Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/arichards-gallery/3487306738/

Just turned 75.
As I think about being a year older,
my first thought is
I’m so glad to be alive.
No jive.
On my list of priorities,
breathing is most high,
as I want to take all that I’ve seen,
over the years, with these old eyes,
all the bits and pieces of life
that are memorialized
and analyzed
and crystallized into my being’s archives
and use these experiences
in a constant quest
to stay wise —
because I dare to surmise that there is no point in being 75
if you’re not wise.

At least wise enough
   to know that Fox News
   is to news as Polka is to down-home-funky-blues.
Wise enough to know that “terrorism”
ain’t just something that happened the other day
in the dear old US of A,
that it was a way of life in an earlier day
called the “Good Old Days”
and droning children’s lives away, today
I must say,
is not the pathway to creating better days down the road someday.

   Wise enough to know
   that there often is truth in “We reap what we sow.”
Wise enough to believe
that it’s the epitome of hypocrisy
when champagne is broken to launch new ships
and wine glasses are clinked
and toasts sipped through celebratory lips,
indeed,
while someone gets cited for possessing
or toking a few grains of weed.
We need a little consistency.

   Wise enough to know that, in a world of plenty,
   there should be no such thing
   as hunger
   or a homeless child,
   that political posturing
   like blustering
   and filibustering has no place
   in a world that’s gone mad and wild,
   in desperate need of something like a “timeout” for a while.
Wise enough to know,
after 75 years of being on the scene,
that I can’t just complain about what I’m seeing,
that I have to be counted
and visibly seen
actively trying to change the scenery,
and in order to do so
I have to be wise enough to know
that I’ve got to keep myself strong
and flexible
and able,
understanding that if I don’t move it
I will lose it.
So I have to walk a few miles
a day,
as I age,
and/or bust a move
to a song
with a funky groove
because there’s nothing like dancing
to spark a nice mood
for taking on all that has to be pursued.

I’m digging the age of 75,
grateful that I’m still able
to get out and exercise
and realize
more and more
that life is to be engaged
with a sense of play,
in a spirit of fun,
having come
to know
that there is no better way
to get the job, of making the world better, done.

Next trick.
Making it to 76.

Martin

Everyone, perhaps, has now seen the picture of Martin Richard, the 8 year old boy who lost his life in Boston, holding a sign that says “No more hurting people – Peace.” Oh, if we, as a society, could live in such a caring way.

And these sentiments, expressed by Mr. Rogers, of children’s television fame, have gone viral in cyberspace: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

How true, and I see Martin, even though he has been taken away from us, as one of the “helpers” of the world that Mr. Rogers has painted in our minds as he is already helping me to carry on after the madness at the Boston Marathon.

His sentiments are so simple. So innocent. So child-like. So characteristic, if you will, of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.

If the world is to ever become safer for its inhabitants won’t it happen because people have become more loving? Such thinking is idealistic, I admit, but citizens of the world treating each other in hateful ways sure hasn’t brought about any good old days.

And I’m not talking about getting rid of our armies and our navies and our air and special forces. That would scare the hell out of me in a world like ours where if you let your guard down evil rushes in to do you harm but what if we called on these devices a little less than we do?

Isn’t it true that since World War II we could have avoided so much of our warring? I’ll just go through a few. Korea? Never had to happen. Bay of Pigs? Anti- communist silliness. Vietnam? No way. Dominican Republic in ’65? More anti-red jive. Grenada? Same old same old, with socialism, this time, as the foe. Stomping through Panama chasing Manuel Noriega, our big time drug dealing friend? Big time sin. Desert Storm? Unh unh. Please. Afghanistan and Iraq with its Shock and Awe Show? Illegal as all get out; no way to go.

How many Martin Richards died innocently and needlessly in this barrage of violence?

So why don’t we listen to the soft spoken man who wore a cardigan sweater and a tie and asked our children “Won’t you be my neighbor?” many times before he died.

He once said, “The child is in me still and sometimes not so still” and maybe humankind’s problem is that we have let the child in us slip away — to the point that we can’t give into our better selves and truly explore how to make our world a better place. Perchance we could begin right away, as we move past the frightening bombs that literally destroyed our day, by paying attention to the lessons about love that Fred McFeely Rogers tried to teach us.

Relating to our day to day lives, he had this to say: “Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”

That probably wouldn’t work in our country’s relations with the Koreas and Irans and Syrias of the world as they are not “touchy feely” governments but such thinking as this from the mind of Mr. Rogers might help: “When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed.” If more of us subscribed to such reasoning might we achieve such a way of living?

Of course we’re angry right now, full of feelings of revenge, wanting to take scalps, eager for tit-for-tat, seeking justice for a wrong that has rocked us to our very core. Such is understandable but let’s say we find out who has hurt us and we capture them and they reap what they have sewn. What do we do after that? How do we keep the world’s children safe — and ourselves — after we’ve had our fill of eye-for-and-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth mentality?

