gold-rush. “Sierra, right?”

He nodded for the beer, then rejoined, “It’s a lot easier to believe in makebelieve than it is to think or face facts.”

“Who said that?”

“Me. I did.”

The man with white hair said, “You ought ‘a bottle that. Make a million.”

“Here’s your beer, Hon. Your burger’s coming right up.”

“We could’ve had it all,” said the stranger.

“All what?”

“All ‘a everything. You know, everything for everybody. It would have been a whole lot cheaper than paying for the mess we’re in now. We’ll never get anything out of this but more and more of less and less. It’s the sheeple that get me, people take it like it’s supposed to be, like we don’t deserve better, peace and freedom ain’t even worth a damn vote, some divine swoon that’s sent us all to hell for our own good. How wondrous is the Lord and all that.”

“Like it says,” added the white-haired gent, “In God we trust.”

“I’d rather have some of that liberty and justice for all. I mean, we begrudged the poor every dollar they got but now all’s we do is transfer trillions to the pinstripe thugs who robbed us, robbed us as blind as the faith we put in ‘em. It’s them we trust, even now, even after they and their pious cheerleadin’ reverends had us fleeced and begging for slaughter.”

The cook came forward into the bar and stood before the stranger. He gathered his breath and shouted down to Meagan, “Your order’s up.”

Meagan said, “You’re gonna love our burgers. And you got the cheese.

Mmmm. You enjoy that, Hon. I’ll be right back with the ketchup and hot sauce.”

He cut it in two and took a long, slow bite. He rolled his eyes. After another bite he said, “You ever notice how the ones who fuss most ‘bout gay this and gay that are the ones most on their knees ‘a grovelin’ and ‘a slobberin’ for the affections of their pretty boy man-god? That seem funny to you?”

Meagan spun around and giggled.

The gent said, “No, I never did. But I’ll tell you one thing, if you don’t quit

that line of thinkin’ or at least shut the hell up you’re gonna start noticin’ a lot of damn fists on your damn head. Where you think you are? This is God’s country, son. It’s all some folk got, anymore.”

The stranger took it to heart and shut the hell up. He nodded, “Yeah, I know.

But it could ‘a…”

The white-haired gent fumed and faced his drink. “Could ‘a, should ‘a,” he mocked. “They didn’t want it, gave it all away to anyone who’d take it, and for nothing, nothing but damn fool lies, criminal greed, and all them dead and torn-up wounded.”

The stranger put a napkin to his chin.

“That’s how they won, the way they beat us.”

“Who?” asked the white-haired man.

“They sold us the plantation with no money down and threw in the rapture for free. Trouble is, nobody said we’d be the slaves, our kids fodder, or our grandkids sold off like pork belly.”

“Didn’t want to know,” retorted the white-haired gent. “Too busy grabbin’ the chains.”

“Speaking of which, I see they’re building a couple ‘a new churches along the highway,” said the stranger. “More truss ‘n nails for the faithful and pasture for the flock, huh?”

“Governor says we got no money, closin’ down the schools and everything else needed to help a person out,” said the white-haired man.

The stranger finished up, took his last drink, and left a twenty to cover his bill. He waved goodbye to the cook, said how good the burger was to Meagan and zipped his jacket up to face the wind.

“Like you said, God’s country.

Masta’s children don’t need no readin’ an’ writin’, need no doctor, and nobody need no gov’ment of no people. What people? There ain’t no people. Just sheeple. Sheeples and steeples. Can’t get no closer to heaven than that.”

Meagan laughed. “Well hell,” she said, “come back again. Who knows, maybe next year we’ll have some damn sheeple burgers on the damn menu. Ha ha,” she laughed. “Ain’t that right, Frank?

Sheeple burgers,” she said to the whitehaired man. “Ain’t that a hoot?”

Outside, the wild torch winds wailed.

Writer, poet, and artist Tom Loret lives in Yucca Valley.

Noble Intentions

Francesca

Finally At an end Again the general washes his hands Overwrought like an actor in a play

Your image taught my eyes to pay attention, And the vision of your form within your clothes Made me yearn to see the loveliness beneath them— Made me yearn to see the you that moved unseen; Beneath the moon your hair seemed almost blue As I marveled at the mystery of you …

Instruments of plague line the rooms of his stately home His own footsteps echo off marble floors Resonate through empty halls Furniture turned to dust Covered with sheets like Halloween wraiths He forgot how many rooms his house embraced: Chambers, cellars, dungeons Bedrooms, closets, basements Rooms for sex and eating Rooms set aside for ribald entertainment Rooms for reading Rooms for sleeping Nooks reserved for punishment and pain Others set aside for confession There is a place for remorse And another for pulling teeth Too many rooms the general thinks Too much clutter He is determined to narrow the circumstances To focus and eliminate redundancies He sees himself as a noble man But his victims would not agree Dead rise up to exact retribution The exhausted general called back to war Questioning his existence His role There is never time to evaluate Or choose another path Always called back to battle Marching to echoes of reveille Through the many rooms To the one reserved for war Forced to face the inevitable: Ending like an old movie With a scream, a cough And trickle of blood

Lee Balan, Palm Springs Lee Balan, artist and writer, was the first editor and art director for Beyond Baroque Magazine in Venice, CA. He has had poems and stories featured in several magazines. He was a featured poet at the Palm Springs Museum for their “Out Loud” Poetry Series and was the facilitator for the Tenderloin Writer’s Workshop in San Francisco.

His background in mental health has been a major influence on his work. Lee is currently a member of Lulu.com as a self-publisher. This year, he plans to market his novel, Alien Journal.

“Hello,” you said, “I am to be Francesca.”

But the silence in your pauses said to me “I am seedbed, you are seed—a good beginning— I am seedbed, you are seed, and it is time.”

Your voice a gentle spear that ran me through, Made me think well spent my years in search of you …

And your hair diffused somehow the scent of starlight The fragrant mist of heather covered hills, With a hint of spice and honey gently rising …

With a hint of spice and honey from your bloom; And I sensed your perfume with each breath I drew As I hovered in the redolence of you …

Within your mouth I tasted sweetest promise Of jungle fruits at pagan bacchanals, Of sustenance forever ending hunger— Of sustenance forever in your bloom; Mocha-Java, bittersweet, delicious brew I drank the savory succulence of you …

And my body, wherever you had held me Was eternally imprinted with your warmth And the tender, subtle softness of your touching— And the tender, subtle softness of your bloom; I grew younger by at least a year or two Every time I felt the gentleness of you …

Sacrificed and drained within your sacred temple, Sated god and victim both at once was I, Softly moaning with a joy encroached on madness— Softly moaning with a joy approaching pain; Beneath the moon your hair seemed almost blue As I marveled at the mystery of you.

Stephen J. Wersan, Ridgecrest Stephen J. Wersan was born in 1933 in New York City, studied mathematics and physics, received a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering, and spent his career with computer and defense electronics firms, including the last ten years in Federal Civil Service. He resides in Ridgecrest, CA, with Francine, his wife of 50 years. His poems have been published in the Journal of Reform Judaism, Poet, and other publications.

He has won several awards from the California Federation of Chaparral Poets, and in October 2004 he published a collection of his poems entitled Smooth Stones on the Bottom.

August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 29

The Stranger

When you decide to leave your chair?”

The love of the spirit is burning me up The secret of life on the tip of my tongue Please, lend me my blindness for a while Before you send me once again into the fire

I answer “Do you offer any sign To post along this clarifying path? “ For though I am a traveler on the path I do not trust my own creative mark As Judas, who betrayed us with his kiss Threw his wages in the bloody park And now a stranger roams the field where God was bought

I see a stranger standing in the trees The twilit hills, the mountain and the sky And the stranger comes and asks me “Why Are you so frightened in the dark When it was you who closed your eyes?”

I answer “Do you understand how hard It is to have refused to see the light?”

For though I am a creature of the light I clothe myself with terrifying cloth As Adam, when he knew that he had sinned Tried in vain to hide himself from God Adam is long since revealed; but I am not The songs of the angels are fanning the flames To fly from the lips of the wise and the young Please let me be silent for a while Before I drink again from that difficult vial For here’s the stranger standing on the shore The sleepy sun, the seabird, and the cloud And the stranger comes and asks me “How Can you regret your muted state When it was you who closed your mouth?”

I answer, “Can you measure my despair At having sealed my lips against this truth?

For though I am a speaker of the truth I stop my voice in fear of its remark As Jonah, when required to warn the town Lay in the fish until he changed his heart Jonah thus escaped the net; I am still caught The cries of the living are rising in sparks Witness to all that is secret and sung Please, let me be helpless for a while Before I face again the mysterious trial For here’s the stranger standing by the wall The flowery quince, its legend, and a clue And the stranger comes and asks me “Who Can you expect to lift the Veil When it is up to you to choose?”

I answer, “Can you comprehend the fear Of waiting for the one who has the key?”

For though I am a keeper of the keys I myself must wait to be unlocked As Phaedrus, on his philosophic quest Awakened and remembered who he was Phaedrus was thus known to all; I am forgot.

The stars of the godmen are lighting the spheres Notes from the harp that the Zionist strummed Please let me rest easy for a while Before I climb again the double-edged spire For here’s the stranger standing in my soul The mortal doubt, the hope of heaven there As the stranger comes and asks me, “Where Do you intend to seek your fate 30 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

Eva Stokes, Joshua Tree

Eric Eats an Artichoke

By Eva Stokes

E

ric’s grey-green artichoke arrives, looking exactly like what it is: the giant immature flower of a yucca plant trimmed of its thorns and steamed, lying on a nondescript white industry plate with a small dish of yellowy whipped mayonnaise on the side.

Eric sighs.

What ethnicity of numbskull decided that a smelly, disease-bearing picnic concoction is an appropriate condiment for such a precious vegetable? Certainly not the French!

(Hollandaise Sauce, a kind of mayonnaise made with lemon, was not created in the Netherlands, as some believe, but an improvisational compromise by Jools Holland, a jazz musician who felt the same way.)

