Attending a Poetry Slam in Monterey County California by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Attending a Poetry Slam in Monterey County California by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Most of Monterey County’s Poetry Slams are held in the East Village Coffee Lounge in downtown Monterey, but the Steinbeck Center in Salinas held one as part of the National Endowment of the Arts Big Read program honoring Carmel poet Robinson Jeffers when I was the youth services librarian for Monterey County.

I took my daughter Florence along to attend a poetry slam held in conjunction with the Robinson Jeffers Big Read.  Slam poetry is a performance art.  The genre is urban and was most definitely influenced by hip hop music.  The teen poets who performed that evening came from Oakland, California.

The evening was organized by Monterey’s local slam poets Garland Thompson and Marcos Cabrera – stars at the time at the East Village Coffee Lounge, newspaper writers, and fellow producers of youth summer reading programs from the Salinas Public Library.

Thompson began the evening by saying that poetry slams in coffee houses begin with people snapping their fingers to bring the poets on stage.  I began snapping my fingers rhythmically imitating dance music, looking forward to a great evening.

The teen poets dealt with every problem in the US and the world it seemed.  I was happy that social studies had not been dropped from school curriculums and that the teens had some solutions for pollution.

The only thing I would change about the evening would be to end with a Japanese renga poem, which has a same beginning that everyone adds to in order to bring everyone into the poetry circle.

Then, I would use poetry rounds to start having attendees think about simple poetry prompts for their own work.  The one round that everyone learns in kindergarten in “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”  That one might generate laughs, but songs like “Home on the Range” and “America the Beautiful” encourage poets to look for beauty around them.

Reading a poem together might create a contemplative atmosphere for writing after an evening of poetry slamming.  My suggestion would be “A Negro Speaks of Rivers” by New York poet Langston Hughes in order to have Monterey County slam poetry attendees to think of our underground Salinas River and usually dry Carmel River.

I am not a poet, but love reading Japanese haiku poems about nature.  The form and subject are easy to learn and might be a good wrap up for a poetry slam as well.

I like slam poetry for the way it draws the audience in, but think it could be even more powerful by capitalizing on audience energy to write group poems and individual poems focused on solutions to maintain or retrieve unpolluted nature. (Clean, pristine water is beautiful, and we need it everywhere.)

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Carmel Valley Pool Life by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Carmel Valley Pool Life by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When I first moved to Monterey County California more than twenty years ago, I worked part-time and would take my daughter Florence out to the Carmel Valley pool during summer vacations.

I always bought a summer pass and took some writing to do while Florence played and swam.  I thought the summer pass was a great investment, because we went there everyday Monday through Friday.  The pool also had a concession stand where you could buy an inexpensive lunch.

The Monterey Peninsula is chillier than you would expect and does not have pool weather.  Surfers wear wetsuits in the cold Pacific waters here.  The temperature range is between the high 60s and low 70s.

However, once you go inland toward the mountains, the temperatures rise to the mid 80s and 90s in Carmel Valley – wine grape growing territory.   Carmel Valley Village is obviously great swimming pool territory.

At the pool, I pulled up two lounge chairs for Florence and me and put an adjustable umbrella between the chairs to angle shade my way when the sun changed position.

After two or three hours of water play, Florence would come play move star and lay back on her lounge chair.  She would push her wet hair back and put on black sunglasses.  She repeated what I always said, “Those mountains with the blue sky behind them are beautiful.”

The pool is next to a large park with green grass and a white gazebo with lacy woodwork.  When there was a breeze, the wind smelled like freshly cut grass.  There are several picnic tables in the park for families doing larger lunches.

Once Florence was comfortable, I would ask her if she wanted a hot dog or hamburger that day.  With the order placed, I would usually bring back all-beef hot dogs with “the works” on them, diet sodas, and ice cream sandwiches.

After lunch, we would clean up and head back to town happy and fed with plans to return.

On one of our trips to the Carmel Valley pool, one of the other sunbathers there introduced herself to me.

She was an author, who had just obtained her first publishing contract.

I congratulated her and said, “I have a bunch of writing prompt responses here that I am trying to arrange and put together into a book.”

“Would you like me to look at some of it?” she asked.

“I’d love it,” I said and added, “I know most people pay for this type of consulting, but all I can afford now is lunch.  Can I offer you a hot dog meal?”

“Sure,” she said and added, “I’d love it.”

Florence came out of the pool and talked with the Carmel Valley Welcome Committee author as I went to get us all lunch.

The author had some good advice for my writing responses that I wanted to turn into a book.

“Maybe short stores that resemble movie scenes would be a way to start before formally outlining memoirs, which still use narrative storytelling,” she said.

I wrote that down and made a smile next to the note.  I was starting to like Monterey County very much.

I thanked her and said that I would be taking classes with David Gitin at Monterey Peninsula College and wanted to have some work together before classes started.

“That’s an efficient way to work,” she said and thanked me for lunch.

