Next Week, S.F. Labor Book Fair

Next July 19, 2008, I'll be reading poetry at the San Francisco Labor Book Fair. The poets will
read 3:30-5:00. The Book Fair is part of San Francisco Labor Festival: 50 events held from July 5 to 31 in San Francisco and the East Bay on labor including films, videos, talks, theater, concerts, panels, walks of historical labor sites.

LABOR BOOKFAIR
1st Annual LaborFest BookFair & Poetry Reading
July 19 (Saturday) 2008
Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts - 2868 Mission St.,SF

Schedule

Main Gallery (Book Presentations)
9:30 AM-10:45 AM
Fernando Gapasin on: Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice.
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/11121.php

11:00 AM-12:15 PM
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz on: Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico.
http://www.counterpunch.org/dunbar09222007.html

1:15 PM – 2:30 PM
Lauren Coodley on: Putting Labor into California History
http://www.pearsonhighered.com/educator/academic/product/0,3110,0131884107,00.html

Theater 12:00 PM-1:30PM
Lincoln Cushing Presentation and Slide Show on: Art/Works - American Labor Graphic.
http://www.docspopuli.org/ArtWorks.html

1:45 PM-3:15 PM
Bryan D. Palmer on: James P. Cannon and the Origins Of the American Revolutionary Left.
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/83cyh3wc9780252031090.html

3:30 PM-5:00 PM
LaborFest Poetry Reading
With Jenifer Rae Vernon, Julia Stein, Alice Rogoff, Matthew Diaz, Benjamin Balthaser, James Tracy, and others.

Small Gallery
9:30 AM-12:00 Noon
The LaborFest Writers Workshop will conduct writing exercises inspired by the American Life Histories of the WPA Federal Writers’ Project’s Folklore Project. Main themes will be on the industrial and occupational lore of working class people and families. We will explore the customs, cultures, and regional traditions of our diverse backgrounds.

12:30 PM 1:45 PM
Dan Berman on: Death On The Job and the State Of Health And Safety.
http://labornet.org/cgi-bin/ib/cgi-bin/ib.cgi?action=read&id=159

2:00 PM – 3:15 PM
Suzanne Gordon on: Safety In Numbers, Nurse-to-Patient Ratios and the Future of Health Care
http://www.suzannegordon.com
Suzanne Gordon; John Buchanan; Tanya Bretherton

3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Paul D. Blanc, MD on: How Everyday Products Make People Sick
Toxins at Home and in the Workplace
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10650.php

Saving Energry: One Danish Island Does it!

There's a great article in the July 7 and 14 New York titled "The Island in the Wind" by Elizabeth Kolbert about the Dutch island of Samso, where over a decade the 4300 people living changed how they used energy so by 2005 Samso was "producing from renewable sources more energy than it was using."

The people at Samso are conservative farmers mostly--not wealthy, not idealistic, not adventurous. First, the Danish government had a contest to choose one community to sponsor for a renewable energy project. After an engineer along with Samso's mayor drew up a plan to wean the island off fossil fuel, the island won the contest. The Danish federal government funded one person, Soren Hermansen, to be the project's first employee. For years Hermansen worked alone to convince these conservative farmers to rethink how they used energy in discussions and "he brought free beer along to the discussions." More and more people got involved.

People in Samso erected eleven big turbines on land and a dozen micro-wind turbines. The land-based wind turbines produce enough electricity for all 4,300 people on the island. They also erected 10 offshore wind-turbines, and one offshore wind turbine provides electricity for 2,000 homes. So the 10 offshore turbines "were erected to compensate for Samso's continuing use of fossil fields in its cars, trucks, and ferries." The offshore turbines feed electricity back into the energy grid as well as provide the "energy equivalent of all gasoline and diesel oil consumed on the island." So Samso produces more energy than it consumes.

The turbines were financed three ways. The European grants gave money. Cooperatives of Danes buying shares at $360/share also paid for the turbines. And private investors put up money for turbines making 8% on their investments. Farmer Tranberg on Samso took out a $1 million while the Danish government promised him above market price for his power. Now his windmill has paid off, and he's making enough money to retire, but he still farms because he likes it. People in Samso are now making money off their turbines.

Also Samso has three plants which burn biomass to make heat for buildings: in one plant they burn bales of straw; a 2nd also burns straw; a third burns wood chips. The straw used in the two plants comes from wheat stalks the farmers used to burn in their fields. A few farmers also use canola oil to run cars and tractors, but their program using electric cars failed. The people also removed their furnaces, replacing them with heat pumps. They're now working on finding ways to run their cars without gasoline.

What Samso shows is that one very modest federal program spending a tiny amount of money started moblizing of an entire community. One can't sit back and let "the experts" decide our energy future. At Samso they financed the program partially through cooperatives in which people of modest means could invest. The investors are getting excellent returns of 8% on investments. The people of Samso lacked fancy educations but did have common sense. They didn't sacrifice their way of life when they changed their methods of using energy. Instead they became a world famous showcase of how simple technology we have now can reduce our energy bill to 0. People from around the world now come to Samso to study how they did it.

A poem for July 4th

Here's a poem from my new manuscript "The War Years,"

Ben Franklin Nods in San Francisco


Our poets’ cries for peace had been smothered

in the huge hurricane for war that swept across our country.

Still after the U.S. tanks glided into Baghdad in April and

the President declared victory standing on an aircraft carrier,

we six poets gathered on the grass in Washington Park next

to the statue of Ben Franklin in North Beach, attempted

to light our peace candles, saw the wind blew them all out;

still we relit the candles as we spoke, Quaker-style,

how still we stood against the war; I swear I saw

Ben Franklin that old protestor from Quaker Philadelphia nod

approval as all six of us busily began to relight

all our candles; I swear that Lincoln sitting in his

Memorial stood up for a moment to salute us in San Francisco,

swear that Washington in Mt. Rushmore turned his face

westward toward us in praise, they all wanted

their old republic back just as we did in Washington Park

despite all the harsh winds of war we relit and

relit our candles again until all six blazed forth.

