Tom's Hat

Blogs have a way of building themselves; sometimes they workout at the gym and get fit; other times they become musclebound and inflexible, or in the case of this one, they just sit there on their mat listening to their ipod, checking their fb, not doing anything. 

Why has it been so hard to get started again? 

Anyway here's a post I meant to do last week, a little out of date, a little inflexible— as I've tried to change it but it insists! At least its off the mat, lifting weights. (OK, you don't have to point out they're only 3 pounders... working on that. 5 then 8!)

•••

In last Sunday's LA Times, a headline below the fold in the California section read, "England returns 7 Native American skulls to California," to which Tom responded, "Only seven?"

Tom has a droll sense of humor when it comes to things native. In the case of stealing Indian bones and moving them elsewhere—to be studied or put on display—the most infamous account was in 1918, when the boys of Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale, dug up Geronimo's grave in Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and took the remains back to Connecticut. Geronimo's descendents sued Skull and Bones in 2009, but lost their suit a year later; still, the fight for repatriation—"the return to tribes of indigenous bones and artifacts"—goes on.

On the same day Indian skulls were in the news, the solar eclipse appeared above the western skies, at 6:38 pm, for about an hour. I'd read in the same Sunday paper that Navajo custom called for praying, fasting and staying indoors, but Tom was skeptical—historically, he wanted to know, "how would they have known when one was approaching?" For his part, he wasn't praying. In the afternoon, he set up a mirror on a grip stand to reflect the sun, and then went down below to plant sunflower seeds. 

Meanwhile, I drove down the hill to an opening of a new bookstore on York. The intensity of the sun was hard to bear. My clothes felt uncomfortable, my skin too tight. Trying to avoid looking at the sun, I kept looking at it. Maybe it was this feeling of unease that contributed, but the bookstore opening was a bit of a letdown. I bought a used E.L. Doctorow for 3 bucks and drove home.

When I arrived, images of the eclipse were everywhere. 

Eclipse on wall, with Tom's Hat

On the side of the canyon

(reflection off mirror)

 

3 crescent moons reflected through Tom's Hat

After the moon had passed, I noticed a bluejay chasing a mockingbird through the trees, making a racket. What a relief to hear birds singing again! I took a walk around the hill and felt the day's intensity fading away. The lights over Highland park rose up, shimmering, as I descended into the cool night air.  

 Tom's hat

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

Rubbernecking in South L.A.

Okay, I'm no genius, but I did foresee a money making opportunity that I'm sorry now I didn't rush into production while there was still time. Unfortunately, no proof exists that I actually thought this thing up except for the 'reject file' of my blog, an entry titled, " Moms and Pops of Invention" about hard times and entrepreneurial jobs.

Here's what I proposed:
"Crime scene tourist guide. The industrious people of Mumbai have set up shop, guiding tourists around Colaba, site of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel terrorist attacks that occurred last year. Be the first on your block to open your own home travel agency, taking tourists around Highland Park and areas beyond to show them scenes of gang crimes."

And then came yesterday's front page headline in the Los Angeles Times:  "The 'hood as a tourist attraction." Whoa!


The article informs us that a group of civic activists will be offering bus tours to some of the grittier parts of the city including, "decayed public housing, sites of deadly shootouts and streets ravaged by racial unrest."

I can't believe they stole my idea!
                          
They're calling it "L.A. Gang Tours." The operation has a social justice, or I should say, injustice component to it, no doubt, as the organizers want to show how the economic engine has detoured around the poor and black/brown people of this city, to which no one can argue.

But I can't help but snicker when I read that Terry Jensen, one of the backers, thinks this is the next big destination tour that will draw people to L.A. Jensen is owner of the Seattle based Duninger Corp., an engineering and real estate investment firm, and inventor of "Jakpak" the jacket that turns into a tent, useful if you're homeless ....or going camping.

There's something a little cynical about making money while touring sites like the South Central bus stop where, "five children and three adults were shot in gang crossfire last year." I was just kidding when i was thinking up new jobs. The word that comes to mind for this, which ironically I taught to my class last week, is rubbernecking.