Happy pup

This just in. Matt Coker reports that, at long last, biker and hubby-of-SandyB Jesse James has been reunited with his beloved pup, Cinnabun: Jesse James and Cinnabun Reunited. We’re glad.

Jesse James’ dog, Cinnabun, is returned home (OC Register)

UCSD fraternity “Compton Cookout” inspires outrage

Party Mocking Black History Month Angers Many at UCSD (Inside Higher Ed)

Many University of California at San Diego students are outraged over a "Compton Cookout" party held by fraternity members to mock Black History Month, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Attendees were encouraged to wear chains and cheap clothing. A guide for women attending the event said: "For those of you who are unfamiliar with ghetto chicks — Ghetto chicks usually have gold teeth, start fights and drama, and wear cheap clothes."

Students sue to restore affirmative action at UC (Contra Costa Times)

Students represented by a civil-rights group filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday to overturn California's ban on affirmative action in public university admissions. ¶ The complaint, filed in San Francisco, argues that Proposition 209 violates the U.S. Constitution's equal protection clause by turning certain students away from the University of California's most selective campuses….

Late at night, thinkin' about Robert Johnson

Robert Johnson 1911 — 1938
When I first heard his recordings, there were no known photos of the man.
Little was known about him.

This photo of the great bluesman emerged in 2008. Probably genuine.

These two photos were discovered in 1973.
They did not appear until about ten years ago.

Johnson didn't like to talk about himself.
Thus his surviving friends have provided little information about him.
A reliable music researcher says he met with Johnson's killer, sixty years after the fact.
Won't name him for legal reasons.

Recently alleged photo of R. Johnson sold on Ebay
My vote: yep, it's the Great Man
I'm hoping for more; and for more info


Despite his obscurity during his lifetime, Johnson was profoundly influential.
In 1938, he was sought for a major venue for black musicians in New York;
he died right about then. It isn't clear where he is buried. Three burial sites are claimed.

The latest idiocy

Gary Robbins on the OC Reg’s College Life blog report the latest idiocy in the UCI “free speech” saga: Zionist group urges boycott of UCI

The Zionist Organization of America today issued a news release asking people not to give donations to UC Irvine, which launched a $1 billion fundraising campaign in 2008. ZOA also urged students not to apply for admission to UCI, claiming in the release that “the university has for years enabled bigotry, discrimination and the violation of civil rights by failing to condemn longstanding anti-Semitic and Israel-bashing speech and conduct on campus and failing to enforce its own policies against the perpetrators.”
. . .
Cathy Lawhon, director of media relations at UCI, said by email, “We have no comment on ZOA’s press release.”

See Matt Coker’s Zionists Call for Donation, Enrollment Boycott of UC Irvine, Slam Chancellor (2/17)

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "this past was waiting for me"

There's a great deal to say today - even though the person Rebel Girl writes about often said so much in few words.

Lucille Clifton died last Saturday February 13, 2010 at age 73, at the end of a life that began in a large working class family in Depew, New York.

Clifton's bio is impressive - 11 poetry books (first one published at age 33), 20 children's books, a host of honors: three time nominee for the Pulitzer, National Book Award winner, poet laureate of Maryland for 11 years, professor at St. Mary's College of Maryland, Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets, and just this year, the Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America to honor "distinguished lifetime service to poetry." And, not the least, she was mother to six children, grandmother to several, teacher of multitudes.

A poem:

i am accused of tending to the past

i am accused of tending to the past
as if i made it,
as if i sculpted it
with my own hands. i did not.
this past was waiting for me
when i came,
a monstrous unnamed baby,
and i with my mother’s itch
took it to breast
and named it
History.
she is more human now,
learning languages everyday,
remembering faces, names and dates.
when she is strong enough to travel
on her own, beware, she will.

~ Lucille Clifton

Rebel Girl worked with Clifton during the summers at the Community of Writers in Squaw Valley where Clifton had been a staff poet since 1991. At the poetry workshop, Clifton wrote new poems each day along with the other staff poets and participants. She composed her daily poems on a typewriter, working on one of Oakley Hall’s shabby IBM Selectrics. It was Rebel Girl's job to collect everyone's first drafts early in the morning and make copies on the wheezing xerox machine. She'd wait for the copies to emerge, standing there, reading the poems, imprinted on the warm stack of thin white paper. Clifton's drafts were elegant, powerful, spare - and often many would appear a year or two later in magazines and journals, collected eventually in one of her books.

Rebel Girl still remembers Clifton's final poem from two years ago, how it achieved what her work did so well – three spare lines that captured the spirit of the previous night’s party at the Hall House, the week itself – and much more. That poem, the last, as it turned out, that I'd see from her, went something like this:

over the mountains
and under the stars it is
one hell of a ride

~
One more:

mulberry fields

they thought the field was wasting
and so they gathered the marker rocks and stones and
piled them into a barn they say that the rocks were shaped
some of them scratched with triangles and other forms they
must have been trying to invent some new language they say
the rocks went to build that wall there guarding the manor and
some few were used for the state house
crops refused to grow
i say the stones marked an old tongue and it was called eternity
and pointed toward the river i say that after that collection
no pillow in the big house dreamed i say that somewhere under
here moulders one called alice whose great grandson is old now
too and refuses to talk about slavery i say that at the
masters table only one plate is set for supper i say no seed
can flourish on this ground once planted then forsaken wild
berries warm a field of bones
bloom how you must i say


~Lucille Clifton

She said it.


(photo: Lucille Clifton receives the National Book Award in 2000.)

