Rain finally if only for a short time. Maybe we deserve a dry year after last year’s exceedingly wet one.

I appreciate the comments on last week’s column and will be following up soon with more information about the Commanding Officer’s Quarters.

Mayor Elizabeth Patterson hosted a fundraiser for incumbent Linda Seifert who is running for re-election to the Solano County Board of Supervisors. Her opponent is former mayor, Steve Messina. He’s already mailed a colorful brochure. Seems awfully early to think about another election, but elections always seem to be in the news. I think the Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot with the number of debates and the fallout from those and their personal shenanigans, but that’s only my opinion, and that plus, oh, $3-4 will buy a cup of coffee.

Speaking of which, we had breakfast at the new and improved Pappas the other day. Blue and white everywhere. Very nice. My breakfast pita was excellent, but…the coffee. Please. There was a time we were all used to thin coffee, but after years of Peet’s and Starbucks and coffee beans at Safeway, that old coffee doesn’t cut it anymore. Buy Moschetti’s, the coffee firm in Vallejo with good coffee.

Tabulating results and listening with one ear at the Poetry Out Loud contest for high school students, I noted one particular poem, called “Poetry” by Marianne Moore, who says:

“I, too, dislike it: there are things that are important beyond all this fiddle.

Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one

discovers in

it after all, a place for the genuine.”

I take her point. Poetry, like music, exists somewhere between the linear and the nonlinear. Done well, it reaches us through both our cognitive senses and feelings. It feels true. It can bring profound understanding, joy, and clarity, but it is often so ephemeral, it slips past us unrecognized. Definitely worth our time.

The newly formed Benicia Literary Arts will be sponsoring a poetry reading at the Rellik on March 25, from 3 to 5 p.m. Local poets will be reading well known poems. I guess “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe would be appropriate, though it is a bit long. Toward the end of the event, there will be some open mic time. A chance for each of us to search for the genuine.

Meet Your Officials Night is this Friday between 6:30 and 9 p.m. at Shiroco’s and Piccolo, 216 Firsts Street. Sponsored by the League of Women Voters, it’s an opportunity to meet and greet decision-makers. See you there!