Books

“Other Sacred” — A book of poems by Lawrence R. Smith

The two major magazines that championed surrealistic poetry during the past sixty years were KAYAK magazine, edited by George Hitchcock, and CALIBAN, edited by Lawrence R. Smith. The latter had two incarnations, the first as a print edition and the second on-line (Calibanonline.com). Forty issues of the on-line project are still maintained, along with intriguing, tantalizing art.

Most editors of poetry magazines are poets themselves. Sometimes the poets they publish are far better than they are (as in my own case), though whether they would be able to edit with any significant discernment unless they also attempted to write poetry is open to question. George Hitchcock was certainly as good a surrealist poet as the ones he selected for kayak, and the same is true of Lawrence R. Smith, though Smith has a greater range of topic and lyricism.

Among my favorite poems in OTHER SACRED is “Bird Signs,” which is dedicated to his granddaughter. Smith has given me permission to quote the poem in its entirely, and reprinting it here is one of the most rewarding moments for having done a blog for the past ten years.

When birds write on air,
they know the audience is small.
Their kin the lizards
occasionally watch,
but spend most of their time
doing push-ups.

My granddaughter
speaks to hummingbirds
in their strange chirping language —
and I’ve heard them reply.
She says their darting moves,
in all the vectors of a compass,
are calligraphic strokes
of hummingbird text,
advanced lessons for the child
who broke their code.

Language can live only in midair,
not on the page, and proud cities
raised with the music of vowels
dissolve as they are uttered.

There is no memory.
Hummingbirds merge
into the space they occupy,
writing their best lyrics
on the beating heart of the world.

**********

In “Bird Signs” a child serves as a mediator in the manner of immigrant youth negotiating for the elderly in a defamiliarized world. Open to the gestural as an alphabet, the child’s literacy enables her to see into the very heart of consciousness itself. This poem, however, is not the only one in which Smith regards air as the fundamental component that aligns one’s self-awareness of existence. Air is the amphitheater that hosts the resurrection of the life force, Smith reminds us in the culminating stanza of “Neighborhoods.” His cartography focuses on the inhabitants of the “netherworld,” however, rather than the quotidian domains of domesticity associated with the word “neighborhood.” In an annual resurrection, the small gods “tease the moment / with a fluttering samba danced in midair.” The minuscule devours the grandiose, in Smith’s account of a fundamental equilibrium between the life force and the always already “project of collapse.” How rarely I have found a quiet poem to set alongside well-known poems by Dylan Thomas and Gerard Manley Hopkins! on a similar theme!

At this point, I want to say how much I admire blogs in which lengthy reviews provide readers with a comprehensive understanding of a book under review, and I do wish I could do justice to “Other Sacred.” It is a volume that I am willing to bet will not be read in its entirety by a single person who contributes to that all-too-pretentious volume called “Best American Poetry of (name the year).” Yes, almost every volume of that anthology contains some memorable work, but I have also read poems selected for that honor that do not have a single stanza as perceptive as Smith’s insight that “Work gloves want to live on an / upper story but can’t pay the rent./ They feel the weight of brilliant flesh, / but can only hold and shelter it.” The poignant backwash of the conjunction in each of the poem’s final sentences reminds us of the long toil of evolution to bring human fingers and “urgent touch” into dialogic contiguity.

In this all too brief review, I also wish to point out some of my other favorites; in particular, one poem that is on the “local” side: “Santa Anas.” These are the notoriously fickle outbursts of superheated air that often cause voracious fires to erupt at the slightest provocation. Smith’s poem perfectly captures this whimsical apocalypse in its opening stanza:

“When the key that lives in wind
opens fire inside the house
of ordinary weather, a kind of madness
that tastes like smoke strews needles,
cones, and resin over the streets,
obscuring routes of escape.
Trees wheel, groan, pop sinews.”

All of the poems I have cited so far come from the first two parts of “Other Sacred.” The third part consists of a twenty-four page, six-part poem entitled “Eleven Roads to the Meeting Place,” which is in turn complemented by a five page prose piece that recalls Smith’s visits to the classic jazz club, the Five Spot, in New York City. His account of seeing Thelonius Monk play should be kept in mind by anyone working on a biography of that masterful composer.

