I used to be completely plot impared and Dru taught me how to structure a novel so my ideas had a framework to hold on to and shine. Thanks to her, I was even able to obtain a grant to finish my novel.

Tonight, there is a publication party for her latest book, The Good Sister, at The Ink Spot. I suggest you check out her book and take a class of hers.  There’s a great reivew in the North County Times and she’s teaching a Novel Cram workshop at the Southern California Writers Conference in February.

If you’re in San Diego, I hope you make it to one of her appearances and if not, you can buy the book at Amazon.

First up is Stephen Wing – a man I know from my twenty years of involvement with the Rainbow Gathering. His novel, Free Ralph!: An Evolutionary Fable, was published in 2008.  He graciously sent me a copy a year ago to read and given my busy schedule it took me awhile to get started, but once I did, I was hooked.

Now for those of you who think this is some rambling hippie tale, think again.  Wing’s comic gifts and straight forward story telling take the topic of human and chimpanzee communication, evolutionary ecology, a drunken safari leader, his much too serious mother and toss them into the circus along the way spinning a tale worthy of a Monty Python treatment.  Nerdy janitor, Wilbur Trimble,  finds his true family in a band of chimpanzees in Africa and returns to the USA to rescue their kidnapped son who has been turned into a circus performer.  Now my two cents cannot do justice to the original work, so I’ll share just portions of a passage when Trimble gets on the bus.

“There on the side of the road stood Wilbur Trimble–in a leopardskin loincloth.

Trimble still wore the same wire-rimmed glasses, but his feet were bare and flithy, his thin shirtless chest burned reddish by the sun. … But no experienced hunter could mistake the smell of a freshly skinned pelt. Nor could the flies, who were beginning to buzz enthusiastically around Trimble’s loins. ”

To purchase your very own copy or read reviews by people with far more credentiails to their name, click here.

Even though I work as an information technology engineer, I am weary of the constant need to change everything. Just when you get something working, then it needs to be ripped apart and reassembled. It’s a racket if you think about it. IT workers create obsolescence so more work will be created and they will keep their jobs. In the meantime, we’re working 50 hour weeks when we’re lucky, more when we’re not. When is enough going to be enough?

That’s gone. Mike Halloran got canned or let go or who knows what a week or two ago. Today I find out they’re bringing the hack loud mouth dj from 105.3 to 94.9. So now we get to listen to 13 year old boy humor in the morning – joy oh joy. And it turns out that he and his staff need to pass a drug test. What kind of bullshit is that? Why does a rock n roll DJ need to pass a drug test?

Adios 94.9. I’ve switched to classical for now until I can find a radio station that supports local music, plays local music and doesn’t submit it’s employees to drug tests. Lets be real. What’s the worst thing a stoned out DJ will do? I know, play good music.

Hope is on the horizon. The great crew at Activist San Diego are trying to create a community FM Radio Station. I don’t know if it will reach into the City of San Diego, but if you’re interested, check out their website and let them know you support their efforts.

I don’t know what the answer is other than to go forward to the past – to a world were human energy is important, people lived in self-sustaining communities and our homes aren’t filled with toxic crap from China. At the end of the day, buying stuff isn’t bringing me happiness, hugs are.

In the spirit of local activism and global warming, I want to take a few minutes to share some of my local heroes. Carolyn Chase and Chris Klein – the amazing duo – who live a few blocks from me and who started the huge Earth Fair that happens every year in Balboa Park. I’ve volunteered with Earth Fair, am saving a creek thanks to a non-profit these two amazing people started, San Diego Earth Works, and have hope that sane decentralized transportation will become a reality in San Diego thanks to Move San Diego – another group with ties to the amazing duo. If it’s environmentally progressive in San Diego, this is Chris and Carolyn are your connection.

The dynamic duo is in Copenhagen at the United Nations Conference on Climate change and have put together a website to allow those of us stuck in our mundane lives to hear some of the debates between regular people like ourselves.

Thank you Chris and Carolyn for all you do. You rock.

***From an email from Chris****************

Carolyn Chase and I are in Copenhagen at the UN conference on climate change (COP15). Officially, we are registered delegates of the Sierra Club, of which we are both life members.

We puzzled over how best to make a difference at the conference. We decided to create a special website, Message to America, and post videos of other delegates speaking their “message to America.” We have also posted photos, and and there is a blog of updates, quotes, special notes, etc.

The goal is to give you a better picture of the kind of world citizens who are attending the event, and how critical this issue is for much of the world. It’s one thing to deal with figures and technical abstractions. It’s another to listen to a woman who’s island is in danger of slipping beneath the waves.

**************End email from Chris*******************

You may be asking, what the hell is mythological studies. Here’s the blurb from the program

“Pacifica Graduate Institute’s program in Mythological Studies explores the understanding of human experience revealed in mythology and in the manifold links between myth and ritual, literature, art, and religious experience. Special attention is given to depth psychological and archetypal approaches to the study of myth.”

I’m still in shock. Three days of lectures – 8 hours a day. Plus socializing with my new classmates, taking the train back and forth, being with a group of very smart students who are more analytical than I will ever be. WOW.

I’m hoping to catch up on the reading and come back and share something meaningful on this blog. But in the meantime, I’m shell shocked and trying to process.

I’ve spent a lot of years doing things that “girls don’t do.” When I had a life (before my mom’s stroke) I used to work on cars, slam dance in the mosh pit and surf (a lot). I also liked to sew my own clothes, bake my own muffins, kiss boys and garden.

I’m still here only now I work with computers (me and the guys on my team, but the other team has a couple of girls who wore pants to school starting in Kindergarten and didn’t even know there was a time when that wasn’t allowed). I still surf from time to time. Last night I saw friends surfing together and sharing stories with each other about the inside wave they caught or the one that caught them by surprise and bounced them off the sand. They looked so happy together and I wanted that. They were all male.

I have female friends that will go to the beach with me, but they don’t surf. I’ve had that story sharing with male companions before, during and after surfing, but I’ve never in my entire life gone surfing with a woman and the worst thing is I just realized that yesterday.

When I started surfing, I was recruited for Surfrider’s Paddle for Clean Water because I was a woman surfer and they needed more balanced energy. I tried to explain that I suck, wipe out and am basically not physically coordinated, but off I went to paddle around the pier at the second paddle in OB and I’ve been doing it ever since. These days it’s families, young girls, older women and me.

Since I’ve been locked in a house taking care of my mom, San Diego Surf Ladies has come into existence to foster that type of camaraderie with other surfing women – although they are quite a bit younger than I am. When I go to the beach, I sees women in their twenties surfing in groups of 2 or 3 and having fun as only good friends can do out on the water.

All these things make me very happy. But maybe before I die, I could meet just one woman my age who likes to surf Black’s (and maybe isn’t that great) to bond with and walk up the road telling stories of the triple bounce off the bottom or the 6 foot wave she caught because she was too scared not to take the ride.

On the trail up someone had posted a sign, “Don’t go with the flow, be the flow.”

The rest of the story is true, just this slight update. And thankfully the beach is once again lifeguard tower free.

Friday night the water was incredibly warm, the dolphins came out and frolicked in the surf and even did a few back flips for us, and I caught a couple of waves.

Life is good.