With Willie and Bogdan under the stars

Bogdan

I may not like working at night but I love my colleagues. For instance, I first got an inkling Bogdan, my Bulgarian counterpart down the hall, liked Willie Nelson when I heard his Level 1 English class singing Willie's version of "Crazy."  I went to investigate and saw him standing in front of a dozen or so bewildered Korean and Farsi students urging them to sing along with the words he'd written on the board. Later he explained Willie's lyrics are quintessential American expression: simple, yet understood around the world. I had to think about that for awhile. I love Willie too, but for his wild rebel ways. Tom and I saw him in concert a few years ago with a stage full of musicians celebrating his 75th birthday; he sang for hours, the younger band members, including his son, barely able to keep up with him.

But Bogdan was onto something, so when I saw Willie was slated to play the Greek Theatre last Friday I bought two tickets and invited him along. 


We met on Vermont and drove into the park, arriving as the first act was getting under way. Bogdan didn't care for it much, so we sat at one of the tables in front and ate sandwiches. I've never met anyone as easy going as Bogdan, a trait I attribute to life under Communism, which ruled Bulgaria for 45 years. During the first few years after the 1944 takeover, Bogdan told me, Communists controlled the country with a Stalinist iron fist, going into villages and imprisoning or killing anyone (teachers, intellectuals, writers) who opposed the regime. One learns to cope under such circumstances.


Bogdan's father, Boyan, learned the lessons of coping, first under the Nazis. He'd been stationed in Paris during the war, as part of the diplomatic core of the monarchy. Bogdan remembers as a child walking the streets of Paris, playing in the beautiful gardens, but soon was being bundled back to Bulgaria as the Nazis took control of the city. As the war intensified, his father received desperate pleas at midnight, knocks on the embassy door, from Jews and other Bulgarians fleeing the Nazis. Before long, hundreds of political refugees were gathered inside, and although Boyan didn't know how he'd keep them safe he hatched a plan. Calling around to every German contact he had, he secured a train car (or two) to transport the refugees back to Bulgaria— the only European country that refused to collaborate with the Germans in deporting or exterminating its Jews. 

Unfortunately the real suffering for Bulgarians came after the war. When Bogdan's father returned from serving in Portuguese and U.S. consulates, he was striped of his diplomatic duties; he found a job through a friend as a gravure, a glass cutter. (Bogdan chuckled at the memory because his father couldn't cut a straight line and was fired.) He then loaded scrap metal onto a truck. One learns to cope, a lesson Bogdan mastered as well, as an English professor in Sofia. Under Communism, Bogdan earned 40 dollars a month and was banned from furthering his studies.

When Willie appeared, Bogdan applauded loudly, whooping it up with the crowd. He was in heaven, especially impressed by the massive Texas flag draped across the back of the stage; Bogdan was amused by, and kept repeating, Willie's use of the vernacular (he seemed especially fond of "little shack in the woods.") Willie sang straight that night, with little gabbing or socializing, going from one classic song to another.  What a great night we both agreed, hearing Willie under the stars, the heat from the day still lingering, and for me, seeing Bogdan revelling in Willie—as free a spirit and as American as my friend from Bulgaria ever imagined.

 In front of the Greek Theatre

Full Moon

 Full moon over Highland Park

I set my camera for 15 seconds, hand-held, which produced this blurry image shot by a drunk, but I wanted to capture the full moon while it was still relatively low in the sky, so here it is, overlooking Highland Park, and beyond.


I didn't work tonight, but instead of enjoying myself, I was walking a thin line of anxiety from being at home: should I rush downtown to see a program, call a friend for a drink, run to the bookstore? My heart was pounding and I was wishing I had something to drink, when I heard a strange sound coming from my neighbor Thea's yard. I looked out the window and saw five skunks—five!— walking up from the canyon below to grab some cat food and drink from the many bowls she leaves lying about. The skunks were everywhere, like circus clowns, dashing in and out of the garage, around the yard, challenging the one stray cat that found himself literally up against a wall, and I began to wonder if there were only five— maybe 20? 

After the skunks left, I decided to go for a walk but paused on the front porch, listening to a hoot owl on the other side of the house, in my neighbor Elliot's patch of tall Eucalyptus trees. What I hadn't heard before, but heard now, was another hoot owl, further up the hill, answering the first one: "hooo hoooo hooooot," and then the answer, "Hoooooooooooo," like that, back and forth. Walking, I continued to hear them; a million crickets were singing up from Heidelberg Canyon across the way, and dogs were barking at the traffic down in Highland Park, and a siren whizzed by, and somebody was talking sternly to their dog, and an old jalopy was putt-putting down the road as though it were on its last legs. It was only 7:10, and so much activity! What had I been missing these last two years, teaching at night? It was delicious: being home, hearing these sounds.