Eric sends the waiter, a squirrelly little boy overflowing with obsequiousness and rote service language, back to the kitchen for melted butter and a lemon.

“Not margarine, butter. Lemon, wedged, not sliced,” Eric says sternly. “And I want my own pepper grinder.”

He sees the disrespectful waiter mimicking him to another waiter as he goes into the kitchen with the mayo dish.

“He wants his ‘own pepper grinder,’ nyah!”

Eric enjoys his artichoke. The silvery leaves pile up on the plate, scraped clean of delicious flesh, clearly marked by his small, even teeth. In one of those random asides to his general train of thought, he wonders if some tracker could identify him by his tooth marks on the leaves, and changes his line of attack, which gets him a small thorn in the tongue. Close to the center, where they (the leaves) become tiny and purplish and bitter, he pinches off the last clump and lays it aside, exposing the hairy heart quietly full of nourishing vitamins and vigor.

It reminds him of an anemone. He briefly reminisces of a weekend at Pismo Beach, where he played gently with those strange sea creatures, poking them with something not unlike the fork he is using now. He picks the artichoke up by the stem and scrapes the hairy part away with his implement; divides the heart into four large pieces, and eats it with the last of the lemony butter.

Later, Eric is convulsed with very bad gas. His girlfriend decides he has parasites and forces him to swallow teaspoons of vinegar while he whines like a baby.

He sleeps on the couch, farting into an old Mexican horse blanket.

For his pain and smelly loneliness, Eric blames the artichoke.

I blame the waiter.

In the Desert Part I In the desert, I saw a gaping burrow, and craned my neck for a glimpse of the tortoise that had carved this crescent into the earth.

Show yourself! I called, breaking all wilderness etiquette. I was tired of finding so many empty holes, so I crawled into the burrow and felt myself drop, slowly, but with an irresistible heaviness.

I landed in a cavern filled with hundreds of unsmiling, unblinking tortoises. They seemed to disdain me—maybe it was the papery pink skin or the lack of a sturdy carapace. Perched precariously on my two legs, I must have appeared timorous, weak, and improbable. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light I could see them moving slowly, as though the delicacy of each moment required their careful study and calculation.

They were soundless.

Part II My life among the tortoises has been good. When the earth has absorbed enough of the sun’s warmth to rouse us from our sleep, we emerge onto the surface and browse on beavertail cactus, carefully avoiding the tiny glochids that could lodge in our tongues.

The desert is brilliant after the long brumation in the burrow; one cannot imagine the depth of hunger we feel after not having eaten for months. The desert dandelions taste like soil and fire and exploding stars and we cannot eat enough of them. But we take our time, chewing and watching and absorbing the great solar goodness of the day.

I will return to the burrow as the great shadow falls on the ricegrass and the purple verbena, on the forbs and the galleta, the woolly daisies and the goldenbush.

I will crawl back down into the subterranean world where the deep hum of the sheltering roots soothes us back into our sleep.

Part III What is that shrill whine echoing through the ground? I cannot place it; no hummingbird or tarantula hawk has ever been so loud.

The pitch is fiercely piercing: It could shake the scales off a healthy tortoise or deafen anything that hears. The sound is growing louder. Is it getting closer?

Now it seems upon me, the earth is caving in around me, it is hard to breathe and if I don’t get more air I will suffocate.

I have become the sound without voice.

Part IV In the desert, I saw a concave, bowl-shaped pit. The geometric hatch marks of a motorcycle tire adorned it like the wax seal on a secret document. It looked like an inverted grave mound, collapsed or upside-down. I wonder why the earth was so unstable there, what made that shallow depression?

This land holds so many untold stories, layers of lives locked under the sand.

I lie down and a thin voice seems to rise through the granular throat, sighing, saying something urgent and sorrowful.

What does the desert want us to know?

Caryn Davidson, Joshua Tree Caryn Davidson’s previous work has been published in the L.A.Weekly, GEO Magazine (German edition), The Stone, Phantom Seed, and Interpretive Writing. She has worked in environmental education for 15 years and is currently a park ranger at Joshua Tree National Park.

August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 31

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Desert Winds You come through the cracks and under the doors where nothing remains certain.

You rock our world with hot oceans of air and grains of sand yet I sense a familiar warmth.

Today you comfort me with memories and reveries Not like your chilling November brother who goes by so many names and guises who also, come to think of it, has a familiar chill.

Joanne Bodin, Albuquerque, New Mexico 32 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

uring the Korean War, it took less than a month for the Navy’s team at China Lake to conceive, make, test, and ship the first 6.5-inch antitank aircraft rockets (nicknamed Ram) to the battlefield. A couple decades ago, highly acclaimed author and editor Elizabeth Babcock set out to write about China Lake. Her extensive research and interviews, followed by seemingly endless red tape, took considerably longer than the Ram. Yet anyone reading her completed history of the Navy at China Lake, California, Volume III, will wonder how she could possibly have amassed such a wealth of information so quickly.

Ironically, the bureaucratic delays serve to remind us why insiders hold the 1948-58 decade in awe. Back then, a legendary coterie of technical and military giants embraced the “China Lake way”—brook no obstacles; just get it done.

Magnificent Mavericks: Transition of the Naval Ordnance Test Station From Rocket Station to Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation Center, 1948-58 begins in the desert in the pre-air-conditioning era when anyone dressed in a suit was probably a salesman or an official visitor, and where social clubs had slot machines until prohibited by act of Congress in 1951.

The Naval Ordnance Test Station’s fate hinged largely on the mood in Washington, D.C.—from post-Korean War mentality to concern about the growing Communist threat and deepening Cold War. Under the leadership of Technical Director Dr. William B. McLean and Deputy Technical Director Haskell G. Wilson starting in 1954, NOTS entered its golden age.

For instance, McLean had a concept that became the Sidewinder missile. His work so absorbed him that one evening he went home, ate dinner, puttered in the garage, then asked his wife, “When are we going to eat?”

Magnificent Mavericks examines the amazing complexity of the China Lake universe—professionally, politically and socially, not only testing and creating weapons but also the delivery systems, the launchers, and the science behind the various projects—and not only R&D, but also relationships with other branches of the armed forces and the federal government. In so doing, the book awakens profound nostalgia for a bygone world where innovation, imagination, solutions and science had carte blanche—and no equal.

Magnificent Mavericks, published in paperback by the China Lake Museum Foundation, is available from the Maturango Museum (www.maturango.org, 760-375-6900) and the China Lake Museum Store (chinalakemuseum.org, 760-9393530). A government-published hardcover version is also available at the China Lake museum.

M D

eath Valley in ’49: The Autobiography of a Pioneer written by William Manly and published by the Narrative Press is the story of the crossing of Death Valley by several groups of pioneer families in 1849. Death Valley was named by Manly and the few surviving people who made the crossing, having used this route as a shortcut to get to California. They had no idea how much they would suffer.

What makes this book particularly fascinating is the detail that Manly goes into in describing how he survived and how he and his friend, after having made the crossing, returned to rescue two other families who were left behind in the desert.

Getting to the Death Valley cutoff from Wisconsin, their place of departure was also intriguing. He and a few companions floated down whatever waterways flowed west with their animals and supplies. When a homemade boat turned over and disappeared, no problem. They cut down a white pine and made a new boat. An Indian chief by the name of Walker, whom they met along the way, helped them find a new route when the water route was no longer viable.

Once the families were safely in California, Manly headed to the gold fields of northern California, and he again describes in detail how he found gold and what life was like in several mining towns he visited. He also tells of his trip back to Wisconsin, via Panama and steamboat up the Mississippi, and his adventures along the way.

The characterizations of the people Manly meets and the gratitude and respect he feels towards the early California emigrants reveals how so many of them were highly intelligent and generous of spirit. He also talks about the evil element among them and how justice was meted out. This autobiography is easy to read, well written, and has unexpected twists and turns along the way. It is never boring.

The publisher, The Narrative Press, has published somewhere around a hundred first-hand accounts of adventures of historical interest in countries and islands all over the world. If even half of them are as interesting and exciting as Manly’s story, there’s a lot of good reading to look forward to!

ari Collier, a resident of Twentynine Palms, recently self-published her new book, Gather the Children, an historical science fiction fusion novel with an unusual twist, through Publish America, an independent publishing company. The first third of the 305-page book set in post civil war Texas is well researched, similar to Larry McMurtry style westerns. It is a coming-of-age novel about Lorenz, a boy whose family was captured by Indians, split up, and scattered. Collier carefully develops the character of Lorenz throughout the beginning pages of the story after he has gut shot Zale, his abusive guardian. After the shooting he is coincidentally taken in by his stepfather, MacDonald, an unusually powerful giant of a man. The description of this man’s physique and his behaviors are the first clues of what follows in the book.

The relationship that develops between Lorenz and MacDonald is well crafted, as well as MacDonald’s relationship with his wife, Lorenz’s long-lost mother. The story is set against the background of pioneer settlement in the almost lawless Texas of the mid-19th century. The distinctive speech patterns of each character give them credence and personality.

Several of them speak in a German patois and others in a Texas border drawl. Each character that is introduced in the first half of the book is unique and substantial.

Suddenly, about a third of the way into the book, the plot digresses. Collier reveals that MacDonald arrived in Texas from another planet, his space vehicle hidden in a cave. Some family members, not all, have two hearts and can communicate telepathically in varying degrees. They use their extraterrestrial powers for the protection of family and friends. The westernstyle genre continues: shootouts, barroom brawls, attacks on Yankees by disgruntled rebels. More lost family members appear, as well as many supporting characters. It becomes difficult to remember who came from where on this planet, let alone who came from other planets, and their agendas. The book becomes confusing, too many characters, not enough character development, and awkward plot development. There were some unique ideas here, but overall Collier was over ambitious, and the story suffered for it.

The book is still worth a read however. The historical research about this era in history is meticulous and very interesting. The strength and courage of the pioneer women and their role in this history is carefully detailed, and the reenactment of the western towns, homesteads, cattle drive, and sheriff’s department are well configured.