A Raft Across the Pacific

Earlier this blog reviewed Marcus Eriksen's book My River Home, a book how Erikensen made a raft out of soda pop bottles and then took it down the whole way of the Mississippi from its source in Minnesota to the Gulf Coast. I heard Marcus speak April 15 at the Santa Monica College Reading Series and then had lunch with him, members of the English Department, Erikesen's fiancee Anna Cummins; her father Paul Cummins, founder of Crossroads and New Roads Schools; members of the English Department; and students. Marcus was fascinating,
and at lunch he told us about his plans to cross the Pacific in a raft he made.

Now he has made another bigger raft out of 15,000 "junked" plastic bottles called the Junk. He and fellow crew member Joel Paschal left Hermosa Beach on "Junk" (the raft's name) on June 1, 2008 heading across 3,000 miles of open ocean for Hawaii. The purpose of the trip is to call attention to the huge amount of plastics in the north Pacific which is killing large parts of ocean fish and birds. Plastics occupy thousands of miles of the Pacific in an area called the Pacific Gyre and when fish or birds eat bits of plastics, they die.

The raft is now three days past Guadalupe Island (at 1-2 knots per hour) off Baja California and headed into the open Pacific Ocean. They should reach Hawaii in the next one to two months. They are posting ship's journal entries, photographs, and their current position via satellite link on the blog.

Anna Cummin's is keeping a blog documenting Marcus's and Paschal's journey across the Pacific:

http://junkraft.blogspot.com/

In the next month we can all tune in to see how the Junk is faring with the Pacific and all the
plastic waste in the Pacific. So check out Anna's blog and rethink how you use plastics.

Changing the Cirriculum

I'm all for changing and innovating the curriculum . My objection to charter schools is that they are a poor way to make needed changes in curriculum because that is not their aim.

I've participated in different efforts to change the curriculum for thirty years. During the 1960s and 1970s there were waves of attempts to change the curriculum in public schools. Most people are aware of the development of African-American studies, women's studies, and Chicano studies classes in these period but that was only part of the changes attempted.

W hen I did student teaching through California State University Los Angeles, I student taught at Lincoln High School, a public school within Los Angeles Unified. The master teacher had two student teachers team teach in each class and encouraged us to try new methods in our 11th grade American history class. We showed our Mexican-American class slides of Mayan, Toltec and Aztec civilizations. We used discovery method and had a text which was a compilation of documents from the 17th century on. We broke up our students in small groups and asked them if they were Pilgrims leaving England for America, what would they bring on their ships? After they worked on this problem for a class, we then showed them the list of items brought from the book. At that same there were a wave of new curricular materials produced including books, slides, and films.

My second semester of student teaching, I was at Pasadena High School teaching high school students an Introduction to Sociology, Anthropology, and Psychology class --an entirely new class. Since I had a background in sociology, psychology, and history, I was given this class. I had use of the excellent film library from Pasadena City College, and remember showing a film on the Bushman in South Africa for the anthropology segment. I much enjoyed teaching this innovative class.

Another innovative program in the 1970s was Poets-in-the-Schools which brought live poets into the public schools to teach creative writing and then at the end of the program produced a small booklet of student work. I thought this an excellent program. By the 1980s one program was beginning to send poets to teach creative writing in the juvenile halls. I taught creative writing to female students at a country work camp. I give my students short stories and p0ems to read--they were really fine critics making good comments about the stories--and then taught them how to write poems and short stories.

Another way that reform was done is California Writing Projects at UCLA and UC Berkeley and eighteen other sites around the state. For thirty years public school teachers go to the university states taking summer and year-long institutes where "every site of the California Writing Project conducts an annual invitational institute where" experienced teachers of writing demonstrate exemplary classroom practices, study research, and write extensively."

Now Poets-in-the Schools has been established in the public schools for 30 years, and young students who started writing there then go on to become adult poets. Many seniors in high school take classes such as psychology, sociology, or anthropology. And multi-cultural text books and teaching methods in public schools have been mainstreamed for decades now. The California Writing Project has a thirty-year history.

What we did was start small-scale projects in public schools or small scale project like the Writing Projects at the universities. I'm not saying very attempt at curriculum reform was a whopping success. Some were and some weren't. But as the small-scale programs prove their successes, they are enlarged to other students in other public schools. But all the efforts were within the public system to give improvements to that system.

What's Wrong with Charter Schools?

Charter schools are proposed as fixes to poorly running public school but they don’t work out that way. I briefly taught in a charter school. Though I met dedicated, hard-working young teachers and lively, likable students, the big problem was lack of understanding of high school English curriculum. Teachers and students don’t choose curriculum but administrators do.

I was hired by a junior college in Los Angeles, and then asked to teach freshman composition, the writing class for all freshman in the nation, to high school students at the Charter School. Since during my last semester in high school I taken two classes at UCLA, I at first thought it good to give college classes to high school students.

I showed up to the Charter School and met my very small class of seven, and they weren’t 12^th grade seniors but to my surprise 10^th graders. They were very good in grammar but I was teaching not grammar but writing. At first their writing was with simplistic sentences and vocabulary, not like college freshman—but like 10^th graders! Very bright 10^th graders but still 10^th graders. Naively I thought that if they and I worked hard, their writing would improve a lot. One student who was straight-A did improve but the others didn't.

I was told that Charter School was a new high school of about 300 students and the highest grade was 11^th grade; they still hadn’t a 12th grade senior class. I was also told that when Charter School developed a 12^th grade, they would have few or no 12^th grade classes on site. The students would do an independent project and be encouraged to take college-level classes while in high school. My freshman composition class was part of this promise.

For the first month I had to learn how to deal with school sites at once: where the parking was, where to put in paperwork at both schools; etc. Then, I discovered my students were already taking 10^th grade English, and my class, held after-school, was their second English class they were taking that semester. They were a little hungry and tired in my class, but I thought that normal as they had already put in a full school day.

