Spring Haiku (Rebel Girl)

“Prefer vegetable broth to duck soup.” – Basho’s advice to writers

Yes, spring has arrived and, like a drunken hummingbird to a swollen trumpet flower, Rebel Girl marks it by returning to the word, in this case, a few words. Haiku. The seventeen-syllable poem is rooted in the Japanese tradition of the close observation of nature--but in other elements as well. As the noted American poet and well-regarded translator Robert Hass points out, “If the first level of a haiku is its location in nature, its second is almost always some implicit Buddhist reflection on nature…At the core of Buddhist metaphysics are three ideas about natural things: that they are transient; that they are contingent; and that they suffer.” So, here for you, loyal Dissent readers, a spring bouquet of higher education haiku, full of nature, transience and suffering.

The long spring meeting Raghu says nothing so so many times A fishy smell the room where we sit for years waiting for nothing The spring we don't see the marked trees await their fate the ax, the death which arrives for all The chancellor! not interested in oak trees, teachers or students without classes The clock tower rots A-quad rabbits stare ahead still, waiting to run

Disclaimer: Most English majors will tell you that haiku are supposed to scan five syllables, seven syllables, then five again. Rebel Girl asks your indulgence and begs you to remember that in the original Japanese these would have worked--it’s the translation that renders them a bit off!

Serafin Zasueta

Some at IVC will remember Serafin Zasueta, a Vice President of Instruction at IVC ten or fifteen years ago. I barely remember the guy, but I asked around, and I could find few who had anything good to say about the fellow. I was told that he was tight with Glenn Roquemore, so I guess Glenn liked him. Most seemed to think that he was a rat bastard.

Said one colleague: "He's as rotten as Mathur, only a little smarter."

Well, smart or no, the fellow has gotten himself into serious trouble.

Back in the early years of the new millennium, Zasueta was the President of Southwestern College, in Chula Vista. But, soon enough, faculty complained that he left them out of decision-making.

Imagine that!

They took a dim view, too, of Zasueta’s use of district vehicles and his purchase of $1 million in life insurance with district money.

With the help of the CTA, faculty backed and secured the election of a trustee candidate who, upon joining the board, tipped the balance against Zasueta. After a board "no confidence" vote, Zasueta was placed on “administrative leave pending investigation of a personnel matter” (CCA Advocate, March/April, 2003).

Personnel matter? What was that about?

Well, not long after, Zasueta was indicted together with a political consultant named Larry Remer:

A high-profile political consultant illegally conspired to spend public funds on a commercial promoting a community college bond campaign five years ago and then tried to cover it up, a prosecutor told jurors yesterday.

“This is a case about abusing power and violating public trust,” prosecutor John Rice said….

Defense lawyer Michael Pancer [said] that there was nothing illegal about the way consultant Larry Remer went about getting a bill for $5,890.47 paid following the successful campaign for an $89 million bond…Pancer didn't dispute that college funds were used to pay the bill, but he said it was legal because the school wasn't paying for the production of the commercial, but rather to purchase outtakes for education and marketing.

It is illegal to use taxpayer money to advocate positions in political campaigns.

Remer and former Southwestern College President Serafin Zasueta were indicted on conspiracy, theft, and wire and mail fraud charges in 2004.

Both have pleaded not guilty. The trial of Zasueta, who was fired in 2003, is scheduled to begin April 24…Zasueta claims he didn't know anything about how the bill was paid and that Remer defrauded him and the college, according to court documents.

The case centers around a bill for a television commercial for Proposition AA, which passed with 69 percent support in November 2000.

The commercial was produced by an Alexandria, Va., firm and shot on Southwestern's campus. It shows several students talking about how the money from the bond would be used.

A month after the election, the Virginia company, Murphy Putnam Media Inc., sent a bill for editing and production of the ad to Friends of Southwest College, a campaign committee set up by Remer.

However, the committee had spent all its money.

At that point, the prosecutor said, Remer and Zasueta had a choice to make. They could have raised more money. They could have told the company the bill was late and couldn't be paid. Or Remer could have paid the company out of his own pocket.

“But there was a fourth option,” Rice told jurors. “An illegal option.” And that was to use school funds, the prosecutor said.

“They couldn't use public funds, but they did,” he said.

Rice said that after Zasueta decided to disguise the payment as the purchase of outtakes, Remer asked the company to send the college a bill for “dubs and commercial footage.”

The bill was paid out of the school's theater budget.

In the fall of 2002, Carla Kirkwood, a theater professor, reviewed her department's budget, found the payment to the Virginia company and alerted a trustee.

