Archive for April, 2010

In Loving Memory of Gary Ellingsworth, 1923-2010

Thursday, April 29th, 2010

Gary’s Hat

His hat had seen some living

And it was his for that

Its straw had taken hits and storms

And it was Gary’s hat.

~

Its own peculiar story

belonged to it alone

Its beaten frame most eloquent

of the long life it had known

~

And in that hat so humble

There lived a mind as rare

The vast and storied landscape of

A country warm and fair

~

It wasn’t much to look at

Plain worn out at the end

It was all in how he wore his hat

Our dear old missing friend

~

Misshapen, lumpen, beat-up thing

And beautiful for that

Only one man could have owned it

And it was Gary’s hat.

Gary Ellingsworth

I miss you, dear friend. x


I Need You

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Not carnally for the moment but I’ll call you if that changes. I have to write a short blurb about myself for a thing I wrote for Bret Bradigan’s fantastic new Ojai magazine. Under 100 words. My best efforts are below. Please pick the one that most accurately reflects the Sami you know. No filth please. Leave that to me.

Samantha Zahringer is an upstart housewife of some moral dubiety. She has lived in Ojai for 9 years where she teaches her children stuff.

Samantha Zahringer is a blameless housewife of impeccable character who has lived, written and bred in the Ojai Valley for 9 years, sometimes all at once.

Samantha Zahringer is a housewife of low character, dusty mantlepiece and several outstanding warrants. She has lived in Ojai for 9 years where she writes and teaches her children how to think for her.

Samantha Zahringer loves dawn, rum babas, the way you run your fingers through her hair, and the special light in the eyes of adorable old Tibetan men.  She is 35 and married with two children but her number can be found on bathroom walls throughout town unless the despicable swinehunds have painted over them again.

Samantha Zahringer can rather pitifully be summed up in a lot fewer words than Bret Bradigan allowed her.

Samantha Zahringer: men love her, women adore her and small children are always polite and good when she is near. She lives in Ojai with a husband, two children, a clinically obese cat and several trillion beneficial gut bacteria.

Samantha Zahringer has been clinging to sanity, passing handsome men and her unfortunate children in the Ojai Valley for 9 years. She is 35 and 3/4 and enjoys writing, vigorous health, and ribaldry of stripes both bawdy and ticking.

Samantha Zahringer is a wretched solipsist who imagines people have nothing better to do with their time than to read this dreadful tripe.

Samantha Zahringer is out of stuff to say and bored thinking about herself, which is saying something.