Emma Prusch Farm Park

Lady and Gent

   How to begin after going dark since the end of April here at Insight Walks? I might begin at the beginning with chickens, or would that be eggs? This handsome hen and rooster pair are a good entryway. I found them scratching for insects in the moist, deep mulch nourishing Emma's plum and apple trees. The hen flung wood chips into her escort's wattles as she dug herself a cool little bowl in the earth. For his part, he stepped lightly around a tree trunk hanging close to her side.

   Chickens as well as ducks roam the park fields and field edges freely; they sometimes wander out of the park's fences into adjoining environs such as the Shell car wash at the intersection of King and Story Roads or the #22 Eastridge Bus Stop on King near the park's entrance gates. Everything outside this historical park is rush and bustle. Had Emma Prusch never donated her farm in the 60s to San Joseans to sustain and commemorate a rural county farm atmosphere, there would be another fast food franchise or shopping plaza plopped over these orchard and garden acres without a thought of trees or pollinator gardens or a green place to lie down on a blanket.

Art and Life on the Outside Wall of Veggielution Kitchen

  If you walk to the back of the farm out past the Prusch family home and Veggielution's eight or so acres of gardens, farm stand, and community work and learning spaces then look up, you realize you are hanging out with families of peacocks and picnickers right under the junction of I-680 and Freeway 101. I could hear the whoosh of traffic as I took a little shade rest in the Youth Garden's "Grape Tepee." At the foot of the living tepee, farm labor organizer César Chávez's words live on in dappled shade and sun on a little handmade sign . . .

   Emma Prusch Farm Park is a palpable leap back into San Jose's agricultural history. We were not always this Place of Vast Parking Lots: This was the Valley of Heart's Delight where there were miles of orchards and anything grew. This place in East San Jose is a little window into times past, but it's not just for looking through. Emma Prusch is a fully participatory heritage farm, and it is up to us how and where to link hands with our community. There is a spot for you and for me, for the young and the old. There is a working barn for beef cattle, sheep and swine, and it is one of the largest free standing wooden barns in our state (www.pruschfarmpark.org/about-us.html). 

   I watched a pot-bellied pig take a nap beside the original farm home. In a nexus of three major shopping centers including Plaza de Sán José and Placita Tropicana as well as the one housing the first Mi Pueblo Food Center, it is fascinating to just unhitch from the clock, forget about your grocery list (never-ending) and gaze at a pig taking a long grinning yawn in the midst of his Sunday snooze. Tire of swine swoons and you may wander on to pat a goat's bony forehead and look into their startlingly strange irises. Maybe this is the only place some of the children visiting today ever see a rabbit or sheep. A windmill waterwell named Bella. Sturdy corn stalks and drowsy headed sunflowers.
   One goat was pregnant and walked around like she had just swallowed down an easy chair. A woman holding her toddler up over the top planks of the animal fences exclaimed in an Asian language (I am not sure which one) with intermittent "Bay-bee!" "Baybee!!" thrown in. We all watched the soon-to-be mother together while a little girl turned furrowing her brow and peering around and between the goats looking for the 'Bay-bee. A lot goes on here, especially in summertime; Browse the Emma Prusch Farm Park Foundation's site for its historical overview and further information on events, programs, and classes.
   I listened to a birthday crowd smashing a piñata as I lay on the grass, then walked across the lawns to peer in at all the bounty of the plots in Cornucopia Community Garden: Fat tomatoes, springy basil and glistening tufts of corn silk on ripening ears of corn. I lifted the gate anchor, slipped inside and after taking some camera shots of the burgeoning harvest found myself locked inside the horn of plenty. My mouth watered in front of a tub of crowded basil--

I approached a Mexican family busy harvesting ears of corn and asked if they might let me out. The young man in white sneakers told me the gardens are private and after an uncomfortable silence his father walked me to the gate and spun the combo to let me out. He asked me about my pictures and I complimented him on the garden's health.
   We began our walk ushered in by chickens and we shall part ways with a glimpse at the elegant simplicity of corn silk mingled in sunlight--