A Real Jew

Sequoia Redwoods

During this week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews reflect on their past year and ask forgiveness—if warranted— not from God, but from those they've wronged. Only then do repentant Jews get their name inscribed in the Book of Life. I confess I hate organized religion, but using this as an example, one can see how religion serves a purpose: who would apologize for their stupidity if they didn't have to?

I don't know if it's because of the holidays, or because autumn's in the air, but I've been doing a lot of reflecting lately: about my mom, about life and death. I was heartened to see in the current New Yorker that Roland Barthes, the French literary theorist (not a Jew), also reflected upon these things, especially on the loss of his mother. Here is a letter from Proust that Barthes sent to a friend whose mother had just died: "When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire, place, beside you..... Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more..."

Thinking about my mom and how she died leads me to believe that, if you're lucky, death finds you when you're not looking. The older I get the more convinced I am that really old age is something I'd rather not do. The other kind, a quick death, seems preferable. For instance, Robert Schimmel, the stand-up comedian who died last week at the age of sixty. 

Here's a guy who had the roughest of lives but found humor wherever he could mine it: his long battle with Hodgkins lymphoma, liver failure, smoking pot during Chemo, with his doctors' and parents' full consent ("Man," he said on Tavis Smiley, "where were they in high school?"), married three times to the same woman—the guy made fun of it all. And then last week his daughter was driving and Schimmel was in the passenger seat and BOOM—they get in an accident. A week later he dies from complications. Seems anti-climatic after everything he'd been through, but still, death came quick.

When I was in high school, I went out every weekend with a boy named David Nathan. I wasn't allowed to date outside my religion, but since David was half Jewish (actually the wrong half, his father was Jewish, although my parents didn't know that) he was granted dispensation. The truth was he wasn't my real date, but a fake date, picking me up every Saturday night and delivering me to my real boyfriend (a Gentile) waiting for me in the park a few blocks away. 

David covered as my front man for nearly a year, during which time we hardly rose beyond the cordiality of our awkward setup. But after many rides with him I found out he was terrified of cemeteries. Every time we'd drive down Baxter Ave., he'd twist his neck and look away, sinking lower in his seat, to avoid the cemetery. He hated the thought of the dead, their very existence pressed in on him, as surely as the cold, hard ground pressed in on the dead. After he dropped me off, he'd go back to his real life, drinking with his buddies down by the river, or going out with girls, and I wouldn't see him until the next weekend, when he'd knock on the front door again and say hello to my parents.

While I was still in high school, my boyfriend and David dropped out of college, and enlisted in the army. They were shipped out to Vietnam, saw combat, but survived unscathed, and returned to Louisville in the early seventies. My boyfriend married, had a kid, divorced and moved away, but David remained in Louisville, bumming around, trying to find himself, as was the story of so many men who'd returned from Vietnam. Somewhere along the way, he bought a tavern, the Cabin Inn, in Bardstown, Kentucky. Bardstown, the home of Stephen Foster of "My Old Kentucky Home" fame, was a genteel southern town and the tavern turned out to be a success, popular with locals and friends from Louisville. David was on his way.

One night, after closing, he opened his cash register box to count the day's take, a nightly routine. But on this night, when he punched the register, the cash drawer opened quickly and hit him in his side pocket, where he kept his gun. The gun discharged and sent a bullet on an inside journey, of which I have imagined many times before, taking off through his heart, around his organs and out the other side. David reached for the top of the bar, but sunk down, down, down, to the floor. He tried to hold on, twisting his neck and sinking lower in his seat, but death found him when he wasn't looking. He was 29.

A few years ago when I was in Louisville, I went looking for his grave which I'd heard was in the Jewish cemetery. When I came upon his gravestone I was surprised at how small it was, but what surprised me even more was that the whole family was there: the father, David in the middle, and his mother. What was shocking really was that I'd had it wrong all those years before: his mother had probably converted to Judaism (why else would she be lying there?), which meant, with a Jewish mother, David had his bonifieds: he'd been a real Jew after all. If I'd known, would my life have been different? Would his? What if I'd fallen in love with David instead of my boyfriend? I wouldn't have had to lie and connive to get around my father. David and I might have married and he wouldn't have gone off to Vietnam; he'd have finished college and not been a barkeep; he wouldn't have bought that tavern in Bardstown or opened the cash register drawer that night and died.... But, then, that kind of futile thinking will get me nowhere.

 David Nathan died in 1977, at the age of 29.

