LET'S HEAR IT FOR MURALS!

North Park, a San Diego community east of Hillcrest on University Avenue is becoming a center for outdoor art. I was driving at night with son David on 30th Street a couple of evenings ago when he pointed out a guy working on a mural. This wasn't a tagger lurking surreptitiously in the shadows, but a legitimate street artist with permission, perhaps even a commission, working like Michelangelo in the chapel to put an idea onto a wall.  There he was with his ladder and buckets of paint and brushes putting the finishing touches on a new mural that I thought surely must mean something. The idea of public art appeals to me,  so I went back today in daylight to see for myself what he had done. 

 O.K., O.K., so he wasn't exactly like Michelangelo, and he wasn't putting something as grand as God reaching out his finger to touch man, but what he did was worth studying.  I'm still trying to figure it out, and I'm giving the artist the benefit of the doubt, which is actually what I have to do with a lot of art.  What was he trying to say?  I guess that's not the point of the thirty-foot-long, eight-foot-high, collage.  What I can say about it is that it's more interesting than the blank wall that was there last week.  That's enough.

Sculpture?

A Cold Day in San Diego...  I was almost alone on my bicycle on the beach when a young fellow dashed out from under the pier and began doing cartwheels.  No girls in bikinis.

Jim Fudge and Tom Fudge

January Birthdays

Harp mini-concert
by Sophie

The scariest evil is the evil that smiles...

insistent, monotonous, determined.

Halcyon sunsets suggest a promise

that night coming on coming on 

will bring rest and peace and sleep,

but soldiers marching march march

with guns and bayonets out of step

with the drumming that won’t stop

make it easy to forget to remember

that the railway ride to Treblinka 

in better times was a lot of fun.

Another confession... to set the record straight about putting aside the BB gun.  I have not personally owned another gun since the BB gun was put under the bed.  Margaret and I have never owned or kept a gun in our home; but when I was in graduate schooI, I worked for a couple of years as a guard at San Quentin Prison.  Regular training with guns was part of the job.  Most of the time I worked in cell blocks and other facilities with inmates; and, of course, prison personnel don’t carry guns or any weapons in those places.  When I was assigned duty on a wall post or in a tower, I was required to carry a gun. 

I had been a school teacher for a couple of years before I worked at San Quentin. When I went back to school I was married with a wife and son. I needed a job.  With the prison job I got salary, good benefits, discretionary time off for exams or papers. I worked at night leaving days “free” for school.  After two surreal years, I went back to teaching English at Yuba City High School... better prepared by the prison experience coupled with rigorous academics for a long career as educator than I would have been by graduate school done in isolation away from the often brutal realities of human life on the edge that is concentrated in a maximum security prison.  

But that’s not the point of this writing.  I need to set the record straight about my opinions of the people who have chosen careers in military and law enforcement.  I have tremendous respect for them and support them.  We need them.  Because of their  careers, our country and our neighborhoods are safe places to live .  Just as there are some unprincipled, misplaced rogues among the ranks of teachers and administrators, there are people in jobs that require them to carry and use guns who should have found other careers.  The problem with guns in America is basically not a problem with military and law enforcement. The NRA and the run-away gun industry are obscenely rich not by meeting the equipment needs of law enforcement and military organizations.  The NRA doesn’t speak for legitimate police and other law enforcement officers or for people in the military.  People in law enforcement and military jobs are put in greater personal danger by unregulated civil gun ownership which the NRA supports. 

IF HONEST CONFESSION IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL, perhaps I can do some good for myself by describing something I did (not everything, not all, dear reader) when I was eight or nine years old.  My family lived in a small Arkansas town that had an unpaved county road and railroad tracks running through it, a once-upon-a-time-but-no-longer prosperous lumber mill, a Baptist church, a two-room school house on our side of the tracks and a little one-room school house for “colored people” on the other side.  Even before the age of ten I had learned from my Mother that the main thing wrong with that idyllic village and with the whole Southern part of our country was the segregation of “our kind of peope” from the “other” kind.  Mother insisted that people were people, and that was all we needed to know about it.  It wasn’t until later that I understood the significance of having a mother who understood that all people are the same and wanted her children to understand it.  