August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 33

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ill Cook’s book, Ghostly Guide to Calico Ghost Town, is a fun, quick read at 75 pages. The purpose of the book is to introduce the reader to the ghosts in the different buildings, structures, and areas in Calico Ghost Town. Basically, what happens in the book is that Bill Cook takes you on a ghost tour of Calico Ghost Town, and explains how the visitor can actually perceive a ghost. Cook gives anecdotal accounts of actual sightings that have taken place on tours he has given.

Cook and his wife, who owned the Calico Photo Studio for a number of years, took people on ghost tours in the evening on weekends. The tours originally started out as a lark, as Cook had no real belief in ghosts. As time went on, however, Cook began to tune in to the ghostly presences that made themselves known to him and to others on the tours. Eventually, Cook and his wife became believers.

This little book is delightful. Cook makes going on a ghost tour so much fun. He has a real empathy and interest in these people from the past who appear, and, as they make themselves known to him, he researches more about the past to add details, putting the ghosts in context.

One of the most interesting ghosts is Katy, a young teenager you might meet at the schoolhouse. You may also meet her, at a different age, at Hank’s Hotel on the same tour. Here she goes by the name of Kate. Cook promises a lot more details about her in his next book.

Cook and his wife no longer give tours of Calico, but using his guide you can go there and see for yourself. You can go anytime of day and have the same experiences, according to Cook. Bring your children and teenagers. They seem to be even more perceptive than adults.

Cook still leads ghost tours in the desert, and you can find out more information about them at www.hauntedbarstow.com.

34 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

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ickel$ and Dime$ by Cheryle Marvel is a concise guide to managing your personal finances. She calls it “The Poor Man’s Plan for Financial Security.” By the time Marvel was 35, she owned two houses outright, had money in the bank to cover her salary for a year, and money in a 401K. When she suffered a debilitating accident and had no income for a year, she did not experience financial stress. She decided to write this book because so many of her friends wanted the peace of mind with the financial security she had.

The author does not have an extremely high paying job, but she explains in a simple, practical, nuts-and-bolts way her philosophy of how to handle money and how to get the biggest bang for your buck. She tells the reader, basically, how to live as well as you can on what you earn, and how not to waste money.

She provides food for thought such as separating needs from wants, and watching out for the seven pitfalls that prevent successful management: over-indulgence, excessiveness, instant gratification, play days, spending due to emotions, spending money twice, and keeping up with the Joneses.

The book contains forms for making a household budget, managing debt, and how to save for different situations that will come up, such as needing another car, vacations, and the “whoops” fund for unexpected disasters. Cheryl can be contacted at cmarvel1@earthlink.net. She will sell the book for the cost of producing it, copying and spiral binding. In other words, she wants to share her method with anyone who wants help with managing finances—for only the cost of the materials.

Desert Authors – Do you have a book you would like to see reviewed in The Sun Runner?

If so, send a review copy and press kit to: The Sun Runner, 61855 29 Palms Highway Joshua Tree, CA 92252

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ot So Brave is a fictional story of a girl, Sara Jones, who made the choice in life to be brave. The book is actually based on a real person and was written by her father, Robert Jaunsen. It begins with Sara’s physical difficulties as a newborn and takes the reader through her childhood and adolescence, and ends with her 21st birthday. The pages are snapshots of her thoughts as she continually endures nearly unendurable physical pain and suffering throughout her entire existence.

Not So Brave is a quick read, a mere 200 pages, some of them short with a couple of pages of poetry interspersed. At the beginning of the story the reader gets bogged down with medical jargon and throughout the story the jargon can get confusing. “My atrio-pulmonary connection Fontan was then converted to a fenestrated, lateral baffle Fontan and a pulmonary artery stump was obliterated,” is a sampling of one of the more complicated descriptions of one of her numerous medical procedures. Most readers would have no idea what literally was going on, but after several of these operations, the reader will get the point. Sara is in the hospital most of the time, and these endless operations are necessary to keep her alive, and she wants to be alive most definitely.

Shortly after celebrating her 14th birthday in the hospital, Sara undergoes a liver biopsy, and her father breaks the news of the results to her and the rest of the family. She needs to have a new liver and heart, and she must have it within the next year or two in order to live. The rest of the book explores Sara’s spiritual journey. There is an interesting meditation on the indifference of nature as it applies to the physical world. A priest tells her this indifference does not exist in the spiritual world.

Sara’s father is a faithful guardian and advocate who stays by her side throughout her painful ordeals, as she suffers with endless medical issues. Getting transplant organs becomes the family’s entire focus, and she manages to stay alive, while weakening daily, for five years until she gets them from an unexpected source.

There are many reflections in this book on Sara’s outlook

I

f you would like to have more environmentally friendly plants in your yard, i.e, the ones that don’t need large amounts of water, having a look through the book Palm Springs-Style Gardening, written by local landscape architect and horticulturist Maureen Gilmer, is well worth your time. The book focuses primarily on gardening in the low desert, but some of the plants she discusses can be grown in high desert gardens too. The purpose of the book is to show how desert gardens can have a variety of colorful flowers, not just palm trees and succulents.

Previous landscaping in the desert focused on formal northern gardening with lawns and plants that were not native, plants that were heat tolerant but needed plenty of water. Gilmer shows how you can have a more casual sort of garden using plants that are better adapted to desert conditions.

The book itself, which is rather small compared to typical coffee-table type gardening books, is truly a beautiful jewel.

The photographs are sumptuous and the book itself is laid out and organized well with a good table of contents and index.

There is a wealth of information about many kinds of desert plants that is easy to understand, as well as interesting. She covers topics such as soils and planters to use, destructive organisms, and how to design tropical, Mediterranean, modern, and cottage gardens.

My favorite section of the book is about the Joshua tree, how the yucca flowers change their orientation to the night sky reflecting moonlight in order to lure a special moth to pollinate them. This section of the book is pure poetry. I also like the history of some of the plants that have been brought to the desert from other places. Experiencing this book is delightful! on life and death, and the importance of making attitude adjustments when things in life seem bleakest. She says, “It’s amazing how you can get your shit together once your tears no longer blind you.” Sara wants to live and she feels blessed that she was given the gift of life through organ donation. The book ends as a plea for people to donate their organs. Sara’s story alone would have been enough without this ending, although now, the real life Sara does do advocacy work in this arena.

Author info at: www.rjaunsen.blogspot.com.

August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 35

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he desert boasts of dedicated “native plant” enthusiasts who insist on removing everything which is not “native” to the area; whereas myself, I rather enjoy any surprises that add a variety of welcomed shade or hue to our local desert! Such is the “Wat Santi” Buddhist Forest Monastery (“Wat” means “temple” in Thai and “Santi” means peace), which seems to have sprouted overnight in Landers.

What is a “Forest Monastery” doing in Landers? It should come as no surprise that a handful of dedicated Thai monks wish to practice their faith in the U.S. But why Landers?

The Forest Monks—originally only found residing in forest environments— are an offshoot of the Dhammayudh order of Forest Monks who follow the strictest rules. Forest Monasteries differ from the more commonly found City Monks, such as Wat Thai in North Hollywood. In such a manner, Wat Santi is related to Wat Metta, north of San Diego, and Wat Puritas in Ontario… consisting of over 1,000 members. Forest Monks choose to adhere to stricter codes of discipline, more practice, including more hardships!

So how did Wat Santi come about?

Ahhhh…. that is a long story—a story which starts off with a native Thai gentleman by the name of Pradit Donchuanchom (or “Dr. Don” as he was commonly called) who came to the U.S. in 1965 and practiced as a radiologist in Chicago for 21 years.

Since to Thais, attending ceremonies in the Buddhist temple is not only a religious observance but also a welcomed 36 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

cultural activity, Dr. Don and his wife, Srisamorn, occasioned to meet a Thai Buddhist Master in 1985: Ajaan Suwat.

They were both greatly impressed by him.

Eventually Dr. Don was asked by the Master: “So when are you going to become a monk?” and he responded by making a vow (spiritual promise) to become a monk in 10 years time.

In 1986, Dr. Don’s medical practice led to California, where he served the L.A. County Public Health System. Then migrating desert-wards, he practiced as a radiologist at the Hi-Desert Hospital in Lancaster, in Barstow, and in Indio. Ten years had already quickly passed, and 60year-old Dr. Don made good on his promise to his Master; he was ordained a monk May 10, 1997, his name changing now to Pra Don (“Pra” being a title of respect for a monk).

While at the Buddhist Congregation of Ontario, Pra Don happened to meet a Thai lady whose friend, Marilyn Hodge of Landers, was at the White Feather Hospital where a group of Thai monks had gone to bless her before she passed away. Her five-acre home in Landers remained empty, with only her sister as part owner now.

Si Si (nickname of Pra Don’s ex-wife) who had become a board member of the Wat Santi Buddhist Forest Monastery Non-Profit Foundation, immediately asked the members to search out Hodge’s sister and make an offer for this property… without having the slightest idea of what kind of reputation Landers might have or who the neighbors might be. The business was thus properly executed (monks

are not allowed to touch money) and in 2003, Pra Don moved into the newlyformed Wat Santi, accompanied by four other monks (five are needed to perform a complete ritual).

Eligible Thai monks are selected according to their proficiency of Dharma, length of time of ordination (at least five years), and their degree of Buddhist knowledge. Presently, Wat Santi houses six monks who, in addition to their monastic practice, also wield tools. Not only have they helped in the construction of the large temple, but also have created a charming Thai Vihara, housing what is claimed to be the largest Buddha in North America. This Buddha statue and the funds for all construction are derived from donations received from the Thai congregation and hi-desert locals, along with even more distant western friends.

The frequent Buddhist celebrations, to which the community is always invited, all have a similar format: at 10:30 a.m., visitors are invited to offer food to the monks (monks are not allowed to eat anything after noon). This is done by symbolically offering a spoonful of rice dropped into each of the traditional “receiving bowls” carried by the barefoot monks as they file by. Then all the prepared dishes which have been brought, pot-luck style, are passed over hand-by-hand to the seated monks who take a small portion, eating silently after having chanted prayers.