That prompted an inquiry, during which Remer sent Zasueta a memorandum stating different uses the college would have for the video outtakes.

That, Rice said, was part of a cover-up…. (“Legality of funds’ use contested,” San Diego Union Tribune, 3/29)

Here, then, is the last chapter of this story. Yesterday’s LA Times (“Consultant Admits to Misuse of Funds”) reported as follows:

In a plea bargain, a political consultant Monday pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor criminal count stemming from alleged misuse of public money in exchange for six felony counts being dropped.

Larry Remer, 55, agreed to pay restitution to Southwestern Community College in Chula Vista and a fine of $5,000, and to perform 100 hours of community service.

Serafin Zasueta, 63, the former college president, pleaded guilty to the same count and accepted the same conditions.

…On April 7, a jury deadlocked 10 to 2 in favor of convicting Remer of six counts stemming from $5,890.47 spent by the college for outtakes from a TV commercial favoring an $89-million bond issue for improvements at the college on the 2000 ballot.

Zasueta was awaiting trial.

Prosecutors alleged that Remer and Zasueta improperly spent public money for political purposes by arranging purchase of the outtakes.

A probation report will be done before prosecutors make a sentencing recommendation to the judge. A possible recommendation could range from probation to six months in custody, said Assistant U.S. Atty. John J. Rice....

UPDATE:

• OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA:

NEWS RELEASE SUMMARY - May 1, 2006

United States Attorney Carol C. Lam announced today the guilty pleas of Lawrence “Larry” D. Remer, a San Diego political consultant, and Serafin A. Zasueta, former President and Superintendent of Southwestern College. Both defendants pled guilty before United States District Judge John A. Houston to an Information charging them with illegally using public funds from the Southwestern Community College District to pay for political activity in relation to the Proposition AA Bond measure which was on the November 2000 ballot. Proposition AA was a bond measure seeking $89 million in bonds for Southwestern College

• OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY
SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA: NEWS RELEASE SUMMARY - July 21, 2006:

United States Attorney Carol C. Lam today announced that Lawrence “Larry” D. Remer, a San Diego political consultant, and Serafin A. Zasueta, former President and Superintendent of Southwestern College were sentenced today in federal court in San Diego by United States District Court Judge John A. Houston to serve three years probation for violating18, United States Code, Section 600, Promise of Benefit for Political Activity, a misdemeanor. As part of his guilty plea, each defendant agreed to pay full restitution to Southwestern Community College in the amount of $2,945.24, pay a fine of $5,000, and perform 100 hours of community service.

Breaking news

Americans celebrate May Day

Rebel Girl, along with Red Emma, and pulling Limber Lou in his little red wagon, joined thousands of others marking the Day Without An Immigrant in Santa Ana yesterday.

You should have been there.

Maybe you were.

Earlier that day, on her morning drive to the college, Rebel Girl was struck by the sight of the Sand Canyon strawberry fields sans workers—rows and rows of green plants and red berries, but nary a worker crouched among them. Closer inspection revealed that the gates were locked, the pallets stacked, the cars that usually park in the dirt missing.

The asphalt and construction crews raising the nearby new community of Portola Springs seemed thinned as well.


It took her fifteen minutes to drive from the college to Santa Ana, to rendezvous with Red and Lou and a visiting friend from Germany. Five more minutes to get to downtown, locate parking, and feed the meter its diet of quarters.

The sidewalks were full of white-shirted people but businesses were closed. Cars drove by with horns blaring and flags flying. The spirit was festive, celebratory, proud.

May Day had come to Santa Ana.

Rebel Girl reminded Red of the time they arrived in the Greek port city of Patras on May Day—there, a national holiday with long roots in both labor and pagan traditions. Wreaths of yellow flowers adorned the doors—months later, in the heat of summer, they’d be tossed on bonfires to commemorate St. John’s Day. Families picnicked, paraded.

Reb and Red found dinner in one of the few restaurants open for business—someone had to make sure the sailors got to eat, the owner explained. —Sailors and wayward travelers like us. We feasted—broad beans in tomato dill sauce, stuffed peppers, fresh Greek salad, tasziki, good bread, cold restina. The owner didn’t believe us when we told him that May Day wasn’t celebrated in the U.S. “But it began there,” he said, clearly a Greek who knew his history and ours.

Yes, we agreed, but most Americans don’t know that and, somewhere along the way, someone designated a day in September to honor labor, allowing a nation to begin to forget the American anarchists and Haymarket while the rest of the world kept remembering. At the end, I think he still didn’t believe us.

That was ten years ago.