Coyote Ridge Open Space Preserve

Purple Owl's Clover with Goldfields

   Liam O'Brien, Lepidopterist, visited us at Coyote Ridge from San Francisco to lead a group of approximately forty hikers to roam the old mine roads for sightings of the rare and threatened Bay Checkerspot butterfly (and assorted others). We spotted the Boisduval's blue on some Lupine ovipositing her eggs. On this tour we also stopped in our tracks to watch a California ringlet. We spotted one Bay Checkerspot on some tidy tip blossoms. Liam described him as at the end of his brief imago days or "greased out."
   The day was breezy and sunny. Grasses bent in snakelike paths up the hillsides in the wind. A woman walking beside me called these wind-stroked undulations 'wolf whorls.' I have pondered this phenomenon in these foothills for many springs. It is like invisible snakes or great fingers stroking the earth's hair. The sight is both calming and restless: it gives body to the wind. At times we focused in on the face of one creamcup, blue-eyed grass blossom or a mixture of poppies and purple owl's clover in a small area. Other times we paused to take in whole hillsides watching the utterings of the wind.
   Purple needlegrass nodded and shone in the sunlight and breezes. These native bunch grasses have reddish purple lining their silky-looking narrow seedheads in the spring. There are all different grasses, and to learn to see between them is to learn our own history in this place. The splashy dizzying show of bright wildflowers teases us away from the soft stories whispering in grasses. Who will be the leader of the Grasses Walk? What is the professional title of a grass expert? I wonder if one will stand up and host a grass meander to teach us how the grasses here supported the humans, what lives in there and eats of it and more mysteries about the varied lives of grasses . . .

Purple needlegrasses dangled over wildflowers gently pointing our attention to poppies, goldfields, lupine, tidy tips, purple owls' clover and other flowers growing in their midst.
   White-tailed kites and kestrels hunted the gentle open grasslands. Meadowlarks hidden in tall grasses and among rocks made themselves known to one another in flutelike drifts of song. We were assorted friendly strangers sharing a leisurely walk hosted and organized by Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority. We peered into the lives of butterflies learning from one of their champions, Liam O'Brien, who spends his days chasing them, studying them, painting them, saving them, and sharing his enthusiasm with the public in his loose, straightforward, humorous manner. Refer to his self-illustrated guidebook, "Butterflies of the Presidio." Or walk with him on one of his scheduled walks. There is nothing like being there, our feet in flowers and our eyes on butterflies. The story of the Bay Checkerspot, Euphydryas editha bayensis, is a window into wildlife conservation where we live. This subspecies of Euphydryas editha at present only survives in Santa Clara County foothills and Coyote Ridge is a core habitat area supporting its host plant, dwarf plantain, and thereby providing a foothold against its extinction. It's bad when the butterflies go away.
   It is April and even the cows are luminous and framed in flowers all around--black cows and calves strolling through goldfields. I stand staring at a cow and her calf all framed in bright gold, their coats like wet daubs of black paint in the sun.

Walk in Beauty

    Thick stands of Purple Owl's Clover below serpentine outcrops brings photographers to our knees; we zero in on their blushy numbers attempting over and over to catch their floral spirits with a click. Hundreds of little white eyes of the flower tucked in the plant's purple feathery bracts gaze back at us. After we go out the gate and back to our cars and descend into the city, the flowers still waver up there on Coyote Ridge. The California poppies shout. The little owl eyes in the Purple Owl's Clover look out. Needlegrasses nod. Meadowlarks sing the songs that if the blue sky could talk, would probably sound of meadowlark.

Wildflowers: You Have to Be There

The Slog (Flood February 2017)

 

Brookwood Terrace

   In a state of numb fascination I wandered around Brookwood Terrace neighborhood after the evacuation. For any residents remaining after the evacuation, the flood of the prior night posed the sole topic of conversation on the sidewalk. You still could not see the sidewalk but some neighbors in rubber boots were visiting, comparing notes and stories, and lending advice and tools. It honestly did feel a little intrusive to me to be carrying a camera and shooting photos, but this has never happened here in my close to half-century of existence. Later, shots of the flood on social media helped people in far reaches of California and elsewhere stay in touch with friends who still live in their old neighborhoods: It also gave them a grasp of the level and the impact of this flood when news coverage with its hyperbole and repetition made the country think that maybe all of San Jose was underwater. In conscribed zones of the city on the Coyote Creek, we were in a state of emergency and distress but even some other citizens of our city remained unaware that our neighborhoods had flooded and required (and still require) relief and services. Following is a collection of images of Brookwood Terrace on the day after this historic event for our community.

