Mossy Mountain Trees

Fixer Upper

Tomato Fig Jam

Engagement

Eggs

Working Farm

Sadie Steinberg (1920-2018)

Field Guide

by Lisa Hirschfield
for her grandmother Sadie

Our morning walks

through cool chaparral

salt air and wild sage

trying and often failing

to memorize 

the accurate flash 

of color

until I could get home 

and open the book you gave me 

Golden-crowned sparrow 

house finch

Oregon junco

not to be confused 

with the rufous-sided towhee

and once the actual blue 

of a robin’s egg

All unexotic

but I wanted to know their names

their songs

their seasons

their other homes

Unlike learning to press wildflowers

watching your hands

gently arranging

larkspur

sand aster

cranesbill

and the illicit orange 

of the California poppy 

We interred them between volumes 

of the World Book Encyclopedia 

1955

For days I imagined pages 

of bright fields

But there was no place 

in my world yet

for faded things forced

into the wrong dimension

Though I must have saved them somewhere

because I never could throw anything away

because back then 

everything had a face

Now I am only sure of your body

so delicate it takes

four men to lift

so you can lie in the garden 

warming 

maybe feel the breeze

brush your paper skin

I imagine myself descending 

like you into these flowers 

you once named cosmos

but then my body buoyed 

by this invisible sea 

of sound and light 

How will you recede 

to that single point in the dark

When I was ten 

you told me 

once you hear a meadowlark

you can never forget it

Wood Bull Barn Window

Sawblade instructions

Sunbaked barn

Oldwick rustic scene

Reclaiming Sun Ra's Legacy

An excellent story by my friend Jim Knipfel about Sun Ra's posthumous legacy, posted at The Believer. The article discusses at length the work I've been doing since late 2013 administering and sorting out Ra's convoluted catalog and rights conflicts on behalf of Sun Ra LLC, the heirs of Herman Poole Blount. Pictured above: administrator and his "boss," Thomas Jenkins, Jr. (a.k.a. "Capt. T"), son of Ra's older sister Mary and patriarch of the family. Photo snapped Nov. 22, 2014, outside the Jenkins home in Powder Springs, Georgia.

From the article:

"Thomas—a man I love and admire for his diligence, humor, and strength of character—explained to me the parade of unscrupulous characters who, after Ra's departure, emerged from the shadows to assert rights without lawful claims. Jenkins provided conclusive, documented proof of chain-of-title on Ra's rights for Sun Ra LLC, as well as a chronicle of dubious, and in some cases provably fraudulent, claims by those who felt entitled to a financial stake in Sunny's artistic legacy. And when I say financial stake, I should add, such as it was. Ra died impoverished, and owed the IRS—are you ready?—$146,799.95." 

Chusid admits he had no idea what he was getting himself into when he agreed to step inside Sun Ra’s universe to try and sort a few things out.  “I did it to help Michael [D. Anderson], because he asked,” he says in retrospect. “I did not comprehend the scope of the task ahead and had no idea where it would lead. To be honest, I foresaw a tremendous expenditure of time and labor without any prospect of making it profitable. Just about every project I've developed—Raymond Scott, Esquivel, Jim Flora, Langley Schools, Shooby Taylor, outsider music—started as a labor of love, a challenge, something that intrigued me, and that was grounded on a unique artistic legacy that appealed to me. It was that way with Sun Ra. He's one of the great, unsung musical geniuses of the 20th century—easily dismissed as a crackpot or a charlatan by those who barely know his music. And if all you know is 'Space is the Place,' you don't know his music."