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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 6h

Shovelers get in a bunch sometimes and all paddle together in tight concentric circles, maybe because that’s something to do.

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 15h

My writing this morning has sent me to read a 2020 paper analyzing the conditions for silicon-based life forms, and this for a story that isn’t science fiction.

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 16h

Donne? Milton? Hart Crane?

Yeats, when he’s in the mood:

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43293/...

Seamus Heaney, likewise.

Yeats, when he’s in the mood:
www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43293/...

Among School Children

I I walk through the long schoolroom questioning; A kind old nun in a white hood replies; The children learn to cipher and to sing, To study reading-books and history, To cut and sew, be neat in every...

www.poetryfoundation.org

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 1d

C. has the virtue of plausibility:

www.kqed.org/news/1205760...

Squirrels Gone Wild: Marin County ‘Attack Squirrel’ Sends at Least 3 to the ER | KQED

No one in the U.S. has ever gotten rabies from a squirrel, but multiple attacks by one squirrel have sent three Marin County residents to the hospital.

www.kqed.org

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 2d

We are an ethnicity with which this country has a love/hate relationship, and some of whose Continental branch has sold itself as arbiter of luxury, so we can be a convenient target of contempt simultaneously for the snob and the foreigner.

Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 2d

Unsure if I am amused or insulted by this. Matter of fact it’d be damned nice to have a joint in walking distance called something like La Marée where I could get a bowl of moules marinières from a waiter in long-sleeved white shirt and black vest whose name I’ll never hear. And a demi of vin blanc.

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 2d

Wait a minute (he says, at two months shy of seventy), is this not the standard path to take around the house in search of keys?

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 3d

But a bit like saying, If it sounds like a symphony, I rewrite it for guitar.

I have an ensemble of instruments. Why wouldn’t I use them all?

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 5d

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...

Past a foreground of park paths and cypresses a mountain rises, first in a tree-capped ridge with boxlike houses zigzagging up its near slope, then in green-black peaks topped with radio towers.

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Reposted by Michael Thériault

AFL-CIO @aflcio.org · 5d

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.

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 5d

Pfizer (COVID) in one arm, flu in the other at Mission Bay Kaiser in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago.

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 5d

See Yeats, “Easter, 1916” (on the Rising, in commemoration of which I marched with Sinn Féin in Dublin and Belfast 2016), first stanza.

Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 6d

In discussions for the recent Strategic Plan of the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway & Transportation District I specifically mentioned bus service on Hwy37 as one possible expansion of transit connections between the Hwy101 and I-80 corridors.

Wouldn’t that be lovely?

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 7d

Radicchio starting to form heads in my garden.

Half a dozen radicchio plants, their leaves variously red-tinged and red-veined and starting to curl toward what will be heads, on a gray sandy soil sprinkled with dry pine needles.

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 8d

Bird more often heard than seen, in my experience, so nice work.

Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 9d

September was exceptionally busy: (short stories, not poems) 23 rejections, 4 acceptances, a ratio harsh enough to keep me striving, sweet enough to keep me going.

Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 10d

Spent an almost ecstatic evening once in this City of St. Francis in the cheap hot crowded standing-room zone at the very top and back of the Opera House, listening to Messiaen’s St François d’Assise, with its wild close transcriptions of birdsong. I’m deeply apostate, but: Respect.

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 10d

They hang out under the Golden Gate Bridge sometimes. Bicycling across one time, I glanced over the rail and saw one directly below. Another time, I saw their distinctly columnar spouts all around it as I started to cross.

Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 12d

The resident knitter, shown the Etsy pattern, says that his presence in her life is already excessive.

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 12d

I always suspect they know but stop partway into the bike lane to object to it and our existence.

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 13d

Recalling that repeated motions to adjourn (always in order) ultimately succeeded in frustrating Ben Franklin’s motion for daily prayer in the Constitutional Convention of 1787. In respect for him, most delegates didn’t want to argue directly against it, though Alexander Hamilton did.

Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 14d

Having been a plan trustee, I confirm the deterrence of the threat of being sued personally by plan participants for breach of fiduciary responsibility. Also, many pension plans are ruled with equal labor-management votes, so management would have to be convinced of pro-labor investment strategies.

Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 15d

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.

Past cypresses and a pine in the foreground and a ridge climbed by zigzagging “little boxes” houses in the midground, a green mountain capped with radio towers rises toward high clouds.

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Reposted by Michael Thériault

Bill Wolkoff @billwearsties.bsky.social · 17d

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

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Michael Thériault @mtheriaultsf.bsky.social · 19d

Actually not the first time I’d faced a rifle, and I was pissed off and inclined to be confrontational again, but wisdom prevailed and (with a little struggle because I’d secured it against pickpockets) I produced the magic American passport and was let pass.

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