If my Mother were living today, I’d go for a special visit to learn what she thought about guns.  She didn’t own guns.  My father did, and he bought a BB gun for me for Christmas when I was eight.  He also took me ‘possum hunting, which was a matter of meeting up with a few of his friends in the woods late at night, all of them bringing along their ‘coon dogs.  I figured out without his having to explain it to me that it wasn’t a real hunt because they didn’t bring guns.  They liked to hear the dogs barking off in the woods when they had found and treed an animal.  The men never left the little clearing in the woods where they parked their trucks and cars.  Of course, I didn’t understand when I was a child all the nuances of those meeting of men in the woods, but clearly the objective was not to bring home food for the family. 

My father didn’t give me any instructions about the use of the BB gun beyond saying that I should never under any circumstances point it at anybody even when I thought there weren’t any BBs in it.  He set me up in the back yard with some tin cans on posts for target shooting.  

Now for the honest confession.  I remember as if it were last week the day I went for a walk with my gun down by the railroad tracks.  A once-a-day thrill in those days was watching and listening to the steam engine train as it went by on its daily run.  I heard the train coming a good way off so I got off to the side of the tracks even before the train came around the bend into my sight and waited for the thrill of smoke and steam and a wave from the men in the cab of the train. I glanced up into a tree on the other side of the tracks and saw a blue bird perched there as if it were also waiting to see the train go by.  On impulse, I raised my BB gun, aimed, and fired.  The bird tumbled to the ground, and I scrambled across the tracks well ahead of the train and found the limp, blue body in the grass.  I dropped the gun and picked it up the little bundle of feathers.  The little fist-sized bird was still warm, and there was red blood seeping through the blue feathers. Horrified, I didn’t see the train go by.  I remember it only as something approaching in the distance from where I had committed a terrible sin. Holding the dead blue bird and crying, I turned away from the tracks so the men driving the train wouldn’t see what I had done. I buried the bird in soft, damp earth and went down to a creek to wash the blood off my hands.  I was unable to clear away from my mind the awful reality of having killed something for no reason at all except that it was there, alive and perched within my sight in the oak tree. I went home and shoved the BB gun far under my bed.  I didn’t take it out again. I don’t remember what happened to that BB gun.  I didn’t tell anybody what I had done. 

Setting the record straight about guns in the United States and in other high income countries.  

After each tragic mass shooting in our country, the National Rifle Association resurrects its old familiar litany about the Second Amentment and the right of American citizens to bear arms.  Legislators in state and federal government dance to the tunes played by the NRA in order to continue to get their support in elections. I’m not enthusiastic about promoting the idea that my country needs and citizens deserve stricter gun laws because it feels now like a hopeless cause.  At the very time when it would seem reasonable and logical to advocate for appropriate control of gun ownership and use in America, the gun industry has never been healthier or happier.  Our national talk about the need for gun control laws has prompted perhaps the greatest surge of gun buying in our country’s history. I feel helpless. Facts seem not to matter. 

In 2003 the World Health Organization (WHO) assembled official national statistics of individual countries around the world.  The study included firearm deaths in high income countries (Australia, Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom [England and Wales], United Kingdom [Northern Ireland], United Kingdom [Scotland], and the United State).  In 2003 the total population for the United States was 290.8 million while the combined population for the other 22 countries was 563.5 million.  There were 29,771 firearm deaths in the US and 7,563 firearm deaths in the 22 other countries.  Of all firearm deaths in these 23 hig-income countries in 2003, 80% occurred in the US.  In the US the overall firearm death rate was 10.2 per 100,000, the overall firearm homicide rate 4.1 per 100,000, and the overall homicide rate 6.0 per 100,000, with firearm homicide rates highest among persons 15 to 24 years of age.  For the US the overall suicide rate was 10.8 per 100,000, and slightly over half of these deaths were firearm suicide (5.8 per 100,000).  Firearm suicides rates increased with age.  In the other high income countries 2003 the overall firearm death rate was 1.4 per 100,000, the overall firearm homicide rate 0.2 per 100,000, and the overall homicide rate 0.9 per 100,000.  Firearm homicide rates were highest in the 25 year old to 34 year old age group.  The overall suicide rate was 14.9 per 100,000 with an overall firearm suicide rate of 1.0 per 100,000.