Summer's End

The Rat's Nest has been on hiatus (just letting the three of you who read this blog know) during these last few weeks. It's hard to muscle through the summer doldrums while being in the city and NOT on vacation somewhere, but others have found solutions to the August blues. My friend Lu has been riding on the newly cleared LA River bike path into Frogtown at dusk; another friend in NY has been writing a play about war (a nice summertime activity); while still other friends have been producing magical giant tomatoes and runaway squash in their urban gardens. 

I decided to take a day off work last week, which lifted my spirits, but then I had to face the fact that summer's almost over and my daughter's heading back to college—which she did on Sunday. My lone out-of-town trip was to Missouri to visit my brother in St. Louis, and travel to Boonville (Boooooonville!) and Arrow Rock to see cousins. What a thrill to walk in late afternoon and hear the roar of cicadas in the vast canopy of trees overhead. It reminded me of childhood summers, when the roar was deafening. My brother and I'd collect the cicadas' empty casings and march them around like soldiers before crushing them between our fingers. Their protruding blank shell eyes always gave me the willies.


While visiting Arrow Rock, I asked my cousin about this ancient stone work on the side of the road. He said it was a slave gutter— that is, a gutter made by slaves.


When I heard that word, "slave gutter," however, my mind conjured up all sorts of imagines: slaves being swept asunder in rain filled gutters, made to walk on hands and knees in the streets, digging trenches and laying heavy stones while dogs ripped at their heels. Although Missouri is considered Midwestern, it was a border state like Kentucky, and like Kentucky, half the population defended its right to own slaves. During the Civil War, as in KY, brothers fought brothers, dividing families between Confederate and Union right up to the grave. Boon's Lick, says an Arrow Rock historical plaque, is across the river (which, oddly, changed courses and is no longer there), where Daniel Boone's sons boiled salt in 1806 and expanded westward along the Sante Fe Trail. 


After Arrow Rock, I went canoeing with my brother and his girlfriend Christine on the Meramec River, and I realized, while floating somewhere between St. Louis and the Ozarks, how important water is to one's sense of summer. Without it, there's none—only sweat and dry land. Water is summer, summer is water. We need it to survive the heat, and its healing powers distract us from our woes. Water heals, water calms. The word "Maya" derives from the Sanskrit word meaning water, alluding to the illusory nature of our world.

Christine floating on the Meramec River
(photo credit of river and cave: David Hildebrand)

At one point, we stopped to explore a cave, of which there are many along the Meramec, but it was closed.  

A sign at the entrance warned of the spread of a disease called white-nose syndrome, which has decimated over a million cave-dwelling bats from New York to Oklahoma since 2006.  

The culprit, a white fungus, attaches itself to hibernating bats, agitating them and causing them to wake early. Without food, they use up their energy supplies and die. An editorial in the NY Times reports that in two decades we may see the extinction of the little brown bat. "According to bat conservation experts," the article reads, "this is 'the most precipitous decline of North American wildlife in recorded history....'" 

Coincidentally, or maybe not so, bats in Russia are also being threatened as a result of global warming. Moscow's summer fires burned tens of thousands of hectares of protected forests, home to more than 30 species of migratory bats. Scientist warn that bats are our canaries in the coalmine—our environmental health depends on these flying mammals (unbelievably, bats eat up to 5000 mosquitoes a day!). EUROBATS, an org that promotes bat conservation, warns of the dangers to bat populations worldwide and urges countries to take urgent action. They're calling 2011 "The Year of the Bat!" 

We paddled back in the late afternoon with bats on our mind, and the hope of getting a beer— given the 114 degree heat index— at the little Mexican cafe down the road.

   

A flying fox (a type of fruit bat)

Oh, what a beautiful face!

(photo credit: www.auswildlife.com)

David taking a whiff of the Missouri sky

Road Trip!

Road Trip!

My daughter left this morning for Oklahoma to visit her grandma and her grandma's new rat terrier, with her friend Dylan, the guy in the red shirt. Here they're saying good-bye to Henry, with backpack, and to me the mom taking the picture, who just lent them her car and gave them enough gas money to make it to their first stop, the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook, AZ. 

Wigwam on Route 66
(photo credit: LA Times)