As I ponder such a question, this statement from Mr. Rogers resonates solidly with me: “At the center of the Universe is a loving heart that continues to beat and that wants the best for every person. Anything that we can do to help foster the intellect and spirit and emotional growth of our fellow human beings, that is our job. Those of us who have this particular vision have to continue against all odds. Life is for service.”

That should be music to our ears, an impetus for leading us to find ways to honor the likes of exemplary human beings like Martin Richards and Mr. Rogers with thoughts of how we can proceed with our lives, in as reasonable a manner as we possibly can without hurting people. In peace.

What do we possibly have to lose?

Kinya, my granddaughter

It was already a beautiful day as I observed the sun shining through the window and then I clicked into Facebook where these words brightened my outlook even more: “Today, I marched with his son to symbolize that the struggle is not over and our will to fight has not died. You did not die in vain…R.I.P. Martin Luther King Jr.”

My granddaughter, Kinya, shared such sentiments after a march in Memphis where Martin was felled 45 years to the day. It warms my heart that she took part in such an assemblage, considering that my progeny, unlike me, are not among those who hit the streets with slogans and songs in pursuit of justice and dignity. They just don’t do that. But I don’t despair because I know they care and pursue a better world in their own ways – as loving people, I’m proud to say.

But there was Kinya along with hundreds of union members and their supporters paying homage to the sanitation workers strike that brought Martin to Memphis. His son, Martin Luther King III, was one of the speakers at the occasion. Kinya met him and I know how intoxicating that can feel, as after shaking his dad’s hand close to 60 years ago I felt all aglow and firmed up my commitment to be the activist that I am today. I hope Kinya is feeling as heady as I did and gets more and more involved in the issues of the day because there’s always something to do.

Sometimes, though, it can seem like an impossible dream trying to make the world a better place. In the play, “I Am a Man,” T.O. Jones, the main character, cries out: “All the marchin’ and jailin’ and beatin’s! All that starvin’ and prayin’ and downright cryin’! King dead! Murdered! What we git in return? One piece of paper and eight bright, shiny pennies. Not even thirty pieces of silver! Eight pennies and a maybe! Ain’t a damn thing change!”

But surviving Memphis striker, the Rev. Leslie Moore, who joined the marchers when they arrived at the National Civil Rights Museum, built on the site of the old Lorraine Motel where King was shot down, looks at it another way. He says: “Something lifted off of us when Dr. King came to Memphis. Before he came, we had a hard time. When he came, it looked like everything brightened up, a light began to shine out.” Moore, 66, was in his early 20s at the time of the strike. He still drives a truck for the Memphis sanitation department.

I get the idea that that light still shines for this hardworking man. I’m sure working for the sanitation department today is better than it was back in 1968.

Oh, but it can be slow, don’t you know. King’s son made it clear, when he spoke, that workers still face challenges like those they encountered back then. Pursuits of racial and social equality never end.

My granddaughter is keeping King’s dream alive. The issue that brought him to Memphis was one of injustice, the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, its sanitation workers. Today they are engaged in a struggle to end a 4.6 percent pay cut that they were forced to accept unjustly.

The night before Martin was shot he said “Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for rights.” Kinya’s involvement indicates that she sees a need to continue such pursuits of basic civil rights, the rights of poor people to be treated fairly.

Martin also spoke to the threats against his life – as though he felt the end coming, saying: “Like anybody, I would like to live – a long life; longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. So I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

And my eyes have seen the glory of my granddaughter marching at the front of the line in Memphis, doing what must be done if there’s ever to be a just world for everyone. Her eyes are on the prize and that fills me with an almost indescribable pride.

Before signing out of Facebook I discovered a video on my timeline of Bobby Kennedy announcing Martin’s assassination to a gathering of black people in Indianapolis, the only major city where, many say thanks to him, there was no rioting after the assassination. He spoke ever so brilliantly to how Martin devoted his life to love and to justice between human beings and that we, as a people, should seek, in our anger, ways to continue his teachings, ending with: “Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the light of the world.”

That’s what I see Kinya doing. Like a line from one of my favorite Sunday School songs growing up, I’m hearing her say, in her actions:

“This little light of mine I’m gonna let it shine.
Let it shine/Let it shine/Let it shine.”

Shine on, baby girl, shine on. Because of people like you, acting in his name, our beloved Martin has not died in vain.

My 46-point night at Arizona in 1960.