South 19th Day After

South 19th Sidewalk

 Everything was boggy and afloat. A resident tried to prevent his pick-up from sinking further below his front yard:

Most likely, at some point in the advancing waters, he determined his yard as high ground. Not high enough as you can see the waterline is at his front stoop.

Drought Resistant Landscaping

In the last several years of drought, many people have switched their front grass for drought resistant plants or fully California native gardens.

  We have been on water restrictions for a few summers. This family's yard will be lucky if it recovers from complete submergence under the escaped waters of the Coyote Creek. Coyote Creek became overwhelmed by the overfull Anderson Reservoir pouring into its channels. There is a town meeting at City Hall this week on March 9th; There are many people who have questions and concerns, to say the least. I am sure some are still overwhelmed and also incensed at the disruption and expense this flood has caused in their lives. I will learn what I can and take the temperature of the neighborhood at the planned forum. Two emergent lessons have been cooperation and civic responsibility (between neighbors foremost and also between communities and helping agencies) and also holding our public officials accountable and making sure they see us through in a crisis.

The Flood of February 2017 William Street Park

Soccer Field Turns into Lake in a Night and a Day

Only the Ducks Seemed Pleased

My Path Through Coyote Creek's 100 Year Flood

   February 22nd 2017 is the day I learned that gophers and moles will swim when their lives depend upon it. I walked down the street with family friends and neighbors to find the scrambled chaos of a flood crisis at the William Street Bridge on Wednesday morning. Our walk happened before, but only hours before, the entire neighborhood flooded and people had to drive through streets that were sudden temporary creeks, take household tools like push brooms and shovels to unclog storm drains in an attempt to save their houses and yards, push cars to higher ground. Some people were barefoot and others shouted out of SUVs for their loved ones to get in the ^#!~* car already--"we're outta here!" It was a scene of panic and confusion. Some of us just stood there staring at the swirling water on 21st street at the corner store. We all had this numb or aghast expression on our faces even the German shepherd standing against a garage on San Antonio and South 22nd street. We used to call it "Goldstone's" and then "Guru's" but it has since changed hands a few times. It's now called 'San Antonio Market.' A man was locking up the door in the small lift (like a heel) between the store entrance and the sidewalk. The sidewalk was all moving water. I saw a woman plunge with a yelp thigh deep into a storm drain as she attempted to cross San Antonio Street. Photos following this blogpost I took on Thursday morning, post flood, wearing rubber boots and plastic pants. I had to walk up the middle double stripe of San Antonio several blocks to avoid the murky and swirling flowing sidewalks and streets on Wednesday night. I was wearing a black skirt and black shoes (since thrown away) and was worried about all the distracted drivers whose wheels were sending up brown waves of water hitting me or just sliding over since I had heard cars are able to float in 6" of water. I needed to get home and see our street and house. I called my dad and urged him to take a look outside because I was fording a stream to come home and wet to somewhere above my ankles from steering to the shallower areas. "Check it out!" I only remember keeping my goal in mind (getting home) and stopping to thank my Mexican neighbors actively battling the rising waters. Evidently, they were the ones losing ground and the creek meandered into their backyards and submerged the cars on the street. We were being swallowed and watching it happen. I sat with my parents and watched it all over again several times on the news. It was late on Wednesday on the 10:00 p.m. news before we were seeing media images and receiving assurances that the floodwaters had peaked and were receding. Many of us had been watching trees and other landmarks such as notches on the bridges to guess at the water level and the "creep." I've decided to do the shots on their own and the narrative on its own.