Will any poet of equal stature to Hitchcock and Smith ever launch a magazine devoted to surrealist poetry that is as inspiring and inclusive? Perhaps it is enough that a miracle happened twice in my lifetime, and I am immensely grateful for both instances.

“OTHER SACRED” by Lawrence R. Smith (2023)
BALD TRICKSTER PRESS
9784 Nature Trail Way
Elk Grove, CA
95757
www.baldtricksterpress.com

Books

Neeli Cherkovski (1945-2024): Poet and Beat Chronicler

Wednesday, March 20, 2024

https://www.bigbridge.org/BB14/2010_Reviews/REV_2010_Cherkovski_review.htm

Late last night, S.A. Griffin wrote to inform me that Neeli Cherkovski had died, mid-afternoon. I had heard from Paul Vangelisti during the weekend that he had suffered a heart attack, but Paul said he had been unable to find out about Neeli’s current condition. I’m not completely caught off-guard by the news of his passing, but it still feels like an abrupt departure.

Both Neeli and Paul were co-editors, along with Charles Bukowski, of one of the first anthologies of Los Angeles area poets. The publication of ANTHOLOGY OF L.A. POETS by Paul’s Red Hill Press and Bukowski’s Laugh Literary Press) in 1972 was perhaps the most transgenerational editorial project, inn poetry at least, in all the decades since World War II. Bukowski, after all, was a quarter-century older than Vangelisti and Cherkovski, who were both born in 1945. According to Paul’s account of the editorial process, their review of manuscripts included a fair number of beers being consumed, after which they each rejected the other’s choices by ceremonially dumping all the submissions of poets into a trash can. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” Bukowski is reported to have said.

As far as I know, I was one of the few poets anywhere to write a review of the anthology, which I confess was a rather grouchy commentary. The review appeared in BACHY magazine, which I was then the poetry editor of, and the only poet I thought very highly of in that collection was John Thomas, whose first volume of poems had just been published by Vangelisti’s Red Hill Press. I’m fortunate that none of the editors of that anthology, nor its contributors, resented my argument that the book had left out too many poets who were becoming known as the core of the Wednesday night poetry workshop at Beyond Baroque.

Given Bukowski’s status as a legendary “outsider,” one might be understandably surprised to learn that Cherkovski was in correspondence with him at age 16. It’s astonishing enough that Cherkovski and Vangalisti were in their mid-20s when they worked on “Anthology” with Bukowski, but for a youth in high school to deserve Bukowski’s attention in a letter in the early 1960s is about as unexpected as a young poet in Charlesville, France getting the attention of Paul Verlaine. Fortunately, the outcome for both Cherkovski and Bukowski was far more amiable. Cherkovski’s biography of Bukowski, HANK: A LIFE, was reissued, in 2020, in a centennial edition by Godine Press to honor the 100th anniversary of Bukowski’s birth. Cherkovski also wrote a biography of Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

Neeli and I went on, in the middle of the past decade, to co-edit an anthology of poets who had lived both in Southern and Northern California. CROSS-STROKES: An Anthology of Poetry between Los Angeles and San Francisco required an enormous amount of effort, in part because the electronic transmission of manuscripts is actually a less reliable means of production than the old=fashioned process of typewriter-typesetter-galleys. The computer screen is not necessarily the ally of cultural workers, unless one has the luxury of a production manager. In any case, thanks to Paul’s Seismicity Editions, Neeli and I were able to champion an ensemble of poets that challenges preconceived notions and prejudices about West Coast poetry.

(cut and paste into browser)

I was surprised to find on mainstream websites such as Wikipedia and Poetry Foundation no mention of Neeli’s most recent major volume of work, HANG ON TO THE YANGTZE RIVER (Lithic Press, 2020). For those who want a critical appreciation of Neeli’s poetry, I recommend the following article by Paul Vangelisti, which was published in the Los Angeles Review of Books on October 16, 2020.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/short-takes/rilke-la-neeli-cherkovskis-hang-yangtze-river/

Rilke in LA: On Neeli Cherkovski’s “Hang on to the Yangtze River”

******
Neeli Cherkovski was predeceased by his father, Samuel Cherry (1913-2009) and his mother, Clare. as well as an uncle, Herman Cherry (1909-1992), who was a well-known abstract expressionist painter. Among other projects, his parents operated a bookstore in San Bernardino when Neeli was growing up. Neeli is survived by nephews and nieces, as well as his long-time partner, Jesse.