UPDATE: To read the New York Times obituary, click here.

Irvine crime wave: illegal balloon jumping

Earlier today, the OC Reg reported an unauthorized parachuting, evidently a crime. (See Man parachutes from Great Park balloon.)

The crime occurred on the Great Park balloon, in Irvine, Sunday morning.

The balloon, carrying 12 passengers, was rising to its top height of 400 feet when, at about the 330 foot mark, the pilot “felt a jolt and noticed that a young man had climbed to the top of the netting that encloses the gondola.” Or so said a city spokesman Craig Reem.

The man threw a parachute out in front of him and then jumped, quickly floating to the ground, Reem said.

"When he reached the ground, he scooped up the parachute and leaped over a nearby fence to a waiting car," Reem said.

Somebody was waiting for him in a white Toyota Supra, and the two left through the park gate at Marine Way, Reem said.

The kid was in his mid-20s, with blond hair. You know the type.

The Reg notes that federal laws were likely broken. Evidently, it’s illegal to fall on people.

Reem explained that the jump was dangerous, owing to the lowness of the balloon. “But it’s not the lowest ever attempted.”

The Reg helpfully notes that Austrian Felix Baumgartner once leapt “from the 98-foot Cristo Redentor statue in Rio de Janeiro.”

I’m sure blondie’s taking notes.

* * * * *

In another eye-opener, the Reg reports today that people are rating OC towns, on a scale of 1 to 5, on a site called “Yelp.” (See O.C. towns rated online, from 1 to 5 stars.)

Irvine isn’t doing very well.

For instance, Sam Y., who no longer lives in Irvine, gave the city one miserable star:

"Irvine is a planned community. a fake city, its owned by a corporation. like raccoon city from resident evil. and every once in a while people will freak out and go do something crazy. it looks nice but the place is real creepy. be careful there. i would write more but i don't want the irvine company to come get me."

Hey, Sam’s one of my students for sure. I recognize his punctuation.

UCI marketing prof Mary Gilly says

"Everything is viewed as brands now; cities are viewed as brands, they have brand associations … Irvine is viewed as being safe and boring ... so it's not surprising that people would review Irvine like they would a restaurant or Coca-Cola."

Nobody cares. Meanwhile, T.O. gave the city five stars, saying: "Who the **** writes a Yelp review on a city? ... I find this section to be completely useless."

Well, OK. Nice consistency.

Annie N. spoke directly to Irvine:

"You have no culture. You have no mom-and-pop stores. ... Nothing here has been untouched by the Irvine Company. The only good thing about Irvine: no electrical poles and wires. That actually amuses me for some reason. One star for you."

Annie's an English major, no doubt. Resident Anita L. was more positive:

"I love living in Irvine. ... I never thought I'd say this but I do. Though I still miss living in the Bay Area, lil guy is getting an excellent education, we live in an area free of crime. ... My only question is why are they constantly repairing the roads when they are still in mint condition?"

Oh, that’s cuz people in trailer parks don’t want to hear train horns. So they get tens of millions of state dollars to build a tunnel under the track, thereby inconveniencing thousands of other residents for years and wasting a buttload of money.

Explaining her review, Gilly said, that she is motivated by “altruism”: “– I don't want anybody else to suffer what I suffered."

“Williams was rarely there”

In today's OC Register:

Paralegal to challenge public administrator

A former employee in the county public administrator’s office plans to challenge her old boss, John Williams, for the elected position, saying Williams is an absentee leader and echoing claims of mismanagement documented in two grand jury probes into his office last year.

Colleen Callahan, 49, was a supervisor in the department’s legal unit before she quit last year after 11 years on the job. She said she had planned to work at the public administrator’s office until she retired but became so unhappy with management choices and low morale at the department that she changed her mind. She is now a superior court clerk at the Orange County Courthouse.

“I know it’s a long shot, but it’s not right for him to be there,” Callahan said. “I’ve seen so many people hurt and great employees he pushed out. We’re there to service the public.”
. . .

Last year, the PA/PG was the subject of two scathing grand jury reports that allege that Williams doubled salary costs, squandered the estates and engaged in questionable personnel practices, such as spiking an employee’s salary within a year of the employee’s retirement. (You can read about the first report here, and the second report here.)

Williams has defended his performance, saying the reports were riddled with inaccuracies and that grand jurors struggled to understand some of the complicated data they reviewed. And county supervisors in December narrowly voted down a proposal to reduce Williams’ authority by splitting the two roles and requiring Williams to report to the county’s CEO.

Callahan said that when she was with the department, Williams was rarely there. She pointed to a recent Register analysis of his travel records in his role as a trustee for the South Orange County Community College District, and wondered how he had time to travel and do his job at the county.

If elected, Callahan says she’ll cut department management in half and fund more front line workers who directly care for people….

Naturally, Reg readers have written comments about the above story. John C wrote:

I too was an employee of this department, and it is the truth that Mr. Williams was never there. His usual hours on the days that he shows up were in by 10:00 a.m. and after an hour and a half lunch, out by 3:00 p.m. (I never saw him but going by when his car was parked right out side the door in the employee of the month parking spot). No doubt on South Orange County Community College District business, but still on the County of Orange tax payers dime! Its time to put an end to his almost 30 year political career and to stop the corruption! He is only running again to keep his cronies (who have covered his @$$ while not in the office and who commit perjury by falsifying his timesheet every pay period. It should be noted that he just moved all the clerical staff out of the management area, no doubt so they can’t note his coming and going.