The NRA and our legislators in Washington know these statistics. There is no doubt that any plague or contamination of the food supply or detonation of terrorist bombs or release of chemical weapons in our cities would get a quick and sure response from Congress.  Only with gun violence do we respond by quietly making a pile of teddy bears and flowers at the sites of the tragedies.  Congressional response invariably has been to show up at public displays of mourning, but to do nothing at all in the halls of Congress to stop the proliferation of the guns that caused the tragedy. 

I am sick of it... and ashamed.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?  It’s an important question that deserves attention, but sometimes insistence on knowing what something means gets so much in the way of experience that a moment which doesn’t depend at all on understanding for its significance slips past and away.  At the National Gallery a couple of weeks ago I wandered among familiar paintings and prints and sculptures without stopping to analyze anything I was seeing.  I specifically sought out works that I’ve known for years, the way one makes a special effort to find old friends. I didn’t try to figure out what Clifford Still or Robert Motherwell or Leonardo da Vinci was trying to say.  Without spoiling the experience by analyzing it, I stood and allowed myself to be amazed that anybody could do what artists do.  Please don’t misunderstand.  Just as surely as Michelangelo knew that he wanted to release David from that immense block of marble, Motherwell knew what he was doing and why he was doing it when he painted the thirty-foot-long Reconciliation Elegy that hangs in the East Wing of the National Gallery.

Looking for my picture for today, I wandered down by the river in Mission Valley.  The underside of the interstate highway bridge over the river is an immovable canvas for graffiti artists.  Some of them are simply taggers who, like Kilroy, want to say, “I was here.”  Others are artists who put their work up knowing it won’t last.  Someone else will eventually come along and paint over it.  I go down there every couple of months to see what’s new.  Today I found some things that I could photograph and then manipulate with Photoshop in my computer to get an image that belongs now to me.  It’s great fun.  I found some melaleuca roots that belonged once to a tree I like, but now they are mine... as well as the sycamore bark not far from the road where I found some gravel imbedded in black asphalt. Abstract expressionist images are out there waiting to be discovered, like Michelangelo’s David that was once hiding in the carrara marble.  

Life is good.

Click on these images to see them larger.

I am a very fortunate man.  Fate favored me with a good family, families, actually... the family of my birth and then the family that was created when I was fortunate enough to be married to Margaret.  This blog writing isn’t about that but about my Niece Lenda, who is perhaps the most gifted writer in the extended family.  Lenda, a lawyer,  recently spent a couple of years in Puerto Rico where her husband was sent on assignment as a Federal Judge. She sent one of her poems to me, something she does sometimes.  She attached the following note:  “I wrote this one for you, Uncle Jerral, and now you know almost everything I have learned about Puerto Rico in the past year, except about church, and the food.”

I went looking for the poem again yesterday, after I had finished reading a section of a book by David M. Felten and Jeff Procter-Murphy called Living the Questions  (The subtitle is “The Wisdom of Progressive Christianity”).  I am impressed all over again with the skill, insight, and wisdom in Lenda’s poem... and with Lenda.  I called her to get permission to share it.

The photographic task today to find a photograph in San Diego to go with Lenda's poem was not such a great challenge.  "Missing Someone in San Juan" is set in Puerto Rico with reminiscenses of New Orleans; and that amazing city and Puerto Rico and San Diego have in common fountains, palm trees, and beautiful sky. 

