Category: Columns

by Ernie McCray

The raging fire
in Pacific Palisades
darkens my soul
as it’s part of me,
the home of Nancy
my very dearly departed soulmate,
the mother of three of my six children.

I know that she,
if alive,
would be destroyed inside,
viewing an inferno, miles wide,
leaving her old neighborhood
burning away
in its wake.

by Ernie McCray

In a reflective mood the other day
I thought of people
who, in some way,
had something to do
with who I am today
and the first person who popped
up in my mind
was my very first school principal
standing tall in an image
that’s so memorable to me:
Big old head.
Big old shoulders.
Big old chest.
Big old beer belly.

by Ernie McCray

2024
was a year
unlike any I’ve ever undergone before,
one in which I feel as though I barely survived.

The year did, however, provide me
with a few lovely upsides
such as some really good times
with family and friends,
moments where I cheerfully
rooted for our country’s Olympians
and watched a masterful basketball player whose
artistic wizardry in the gym
made millions of people
women’s roundball fans,

by Ernie McCray

I called for a Lyft ride
for a trip to see a doctor
who had performed cataract surgery
on my eyes,
a bit shaky
because I was dealing with a degree
of brightness
unlike I had ever seen,
like I was staring at the sun.

And when my ride arrived
I got the feeling everything was going to be all right
because, as I fiddled around
with my aging hands
trying to strap myself in,
I found myself, simultaneously,
singing along
with the Spinners
on my driver’s radio,

By Ernie McCray

Excuse my French,
as they say,
but it just seems as though
everything today
is ass-backwards.
In so many ways.
And that puts us in a bind,
considering that we’ve got a man
who, in a very short time,
will be taking us through whatever
is going to go down
down the line,

By JW August / November 25, 2024

It’s been 27 years since I interviewed Chauncey Marvin Holt in a Lemon Grove home. Over the intervening years, what Holt revealed in his intriguing  life story has bedeviled me.

A documentary I would produce from the interview included many details on his role with organized crime, in San Diego and elsewhere, and how it played out in the most dramatic murder of the 20th century — the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

A more recent interview with attorney Michael Aguirre, former City Attorney for San Diego, about the confidential arrangement he had with Holt reignited my decades of interest in the late Holt’s story.

Just this past July, President Joe Biden released documents related to the JFK assassination, three decades after Congress ordered papers related to the murder to be released, although not all of the documents. With 4,684 documents still to be released, the final chapter of the murder has not been written, and there probably is a chance it never will be.

At the time of the June 4, 1997, initial interview with Holt, I was an investigative producer with 10news and was asked by friends and colleagues of Holt to “do his story.”

by Ernie McCray / November 26, 2024
 
The other night,
after I had laid my head down to sleep,
I transitioned into that stage
where one loses consciousness
before their dreams kick in
and then
a sign above a lab door appears
that reads
“Mad Scientist at Work”
and I cautiously tip-toe through the portal,
to music with an eerie unsteady beat,
and before me
a Frankenstein-looking-dude
puts the final touches on
a spine-chilling orange-faced man

Times of San Diego

A racist term for a Native American woman will be removed from nearly three dozen geographic features and place names on California lands, the state Natural Resources Agency announced Friday.

Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2022 signed a bill into law that bans use of the word “squaw” in future place names and ordered the agency to rename all places that used the slur, including on streets, bridges, public buildings and cemeteries, the Los Angeles Times reported Friday.

by Ernie McCray

As I surveyed a picture
taken at
my sister-in-law, Becky’s, 80th birthday party,
I couldn’t help but notice
how joyful she looked
all dressed in pink
and I began to think
that the way to survive the mess
our country is in
is by simply
enjoying to the fullest
the joyful moments we find ourselves in,
no matter how fleeting they might be
because these little breaks
will certainly be short-lived
in our reality
as a country,

by Ernie McCray

Come on America.
You vote for, perhaps, the most loathsome
excuse of a human being
ever born in the Milky Way,
then have the nerves
to talk a lot of bullshit
about how Kamala Harris
gave the election way.

Stop it, I say.
You’re way the hell off base,
as this election
was, aside from being laced
with strong traces
of sexism,
mostly about race.

by Ernie McCray

That poor excuse
for a human being
is going to the White House again.
And I was thinking about him
as I played
with Jackson,
my youngest grandson,
the other day
because at the same time
my mind was also
buzzing frantically

by Ernie McCray

When I think of
another Trump presidency,
I shiver to my bones
from just knowing
that he will,
based on his granted immunity
if he commits a crime,
devise, out of his love of dictators,
some yet to be seen
extremely obscene
form of autocracy
that will relatively-speaking
bring our society
to its knees.