Then, while the monks are eating, the laity will recite prayers in both the Pali language and English. At this occasion also, the Five Precepts are offered to those who wish to take them—a vow to abstain from killing, stealing, engaging in sexual misconduct, lying, and intoxication—for at least 24 hours. After this, the remaining food is shared and enjoyed by all present.

I asked the Abbot, Venerable Pra Don, what message he wished to convey to readers. He answered: “We are grateful to all visitors and the local residents, since without their support, we would not have reached the point where we are now. We have been here six years already and we are happy here; the weather is good to us and to our health.”

Pra Don added, “Don’t forget: the most important thing anyone can do is to find and experience true happiness. Keep everything in the present moment… the past and future is a delusion.”

Meditation sessions and classes are freely offered at Wat Santi, 60424 Reche Rd., Landers. Six miles east on Reche Road from Old Woman Springs Road (Hwy. 247). (760)364-3244.

A Joshua Tree landscape by photographer Vera Topinka, a baby Desert Tortoise by Bruce Squires.

W

hy bother to buy land? What good is it? Provocative ques tions; let me try to articulate some answers. I will, however, start with moving feet, not at my desk.

Land—open, beautiful, wild—is not an abstract for me. I need it. I want to see and feel things. I have to walk it, sit on its rocks, look under those rocks, explore its whole, smell it, photograph it, look at maps, and talk to the neighbors. The 955 acres on the east side of Quail Mountain in south Joshua Tree is compelling, and I have been walking it for the past two years, which is not nearly as long as the neighbors in the adjacent communities of Joshua Highlands, Monument Manor, and Friendly Hills. They can tell me stories and show photos of the tortoise, the bobcats, the bighorn sheep, the birds, and even the bear. They also clean up the trash dumped by people who are blind to its beauty. Out walking, I have been asked bluntly by a local what I’m doing there. I charmingly seized the opportunity to tell this guardian that the Mojave Desert Land Trust is buying this land, please join us by becoming a member.

But, back to “why.” The first “good” is the federal and state threatened desert tortoise—lots of them, all in need of protection. They live here on 300 acres at the base of the rocky foothills. There are big old ones, teenagers, and even babies with soft glistening shells and big round eyes. This large tortoise population is unique and compels the question, “why here?” My first thought is—by accident.

The past and present owners of the land didn’t develop it, possibly because the steep rocky hills that make up the major-

ity of sections 11 and 13 pose challenging engineering problems. The level acres, however, are developable but remain as natural and serene as any in the Morongo Basin, a safe harbor for this ancient species.

Yet, if this patch of superb tortoise habitat were isolated in a sea of development, the Land Trust would not touch it, regardless of its beauty and threatened species. Every land trust has the mission and obligation under state and federal regulations to preserve in perpetuity the conservation values of the land it acquires. We look for winners—land we know we can protect forever.

Think of it this way. You have the most beautiful house in the world, but to function—to provide a home for your family—it requires, at minimum, water, power, arable land for food production, and replacement parts as it ages. Without these things the family will not thrive and the house will deteriorate. These necessities—the structure of your living world—come from outside the house, and they are connected to an even larger functioning whole.

The second good, then, is that the 955 acres are connected to Joshua Tree National Park. Step back, take a look. From high overhead Quail Mountain is a rugged and roadless wilderness. It is the highest mountain in the park (5,813 feet above sea level) collecting the rain and snow from storms moving inland from the Pacific or up from the gulfs of California and Mexico. The ephemeral waterways, channels, and seeps that we see connect the landscape. These veins collect and drain the moisture that, mixed with nutri-

ents released by the rocks, animal dung, and decaying plants and animals, supports the dandelions and native bunch grasses sustaining the tortoise below.

These same waterways channel the breath of the mountain as it inhales the morning air, providing currents for bird flight and upslope movement of insects. The evening exhalations, which refresh us while we walk, carry the same and other elements down slope.

We cannot see the slow time it takes for the mixing and the movement that supports living on the mountain; we cannot see the time it takes for life to adjust after storms bring lightening-strike fires. We cannot see the artificial boundary line hoisting a safety net inside the National Park; nor can we see the vulnerability of the mountain’s toes jutting beyond that net into the developing community. We are, however, beginning to see the shifts brought by the changing climate and we are planning for perpetuity.

The Mojave Desert Land Trust bothers to buy land in an attempt to capture time, encompassing the natural cycles that feed the land and the living. This work supports the vulnerable, including humans, for generations to come.

We hope you can join us—Community Support Saves Land. To learn more about the 955 acres and how you can help, visit www.mojavedesertlandtrust.org

August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 37

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an you hear those big drums calling? Come on out to the 15th Gath ering of Nations Traditional Pow Wow on Sept. 19 and 20 at LeRoy Jackson Park in Ridgecrest. Come to learn, to dance, to enjoy Native culture, and to soak up some outstanding drumming!

The Pow Wow is open to the public, and admission and parking are free. Hours will be Saturday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., with the Grand Entry at noon both days. There will be educational displays plus lots of vendors selling Native American food, arts and crafts, hard-to-find books and music, and much more.

This is an ideal family event, with special dances and storytelling for children, and special seating for elders. There will be demonstrations of flint knapping and drum making. Absolutely no drugs or alcohol will be permitted.

For first-timers, here’s a quick guide.

First, be aware that some of the happenings you will see are actually ceremonial in nature, and therefore it is very bad manners to photograph or tape them. Listen to the master of ceremonies; he will advise when it is okay to take pictures or make a recording, and when you should just watch and listen. If in doubt, always ask before taking a picture of someone.

If you really admire someone’s regalia, wait and ask them when they are outside the arena. If they give permission, you may get a good close-up photo.

Second, the big circular area in the center is the dance arena. It is blessed by the Spiritual Advisor with sacred sage at 9 a.m. on Saturday. After that, it is only to 38 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

be entered if you are dancing or are invited to enter. Cutting across the arena to get to the other side is considered very disrespectful. Walk around the outside instead.

Third, some dances are only for exhibition dancers, who have earned the right to learn and perform these often complex and energetic dances. Some of these heirloom dances tell stories; others are thought to have healing effects on those watching. The dancers wear gorgeous outfits, called regalia. When they dance, sit back and enjoy. Listen to the emcee regarding whether photography is permitted or not.

When you hear the emcee announce an “Inter-tribal” dance, that means everyone who wants to dance may do so. The step is easy to follow along, but if you feel awkward, faking it is perfectly acceptable—just keep moving in the same direction as everyone else, relax, and enjoy yourself. Inter-tribals are intended as friendship or get-acquainted dances, and are open to all. Little children often really enjoy getting out there with the big people and moving to the beat of the drums. Since these dances are social rather than ceremonial, photography is usually acceptable during inter-tribal dances.

Points of etiquette: regarding the regalia. Please do not touch any part of the regalia worn at Pow Wows. First, it’s rude.

Second, all of the elements of the regalia have significance and meaning to the person wearing them. Some items, especially feathers, have been blessed. To handle them is to taint them, and the items

will have to be re-blessed later. This is disrespectful.

Referring to a person’s regalia as a “costume” will mark you as ignorant. To help remember the difference, a costume is what you wear to hide who you are.

Regalia is worn to show exactly who you are. Style, designs, colors, and elements of the regalia proclaim (to those who know how to read them) exactly what tribe and tradition the wearer belongs to, as well as elements of personal choice. A Native person’s regalia is usually beautifully handcrafted and represents an investment of many, many hours of work, as well as considerable expense. Some articles are family heirlooms. Please respect the personal space of dancers as you should for anyone.

For your comfort, good walking shoes and comfortable attire are suggested. It’s good to bring a folding chair, sunhat, sunscreen, water, camera, and money for dancers, food, and souvenirs.

Come ready to have fun!

The Four Winds is a non-profit group dedicated to education about Native culture, history, and traditions. Feel free to ask questions—that’s how you learn.

For more information, write FWIC, 713 W. Reeves Ave., Ridgecrest, CA 93555 or call Little Deer Durvin at (760) 446-3414 or e-mail durvin@verizon.net.

15th Gathering of Nations Traditional Pow Wow

September 19 & 20 Saturday 10 a.m.-8 p.m.

Sunday 10 a.m.-3 p.m.

Grand Entry - Noon both days Dance, drumming, educational displays, Native American food, arts & crafts, books & music, storytelling for children, demonstrations of flint knapping and drum making LeRoy Jackson Park Ridgecrest

Inter-Tribal Gathering Exhibition Pow Wow

October 16-18 Indian village & museum, Native American food, arts & crafts, exhibition dancing, drumming, pony rides, pottery & basket weaving demonstrations, Saturday chili cook-off, Sherman Indian School, Terri Goedel & Hoop Dancers, Carlos Reynosa (flute), Agua Caliente Bird Singers & Dancers, Pomona Tribal Dancers & Drummers Sportsman’s Club 6225 Sunburst Ave., Joshua Tree (760)408-3944

Ramblings from Randsburg

H

ow does a mining camp begin?

What does it look like as it turns into a village or graduates into a town? When did what get built and why?

Did all mining camps look alike? How do churches fit into the mix? The author of an Overland Monthly article in May of 1897, “A Reminder of the Days of ’49,” compared Randsburg with older mining camps and concluded that: “…the points of similarity are vastly in the ascendant. There is the same community of men, mostly young men, strong, manly, and bearded. There are the same mushroom dwellings—tents, dugouts, and shanties…the present Randsburg is living on hope….”

Contrasting Randsburg’s desert location with gold camps under the pines and in the shadow of snow-capped Sierras, the author remarked: “The scarcity of wood controls local architecture. Construction is of the flimsiest, and nowhere else have I seen the combination of a solid stone fireplace and chimney and canvas walls.”

Into this early Randsburg setting arrived Mr. Nagle, a successful Mokelumne Hill hardware store manager who came to the Rand to expand his hardware store business. Nagle, a licensed (Episcopal) Lay-Reader, was distressed that there were no churches in the camp and only occasional services held by a Roman Catholic priest.

In a can-do spirit, Mr. Nagle began to hold services, which were well supported. He then secured a plot of land and began to build a beautiful redwood church, mostly with his own hands.

