“I must break the language to tell it myself…” Donna Vorreyer

I had bone scans today, which I get annually for a thing, and before the technician moved on to the next patient I had a glimpse of the screen. I am not a handsome skeleton.

If you want to live in a nice world you have to support independent media and independent journalists that are doing the work and saying what needs to be said. @404media.co @defector.com @marisakabas.bsky.social @theflytrapmedia.com @flaminghydra.com @aftermath.site Probably missing quite a few!

OK, Gavin, I did my part.

30 octobre 1871 : Naissance de l’écrivain, poète et philosophe français Paul Valéry. Figure majeure de la littérature française, il devient immensément célèbre à la suite de la parution de son œuvre poétique « La Jeune Parque » en 1917. #CeJourLà fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Va...

Hate this sort of thing. Dark times keep getting darker. If you like Gone Lawn and you have the means, consider a donation to keep us going, even something small. Thank you. gonelawn.net/journal/glj_...

I'm grateful to the govt officials who quietly keep our food safe & air clean & taxes collected, but whenever I teach the St. Matthew Passion I realize that of all the govt officials in all the world I'm most grateful to Picander—18th-c postal employee, later Liquor Tax Collector & Wine Inspector

No surprise, but an oncologist - nervous to be named - told this Stage4 survivor (so far) this a.m. that among the things quickly canceled by the Trump admin, long before the shutdown, were several steering committees on cancer research. So that research won’t happen for the foreseeable future.

These nights a great horned owl is again in our pine. I’m praying to it to eat the rat that is eating the tomatoes that linger and ripen on my vines in a mild San Francisco October. This owl precedes its hoots with appoggiature.

My wife and I bicycled San Francisco-San Diego in 2019 and the only way to bike through Camp Pendleton is on the shoulder of I-5. Over which the Trump admin just sent artillery fire. From which one premature shell burst dropped shrapnel on a CHP cruiser. Imagining shrapnel on our ride.

Rimbaud’s birthday. I continue to be very very fond of this performance/recitation of Le Bateau ivre: youtu.be/7KXgKCL8XkM?... Give Sara Llorca the full screen. She’s worth it.

The San Francisco high rise upper/center frame clad in red Swedish granite was my first as an Ironworker apprentice forty-plus years ago, ten stories in the air my first day. I tried for a photo of it today and found myself in this crowd. In body and spirit. No kings, ever.

All of California Labor stands with David Huerta and we reject the unjust charges against him. Brother Huerta was peacefully protesting enforcement raids targeting working people when he was pushed to the ground and arrested. Standing up for workers is not a crime!

This in today’s San Francisco Chronicle while Marc Benioff and Elon Musk tell Trump Yes, please deploy the National Guard here, it’s so lawless. I’m 2 months shy of 70, which means the City is the safest it’s been all my long life here. The lies have abandoned any pretense of plausibility.

My short story His Mothers and the Mountain is out today in The Table Review. San Bruno Mountain rises between San Francisco and smaller cities. Climb it with eight-year-old Rory Leary unaccompanied in the dark of an autumn night: thetablereview.org/2025/10/09/h...

America’s unions mourn the loss of our brother Kent Wong. As APALA's founding president & a leader throughout our movement, he relentlessly fought for worker, immigrant, civil & human rights across the country & around the world. He inspired us all. Rest in power.

The Table Review has taken my short story “His Mothers and the Mountain” for 9Oct25 publication. San Bruno Mountain rises from the SE edge of San Francisco. The story sends an 8-yr-old boy up it in an autumn night, away from one home, in hope of another. I’ll post a link when it’s out.

Indie director Barbara Marques has been kidnapped by ICE. She is legally married to a U.S. citizen & was at a green card mtg when she was abducted and prevented from seeing her lawyer. Her husband Tucker May does not know where she is. Please spread the word so he can find her /1

El realismo mágico explicado en una frase:

A closet rod becomes a mode of communication and an element of power in my story Her Delight, out now in @rawheadjournal.bsky.social. My thanks to John T. Leonard and the editorial crew, and my greetings and congratulations to my fellow contributors. rawheadjournal.org/issue-one/

The rapidity of dreams: When this morning’s Berkeley earthquake woke us in San Francisco my wife says that I reported that it was from a dream that a former Ironworker employer of mine (1993-99) had assigned me to seismically reinforce THE INTERIOR OF A TOASTER OVEN.

My very short story “The Excelsior Water Tower,” taken yesterday for publication by the McNeese Review, looks up at this landmark of San Francisco’s working-class Excelsior District and asks questions of love, of heritage, of identity. I’m thrilled and grateful McNeese liked it. I hope others will.

Insalata caprese with Purple Cherokee tomatoes from my garden Flying down the sweeping curves of White Hill in Marin on a bike at 40+mph The scent of my wife between her shoulder blades Vin rouge The tight spiral of a California slender salamander on my palm

Harro Siegel's marionette of Grendel from his post-war production of Beowulf. museo-marionetas-barcelona.org/en/master-bu...