Guadalupe River Trail - River Oaks Footbridge to Ulistac Natural Area Ramp

Blue-blossom ceanothus

     When February revisits the Santa Clara Valley my fingers begin to tingle and the only relief turns out to be hours of vigorous weeding. Okay-granted. I do relieve all that vigorous weeding with bouts of dreamy weeding as the Red-tailed hawk slowly circles the sky. She puts everyone in her domain on alert with her air tearing cries. The earth is soft and yielding after being pounded and kneaded by series of heavy rains; Invasive annual grasses surrender the soil much more easily than they are wont to at drier times. The grasses are soft in my hands, and as I pull them out and pile them in stringy heaps I am soon rewarded with bundles of ceanothus blossoms bursting forth and all the bees drawn hither who lend me their subtle, warm companionship as they tumble the flowers. Nearby animals do not hesitate to maximize on unearthed insects, freed up flowers and sleepy seeds my hands and thrashing form shake down from their withered chambers. About an hour into my work, I am no longer separate from all this nonstop interaction and mutualism. No longer foreign to the busy oneness enveloping me.

I got off light-rail at River Oaks Station and crossed the bridge over the Guadalupe which is out past Valley Transportation Authority offices and new playground built for the apartments adjacent to the the river trail. People of all ages and dogs of every size were out enjoying their strolls, jogs, and bike rides. Here's a view of the trail after I have crossed over into Santa Clara but before I have reached the down ramp into Ulistac.

Santa Clara apartments and Guadalupe RT Levee

The GRT parallels apartment complexes so that it takes you past people's kitchens and bedrooms. I gaze at balcony decorations and container gardens on my way by. The trail is heavily used by office workers and other residents. Thamien Park and Rivermark are very close. People commute over the bridge to go to Safeway or else wander over to Peet's and other amenities over in Rivermark (Stone Cold Creamery, Smash Burger, Posh Bagel, the Prolific Oven among others).

    Don Callejon students play on the Thamien Park field and the young children enjoy the sand and playground at Thamien Park while families, often mothers with young children, visit. Older folks take advantage of shaded benches near the tennis courts and behold the pageantry. There is also a well-tended basketball court where quick games are often in progress or children zip around on small bicycles. If you walk up the switchback ramp from the Thamien tennis and basketball courts you come upon a bench and overlook with a rail, but what you gaze upon is a litter and rubber ball graveyard.

Trash Clog

Heading north on the trail, in several minutes I come to the Hetch Hetchy change over station and the footramp down to UNAREP's work shed at Ulistac.
    There is a charcoal black fence lizard sunning on the lower boards. He welcomes me into Ulistac Natural Area with curious upward tilts of his perfect little head. I get his picture before he slides out of sight only coming right back to watch me from the T of the boards. His eyes look deep dark and intelligent to me.
I get a sunny feeling all over me from my brief flirtation with Lizard. This special place is full of welcome.

Greeter

"Coyotes" Invocation

Language Dog

                                            Hey, hey Coyote come to my poem!

                                            I am cooking up duck, snake, deer,

                                            and you're called here Coyote!

                                           "Hey, Man have you seen Coyote?"

                                           "Oh yeah. Over up on the hill and down by the creek,

                                            roaming the brush and weaving in dreams. . . 

                                            Coyote running through dreamtime 

                                            miles and miles all night long.

                                            Coyote worked a new song from all the torn pieces--

                                            He raised up a new song."

                                            "I heard," said Spider. "I heard too," Hawk said.  

                                            "Heard him," said Frog and Eagle.

                                            Coyote's song sounded like some of the old ones,

                                            new waters over old rocks.

                                            We seen him with the moon

                                            and some girls, seen all their shadows, 

                                            all his women dancing on the rocks like a painting.

                                            Red rock held them all flowing together.

                                            So come to the poem Coyote,

                                            maybe on your way back here?

                                            Ha ha yip yip wooh

                                            meaning something like I might

                                            unless my nose turns me another way.

                                            You want me, watch out for me! 

                                            I am always coming around.

                                            Ahh Haiyeee!