Hey, you, Wildcats!
Man!
You could never understand
how you make my heart sing
when you take to the courts and do your thing.
It’s downright thrilling, appealing,
exhilarating, fulfilling …
And I’m sitting here in my den, chilling,
thinking of rhymes about how y’all beat Belmont
like they were no more than children out to play,
no more than feathers in a hurricane’s way,
and you attached yourselves to Harvard
like leeches feasting on fat prey,
like gloom on a nasty stormy day.
And, what can I say
about that shot
in the Sweet Sixteen
that put you away
other than it’s a lesson for another day.
But you hung in there with them all the way.
Hey, like they say,
at the U of A,
you “Fought like Wildcats!”
That’s where it’s at, Jack.

There are moments when
you guys do things
that are absolutely amazing,
like that blocked shot against
the Aztecs
that seemed to come out of the rarified air
of a place called nowhere.
I mean no where in any physics book
in which I’ve looked
is there any mention
of such an insult to the “Law of Gravity!”
Feel me?
How can one’s heart not sing
after witnessing such an incredible thing?

When I see you do
what you do
I go back in time,
a few decades,
to my playing days
when the program
was in decline,
a bit behind the times,
going through
what happens when old ways
are slow to adapt to the new;
Our stagnant schemes and plays
had long seen better days.
But I ain’t lying
when I say our lack of success wasn’t due to a lack of trying.
No, we “fought like wildcats” just like you,
full of rah-rah-rah and siss-boom-boom
for the old Red and Blue.
We dove for loose balls
and blocked out
and set screens
while the cheerleaders went through
“Go! Go! Wildcats, Go!” routines.
But “wins”?
We hardly knew of such things.
That’s why you make our hearts sing.
We’re old branches on your Family Tree
and we live through you vicariously.
When you win we win.
When you lose our hearts bend.
When you “Alley-Oop”
we wonder when did man learn to fly
and sometimes we call it showboating
and the reason why
is because it is to our dismay
that we couldn’t have ever executed such a play,
back in our day,
if everybody on defense got completely out of our way.
We might talk about how everybody today
palms the ball
and takes an extra step
and pushes and shoves
but we can’t help but marvel
at how your generation
has taken the game to a level way above
anything we could have imagined
ever seeing.
You make our hearts sing
no matter what we say.
You’re our offspring
when it comes to basketball at the U of A.

The U of A.
I have to say
that you gifted athletes chose to study and play
at an institution that has come a long long way
to become as great an institution of higher learning as it is today.
If you learn all you can from this season past,
basketball-wise,
and what the school asks
of you
human-wise, critical-thinking-wise,
creative-wise, health-wise,
fun-wise, self-exploratory-wise,
loving-caring-contributor-to-the-world-for-the-sake-of-that-very-world-wise,
keeping your eyes on the prize,
“Bear, Down, Arizona!”-wise…
   Well, you will make the WORLD’S HEART SING!

Thanks for a wonderful season!
Have a nice spring!

In picture left to right, Robert Singleton, Helen Singleton, Henry Hodge, Yvette Porter, Robert Farrell, Carrol Waymon, Conley Major.

Freedom. What a concept, huh? One of the sweetest words in the world’s vocabulary.

I learned a long time ago that the pursuit of freedom will make one do almost anything. Sometimes in the spur of a moment. I used to love to hear my maternal grandfather tell about how he woke up one day on a sharecropper’s plot of land in Hawkinsville, Georgia, thinking to himself, “God, I don’t know what all is out there in this world but I just know You created something better than this.” At about the same time “big boss man” came riding up on his horse rallying what were supposed to be “free men” to the fields, “yelling and spitting tobacco every which-a-away” my grandfather would say and the next thing he knew he had snatched the man off his horse, gave him the ass kicking of his life and then ran for that very life until he reached the Gulf of Mexico — to what, he didn’t know. He just knew he had to be free.

I thought of him a little while back at a forum at the Malcolm X Library that featured four of a group of people who stand tall in my mind and soul: The Freedom Riders. Yvette Porter, of the Walter J. Porter Educational & Community Foundation, brought them to town. They, San Diego mayor Bob Filner, Robert Singleton and his wife Helen Singleton, and Robert Farrell were among an historic number of people who taught us non-violent (Gandhian) ways to pursue freedom for all, demonstrating before the eyes of the world how powerful the tactics of Civil Disobedience are and can be, teaching us all along what love can do.

Their mentor, Henry Lodge, who was then the National Vice Chair of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) was in attendance also.

Carrol Waymon, who founded and directed CIC (Citizens Interracial Committee), San Diego’s first human relations agency, moderated the proceedings — in the humorous witty fashion that I remember him calling upon back when he worked so tirelessly to open up employment and housing opportunities for all San Diegans. His work in those days, as well as his handling of this particular day in honor of the Freedom Riders, was done in a spirit of love.