What my 10^th grade students writing lacked was 11^th and 12^th grade. While they took freshman composition in their 10^th grade, I have first finished all my high school classes in 11^th and 12^th grade English and history before taking freshman composition at UC Berkeley. At a Fairfax High public school I had taken 11^th grade American history, American literature, and an introduction to British Literature; in 12^th grade I took Advance Placement European history, Senior Composition, and then a choice in my last semester to take World Literature class in high school or at UCLA but I choose UCLA. These classes give any student a vocabulary and knowledge of historical cultural terms—what is the Industrial Revolution or the Age of Enlightenment? who is Shelley?—invaluable for all university-level social science and humanities classes. I had this background before I took freshman composition as a freshman at UC. My Charter students lacked wide exposure to history and literature from 11th grade and 12th grade classes they hadn't taken. The curriculum had given them a class they weren’t prepared to take.

I was told that most of the 11^th graders at Charter School had flunked the previous college-taught composition class. What the administrator was doing was given these students inappropriate college classes setting them up for failure. The administrators seemed to be well-intentioned but had no understanding of English curriculum.

Let me explain. Universities want students who can write essay. I learned in my 12^th grade Senior Composition class and learned vocabulary and ideas in my World Literature. UC gives students an English placement test, and for all of the 20^th century about 60-70% percent pass, taking freshman composition, while 30-40% fail, taking “remedial” composition. The remedial composition is taught at most colleges as two classes; remedial 1 goes over 10^th/11^th grade grammar, paragraphs, and simple writing; remedial 2 is supposed to be equivalent to 12^th grade Senior Composition focusing on the essay. When taught at colleges, the college instructors have little time to focus on literature , forced to quickly teach grammar and writing as these are speeded up classes. Most students don't find grammar interesting, and now they had to learn grammar very quickly. Hopefully the student is taking other college class learning vocabulary, concepts etc.

What the Charter School had done is given Remedial 1 to 11^th grade students, promising it was a college class. It wasn’t. It was college instructors teaching 10th /11^th grade grammar/writing in a speeded-up style inappropriate for 11^th graders. What should the Charter School have done instead? Teach the best 11^th grade history and English classes and add 12^th grade history, literature, and senior composition. Without 12^th grade classes Charter School is shortchanging it students as the school is not preparing them for universities at all. There’s a certain wisdom in the tradition developed over decades.

However, I’m also for innovation. If Charter School wanted innovated they could have had creative writing as an after-school project—something different and fun—with the students producing their own literary magazine. Or the students could take journalism.

A month ago my almost-fifteen year old niece showed me her articles for her school newspaper—she said and I could see that her writing had improved tremendously by that old high school standard, writing articles in journalism class for her school newspaper. She was spending extra hours on fun kind of writing about her trips to New York or about independent record shops. She was learning writing was fun and her published articles were getting her recognition both in the school and the community. It would have been damaging for her to be forced to do Remedial 1—all that extra grammar would have bored her silly as it probably did Charter School students. Journalism was so much better.

Charter School should junk the “so-called” college English classes as they were inappropriate for the students. It wasn't the students fault nor the teachers' fault but administrators had made a mistake. The Charter School’s curriculum was much worse than my public school curriculum at Fairfax High School.

"Write to the City" Showcases The Next Wave of Los Angeles Writing

Last night I attended an amazing event, Write to the City, Los Angele's first Slam on Gentrification, held at Gallery 727, 727 So. Spring St. PM Press, an exciting press out of Oakland, Ca, along with Strategic Action for a Just Economy (SAJE), which fights to improve housing in the Figueroa Corridor just south of downtown, sponsored the reading. The event was aptly held on Spring Street, once the Wall Street of the West then abandoned mostly to homeless now being gentrified. Gilda Haas, Executive Director of SAJE, welcomed us, then introducing mc Gary Phillips, crime novelist of the Ivan Monk series.

The readers spoke of how the city of Raymond Chandler is being gentrified out of existence. The crime writing children of Chandler are speaking out along with organizers recounting true stories from the streets. Who has the right to live in the city now? There were three sets of readers andin each set writers read first followed by organizers. The reading was electrifying before a rapt audience crowded into the space.

Set I started with Larry Foundation, organizer in Southcentral Los Angeles and author of fiction books Angry Nights, Common Criminals, and his latest, Fish, Soap and Bonds, about three homeless in Los Angeles. Foundation's piece talked about a homeless man who slept in a dumpster near a downtown apartment building until gentrification came when he came to a tragic end in a trash compactor. Next Jervey Tervalon, author of the brilliant novel Understand This, read a section from the latest novel he's writing about a single mother struggling to survive with her baby. Crime writer Denise Hamilton followed with her vignette about a reporter trying to interview transvestite homeless camping out near the Los Angeles River.

Next Davin Corona, Director of Organizing at SAJE, told of a black paraplegic living in a downtown slum building whose health is attacked by the worsening conditions in his building until he is forced out, finally dieing on the streets. Last in Set I, Lydia Avila from East L.A. Community Corporation, told of how the taco trucks are under attack in East Los Angeles with police giving citations and one taco truck owner, stressed by the attack on her business, died from a heart attack. In this first set both writers and organizers showed how gentrification actually kills people as well as how hard it is just to survive now in the city.

Between sets DJ's played music a little too loudly as the crowd got drinks, bought books and milled around out on Spring Streets.

In Set II the readers gave an excellent historical context to current gentrification. Crime novelist Gar Anthony Haywood read his essay how gentrification doesn't just pull down buildings and drive out people but also destroys communities going back to his grand father's time. Poet Luis Rodriguez wowed the audience with his powerful rant telling how for decades working people's communities have been destroyed in East L.A. to build a hospital, freeways, a jail and have also been destroyed in Chavez Ravine to build Dodger Stadium--Rodriquez come off as one angry almost Biblical prophet.

Next Sara Paretsky, famous author of V. I. Warshawski crime novels, read a section from a Warshawski novel where her heroine, evicted from one neighborhood in Chicago, moves to a second only to watch that neighborhood get gentrified showing how the housing problem is nationwide. After Paretsky, Aqulina Soriano from Philipino Worker's Center first shared how old Philipinotown near downtown Los Angeles had workers' hotels which were destroyed and then sang her song about recovering people's history. Lastly, Leonardo Vilchis from Union de Veccinos told how in Boyle Heights the neighbors themselves, mostly women, in the housing project organized successfully to stop gang violence, but then the city destroyed the housing project, evicting 800 families, but Boyle Heights neighbors are again having their walks to make their neighborhood safe.