“Fundraising entertainments” had been organized by the ladies, including box socials and oyster suppers. (Oysters were popular in mining areas as evidenced by the large number of oyster cans research-

ers have found in mine town dumps) There is a fascinating photographic panorama in the California State Library in Sacramento of very early Randsburg in 1896. You would recognize the curve of the road that now leads one mile from Hwy. 395 into Randsburg.

Wooden buildings line Butte Avenue with many, many tents in evidence on the fringes. Eight noteworthy locations are named in a handwritten note at the top of the photo including: No. 1–Burcham’ House, No. 2– Mooers’ Tent, No. 3–Singleton’ House, No. 4–Yellow Aster Office, No. 5–Yellow Aster Barn, No. 6–Rand Shaft, No. 7– Episcopal Church, No. 8–Thomas House.

Few photos remain of Trinity Episcopal Church and perhaps none of Mr. Nagle. Curiously the church in the 1896 panorama was located just east of the road coming into Randsburg. It was later

moved to a location across from the still remaining Santa Barbara Roman Catholic Church. The Trinity building is no longer in Randsburg, having been purchased by Fr. John J. Crowley in 1921, disassembled and trucked to Lone Pine where the lumber was used to enhance the Roman Catholic building there. We might consider the church was recycled…still used in that same search for God. Next time you are in Randsburg, pause at the empty lot across from the Santa Barbara Church. Trinity Episcopal Church once stood there, proof that even in the heady early days of a gold camp not every hour of every day for everyone was devoted solely to the hunt for gold.

Writer Lorraine Blair’s small books about Randsburg are in the permanent collection of the Historical Room, California State Library.

August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 39

Desert Theatre Beat

By Jack Lyons Sun Runner Theatre Editor

A

ugust signals the torrid triple-digit summer season is, thankfully, half way over. In the summer, almost all of the high and low desert theatres go on hiatus due to heat. Our one lonely exception is Theatre 29 in the hi-desert. They perform shows 12 months a year. And we’ll kick off our hot summer issue with news about them.

HI-DESERTTHEATRES Theatre 29–Twentynine Palms Mel Brooks’ outrageous musical comedy The Producers, which opened July 17, continues to keep them rolling in the aisles at the John Calveri Theatre on Sullivan Road in Twentynine Palms.

Directed by the “dynamic duo” of Gary Daigneault (actors’ director) and Ed Will (musical director), the hilarious, Tonywinning comedy continues on its zany way through August 15.

The Producers features Charles Harvey as Max Bialystock, the wily, and ethics-challenged Broadway producer who sets out to produce a huge flop musical as a way to pocket the profits for himself and write off the production as a business loss to his investors. However, the best laid plans, etc, etc., come into play, and the planned “flop” becomes a huge success. What will Max and his partner Leo Bloom do now? To find out, attend one of the performances on Fridays and Saturdays at 7 p.m. There is one Sunday, August 9, matinee at 2 p.m. The musical runs to August 15. For reservations call the box office at (760)361-4151.

Hi-Desert Cultural Center–Blak Box Theatre–Joshua Tree The state-of-the-art Blak Box theatre, located behind the Main Stage building in the Cherie Palmer Performance Hall, will be holding auditions the second and third weekends in August for their upcoming world premiere production, Swift Fox. It’s 40 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

the story of Willie Boy, written and directed by theatre Artistic Director, Ron House.

Swift Fox is a powerful and controversial story concerning a high-desert Native American who eluded authorities in the California deserts for weeks back in 1909. Hollywood actor/playwright/director House, who has been researching this story for some time, has now set Friday, September 18 at 8 p.m., as the date for the world premiere of Swift Fox, the story of Willie Boy. Performances will be Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 7 p.m., and Sundays at 2 p.m. from September 18 through October 4. For ticket information call the Blak Box ticket office at (760)3663777, or visit www.hidesertculturalcenter.com.

Groves Cabin Theatre–Morongo Valley The Groves Cabin Theatre is currently on hiatus until October 10. They open the 2009/2010 season with the comedy play The Clean House, written by Sarah Ruhl.

Directed by Desert Theatre League multiple award-winner Wendy Cohen, the play stars Julie Scott, Sue Kelly, Vicki Montgomery, Joy Groves, and Lloyd Steel. Performances will be Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 2:30 p.m. from October 10 through November 1. The Groves Cabin Theatre box office number is (760)365-4523.

DOWN VALLEYTHEATRES Palm Canyon Theatre–Palm Springs The flagship Palm Springs theatre is currently conducting young people “theatre camps” and prepping for their 2009/2010 season opener, Meredith Wilson’s The Music Man, directed by Scott Smith. The show is composer Wilson’s paean to his Midwestern upbringing and values, and is chock full of hit songs.

Auditions are still underway for the key role of Professor Harold Hill, the slick and charming salesman, and for Miss Marian, his love interest librarian, as well as other principal roles.

The Music Man opens October 9 and runs through October 25. For information call the box office at (760)323-5123.

LaQuinta Playhouse–Old Town The intimate 45-seat theatre located at 108 Main Street, Old Town La Quinta, is currently performing the satire Greater Tuna, written by Jaston Williams, Joe Sears, and Ed Howard. Performers Ron Young and Blake Bentley play all 20 characters that make up the population of Tuna, Texas, the imaginary, third-smallest town in the Lone Star state.

It’s a tour de force effort on the part of the two performers who bring to life the zany characters of Tuna. The comedy-satire spawned three follow-on plays about the denizens of the imaginary Texas town. Greater Tuna opened at the playhouse on July 24 and continues Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. through August 29. For reservations and ticket information call (760)360-9191.

REGIONALTHEATRES Up in the mountains, the 2009 Big Bear Summer Theatre Festival gets underway at 6 p.m., Friday, August 14 at the Big Bear Discovery Center Amphitheater. The festival plays Friday and Saturday for two weekends, with the final curtain on Saturday, August 22.

Jenilee Harrison (Three’s Company, Dallas) is taking on the title role in the festival’s melodrama, Belle, the first baby of Big Bear. Other offerings include Clarence Darrow.

For more information, call the box office at (909)657-0585, or visit www.bigbearsummertheatrefestival.com.

A great way to beat the August heat in our desert is to take a quick trip to the cool coastal waters and sophistication of San Diego and the world famous Old Globe Theatre complex in downtown’s Balboa Park.

The Globe is currently presenting the world premiere of the new musical The First Wives Club through August 23. Patrons can also attend the Summer Shakespeare Plays (in repertory) in the outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, through September 27. Performances begin at 7 p.m. or 8 p.m., depending on the day of the week. Check the box office for curtain times. Ticket information for all Old Globe productions is available at www.theoldglobe.org or by calling (619)234-5623.

For more views and reviews—I just returned from New York City where I saw four productions!—read my blog: “Lyons’ Views and Reviews” at www.thesunrunner.com.

See you at the theatre.

T

here are some people who claim the movies and box office ticket sales are in the doldrums. Well, you couldn’t prove it during the recently concluded Palm Springs International ShortFest Film Festival.

According to festival executive director Darryl Macdonald, this year’s ShortFest, generated more ticket sales and attendees than ever before.

“We’ve never had such a large and accomplished group of young filmmakers gathered together at this event at one time, and the positive critical and audience acclaim for the films on view at ShortFest this year is a testament to the wealth of new film talent emerging around the world right now,” said Macdonald.

The public certainly agreed with that assessment as well. More than 230,000 attendees viewed over 315 films during festival week.

Palm Springs is right in the thick of the movie business, boasting two festivals that now command world-wide attention: the huge Oscar-oriented 10-day Palm Springs International Film Festival in January and the week-long, highly successful ShortFest in the summer. Well done, all.

Southern California is home to many film festivals. Up next for your viewing pleasure and attendance, only a stone’s throw away, is the Big Bear Lake International Film Festival. The festival, set amid the picturesque and invitingly cool Alpine setting of Big Bear Lake, begins September 18 and runs to September 20, 2009.

This festival, which I’ve attended for the last four years, is growing in importance and in the quality of the films entered. The real unique aspect of this fes-

tival, at least for me, is the continuing recognition of cinematographers and screenwriters and the creative and important role both play in world cinema. Past Big Bear International Film Festival Lifetime Achievement Award honorees include a distinguished list of Academy Award winners—who, by the way, actually attend and pick up their awards!

For film junkies and devotees, this festival offers not only films for screening but panels and seminars with the filmmakers and movie experts who welcome audience participation. With about 5,000 attendees, one can get up close and personal with the various filmmakers and industry types who attend. It’s a wonderful opportunity to share your thoughts with the folks who make the films.

Tickets and All Event Passes and information can be obtained online at www.bigbearlakefilmfestival.com, or by phone at 909-866-3433 or by email at BigBearFilmFestival@aol.com. Enjoy!

A little closer to home are two unbeatable deals for movie buffs.

Deal One: The Palm Springs International Film Society and Friends of the Rancho Mirage Public Library are presenting a “behind the scenes filmmaker series” every Tuesday, at 7 p.m., at the Rancho Mirage Library. The August 11 program features Stunt Work. The September 8 program will be Cinematography.

Everything you ever wanted to know about movies but were afraid to ask is now available merely by attending these series. Meet face to face with the experts who will conduct the sessions. And the best news of all is the entire series is free to the public. Just show up and enjoy.

Deal Two: The Palm Springs Art Museum in association with Global Lens 2009 is presenting a series of foreign films at their Annenberg Theatre every Thursday in August at 6 p.m. This is another opportunity to peer into another culture and country without ever having to leave home. On Thursday, August 6, the Iranian film Those Three is being screened.

It’s a powerful story of courage and sacrifice. On the following Thursday, August 13, What A Wonderful World from Morocco will be shown. And once again, the price is unbeatable. It’s FREE! The theatre fills up fast, so plan to arrive about 5:30 p.m. for the 6 p.m. movie. For more information on Global Lens and this film series go online to www.psmuseum.org/ programs/film_screenings.php Last but certainly not least, the Desert Film Society presents a screening of Cat City on Saturday, August 15, at 9:30 a.m. at the Camelot Theatres in Palm

Springs. This film is not free unless you’re a Desert Film Society member; however, you might want to plunk down $15 at the door because the entire film was shot right here in Palm Springs.