San Jose State University

Tower Hall

    The Tower Hall we see standing today as the center piece for San Jose State University dates from 1910. I often did some leisurely study on the lawn surrounding the Tower and imagined my essays taking form as the sun's rays soothed me into a nap. The lawn was always a popular frisbee spot, a place to whisper secrets to your busom buddy, sunbathe and people watch, or soak in a novel for your Faulkner seminar. It was an environ of possibility where the future was near but not unsettlingly so. I was an almost-teacher at the oldest teacher's college in California
         

Tower Hall grounds (SJSU Archives)

--a lot easier than being a practicing teacher inside four walls in front of flesh and blood middle or high school students who, as a general rule, would rather be free or at least on an unchaperoned trip spending gobs of someone else's money at Great America's Amusement Park. I picnicked with my ideals. I wore shorts. The sun ran his indulgent warm fingers through my hair. It was an idyll. Those drifty and sweet midday afternoons were my 'Apple' rather than that smudgy apple sitting on a desk in a room permitting precious little natural light-- a certain apple with its gloom and fate-- a lunchbox apple holding down 80 quizzes yet-to-be-graded, recorded, and returned to their affronted owners. No. There was not "an app for that" yet.
    But, emerging from the daydream and resuming our walk. . . I headed over to the Department of Biological Sciences Botany Garden just north of Duncan Hall. My father taught as a professor of Meteorology for twenty years inside Carl D. Duncan Hall and his office was there too. I considered this my father's building when I was a little girl:

Dad's Carl D. Duncan Hall

You had to get in an elevator and stand in front of a nice lady who wore glasses around her neck and tell her about your school day before you could talk to your dad. We often walked home together after the bell rang at Horse-Man (Horace Man Elementary) and I found him in his office. I knew strange things occurred in his white and black blockish building because one day my dad shattered a banana over a lab counter in front of my whole fourth grade class, making our teacher blink hard and a few boys back up on their heels.
    In the basement of the building there were slow and bored looking fish hovering in tanks in the walls. I peered at them before getting back in the elevator whenever I pushed the elevator's down arrow on accident.
    On a good day Professor MacKay might have a few things to finish up and I'd go to the candy machine with the giant buttons to buy some Lifesavers or a Hersheys. As you can see, the place is crisscrossed with memories for me.
    I took a few pictures outside Duncan Hall of the California natives in the Botany Garden. Students, interns, and professors planted specimens from 42 different plant families in this small area beginning the project in the 1980s. Below is deergrass, a perennial bunchgrass which was outpaced by invasive grasses during the 1700s. Increasingly I encounter this graceful California native among landscape selections around homes, industrial buildings, and in parks such as the Guadalupe Rotary Playgarden. They sway gently with the breezes. Their tall flower stalks light up sometimes a warm and humble golden-brown.

Muhlenbergia rigens

   
  

To Ulistac Once More

California Wild Rose

    Yesterday I walked and weeded at Ulistac. Walking while weeding is different from going out for a walk and from hiking. It is like 2 steps- weed, carry weeds, 5 steps- weed some more, forget where you were, go back to beginning. It is in fact a lot like turning in circles, just with more stops and muddier. It's more productive than spinning, in a sense, at least in the short view. Of course, the weeds return and round you go. Bending down and touching the ground is also more like taking a walk as your two-year old self because you notice more at ground level. There are earthworms and stones. There are places where a Huckleberry vine stitches itself across the ground. There are the seed leaves of a buckeye brought forth by many closely spaced rainstorms followed by a strand of crisp, sunny January days. The buckeye seeds the volunteers tucked in several short weeks, or perhaps it was months, ago sprout up so close to ground level that you would not have seen them were you standing up or else in passing. It was their strange so-green-it-is-purple hue which caught your eye. You have to narrow your world and become wee faeirie size. Little ladybugs become the size of small dogs. The squeaky hummingbird over your head is getting around a lot more today. Weeding is like reading the earth with your hands.

