Waterfalls

Fall is starting here in Toronto, but there's still plenty of time to get out before it gets cold! Above, Amado enjoys the waterfalls at High Park (and a strawberry). It was raining, but that didn't make a difference.

Santana - Soul Sacrifice - Woodstock 1969

The older I get the more I love this clip. Carlos and the band are on mescaline. The audience is skinny dipping. A hippie is reenacting the crucifixion. And at 7:45 a naked man is carrying a sheep.

Man, they don't do shows like this anymore.

El Mirage

View Larger Map

Google maps is so cool. Here is a 360 degree street-level view of El Mirage, California. Out in the desert where I grew up. You can also drag the street view icon along any blue-outlined road to see what you can see. Rad.

Trane's Birthday

The more I listen to John Coltrane, the more amazed I am. This man was certainly in touch with something that most humans only rarely grasp--and whatever it was, it remains essential for our survival.

More honest than any political correspondent.

Andrew Sullivan blogged on this interview with hip-hop artist DMX and I found it amazing --- he must be kidding, right? Here you go....

Interviewer: Are you following the presidential race?

DMX: Not at all.

You’re not? You know there’s a Black guy running, Barack Obama and then there’s Hillary Clinton.

His name is Barack?!

Barack Obama, yeah.

Barack?! Barack. What the f**k is a Barack?! Barack Obama. Where he from, Africa?

Yeah, his dad is from Kenya.

Barack Obama?

Yeah.

What the f**k?! That ain’t no f**kin’ name, yo. That ain’t that ni**a’s name. You can’t be serious. Barack Obama. Get the f**k outta here.

You’re telling me you haven’t heard about him before.

I ain’t really paying much attention.

I mean, it’s pretty big if a Black…

Wow, Barack! The ni**a’s name is Barack. Barack? Ni**a named Barack Obama. What the f**k, man?! Is he serious? That ain’t his f**kin’ name. Ima tell this ni**a when I see him, “Stop that bullshit. Stop that bullshit” [laughs] “That ain’t your f**kin’ name.” Your momma ain’t name you no damn Barack.

Farm Boy

Yesterday we took a trip out to Everdale Organic Farm for their annual Carrot Festival. I actually didn't see many carrots, but we all had a great time roaming the open spaces. Amadisto most of all.

More farm pictures here.

Road To Ingwavuma Trailer

Maybe it's because I just had to cancel a 10-day trip to South Africa (I was to leave Oct. 1), or because this film features my favourite musician Carlos Santana...or because it also features one of my favourite leaders, Nelson Mandela, but for whatever reason I found this trailer very moving...

Twisted

I think I may have a crush on Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live. Is that wrong?

Who Said I Didn't Like High School Football?

Thanks Sharon for sending me this brilliant clip. (I hope it's ok to post it!) Sharon's son Dylan (#81) and my nephew Ty (#80) both play for the Serrano Diamondbacks freshmen team. This clip is from the Diamondbacks victory over Paraclete last week. I would LOVE to see one of their games! (It's especially heartening to note that they must have retired my number 61 from the '78-'79 season, because I don't see it anywhere!) Go Diamondbacks!!!

Cleveland Browns

I think this year I'll be a Cleveland Browns fan. Not that they are likely to be winners, but Cleveland's a Great Lake town, like Toronto. They're one of the old-time NFL teams, which I like. And their uniform fashion is minimalist, and uniform fashion is high among the reasons I like a football team. Plus, I like brown. Orange ain't bad either. And, my Mom's parents are from Cleveland too.

I also like the Detroit Lions, Seattle Seahawks, Minnesota Vikings, Arizona Cardinals, San Diego Chargers, Philadelphia Eagles, and Pittsburgh Steelers.

I know, a lot of losers in this bunch. So?

New Favourite Food

Pizza! But it's not like he's going to get it that often.

L.A. River

This picture of the L.A. River from The Jimson Weed Gazette brings back many memories of my childhood. I love it and I'm adding it to my Christmas list. You can buy it at East of West LA.

Lazytown en espanol

Amado loves to dance to this one!

Before the World Trade Center

New York from the Staten Island Ferry, 1961. By Edward Ruscha.

Here's the story behind the photo.