MISSING SOMEONE IN SAN JUAN

Lenda Perez

When I'm missing someone in San Juan

I take the dogs out

Down six flights of stairs,

cause the elevator's out

Again.

I talk to Charlie

who speaks good English

And works in the building

And is descended from Bela Lagosi

he rides a bike, though it's not a Harley

But his helmet's just like the one Jack Nicholson wore

In Easy Rider

the one that wrapped itself in the flag and started to New Orleans.

Charlie won the lottery for Christmas

And gave his mother five thousand dollars.

She still lives in the neighborhood

so he sees her everyday.

She must be my mother's age

Aren't we the lucky ones!

Tia, who's always on the right lead

Insists on walking on the curb

And Yunior

Who has seniority

is so easy-going, he lets her.

Scoop that poop!

What fun, but it's got to be done

For the sake of civilization.

I heard the other day that every dog must

Wear a muzzle in San Juan

however, I have yet to see one

So I think it's safe to say that

It's never enforced.

Or even expected.

I have seen a lot of dogs here

Mostly with fine pedigrees

it's the old Spanish in them

_____their owners, I mean.

in this fine old neighborhood of Miramar

With its good Catholic schools

And it's View of the Ocean.

Carlos has his shop near the corner

Right next to Casita Miramar

In the El Torro Hotel.

he and his wife work to

Relieve the suffering of the homeless

In Viejo San Juan.

There is a Mission there

(Just as depressing as you would imagine)

This place sure reminds me of New Orleans

Except that it sits up on the hills like San Francisco

though it is centuries older.

I see the homeless men everyday

And sometimes the women

As I walk down to the Avenida

Ponce de Leon

To buy my loaf of French bread.

They call it 'pan de agua' here

____water bread__

But it is French bread all right

wonderful French bread.

In San Juan

Everyone says "Hello"

Or, rather, "!Hola!"

Or we both say

"Bona dia"

I once said that in the afternoon 

And the gentleman looked at me funny.

The Chief Judge in Jerry's Outfit

Warned him the first day

When he took the Oath of Office

not to use the familiar

As it would be inappropriate

For a man in his position.

Now that he's a Judge

And su Senoria

__Your Lordship!

He told him to be careful of his Spanish

And not to use the local patois

And drop the endings off his words

Judge del Torro was born in the States

though his family is from here.

his son is going to the Ivy League

As soon as he finishes the

Best Catholic School

Right up the hill.

Jerry was born here

(or should I say, "Gerardo"?)

Gerardo was born here

In Mayaguez, a little town

On the west coast

his people still live there

they were Sephardic Jews when they came 

Fleeing Queen Isabela and her consort

who OK'ed the Inquisition.

In Puerto Rico

Perez may be a house of Israel,

But it is primarily a Black name

So I was told 

In a shop,by a very old man

Sitting on a chair, and passing conversation

with anyone who came by.

and you know, Jerry's father

that older Gerardo,

Was a black man

You could tell by looking.

After the  

Seventh or eighth

Person told me 

that Justice Sondra Sotamayor

Came from 

Mayaguez

I realized it must be important.

her people still live there

But she was born in the Bronx.

As for me,

I always say, "Bona dia"

I make a point of it.

and someday, if I find another dog,

I shall name her

'Juana Dia,'

After the town 

Up in the mountains.

Just because I like the sound

Of the vowels.

My doggies hate the trip upstairs

the six irregular flights

almost as much as I do.

though they don't have to stop and rest

like me.

Tia always limps on that bad leg

that she got in her former life

Before she was abandoned on the street in ninety-five degree heat.

such a sweet dog

Not a mean bone

In her little body.

(She only ever growls at Me,

when I disturb her sleep, and make her move from 

her Spot

Next to Jerry in the bed.)

Yunior was left behind

Outside in Katrina,

but he never refers to it.