Here’s the storyline: Victoria Compton (Rebecca Pidgeon) is a successful family lawyer who happens to be married to a lying cheating, husband named Nick (Julian Sands). With the help of Harold (Brian Dennehy), a retired copturned-private-eye, Victoria manages to uncover her husband’s infidelity, her husband’s shady business dealings, and her husband’s plan to leave her. This is a tale of infidelity, deceit, greed, mistrust and murder—did I miss any other important vices?—which sounds to me like your typical, laid-back, everyday work week here in the Valley. (Just kidding, folks.)

But if you want to know more about the movie and how it was filmed in Palm Springs, make sure you attend. Brent Huff, the writer-director, will be in attendance for this one-time screening and will conduct a Q & A session with the audience following the screening. For additional information call (760)772-2999, or go online at www.desertfilmsociety.com.

Basra Entertainment, based in Cathedral City, has something to be pleased about with the release of Bart Got a Room, the prom comedy starring William H. Macy and Cheryl Hines.

The film has been been getting great reviews at film festivals from Tribeca to Maui, as well as in the media. The New York Post called the film “gut-bustingly funny,” while Variety noted that it is “much sweeter and less raunchy” than some other coming-of-age movies. Congratulations to Basra!

See you at the movies.

August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 42

I

t was 1972 when I first picked up a copy of Neil Young’s Harvest.

Be fore I even opened it, all I could do was stare at the cover. I took out a piece of paper and started free-hand copying it. This album inspired me to do many posters and album covers for many bands myself, and little did I know that down the road, the amazing graphic artist who did the cover would become my friend, Tom Wilkes.

When I first met Tom I had no idea that he did many of the album covers in my collection, including Janis Joplin’s Pearl, The Rolling Stones’ Beggars Banquet, George Harrison’s The Concert for Bangladesh, and so many others. I just knew him as the man who took the most amazing photo of Gram Parsons I had ever seen. He gave me a copy of that photo that day, and Gram has been following me around ever since.

In 1967, Tom was the art director of the Monterey International Pop Festival, where he created all the graphics and printed material, including the iconic foil poster that even won him an award from Reynolds Aluminum for best use of foil. He was art director for A&M Records from 1967 through 1969, and ABC Records from 1975 through 1977.

Tom loved the desert and called it home. When his home burned in the Pioneertown fire, he rebuilt. His Airstream trailer melted into a puddle of molten silver (I still have some of it), and it just looked like art.

Tom received a Grammy Award in 1974 for Best Recording Package for The Who’s rock opera Tommy as performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and Choir.

A week before his passing he posed for Fritz Drumm in what turned out to be the final photo of Tom holding his Grammy with his Cheshire-cat grin.

In 1978, he started Tom Wilkes Productions and became president of Project Interspeak, a not-for-profit environmental and human rights organization devoted to planetary enhancement programs. Tom was a trickster and loved to play practical jokes. He loved life and had recently completed a book of his artwork and memoirs called Tommy Geeked a Chicken. When Tom was diagnosed with ALS he said, “How can I have Lou Gehrig’s disease? I don’t even play baseball!!”

A celebration of Tom’s life was held in Orange on July 11 with stories of love and laughter. The one I liked the most was when Tom was working at the Monterey Pop Festival and undercover narcotics agents demanded all-access passes to the 42 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

Tom with his Grammy—and his Cheshire-cat grin, above. Tom with Fritz Drumm, right, and with music columnist Judy Wishart, left. Photos by Fritz Drumm.

show. Tom told them that they did not look like musicians or crew and that everyone would know they were narcotics agents.

But Tom did offer to make them special passes to be judges in the Guitar Contest (of course, there was no guitar contest).

They agreed and Tom made them the passes, but not before he let word out to everyone involved that anyone with a “Judge” pass was a narcotics agent.

There were stories of Tom’s Sun Bear in Topanga Canyon getting loose and going over to the neighbor’s house, where they found him sitting on their couch and eating Oreos, and stories of Neil Young babysitting his daughter, Katherine. He was a brother, a father, a grandfather, and to many of us who knew him he was a friend and inspiration. His legacy and art will live on forever… –Judy Wishart Tommy Geeked a Chicken, and His Mom Gave him a Lickin’ (From his book): “I was Tom’s running buddy for the last several years. We both owned, rode and loved Triumph motorcycles in our younger years. Tom was part of a vanishing breed, a child of the Eisenhower years who got it. He was a mix if Hemmingway, Hunter S. Thompson, James Dean, and Don Quixote. His windmills were injustice and inhumanity. Tom wanted to save the world. Looks like the world is on its own now. He had a passion for art and compassion for humanity.

Gone but not forgotten. To quote Bob Dylan, ‘He was a Friend of Mine.’ Happy Trails Amigo...”

–Fritz Drumm Fritz’s Fun Facts: Tom read, wrote, and spoke fluent Spanish, and read, wrote, and spoke conversational Japanese. He played several instruments (not counting bagpipes), was classically trained on piano as a child but was a great “Stride” piano player as an adult.

I

would like to thank everyone who came out to help me celebrate my bithday—and Bob Dylan’s—in May at the Joshua Tree Saloon. It was a 3hour jam session that included Ted Quinn, Ruby and the Rock Spiders, Johnny Vargas, and a special treat when Jim Mankey from Concrete Blonde joined the band for the afternoon. The Rock Spiders have been packing the house on Saturday nights at the Saloon. Look for them to play at Pappy and Harriet’s in Pioneertown.

We lost a couple of gems from the music industry that were also friends of mine and the desert, Sky Sunlight Saxon of the Seeds and Grammy Award graphic design winner Tom Wilkes (see story this issue).

I knew Sky back in the ’80s and even did an album cover for him. We had a lot of good times at recording sessions and at Greg Shaw’s (of Bomp! Records) “Cavern Club.” I hadn’t seen Sky for almost 20 years when one day he showed up at the Rancho De La Luna in Joshua Tree and we rekindled our friendship. It was quite a session with the new “Dog God Band” that included Victoria Williams, Ted Quinn, Carol Ann, among many others.

In fact, I think I even sang on a track. Sky also played at Pappy’s that weekend singing such hits as “Pushin’ too Hard” and “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine.”

The desert was really rocking for a weekend in June at Pappy and Harriet’s, starting with a birthday celebration for Dave Catching with none other than the Eagles of Death Metal, who played to a packed house on the outdoor stage. The next night was an outrageous show from Peaches, who luckily did not get buck naked on stage as she does at many of

her other shows. But she was a crowd pleaser, even jumping off stage and singing in front of the bar.

The Starlite courtyard behind the True World Gallery and next to Mount Fuji General Store in Joshua Tree has quickly become the newest most intimate venue to play. Kicking things off was the CD release party for Tim Easton’s Porcupine, followed the next weekend with a show from JP Houston and Amanda Jo Williams. Thanks to George and Bonnie Kopp from True World and Chantal Doyle of Mount Fuji for opening up their courtyard for some amazing shows.

The Red Arrow Gallery in Joshua Tree has also hosted movie nights and has shown great films about Gram Parsons and John Trudell.

A benefit was held for our own Pitown Princess Kristina Quigley at Pappy’s. It was a huge success and included music from Ritmo Loco, Rojer Arnold, Biker Larry and the Black Ropes, and Solid Ray Woods Raw Soul Review.

Thanks to all the musicians and artists who contributed their time and art to help our dear Kristina with her medical bills; this community always comes through.

Another venue has also opened up in Morongo Valley, “Rattlesnake Jakes.”

The grand opening music was from David McChesney (aka Hurricane David) and was followed the next weekend with a show from Glenn Patrik, who also rocked the crowd with his soulful blues at the Landers Third of July fireworks show.

I encourage everyone to head east and catch the Hafler Duo at the 29 Palms Inn, and then trip on out to The Palms in Wonder Valley, which just hosted an amazing show featuring their own house band, The Sibleys, City Fritter, and Bret

Ruby & the Rock Spiders, top left; Amanda Jo Williams, top right; and Sky Saxon, above.

Jensen’s Death Valley Jubilee.

There has been so much great music out here already this summer, including Paul Chesney’s Birthday Bash, with the amazing singer-songwriter Matt Ellis opening, and the Ditty Bops and Linnzi Zaorski at Pappy’s. The Art Queen in Joshua Tree has also been having some really great shows, including a rousing set from There Be Pirates! who were sailing off to England on tour as I wrote this.

With so many great shows at so many outstanding venues, it is hard to get out and see everything. And the Saturn I was driving had 200,000 miles on it and made its last trip to Pappy’s a month ago, but I have a new car now that can even make it to Wonder Valley! Have a great rest of the summer....

August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 43

Sustainable Living

Simple Times in a Simple Place “Claire’s Yurt ...”

(By Pasquali via David Brown)

O

n the threshold of this dream, where hundreds of humming birds dart about while coyote and badger may play, there is an old sign. It is primitively made and very worn out, posted on an aging pinyon pine in the desert mountains of eastern California.

Whimsically carved into a weathered slab of scrap lumber, it reads: “The circle is a path unbroken, with no beginning and no end, eternal and outside, a ring of strength and through strength we understand truth.”

As we walk down this path amid disturbed times through a small stand of the pinyon and the “femme” juniper trees that are loaded with berries, it is not far—a little clearing of sorts. Here are volcanic rock of the mountains and varnished desert rock of the flats below and petite grasses and delicate sweet flowers whose lavishness looks like they belong in the Dolomites after a wet winter.

Amid such wondrous and delightful things is a platform built of redwood timbers and boards, with an earthy and magnificent “Yurt” sitting atop of it! A 16-foot wide canvas-over-wood framed example of nomadic living, although how “portable” this may be is another question.

This particular yurt has not been taken down or moved since it was located here about 10 years ago. So much for the nomadic tendency of a gypsy.

