The Fiercest Students

I used to blog quite proudly about my students.

Mahvash (top) and Khodadad
Two graduates in LA's downtown garment district

Lately, though, I've been resenting the fact that they can't or won't learn English. My Advanced ESL students have been here 5, 10, 15 years and still can't write a sentence—or two, and definitely not a paragraph—about their lives. 

Perhaps the problem isn't their want of trying, but the geography of Los Angeles. When I worked for Cultural Affairs we spoke of this as "bridging the diversity gap" between communities. But with freeways isolating neighborhoods and lack of public transportation, the bridges were never built and the gaps never filled. Diversity remained in its own quarters. Korean students never need to step outside Koreatown's borders in the mid-Wilshire district. My Persian students can get all their needs met by speaking Farsi in the area called Tehrangles (aka: Little Persia), along Westwood and Pico. What then is the motivation for learning English?

Visiting the Taper Auditorium

Central Public Library

Let me put myself in my students' shoes. They are tired, they are weary, they don't trust the natives: we speak too fast, are rude, don't give them the time of day. Immigrants are what they'll remain forever in our eyes, or until they get their citizenship papers, but even then, nothing changes.

And yes, they're partly to blame—yet who can blame them?—tied as they are to their communities through family, commerce and familiarity. But still... many of them never leave their neighborhoods. They've never visited LACMA, two blocks from school, or Griffith Park, a mile away. The older ones have grown accustomed to their lives, settling for a four-block square. But the younger ones want more. After graduating they go on to LACC, or Cal State LA, or any number of vocational schools. They are motivated to learn English...but perhaps, even more, to learn a little Spanish for their work.

Ah, sigh. My students may drive me crazy with their messed-up English, but I salute them for at least trying. 

And Sunny, who just graduated, I will miss you more than most. Despite your size, you were a handful, one of my fiercest students ever.

Sunny

at LACMA, on a recent field trip

Ferdinand the Coyote

It's hard not to hear the goings on next door, especially given that my kitchen window looks out on my neighbor's yard. At night I can hear swishing in the bushes as the night creatures make their way to Thea's bowls. In the morning I hear more swishing and tap tap tapping and see the skunks and cats and crows and coyote that come to eat breakfast and dinner. 

To be fair, the coyote hasn't been around much this summer... until last weekend. This comes as a relief but not a surprise as Mary Paglieri, a "human-animal conflict consultant" with the Little Blue Society, told me this would happen. She explained in scientific detail how he would eventually wean himself of human interaction (I'm assuming coyote is a he but he could be a she): "Given time, this matter will resolve on its own, the coyote will decide [when]." 

When coyote does come around, it's like a homecoming. Thea comes right into the lower yard where the coyote's lying in the grass not more than five feet away. She talks to him and coyote listens, waiting for her to put food into the bowl. Then she gives him her blessing and climbs back up the steps to go inside. Thea is unafraid because the coyote is her friend. He likes skunks. He likes to smell the breezes. He likes the tall grasses in Thea's backyard. He must get sick of coyote life—enough of the urine smells and hard rocks for beds and howling at night. 

Coyote is Ferdinand the bull.

"He liked to sit just quietly and smell the flowers. He had a favorite spot out in the pasture under a cork tree. It was his favorite tree and he would sit in its shade all day and smell the flowers."—Munro Leaf, illustrated by Robert Lawson

Seeing is believing. Here is Coyote as Ferdinand: 





Previous posts on Coyote:
http://charlottehildebrand.blogspot.com/2011/06/tale-about.html
http://charlottehildebrand.blogspot.com/2011/06/in-shifts.html
http://charlottehildebrand.blogspot.com/2011/06/howl.html

Middle Summer

Blackberry, where are you?

Have you noticed all the signs for lost pets lately? Postings started on July 4 and haven't stopped; every telephone pole in my Northeast LA neighborhood is covered with messages of the missing. I was walking this morning at the top of my hill and heard a woman calling, "Lucky, Lucky, Luuucccky?" as she looked for her dog. Right there and then, I resolved never to call a pet Lucky. Once I saw a sign for a lost parrot who was blind in one eye, had a busted wing and a nervous condition that required meds. That bird was called Lucky too. 

Talking about lucky, I feel extraordinarily lucky having my daughter home for a week before she goes back to college. 

On Thursday, I drove up to San Luis Obispo with my old friend Hudson, which got me halfway to seeing Maya who'd been away all summer. That night we stayed at the Peach Tree Inn, a throw back to the sixties, and ate at The Range in Santa Margarita (a small restaurant in the middle of nowhere that deserves an enthusiastic 5-stars!). In the morning, we explored the Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa, founded by Junipero Serra in 1772, the fifth California mission to bring the Catholic faith to the area's native inhabitants. 