Books

Lyn Hejinian (1941-2024): Monumental Poet-Editor-Publisher-Critic

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Today’s New York Times contains three major obituaries: Robert M. Young, a filmmaker, age 99; Nancy Wallace, riparian activist, age 93; and Guy Alexandre, a transplant surgeon, age 89. All three deserved their extended notices.

But where in the New York Times is any notice of the recent passing of Lyn Hejinian, whose work as editor and publisher of Tuumba Press infused the Language poets with a heady sense of an irrefutable avant-gardism. The chapbooks that she printed on a steady basis between 1976 and 1984. It’s impossible, I believe, to convey to readers the excitement that I felt as I received those chapbooks in the mail from her. By late 1980, I was looking for some alternative to the post-Beat writing (additionally influenced by James Schuyler and Ted Berrigan) that I had been doing for over a decade. While I had been an assiduous reader of Paul Vangelisti’s and John McBride’s INVISIBLE CITY, Dennis Cooper’s LITTLE CAESAR, and Leland Hickman’s BACHY, as well as Stephen Kessler’s ALCATRAZ EDITIONS, I still found myself reluctant to “experiment” in the way that inaccessibly simmered within me. Hejinian’s ensemble of chapbooks proved to be a major turning point. Her impact as an editor and publisher on almost all the poets who contributed work to or were influenced by Ron Silliman’s anthology, IN THE AMERICAN TREE (1986), made her a proleptic force within the Language insurgency. In 1984, for instance, issue four of POETICS JOURNAL included her crucial essay, “The Rejection of Closure.”

Although Hejinian’s “My Life” will probably always be her best-known work, and it certainly had a profound impact on other poets such as Ron Silliman, it is the combination of all her projects that makes her such an important figure in contemporary poetry. In particular, I would direct attention to THE GRAND PIANO, a ten-volume group memoir that should serve as a model for any community of poets seeking to preserve the dialogue of poets in their youth.

I wish she could have lived so that she could have witnessed a massive celebration of the 50th anniversary of the founding of Tuumba Press. I would hope that UC Berkeley and UCSD’s Special Collections might be able to pull together such a convocation. In the meantime, I will find myself being more quiet than usual when I retreat to solitude, though no amount of stillness could be enough to suggest my appreciation for her inspiring example.

******************

RON SILLIMAN on Lyn Hejinian:

“When, in 200 years, students are reading the poetry of Lyn Hejinian – as certainly they shall if humans are still about – those readers will undoubtedly begin with My Life (hopefully in its initial Burning Deck version, not because the earlier edition is “better,” but because that is the volume that changed the lives of so many other poets). Those who go on to read Hejinian’s finest work, however, will then turn to The Book of a Thousand Eyes, which Omnidawn brought out earlier this year.” Ron Silliman’s Blog, December 10, 2012
https://www.writing.upenn.edu/epc/mirrors/ronsilliman.blogspot.com/2012/12/when-in-200-years-students-are-reading.html

******

Lytle Shaw’s Obituary notice:
://jacket2.org/article/lyn-hejinian-1941-2024-obituary-lytle-shaw

*******

Tuumba Press

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyn_Hejinian

******************

French critic Hélène Ali:

https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-etudes-americaines-2005-1-page-79.htm

The Stakes of Narrative in the Poetries of David Antin, Ron Silliman and Lyn Hejinian: New Forms, New Constraints
Hélène Aji
Dans Revue française d’études américaines 2005/1 (no 103), pages 79 à 92

************

Interview with Lyn Hejinian:

https://english.berkeley.edu/news/remembering-lyn-hejinian-0

Books

The Kinship of Memory

Friday, February 23, 2024

Of the quartet of photographs in today’s post, only one somersaults back over 30 years ago: the second one, which features painted wooden panels leaning against a wall. I first saw those panels in the late summer of 1993, when I read with poet-actor Harry Northup at Portfolio Coffee House in Long Beach. Kitty-corner to the coffee house was an elementary school playground with a block-long chain-link fence on which the panels gleamed as public art. Harry and I were celebrating the release of our spoken word albums, VEHEMENCE and PERSONAL CRIME, along with fellow spoken word performer, the late Linda Albertano, and a local poet Pam Nielsen.

