SMITH: That's not a pole, it's a poet-tree

<p>Walking near Santa Rosa's Slater Middle School, Andrew Hidas spied a plastic document holder attached to a utility pole.</p><p>Lettering on it reads, “Share a Poem ... Take one, leave one.”</p><p>Inside are photocopies of poems. Hidas picked a couple works of Edwin Arlington Robinson. “Not being too familiar with Robinson, I came home to read them and looked him up on Google,” he said. “I learned something that night.”</p><p>I, too, stopped by the inspired, curbside poetry swap at Oregon and Wyoming streets, and I chose “To Night” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822).</p><p>I'll drop into the box Sonoma County poet laureate Bill Vartnaw's “That Bird.”</p><p><i>that bird</p><p>(unabstractly)</p><p>flapping frantically</p><p>hovering to catch the shaft</p><p> & our attention</p><p>“one with light”</p><p>& not only</p><p>from millions of miles</p><p>projected through ozone</p><p>sifted by tree leaves</p><p> in a breeze</p><p>just so</p><p>I know that bird!</i></p><p>WITHOUT HER HAIR, nurse Gloria Haddad will take some getting used to.</p><p>Gloria is rather renowned for her hairstyle, a classic 1940s French roll, or chignon. For 30 years she's worn her hair that way, but Saturday night she'll have it cut.</p><p>To the bare scalp.</p><p>Gloria is among several women and men who'll raise funds for pediatric cancer research by having their heads shaved in front of a crowd at a St. Baldrick's Day benefit at Patterson's Pub in Windsor.</p><p>She'll go bald in support of neighbor Madeline Baker, 18, who's fighting a brain tumor. And once her dome is bare, Gloria will indulge a desire for a tattoo.</p><p>Her boys — Bryan, Jordan and Benjamin — think it's cool that she'll have their names etched onto her scalp.</p><p>Her husband, Sam, is trying to be a good sport. </p><p>Gloria says, “I keep telling him, 'Don't worry, baby, my hair will come back'” — and in time the tattoo will disappear beneath a new chignon.</p><p>THE HAIR IS WILD in “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert,” the wacky Australian film to be screened at Sunday afternoon's kickoff of a drive to save Monte Rio's Rio Theater.</p><p>The Rio (riotheater.com) needs a digital projector to survive. As casual as Monte Rio is, go Sunday without a wig and costume and you may feel under-dressed.</p><p>NO SWEAT: Starting at 11:30 a.m. today, two guys will climb onto a stationary bike and a stairclimber at the Sonoma County Family YMCA — and hog them.</p><p>Y chief David Brown and attorney Gerald Villarreal, chairman of the Y's board, intend to work the machines until donors kick in $2,000 to assure that low-income folks have access to Y camps and other services.</p><p>They'd love for us to stop by, drop a buck and savor that it's them, not us, pedaling or stair-stepping for hours and going nowhere.</p><p>Chris Smith is at 521-5211 and chris.smith@pressdemocrat.com.</p>