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.

Junk Mail

I've gotten so much junk mail lately, and so little real email—where is everybody? tweeting, texting, fbing, email is becoming downright old-fashioned!— that I've taken to reading my junk mail. It's a mishmash of defrauders and entertainers, entreaties and exaggerations, and promises to be made, really a very rich palette if you have half the day to waste. 

Well, you know how one thing leads to another, and after hearing author Norton Juster on the radio talking about his book, The Phantom Tollbooth, with sentences that read like this: "Whether or not you find your own way, you're bound to find some way. If you happen to find my way, please return it, as it was lost years ago." which made me look at the book again with Jules Feiffer's illustrations—anything by Feiffer always makes me feel silly, as evidenced here.  So, figuring by Norton's example, the way to find yourself is by getting lost sometimes (in wordplay); therefore and thus, I present my reimagined deleted junk mail here, with apologies forthwith:

Solar penises— grow bigger!

Natalie Portman awards Liz Butler the TownHog!

Claim your Borders

Boot Camp for Children
Help them find the straight and narrow
(not making this up)

[READ THIS]

Dear Beneficiary,

Did you get my last email! 

Your official payment of 5.5 millions is

approved by World Group Bank

If you have any info about

any one that scam you

forward it to us,

British High Commission (head office)

Fresno, CA

Yours, Faithfully,

Larry Wayne Ellis

[arrested 6/10, jailed Pinellas Cty. FL]

Fix your hips 
Replace your claim
Hip replacement fixed claim from Canada
Fly Air Canada!

Vitalize and hydrolyze. Wow! What a difference!

Nevada State Dems work from home!

Congratulations, You've just won a prize Ugg!

(Alert! Send real email to stop this flagrant bastardization of junk mail! Do not delete! Final notification! Submit your application today!)

Florida

This is the first time in the Rat's Nest's short history that it's been without a rat. What will become of it now that the last rat has passed to the great beyond? One thought is a move to another website, one that won't be as frustrating as blogger (sorry, blogspot.com, you've been good to me, but the lack of control on your site sucks). Reader(s), look for a new link in the coming weeks.

So, Florida. A few weeks ago I flew down to Florida, and heard a lot of great stories about my late father and his brother Lee, who I went to visit. At 98, Uncle Lee's a miracle. Still easy going, still cracking jokes. During WWII, he led an army battalion of all black soldiers across N. Africa and into Europe; came home to run a successful business with my father, was a whiz at numbers, a champion at bridge. Now he has no memory, sleeps upright in a barcalounger, but is as happy as a lark. 

Lee and Sid, Brothers

In Florida, I saw all the cousins, visited my parents' grave, observed the egrets and herons in the drainage ditches along the back roads. The grackles in the shopping center parking lot. The creole Haitian workers. But Florida's a strange place. It's where the 9/11 hijackers, including Mohamed Atta, came to lap dance and drink great quantities of alcohol without being detected; where the Iraqi invasion was broadcast on TVs in Walmart and no one bothered to watch; where young people live in gated communities and old people go to die. But it does have the Atlantic, shimmering and warm. 

Florida's shoreline

After visiting old friends in Palm Beach, I took a walk along the nearly empty shore. I remembered when I used to walk with my parents in Boca; they insisted on walking three miles of beach to the Holiday Inn and back, even in their 80s. It was the happiest time I ever spent with them. The rest of the time was a dark cloud, fraught with tension and antipathy. When I visit there these days, no parents, no tension. Still I don't like Florida!

On the home front: Maya left this a.m. for the frigid East Coast, after a month long winter break. Her vacation went by in a flash, with trips to OK and the desert, clandestine parties, lots of time spent horizontal. How will she adjust to the cold, from 70 to minus 10? Here's a picture taken of her in the warm CA sun, as she contemplates a shopping trip with her mother. 

Malka

Malka, Oct. 28, 2008 - Jan. 13, 2011

(photo credit: Maya Harjo)

I'll try to say a few words: She was the best rat a family could have. Affectionate, entertaining, brave. She'd always pop up when I came home from work, looking to be taken out of her cage and indulged with sunflower seeds and scratches. In her youth she was a great admirer of newspapers, and later used them to build extensive nests under the couch. When we first got her, I thought we'd made a mistake; she'd dash around with a crazed look in her eyes, like someone was after her. If you tried to touch her, her little body would tense up and she'd run away. But slowly she learned the ways of domesticity and liked being fed bananas in the a.m., kale and carrots in the afternoon. She slept in a hammock and often tried to jump from her cage to the table next to it, landing on the floor with an occasional thump. Her last day, she built a nest under the couch but when she came out of it, she had worsened and we knew it was time. Still it was an impossibly difficult decision, even with her tumors, we couldn't let her go. But, it's weird, they let you know, animals let you know that it's okay, they can deal with it, even if you can't. This was the last picture taken of her and if I must say so myself, she was a handsome, adorable rat, right up to the end.