Portfolio Coffee House was forced to move by the landlord over a year ago, after being a landmark gathering place for poets and the occasional musician. Other coffee shops have opened up on Fourth Street, including Coffee Drunk and Rose Park Coffee. I have met and talked with young poets at both these places, but I miss Portfolio. My hair is all gray now. How dark my.hair still was, back then, 30 years ago. Of course, what do I expect of inevitability but its unwobbling fulfillment? I sit ere, grateful to be able to still move my fingers on a keyboard and to know that I will be reading my poetry on Harry’s Poetry Hour this coming Tuesday, February 27th.

I took the photograph of the panels a couple weeks ago, before a set of rainstorms pumped up the snow levels in the Sierra Nevada and pushed the annual precipitation totals in Los Angeles County above normal. I should walk over this weekend and see if they are still there, leaning agains the wall in the subdued, but vigilant light of a Southern California winter.

Books

California (Adjunct) Faculty Association Caves In to Chancellor’s Office

February 20, 2024

The California Faculty Association (CFA) is a union representing over 20,000 faculty in the California State University system. The overwhelming majority of its members are not tenured faculty, but part-time (adjunct) faculty who exercise the same franchise as the tenured faculty. Each member gets one vote. Since the majority of the faculty are not tenured, but at best have three-year contracts, guess which contingent gets the most attention from the union’s leadership?

When the CRA reported that 76 percent of the vote on the new contract was in favor of accepting it, guess which percentage of the CFA is adjunct faculty? You wouldn’t be far off it you name the same percent.

It certainly came as no surprise to me that the CFA called off its strike after one day. This union’s leadership would never be tolerated by the United Teachers of Los Angeles or the Auto Workers Union. In recognition of the extraordinary erosion of our paychecks the past two years, the Chancellor’s Office offered a five percent raise, and the CFA accepted it.

Supposedly, there is another five percent raise coming next year, but that depends on whether the Legislature and Governor deign to honor their promise. Well, I’m not waiting around to get spit on again.

I quit.

I quit the union, and why shouldn’t I? .The value of my pension (which I will finally at age 76 begin collecting this summer) was decimated the past two years, and the union did not lift a finger to protect it.

And to think that I endured a month of hell on behalf of this union back when things were really tough at the end of this century’s first decade.

Good luck, CFA, with negotiating your next contract when the current one expires in the summer of 2025. You won’t find me wasting my time on your picket line in 2026, when I am FERPing (half-time, tenured faculty), and when the deal you made is worth even less to membership than it is now.

If you ever get your courage back, let me know and I’ll reconsider. But CFA leadership has long refused to take the needs of its tenure-track and tenured faculty membership seriously, and I predict it will never change.

Post-script on Wednesday, February 21:
I was hired as a tenure-track assistant professor in 2006 with a salary that was below $60,000. Mind you, I had a Ph.D. and brought over 30 years of experience as an editor, publisher, and teacher to the table on day one. When I given tenure and promoted to associate professor four years later, I got a ten percent raise, which was 2.5 percent more than the minimum that often accompanies that promotion.

The fact remains that if I had not put in a tremendous amount of work and been promoted to full professor in 2017 and been awarded a 15 percent raise that year, I would now be only earning a pittance more as an associate professor than I did as a newly hired assistant professor, once inflation was factored in.

Books

Bob Edwards, the Walter Cronkite of the Baby Boom Generation

February 16, 2024

I was working on the final draft of my Ph.D. dissertation in the spring of 2004 when I heard that Bob Edwards was being fired from his job at NPR. The notion that he was too old to serve as a drawing card depressed me, not least because I had been on the academic job market, and I had had only two job interviews, and one job talk at that point. In 2005, I did not get a single job interview, even with a Ph.D. degree in hand,

Edwards was not that old when he lost the only job he’d known for almost a quarter century. He was born, after all, the same year I was. The announcement of his death very close to twenty years after NPR and he went separate ways hits home because our lives shared an awareness of the same major points of cultural and political demarcation.

Of all of his interviews, one I recall in particular was with a homeless man in a park in Washington, D.C. The compassion in his voice was as palpable as the the contradictory altruism and abjection of the man he was interviewing. Rarely have I ever heard a conversation in which so much inner anguish has been revealed with such subtle urgency.

