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The title is eye-catching enough on its own: “The Lighter Side of Horse Manure”.
Add on the author’s personal experience overcoming adversity, her interesting retirement lifestyle splitting time between Pleasanton and Barcelona, and the two of us sharing an alma mater, and my interest was piqued.
Linda Drattell, who published the book of original poems last fall, is settling into an exciting life likely much different from the one envisioned when she completed her Master of Business Administration at American University in Washington, D.C. in the mid-1980s.
“My world was turned upside down,” she recalled about the major turning point – being deafeaned in her late 30s.
“When that happened, I didn’t know what to do,” Drattell told me by email this month. “I became nervous, my self-esteem was deflated, I self-isolated. I felt I couldn’t be a part of the hearing world anymore, at least not in the same way. And I did not grow up in the Deaf world.”
Enrolling in the Ohlone College Deaf Studies Program to learn American Sign Language would be Drattell’s key positive step forward.
“What I learned there was an eye-opener. I learned not just sign language, but how to thrive and grow as a deaf person. I ate up their classes,” she said.
“And just as important as the classes were, I met deaf students who were warm and embracing,” Drattell added. “They helped me not only feel accepted in the Deaf community, but also how to survive in the hearing community. I learned a new language. I learned coping skills and how to self-advocate. I gained self-confidence.”
She would go on to work in deaf advocacy and community relations before starting her own nonprofit in 2015, Bay Epicenter of Advocacy for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing – which she operated until disbanding early in the COVID pandemic.
In retirement, Drattell has found another new community and another new outlet.
“Splitting our time between Pleasanton and Barcelona has been an eye-opening experience,” she said. Her husband first moved to Pleasanton from Maryland 25 years ago when their kids were still in high school and middle school, respectively.
“What we love about Barcelona is the sense of community and inclusivity of others. What we love about Pleasanton is our family and longtime friends,” Drattell said.
She also set out to learn Spanish about four years ago, working with private tutor Eve Little.
That led to her and Little co-authoring a kids’ book, “Who Wants to be Friends With a Dragon?”– which hit home for each woman in reflection of times in their lives struggling to fit in and feel included.
The book published in 2023, the same year as Drattell’s first poetry collection, “Remember This Day”.
“The Lighter Side of Horse Manure” followed last October.
“The ‘Manure’ poems were mostly written as a result of spending time with my horse and goats during the last years of their lives,” Drattell told me.
“Some of the poems arose from other reasons: ‘Compliment’ came about when a friend of mine complained that a man had actually suggested she would make a beautiful mare from behind because of her hair; … ‘Sparrow and the Oak’ was written when I was a teenager; ‘Squirrel Amnesia’ was written after I observed a squirrel in a park looking like he had lost a nut,” she said.
“Since I couldn’t hear the language spoken, she focused on having me read children’s stories in Spanish to give me a vocabulary. One day, for homework, she told me I needed to try writing my own children’s story,” Drattell recalled.
Three of the poems from “Manure” are on display right now at the Civic Center Library in Livermore, hanging in the main hallway next to paired artworks in the “Saddle, Brush, and Art: A Cowboy’s Poetic Canvas” exhibition.
“The artwork was shared with me first, and then I chose poems that I thought reflected the themes of the paintings. Then poems were selected to be part of the exhibit,” Drattell said. “It is a beautiful selection of paintings and poetry.”
The aforementioned “Compliment” is linked to “Dust Dreams and Distant Hills”, an ink drawing by Shweta Agarwal; Drattell’s “Home” is with “Old Cavestri Ranch (Yesterday) by watercolorist Charlotte Severin; and “I Bring You Grain This Evening” is with Joy Theel’s oil painting “Study of photo by Bob Langrish of an Andalusian”.
In each case, Drattell’s poem is with another poet’s work (or even two others) next to the art piece.
Some of the other pairings that stood out to me included a wood art piece (puzzle-like) called “Walter” by Jill Zolkos with the poem “That Summer in Savery, Wyoming” by former Dublin poet laureate James C. Morehead.
Current Dublin poet laureate Richard M. Deets’ “Buckaroo Belle” worked well with Craig Varden’s rodeo arena photograph, “Bucking Blue”.
And Mikayla Henry’s acrylic painting “Into the Sunset” – maybe my favorite artwork there – was displayed alongside two poems: “Something about the Light” by Lauren de Vore and “Desert Outlook” by Rose Owens.
The library exhibition will hang until June 30. As I wrote about before, it is being held in conjunction with the same-titled exhibit in the UNCLE Credit Union Art Gallery at the Bankhead Theater, open through July 27.
As for what’s next for Drattell, she’s working to get a publisher for her new adult fiction novel, “The Peccadilloes of Filamena Phipps”.
“It is a big-hearted picaresque tale of overcoming adversity, a story of boldly embracing one’s otherness, and of the value of human connection as it follows a unique young immigrant woman who braves, and forever alters, the single-mindedness of a white-picket-fence town,” the author told me.
Editor’s note: Jeremy Walsh is the editorial director for the Embarcadero Media Foundation’s East Bay Division. His “What a Week” column is a recurring feature in the Pleasanton Weekly, Livermore Vine and DanvilleSanRamon.com.
