Poetry at the Truckee Community Block Party, 9/17/2026

 

I'll be reading a poem tomorrow at the Truckee Block Party 2026! Outside the Truckee Train depot in downtown Truckee, this family-friendly gathering will bring together community resources, local culture, and neighbors for a vibrant evening in the heart of downtown. I hope to see you Thursday night from 5-7 pm at the party!

Residents and visitors alike will enjoy an evening filled with:

• Food trucks featuring local flavors
• Live music and performances
• Local art displays
• Raffles, games, crafts, and free face painting
• Extended downtown shopping hours
• Free neighborhood shuttles for easy access
• A bike valet hosted by Truckee Trails Foundation to make arriving by bike easy and stress-free
• A free bike kitchen to tune your bike and get information from Lake Tahoe Bike Coalition
• Opportunities to connect with more than 40 local non-profits, service providers, and community organizations

Spanish interpretation and materials will be available. 

I’m drawn to the words of US Poet Laureate Emerita Tracy K Smith, recently interviewed by Krista Tippett of On Being. In her newest book, Fear Less, Tracy says, “When I’m lost or afraid, the speakers of poems assure me that my feelings are nothing to hide from or deny. Indeed, that vulnerability, uncertainty, and even desperation are not only signs of life, but tools for moving forward toward courage, hope, and purpose. When I’m confident in my convictions, poems alert me to complexities I failed or been unwilling to regard.” 

 

Her words remind me of why we seek out poems during celebrations and rituals. I've chosen to read a poem I wrote last summer after teaching a poetry workshop to a first grade class at Donner lake Memorial State Park. I was inspired by the number of parents and teachers supporting their camping and writing adventure, the dedication and love they poured over these young students. I was also reminded of the fresh and hopeful visions of children.

 

Back in June, I corralled two weeks of personal writing escape time in Colorado for myself after the Mountain Words Festival on Memorial weekend. I brought with me over 100 pages of poems, written over the past decade, to shape into a full-length manuscript of poems. 

 

I look forward to getting back to that project over the winter. While I juggle so many balls between my teaching, my community organizing, mentoring, and figuring out how to be a good person, I struggle as all writers do to focus my creative energies and prioritizing my own writing. 

 

As Tracy K Smith wrote, “We never cease in our becoming.” You can listen to Joy Harjo and Tracy k Smith with On Being https://onbeing.org/programs/joy-harjo-and-tracy-k-smith-this-world-is-full-of-everything-good-everything-beautiful/

Four Free Arts, Music & Literary community events in Truckee 9/10 - 9/13, 2026

Many poets and writers are participating in these events so go to the website links and posters attached for more details. So much opportunity to gather creatively and inspire each other for making and creating in our world. I hope to see you out and about!

Thursday 9/10 Tangled Roots Open Mic & Reading Series at Alibi Truckee 6-7:30 pm. 

• Join us for a community open mic for poetry, prose, and singersongwriters. Our featured reader opens the open mic with a special reading from her debut novel Whalespeak that was released just September 4th! Author Liz Collins of Nevada City.  https://www.facebook.com/events/2282670338937709/

 

Friday 10:30 am - Noon Truckee Library Moments for Memoirs. This writing workshop is open to all. 

• Truckee Library's beloved writer’s program, Moments for Memoirs, is back after a summer break! Join us in the Donner Room for a workshop and write about stories from your life.   Nevada County Poet Laureate Karen Terrey returns to lead these engaging memoir‑writing sessions, guiding participants in capturing meaningful memories through writing. We look forward to welcoming both new and returning writers!

Saturday 9/12 10 am - Noon Mountain Bounty Farm, Nevada City

Poetry reading and writing workshop with Ingrid Keriotis, Rooja Hoasessey, and Karen Terrey. Join us under the hundreds year old Oak at the top of the ridge! 

• Mountain Bounty Farm (map) Join Nevada County Poet Laureate Karen Terrey and poet Ingrid Keriotis for a morning of poetry at Mountain Bounty Farm. https://mountainbountyfarm.com/events/2025/poetryonpreserves

Sunday, 9/13 1-5 pm Glenshire Porchfest

• I’ll be performing poems along with many other poets and storytellers at the Glenshire Porchfest this Sunday! Over 18 bands, a plethora of poets and storytellers from all over our region, plus food trucks and face painting in Truckee's Glenshire neighborhood.  Free event full of local musicians, food, and wares. More info at glenshireporchfest.com

Einstein Time, Loitering, Choosing how to spend our time, and Democracy

I learned a new phrase tonight from someone in my Monday Night Creative Writing workshop: Einstein time. This means, you own your time and you choose how you spend it. The concept is discussed in The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks. I haven't read the book yet, but this concept of owning your time came up in workshop because we read a beautiful short essay by Ross Gay, one of my favorite poets. His essay is titled Loitering. The author is at a cafe, having bought a coffee, and he is nearly dozing in the sunlight in the window. 

Here is an excerpt:

"I have a fiscal relationship with this establishment, which I developed by buying a coffee and which makes me a patron. And so even though I subtly dozed in the late afternoon sun pouring in under the awning, the two bucks spent protects me, at least temporarily, from the designation of loiterer, though the dozing, if done long enough, or ostentatiously enough, or with enough delight, might transgress me over.