During the intermission I said hello to Robert Ward, author of the novel Red Baker and scriptwriter for such TV shows Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice, who read in Set III, and also said hello to one of my Santa Monica College students Gabriela.

Unfortunately, like Cinderella I had to disappear after Set II, and missed set III, but the event did showcase a powerful new wave of writers in Los Angeles along with the organizers working heroically to get jobs and decent housing for people in this city. Write to the City gave us the next wave of Los Angeles writing showing us what's going on now in the city. Phillip Marlowe's descendants are alive on the streets fighting for justice; these organizers and writers told the stories how what's its like now to be on the streets of the city.

Read Gilgamesh

I finished reading Herbert Mason's 1972 version of Gilgamesh and thought it not just the very best epic poem I've ever read but one of the best pieces of literature I've read in a long long time--and the poem is 6000 years old from Iraq and is the origins of world literature! It is about great friendship of the tyrant Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the death of the best friend Enkidu, Gilgamesh's search for immortality, and the taming of the tyrant Gilgamesh.

Mason's version was about 77 pp all in modern English--no archaic language at all. Then I got fascinated by Gilgamesh to get Stephen Mitchell's new version also in modern English published in 2004--Mitchell's version is a little longer, with material that wasn't in Mason--137 pp. Mitchell's long introduction is fine. I would recommend both versions, and both are in the Los Angeles Public Library. Oh, the earliest Gilgamesh texts are found on clay tables from 2100 bce, but around 1200 a poet-scholar priest named Sin-leqi-unninni in Babylon revised the old stories into what's is now called the Standard Version, and scholars use this version for their translations.

So why is Gilgamesh wonderful? The poem is the beginning of both Arabic and Western literature. The poet pulls us back into an ancient world where the Gilgamesh poet deals with totally modern topics: how to how to be civilized, how to live in cities, how not to be a tyrant ruler. The poem gives us a startling view into ancient Iraq which knew all about tyrants ruling the city as Gilgamesh in the poem's beginning is a tyrant:

The city is his possession, he struts
through it, arrogant, his head raised high,
trampling its citizens like a wild bull.

The epic is non-macho and non-Puritanical with great erotic poetry. Since the people of Uruk are suffering under Gilgamesh's tyranny, they pray to the Gods who fashion a second hero Enkidu to balance Gilgamesh and to give the city peace, so this poem is about taming the tyrant. In the beginning Enkidu is the wild man of the forest living with his animal friends the gazelle, antelope and deer. He's naked with hair covering his body. He's a Mesopotamian eco-warrior, freeing his animal friends from the human hunter's traps, but he's causing the hunter ruin--this poem is on the side of humans, on the side of the city. The hunter goes to Uruk, asks Gilgamesh for help, who tells him to go to the Temple of Ishtar, the love goddess (like Venus), and ask for help of the priestess Shamhat. He does so.

Shamhat in her way is the heroine. She lies naked near Eniku, using her love arts in great erotic poetry to seduce him and teach him about love and women. She teaches him human language, cuts his hair, gives him human clothing, leads him to a shepherd's hut where he eats human food for the first time, eating bread and drinking beer. There she cuts his hair and when "he rubbed/sweet oil into his skin, and became/fully human." the part-animal Enkidu becomes fully human. For the Gilgamesh poet, eroticism is part of being human.

In other epics the hero goes off to battle dragons or conquer cities; yes, Gilgamesh and his best friend Enkidu do have great adventures where they vanquish Humbaba and the Bull of Heaven--the adventures passages are gripping, taking us into mysterious worlds. But this is not just a terrific adventure story because Gilgamesh is a tyrant forcing the adventure for the wrong reasons--because he wants to gain fame and because he thinks the young men of his city are Uruk are too soft. Gilgamesh manipulates the elders of Uruk into agreeing with the will--his actions calling up memories of all tyrants leading their cities into adventures and wars that end in ruin.

For the heroes winning battles only brings disaster. When Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the Humbaba who is the guardian spirit of the Cedar Forest, they do wrong because they kill the spirit appointed by the Gods to guard the Cedar Forest. Humbaba did not harm them but they invaded his territory. Like good imperialists everywhere, the two chopped down the huge trees of the Cedar Forest to bring home the cedar trees as booty. Back in Uruk the goddess Ishtar falls in love of Gilgamesh. She tries to seduce him with promises of all the blessings she will bring him, but now Gilgamesh is so arrogant he rejects, scorns and insults Ishtar, listing how she injured all her other lovers.

Ishtar goes screaming to her father God Anu, gets him to put the Bull of Heaven on earth in punishment for Gilgamesh.Two hundred warriors die fighting the Bull until Enkidu kills it. As punishment the Gods have Enkidu die from illness, leaving Gilgamesh heartbroken. He tears out his hair, destroying his royal robes, going from the city "into the wilderness/with matted hair, in lion skin." Gilgamesh's adventures have left him lost alone with the most terrible loss. Now that Iraq war has gone on for five years losses are mounting, and this poem is about losing one's closest friend--Gilgamesh's laments after loss of his best friend are of stunning beauty. Gilgamesh gets not fame not glory from his adventures but utmost ruin for him.

Gilgamesh's loss of Enkidu is just the beginning of his learning how not to be arrogant but to be human. He roams the wilderness looking for Utnapishtim, who survived the flood and is immortal so he can bring Enkidu back from the dead. In his travels he meets the woman tavern keeper Shiduri who tells him he will never find eternal life: "Humans are born, they live, then they die; that is the word that the gods have decreed." Gilgamesh can't hear her. He rejects her good advice to enjoy such human pleasures as savoring food, having music and dance fill his house, loving his child and his wife--"that is the best way for a man to live." The women in these poems always give good advice about being human.