    I also cut sprigs from willow, Toyonberry, Flannel bush and Mulefat and left them pondering in a bucket of magic solution which Dennis, the Site Manager at Ulistac, had prepared and left for them. 'Site Manager' does not really represent fairly what Dennis is to Ulistac Natural Area and the collective vision at the soul of the place. He's a diplomat and visionary, a scholar and a laborer. Some like to call him the 'John Muir of Ulistac.' You have to go there and shake his hand to really get it. Come here. Dig with us. Get to know new plants (their fragrances, their desires, even their secret powers);  move mulch, restore California's native habitat and meet a dedicated, impassioned community builder who has helped plan and tend this beautiful sanctuary. Our work sessions are the 1st Saturday and the 3rd Sunday of every month, ongoing, from 10:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m (until we switch to summertime hours; please refer to Ulistac.org for more details.)
    There are many special persons to meet in the Ulistac network. Some of my dearest friends out there are among the wildlife and after these several years, even the plants. The sages have flesh just like we do. The ceanothus has its time of climax. They trees too have their beginnings and their endings. Others inhabitants are the Old Ones who walk the place; guardians. They knew the bears, hunted elk and deer, fished in the river, and made their seasonal villages there for thousands of years. It is a powerful spot. When I see the children play as I stroll or during my work, I like to think of the Ohlone children 300 or 700 years ago also running, rolling and chasing around. At the Annual Wildflower Celebration children get a chance to play the staves or clap clapper sticks made from the straight limbs of the elderberry, One long-time volunteer has made hoops of grapevine and has devised a spear throwing activity. Visitors, longtime friends of Ulistac, from the Ohlone community also participate and spread cultural knowledge. Last year we had a Native Californian story-teller. We volunteers do what we can to inform ourselves and share with the public, but there is something very anchored and graceful about someone of Ohlone heritage speaking their history and tradition. It is always an honor.
    When you are working on the ground, little bushtits zigzagging in the Coyote brush beside you are from this new perspective pretty big and they look down upon you, head tilted. These birds are scarcely larger than a hummingbird and clothed in muted mousy grey and slate feathers. They are gregarious and fidgety. From my kneeling position, they were easy to notice. They did not scatter to the next shrub like they generally do when I surprise them with all my movement. I was close enough to see their polished little black eyes. Some of the best birding is done weeding (and there's my second open invitation to join with us on weekend work sessions).
    Weeding is quiet so the little chipping birds are really all you hear except for when the grass begrudgingly tears from the soil. I have to say, though I practice no formal religion, I felt cleansed after four hours of weeding as though coming away from focused prayer. It returns and returns. It's like grasping the hand of a great-great grandparent. Your body reaches through the eras. It is a very old song.

                                                                                 

                                                                                  Salvia apiana

Post in Progress (invoking the poem)

   

Park Avenue Bridge Trail Entry 

  Reader, honestly, I am stuck on Coyote. S-he is so important to the heritage and mythology of our region that I find myself stymied. I am stuck in the same pair of pajamas even longer than is typical for me. Nevermind. I plan to leave a sketch here, in the nature of a seed, and return when Coyote deems the time is right, trotting up to me with a poem in his mouth or some kind of trickster offer of a deal (I will not be able to refuse) which will help me out here. He'll probably tell me to follow him and join in some misadventure after which he'll give me the first line or perhaps the central image. He will make me get lost and I'll have bloody feet. I am waiting for a poem to burble. Coyote is laughing. He is always laughing and knows everybody.
    I believe the best way I can respond to Peter Schifrin's sculptures "Coyotes" as well as Coyote himself is in the language of poetry. They are 16' bronze coyotes mounted up high on the Park Ave. Bridge just west of the Center for Performing Arts. Here is one of the pair singing--