It was out of love that the Freedom Riders allowed themselves to undergo the fears and beatings and jailing that they had to brave. Parchman Farm where they were sent was no exhibit at Disneyland. No. There’s no dignity in being stripped naked and searched; in being given no basic items like pencil or paper or books; in having the lights kept on all day; in being mocked with “Y’all wanna march, well march to yo cell”; in being issued clothes that don’t fit; in having your breakfast, coffee, strongly flavored with chicory and biscuits and molasses and grits; in being served beans and black-eyed peas for lunch and supper everyday; in having the governor of Mississippi, Ross Barnett, direct the prison guards to “break their spirit, not their bones”; in having some of your comrades murdered and raped. And there on a library stage these beautiful people sat proudly, as loving people, in full control of their minds all these years after having endured the worst of times.

Out of their ordeals they have chosen to contribute their skills as human beings to make life better for all people: Filner, recently, standing up to the powers-that-be in the tourist industry, demanding that they pay their workers decently; Mr. Singleton, a professor of economics at Loyola Marymount University, has over the years focused on, among many things, projects in the area of job training so people can learn employable skills; Mrs. Singleton provides strategic planning, project management, fund raising and research services to non-profit organizations that work for the betterment of their communities — she has toiled to highlight the work of African American artists so a people can share the feelings in their soul with the world; Robert Farrell assists individuals and organizations in Los Angeles County in money matters, in a world where money really does matter.

He said something that day that reflects what he and other Freedom Riders taught us: “In America we have the power to change.”

I know that is so true. My grandfather over a hundred years ago had to free himself from bondage by slapping an ornery racist around that he had just jerked off a horse and then running and hiding to avoid being strung up on the branch of a tree. The Freedom Riders, as time went by, wrote new chapters in pursuits of freedom without raising a hand other than to lead themselves in a song like “We Shall Overcome” — some day.

We, indeed, in America, have the power to change. And, goodness knows there’s a lot to change.

Yeah, I’m bad. That’s what I was thinking as two City College communications majors talked to me behind the camera that was focused on me in the Quad at SDCC.

And I wasn’t just thinking that I’m bad. No, not at all, for I am: Truly. Bad. And I don’t say that as a wolf ticket kind of brag. But as a black man you can’t reach 74.99 years of age, in these here United States of America, with all your senses, and not indulge in a little swag. So please excuse me if I break into a bee-bop stance with a little Bojangles tap dance and act out just how bad I am.

The reason I was on the premises was because I had been asked to speak at a ceremony that was dedicated to Black History. Now that invite, alone, sets the tone for how bad I am because they didn’t just ask anybody to address them. Can there be a greater honor than having someone think that you have something to say?

But I’m not ass kicking bad. That must be made clear. I’m bad because I’ve managed to be a loving human being for almost every moment of my life up to this very moment, minus a couple of moments when I had to slap a couple of bullies silly.

And love is what I spoke about at the gathering because The African American struggle has always been about love. Love of ourselves. Love of others. Love of life. Love for taking on our very plight. We’ve sought only peace and justice, the right to live dignified lives without some chump saying “We don’t serve Negroes.”

With my bad self I spoke about growing up in Tucson, where I first, in my childhood years, began teaching myself how to maintain my cool in a world run by coldhearted hateful fools.

I briefly shared a couple of things I’ve experienced in my lifetime like when I was a little boy playing with my cousins down in Union, Mississippi, and all of a sudden, in the most panicked of voices, they were yelling at me: “No! No! No!” and I’m going “What? What? What? and they scream “You walked in front of that white man!” According to Jim Crow down there, at the time, a black person passing up a white person on the sidewalk, no matter how slow they happened to be, was a major crime. And the punishment wasn’t pretty!

I spoke of a visit my mother and I made to Highland Park, in Detroit, in the summer of 1949, between my fifth and sixth grades of school. Our cousin had just moved into a neighborhood which had been all white until he showed up. We stepped out of the cab onto pavement with “Nigger, Go Home!” prominently painted on it in red, with the initials KKK signed below the disgraceful greeting. We got up one day to drive to Canada and lucky for us we rose early because as we gathered a few things together we smelled smoke. The garage was fully enveloped in flames and the house was beginning to burn.

But in spite of such scary inhuman encounters, in my life, and there have been a few more (don’t get me started on the police), I pointed out that I somehow managed to get through life without being overcome with anger, without embracing myself in self-pity or resorting to drugs and alcohol to get through a day. I learned how to not be like those who oppress others, how to not put all people of a group in the same category, specifically how to not denigrate all white people when it was a white person with whom I was having a problem.

In keeping with such thinking, I read the audience a poem that I used to introduce myself to students at the last school where I was a principal, a poem that let the kids know that the man in the main office was a human being above all else, someone they could rely on, someone who would respect them in the same manner that I would respect their teachers, their parents, my own family.

One line goes: “Now, when you see me coming, you won’t have to stop in your tracks, you can just kick back and relax…” That poem was written in a spirit of love and it did just what I intended it to do: it bonded me with a few hundred children the first time we ever met. Oh, I’m bad.