Maybe somewhere there’s a tape: “The Best of Bob Edwards.” If I ever get to retire completely from my job, I’d love to spend a few days listening to it.

R.I.P., Mr. Edwards.

Robert Alan Edwards (May 16, 1947 – February 10, 2024)

https://www.npr.org/2024/02/12/165681524/bob-edwards-dead-npr-host

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/2004/04/29/bob-edwards-38/948fcd65-36c8-40a1-b4c1-050daf4decb5/’’

https://www.npr.org/2024/02/13/1231061499/remembering-longtime-morning-edition-host-bob-edwards-who-has-died-at-76

Books

Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez (1949-2024): the voice that summoned in “Diva”

THe opera star of “Diva” recently died, and though it is an all too brief post on Valentine’s Day, I simply must take note of her passing. The excerpt of Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez singing in a suspense thriller built around a “bootleg” tape of an artist who doesn’t believe in the commodification of her voice is one of the most poignant experiences of my entire life. I just listened to it once again, and it is more enrapturing than ever. I regret that I never had a chance to hear her perform live.

Oddly enough, my guess is that this film, which was released over 40 years ago, has probably not been seen by the majority of filmgoers between the ages of 18 and 30.

May the most exquisite operatic voice I have ever heard rest in eternal reverberation.

Books

Wanda Coleman’s “American Sonnets” and Terrance Hayes

Sunday, February 11

This weekend I’ve been preparing to lead a discussion of MFA students about Terrance Hayes’s “American Sonnets for My Once & Future Assassin.” I’ve just finished jotting down notes on each of his sonnets and realized that I should have assigned Wanda Coleman’s sequence to them, too. While it’s too late for me to insist that they do so, I would like to post this brief note today (at 5:45 p.m., PST) to let my readers know that they can be found on-line:

https://paulenelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Wanda-Coleman-American-Sonnets-Complete.pdf

There are dozens of poets whose work deserves close attention and at least some brief commentary, and the sad part of being a devoted reader of contemporary American poetry is the fact that no one could meet that demand, even if she or he were paid a full-time salary. Nevertheless, it’s almost incumbent on any serious reader to record a small portion of their insights into a few poets.

In Hayes’s case, I would like to apply a rule I heard about years ago that claimed anyone who wanted to know what one of Shakespeare’s plays was about only had to read the line of poetry that was at the exact center of the play. I thought that was an interesting premise, even if it was nothing more than a premise meant to bolster and augment one’s motive for indulging in Bardolotry.

In the “Once and Future Assassin” collection of poems, the rule turns up a haunting line, which in fact circles back to the very first “American Sonnet.” You’ll find that line in the middle of the sonnet on page 43: “To be dead and alive at the same time.” That kind of simultaneity is exactly what happens when Orpheus draws an “X” across the eyes of the beloved.

Hayes is an astonishing poet, and I have more to say about this book on another morning.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Books

Don’t Look Back, Taylor Swift: J. Ivy’s Won Two in a Row!

Monday, February 5, 2024

THE BEST SPOKEN WORD POETRY ALBUM — 2024 GRAMMY AWARD

“our muscle memory is made out of miracles” — J. Ivy

Even as Jay-Z gave a stirring acceptance speech after receiving the Dr. Dre Global Impact Grammy, let us remember that over a half-dozen years ago Chicago poet J. Ivy began to agitate for the Grammy Awards for “Spoken Word” to have a separate category for poetry. This is something that should have happened a long time ago. If it had, Michael C. Ford would certainly have an actual Grammy sitting on whatever stands in for a mantel where he lives. Ford was once nominated for a Grammy, and he will continue to share that honor along with the others who were nominated with J. Ivy for the 2024, which went for the second year in a row to J. Ivy.