One may expect a “knomus du’ne” or some such persona to appear at the doorway. Yes, there is actually such a mythical creature. They are very rare, I would think, since dunes in general seem to be a vanishing landscape. A figment of both coastal and desert thought.

“She who does appear on the threshold of a dream” is not so short or so stocky, I think, and far more attractive.

My friend Claire lives here, in simple na-

tive fashion, creating jewelry and art and love, and not always in that order. When she moved here from a small city to create this place, with the erstwhile help of my friend Allan in his pre-Estelle days, Claire refused to destroy any living thing, and lives this way to this very day! When clearing the land for the platform, she gave a prayer offering and explained to the sage brush that she was only to move them, not reacting from bad thought. Her medicine was good, and she asked forgiveness from the land for disturbing it.

Claire then dug three holes and filled them partially with loose soil. She gingerly removed the bushes, making a wide cut around them so as not to disturb the roots that much, noting the direction in which these plants where facing, and made sure to place them at their new homes in the same fashion. Their new location was as closely matched to the old as possible. This keeps the secret life of plants from enduring shock, I think.

Love and caring were her partners in this task, as it should be with you and I as well. Ask la beuno terra for help in the planting, as well as la solar and las luna and las tierras ceilo. Some people may think this is sort of pagan? Oh well, I guess that’s their problem, says I, Pasquali, apostle of theosophical thought. Simply, Claire has a respect for the land going back generations in her family and also in the circle of life. Claire knows how to live.

Allan, ever the eccentric sort of character, used only human hand-powered tools to build the platform. No batteries or extension cords for him, a craftsman of the old school! It is his way of honoring the land as well. As Allan explains: “A yurt is a nomadic structure from the East traditionally made from skins. They are squat walled and have an opening only for a door in front and a smoke hole in the center peak of the roof. They look very much like a canvas hogan, or perhaps a hogan is just an earthen yurt. There is that trans-continental ethnicity which is rather interesting, isn’t it? These structures are very sound. Possessing no angles or sharp edges, they stand up to howling winds of the Mongol Plateau effectively. Like a nut shell, the circular shape is inherently strong. When bucked

by a strong wind, the dervish flows on by, and the web-like framing has enough give not to buckle, yet is strong enough to prevent collapse.”

“Think of the proverb ‘bend like a reed in the wind’,” says I. “This applies to conventionally framed or earthen-based round structures as well,” continues Allan. “Try that in a western tent, I dare you! Fuller came close with his domes; however, too technological and modern for some, they miss the mark when it comes to organic! Organic as a yurt may be, these ‘round houses’ are also efficient in terms of energy use.

Since there are no hard angles, the air just free flows about the room so the temperatures seem to be very consistent, no matter where you may be. This is as long as one resists the temptation of placing walls in the yurt, trying to make it more ‘home’ like. I say, why bother? Part of the allure of yurt, or tepee life for that matter, is the joy of simple living, a sort of voluntary simplicity, partly coerced due to lack of space. We could all very easily get rid of more than a few things, myself included.”

“Living in the round is a departure from the norm,” reflects Claire. “All the standard trappings of life seem never to fit. My space is very limited, so I choose my possessions with care. Many of them are aesthetic, but the choices are different. For example, standard furnishings do not fit well in a round room—the sofa, entertainment center, and such. Instead I have two small chairs, a table, a large chest, an old pie safe turned into an armoire by the woodworking artist David Borland. I have a small assortment of musical instruments from throughout the world. All the things within this yurt were made by craftspeople whose standards meant more than making a dollar or yen or mark. They are items made with love and respect for the planet and other life.

The attitude of true creative endeavor, the attitude we should all have. Why clutter our life or homes with cheap throw-away goods from a mass-marketed temporaryfulfillment society?

“Sit here and make yourself comfortable. Isn’t that nice? Goat skin, they use it all! It is a nomad’s chair from Tunisia, and you look to me like a sort of nomad.

Ride with Shawn Mafia down the unlit back roads of the

Dark Desert

Only on www.thesunrunner.com

44 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

“Back to my living arrangements. I cook on a wood-burning stove, which doubles for a heat source when it is cold.

When it is hot, I use a wonderful solar cooker my good friend Allan made for me a few years ago in his little off-grid workshop in the desert mountains to the south. OK, I do have a small solar array, and they sit atop my bath house (a small square structure 20 feet away), with its homemade compost toilet (yes, another Allan creation), and the stock-tank bathtub, itself with a killer view. So this means I can listen to music or use a laptop computer and even charge that devil called a cell phone—no land lines here, folks. I even have a small electric refrigerator. This lady likes a few cold luxuries such as goat cheese and the occasional sorbet or Italian ice!

“The inside of this yurt is wonderful. The lattice framing makes an interesting backdrop. There is just enough natural wood to make this one-room abode warm and inviting, but not enough to make it dark or oppressive. The off-white-color canvas duck of the inner walls help balance this out. There is a thin layer of woolen blankets between the inner and outer wall, and this acts as a sort of insulation. I like warmth and sunlight in a room, so this yurt is modified to include a set of French doors at the south entry and two wall-height 12-panel windows on the east and west sides. I also have a center skylight, set above the compression ring in the center of the ceiling. Like that handpainted sun and sky, turning into twilight and then the stars and moon? See, this is what I was talking about earlier, a certain quality of life and a rejuvenating space in which to live.

“The kitchen is more of a galley, with just a simple sink and a place to hold silverware and a few pots and pans. It is actually a mini Hossier of sorts, rescued from a yard sale! I also store my herbs there during winter when they are not available from the ‘kitchen garden’ outside. Live with freshness, I always say! It elevates one’s standard of life, and that is never bad. I really want to go outside now and listen to the wind and watch the humming birds that always come this time of day. Grab those wine glasses and let’s retire to the deck.”

“I lived in a cabin tent one summer in Modoc while I was tending a herd of sheep!” says I. “This was in the high desert country between Alturas and Cedarville. I had a good flock of sheep, a few hundred in fact. Of course they where not mine, myself being a man of very little means and I wish to keep it this way. When you have fewer things this makes fewer distractions, and it gives a man or a woman or a dog much needed time to contemplate living and clear the mind of needless clutter.

Anyway, it is pleasant country, full of sage, rabbit brush, meandering streams, and no office buildings or malls. The cabin tent wasn’t very large, but it was comfortable. I had a sling cot for a bed, a table and a stove, all which I could take outdoors for cooking or eating or napping, weather dependent. This was an old military surplus item, one of the few good by-products of battle in a war-mongering nation such as Sweden, I think it was.

“Yes, my friends, an old officer’s field tent. There I was, the officer and commander in chief of a flock of sheep! I felt most royal! The King of Basques! I fly my own flag proudly with simplicity and dignity!”

Peace–Pasquali

Letters From London

The means more deals online!

by Isabel Bass

Art • Theatre • Music • Travel

Only on www.thesunrunner.com

August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 45

AUGUST

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46 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

Through Aug. 15 – The Producers. Directed by Gary Daigneault with musical direction by Ed Will. Based on the Mel Brooks story of a theatrical producer and an accountant who attempt to cheat investors by deliberately producing a flop show on Broadway. $12 regular admission, $10 Senior & Military, $8 students with ID. Because of mature subject matter the show is not recommended for children.

Theatre 29, 73637 Sullivan Rd., 29 Palms. (760)361-4151 or www.theatre29.com.

Through October – Abraham Lincoln Exhibit. A fascinating exhibit honoring Abraham Lincoln chronicles the life of America’s 16th President. The exhibit features authentic Civil War artifacts & a framed document, hand signed by President Lincoln. Free. La Quinta Museum, 77-885 Avenida Montezuma, La Quinta. (760)777-7170, www.la-quinta.org.

Through October – Pioneertown Posse Old West Re-enactment Shows. Free shows every Saturday at 2:30 p.m. from April through Oct. on Mane St. in front of the Pioneer Bowl, off Pioneertown Rd. in Pioneertown. Shows are fun & entertaining, including ventriloquism, music & comedy skits for the whole family.

Aug. 8 – Shadow Mtn. Band & Gram Rabbit. Shadow Mtn. Band performs acoustic mountain hillbilly & more at 5 p.m., with Gram Rabbit & VooDoo Organist at 9 p.m. Pappy & Harriet’s, 53688 Pioneertown Rd., Pioneertown.

(760)365-5956, www.pappyandharriets.com.

Aug. 9 – Eva Stokes Starsinger. 4 p.m. $10. A solo acoustic performance (piano & voice). A Roadside Attraction, 69197 29 Palms Hwy., 29 Palms. (760)362-4100.

Aug. 13 – Roommates. Noon. Free. Part of the Brown Bag Lunch Lecture Series. Museum biologist Stefanie Ritter talks on your unknown roommates inside your home. Iced tea served. Hi-Desert Nature Museum, 57090 29 Palms Hwy., Yucca Valley. (760)3697212, www.hidesertnaturemuseum.org.

Aug. 15 – 15th Annual Yucca Valley Summer Music Festival featuring the Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Air Combat Center Band. 7-9 p.m. Free. Bring a blanket & lawn chair & enjoy the show. Yucca Valley Community Center Complex Ballfield, 57090 29 Palms Hwy., Yucca Valley. (760)369-7211, www.yucca-valley.org.

Aug. 15 – Perseid Meteor Shower Star Party. 8 p.m.-midnight.

The Mojave Desert Land Trust will host a Perseid Meteor Shower Star Party Benefit for the Quail Mountain Project to raise funds for its land acquisition campaign. Attendees have the option to camp overnight on the property to watch the meteor showers during their peak hours after midnight. The California Desert Video Astronomers will project live pictures from their deep-space telescopes enabling a peek at galaxies & stars beyond our visual spectrum. The National Park Service will offer a dark skies presentation to show the growth of light pollution & its effect on our region. The Integratron is donating their facility for this benefit and will conduct their signature Sound Bath for attendees. A coffee & dessert bar is included & the Joshua Tree Chamber of Commerce will offer wine & beer for purchase. All ages invited. Overnight camping on site is available for an additional fee of $25/person, with continental breakfast included. Children 12 years & under attend for free. Integratron, 2477 Belfield Blvd., Landers. www.integratron.com.

