D Note love letter 1/26/12

D bosh

We usually focus in on weekend events in this newsletter, but it is good to remind you of some of the other terrific things we have going on. Sunday days we have Mello Cello Brunch at 11am (live Cello playing by Monica Sales and breakfast pizza), followed by Baby Boogie, a great time to relax with a beer and pizza while the kids hang out and play, 2-6pm. Sunday nights we have our award winning salsa night, with lesson at 8pm (great for beginners and advanced alike) followed by one of four rotating salsa orchestras at 9pm. $8. Monday nights we have our open stage hosted by Jay Ryan. Jay's introductions are very funny and it is always a pleasant surprise to hear what kind of talent comes out of the woodwork. Wednesdays we have a swing lesson by the charming and talented Lark Mervine at 7pm (only $5) followed by the legendary Clamdaddys. (best free night of Blues anywhere.) Then on Thursday at 6:30pm we have Geeks Who Drink trivia at 6:30pm. We defy you not to laugh out loud at least once during Trivia. To keep you in shape we also have Zumba Wednesday and Saturday mornings at 10:30am and Yoga w/ live music (donation based) Sunday mornings at 10am. We hope you will make it out to one of these excellent events soon.

As for this weekend, we have Marlo Mortenson followed by The Legendary Hitchhikers, a Tom Petty cover band Friday night starting at 7pm. $10. Saturday night we have our annual Winter Gala Hafla presented by Phoenix, which will feature Malia Delapenia from Hawaii, several belly dance performances and the music of Yallah! $8/$5 kids under 12. Then closing out the evening we have The Volunteer Funk Department. $5.

Next Tuesday we have Sentimental Sounds Big Band at 7pm. Free. Next Saturday we have a mini bluegrass festival with Blue Canyon Boys, Hayward Stranger and Statue Of Liberty Band.

Yeehaw!

D per

Extra Credit: The oceans require a hero. A poem to make one think, by Albert Goldbarth.

Everyday People

The oceans are dying. They require a hero,
or a generation of heroes. The oceans are curdling
in on themselves, and on their constituent lives,
they're rising here, and lowering there,
I swear I've heard them gasping. And my friends ... ?
Are brooding over who their kids are playing with
on the streets. Are coming home after a day where some
midlevel management weasel sucked
their souls out like a yolk from an egg—right through
a tiny puncture-hole in the dome of the skull. The cat
has worms. The price of gas is nearly what
their grandparents' wedding rings cost. The oceans

sorely need a paladin, but my friends are exhausted
disputing how many angels can trample the truth
from a twelve-dollar overcharge on a cell-phone bill.
Our privacy is disappearing, cameras sip it up
like thirsty beasts surrounding a shrinking pool of water, my friends
are worried, oh yes certainly they're worried, but also the tumor
and the marriage and the alcoholic uncle. The war
that's this war but is any war and all war is requesting
a little attention in the cause-part, maybe only
a little more in the effect-part, but my friends know
how impossible it is to attend to even a single other
person sufficiently, plus the dentist, plus the eye exam,
and can't they spend some time renewing their sense
of making beauty in this wreckage, Edie
her hummingbird feeders, Sean his libretto, Omar
his amazing organic noodles: something like Balenciaga

the haute couture designer whose life I'm reading compulsively
while the ice caps and the red tide and the polar bears,
Balenciaga for whom "the business of making beautiful things
absorbed him totally, and there was no room in his life
for anything else," he did a piece of sewing "every day
of his adult life: from the age of three," in 1913 (age eighteen)
"he was learning the women's-wear trade" as the guns
of the World War cleared their throats and aimed, and through
the world depression, "a fishnet cloak
of knotted white velvet, and swathes of parachute silk
to make pink-and-white flowers," and through
the Spanish Civil War, "regarded making dresses
as a vocation, like the priesthood, and an act of worship,"
through (he bargained with Franco) World War II,
chantilly, chenille, mohair, tulle,
"he took the sample of intractable material
into his sanctum and returned in only moments
with a superbly accomplished buttonhole: it
would have been a half-hour's labor for anyone else,"
a buttonhole while Israel was forged in 1948,
a buttonhole for Sputnik, yes a buttonhole,
a perfect—consummate—buttonhole, is this
a condemnation of my friends (and so myself)

or an exoneration? I truly don't know.

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