Gilgamesh does make it across the Waters of Death to met Utnapishtim, who tells him how the Gods enabled him to survive the flood. Gilgamesh never learns any secret of eternal life, returning empty handed to Uruk. But as he looked at Uruk, he no longer mourns his lost friend, but stands in awe of the great city and in awe of the great works human hands have done. He walks on the great walls of Uruk:

observed the land it enclosed: the palm trees, the gardens,
the orchards, the glorious palaces and temples, the shops
and marketplaces, the houses, the public squares.

Gilgamesh is now content with his great city, accepting his human lot to be a responsible ruler there, and now fully human. The poem introduces us to the arts of civilization in ancient Sumer which was the world's first civilization. The poem shows how macho men are humanized, a concept that is totally relevant today. We still need to go to Gilgamesh, to ancient Sumer, to learn the arts of civilization.

M. Daum wrote the stupidest op-ed in today's LA Times

A particularly stupid op-ed article appeared in 5-25-08 Los Angeles Times by one M. Daum who is tired of baby boomer reunions. Daum calls herself "a member of Generation X," a term which I always thought was a pop media cliche, and refers to Generation Y, yet another pop media cliche term. And do we have a pop media Generation Z yet? I hope not.

As a member of the '60s generation, I'm not what Daum calls "baby boomer," yet another pop media term used to sell goods. I haven't listened to classic rock for decades, and get rid of all those old albums about 15 years ago. To tell the truth, I never liked the Rolling Stones much anyway, thinking them hypocrites who could rock.

I did love roots American music featured at the Ash Grove in the 1960s, and missed the Ash Grove reunion a few months back at UCLA. But Daum is too much emeshed in pop media cliches to have bothered with the Ash Grove which showcased great American music--blues, bluegrass, Appalachian folk-- in the 1960s to a new generation. The only problem with the Ash Grove reunion is I missed it and it should have been better publicized. Ed Pearl, please have another reunion so I can go!

Daum kvetches about how her generation was "carving out its collective identity largely concerned with our role as the victims of any number of boomer-imposed crimes" like some right-wing Fox TV host. She lists "dwindling Social Security, fearsome divorce statistics, AIDS as the death rattle of the free-love party." Social security is not "dwindling" except in right-wing scare stories--it's a very successful program of the 1930s generation. She should put a lot of the blame for the soaring divorce tactics on her generation and stop sounding like the crybaby of the week.

As for AIDS, blaming that on "boomers" makes her sound like a right-wing revivalist. Her generation did its bit for spreading AIDS, so she should stop wringing her hands as if she were a virgin goody two shoes who came too late to the party. If she's serious about how she--or her ten friends--tried to make a collective identity as victims of non-existent boomer crimes, they are to be pitied as fools.

She doesn't like the movie "The Big Chill," but I didn't either. So what! She complains that most of her peers who have "crushing student debt and a prohibitively expensive housing market preclude solipsistic weekends in that kind of square footage" of a movie like "The Big Chill."

Blaming crushing student debt on baby boomers is incredibly ignorant. Actually, the military build-up in the 1980s Reagan presidency began a systematic defunding of higher education--both federal and state governments have defunded higher education--which has lasted for 27 years now! Blame Reagan Republicans! Blame all the Republicans and their ghastly military budgets and all the Democrats who go along with them! At least get your facts right.

As for Daum complaining about the housing market, she shows ignorance of why its so expensive: private developers dominate the market nationwide, wanting the highest profits. The federal government only briefly in the 1930s-early 1950s built public housing, but the Red Scare stopped public housing in Los Angeles. If you want more affordable housing in this country, we need to fight for decent government regulation of mortgage market, low cost federal mortgages like the World War II veterans got, and subsidized public housing.

What I'm tired of is decades of foolish commentators like Daum who mouth the most lifeless most ignorant pop media cliches and the most flawed right-wing analyses. Now that we know that the cute right-wing analyses lead to a bankrupt U.S. government, the Daums of the world aren't cute but really really boring.

LA Unified Abandons Locke High School Again

There's a particularly terrible editorial in Sunday, May 25, 2008, Los Angeles Times praising how Los Angeles Unified School District is abandoning Locke High School, a school with a lot of problems a poor area of Southcentral Los Angeles. The only thing the newspaper gets right is the school district has abandoned Locke High for decades, and does say that "several years ago, dedicated teaches drew up a plan to transform the school. Approved by the local district, it then disappeared within the central office."

While the central district neglects the school, some teachers show movies rather than teach while others "strive heroically to educate." Of course, given the district's horrific neglect, most students perform poorly on those really absurd mandated tests and many drop out before graduation.

Rather than do anything for Locke, the district has give it over to Green Dot, a private firm with exactly no experience in running a large high school of 2,600. After the school district signed the contract with Green Dot, the district worsened the situation at Locke by cutting the security force in half: "classroom fights became frequent, and teachers' calls for help went answered." I find that quite horrifying how the district in fact set up the conditions for increased fights by ignoring the needs of both students and teachers at Locke. Don't blame it on the students but the district. Don't blame it on the students but blame it on the Los Angeles Times, which ignored the situation for years. Don't blame it on the students but blame it on the people of Los Angeles who ignored the situation for years.

The editorial makes a long list of reforms that Green Dot wants to do, but the district if it had wanted could have done each and all of these reforms decades ago. What of the students bring big problems to the Dot-run school, they will be expelled. A public school system in a democracy should educated all the children not give life rafts to a few, abandoning the rest.

I started teaching for Los Angeles Delinquent and Abandoned kids program in the 1970s, tutoring teenager at Boys Republic Silverlake who had been arrested and put in a court placement, ran a small classroom for delinquent boys at Optimist Homes for Boys in Highland Park, and taught creative writing at Camp Scott, a country workcamp for teenager girls. My students were bright, willing to learn, did well in a small-class situation, never gave me any security problems. The girls in lock-up--Camp Scott was a jail--when given poems did excellent analysis, and wrote fine poems and stories. These kids had more problems 90% of those at Locke, and were teachable if the teacher really tried to teach. I also worked as a teaching assistant at Garfield High School teaching 16-years who read at the 1st grade level how to read better. For decades the central school district could have reached these teenagers and children but didn't.