The author disappeared into a writing cave to write many more books, but I saw her at the grocery store sometimes when I went to Trader Joe’s in Pacific Grove as she busied herself with mundane chores that might become movie scenes.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Georgia's Agritourism Route to Blue Ridge - Part 2 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Georgia’s Agritourism Route to Blue Ridge – Part 2 – by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Georgia’s Agritourism Route has the same goals of generating supplemental income in rural areas as the Italian and British ones, but entered this type of tourism when it was more developed as UC-Davis described.

When we first starting visiting Georgia, our destination was Mercier Orchards outside Blue Ride, a pick-your-own-produce orchard, that served lunch and sold apples, blueberry and pecan pies, donuts, and souvenirs such as books written by people in the community documenting Appalachian life.  Wineries dotted the freeway and have increased in number today.

Today log cabin homes are for sale for people who want to be Blue Ridge Mountains Ridge Runners.  Billboards for fudge and homemade ice cream entice drivers bound for Mercier Orchards to buy apples.  Zipline advertising entices family daredevils.  Historic downtowns entice antique hunters.

Wineries along the Agritourism Route have names that evoke images, making you think their wines might dance on your tongue.  Some wineries with evocative names include:

-Sharp Mountain Vineyards

-Fainting Goat Vineyards

-Horse River Vineyards

-Bear Claw Vineyards

Two farms are open for visits now along Georgia’s Agritourism Route:

-Mountain Valley Farm

-Pleasant Union Farm

The town of Blue Ridge offers most of the amenities associated with agritourism now such as air conditioning, pools, saunas, spas, and an adorable town with several tea rooms, fancy country good stores (look for tea and quilts), and a bistro or two.  The town also has an arts center and a writer’s retreat.

The only things I would add are cooking classes and maybe square dance classes to work up an appetite.  The items for cooking classes could include:

-pies with lattice crusts

-fried pies

-donuts

-biscuits

-country gravy

-corn bread

-cheesy grits

Georgia’s Agritourism Trail on I-575 North of Atlanta towards Blue Ridge is a nice country outing from the Big Peach City.  Blue Ridge is relaxing and pretty and might coax you into a longer vacation.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Georgia's Agritourism Route to Blue Ridge - Part 1 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Georgia’s Agritourism Route to Blue Ridge – Part 1 - by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Every time my husband Laurent and I visit Atlanta, we go to Mercier Orchard in Blue Ridge to buy apples, blueberry pies, honey, apple cider, and a few country souvenirs outside the town of Blue Ridge on Georgia’s Agritourism Route I-575 North, towards the Appalachian Hiking Trail.

Agriturismo began in Italy as Farm-Stay Tourism that shared many elements of Britain’s Bed and Breakfast program.  Agritourism has evolved, and I wanted to do research on it to see how Blue Ridge, Georgia interpreted this category of tourism.

The first place I looked for information was the University of California – Davis (UC-Davis) website on Agritourism, which defines this category of tourism as follows:

“Agricultural tourism is a commercial enterprise at a working farm or ranch conducted for the enjoyment and education of visitors, and that generates supplemental income for the owner or operator.”

UC-Davis lists the following activities as fun and educational that can be part of agritourism:

-farm stands or shops

-U – Pick (pick your own produce)

-farm stays

-tours

-on-farm classes

-fairs

-pumpkin patches

-festivals

-corn mazes

-Christmas tree farms

-winery weddings

-orchard dinners

-youth camps

-barn dances

-hunting or fishing

-guest ranches

All of the above are what agritourism in the United States has morphed into.

My next research stop was to check out what agriturismo was in Italy.  I have read many articles about it in Saveur magazine and The New York Times, but tripsavvy.com summarized what created agriturismo in Italy very well:

“Starting in the 1950s and continuing through the 1970s, traditional small-scale farming in Italy became less profitable and many farmers abandoned their farms to search for work in larger towns…

In 1985 Italian lawmakers had created a legal definition for agriturismo, which allowed, and in some cases provided funds for, the rehabilitation and restoration of many abandoned rural buildings and estates.”

This legislation set up a model for farm stays that resembled Britain’s bed and breakfast program, which I had experienced as a child on a trip there with my mother and great-aunt.

At one country farm where we stayed, we ate a shepherd’s pie dinner when we arrived and slept under a snug thatched roof in the rain.

The next day I ate a hearty English breakfast that I enjoy eating to this day and can make it, too:

-two eggs over easy

-sheet pan baked potatoes with Italian herbs (oregano, thyme, and rosemary)

-baked tomato with bread crumbs and chopped parsley

-thick-cut fried bacon

-toast with marmalade

-a big pot of English breakfast tea with milk

After breakfast I did what true bed and breakfast lodgers were supposed to do:

-I milked a cow by hand.

-I fed muddy pigs.

-I pulled eggs out from under hens and cuddled a few, fuzzy chicks.

We left with mom driving after I had said good-bye to all the farm animals.

As in Britain, the agristurismo farms in Italy were supposed to be working ones.  Italians expanded their services to include cooking classes and tours of wine, cheese, and olive production facilities.  Some agriturismo farms added restaurants using farm products and products from nearby villages and towns.

Now many agriturismo farms offer air conditioning and swimming pools to make the farm experience a little more luxurious in their out-of-the-way farms.

End of part 1.

To be continued.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France


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