Joyism

I'm driving home from work and hearing a long stream of bad news on the radio: Yemen rebels fired on by the military, Egyptian rebels protesting the interim government, anti-government rebels retreating behind Gaddafi's advancing army; and more—we might be arming the wrong rebels in Libya, actually, arming al-Qaeda, all 15 of them, and I wonder, does it look as silly as it sounds?

Ernie as al-Qaeda

Meanwhile plutonium is drenching the ground around the Fukushima Nuclear Plant and scientist speculate how far it's spreading; however, no one at TEPCO is talking (especially since boss, Masataka Shimizu, is in hospital, as of yesterday), but don't eat the spinach or drink the milk and by the way, farmers, please do not farm! And workers are still trudging through the sludge (who are these saintly men who've put their lives at risk?). And back in the US of A, a majority disapprove of the way the prez is handling everything. And I've had a bad day at work, no, scratch that, a bad week, and the radio of despair is washing over me all the way to Ave. 52, where I pull off the freeway, and there, in front of me, is a car with a license plate that reads: "Joyism." Joyism. I'm stupified. It's so simple. Feel joy. Be joyful. An ism I suddenly find myself behind.

It's good to know that amongst the terrible and the tragic, there's still joy in the normal: kids home from college for spring break. Maya came home with her friend Maggie last weekend and the house was once again filled with laughter, tears and dirty dishes.

A few days ago, right before the rain, the L.A. sky was dark and dramatic.

I rushed home to get my camera, and try and convince Maya and Maggie to come along. They'd been holed up inside all day, on their computers, finishing papers that were due before the break, so it wasn't like they immediately jumped up to follow. But once outside, they seemed transformed: two girls out in nature....where, by the looks of it, they belonged.

Maya and Maggie

A few days later, in Santa Monica:

Maggie and Maya continuing the adventure...

Dear Students of Takasago...

Following are some letters my students wrote to the students of Takasago, whose school is sheltering 1000 homeless victims of Japan's earthquake in the Rikuzen-Takasago neighborhood, north of Tokyo. With resources tight and need great, Stu Levy, the founder of Tokyopop thought it'd be a great idea if people could send letters to encourage these students, who are working hard to rebuild; (his request was sent via Louise on fb—thanks Louise). 

I teach an advanced ESL class to Iranian, Korean and Russian students, who I realized would be perfect candidates to write these letters, as most have experienced disasters in their own countries. I just had to ask: my students immediately set about writing, gripping their pencils tight, diligently referring to their dictionaries for meaning and spelling. I told them spelling wasn't important; what was important was that they wrote from the heart. For an entire twenty minutes, no one talked. 

Here's a sampling of their letters (produced exactly as written):

Dear students of Takasago. we are in Los Angeles. we are thinking about your Live all the time and we are sorry for your lost. we know what you're going through. I am very angree and I wish I was there to help you. In my country we also experienced an earthquake.
we hope you can start your good life again. we are thinking about you and your life I wish Japan gets better faster. the Japanese pepale are picking themselves up and your story showed it in Nacazacy and hyroshima, you are special peaple in the world. 
God help you.
Sincerely:
kindly S.

Dear Students of Takasago
I am sorry that earthquake from Japan all of the world countries feels very sorrow
In my country we also experienced an earthquake
So Please don't despair of suffering
I hope you overcome quickly
my family, my country, all of people are thinking about Japanse people
Quen Shiteimasu!
Sincerely, K

Dear students of Takasago
Helo to the geat pepol Japan
wer heard about your terrible earthquak
and we were very sorry about it
we know what happend. that is very blues
you were and are a great nation and prograssive in the world
we have a bad experiance about earthquak terrible,
and you have a bitter remember about atomic bomb
in the end of 2 world war, I heard, after fifty years
all the fishes in the sea had blood cancer
So we're very worried about you
I believ you can make yourself same the past with honor
we're thinking about you in LA
with the best kindly, N

Two letter writers

The Ninth Ward

You know how it is when something of importance happens and you take it in as much as you can, but in a minor way, as what has happened has happened to someone else, somewhere else. Yes, you empathize, but you can go on with your life. Then years later, well for me years later, you recall this thing and the importance of it is so overwhelming, set off by something, say, like a piece of music you've listened to a hundred times before, but one day, you hear it for the first time. 

What got me started on this was I was looking through boxes of old pictures last week and I came across this one:

New Orleans, 1982

This was taken during the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, when I was down there with my brother and his friends, whom I had met on various Southern excursions— which might have been the reason I was getting my crawfish on. 

In 2006, the first year after Hurricane Katrina, Tom and I went down to N.O. to the same festival; on that occasion, we hired a guide to take us around to see the areas affected. As soon as we crossed the bridge into the Ninth Ward, we were hit with destruction as we'd never seen it—a war, a terrible war had flattened everything, and both Tom and I burst into tears. We walked around and took pictures, but mostly, we just felt numb. A year after Katrina, not one house had been rebuilt, not one tree had grown; everything was just as it had been after the flood.

My son is down there now celebrating Mardi Gras, or I should say, still celebrating Mardi Gras, which took place last Tuesday (March 8th). When I heard this piece of music by Charlie Miller from "Our New Orleans: Benefit Album for the Gulf Coast," while driving around L.A. last week, I was struck on a level deeper than my usual "observer;" then Japan happened. I was suddenly back in New Orleans: the waters rushing in and the world stopping and all that had been, gone and forgotten. 

So here's a little bit of remembrance of that time in the Ninth Ward, using a modified version of Miller's tune, "A Prayer for New Orleans."