In Santa Ana, over 10,000 gathered in the Plaza of the Flags to hear speeches, to see each other, to stand together and be counted by whoever was doing the counting. It was impressive: families; mothers with strollers or babes in arms; beaming children riding on their fathers’ shoulders; working people wearing t-shirts emblazoned with their union logos or, more often, their own handwritten messages; working people carrying the tools of their trade: tool belts, spades, rakes, brooms, mops. Flags fluttered above all. Lou sat in his wagon, waving his banner of choice: the Jolly Roger.

Our German friend commented that he never imagined being at a rally with so many American flags. But where, he asked, were all the white people?

He had a point.

There were few. But that’s a topic for another essay.

As the march began to move out, I looked up. In the wide set branches of a tree, sat a broad-chested young man, in clean, well-pressed khakis and a white button-down shirt. His tie was red, white and blue. His hair was clipped close to his head. His brown face was gleaming with sweat. He shouted down at us, urging us forward, like some figure out of Greek mythology.

At the plaza where we paused for speeches in English and Spanish, we met up with three colleagues from Saddleback. We congratulated each other on being there as it was clearly the place to be. Solidarity, indeed.

Media reports cited counter protesters, but I saw only one, a single fellow, singularly unhappy, standing there with his own bitter hand-lettered sign. He had, Red noted, obviously more problems than one.

The march continued, winding its way around the Civic Center. At the corner of 901 Civic Center Drive, the crowd looked up and noticed a group of men on the roof, arms crossed, watching us. Clearly business men, they had taken off their suit jackets to better bear the heat, but their ties remained tight around their necks, their shirts tucked into their belted trousers. Standing there, arms crossed, they watched us, the slowly moving sea of white shirts and red, white and blue flags. We started waving, calling out “Hello!” “Hola!” No reaction. We shouted louder. Nothing. We called, “Come join us!” and realized how absurd that request was, but still, we repeated it. “Hello!” Come join us!”

One fellow finally waved, but then backed away, ashamed either by his reaction or, more likely, because he was making fun of our own waving hands and had to back away to chuckle with his pals.

On the way home, hungry and realizing that the sink was full of dishes, we decided to stop at Taco Mesa for our favorite quick dinner: beans, rice, grilled calamari tacos. Pulling into the parking lot, we realized our mistake: Taco Mesa was closed.

What were we thinking? It was May Day!

I don't get it

oke up this morning to a gloomy sky and a peevish cat.

After Meet the Press, etc., Sunny had had it with those lyin' Bush apologists, I guess, and so she lobbied for going outside to puke. I let her out.

I followed her outside, taking my camera with me. Here are a coupla snaps of the ridge above my house. Gloomy, man.

As I called Sunny in and walked back inside with her, I noticed a weird reflected image in my study window. Check it out. Who is that fellow? Creepy.



f you've been following the Sheriff Mike Carona saga, you know that his administration is almost as scandal-ridden as the President's. It seems like every week there's a new scandal.

So, this morning, the LA Times' Dana Parsons opined as follows:

One of Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona's election opponents suggests in so many words that the sheriff has hit rock bottom and should resign.

Ralph Martin called for the resignation after a photo in the alternative press OC Weekly [Dirty, Stupid, or Both] showed a Las Vegas strip club owner with his arm around the sheriff. A Nevada grand jury in 2005 characterized the strip club as a racketeering enterprise and indicted a shift manager but not the owner.

Martin may think the sheriff has lost it, but it looks to me as if Carona is having the time of his life as the county's top cop. Controversy follows controversy and allegation follows allegation, but he keeps on smiling. He's been accused of personal indiscretions and managerial shortcomings, and look what it's gotten him: an endorsement from the county's GOP Central Committee.

In another magical moment (and my personal favorite), a photo surfaced earlier of Carona next to a young woman wearing what apparently was his uniform jacket [Sex, Bribes and Jailhouse Scams]. She was identified as the Russian translator on his 2002 trip to Moscow. That photo also appeared in the Weekly, which seems to have become Carona's unofficial photo album site.

Young Russian translator wearing his clothing. A photo op with a strip club owner. In defending Carona a few months ago against naysayers in general, a former state GOP official said, "Mike is a very, very popular guy."

No doubt that former official was Mike Schroeder, one of Trustee Fuentes' best pals and the "most powerful man in the county." I'm not surprised that the pious-and-married-and-completely-outa-control Carona is popular among Fuenteans such as Schroeder. Being corrupt or ruthless seems to be a membership requirement for their little club.

A friend of mine--yet another Mike--has first-hand experience of some of Fuentes' crew's tactics. Remember proposition 187? Well, my Mike was involved in organizing protests during the anti-187 campaign. Those protests comprised lots of folks with connections to south of the border.