Coyote Howling

Underneath this bridge is the sunset meeting spot for a bunch of tricksters who dress in black. They were smoking and huddling here after a heavy rain and rising waters. Some of them eyed my camera warily. One of them was howling something or other. The scene under the bridge was black and gray with all the concrete and the Guadalupe churning down to the SF Bay.
    Coyote is a deity but is also a sort of brother, both helpful and tricky, to people in Native North American mythology. The Ohlone people who lived along the Guadalupe as well as other areas both south and north of here told stories about Coyote, sang about Coyote, and honored him among Eagle, Hummingbird, Crow, Lizard, Hawk, Badger and other Animal People. He was there with his friends in council to form the world and First Peoples. Schifrin's work includes plaques with etched fragments of Ohlone sacred narrative which tell the story of Coyote and the beginning of the Ohlone culture. Coyote mentored the Ohlone in the elements of living well in their environment; he showed them the oak tree and its food. He taught them to fish. At the same time, he loves a good joke whether played on himself or anyone else. S-he is incurably curious and, in some tales, lustful too.    
   There are as many stories about Coyote in California (and all over North America) as there are hairs crowded in his fur. S-he is one unending story. He's got my poem in his back pocket. Coyote Was Here. Coyote Is Here. Coyote speaks. The Ohlone are also still speaking: "We are still here." Coyote is at home here; he travels the riparian corridors and the hills sing to each other in his high, raw voice. It sounds at once beside us and a few ridges away from here. He can do that thing of being here and there.
    Coyote after your nap or if you're looking for some trouble today, lead me to the poem. Call to me. Sing to me in your ancient language and I will listen and try to tell your song to the others.

River in Black and Gray

Landscape Artscape

Downtown San Jose Landmark

    Do you know exactly where you are when you  look at this sculpture? If I were dropped from the sky blindfolded and landed about here stumbling into Beniamino Bufano's California Bear and were allowed to use my sense of touch, I could announce my precise location after tracing my palms along the concrete bear's smooth contours. I think this is part of why I delayed writing this walk (Blogpost the 6th if you're counting, which I am). Besides a run-in with writer's block, a pinch of paralyzing self-doubt, and the usual concerns and pressing matters-- confounding me also these days. . . this challenge of writing about my own hand. That's what the day's route through El Paseo de San Antonio and to the bridge over the Guadalupe River at Woz Way on Park Ave (Coyotes next post) is like for me, writing about my own hand. My hands are a part of my anatomy as these sculptures are a part of downtown's San Jose's anatomy; they always will be. Won't they?

    I have no formal instruction in expounding on the visual arts but I am able to talk to you about these works dedicated in the 1980s as old familiars, as resting spots of my small, walked over and over urban pathways through a lifetime. California Bear first stuck his muzzle up to the sky when I was in elementary school and we 6th graders came out to see "Hello Dolly" at the Center for Performing Arts; Very same bear stood tall for my high school years outside "The Nutcracker," then college during Center for Performing Arts' run of  "Annie Get Your Gun," or "Cabaret" was it? She stood out here on the theatre grounds for "Westside Story" several years ago while an old friend and neighbor enjoyed the show with me. So I wander, wonder about, and write it up: WriteWalk my beat.    

    Next we visit this round, bumpy old guy. What's his name? I see him so often that I forget it. "Lookin' good. Lookin' solid."

Kenneth Matsumoto

  "Untitled" reflects today's last light along the banks of the Guadalupe River. It's a wheel like time. It appears both man-made in its symmetry and natural with its roughness and pocks like the river's bottom. If California Bear is a hand, then SJSU Fine Arts alumnus Matsumoto's stony circle is the bellybutton of the figure of this walk.

Center Detail "Untitled"

From where El Paseo begins on Fourth St. near campus until you arrive at Cesar Chavez Park near the Fairmont, there's lot of art to accompany you. Many painted panels feature work done by local students. Some of them are giant doors which have been turned into canvases. There's a landscape mural of California oak woodlands in summertime which beautifies a cinderblock wall outside Camera 12 Cinemas. There's plenty of artwork to see even as you rush to work, class, or to shop or mail bills and letters at the Third Street Post Office.
    The City has put in anchored benches for the common areas where anyone may read, scribble, sit with the dog, visit and drink coffee, strum a guitar, wait for someone, etc. There's lots of student bustle in this section of El Paseo since it lies between public transit stops and San Jose State University.
    Backtracking through Cesar Chavez Park Plaza, across the street from the park and located between the Fairmont Hotel and the restaurants and coffee shops on the opposite side of the Paseo is an homage to Dr. Ernesto Galarza. He was a Mexican-American civic leader and wrote Barrio Boy, the story of his life as a bracero working in the fields, labor leader, and scholar. Kim Yasuda sculpted the work, and her memorial was dedicated in 1998. She named her tribute to Galarza "Man of Fire."