And the rewards for such a loving approach come in aisles in Von’s or along a hiking trail or in the lobby of a theater or at a rally for justice and peace, when someone calls out “Hey, Ernie McCray!” and gives me a bear hug and then breaks into a litany of memories like “You remember that time when we did Prince’s 1999 and brought the house down at the Talent Show?” or “Thank you for believing in me when I didn’t believe in myself” or “I drive my granddaughter to this school every day because you’re here, because being in Room B5 was the best year of my life! Can you still dunk?”

Ahh, the joys of being an educator.

I closed with my poem, “I’m Just an Old Dude Trying to Feel the Vibe,” a writing that gets at the subject of love with lines like these:

Sing the children love songs;
Sing them to them ever so softly;
Sing them to them ever so tenderly;
Sing them to them ever so sincerely,
and soulfully,
and frequently
and so lyrically that they can’t help but dream dreams
with their eyes opened wide,
dreams that enable them to realize
that they can rise above the troubles in their lives
and not only survive
but thrive.

Like I said the African American Struggle has been a love story. I could have given up several times along the way and allowed myself to succumb to folks who were bent on sucking the life out of my people like hungry leeches on a feeding frenzy. I’ve seen it happen to more friends and family than I would like to remember. But I decided I wanted to honor what my history, Black History, has taught me, that keeping one’s eye on the prize of human respect is a venture in becoming as loving as you can be.

Yeah, I’m bad.

Courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/55790637@N06/5412713029/

“Can we all get along?” Rodney King once asked as the streets of LA burned as a result of LA’s Finest literally stomping him into the ground in sight of the whole world only to be found “not guilty,” free to go. Such is life in an uncivil world.

It’s nice to know, though, that in such an in-your-face world as is ours there are people who want to bring some degree of order to it. Like the people with whom I sat at a conference at the University of San Diego, put on by a movement of people called Restoring Respect, that was all about “Restoring Civility to Civic Dialogue.” Restoring Respect believes that we, as a society, can get beyond today’s politics of incivility and work together to “make sure that our public discourse is worthy of a great Republic.”

I can dig it. But we have to be honest with ourselves and not get all caught up in the notion, as one woman did, that “We need to get back to a time when we treated each other with respect.” I almost said out loud, “When we did what? When was that?” Hey, we can’t make changes if we’re going to hallucinate mythical days that never were. Now, of course, I can only speak to my life experiences but in those nearly 75 years I haven’t seen anything approaching “civility” when it came to “civic dialogue” of any significance.

Oh, we’re a polite people, smilers and greeters all, on the whole, civil as all get out, as they say, but once we have a difference with someone over something we hold dear, then it’s Katy Bar the Door. I’ve seen people almost come to blows over what color the tickets should be at the Halloween Carnival. From my observations over time civility doesn’t come easily for human beings.

So, if we’re really going to do this “civility” thing we have to understand that we’re not “restoring” something, that there is no age to which we can return to see how to get along. Rather, we’re at the dawning of pursuing something that’s beautiful in its very idea: A civil society. How hip would that be? It excites me. We get to create something and I’m all about creativity especially when it comes to civility, when it comes to constructing a spirit of peace and tranquility. It’s all I’ve ever done in my life basically.

Isn’t that what civility is: “a spirit,” a feeling that if we’ve got a task that’s important to us that we can get it done in spite of our differences? And it doesn’t mean that you don’t challenge, that you don’t get loud every now and again; you just don’t attack. You treat others with respect.

And, it’s about time that we’re on to this because if we don’t learn to become more civil our children and grand children and great-grand-children won’t learn to become more civil either – but they must for: in a world where drones fly and Al Queda folks multiply and economies die and glaciers bid us bye bye and hurricanes go deeper into the alphabet and tornadoes drop from the sky like flies and citizens are armed to the teeth afraid of their own shadows and nuclear plants straddle fault lines – well, our descendants, with these problems in their forecast, won’t be able to survive as a species if they don’t know how to get along at some highly advanced level of being.

So schools will have to become involved. The children have to feel what we do and be a part of it so they can, as they are wont to do, mimic it and refine it and take it to levels never beheld. Whatever it is.

I enjoyed the conference, listening to ideas like: “We need more dialogue than debate”; “We need to learn how to find common ground”; “We need to learn to think critically regarding matters that affect our overall wellbeing.” Mesa College has a “Mesa be Civil, Pass it On” campaign aimed at steering students’ minds to acts of civility on campus. It’s the baby steps that get things going, isn’t it?

Bob Filner, the mayor, kicked the day off with “You didn’t expect to see me at a conference on civility, did you?” That got a laugh because my friend can be quite feisty, having, just the day before, called the City Attorney out at his news conference for being “unethical and unprofessional” for giving legal advice through the news media – for even having the news conference.