Remember how people got pissed off at those protesters? What set them off was especially one thing: their habit of waving Mexican flags. That really pushed people's buttons.


Well, Mike has often told the story of how he personally witnessed Fuentes' crew (Fuentes was county GOP chief at the time) amiably mingling among the protesters and passing out "free" Mexican flags! That's right. Mike did all he could to prevent the flag-waving, but, in the end, some of it ended up on the evening news.

Another friend is a player in local politics, and he has many contacts in the OC Sheriff's Department. He claims that it is a big open secret that Mr. Carona is a total hound. Using the department's copter for a tryst? Yeah, that's just standard operating procedure for Mikey the Hound. There's nobody over there who doesn't know that Mikey is the Bill Clinton of Sheriffs.

Can somebody explain to me how it is with these ultra-pious Republicans? They lie and cheat and scheme all day long, and then their eyes roll back in their head while they declare their love of God. They pray. They condemn gays and liberal busybodies and other forms of supposed atheistic scum. They champion morality and speak of love. They pray some more. Without missing a beat, they go back to cheating and scheming and lying and hating.

I don't get it. Do you get it? I don't get it.

Parsons notes that Carona managed to get the endorsement of the local GOP. What he doesn't say is that, at first, the local central committee voted not to endorse Carona. A month later, after much arm twisting (God only knows what they've got on some of these Repubs) and rule-bending by Schroeder and the Machine, the central committee reversed itself and endorsed Carona for Sheriff.

But how on earth can these people endorse a man who is so manifestly unsavory? Well, says, Parsons, if you ask 'em, they'll tell you that they're fair-minded people who are willing to give a guy the benefit of the doubt:

"We support incumbent Republicans, as a general rule," [party chief Scott] Baugh says. "That's what we're doing. That's not to say there wasn't some controversy and debate [before endorsing Carona]…. I think the body is giving him the benefit of the doubt and believe he's the best man for the job."

That strip-club owner? According to the Weekly, he's a mob associate. Those photos of Carona with the Russian cutey? Carona has not denied that they are genuine (i.e., undoctored). Hiring, and supporting many of the outrageous projects, of George Jaramillo (before he was canned)? Carona can hardly deny it. Screwing around? Again, no denial.

But none of this stuff matters to these pious GOPers. I don't get it. Do you get it? I don't get it.


SUNDAY EVENING:

My bro stopped by with his kids, Sarah and Adam. She's 3 years and 4 months. He's maybe 21 months. She already reads and he counts everything that can be counted and some things that can't. Took some snaps:


v

A festival for the likes of us

Today, I attended the LA Times Festival of Books at UCLA, accompanied by my old friend the Janster, a full-time lawyer and part-time writing teacher at CSUF. On our way up there, the weather was gloomy, but we weren't.

Red Emma had his usual booth--he edits a respected literary journal--and so we checked that out and visited. Gary Stewart--formally top A&R guy at Rhino--dropped by. Lots of great people came around.

Right next door was the L. Ron Hubbard booth. Despite warnings from Red, I wandered over there and inspected the lively and garrish (and, indeed, impressive) covers of Mr. Hubbard's numerous sci-fi books.

The two people in the booth--they were disturbingly clean-cut, like Young Republicans--wouldn't leave me alone. I kept sayin' that I didn't need any help, but they kept asking. Finally, they handed me a small box of playing cards. "Hubbard" cards, I guess. They said it was free. They seemed to want me to go.


At 11:00 a.m., we attended the panel discussion on disasters, which featured Timothy Egan (cute, but probably gay, a gal there opined), Philip Fradkin (uncute, but funny, said the same lady), and Scott Gold (I dunno). The discussion was moderated by public radio's own Larry "Earnest" Mantle. (One gal offered this appraisal of the fellow: "I cannot imagine a less sexual being." Ouch!)

Egan was there to talk about the Oklahoma Dustbowl disaster, which was caused by the systematic destruction of prairy grass. You see, after the war, there was a huge demand for wheat, and so they tore out the grass in and around Oklahoma to farm the land. Then all hell broke loose, smack dab in the middle of the Depression.

It took but two generations to ruin the land. Sheesh. They saw it comin', but that didn't slow 'em down one little bit. Lemmings!

Fradkin was there to discuss the San Francisco earthquake, which happened at a time when the feds and the state did exactly zip to help people during disasters. San Francisco pretty much had to fend for itself, although it did manage to attract international assistance.

Anybody looting--including, sometimes, those who were told to take whatever they needed--were shot on sight. Good grief!