The central school district by allowing charters to try to take care of its problems is increasing the abandonment of its students and teachers. The school district is admitting that they can't make any improvements in the abysmal performance of schools like Locke so is washing its hands of even trying. It's not, as the Times says, a "refreshing" development but a horrifying one.

What I'm Reading: Gilgamesh

Right now I'm reading the epic Gilgamesh, verse narrative by Herbert Mason (1972). Gilgamesh is the world's first great epic hero from 3000 b.c. Iraq--before Homer, the Bible, Virgil.The beginning is wonderful:

Gilgamesh was king of Uruk
A city between the Tigris
and Euphrates rivers
in ancient Babylonia.
Enkidu was born in the Steppe
Where he grew up among animals.
Gilgamesh was called a god and a man;
Enkidu was an animal and man.
It is their story
of their becoming human together.

The epic is about the great friendship between Gilgamesh and Enkidu who go on adventures together where Enkidu dies, so it is about loss of one you love. Then Gilgamesh searches the world for immortality which he never finds, so he returns to his home city of Uruk, which really was in ancient Sumer, to be human. I love the last line: "of their becoming human together"--not half God, not part animal but human.

By the way, I've been researching the history of ancient Sumer, the world's first civilization which is between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Sumerians discovered agriculture irrigation, had the first agricultural surpluses, built the first cities, had the first writing which they inscribed on clay tablets, invented the first schools, invented mathematics, astronomy, medicine, had the first medical textbooks. So, of course, ancient Iraq would also have the world's first epic in Gilgamesh.

The world came to Sumer to learn the arts of civilization including epic poetry. Scholars from the British Society of Biblical Archeology rediscovered the epic on clay tables in the ruins of ancient Ninevah in Iraq. Gilgamesh Tablets inscribed with Gilgamesh have within the last 100 years been discovered not just in Nineveh (Iraq) but also in Megiddo (Palestine), Ugarit (Syria), and Boghazkoy (Turkey)--all over the Middle East.

As I get more into the epic, I'll post more about it.

Our Organic Garden

My brother and I have started an
organic garden in my mother's backyard. He has some gardening experience as he did the digging for two large vegetable gardens in the past while I had exactly none. To the left is our beginning herb garden- thyme on the very left, then sage, shallots--two different kinds--then basel on the far right. To the north of the basel is radishes. To the north west of the radishes is strawberries. In other parts of the garden in the box we have cilantro, cucumbers, and parsley which had been planted by the gardener Heriberto--he started it and then my brother and I expanded it.

Since I was totally inexperienced I got a lot of books out of the library to read. Two were most helpful: Pat Welch's Southern California Gardening and Ann Whitman's Organic Gardening for Dummies. I'd recommend these two for the total beginner. A lot of the gardening books said it was important to test your soil, but Whitman gave easy
instructions to test soil drainage which we did.

My brother dug a 1 foot hole which we filled with water. Then we watched how quickly the water evaporated from the hole: less than ten minutes the soil drains to quickly and greater than four hours the soil drains too slowly. Our water drained in a
half water so the soil was fine for drainage. Doing this small
experiment reminded me of junior high school science class.

We got organic potting soil from Home Depot; my brother had dug up the soil twice, so then he mixed in the potting soil into the soil from the ground. We mostly got seedlings from local nurseries but carrots, radishes and zuchinis we planted from seeds. Once the seedlings were up, we added some organic fertilizer around the new plants. My brother is watering.

By the way I made a big mistake by throwing all the radish seeds into the ground and not spacing them out like the instructions on the back of the seed packet said. I will never do that again! So radish plants grew up in a thick mass--very pretty but the book said they would die if they weren't thined about 2-4 inches apart.

So I got down and started weeding raddish plants. I'm learning best by my stupid mistakes like with raddishes. Next time I'll follow the instructions exactly. Later we want to add compost, and I'm going to a workshop run by the city of Los Angeles on how to compost May 18th.

Small Press Book Fair in Santa Monica

I'll be reading at 2:10 this Saturday at the Third Annual Small Press Book Fair at the Church in Ocean Park along with about 25 small presses and writers. It's a rare chance here in Los Angeles to see what all these presses are doing, hear a lot of new work, and check out new and upcoming writers

The Church in Ocean Park hosts an expansive day of

 writers, poets, and publishers, and finding out about
 new releases from over 25small presses.
    
 Saturday, May 10, 2008       10:30-5:00 pm 

 Publishers will be selling books throughout the
 whole day. Every hour will begin with a short period
 of poetry and spoken word readings hosted by Peggy Dobreer.
 
 Presses and writers taking part in the Book Fair

 Julia Stein 2:10
 DVD
 Video: Alexis Krasilovsly, Poetry Flash
 More presses and writers to be announced.
   
  Admission by donation at the door.
 
 Church in Ocean Park
235 Hill Street on the northeast corner of Hill &
 2nd in Santa Monica 
 
 The Church is wheelchair accessible.    
Bus accessible by the MTA #33 & Big Blue Bus #s 1, 2, & 8. 
 The church has a small parking lot on the north side of the street between 2nd & 3rd Sts. 
  Meter parking, 1/4 block west of Main St., $.75/hr
 to 10 hours & free parking from 4th St. east
 
Contact Fred Whitlock at 310-828-3951 for more information.

A Poet's Seder

Last Saturday, April 26th, I participated in a Poet's Seder, a retelling of the exodus of Jewish slaves from ancient Egypt using poetry, at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, California. In Beyond Baroque’s lobby, we saw Rick Lupert, the organizer of the seder, and his colleagues set up a feast including wine, juice, Passover matzah, macaroons, gefilte fish. I dove in and sampled the excellent gefilte fish as well as received my copy of the Passover Haggadah, the book Rick had published which had poems by 36 poets from around the world interlaced with elements of the Passover seder.

In the auditorium Rick, the organizer of the excellent website Poetry Superhighway, poured either wine or juice in our paper cups to start our poetry seder and then we individually made the blessing over the wine. Then he and his colleague handed out hand wipes so we could wash our hands and say the blessing over hand washing.