Post MelonHeads

Amado was great today during his 2nd professional haircut.

15 Years Ago

Yes, that's me on the right, with my boss Karen on the left. And, oh yeah, there's Carlos Santana in the middle, sitting down for our interview in Washington, D.C.

In the World But Not Of It

I've reviewed Brett Grainger's book on his experience growing up as a fundamentalist for The United Church Observer. You can read my review here.

Brett doesn't quite put the "fun" back into "fundamentalism" as I like to quip, but he does offer a more nuanced, understanding view of those with fundamentalist beliefs than you're likely to see elsewhere -- even while moving beyond these beliefs himself.

From my review:

The lesson of this book is that Christians can become so consumed by their own vision of faith that they become blind to the movement of the Spirit in the world around them. This selective blindness afflicts not only the theologically conservative, but liberal Christians as well. Grainger shows us the value of keeping our eyes and hearts open to the surprising work of God in these times of change.

Happy Birthday Mom!

We never cease to be amazed by you! I will always consider myself really lucky to have you as my mother. Much love, A+W+A

p.s. I stole another one of your photos too!

31 Months Old!

Our little cowboy has 31 moons.

At'ta Boy!

Not much time for blogging these days, though I do snap off a quick tweet now and then, so watch the Twitter box in the right column or go here. (I mean, if you're that fasinated with my life, and who wouldn't be?) And like 100 million other people, I am also on Facebook.

Ok, just time for a quick joke (with apologies to my friend Rudy and a hat tip to Andrew Sullivan):

From Peggy Noonan, Wall St. Journal:

By the way, the best line of the convention so far? Ted Strickland of Ohio, when he echoed the 1988 Democratic convention joke about George H.W. Bush, that he was born on third and thought he hit a triple. Strickland said of George W. Bush that he was born on third and then stole second.

(Yes, that's a picture of lil' W above.)

Daniel Hernandez

Some of you may know I have a long-standing crush on Mexico City, though I don't get to see her often. Former LA Weekly writer Daniel Hernandez does though. He's a young journalist in doing a book on youth culture in Mexico City. I love his amazing blog, Intersections.

Hernandez' picture above is from an anti-delinquent rally in Mexico City ("Be a Patriot, Kill 1 Delinquent" the sign reads). He also has some interesting posts on "Emo Riots" in the capital, and lots of other things you won't find on CNN.

Desert Quest

In the summer of 1985, I drove out to my brother's land in Baldy Mesa, California to seek God alone in the silence of the desert. My model in this quest were the 4th century Desert Fathers, who fled the cities to live with God in the wilderness of northern Egypt and Sinai. And like them, I had no plans to return to my former life. I would stay in the desert until God called me out. (However, unlike the Desert Fathers, I did bring a camera. The picture above is of my desert camp and my faithful '76 Toyota Corolla.)

In the end, my sojourn in the desert only lasted about three days. Scared at night, alternately bored and scared during the day, I gave up and fled to a friend's house in nearby Phelan.

A couple of years later I wrote a paper on my experience, concluding with the sense of failure I carried about the adventure. My history of religion professor, UCSC's venerable Noel Q. King (and here), gave me a great grade and noted that in such exercises, it wasn't chronos time which mattered, but karios time.

Even more years later, Tim Butler (and here) wrote a song about my desert experience and included it on his album, Good. I hope he doesn't mind me reprinting the lyrics:

Mojave Desert

Going to the light to set himself alight
mojave desert
driving in his bug with three dozen cans of spam
mojave desert
may go for a week -- may go for a life
mojave desert

sitting in one place like that old joshua tree there
joining in the space
far light - star light

days pass on his mount - i don't know the count
scorpions scurry
time becomes a stranger as stranger time becomes
scorpions scurry
oscillations made between madness and a gift
"what am I doing?" (thinks) "what am I doing?"

yet there's a constant company
in his singular abide
moving in space
far light - star light

out of all his water - ate up all the spam
voices talking (small) voices talking
over the horizon clouds are rising up
horses running (sees) horses running

drive back in the car
defeat - a failure - a demise
but wasn't he in star light - far light
a smile cracks across his wind-cracked face as he recalls
the way he lost himself / won himself
beheld the light.

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