I didn't want to embarrass Maya and her friends (and believe me, they would be too!) with exploits of my road trip with my old friend Sally Wilder in the seventies, when we drove from Louisville, KY to Redwood City, CA, but the road was long, the wind fierce and the icy creeks in Utah where we bathed utterly bracing (not to mention we ate all our food before crossing the bridge into Indiana). Despite traveling with a cat and ending up in dorm rooms with strange men, it was a rite of passage that every young person was taking at the time. So Maya, I'll miss you, I'll worry about you, but you're fulfilling your duty as a free spirit and pursuing what's been laid out before you by generations of nineteen and twenty-year-olds, and that, I'm all for.

~~~

 

Mina M., a Persian Jew from Tehran, has been my student for the past eight months; she's always cheerful, always first to class, so it came as a complete surprise when I asked her the other evening what she was going to do after graduation and she burst into tears. We all sat there totally bewildered: what had gotten into Mina, the cheerful one?

Mina's struggled more than other Farsi-speaking students to learn English (married at 17, first baby a year later), but you can't say she hasn't tried, and lately her comprehension has taken off in leaps and bounds. Now when I ask her how she's doing, she's actually able to say, just fine.  But she recently found out that if she wants to continue, she'll have to pay a lot of money, which brought on the stream of tears.

What must it be like to make progress in another language— to suddenly comprehend what's going on around you—and then be told to stay home? She complains that no one in her family—three children, two grandchildren and an older husband—will speak to her in English. Los Angeles' Farsi speaking community is the second largest Iranian community outside of Iran (estimated at 500,000 to 600,000 residing mainly in the Pico, Westwood area, dubbed "Tehrangeles"). Mina lives in the middle of it and has no other contacts outside its borders; she doesn't need to speak English to survive, yet these classes have given her a form of independence she hasn't had before— being able to navigate this city on her own.

Last night Mina came to class her old cheerful self. She told me that she's going to ignore the directive from the office, and continue class under the radar. She didn't exactly put it that way, but she did say her English has never been "more better," and so she's not going to stop. She must, she will go on.

The Morning Glory and a bowl of cereal

Every time I drive down El Paso I spot a profusion of morning glories so glorious that I screech to a halt just to look at them, at the same time reaching for my camera, which I've inevitably left at home. And the inability to capture this beauty reminds me of the title poem in Robert Bly's small book of poems, The Morning Glory. 

So this morning I remembered to bring my camera, and when I got home I searched my book shelves and found the book, but then the weirdest thing: when I looked for the morning glory poem it had totally disappeared. I thumbed through my yellowed edition at least three times before I realized I must have torn it out for some reason—to send to a friend, to pin up on a dorm room wall, to... to... what? What did I do with that poem so many years ago? I looked one more time, this time very slowly, and discovered I'd copied it on the back of the title page, but without a title, without proper punctuation, just the poem in dark purple ink. The poem in its original form has been lost to me, but here's what I wrote down, close enough I'd like to think to Bly's original intention: 

"There's an old occult saying: whoever wants to penetrate more deeply into the invisible has to penetrate more deeply into the visible.
All through Taoist and "curving lines" thought there is the idea that our disasters come from letting nothing live for itself, come from the longing we have to pull everything even friends into ourselves, and not let anything alone.
When we first sense that a pine tree really doesn't need us—we feel fearful and depressed. The second time we sense it, we feel joyful.


          Basho"s wonderful poem goes: 


          The morning glory—
          another thing 
          that will never be my friend."

     

~~~

Finally, some good news in the paper (besides Lola the missing parrot being found!). And because of this good news, I'm taking inspiration from outwalkingthedog's "Bird Neck Appreciation Day," and proclaiming this day, "Eat a Bowl of Kellogg's Cereal Day!" (doesn't quite have the same ring, does it?) 

 Eat a Bowl of Kellogg's Cereal Day!

As reported in the LA Times yesterday, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation awarded Cal Poly Pomona a $42 million dollar grant to increase its enrollment of "first generation college students, recently emancipated foster youth, military veterans and under represented populations of California." How cool is that? Kudos to the foundation—whose slogan is "Helping Communities Stand up for Children"—for realizing the state cannot survive without an educated populace, inclusive of all, especially immigrant children, who make up the bulk of first in their families to go to college. 

A few years ago, before Green Dot Charter School took over Locke High School in South Central, I helped out the college counselor, a woman by the name of Regina Risi. She needed someone to edit students' personal essays, part of the application process to UCs and State colleges. She expected each senior to apply. She led them, or rather, dragged them through the often tedious and difficult steps to turn in a college application. It wasn't easy. Many of them felt college wasn't necessary because they already had jobs (i.e., at the corner grocery store or an uncle's auto repair shop), or they didn't have the needed support from family members to leave home; in fact, it was surprising how little support, and I'm not just talking money, they had. There was a lot of fear —fear about what was out there beyond their neighborhood (many students had never traveled beyond the hood). For most, they would be the first in their families to graduate high school. 

But Risi wouldn't take no for an answer; she worked with each student above and beyond what was expected of a teacher at Locke, which as we know from LAUSD's failed attempts at control, wasn't much. And that year the results of Risi's hard work bore fruit: 6-8 students were accepted into UCs, including UCLA, Berkeley and Santa Barbara, twice as many got into Cal States, and that many more into community colleges. So along with the foundation, here's to Regina, wherever she is, who deserves an award too.

Regina Risi, college counselor, with her son Sammy