In the seder tradition the youngest person present asks four questions starting with, “Why is this night different from all other nights?” The first poet to read was Ellen Maybe reading “The Four questions” a lovely poem with Whitmanesque long lines about a family moving from anxiety to serenity as the “family sits shivering for a week, trying to make forgiveness a verb.” Lynne Bronstein in her poem about the four questions “Kasha’s,” gives warm memories of family Seders including a friend observing “that he never saw my mother/so happy as when she sang at Passover.”

Next Pam Ward read “Passover Blues” about her “runaway slave roots/roof jumpin’ fools/ who’d rather rot/ than be tied” mixing up the blues, runaway slaves, and the Passover exodus. For the plagues that Moses rained down on pharaoh in order to convince him to let the Jews go, Claudia Handler gave us her scary poem “Upon Your House” telling us what terrible plagues she will send at us. I read my poem “Miriam’s Song’ which tells when Moses was sending the plagues how his sister was busy sweeping up the mess. Rachel Kahn gave her personal retelling of “dayeinu,” a traditional song that tells what would be enough to free us from Egypt.

Then Rick handed out matzah so the whole audience could read the traditional unleavened bread. For the festive meal we eat on Passover, Elizabeth Iannuci read “At Dinner" about the trials and joys of a festive meal with “yam-fisted toddler’s sticky-lipped whispers” followed by Laurel Ann Bogen reading David Gershator’s from “Seder.” Then Larry Colker’s read ‘Visitation," his poem whichis a lovely evocation about the opening of the door and offering of a cup of wine for the prophet Elijah: “opening the door/is such a steadfast gesture; / a silver cup of sweet, purple wine/is such a heartfelt offering.” For the giving praise of the 4^th cup of wine Scott Sonders in his poem “Enosh Introduces Idolatry” praised God.

We found the hidden matzah and then repaired to the lobby for more drink and food. Only a small number of poets from the anthology A Poet’s Haggadah read as the anthology has 36 poets in this marvelous poetic response to the seder and Passover.

You can order the book A Poet’s Haggadah from http://www.poetseder.com/

Janet Fitch at Santa Monica College

Next Tuesday, May 6, 11:15-12:35 acclaimed novelist Janet Fitch will read at Santa Monica College
Arts Complex 214. Free.

I will do the introduction!

Fitch has written two wonderful novels, White Oleander, and Paint It Black. White Oleander deals with a mother, an dedicated poet who winds up killing her ex-boyfriend, and her daughter who is forced to survive in the foster care system of Los Angeles. Ophrah picked the novel for her book club which helped make it a bestseller. Later the novel was made into a Hollywood movie. Paint It Black is about two young artists who find themselves and each other in the Los Angeles punk scene of the 1980s. A generation of young artists included myself performed at these clubs, spaces, etc..

Fitch is a third-generation Angeleno who went to Fairfax High School. She's one of the leaders of a new generation of novelists and poets born and raised in California who treat the state as basis for their writing. She writes stories that only natives can write. One of my students who also survived L.A.'s awful foster care system said Fitch got it exactly right. She brilliantly tells how young people struggle to survive in hostile environments of post-Reagan California.

Tree Hugger Goes to the Gulf War

After hearing Marcus Eriksen speak at Santa Monica College's excellent literary series, I just read his marvelous book: Marcus Eriksen’s My River Home a Journey from the Gulf War to the Gulf of Mexico. His book adds to the growing list of Gulf War and Iraq War soldier memoirs. Eriksen’s book, published in 2007, interweaves two stories:his1990 service in the Marines in the Gulf War and his 2003 trip down the whole course of the Mississippi River on a raft he made out of soda pop bottles. Yes, he made a raft out of soda pop bottles! He endangered his life on the Mississippi in order to regain humanity he felt he had lost in the Gulf War

Early on in his service Eriksen’s Marine buddies call him “tree hugger” for making comments about the environment. He grew up near New Orleans in a blue collar family, exploring with his friends the Louisiana swamps, playing with dangerous snakes and collecting snakes and reptiles. He joined the Marines because he was inculcated with dreams of being a warrior—the book is very good how these media fantasies shape teenager blue collar boys—and also because he wanted the G.I. education benefits. He shows how the military used the boys’ idealism to do good to recruit them.

What’s fascinating is that of Eriksen’s two journeys, the raft trip down the Mississippi was more dangerous, took more bravery and more persistence. Eriksen and his Marine friends never saw combat in the Gulf War; Eriksen conveys the landscape of polluted hell in Kuwait: “Black clouds suffocate the sky. Specks of oil rain down on us and make us filthy.” He and the other Marines had to survive the filth, the boredom, the heat, and the loss of innocence. They spent their time looting corpses and collecting souvenirs. He interweaves the Gulf War stories with stories of rafting down the Mississippi, pulling the raft around logs when the river at first is a tiny stream, often feeling defeated by the slow moving river in Minnesota, almost getting run over by barges numerous times.

With the eye of a naturalist he later developed getting a Ph.D. in science education at USC, Eriksen notes that Iraqi soldiers often had the same equipment made by U.S. and British arms manufacturers and sometimes even better equipment for desert fighting. The boy who once was amazed by the bounty of nature and who once collected reptiles now collects machine guns and other weapons in Kuwait. What offends his warrior pride is his country’s arms manufactures were selling to both sides, endangering himself and his buddies. What begins to restore Eriksen’s spirit in his country is meeting with so much generosity on the river from Boy Scouts, river rats, fisherman, and townspeople from the towns he docks nearby.

What affects Eriksen the most is his four visits of the Highway to Death, the road from Kuwait to Basra, Iraq, where 500 vehicles of fleeing Iraq soldiers were killed by the U.S. Air Force. The landscape full of dead bodies would “resurface in our dreams of Kuwait and to thwart our search for reason and the return of humanity to our hearts.” After the war Eriksen felt used, manipulated, so he isolated and cut himself off from others, buried himself alive in books. He writes with the mature perspective of someone who looks back at his younger selves able to be critical and humble.