Man of Fire Kim Yasuda

                                         

Above right is a damn good hat. Even though I (as viewer or "reader") am not so keen on the table with its bare areas, it is incontestably a damn good hat lying atop it. I notice this hat each time I wander the Paseo.
    Take yourself out for a walk. Here's a handy artscape map for you to refer to as you go and see for yourself:  

                                          http://www.sanjoseca.gov/DocumentCenter/View/26100

Through Roosevelt, second leg (Blogpost the Fifth)

    Princess rules the colony at Roosevelt Park with a quick right paw slap. She was a little wet from sleeping in the landscaping and her "pants" were curled like lamb's wool. She does not appear to be the toughest cat in the colony but apparently she is the boss. She likes to box my shoes when I stop petting her.

Boss (Princess)

Somehow this assortment of cats makes a life here in these urban park margins.
    The Coyote Creek has risen significantly following recent rains. I took a few shots of the ducks and litter traps.
Neighbors years ago endeavored to establish a California native garden in the recesses of Roosevelt Park. A gazebo, some Coyote brush, Hummingbird sage and rushes straggle on. I hear tell the volunteer gardeners were run out by drug dealers and persons propping up temporary shelters in the same habitat.
    I glimpsed and listened to a wren taking shelter and chattering in the Coyote brush. The setting yet resonates with the dream that the neighborhood attempted to bring down to earth and I am saddened that I can't go back there with a book or to prune or weed out English ivy and periwinkle. It might have been a beautiful place to catch up with other people as bees and butterflies worked among us to maintain it. Maybe it could have been a crossroads for people of different walks of life--a kind of place without fences. The health of the rivers is the health of the city. We need to restore these places for everybody. So many city dwellers crave places within reach to hear wind, water, birdsong, and to sit or wander in safety with our own thoughts and feelings.

Tagged Lamppost near Gazebo

I often see something out there on my excursions that reconnects things for me or helps resolve a trouble knocking around in my head. The physical motion of walking and the symbols of the human journey present in nature weave the strands together. They hold me together and keep me going. The magic is real. When I watch a bird splashing itself or flying across the sky with a stick in its beak, the elemental truths come closer to heart. Sometimes it's a seed and its instinctive ways telling me things I need to hear. We lose something crucial to human being when we stay too near the straight edges and neatly squared off corners characteristic of our species. Sometimes you have to log off, get up, get out, and cruise with the dragonfly. Dragonfly of red and gold, wings like the veining of a leaf, revealed.

Attempt at Community Commons

Through Roosevelt Park

   

Hockey Rink

Here are Thanksgiving, Christmas and chili peppers in a haphazard boquet below for curbside pick-up. I saw various orphaned Christmas trees at the curb. I walked in the vicinity of Roosevelt Park and Community Center.

Chilis, Pumpkin and Christmas Tree

 

It's All Over Now

It is the start of January's second week, chuck-your-tree-week. Seems like a perfect waste to me, but maybe they all get turned into mulch at the landfill. Maybe they come up once more as tomatoes in spring or carrots. Or maybe they just lie down in the street like a once sparkling and garlanded thing recently crowned with a star but now stripped of everything.
    I also see visual koans like this on my walks--

Have You Seen Me?

It was gray out before a soft rain and oddities like this red bell really caught my eye. Is someone watching from the window to see whether I pick it up?
   A child's toy vanity has been rather obscenely trapped in this tree for months now. I suppose it could be lassoed and hauled to the bridge. We have a serious trash and dumping problem in Coyote Creek and in other urban waterways like the Guadalupe River.

Dumped

 I stopped to visit some cats no one wants. There's nothing wrong with them. They are discards. They have names like "Cowboy," "Grampa," "Princess," "Mama" and other names which I have never heard called. . . Some conscientious people in the neighborhood help with food and some basic medical care but for warmth and family they rely on each other. They are amazingly resilient but still deserve better. A lot of people do.

Lion, Grampa, and Mama at Feeding Station

Lion

Mama