Two Sets of Three, part two

Part II: Found in politics

Sonny

Sonny Kim is one of my students, a struggling Korean immigrant, who has more dignity than most (that's most people, not immigrants). She's tiny but has big balls. She barged into my classroom one day, demanding I give her a way to speak English. She'd had it with grammar and doing exercises. She wanted to speak: this was her last chance, she said, and I had to give it to her. So I did, and I became a better teacher for it.

She's the only one in my class who understood the analogy I used to define the word "contradiction." I told the class a contradiction is when Hillary Clinton praises pro-democracy activists who use social media on one hand, while condemning WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, on the other. Sonny got it immediately. 

Hillary Clinton, Sec. of State

Last Tuesday, Clinton announced an investment of $25 million in the "Internet Freedom Agenda," which she launched last year. As she explained it, it's a "venture capital approach" to funding tools for activists trying to get around censorship, citing China's firewall and the online blackout in Egypt. Wired Magazine reported she spoke in glowing terms of the revolution (after first coming out swinging for Mubarak); but when questioned about WikiLeaks, she denied any contradiction, saying there was no "hypocrisy in championing internet openness while opposing the radical transparency organization." Ms. Secretary, Say Whaaaat?

Samantha Power, on staff at the National Security Council and a special advisor to President Obama, (and I might mention a past adversary of Clinton's) is helping reform Mid-east policy. Power was the first to make the call that the U.S. needed to be on the side of Egyptian youth during the 18-day revolution, not Mubarak. Power's book, "A Problem From Hell," America and the Age of Genocide explores the waffling, passivity and impotence of U.S. presidents towards intervention, particularly, President Clinton's waffling, passivity and impotence during the Balkan War. She's now working for a man who might be accused of the same; but is this a problem for Power, or can she live with the contradiction?

My student Sonny can understand living with contradictions. She talks about freedom on one hand, while condemning America for her poverty on the other. Sonny finds it unacceptable that her elder daughter has taken a job as a bartender, although having the freedom for her to do so was one of the reasons Sonny came to America in the first place. For some immigrants, freedom is a vicious contradiction. 

So what do these three women have in common? They all have big balls, and they're all on first-name basis with "contradiction," an impenetrable firewall to get around. My admiration for all three.

An impenetrable firewall

(Arcade Fire)

Two Sets of Three

Part I: Found in Nature

 Gun

 Ku Klux Klan

Porcupine

Part II: next post

Walking with Mr. Fleming

The Red Car Line through the streets of Los Angeles, circa 1925

As I read about the slow dismantling of the Pacific Electric Railroad system in Southern California, I'm on the verge of tears. The Pacific Electric was "the largest operator of interurban electric railway passenger service in the world, with over 1000 miles of track." The system operated throughout southern California, north, south, east and west, to the beaches of Santa Monica and beyond. How could Los Angeles' city fathers have let this happen? We had a mass public transportation system, run on electricity! Well, a rhetorical question to be sure, as we know the answer to its dismantling was the almighty car and the freeways that followed, which buried the streetcar after WWII.

This post isn't about the Pacific Electric RR, though, but about Charles Fleming, and his best-selling book, Secret Stairs: a walking guide to the historic staircases of Los Angeles (Santa Monica Press, 2010)

During the heyday of public transportation, over 200 staircases were built into the hills of LA, many of them to accommodate people coming and going to catch the trolleys and buses that ferried them across town. Fleming came across these hidden stairways when he started walking five years ago, as rehabilitation for his lousy health. He was on the verge of a third back operation, when he decided that the first two hadn't done him much good, so he might as well try something new. As I understand it, he's made a full recovery thanks to climbing these stairs. 

Fleming now conducts walks throughout Los Angeles based on the 42 stairway walks that he's detailed in his book—and some that aren't in there. Today he leads us, about 70 eager walkers, on a little under four-mile trek, an hour and a half long, through Silver Lake, climbing 1400 stairs! 1400! That's a lot of stairs. He dubs the walk the red face loop (not to be confused with the Red Car Loop) for its difficulty and duration. Even though Fleming said that the walk would be strenuous and long, I didn't take him seriously. Was I wrong! The man knows what he's talking about. 

Charles Fleming points the way

The Walk

Vincent and Julie begin

Up

Up

Up

Up

Up

Across

Down

Tired dogs, Kiffen and six-yr-old girl—they all made it!

For more info about the stair walks and the author: www.secretstairs-la.com

Cherish

In high school, Ricky Julliard, the only bona fide genius of our class, sat me down one day and taught me the theory of relativity, or at least what I could understand of it. What stuck with me was how he described energy—that energy couldn't be destroyed: once released, it moves on in different guises. We were talking about nuclear fusion, not death, but I've thought of Ricky often whenever I ponder where the essence of a person goes after he or she dies. For instance, my mother, where did her sweet nature go? For a non-believer, I find myself bypassing the more reverent explanations, say, God and heaven and all that rigmarole in which I find myself unsure. I'd like to think that Ricky was right, that energy moves on and informs us in different ways, and thus, a life that might have been cut short is still alive, in one form or another.


When Keith Rohman talked at his son Jack's memorial service, of how he had believed with all his heart that Jack would do something to change the world, and now that will not be, I wanted to cry out: but wait, he will, he has, he already has. I believe that; even though I didn't know Jack in recent years, from what Maya and her friends—amazing, cosmic kids up here on Mt. Washington and beyond—say, Jack's wit and humor, his intelligence and kindness, have changed their lives forever.


Keith appealed to all of Jack's friends to honor him: "Cherish your lives, cherish your friends, cherish your families," he told the young people gathered there, "Do not think there was anything you could have done." His call reached hundreds of those at the memorial who loved Jack and will continue to ring out among us here.

Sam says yes to friends.