It might be said that there’s a more civil way to deal with one’s attorney than crashing his party, so the mayor like all of us, needs to work on a few things, as we stride towards civility. He, in particular, might need to flex a little less here and there. The use of power doesn’t have to be loud. We’ll need him to set the tone if we’re to become more civil as a city.

And the Union-Tribune, the city’s major source of news, who crucifies the man for practically every move he makes, should play a role in this too. They have to find a way to get beyond their outright hatred of the mayor. Editorials titled “Bob Filner: the Mayor of Dysfunction” do very little to promote healthy discourse. Saying that he “ramped up his running feud” with the city attorney could be softened with “Hey, man, why don’t you and the dude sit down and figure this stuff out.” If they have a problem with him being a “progressive” and think he doesn’t have “a clue when it comes to leadership” then why don’t they give him a clue like civil people do? The problem with the U-T seems to be: We’ve got a mayor who’s making the powers-that-be break into nervous sweats because they’ve become, over time, way over accustomed to having their will be done. And that’s not going to happen with this mayor.

The fat cats in the tourism industry want Bob Filner to sign an agreement with them so they can collect $30 million dollars to market their hotels and various attractions. And Filner says “Deal.” But the deal is you will be required to provide better pay for hotel workers and more money for city coffers. Whoa, that sounds pretty civil to me. A mayor for the people. A first for this city. That we have a mayor who won’t cater to and tap dance to the tunes of the folks with the do-re-mi bothers the hell out of the U-T. They see the days where everything was about the super-moneyed, what they want, what they think, slipping away.

I sense that civility in our society is going to have to occur from the bottom up, based on how we treat each other in our communities as we work on our various projects. If we find ways to respect and honor each other’s basic wishes and needs, our leaders will have to follow. And each of us will have to work on ourselves to become more civil. One of the panelists at the conference pointed out: “The one thing you can change is you.”

With that in mind as I ponder “Can we all get along?” I remember Reginald Denny, a white construction driver, who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time when the streets of LA erupted. He was beaten severely. But a year later he appeared on the Phil Donahue Show and embraced one of his assailants. That’s compassion. That’s what civility is all about.

For the benefit of our children and the future it will take a lot of Denny’s kind of thinking to do what we have to do. The more civil we become as individuals, the more we can contribute to our communities becoming more civil.

In spite of all the hard work needed it really is that simple. We can all get along.

Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/notionscapital/7565663812/

I had a childhood buddy whose answer to all that we faced as growing boys, like how to hit on the girls and how to get Murray’s Pomade to turn our naps into waves or curls, was “You got to be yourself, Jack” which is old school for “Keeping it real.”

And I thought of my philosophical friend the other day as I watched a man on TV who said that he: played a round of golf; read a book while teaching himself to play guitar; ran 10 miles while knitting himself a sweater; jumped out of a plane; became a ping pong master while recording his debut album, which he sings in an auto-tuned voice and then he says, “How you ask? 5 Hour Energy!”

The bit’s funny but, whoa, what is this fantasy really all about? The dude did everything but drop dead, which would have been real, and from a couple of articles I’ve read the product is alleged to have caused death. But the stuff sold to the tune of 1.3 billion dollars last year. Seems there are a ton of people not “being themselves.”

I don’t understand the appeal. Just how much energy does a human being need? I mean I put in a full day doing what I do with no sweat other than when I exercise which usually for me entails some stretches and, lately, a little weight work, and moving to some music or taking a nice long briskly paced walk. Sometimes all of the above.

That energizes me for everything else I do, checking out my email and facebook page, joking with my friends at Grant’s Deli when I pick up my cup of coffee, fixing a little something to eat. … Depending on the day, I might get some writing in, some reading in, some time with my woman in, maybe some time with one of my kids or a couple of friends. I might participate in a rally or take part in or attend a forum of some kind, speak to a group of people, letting them know what’s on my mind, take in a movie or a play, and at the end of the day I’m ready to lay my old body down, not because all of my energy is exhausted but because it’s time to sleep. That’s how the cycle goes, isn’t it?

Get up, stay as true to your agenda as you can, maybe watch your favorite show or listen to some good music on the radio or your iPad or Spotify or on whatever gadget you have, hit the sack, get some shuteye, and wake up and repeat.

Somehow I’ve managed to have ample enough energy to pull such days off. If I had any more energy what would I do with it? Break into cartwheels? Create new steps for the Minuet? Take an alligator for a walk?

But, okay, I’m retired and my kids are grown and some of their kids have kids so it doesn’t apply to me when 5 Hour Energy says “Finding the energy for work and family responsibilities is hard enough.” And there are no more moonlighting jobs in my life or evening and weekend college courses for me to squeeze in but I once did all that for decades without running “for the coffee” or grabbing “a soda” and then finding out a short while later that I “needed more.” I mean isn’t it true that nature, through food and the benefits of exercise, gives us all the energy we need for whatever it is we need to do? And all we have to do I would think is “Be ourselves, Jack!”