Aug. 16 – Elvis Tribute Day. Tours 9 a.m.-2 p.m. $25. Living room concert. 4-6 p.m. $50. Combo tour/concert $65. Elvis Honeymoon Hideaway, 1350 Ladera Circle, Palm Springs. (760)322-1192.

Aug. 29 – El Chapo de Sinaloa in concert. 8 p.m. Tickets $30-$50.

Grammy winner El Chapo de Sinaloa has been performing since age 11, when he took up the clarinet. He later learned to play bass &

worked with several regional Mexican labels as a session musician.

But his breakout as a solo artist instantly wowed record executives & audiences alike, & he has since released more than a dozen solo albums. Of his many albums, perhaps the most notable is Te Va a Gustar, which topped the Billboard Regional Mexican album chart & earned him a Grammy Award for Best Banda Album in 2007. Guests 18 & over must be accompanied by an adult 21 or older. Spotlight 29 Casino, 46-200 Harrison St., Coachella. (800)585-3737, www.spotlight29.com.

Aug. 29 – Michael Jackson Tribute Concert: Reflections of Michael-The Man in the Mirror. 9:15 p.m. Free. In celebration of Michael Jackson’s 51st birthday. Tony McKay has amazed audiences since 1984 with his uncanny impression of Jackson. This Vegas performer outdoes himself on stage, backed by a live band and perfectly choreographed dancers. This high energy performance will have the crowd dancing & singing along with the outstanding renditions of Michael Jackson favorites, as well as full costume changes reflecting the many phases of Michael Jackson’s career, signature dance moves & beautifully delivered vocals. Fantasy Springs Resort Casino, 84245 Indio Springs Parkway, Indio.

(760)342-5000, www.fantasyspringsresort.com.

Aug. 29-30 – 16th Annual Jazz in the Pines Festival. Superb jazz festival set in the stunningly beautiful mountains of Idyllwild. 25 acts on three stages. Saturday headliner is Mindi Abair. Sunday’s headliner is Sheila E., Pete Escovedo & the E. Family Project. 65 fine art booths, exotic food vendors, premium wine tasting all on the Idyllwild Arts campus. For tickets and lineup: www.idyllwildjazz.com.

SEPTEMBER Sept. 5 – Action Council for 29 Palms 15th Anniversary Hayride Mural Tour & Progressive Dinner. 4:30 p.m. This “hayride” tour begins at the city’s first mural, progressing along 29 Palms Highway & Adobe Rd. to the Historic Plaza, returning to Bucklin Park for a silent auction, raffle drawings, music & more. The celebration kicks off at the site of the city’s first mural, The Keys, with a goodbye & farewell toast, as the building hosting the mural is scheduled for demolition.

Hayride participants will travel to various stops around a circuit designed to spotlight the area’s rich cultural history. Along the way, they will be treated to an assortment of food & drink. Seven stops later, arriving in Bucklin Park, there will be additional beverages & desserts, a silent auction, raffle prizes and mural souvenir merchandise. $25.15 per person or $43.29 per couple, in advance. Limited tickets may or may not be available at the door for $29 per person or $50 per couple.

Tickets available at the 29 Palms Chamber of Commerce, (760)3673445, D.L. Bowden Frame Shop, (760)367-1174, & Global Product Sales (760)367-4477. For more information, contact Mel Berlin at (760)367-4477.

Sept. 18 – World Premiere of Swift Fox, the Story of Willie Boy. 8 p.m. Written & directed by Ron House. Runs through Oct. 4. HiDesert Cultural Center’s Blak Box Theatre, 61231 29 Palms Highway

Joshua Tree. (760)366-3777, www.hidesertculturalcenter.com.

Sept. 19-20 – 15th Gathering of Nations Traditional Pow Wow. Sat. 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Sun. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. LeRoyJackson Park, Ridgecrest. (760)446-3414.

For the most comprehensive events listings for the California deserts, please visit the California Deserts Visitors Association Calendar, produced by The Sun Runner Magazine, at www.thesunrunner.com.

August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 47

Circle C Lodge

Private oasis offers 12 spacious guest rooms nestled in a lush garden courtyard with heated pool, spa, BBQ pit. Full kitchen, A/C, HBO, phones, continental breakfast.

AAA, extended stay available.

6340 El Rey Ave., 29 Palms, CA (760)367-7615 • 800-545-9696 www.circleclodge.com

Holiday Inn Express Hotel & Suites

Free Smart Start breakfast, free local calls, fast DSL Internet access, heated pool & spa, fitness center, business center.

Andy Patel, General Manager.

71809 29 Palms Hwy., 29 Palms, CA 92277 (760)361-4009 • 1-800-HOLIDAY www.hiexpress.com/twentynineca

29 Palms Inn

Fine food & lodging since 1928. Lunch, dinner, continental breakfast, Sunday brunch.

Art-filled dining room, bar. Heated pool, poolside patio, adobe bungalows. “Oasis of Mara” and trails, near JT National Park headquarters and visitor center.

Paul & Jane Smith, Innkeepers.

73950 Inn Ave., 29 Palms, CA 92277 (760)367-3505 www.29palmsinn.com

High Desert Motel

In the heart of Joshua Tree, a modern motel with spacious rooms, HBO/Cable TV, A/C, in-room phones, in-room coffee, laundry, swimming pool, picnic facilities, BBQ areas.

Reasonable rates. Near west entrance to JT National Park and local rock climbing schools. Your host, Vijay Hira.

61310 29 Palms Hwy., Joshua Tree, CA (760)366-1978 • Toll Free 888-367-3898

PRIVATE AND QUIET RETREAT

2 artist-owned cabins with boulder & panoramic desert views, minutes from Joshua Tree National Park, with all amenities, including wireless Internet. A favorite of musicians & artists, and dog friendly.

909-224-8626 or 760-366-1331

www.rattlerjoshuatree.com

Find the best in desert lodging at www.thesunrunner.com and www.desertfuncoupons.com

48 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

The best of the California deserts

Harmony Motel

Country Inn

Complimentary Continental Breakfast.

Pillow top matresses. Business Center with fast DSL Internet Access, Data Port/Fast DSL Access in all rooms. FREE local calls.

Outdoor pool, some Jacuzzi Rooms, Kitchenette Rooms. TV w/remote, iron, coffee maker, hair dryer, clock radio.

Friendly, professional staff.

71829 29 Palms Hwy., 29 Palms, CA 92277 (760)367-0070 • (760)367-9806 Fax

Roughley Manor

Bed & Breakfast Inn. Gorgeous 1928 stone manor on 25-acre historic Campbell Ranch.

Gardens, elegant guest rooms, fireplaces, grand piano in great room, fine linens, gourmet food, catered functions.

74744 Joe Davis Dr., 29 Palms, CA 92277 (760)367-3238

EL RANCHO DOLORES MOTEL A respite for desert travelers since 1940, downtown 29 Palms. Swimming pool, courtyard, A/C, direct phones, satellite TV/HBO. Refrigerators/microwaves, kitchenettes available. Ken Patel, Manager.

73352 29 Palms Hwy., 29 Palms, CA 92277 (760)367-3528 virtual29.com/a-z/dolores

SUNNYVALE GARDEN SUITES Condo-like suites with a touch of the “old west.” Junior, 1 & 2 bedroom suites, full kitchens, living rooms, dining rooms, private patios w/barbecues, Cable TV, DVD, patio area, playground, spa and fitness center.

Tony & Cora Naraval, owners.

73843 Sunnyvale Dr., 29 Palms, CA 92277 (760)361-3939 www.sunnyvalesuites.com

Pop legends U2 stayed at the Harmony, why not U too?

2005 newly remodeled rooms with TVs, kitchenettes, hot spas, swimming pool, break room, copier, fax and Internet service is free.

Best value in town.

71161 29 Palms Hwy., 29 Palms, CA 92277 (760)367-3351 • www.harmonymotel.com

Sunset Motel

At the foot of Joshua Tree National Park in downtown 29 Palms. Pool, direct phones, TV, HBO, refrigerators, complimentary coffee, full kitchens available. A/C. microwave oven.

Friendly, European-style hospitality.

Owner: Jan. 73842 29 Palms Hwy., 29 Palms, CA 92277 (760)367-3484 totteknutzen@hotmail.com

96.3 FM August/September 2009 – The Sun Runner 49

Amargosa Opera House & Hotel

Historic Spanish Colonial style adobe hotel with Marta Becket murals, gift shop, AC. Reservations recommended.

(760) 852-4441 www.amargosa-opera-house.com

Mark Speer Automotive 367-0222

Roy’s Tires

4082-B Adobe Rd. 29 Palms

Owner Corey A. Collett TIRES • WHEELS • REPAIR COMPUTER BALANCING

(760)228-2084

55666 Yucca Trail, Yucca Valley

WELLS HOME FARGO MORTGAGE

Your Local Lender Mary Jane Binge, Branch Manager

6528 Hillside Ave. 29 Palms, CA 92277

(760)367-3622 • FAX 367-2767 50 The Sun Runner – August/September 2009

Now you can reach 36,000 readers each issue with your ad in The Sun Runner Magazine (and reach even more online with our DesertFunCoupons.com!)

Fine Food and Lodging at the Historic Oasis of Mara

Family Owned and Operated since 1928

GEOFFREY PRESTON PHOTOGRAPHY

(People have lived at this natural oasis for thousands of years.)

The Sun Runner

• Lunch, Dinner, Cocktails, Sunday Brunch • Charming Adobe Bungalows with Fireplaces • Heated Swimming Pool • Entertainment Friday and Saturday Nights • Available for Special Events • Tour our extensive fruit and vegetable garden and grape arbor.

• See California Fan Palms, Oasis Lagoon, Barn Owls, Roadrunners, Gambel’s Quail, Bunnies and Jackrabbits and other delightful things!

73950 Inn Avenue, Twentynine Palms, CA 92277 • 760-367-3505 www.29palmsinn.com

PRSRT STD U.S. POSTAGE

PAID 29 Palms, CA 92277

PERMIT NO.105