Gold was there to talk about Katrina. He was mighty glum. He talked about just how bad it was in New Orleans, during the first few days of that disaster. He explained about looting--he himself was forced to steal gasoline and other things. There was no avoiding it, he said. Most people had no way to leave before or after the hurricane. There was no way to eat if one did not take what one needed wherever one could find it.


These speakers were compelling. They said lots of the expected things: we're not prepared for disasters; if the "big one" hits, it'll make Katrina look like a day in the park; everybody failed in the case of Katrina; people are mighty stupid, etc.

--And unexpected things. The "cute" guy explained that those Okies were often heroic, despite messing up the grasslands (at the urging of the federal government). You wanted to hate 'em, he said, but you ended up admiring lots of 'em.

At one point, a mob grabbed a banker (a foreclosing rat bastard!) and took him out to the dust for a neck-tie party (I don't think they went through with it; whew!). But mostly people behaved well, and two-thirds stuck it out. Amazingly, the land is now returning to its original condition, now that small farming is nearly dead. Towns are dying there. Only old people remain, with their memories.

UCLA sure is a beautiful campus. And they take good care of it, too. Here are some snaps:



At 1:00, we headed over to magnificent Royce Hall to see Joan Didion. We were accompanied by Rebel Girl, who showed up to the festival with Limber Lou in a little red wagon.


Royce Hall is one of my favorite buildings. It was named after the idealist philosopher Josiah Royce, who was born in a California mining camp (in the 1850s) and went on to become one of the most influential intellectuals of his time.

Royce wouldn't be pleased by the corrupt fools who are messing up our college district. I learned about him at UCI, back in 1976, from Frederick Will, a philosopher, and the father of George Will.


Fact is, I really liked that old man, despite his stuffed-shirt son, and I remember everything he said. He'd sit behind a table in front of class and kind of think out loud. Sometimes, he'd think in silence for maybe a minute or two before saying something, but he made every word count. I was the only kid in the room who thought Will's method was cool.

Silence is powerful. Sometimes I use silence just like that old man did.

The Janster and I always seem to end up in the balcony at Royce Hall, and that's just swell by me, because the interior of Royce Hall is as impressive as its exterior, and the view from the balcony is tops. Here are some pics (of the stage and the balcony and the ceiling):




Here's a detail of the ceiling:


Joan Didion was interesting, I suppose, but she sure is soft-spoken, and I'm kind of deaf, and so I didn't hear much.

Every once in a while, she'd say something funny. I know this because people laughed. I stared at the ceiling. "Wow," I said.


Royce Hall is cavernous, and so a tiny woman in a chair on the stage is hard to see. To help out, they set up a big screen--just behind Didion--which projected her image. That lady is thin. Her hand looked like it was all sinew and bone, and it was wrinkly and incredibly long.

I guess anything will look weird if you blow it up to the size of a wall. Mostly, Didion is unweird.

Later, with Red Emma, we showed up again at Royce Hall for an interview of Gore Vidal by Ariana Huffington. On my way into the hall, Ariana ran past and nearly ran me down. She's tall. She sounds like she's from Transylvania. I think she said "Dahling" to me.

They rolled Mr. Vidal out in his wheelchair, and that inspired a standing O. As always, Vidal was funny and clever and actorish. Occasionally, he'd find himself on a rhetorical roll, and then he'd pull out all the stops (incidentally, there's a huge organ in Royce Hall) with that great voice of his. The old guy was shameless. The audience gobbled it up. Me too.

Huffington did a great job, though she didn't need to add much, cuz Mr. Vidal makes his own sauce. He noted that there's considerable evidence that the 2004 election was stolen. How come the New York Times is ignoring this? he asked. It's a pretty undemocratic democracy, he said, when people can steal elections and then get away with it. And they're getting away with it.

Ariana proclaimed that Mr. Bush is the most incompetent and corrupt president ever, and Mr. Vidal did not disagree. Neither did the audience. It was lovely being among such people for once!

Mr. Vidal explained that the media have really dropped the ball on reporting the Bush Administration's scandals and outrages. W is getting away with murder, he said. It'll be at least two generations, he added, before we will recover what we've lost. It took but two terms for these creeps to ruin what took many years to build.

We soon left Royce Hall and emerged to a beautiful day of bright sunlight and cool breezes. Perfect!

On our way out, we ran into a lady with anti-Bush signs, who insisted that there's gotta be a revolution. I nodded, wondering what kind of revolution she had in mind.


It's great hangin' out all day with tens of thousands of people--they're called readers--who, it seems, without exception agree that the President of the United States is a phenomenally evil and stupid man.

It's impossible to have that experience in the O.C. But we went back there anyway, smilin'.

In a possible world