But it’s a mind game isn’t it, ranking right up there with society’s ever growing attempts at trying to mask the aging process with ideas about how “we’re only old as we feel.” I remember hearing an old man say that dying his hair made him feel younger and I wondered how the rest of his body made him feel as wrinkles lined his face like tributaries emptying into the Amazon River, as he stooped over, against his will, like an NFL All-Pro lining up to stop a run up the middle, as his hands shook like a gambler at the crap table ready to toss the dice. But, hey, what can I say if having hair the color of a moonless country night made him feel all right?

But I couldn’t help but think of what he would be like if he approached the world with an attitude that said: “I can’t hide what time has done to my face and I can’t stand tall like I once could with grace and I can’t hold a glass of ice water without sounding like a member of the Tito Puente Band but look at the beauty of my hair, the silver and the gray. This is what you earn when you’ve traveled many a mile out here in the Milky Way.” Isn’t there some kind of ageless natural energy at play in that picture?

Well, I can only “be myself, Jack” and in that role I’ll just eat as right as I can and dance and walk as much as I can and take whatever energy I can from doing that. And leave those folks, who are willing to possibly jeopardize their health, seeking magic in a tiny bottle, to themselves.

But I can’t help but wonder how these folks would fare if they learned how to energize themselves, how to take time to be mindful each day of what lies ahead of them on their jobs. What if, whenever they can during their busy day, they slowed down and closed their eyes and breathed in deeply and reassured themselves of the skills and strengths they bring to their work? And what if when their day ended they squeezed in a workout of some kind? Or maybe that’s a beginning of the day enterprise or something done in the middle of the day — such is something that they have to work out for themselves as that’s what “You got to be yourself, Jack” is all about: keeping it real.

Steph Johnson

I like days like today, days when you find yourself in a nice groove, where your every move is smooth, where you walk whistling with a cup of coffee from the Deli to your home and turn the radio on and sounds come out to where you are and take the already mellow mood you’re in to another place, another dimension.

I mean Jazz 88.3 was pouring out some lyrics in my living room that stopped me in my tracks: “When Sunny gets blue, she breathes a sigh of sadness” and it was sounding so good I couldn’t feel anything but gladness. One of my all time favorite songs; I’ve heard it most of my life by some of the greats. Johnny Mathis did it sweetly with strings. Sarah did it sassy the way she did everything. Anita O’Day swung it in her inimitable sultry way. Barbra did it. Nat did it. Mel Torme.

But I was hearing it this day in a most righteously funky way. These musicians saturated the song with soul as thick as grandma’s peach cobbler, the guitar harmonizing with the singer’s voice, the bass and drums bumping nice rhythms and when I recognized who the singer was I could practically hear my heart hum.

It was Steph Johnson hanging out with Claudia Russell on the Jazz Ride Home – and, oh, she sang the hell out of that song. She’s my next door neighbor and I’ve heard her from her bedroom, at different stages of developing and arranging When Sunny Gets Blue, along with Summertime which played next, so free and easy with a hip playful bounce to it, but I had only heard the repetitive fingering of strings she needed to get the songs the way she wanted them to be – I hadn’t heard them from beginning to end. And I didn’t know exactly what I was missing but I do now.

The finished product is something to experience if you love good music, if you appreciate watching a performer grow as that’s what this young woman is doing as I remember her saying on facebook: “I am having the best rainy afternoon playing guitar. I am SO GLAD I started to really learn how to play my instrument….and if I die poor because I fell in love with harmony and jazz guitar and old songs and creating new compositions, that’s ok with me. :0) Really.”

That’s an artist talking my friends, a learner, one who is rather comfortable with a guitar in her hands, yet surrounds herself with people who can only help her get better at her craft. She records and does gigs with Fernando Gomez who has made a name for himself in San Diego on the drums, playing a range of styles, salsa, reggae, funk, rock, jazz and Latin Jazz – and with Rob Thorsen, an upright bassist of the highest order who has played with some of the notables of jazz, Charles McPherson, Hubert Laws, Mundell Lowe, Gilbert Castellanos, Mike Wofford, Holly Hofmann.

Steph shares a house with musicians like gifted multi-instrumentalist, Dave Millard, a house where anybody might drop by to jam, the musicians just mentioned, Daniel Jackson, who has played saxophone or piano with nearly everybody who is anybody in the music world, pianist Joshua White, second place finisher in the Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Competition, a young man who can make a piano talk – in tongues – composer and master Latin Jazz pianist, Turiya Mareya, whose artistry compels you to listen…

Around such expertise I expect my newly found friend to rise and shine and do the hokey pokey musically for all the world to hear. She’s already been noticed, having won the San Diego Music Award in 2010 for Best Jazz Album with an R&B album. How good is that?

