Now Reading... The Grapes of Wrath

My father-in-law has a ton of great books up sitting up at the cottage just waiting to be read. When I'm there I love to dig into the classics. Last year it was Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. This year, I got into John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. I haven't read it in at least 20 years. What an absolutely stunning work this is.

The Grapes of Wrath is a heartbreaking story written in 1939 about a family of sharecroppers who get kicked off their land in Oklahoma during the Depression by bankers wanting to make more profit by introducing industrial agriculture methods. They go to California in where supposedly "the living is easy," but find that it is anything but.

If it's not already, The Grapes of Wrath should be required reading for all Californians. It's a powerful reminder that there's an awful lot of people of all backgrounds in California descended from those who fled poverty in search of a better life. And there's nothing illegal about that in my book.

We're Back from the Lake

...oops, not that lake, but you know what I mean.

Super Pocoyo

Amado first saw Pocoyo on the little televisions on the airplane to Vancouver. Now I think it's cool too.

Orange Carmen

One of Amado's all-time favourites from Sesame Street.

Orange County's Lost Essence

I love articles like this one by Gustavo Arellano (writer of the provocative column, "Ask a Mexican") on vanishing California, in this case, the orange groves of Orange County. Some of my family from my dad's side have deep roots in Santa Ana / San Juan Capistrano area of what was later named Orange County.

Consider the cult of the orange-crate label. It promoted brands with evocative names such as Esperanze, Mission or Albion during California's citrus era; they're now collector's items, prized for fanciful, idyllic depictions of Old California -- perfect groves, gauzy foothills, flirtatious señoritas. More crucially, this folk art ingrained such romanticized scenes into the American mind, passed off as snapshots of California to inspire the mass in-migrations the state experienced for decades afterward.

Everyone knows that this idealization is a fraud. The insatiable thirst for cheap labor to harvest oranges through the 1960s set us on the course for our current immigration troubles, while naranjeros such as my grandfather faced rampant segregation that in many ways continues (drive while Mexican at night in Newport Beach, and you'll understand). The constant push to extract as much value from property as possible, whether by record sales of oranges at the turn of the century, or by the square footage bought and sold since, is Orange County's truest legacy. Still, I can't help but feel sadness at the demise of our last orchards. The trees should remain as a living monument...

Toronto Propane Depot Explosion

This is what woke Wendy and I up this morning at 4:00 a.m. (No, it's not the sunrise.) Not sure why I can't get YouTube to post to my blog, but click here to watch the video. Go directly to 1:50 in the video to see the big one, and turn your sound up. We saw giant fireballs for more than an hour. Not to mention the sounds were earth shaking.

Here's the newspaper story.

Now Listening... Burning Spear

Burning Spear's Chant Down Babylon is a revolutionary collection of this reggae band's best work. Conscious lyrics, conscious rhythm, conscious beauty and vibe.

The Internet: The Thinking Man's Television

[Photo by Bob DeGraaf]

Fela!

Here's a play I would like to see:

"Fela!," a new Off Broadway musical...a tribute to the Nigerian bandleader and political gadfly Fela Anikulapo Kuti...Mr. Kuti, who died of AIDS in 1997 at 58, was the king of Afrobeat, a musky hybrid of African rhythms and American jazz and funk, and his songs — 15, 20, 40 minutes long — have coaxed many feet to the dance floor. Defiant and irreverent in politics, he also used his music and fame to denounce corruption and ridicule those he called the world’s “vagabonds in power.” That he was repeatedly jailed and beaten for his opposition only quickened his route to becoming a modern African folk hero.

The story revolves around the central tragedy of Mr. Kuti’s life, when 1,000 soldiers stormed his compound in Lagos in 1977 and threw his mother, Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, a prominent activist, from her window; she later died from her injuries. In the musical Mr. Kuti wonders whether he should give up, and he muses mischievously on the idea of himself as a rebellious political leader, a “black president.”

[You can read more here.]

Manny Dreads

See, I'm not the only one worried about the fate of Manny Ramirez' infamous dreads now that he's playing with the Dodgers, who infamously require their players to fashion themselves after the LAPD.

Anything is Possible

...according to ESPN's list of 10 big boxing upsets. But an upset of my East LA homeboy Oscar De La Hoya this Saturday isn't in the cards.

Now Reading... Blindness

This book is as creepy as it sounds. Everyone in the world is going blind. It's going to all turn out alright in the end, right? Right? Interestingly, the other Jose Saramago book I read, Baltasar and Blimunda, was also about vision: a young woman who can see into other peoples' souls when she fasts. I don't know enough about Saramago to know if vision is an ongoing theme in his work, but it would not surprise me.

Aquarium

The Monterey Bay Aquarium is one of the few man-made spaces that approach the sacred for me. My pictures from our visit, including this one from the jellyfish exhibit don't do it justice. There is really nothing like standing before a 40-foot wall of living sea, filled with tuna, salmon, sharks, squid, anchovies - all swimming together amidst the kelp forest. Check it out here, including the live webcams.

Now Listening... Led Zeppelin I

I haven't listened to this album in many years and it's fantastic. It's always been my favourite Zeppelin work. I can't hear this album without being instantly transported back to the first time I heard it in the early 70s, laying on my bed at our house on Valle Vista in Phelan, Calif.