The mission's sanctuary branches off into an "L," and as we walked around I wondered about its odd shape. Did Spanish landowners pray in one arm of the "L," and Indians, out of sight, in the other? A little museum sits off the sanctuary, with numerous Indian and Spanish artifacts, certain evidence that native peoples' mission life wasn't pretty; those that survived were forced to give up their language, their religion and their freedom. In the early 2000's, a local artist painted the sanctuary walls with an array of decorative birds and flowers, a beautiful whitewash over a cruel, earlier history.

:

The next day I said good-bye to my friend and drove to Oakland to retrieve Maya at Mills College. Here are a few highlights of the trip:

Seeing Maya for the first time in 7-wks and hearing a mellifluous, fluid French spill out of her mouth! 

Seeing Mills again, one of the most beautiful campuses in California.

Bakesale Betty's: What looks like a pop-up storefront is the wildly popular eatery in the Temescal and Telegraph Ave district of Oakland. Food constructionists whip up fried chicken sandwiches with spicy coleslaw or the vegan version with fried tofu, and strawberry shortcake, on a daily basis. The bake goods are out of this world. 

 Food constructionists at work in Bakesale Betty's

Outside, long lines waiting for Betty; notice the ironing board tables.

Telegraph Road: There's so much on this road to recommend; I was eager to go back to the Restaurante Dona Tomas, but we ended up at Lane Splitter's Pizza and Pub. Maggie, who'd come over from San Fran to spend the day with Maya, joined us for lunch. Maggie and Maya hadn't seen each other all summer and watching them giggle and chatter was half the fun. Here they are letting me take their picture:

It's wonderful having Maya home for a week, but then she goes away again. (and again...and again...) I'm used to it by now, or maybe, it's just that all my defenses have been shattered. It's still not easy to see her go. 

Late night cleaning

I was scrubbing my toilet around 11:00 p.m.— don't ask, I do that sometimes, clean the house at night— and I started thinking about the Southern Poverty Law Center's Anti-Muslim Inner-Circle: a list of far-right, ultra conservative activists who have ratcheted up the anti-Muslim rhetoric in the past few years. Two on SPLC's list, Pamala Geller and Robert Spencer, were mentioned in Anders Behring Breivik's 1,500 page rant, which was posted online shortly before his killing spree in Oslo. 

As I cleaned, I wondered if any of the ten listed ever scrubbed out their own toilet? Did David Horowitz—who was once a Marxist, and now hater-of-everything Muslim and everything liberal, who runs the David Horowitz Freedom Center and, this is only a wild guess, was instrumental in coining the term, "Islamofascism," and Pamela Geller, who has captured the imagination of nationalistic, anti-Muslim followers worldwide in her black-hearted Atlas Shrugs blog— ever bend over to scrub? Probably not, for if they did, they might not be spewing such bile into the blogosphere, where they wield an inordinate influence amongst their ilk. If they cleaned their own shit once in awhile, I reasoned, they might be a little less provocative with the hate speech, a little more humble with the accusations. 

But you have to admit, Muslims make the perfect "other," like Jews of yore. Along these lines, I was surprised to learn that anti-Semitism among the far-right has fallen out of favor, replaced by hatred for Muslims. Geller, who the NYTimes and other media outlets have linked to Breivik's actions, denied any responsibility for the killings, calling any criticism of her, "patently ridiculous." But words have power as we know, and intolerant, furious, hate spewing words seem to have the most power of all.

What is amazing to me is how alike the anit-immigration, anti-tax, small government Progress Party, of which Breivik was a member, is to the Tea Party. Although no longer a force, the Progress Party served a small contingent of Norway's far-right, and, well, this profile fits the Tea Party, doesn't it? Breivik soon dropped out of the party and went on to develop his own ideas, the outcome of which we know. But we see it now in the GOP, in bed with the devil, standing on their principles— uncompromising, unwilling to listen or to reason; they announce their views as the only true religion. If you squint, the Tea Party could almost be the Progress Party, pre-Oslo, before Breivik lost his mind.

To Whom It May Concern:

To Whom it May Concern:

I will get right to the point. Please, and you know who you are, do not encourage me to draw. Not that I don't like your comments; in fact, your comments make me weep with joy, but I'm weak and undisciplined and your words go to my head. I come home after work and get out a beer and if I can afford it some good scotch and round up my colored pencils, pens and charcoals and make a mess. As I sit there in a haze of alcohol and lots of pencils, it occurs to me I should be attempting something useful, like setting up my new IPhone which I've had for over a week, but have yet to record a voicemail message or transfer my music or email or photos (pitiful I know). Or continuing in this vein, I should be looking for a real job like I keep threatening, instead of dragging my ass home every night at 10:30 and staying up to all hours...drawing. 

So I put away my colored pencils.... but then something catches my eye, and I can't help myself again. 