What she did with When Sunny Gets Blue is telling. She took that song and made it her own. That’s greatness. She’s asking, through her music, for newer days for herself, for more exploration into her soul and she’s getting her due from the way she’s pursuing her life much like Sunny who had lost a love and lived in anticipation of a new love and the song goes:

“Hurry, new love, hurry here
To kiss away each lonely tear
And hold her near when Sunny gets blue.”

For Steph it’s just a matter of time when new opportunities, like a new love for Sunny, will rush in and she will, as it has been for me on this day when I heard her sing on the radio, find herself musically taken to another place, another dimension.

I base such a feeling on the two songs I heard that will be on Nature Girl, her new CD. Am I going to get one? Yes-sir-ee!

Someone posted it on facebook, a picture of me silhouetted in a vision of rich colors, sharing a poem. I wanted to write about the experience when I first saw the striking image but didn’t know how to go about it right away.

Then it came to me as I was reading Leslie Marmon Silko’s “Ceremony,” a masterpiece about the Native American world, a brilliant tale about Tayo, an army veteran of mixed ancestry who returns to the reservation, scarred by his experience as a prisoner of the Japanese in World War II.

In one passage, Sun Man, the father of storm clouds who were abducted by an impressive showy being called Kaup’a'ta who used magical powers to weave evil, discovered where they were and called out to them and at the same time he was calling out to Tayo based on all the problems and stresses rolling about in his troubled mind as he made his way along a rocky journey back to where he belonged. Sun Man declared, having defeated Kaup’a'ta:

  ”My children.
  I have found you!
  Come on out. Come home again.
  Your mother, the earth is crying for you.
  Come home, children, come home.”

That spoke volumes to me and directed my thinking to Enero Zapatista, the event in which I was captured so artistically on camera, one of a month-long series of politically and culturally conscious events that commemorated the uprising of the Zapatistas in Mexico back in 1994. I thought about how Enero Zapatista, like “Ceremony,” is about home, about having one, as life changed drastically for Mexicans in Chiapas where the Zapatista movement began, introducing us to Subcomandante Marcos, the leader of the non-violent insurrection, who shared his thoughts of “a world in which many worlds fit” – of a home for everyone, in other words.

I remember those days as though they were mere minutes ago, how a few of us in San Diego put the energy of the Zapatista’s bold philosophical stand against oppression on stage, under the direction of my old friend, Peter Brown, who has raised funds and built schools in the Lacandonan Jungle.

Through Marcos’ words, we got a deep understanding of how he viewed himself and the movement, of how he saw the universality of himself and all human beings as fellow travelers in life, giving us these eloquent words to say: “Yes, Marcos is gay. Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains. Marcos is also the exploited, marginalized, oppressed minorities resisting and saying `Enough’. He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every un-tolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable — this is Marcos.”

The movement got underway when NAFTA began, allowing the rich and powerful to fill their coffers while struggling people starved, their hopes and dreams of mere survival knocked from under them like an expert bowler felling pins, their forests and lands bulldozed, sending them off to the four winds, farmers with no ground in which to till and plant crops; they witnessed what was once theirs being abused and looted by capitalism run amok.

Some, like other Mexicans and Central Americans had to leave and set out seeking a life in the USA, meeting coyotes along the way who let them out of the vehicles in which they were jammed like cattle going to market, to challenge the odds for survival that greeted them in burning deserts and freezing mountains and those who make it face the wrath of folks who can only see the “illegalities” in their actions, not their humanity. And attitudes rise in us Americans that lead to the harassment of people just because their skin color is brown and, in some cases, like in Arizona, Mexican American Studies were banned although they had demonstrably turned Latino students and others on to the wonders of an ignored culture, inspiring them to become involved in their immediate world and the world-at-large, making the thought of going to college attractive to them.

I touched on such thoughts at the Enero Zapatista event at Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego’s beautiful Balboa Park, through the words of my poem, “I Call on You, Oh Mighty Sonoran,” a piece written in the form of a prayer of sorts to the mighty Sonoran Desert upon which I was born: Home. I pointed out to that mighty desert that

  ”Human ugliness reigns
  upon your vast terrain,
  a strain of irrationality
  suffered by the powers-that-be
  that has metastasized
  into a real fear that God’s Brown Children
  will discover truths
  that might set them free
  to think,
  to analyze,
  to strive
  to enrich their communities
  as they better their lives.”

That was my attempt at reflecting on “a world in which many worlds fit.” Like Sun Man I want to say to those who are displaced or cast aside, as an old African American Black man, a Sonoran, who understands:

  ”My children.
  I have found you!
  Come on out. Come home again.
  Your mother, the earth is crying for you.
  Come home, children, come home.”
  There’s a place for everyone under the sun.