Led Zeppelin I will always be about the groovy feelings of early 70s California to me (especially "Good Times Bad Times" and "Your Time is Gonna Come") and the start of the P*Land skate radicals building our own ramps and shredding the local schools (especially "Communication Breakdown" and "How Many More Times").

Debunking Health Care Myths

I just realized I have another article in Sojourners (Aug. 2008), where I (in theory) debunk conservative myths about universal health care. It goes with a feature on health care by Elizabeth Edwards.

The myths I look at are:

1) Single-payer health care is more expensive.
2) It would raise taxes.
3) Wait times are longer.
4) The government would limit patients’ freedom of choice and dictate to doctors how to practice medicine.
5) People will overuse the system.
6) People won’t have access to services they need.

Here's the article if you would like to read it for yourself.

30 Months Old!

Amado officially turned two-and-a-half the other day. The little kid is getting big! Thanks to my Mom and Irene for this great picture of Amado enjoying a new toy last week in Santa Cruz.

Contrary to Popular Belief...

...this blog has not been completely abandoned! I'm back from Califfornia and getting back into the swing of things. I hope to do some posting soon...including everybody's favourite: vacation pictures!

Near Edwards AFB

Amado Encounters Fish

I'm stealing this picture from my Mom's blog, LLPOF, because I like it! Here's Amado experiencing his first fish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Click to see the bigger size and the amazing school of anchovies flashing through the background! It's great to be in California!

We're Off...

...to Vancouver for the Emerging 2 Where event, and then south to lovely California to visit family! Adios amigos! Hasta luego!

High-Tech Worship

Just in time for my workshop on emerging technologies at Emerging 2 Where.... CBC offers a few quotes by me in this article on religion and technology.

Above, the chapel at M.I.T., 1955.

Poutine

For those like me who like it salty and not sweet, French Canadian poutine could be the ultimate junk food: French fries, topped with fresh cheese curds, and lathered in thick brown gravy. Plus it's vegetarian, so you know it's healthy!

Thank God I live in Canada!

TeleTubbies Meet DEVO

..for Amado

Somebody Stop Them!

Amado proved he's human the other day when he reacted strongly to Ultimate Fighting when I paused to ponder it on the television the other day. For a few seconds he watched the two men beating the crap out of each other in every possible way. Then he started objecting loudly in a way I've never heard before. I am sure if he had the words he would have been yelling, "Those men are going to kill each other! Somebody stop them! Please stop them!"

I turned it off and we went back to his current favourite, Max & Ruby dvds. A much better choice.

Words I Will Never Be Able to Spell

Reincensse
Cornol
truely
Eygpt
Mississiagua

I did manage to memorize "parallel," but the rest are just too dang hard.

~~Hot!~~

Amado accidently had his first exposure to Tabasco yesterday when he ate my tofu dog. I wish you could have seen it. I really do.

A Martini and a Cigarette

Karl Rove: "Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He’s the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

Rove's referring to Obama, and making the case that he's arrogant. So I'm going to take a quick poll here:

How many of you visit country clubs?

And I'm going to agree with Rove that Michelle Obama is beautiful. But how many of you agree that you "know this guy"?

Who knows what the heck he's talking about?

So who's the arrogant one?

E2W Location Tour

I am in Vancouver checking out the locations where our Emerging 2 Where? event will be held July 11-12. Above is St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church where Diane Butler Bass will speak on Friday. On Saturday we will have a day of presentations and workshops featuring Butler Bass, Karen Ward, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Anna Christie, Gary Paterson, and yours truly. Really great locations and the event is shaping up to be something really special too.

The Healer

Even though this rascal has made us sick by bringing home daycare germs, he's still our little healer who brings so much joy and love into our lives. This picture reminds me of the cover of John Lee Hooker's album, The Healer.

By the way, the kid is now 29 months old!

Blindness

I heard a review of the movie Blindness, which opened the Cannes Film Festival this year. Blindness is based on the book by Portuguese writer, Jose Saramago. Not all the reviews are great, but thinking about storyline of the film has kept me up late into the night--and at times terrified at the thought that something like this could actually happen.

In the movie and the book, thousands (perhaps millions) are suddenly stricken by a mysterious contagious blindness. The victims aren't lost in darkness, but in a terrible whiteness. There is a horrible attempt to quarantine those with the disease, but as more and more become blind, society begins to fall apart and an even more horrible sightless, chaotic anarchy takes over.

Imagining what would happen if all the world actually became suddenly blind is chilling. I thought about how I would tie a rope linking Amado, Wendy, and I so we could grope for food and water without the fear of losing each other.

But, of course, the story is an allegory. Maybe a hint reminding us of that which we have already lost sight of. But you don't need me to tell you that.

Swings

Imagine Obama vs. Arnold!

Before the primaries started there was talk of repealing the rule that only those born in the U.S. could be president so that people like Arnold Schwarzenegger could run. If that had happened I would bet my boots he would have gotten the Republican nomination.

Imagine Obama vs. Arnold! Now that would be a race!

