William Eisenlord's City Lights photos, ca. 1959

An amazing Shig discovery today (in a chain of really really great research discoveries lately, ranging from Selden Kirby-Smith's poetry, to Joanne Kyger's Japan journals pinpointing the day that Shig arrived in Kyoto, and yes yes there's more.) The Smithsonian Archive of American Art has just digitized the collection of San Francisco photographer William Eisenlord's photos of City Lights Bookstore from 1953-1959. Apparently there was an exhibition of Eisenlord and fellow photographer Ed Nyberg's work at the San Francisco Museum of Art, January 30, 1976 entitled " Poets of the City", where these photographs were displayed to the public. Sadly, Mr. Eisenlord appears to have passed on in 1976, otherwise I would have reveled in the chance to interview him on his early impressions of the store and its guardian, Shig Murao.

and on the book front...

Also just last night, I printed 100 + covers for Jared Stanley's upcoming book of poetry, The Outer Bay (published by Traffiker Press).

Plus printed 50 dvd covers for Buddyray's long-awaited dvd performance of 'ltfhtp'. Muscles!

sprung equinox

This past weekend was a froth of garlands and nosegays: wisteria hanging like pendulums sweet with bees from the bowers, cherries and apples, sugar-spun perfection, soaproot lilies and the pink chandelier rhibes decking the Oakland hills.

Hikes up the west ridge of the East Bay Hills, we hung out with dogs, dogs, dogs.

Check out these tiny four-legged hosers we met at our easter picnic in Mosswood Park with Filipino food, a big ass ham, and my little niece, Lily Jane (Lily was born one year ago on Easter, for the record, but Easter is two weeks early. Her real first birthday is April 8th).

hon-mono (the real deal)

Fantastic Bolinas artist, Arthur Okamura, gave me the greatest of all gifts when I went out to interview him for the Shig project. Upon learning that my moniker is "wasabi", Arthur led me to the pond in his yard, and there, tucked beneath the shadows were several potted wasabi plants. Live! Throbbing! Verdant!

Now it turns out that wasabi plants are notoriously difficult to raise- they demand cold water constantly flowing over their roots, and short of my building a simulated mountain stream from Gifu cascading down our backstairs, I was a bit flummoxed about how to properly care for my new ward.

As it turns out, we've had quite a rainy winter so far, and without doing much beyond keeping it in the indirect sun and that there is always water available, the wasabi is thriving. When I first got it, it had only three leaves, which actually fell off (though they were replaced by three more).

The lil' wasabi is now sprouting many more leaves, and the rhizome is even sending up a new set of leaves elsewhere in the pot!