Grand Coulee Dam and the Lake Roosevelt Drawdown

When Grand Coulee Dam was constructed on the Columbia River in the 1930s the water behind the dam created Lake Roosevelt. It stretches from the dam to the Canadian border north of us. Grand Coulee Dam provides power, water for irrigation, and flood control . Each year starting in early April we experience a drawdown of Lake Roosevelt. Because more water was needed this year the drawdown is greater. It changes the landscape of the area around Lake Roosevelt where we live. All the part that is sand above is usually underwater. Barnaby Island is not an island right now. The locals always plan hikes from the campground out to the island this time of year when the sandy shore is exposed on all sides.
Looking north it almost looks like a beach at the ocean in this picture. You can see the channel that is getting smaller. A few months ago this was all covered with water. A new island has even emerged on the lake by our house. Believe me... there are many more places to take hikes during the drawdown.

The original town of Inchelium was also moved when they filled Lake Roosevelt. It is a tradition during a big drawdown to hike to Old Inchelium with our students to locate streets and foundations. The elders love to come and share stories about living on the Columbia River and moving the town to a higher spot. Above the bridge at Kettle Falls we can now see the place the Indians gathered each year to catch salmon. There is rich history around my corner of the world. This time of year the past and present intertwine with ritual and remembrance.

Celebrating National Poetry Month: #29

There Is a Place

There is a place

where the museum houses thousands of paintings
seen nowhere else in the world,
the colors so bright they grab your eyes
and hold you there, looking,where the library is filled with brand new books
waiting for you to open them first,
to tell stories only you could know,

where fresh cherries have no pits,
where puppies never grow old.

There is such a place,
hidden deep
in me.

- Janet Wong

WASL: Week 2

In the state of Washington public school students take the Washington Assessment of Student Learning. We gave the assessments three days last week and start again tomorrow for the second week. Depending on the grade level students are tested in reading, math, writing, and science. I have sharpened lots of pencils, proctored without helping or looking over shoulders, and administered the most important things that help my students: lots of encouragement, cinnamon gum ( helps with memory), and water to hydrate the brain. All the tests are untimed so the 7th graders doing a writing prompt tomorrow could take most of the morning. Even though I don't take the test or even know the questions... I am exhausted at the end of every session. Think how my students feel!

Celebrating National Poetry Month: #28

Purple Flower Poem

Among the geranium, a rash

of purple campanula begins,

scattering like Chinese fireworks

through the delicate tan and yellow tips

of saxifrage, encircling a group of bloody

cranes' bills perched on rock. I want

to name these flowers for you,

a litany of colors that begin where

there is hardly any, only the gentlest

hint of evening-flush at the base

of the throats of narcissus and sweet

william, sharing a bed with verbena.

Deep blue and slightly furry as a concord

grape, the salvia cardinalis burns a wine

color of intense sweetness on my tongue.

We could have a curry laksa with it,

even cheese-perhaps a soft brie or kesong

puti sprinkled with peppercorns, or a whole

clove of roasted garlic to smear on the slightly

dusty surface of a saltine cracker. That

reminds me of my grandmother's room

and the smell of her lavender-water,

distilled from the lavandula angustifolia,

whose spears are so rigid to the touch

and announce themselves with such radiant

distinction. I want to glow like them, a field

of me headier than a bottle of decanted scent,

unblushing as a recitation of the contents

of antique pomanders tied with silk string.

Petals pressed into the cool ivory of journal pages:

delphinium, pasque flowers, linseed and flax; linum

perenne, the soft-hooded acanthus spinosus,

purple phlox, and velvet lupine. Veronica

incana, the powderpuff balls of hesperis

matronalis-- the ones they call sweet

rockets-- clearer than rain, exploding

like breath from the furiously kissed

mouth; like fizzy candy, like eskimo

stars in the milky sky.

-Luisa A. Igloria

Spring Blooming in Pink

Such a beautiful site as I left my retreat today. I believe these are Japanese Magnolias. The warm weather yesterday brought them out into full bloom.

Celebrating National Poetry Month: #27

The Voice You Hear When You Read Silently

is not silent, it is a speaking-
out-loud voice in your head: it is spoken,
a voice is saying it
as you read. It's the writer's voice,
of course, in a literary sense
his or her "voice" but the sound
of that voice is the sound of your voice.
Not the sound your friends know
or the sound of a tape played back
but your voice
caught in the dark cathedral
of your skull, your voice heard
by an internal ear informed by internal abstracts
and what you know by feeling, having felt. It is your voice
saying, for example, the word "barn"
that the writer wrote
but the "barn" you say
is a barn you know or knew. The voice
in your head, speaking as you read,
never says anything neutrally -- some people
hated the barn they knew,
some people love the barn they know
so you hear the word loaded
and a sensory constellation is lit: horse-gnawed stalls,
hayloft, black heat tape wrapping
a water pipe, a slippery
spilled chirrr of oats from a split sack,
the bony, filthy haunches of cows . . .
And "barn" is only a noun -- no verb
or subject has entered into the sentence yet!
The voice you hear when you read to yourself
is the clearest voice: you speak it
speaking to you.
-- Thomas Lux