They are equals in charisma (though Arnold's not really my type). Each could raise tons of money. Both bring new political directions into their parties. One has (or had) mass. The other has (or had) mass appeal. The debates would have made amazing television.

I'm not sure that the real race is going to be as interesting, but I'm open to being surprised.

(And by the way boys, it's summer so get those trunks on!)

Beautiful Light Tonight

Click to see the larger version.

Oink!

I had a dream last night that each time I eat bacon (I pick up a egg & bacon bagel for breakfast a couple times a week), it turns instantly into pure fat the moment I put it into my mouth. "You might as well be eating a lard sandwich," the narrator of the dream told me.

I'm having trouble interpreting this dream. Can anybody help me figure it out?

My Walk Home from Kindergarten

Here's a little map tracing my walk home from Belevedere Elementary in East LA where I went to kindergarten and part of 1st grade. I'm pretty sure I didn't walk home without my parents most of the time, but I do remember at least a couple times when I walked home with the "big kids" on my block, who probably were in 5th or 6th grade (they made fun of my hippie medallion). I don't think many people would let their little kids walk home alone nowadays. But those, of course, were different times.

Here's a link to the original.

McCain Opens Website

[Sorry, but I thought it was funny. From Daily KOS]

Canada Apologizes for Native Residential Schools

There is no end to the wound that Canada's residential school policy caused First Nations people. Hopefully today's national apology will help some measure of healing to begin. There is still a long way to go.

In the first formal apology ever delivered by a Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper stood in the House of Commons on Wednesday to say sorry to former
students of the government's native residential school program.

"Mr. Speaker, I stand before you today to offer an apology to former students of Indian residential schools," Harper said in Ottawa, surrounded by a small group of aboriginal leaders and former students, some of whom wept as he spoke.

"The treatment of children in Indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history.

"Today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country," he said to applause.

"The government now recognizes that the consequences of the Indian residential schools policy were profoundly negative and that this policy has had a lasting and damaging impact on aboriginal culture, heritage and language," Harper said.

"While some former students have spoken positively about their experiences at residential schools, these stories are far overshadowed by tragic accounts of the emotional, physical and sexual abuse and neglect of helpless children, and their separation from powerless families and communities."

(From the National Post. Also see the Globe and Mail.)

To read some of the sad stories of residential school survivors, see here and here.

The United Church of Canada, where I work, was involved running residential schools for the government along with other religious denominations. The United Church apologized to the First Nations people in 1986 and has continued to make healing and reconciliation with First Nations a top priority, which I think is important to do for an institution that wants to follow in the way of Jesus.

Maukie

Much to my wife's chagrin, I love Maukie the cat. Look, the kitty follows your cursor! Turn your volume up and you can hear purrs. You can get your own Maukie here.

How Hillary Went Wrong

I would have bit the bullet and voted for Hillary had she won the nomination (sorry, but I still have some skepticism about the Clintons from Bill's tenure, and rightly or wrongly, it rubbed off on her). (And yes, I'm voting from Canada.) In fact, I was planning on it. But she didn't win, and The New York Times offers some various perspectives on "what happened." I agree with Ana Maria Cox' assessment below: Hillary's campaign played to old fears and paradigms that many of us have left behind.

Hillary Clinton’s 1998 invocation of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” put her squarely among those Richard Hofstadter classified as practitioners of the “paranoid style of American politics,” those for whom “what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish.”

Barack Obama spoke of a world without these Manichean dualities. He dismissed the notion of “red” and “blue” America. He refused to demonize his preacher or Iran, and painted governance in a palette of grays. Mrs. Clinton could not see anything in terms that were not — it pains me to use this metaphor — black and white.

And similar thoughts from Frank Rich:

Mr. Obama is a liberal, but it’s not your boomer parents’ liberalism that is at the heart of his appeal. He never rattles off a Clinton laundry list of big federal programs; he supports abortion rights and gay civil rights with a sunny bonhomie that makes the right’s cultural scolds look like rabid mastodons. He is not refighting either side of the domestic civil war over Vietnam that exploded in his hometown of Chicago 40 years ago this summer, long before he arrived there.

He has never deviated from his much-quoted formulation in “The Audacity of Hope,” where he described himself as aloof from “the psychodrama of the baby boom generation” with its “old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago.” His vocabulary is so different from that of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain that they often find it as baffling as a foreign language, even as they try to
rip it off.

The selling point of Mr. Obama’s vision of change is not doctrinaire liberalism or Bush-bashing but an inclusiveness that he believes can start to relieve Washington’s gridlock much as it animated his campaign. Some of that inclusiveness is racial, ethnic and generational, in the casual, what’s-the-big-deal manner of post-boomer Americans already swimming in our country’s rapidly expanding demographic pool. Some of it is post-partisan: he acknowledges that Republicans, Ronald Reagan included, can have ideas.

Tibetan Sky Burial....

...and a committee of hungry vultures waiting nearby. This photo is from an amazing collection of pictures by Zhuang Xueben from Tibet in the 1930s. Discovered via (and I keep saying this) one of my favourite blogs, Heading East.

I would not mind being "buried" this way. Better than the commercial North American way.