Category: Columns

For the past several months, I have listened to a commercial advertising “San Diego Home Cooking Restaurant.” A lovely woman, with a decidedly East European accent has touted the home cooking of the four restaurants in the chain. Since all of those restaurants were far from my home in Ocean Beach, I have never tried them, even though the pictures of the meals served have been enticing. (Stephanie told us the owner was from Serbia.)

Oh, did I ever fall in love with this morning. It was so nice and sunny, so soothing to my soul and bones. And I was still all a swoon when this lovely beginning of the day segued into the afternoon.

At some point on such a day I knew I would want to write, something, anything, because writing to me, is a form of play and this was a day in which to play. I, however, had no particular topics to approach in mind so I went to a website of writing prompts and blindly chose one that asked me to go through a dusty photo album which was no problem because my soul mate, a photographer del mundo, bequeathed me enough dusty albums to ignite a Haboob like the ones that smothered Phoenix…

Remember all the flack about the kids toilet-papering trees?

Remember the argument about what it was doing to the environment?

I even remember the lady that wrote back and said that she saw nothing wrong with it; in fact, she even drove her child to the “scene” and stayed in the car while the dastardly deed was being done.

Author’s note 7/30/10: The link in the article below no longer goes to the original U-T article upon which I based this post (see the reposted article at Tenants Together). I’ll let you all decide whether the new article is an “update” or a “correction,” because in many ways it is a whole different animal.

While the sturm und drang of the debt ceiling debate drowns out the howls of distress of the American public going down with the ship, we are being treated to an equally diversionary coverage of the significant women’s issue of the day. Did someone say douche? I didn’t say douche but someone said douche.

In the past weeks, American citizens have made it known in countless polls that they don’t want anyone to mess with their Social Security, their Medicare or Medicaid. And the majority of us have also said that it is about time to make the wealthiest among us to pay their fair share of taxes.

So why are we enmeshed in a months long debate about the friggin debt ceiling, which in the words of Jefferson Airplane, doesn’t mean shit to a tree (or the citizenry)?

It’s been two, baby
Two years since
You went away…

Yet it feels just like yesterday. And I still miss you like it was yesterday. But I’m getting better everyday. Now, I have to say, I still find myself shedding tears (tears that will be around forever, I’m thinking) but the deep intense bone and soul searing emotional pain that wore on me for so many months has faded away. I’m learning to be at ease with my sweet and precious memories of you, giving way to the poetry in the imagery that comes to me, like a click from your camera, to play on your photography.

Working to counter military recruiting and demilitarize our schools

I was asked to see if I could rekindle (and I can barely keep a campfire going) energy around leafleting our high schools with information to help students understand and deal with the attempts at militarizing them they’ll find in their schools and in their communities and beyond, as anyone can see in commercials, video games, and every form of media.

Well, it should be obvious that there’s a tremendous need for us, especially those of us who dare to refer to ourselves as “community activists.” We look out for our children when Uncle Sam comes after them with his zest for war, even though some of the organizations and activities that counter the militarization of young people are shrinking nationwide.

I’ve found myself lately thinking of a man everybody, including me, called Mack. My dad. Just about the most laid back human being the world has ever had.

The man was always at ease, a man of simple tastes. I can see him in my mind, chomping on his almost ever present cheap cigar which chokes me even in my memory, sipping some whisky, and uttering that obligatory whispery “ahhh” that drinkers who like their liquor neat always sigh and he’s going about any one of his enterprises: playing solitaire, reading True Crime magazine or crossword puzzling – when he wasn’t playing the piano.

Seven years ago today I was sitting on the tarmac in Los Angeles waiting for my plane to take off. I had booked a red eye flight to San Juan Puerto Rico, where I would spend the month studying bomba, a popular dance form, and immersing myself in all things Puerto Rican.

I was traveling post 9/11, meaning that the country was on alert this particular 4th of July for possible terrorist attacks. The thought gave me pause as I imagined my fellow countrymen and women gathered at cookouts, watching parades, and celebrating a national holiday. I also imagined myself, a tiny creature, strapped inside a relatively small metal object flying across the continent and then out to sea for the next seven hours of my life.

Every 4^th of July, I make sure to fit in a few minutes to put on one of my favorite Dave Alvin songs, “4^th of July” (which is better known as an X song). It’s a bittersweet tale of two lovers trying to make their way through life. After pulling a holiday shift, a man comes home from work to find his lover crying in the dark and he ponders their fate:

On the lost side of town
In a dark apartment
We gave up trying so long ago.
On the steps I smoke a
Cigarette alone.
The Mexican kids are shooting
Fireworks below.
Hey, baby—it’s the fourth of July.
Whatever happened
I apologize
So dry your tears
And baby—walk outside
It’s the 4^th of July

As the Union-Tribune noted in its article on San Diego Noir: “When it comes to the literary genre known as noir—that dark terrain of desire and desperation, of passion and paranoia—certain cities come immediately to mind. Los Angeles. San Francisco. New York. Not San Diego.” Well, not exactly.

While San Diego does not have as rich a literary and/or filmic history as Los Angeles, it too has some noir in its past. In the 1890s, Thomas and Anna Fitch saw Coronado as a suitable location for testing a doomsday weapon in Better Days: Or, the Millionaire of To-morrow. Then famously, in 1932, Edmund Wilson labeled San Diego the “The Jumping-Off Place” as a result of its nation-leading suicide rate….