THE LIGHT INSIDE:

I wasn’t able to scribble down all the names of J. Ivy’s collaborators in making “THE LIGHT INSIDE,” but here is a partial list:
Torrey Torae
Christian McBride
Jimmy Jam
Greg Majors
Omar Keith
Dj Jazzy Jeff
Anthony Hamilton
Bootsy Collins
Michael Jamal Warner
Maurice Brown

Tarrey Torae
“our muscle memory is made out of miracles”

FROM 2023 AWARDS FOR BEST SPOKEN WORD POETRY


First Win

J. Ivy wins for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album

Jay-Z’s acceptance speech:

Books

Why Does It Have to Rain on My Grammy After-Party? Storm Watch: Thursday (Feb. 1) through Tuesday (Feb. 6)

Storm Watch: Thursday (Feb. 1) through Tuesday (Feb. 6)

Monday, February 5
UPDATE: Classes at seven CSU campuses were shifted to Zoom today, though the amount of rain in Long Beach was less than overwhelming in my neighborhood. However, the sewage spill into the Pacific Ocean that almost always occurs when more than two inches of rain hits Los Angeles County took place with a kind of aquatic fatalism.

https://lbpost.com/news/5-million-gallon-sewage-spill-prompts-long-beach-to-close-all-swimming-areas/?utm_medium=email
5-million-gallon sewage spill prompts Long Beach to close all swimming areas

Saturday, February 3, 2024

Yesterday, I drove my 1998 Oldsmobile to Allen Tire on Carson Boulevard and got new tires put on. I hope to be able to drive the car another year or so, and the old tires had reached their limit. My decision to set aside time for this chore was in large part due to the storm that’s coming in. We got a sneak preview just a while ago: as of 10 a.m. Thursday, February 1, 2.3 inches of rain had fallen overnight at Long Beach Airport, while 2.4 inches had fallen at LAX. The local deluge barricaded a portion of the 710 Freeway near PCH, and a nearby railroad underpass was also impassible. Floodwater nearly completely submerged several vehicles in the area. Other streets in Long Beach were only partially closed.Right hand lanes on Seventh Street, for instance, were engorged with rainwater, and traffic oozed its way along, reduced to the left lanes only. Parts of PCH in Huntington Beach, however, were closed in both directions. Elsewhere, the CHP reported at least 50 spinouts and crashes on freeways and roads in the central Los Angeles area Thursday morning. Flooding also embroiled the southbound side of the McClure Tunnel in Santa Monica. A foreboding hint of another possible residential catastrophe in the Rancho Palos Verdes and Palos Verdes Estates, after the next storm will have passed, also surfaced with reports of mud flows on Thursday on the peninsula’s roadways.

As of Saturday morning, February 3, two inches of rain are predicted for tomorrow, followed by an inch of rain on Monday. The storm will begin tuning up with a twelve-hour spate of showers that commence on Sunday, at midnight. By noon, the rain will begin falling in earnest and not let up until noon Tuesday, after which light rain and showers can be expected for another 24 hours. The storm will taper off on Tuesday, with less than a half-inch predicted.

The Grammy Award presentation focuses its broadcast on the songs and bands who will draw the biggest audiences. If only as a gesture of respect to those whose writing and performing is more aligned with various poetry scenes in Los Angeles than the bands who be featured tomorrow, here is a partial list of nominations for the Spoken Word Grammy this year:
The Spoken Word Nominations this year are:

Best Spoken Word Poetry Album
When The Poems Do What They Do == Aja Monet
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aja-monet-when-the-poems-do-what-they-do/

Best Spoken Word Poetry Album
The Light Inside — J. Ivy
http://www.j-ivy.com/audios

Best Spoken Word Poetry Album
Grocery Shopping With My Mother. — Kevin Powell

Best Spoken Word Poetry Album
A-You’re Not Wrong B-They’re Not Either: The Fukc-It Pill Revisited. — Queen Sheba

Best Audio Book, Narration, and Storytelling Recording
It’s Ok To Be Angry About Capitalism

NOTE: J. Ivy won the inaugural Best Spoken Word Poetry Album Grammy in 2023 for “The Poet Who Sat By The Door.”

*****

In San Diego, slightly less than two weeks ago, an overwhelming deluge brought left the trolley system only functioning in a small portion of the county, and flooded several freeways. In National City, which is south of downtown San Diego, floods damaged many houses and apartment buildings, and approximately 100 people have been evicted from now uninhabitable buildings and are in desperate need of permanent shelter.

Four or more inches fell at:
Otay Mountain; Point Loma; National City, 4.21 inches; and Palomar Mountain.
Three or more inches fell at:
La Mesa; Fallbrook; Dulzura Summit, San Diego International Airport and Carlsbad Airport; Lake Cuyamaca; and Santee, 3.05 inches.

Oceanside and Kearney Mesa got two and a half inches; the mountain town of Julian received over two inches, as did San Marcos.