What begins to restore his spirit is going down the river, hanging out with generous people on the river in their homes or at bars, revisiting his country’s history in museums and tours of historical sights in St. Louis or Memphis or or Vicksburg or a host of towns. He gains a feeling of confidence that he can master the river and a sense of belonging to his country and seeing once again the goodness of his county people. He becomes a man with a heart not in the Gulf War but on the Mississippi. The stories of the Mississippi are wonderful, updating Mark Twain's view of the river. Eriksen has written a fine tale of going home to the river of his childhood to find redemption.

March from Hollywood to the Port to Get a Raise

A group including actors, janitors, longshore workers and other working people will march 28 miles April 15-17 in Los Angeles to get better jobs in our city. They symbolize 350,000 workers in Los Angeles from screenwriters to janitors to longshore workers to actors whoare fighting in unions this year for a decent wages and to keep out of poverty, so they have organized a march for decent jobs from Hollywood kicking up with Screen Actor's Guild actor Esai Morales and AFTRA member Jason George speaking at a 4/15 rally at LaBrea Tar Pits and ending three days later with a rally at the port of Los Angeles. jThe ILWU (longshore workers) drill team will lead the march. Los Angeles needs a raise! People will walk twenty eight miles from Hollywood to San Pedro to start getting that raise!

For more information see http://www.hollywoodtothedocks.org/about.asp

No Paper No Plastic

So for six months I've struggled to eliminate paper and plastic bags from whenever I go shopping, and I feel like a recovering addict finally getting over the addiction.

I finally realized that the only way eliminate paper/plastic was to BREAK THE HABIT by keeping my own recyclable bags in my car trunk: for grocery shopping a big multi-cultured plastic bag, a backpack, a white string bag, a black cotton bag from Washington D.C. art museum, and about 5 Trader Jo's large paper bags. I grocery shop every week for 4 people, and we eat home almost every meal plus having regular lunch/'dinner parties at home, so I weekly bring in a lot of groceries, needing about eight bags to haul it all in. I developed this new habit of hauling in my bags whenever I entered the grocery store. As my mother said, life is about habits, and I developed my new habit.

The one problem was fruit and vegetables which demanded little plastic bags. I've learned that plastic bags are toxic to birds--birds as well as animals and fish eat them and die. Thousands of plastics bags wind up in rivers or oceans. For two months now I've been reusing the old plastic bags--stuffing the little plastic bags into the big bags in my car trunk--so I'm outfitted for shopping. But I discovered reusablebags.com, a website that sells organic cotton produce bags, so I ordered 13 of those. Now I can go shopping with my reusable small cotton produce bags as well as my large recyleable bags.

What I discovered is that now that I'm not storing paper/plastic bags in my kitchen drawers, I'm freeing up space in the kitchen--one nice benefit of debagging.

Yeah, I still drive a car but that's for another blog.

Author Rafts Down Mississippi on Soda Bottles!

Santa Monica College has had a wonderful literary series this spring.

The next speaker (information below) is Gulf War veteran Marcus Eriksen will discuss his unusual journey down the Mississippi River on a homemade raft kept afloat by empty soda bottles and a lot of ingenuity. Free. Call (310) 434-4303. So Erikesen is recreating Mark Twain's voyages down the Mississippi over 150 years ago Twain describe in his book Life on the Mississippi. I'm wondering how the Mississippi has changed in 150 years? What is it like now to go a long distance now. When I was in New Orleans I took a short tourist steamboat ride down the river, but a long trip on a raft is different.


Erikesen will speak
main campus of Santa Monica College, Concert Hall, 11:15-12:30 pm
April 15, Tuesday

Parking is bad on campus, so best way to get there is park a few blocks away to walk in
or park about a mile away and take the Big Blue Bus on Pico which stops right in front of the campus.

Last weekend, a publication party and a bookstore wake

I'm reading Sara Forth's Eve's Bible: A Woman's Guide to the Old Testament because Sara is my friend, a feminist theologian, and published one of my poems "Miriam's Song," in her book. Sara had her book party last Sunday in at a spectacular wooden house in Brentwood full of fantastic folk art. I read along along with Sara, of course--the star--and also Terry Wolverton, leading L.A. poet/novelist/writing teacher; and Dinah Berland, who read from Hours of Devotion: Fanny Neuda's Book of Prayers. Fanny Neuda was a 19th century German Jewish woman who was the first Jewish woman to write the first full-length book of prayers; Dinah has rendered them into English, helping bring Neuda's lovely prayers to our consciousness.

In her introduction in her book to my poem Sara actually was the first person in history who understood the poem! I was touched. I mean I've read from my book Shlulamith, which has poems in the voices of biblical women, and people just don't understand it. Some poetry audiences often think I'm some kind of fundamentalist for writing poems inspired by biblical woman--odd. Sara said,

"When contemporary circumstances required specificity the Bible lacked, the rabbis would start with a biblical story and then, using its characters or context, spin a new tale that addressed the question at hand. Modern women of many religious persuasions have used the form to create everything from short parables to book-lengths works. Here is one example of what biblical Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza calls a 'narrative amplification' of an existing story 'Miriam's Song' by Julia Stein.'

When I read that, I nearly cried, as that was the first time in four years that my book has been out that someone actually understood it. Sara's party was splendid, with the interweaving of voices who read; Sara and her family's great hospitality; and the breathtaking house with a skylights over a two-story living room. Sara's book is terrific midrash of the Bible, bringing the Bible alive to us once again, helping us connect, explore and understand.

After the publication party, I then went to the closing party for Dutton's bookstore Brentwood. As I arrived the courtyard was packed to the rafters, people on the stairs, and more people on the balcony. Dutton's staff gave talks at the microphone including Doug Dutton himself who has just been one of the most terrific most wonderful supporters of writers in Los Angeles for decades now. Doug has two loves: books and music. He's going to teach music at LACC, Santa Monica College, and Colburn School of Music, but he and his bookstore will be missed by thousands of us.

Then poet Scott Wanberg who worked at Dutton's for many years read a marvelous poem about the store. Then former mayor Richard Riordan said a few words at the mike how in the Irish tradition this party was a wake for a bookstore--and a great wake it was.