"…The Webster’s definition of loiter reads thus: “to stand or wait around idly without apparent purpose,” and “to travel indolently with frequent pauses.” Among the synonyms for this behavior are linger, loaf, laze, lounge, lollygag, dawdle, amble, saunter, meander, putter, dillydally, and mosey. Any one of these words, in the wrong frame of mind, might be considered a critique or, when nouned, an epithet (“Lollygagger!” or “Loafer!”)...All of these words to me imply having a nice day. They imply having the best day. They also imply being unproductive. Which leads to being, even if only temporarily, nonconsumptive, and this is a crime in America, and more explicitly criminal depending upon any number of quickly apprehended visual cues. 

"For instance, the darker your skin, the more likely you are to be “loitering.” Though a Patagonia jacket could do some work to disrupt that perception. …

"…Which points to another of the synonyms for loitering, which I almost wrote as delight: taking one’s time. For while the previous list of synonyms allude to time, taking one’s time makes it kind of plain, for the crime of loitering, the idea of it, is about ownership of one’s own time, which must be, sometimes, wrested from the assumed owners of it, who are not you, back to the rightful, who is."

The contrast is clear between being a good-citizen-consumer who spends their time for the good of the business and the putterer who may not even be consuming while he is apparently (but only externally?) unproductive. In fact, is this the contrast between capitalism and democracy? 

Another writer we studied in workshop tonight is Laraine Herring from her piece On Being Stuck:

"Writing is a slow process. It is not typing. It is a synthesis of past, present, and future. It’s the condensation of an idea, a vision, or an experience into a focused sensory experience on the page. It’s the deepest form of sharing—one imagination to another. It’s the most intimate form of communication—mind to mind, heart to heart. This synthesis does not happen in one sitting, one week, one month, or one year. It happens slowly over months and years of paying deeper and deeper attention to your process and the fruits that come from that work."

Tonight we all noticed the synthesis of these ideas surfacing and intermingling over 1.5 hours of writing and thinking together. This past Spring, for February, March, April, and May, I chose to write a poem a day and post it within an online community for accountability. My sense of my own purpose felt full and grounded and driven by imagination and creativity each day, even when I wasn't writing. I was spending my time keeping aware and tending to the world around me with my imagination. I made daily choices in using my time so that I preserved the space and time to write, to look at the sky, to watch the leaves in the trees I planted nearly 20 years ago now in my backyard, to notice how the rabbit overnight had clipped off the Nasturtium flowers perfectly and left them on the deck by the flowerpot.

I was compelled to search for the term "Einstein Time" and I found this fascinating analysis of time in an essay titled The Grand Illusion in Lapham's Quarterly by Jim Holt, author of When Einstein Walked with Gödel: Excursions to the Edge of Thought, and a member of the Lapham’s Quarterly editorial board:

"Most physicists and philosophers today agree with Einstein that time’s passage is an illusion; they are eternalists. But a minority—who call themselves “presentists”—think that now is a special moment that really advances, like a little light moving along the line of history; this would still be true, they believe, even if there were no observers like us in the universe.

If there is one proposition about time that all scientifically inclined thinkers can agree on, it might be one due to the nonscientist Hector Berlioz, who is reputed to have quipped, “Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.”

Which to me means: write, create, read, think. Want to go deeper? Watch this video of social psychologist Cassie Holmes, PhD talk about time poverty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2IJTn_FOVo&t=75s

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glenshire Porchfest Sept 13 brings together music, poetry, creativity, and community

As Poet Laureate of Nevada County I get the opportunity to collaborate with so many different artists and organizations. A few months ago Brooke Chabot, a beloved Truckee musician and teacher reached out to me to help her line up poets to read on stage for her Glenshire Porchfest this September 13. 

 This fabulous neighborhood event takes place around the neighborhood porches of friends and neighbors in Glenshire, Truckee. Twelve porches, 12-14 bands, and numerous wild poets will perform throughout the afternoon 1-5 pm. A Sunday afternoon, music, community, face painting, Taco Truck, poetry, and even Truckee Community Theater!

The bands performing include: Winter Grain, Rogue, Steel Sparrows, Truckee Jazz Ensemble, Rubicon Gold, Gold Noir, Wild Ginger, Tyler Mathew Smith, Johnson Party, Dark Horse, Will Apothekar, and John and Claudia.  You've seen these bands at gigs around town, and now you get to hang out in neighborhood porches and share the music experience up close and personal.

 

We have diverse and amazing poets performing on each stage before the bands: Rooja Mohassessy, Ingrid Keriotis, Kim Bateman, Sara Priest, Rita Geil, Alexis Cota, Liz Collins, Kathy Nelson, Bishop Randall, Michaelyn Logue, and others. Our poets are coming from the Bay Area, Carson City, Reno, Nevada City, and Truckee! They are published and experienced open mic performers, poets and storytellers. Join us September 13 1-5 pm! You can find more details here on GlenshirePorchfest.com.

 

What is Porchfest?

Glenshire PorchFest is a free, grassroots music and arts festival where neighbors turn porches, lawns, and driveways into live performance spaces. Walk the neighborhood. Discover local musicians. Dance in the street. No tickets. No pressure. Just a really good afternoon together.

Why are we doing this?

Inspired by the magic of Glenshire—Halloween nights, winter luminaries, summer concerts—PorchFest is about bringing people together in the best way we know how: through music, creativity, and community. This is what makes our neighborhood feel like home.