Conversation

the gracious Patricia Hackett talks to Christopher Herold before a program, circa 1993.

dragonfly . . . 

A stream of thought pauses

on the stone buddha

Christopher Herold

   

from A Path in the Garden by Christopher Herold, Katsura, 2000.

Paul Takes a Picture

 This was taken at one of the beloved Yuki Teikei Christmas Parties. This party was at the Gallagher home in Sunnyvale. Fay Aoyagi, in splendid holiday earrings, is getting ready to distribute her haiku gift; we each bring enough copies for everyone. Under the candles at the upper left is Ebba Story, a fine poet, who wrote Challenge Kigo essays for the Geppo for several years. Paul O. Williams is in the lower right;  and, who knows, I might be in his picture! He is wearing one of his signature stone necklaces. We miss Paul a lot. Here is a link to his Wikipedia page.  The partial heads in the lower right belong to the current YT President, Alison Woolpert, and her guy, Alan.

Here is a link to Fay Aoyagi's website; she posts a translation of a modern haiku 

from Japan every day; It's a treat and something sompletely different .

the conductor

raises his baton

outside robins sing

Paul O. Williams

This is the title haiku from one of Paul's excellent books

of haiku, Outside Robins Sing, Brooks Books, 1999. 

Interviewing Norman Mineta

This picture was taken for the newspaper. I think, but I don't know the photographer. Kiyoko had.this copy. Kiyoko and Kiyoshi are at the center. See how she is writing? Since Kiyoshi was profoundly deaf, Kiyoko included him in everything by writing down all that was happening. Sometimes she just traced characters in his hand. Once, at a haiku meeting, she had to leave early and she gave me my instructions; I was to write down everything for Mr. Tokutomi. I wrote in English, of course, and on paper. It was a discussion meeting and various people talked. By the time the meeting was over, I was exhausted! This job had required a greater level of focus and concentration than other meetings. One could not drift! 

It pleases me to see the Sumitomo sign, because then I remember that for a long time, we held the monthly Yuki Teikei meeting in the upstairs conference room at the Sumitomo Bank Building in downtown San Jose. I wrote my first few haiku at meetings in that room. Out of the window I could see a traffic sign that said: LEFT LANE MUST TURN LEFT. It was a perfect five-syllable line; I used it in one of my very first haiku! 

To get back to the picture: at the left is Norman Mineta, mayor of San Jose (and later Congressman and U.S. Secretary of Transportation.) I wish I knew who the man at the right was.
The Tokutomis were probably interviewing Mr. Mineta for the Japanese language newspaper in San Jose. They used to write articles for this paper.

Look carefully at Kiyoko's face to see her focus and concentration! She didn't do anything halfway!

I keep on writing

a letter to my mother

by autumn lamplight

Kiyoko Tokutomi

Kiyoko's Sky; the haiku of Kiyoko Tokutomi

translated by Fay Aoyagi and Patricia J, Machmiller

Brooks Books, 2002, page 31

Roger Abe

This is Roger Abe, a long-time member of Yuki Teikei and a Park Ranger

for the city of San Jose. This was taken in April of 2009, 

when he led us on a Spring Wild Flower Walk in Alum Rock Park.

It was a beautiful, bright day in a park with a variety of beauties:

rocks, trees, flowers, hills and a stream.

Roger is a Past President of YTHS.

boulders on the road

the perilous weight

of spring rain

Roger Abe

Scattered Acorns; YT Membership Anthology 2015, page 9.

Here are some of us that day on the trail; 
that's Jerry Ball in the grass!

Buson's Spring Sea

The sea is really flat here, it just looks curved because of my fisheye lens.  jhh

Many years ago, I asked Kiyoko if people ever repeated a word 

in haiku--haiku being so short, may be it wouldn't work. 

Buson's haiku below was the answer she gave me. 

This came back to me once again, after she died, 

when we visited this overlook to the Monterey Bay

during one of our YT Haiku Retreats at Asilomar. 

Because there is a great deal of kelp visible 

on the surface here, it is easy to see the 

rise and fall, rise and fall of the sea.

                                              jhhymas

हरु नो उमी हिनेमोसू नोटरी नोटरी काना 
haru no umi hinemosu notari notari kana

The spring sea rising 
and falling, rising 
    and falling all day

Buson. 

Translated by Robert Hass.

The spring sea--
all day long it rises and falls
rises and falls

Buson

translated by Robert Aiken

Many various things

Coming towards me, under the blossoming cherries 

on our 2007 Yuki Teikei trip to Japan,

dearest Ann Bendixen!

The honorable Tangan held a flower-viewing party

at his villa. Things were just as in the old days.

many various things

come to mind

cherry blossoms

Basho

from Basho; The Complete Haiku

by Jane Reichhold

Sometimes, as here, Basho included a headnote with a poem.

He had been invited to view the cherry blossoms at the home 

of the son of the man he had served, when young, 

until his friend's and master's untimely death at age 25. 

Many people feel that this early loss set Basho on the path 

to becoming more religious and more interested in poetry.

Dabbling Ducklings

This was the first time we had ducklings in the pond on the weekend when we had our

annual Yuki Teikei Haiku reading in the Teahouse in San Jose's Japanese Friendship garden.

Such busy little creatures, paying no attention to haiku.

stepping past

the caution tape

signs of spring

Phillip Kennedy

from Scattered Acorns; Yuki Teikei Haiku Society

Member's Anthology 2014, page 24