My story TheTrog Girl is out in @unlikely-stories.bsky.social. Immigration comes in waves, and each wave introduces challenges to the descendants of earlier waves. The story plays some of these out between two girls living a floor apart in San Francisco’ Excelsior District. www.unlikelystories.org

"Muchas veces me siento solo. Pero tengo amigos, pocos pero buenos; tengo gente que me quiere. Y tengo además un refugio que no todos tienen y es el hecho de que esencialmente soy un escritor. Eso es lo que más me ayuda a escapar de la soledad". Jorge Luis Borges

Busy literary morning: A long story rejected, then a very short story accepted. “Bolt Head” plays with form, as suits its protagonist’s rebellion against authority. This works for Scavengers Literary Magazine, from @querenciapress.bsky.social. Out this fall. My thanks to editor Shilo Niziolek.

After a cool summer in San Francisco days have warmed enough that my tomatoes are ripening quickly, so here’s last night’s insalata caprese, with Cherokee purples & African blue basil (does better than Italian basil in our fog); baguette from Arizmendi, Mandarin melon from Civic Center Farmers Mkt.

Back up above 200km/125mi yesterday for the first time since early 2023. Slow, yes (moving time 10:12, total time 11:26), but maybe okay at four months shy of 70 years old on a half-century-old bike. Top speed 44mph on one descent. With 7miles to and from the official start, a 141-mile day.

I recalled yesterday that it was the Fête nationale de l’Acadie & had a brief notion of grabbing pot and spoon & banging out the Tintamarre; then thought, it’s San Francisco, & who‘d know what the noise was about? In retrospect: It’s San Francisco, & what would it have mattered the noise was about?

It is in fact an astonishing glimpse of the complexity of the most populous country in Africa, one of the most populous in the world. I was once invited to join the Freemasons - only way in, I guess - and almost regret declining, because I remain curious about the org’s workings and reach.

The Culinary Workers Union representing 60,000 hospitality workers in Nevada has achieved a historic victory on the Las Vegas Strip. For the first time in its 90-year history, all major casinos on the Strip are unionized.

On the Pacific Coast; 8.7 quake off Kamchatka.

Finally saw Sinners, & fine flick, but 2 Remmick gripes: He 1st appears at the couple’s door BY DAY, in rough shape, but doesn’t instantly burst into flame, as he does in the final sunrise; growing up amidst the Catholic roots of San Francisco I saw a lot a lot of Irish dancing, & his kinda sucks.

My odd story A Vase is out now in @bloodhoneylit.bsky.social. It dwells somewhere between the fantastic and the literary, the surreal and the hyperreal. Dante is important in it, the Paradiso. He gets a quote, in the original. It may be a parable of love. www.bloodhoneylit.com/fiction/a-vase

Philip Levine

Somehow the fireworks in my neighborhood last night, which filled the streets until well past midnight, sounded not celebratory, but like spasms of anger and desperation.

While the rest of the country has broiled sometimes, it’s been an exceptionally cool late spring and start to summer in #SanFrancisco, maybe a couple of handfuls of days that cleared 70F and many that never cleared 60. Perfect snow peas weather. Here are today’s from my garden.

I stayed up past my old-man bedtime last night to get out a story submission, then this morning with a mouthful of hot-spice hummus on kalamata olive bread toast saw that it had been accepted. Thanks to Tess Pollock and Animal Blood Magazine for taking my caustically political story Scruff Patch.

40 plus appreciation post. Reskeet with a pic if you’re past 40. (Way way past, here.)

We are posting this placard at all of our offices and asking our union contract farms to post as well. We encourage our friends to put up similar placards at their business as immigration agents do not have the right to go on private property without permission.

I had once thought I might have less reason for despair in this, my old age.

21 juin 1935 : Naissance de la femme de lettres française Françoise Sagan. Qualifiée de « charmant petit monstre » par François Mauriac, elle devient célèbre dès l'âge de 18 ans grâce à son premier roman « Bonjour tristesse ». #CeJourLà fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3...

When I saw that the new Rawhead Journal considered that monsters can “function as conduits for resilience, truth, & connection” I thought it might be a home for my story “Her Delight” & its tangle of love, power, & tech v. physical work. Rawhead agreed. Out later this year. rawheadjournal.org/about/

I meant to repost this with comment. I’ve actually worked construction in asbestos containment, my beard shaved off to achieve a respirator seal, and with full showers at workday’s end. We were taught that a single fiber in the lungs could result in mesothelioma.

Oh, f*ck, reading Joyce aloud today, in my #Bloomsday practice: Not just good, but a density of good.

My left leg is crap for walking right now, though fine on a bike, but today I got a notion to take a good walk, and somehow tens of thousands of people in San Francisco had the same idea, for the same route, and somehow I ended up following this sign.