He is a macho little man

A Notorio,at least, in a past life, or maybe a banker.

Chihuahuas are proud dogs

In the Spanish tradition.

And he patiently waits 

On the foot of my bed

For me to turn in

and put him in his rightful place

And give him part of the quilt.

He won't get up

Until I do, although

Tia arises with Jerry

At five or six a.m.

Way too early for Yunior and me.

So She pees on the rug 

Most every morning.

Then, as soon as we're up,

I take the dogs out.

Not many cities in the world have a real mountain within the city limits.  Cowles Mountain in San Diego is a prominent feature in our landscape.  I can see it from the condinimum community where I live; and from Ed’s back yard in El Cajon this afternoon, looking west, the mountain rose impressively behind Grossmont College. It’s only 1600 feet high, but we count it as a mountain.  The hike from the parking lot on the west side is 1.5 miles long.  

I debated whether or not to include the geologic history of the mountain and decided to do it simply because I like knowing it and sharing it.  The mountain consists of Jurassic and early Cretaceous metavolcanic and exposed shallow intrusive igneous rocks.  These big rocks are a significant feature, especially on the west side.  They hint at the kind of terrain found on the mountains higher up  between El Cajon and Ramona.  I love the really big rocks up there that look as if they were thrown by giants in a big battle.

I am an early riser most of the time no matter where I happen to be in the world, so I’ve experienced sunrises in many places.  It’s hard to be dispondent at the exact moment when the sun breaks into a new day.  In Greek mythology Eos, the Goddess of the Dawn, opens the gates of heaven at the beginning of the day so Helios can ride his chariot across the sky.  One of my favorite phrases from Homer’s poems, Rhododáktylos Ēṓs (Rosy-fingered Dawn), always comes to my mind when I see the first light of day.  A couple of days ago my photo du jour was a picture of my Yoshida friends, Dave and Clyde. On Wednesday morning as I rode my bicycle down into Mission Valley on my way to coffee with those friends just as the sun was breaking out of the mountains to the east of San Diego, I was so overwhelmed by Rhododáktylos Ēṓs that I had to stop and watch for a couple of minutes. 

Homer used the rosy-fingered dawn expression often in his great poem about the travels of the hero Odysseus.  The epithet is an effective metaphor marking the beginning of his journey.  Later in the Odyssey the metaphor is “gold-throned dawn” and “bright-throned dawn” to signal that the man has been tried and found strong enough for whatever a day may bring. When he is near the end of his journey and must return home, the returning is a fresh start for which Odysseus isn’t completely confident that he can handle, so Homer describes the dawn once again as Rhododaktylos.

The first week in January is always a fresh beginning.  The dawn this morning was indeed rosy-fingered.  I got my photo du jour with my iPhone from a bouquet of flowers at Ruth’s and Bill’s house. It’s consistent with the rosy-fingered dawn image. The sunrises are from other places and other times.

Sunrise...  Baja California

Dawn... Vancouver, B.C.

Rosy-fingered Dawn... Ushuaia, Argentina

Sunrise... North Atlantic

Sunrise... bridge 

Dawn... San Diego Harbor

Sunrise.. San Diego

A leaf

becomes

whatever

you want it to be

falling...dancing...flying

...depends

entirely

on the way you

allow yourself to see it

and 

all things.

A reminder
  of love
and commitment...

                                                                                 In the company of friends

                                                                                 coffee is very good

                                                                                 and stories about family

                                                                                 and times gone by

                                                                                 widen the sun’s warmth

                                                                                 on cold winter days.

                                                                                Yeats was right.

                                                                                Frost, too.

                                                                                In the deep hearts core.                                                        

                                                                                Let what will be, be...

                                                       The Way I See It

                                                       A bromeliad is just a bromeliad

                                                       until you take a minute

                                                       to look closely at it

                                                       long enough to discover

                                                       something about it

                                                       that makes it unforgettably  red

                                                       and different from all the others.