For instance, on Monday, in the Health & Wellness section of the LA Times, the focus was on service animals. I had just written about a service dog whose job it was was to make his master laugh. What caught my attention this time, and which I didn't know, is that there is very little oversight for service animals: anyone can buy a service vest online and slap it on their dog, or, as Karen Ravn wrote in "What Service Animal Means," slap it on their "cats and rats and parrots and ferrets and llamas [!] and iguanas [!] and at least one snake." This was too much; the next night I had to spend a few more hours drinking and making a mess, the results of which I present to you here. 

I know I should probably end by saying thank you to those whose kind words have gotten me to this precipice, but please don't take that as an invitation for more encouragement; it's the last thing I need. 

Yours sincerely,

The Rat's Nest

Service Animals in Focus

A Train full of Crazies....

We'd taken the Gold Line downtown on Saturday night, an uneventful ride, but on the way back, a few hours later, it was a whole other trip. Among the late night wanderers with nowhere to go, we sat with a train full of crazies. 

I'd first noticed the couple on the platform at Union Station, the dog rolling on the ground, with red sunglasses on his head, and his master, a hipster in a gray porkpie hat. 

The dog, a beautiful velvety tan pit bull, was a service dog, wearing the official blue vest, but his master treated him like a clown. The dog was the man's therapy, I heard the hipster say, to keep him entertained, to keep him laughing. The dog attracted attention like crazy, and so did the mutterings of his master. As they walked through the car, the dog dragged his muzzle across the sweaty laps of passengers who reached out to pet him. All eyes were on that laughing dog; once seated, the dog fell asleep under his master's feet, his day job as a clown done. 

At the other end of the train, a middle-aged woman in a makeshift hijab talked in tongues. She sat with her arms across her body spewing nonsense syllables, religious incantations of her own making.

When some kids made fun of her, she pulled her scarf over her head, covering her face entirely, and repeated those sounds even louder—she wasn't going to be intimidated. She carried on as though her prayers would really protect her. Between her incantations and watching the laughing dog, my head pingponged back and forth from one end of the train to the other. 

I know it's rude to stare but on this train wherever you looked got you in trouble. Seated directly across from us was a Dodger's fan with severe OCD. The  kid wore a Dodger's ball cap, a Dodger's jacket and underneath, a Dodgers T-shirt. 

He looked kind of normal, except for his repetitious counting, his fingers striking the palm of his hand, adding and subtracting, accompanied by him mouthing random numbers, as he too might find an answer. From Union Station to his destination in Chinatown, he never stopped counting.

One sees the deep divide more clearly on the Gold Line at night. On one side of the cliff, there are those of us who have cars, riding the metro to "take" public transportation; it's an effort but at least we do our civic duty once in awhile. 

On the other side is the "public," a wide swath of humanity who use the metro as their only form of transportation. Call me naive, but there seem to be more riders these days. Among the normal and hard working who pay the high fees to get to a job, there are those—and at night you realize just how many there are in this city of widening gap between rich and poor—who ride the metro because they have nowhere else to go....and no place to sleep...and nothing they own....and no one to stop them from going crazy. 


Update: On July 18, the LA Times published a complete guide to service dogs in their Health & Wellness section. What caught my attention was the mention that anyone could order a service vest online, making it easy for some to get creative and anoint their own pets—cats, rats, parrots, llamas! iguanas and one known snake—for therapy. Makes me wonder if laughing dog wasn't such a dog...

A Tale About...

Once, there was a Crow...

and Crow would caw whenever it sensed danger...


CAW, CAW,


One day, it looked down from its perch, and saw a....

Coyote...

 and Crow cawed and cawed.

Coyote's appearance meant that food was coming, and so, other animals were on their way too.

Skunks. CAW CAW


and raccoons and possums. CAW CAW CAW


But mainly, 

Coyote. CAW CAW CAW CAW CAW


Crow looked down from its perch and saw, too, the old witch who fed the Coyote. She lived in a green house, with a green hedge and a green car, and whose complexion was a little green. 

She didn't feed the little children she kept in the oven, but she fed the wild animals that came to her door. She loved the animals more than the little children, and more than her neighbor, who had asked her not to feed the wild animals. 


At one time—about a week ago—the witch had told her neighbor that she wanted to have a good sense of community; the neighbor hadn't realized that what she meant was a community of wild things.


The witch whispered sweet nothings to the Coyote, as Coyote waited for its meal. She told the Coyote to be a good boy, Werden ein guter Junge; then cautiously she approached, while Coyote looked up at the bowl she held in both hands. 

They understood each other; one was wild, and the other, lonely, or crazy, or both.

The neighbor stayed hidden behind the hedges, because she didn't want the Coyote to bark at her; also, she didn't want to be turned into jello by the witch. She knew that witches can do stuff like that— turn bones into halva, or turn coyotes into humans.

End of story?  To be continued...CAW CAW