Passings: Charles Eastman

When Rebel Girl first started showing up in Jim Krusoe's writing workshop at Santa Monica College in the mid-1980s, she met Charles Eastman, a rather august figure who also showed up week after week to sit in a circle and read aloud his stories and listen to those of others. The writing workshop is a deceptively simple ritual.

It was in Krusoe's workshop that she learned and learned again that there was more than one teacher in that circle - nearly everyone had something to teach.

Charles Eastman was one of those, with his measured advice and his own quietly powerful work and wide-ranging reading.

Truth to be told, Charles frightened her for the first few years, using words that she'd never heard before, citing unknown writers and working week after week at patiently growing a short story, scene after scene. In that workshop where you read your work aloud, Rebel Girl would read hers at home and wonder what Charles would say.

During breaks, while people bought paper cups of vending machine coffee, other students told her things about Charles - facts that were confirmed in today's Los Angeles Times obituary: he was a playwright; he was a screenwriter: his films had big stars in them; his sister was famous too, had written Five Easy Pieces; he, himself, was famously select about what kind of work he did and for whom.

From today Times, Robert Towne, screenwriter of Chinatown:

Screenwriter Robert Towne, who met Eastman in the '60s, recalled how impressed he was by an early Eastman screenplay that never made it to the big screen: "Honeybear,I Think I Love You," the story of a disturbed young man's obsession with a girl.

"For me, it was quite a revelation because it was the first contemporary screenplay I had read that just opened up the possibilities of everything that you could put into a screenplay in terms of language and the observations of contemporary life," Towne said this week.

"It was a stunning piece of work, and I think it influenced a lot of us, even though it wasn't made," Towne said. "Everybody tried to get it made, but Charlie was very particular about how it was going to be made, and in some ways I think he kept it from being made.

"Charlie was an original, that's all. He used language in a way that I hadn't seen used before."

Towne said Eastman was "very particular, very quirky, very much like his sister," who wrote "Five Easy Pieces," starring Jack Nicholson, under the pen name Adrien Joyce.

"I think she was writing about Charlie in some ways," said Towne. "Charlie was just one of those shadowy figures that I think cast a longer shadow over most of us than was generally recognized."

Rebel Girl wasn't Charles Eastman's friend but they did sit in a room together with others, for years and years, and listen to the stories people told and shared some of their own.

To read the rest of Dennis McLellan's obituary, click here.

To see the closing scene of Eastman's film, Little Fauss and Big Halsy, (yes, that's a young Robert Redford) and to listen to Johnny Cash sings its title song, click below.

"Adverse publicity probably didn't help"

I just noticed this report about Laguna Woods Village from two days ago:

• Four Emeritus morning fitness classes at Clubhouse 1 will be discontinued after end of year (OC Reg)

During his Community Activities Committee report at Tuesday's Golden Rain Foundation Board of Directors meeting, Director Bob Hatch announced that the four Saddleback College emeritus fitness classes held Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 12 noon at Clubhouse One's equipment room will be discontinued after the end of this year.

Other emeritus fitness classes will not be affected.

"The fall term will be last term," Hatch later verified.

"The state has reduced the amount of funds the college has, so Saddleback had to determine where their services were most appreciated." Objections raised by some Village residents in having to register for the classes so as to use the equipment room during the 8 a.m. to noon time period may have affected the college's decision, he said, adding that "Adverse publicity probably didn't help." Hatch also emphasized that, as of this time, no plans have been made to discontinue other emeritus classes….

In other news...

• Cal State closes 2009-10 spring admissions because of budget crisis (LA Times)

In a move to cut enrollment because of the state budget deficit, the 23-campus Cal State University system announced Thursday that, with few exceptions, it will not allow students to start at the university next spring. Cal State usually admits about 35,000 freshmen, undergraduate transfers and graduate students in the spring, officials said….

Muscle cars are back, evidently

Ignorant and perverse

Today, New York Times science writer Cornelia Dean reports on a survey just completed for the giant American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (Survey Shows Gap Between Scientists and the Public).

Guess what? Scientists and Joe Public are not on the same page.

…[W]hile almost all of the scientists surveyed accept that human beings evolved by natural processes and that human activity… is causing global warming, members of the general public are far less sure. ¶ Almost a third say human beings have existed in their current form since the beginning of time, a view held by only 2 percent of the scientists. Only about half agree that people are behind climate change, and 11 percent do not believe there is any warming at all. ¶ According to the survey, about a third of Americans think there is lively scientific debate on both topics; in fact, there is no credible scientific challenge to the theory of evolution and there is little doubt that human activity is altering the chemistry of the atmosphere in ways that threaten global climate.

OK, nothing new here. The public is pretty clueless.

Predictably, according to the survey, Joe and Jane Public hold scientists in high regard. –Right. They like science and scientists; it’s only what scientists produce that they reject.

Sure, I get it. I like my compass, but I reject the idea that it points to magnetic north.

Joe and Jane aren’t just ignorant; they’re perverse.

OK, I’ll say it. Democracy sucks. –I know, I know. All other government forms suck even more.

That really sucks.

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

--Winston Churchill

"He made no factual corrections," Perez said

On Monday, the OC Reg (here) described John Williams’ response to a “scathing” Grand Jury report about his agency (Trustee Williams is also OC Public Guardian/Administrator). According to the GJ, Johnny Boy is mighty incompetent. Plus he's blowing off the GJ's recommendations.

Today, a reader alerted us that the Reg article has been updated:

UPDATED 7/7/09: James Perez, foreman of the grand jury that published the two reports, said Tuesday that Williams was allowed to review both reports before they were published and that he did not raise concerns about their accuracy.

"He made no factual corrections," Perez said. "What he said was, the facts are correct, but I dispute your interpretation of the facts."

Williams rejects the claims, as well as most of the grand jury's recommendations, in his official response. For example, the grand jury reported that Williams' office took four years to resolve the estate of a man who had died. The estate was worth $7,100 at the time of death, the report said, but it had dwindled to zero before it ever reached the court to be dispersed.

"The public administrator office didn't even handle this case," Williams wrote in his response. He also defended his staffing levels, saying they're in line with other county agencies and that the grand jury comparisons are misleading. He denied pension spiking and said his office has saved the county money.

Williams still has two months to respond to the grand jury's second report, but he doesn't believe voters will support splitting his office or change it from being an elected job.

"It makes as much sense as dividing up sheriff and coroner," Williams said. "It would be too cost prohibitive."

My money's on Perez.

Big man

As Rebel Girl noted, this morning, Chancellor Raghu P. Mathur spammed the district community, alerting us to two recent newspaper articles about declining property tax collections (County's property tax values tumble $5.2billion [OC Reg] and First property tax dip since 1994 [LA Times]).

Sounds alarming.

"I encourage you,” he wrote, “to read [these] two very important newspaper articles … regarding the decreasing property taxes in Orange County. This will have an adverse impact on our District budget, especially in the area of basic aid dollars.”

Naturally, the Chancellor’s links to the articles didn’t work. The link to the Reg article opened up my mail program. The link to the Times article opened to a page that did not include the article.

Whatever. I, too, noticed these articles. Our district is an unusual “basic aid” district, which means that we get lots of our funding from a portion of locally collected property taxes. So when property values decline, our funding declines. On the other hand, compared to other districts, we’re swimming in dough, a fact that has inspired resentment across the state. We’ve got shitloads of extra money, and so the issue has been: how do we spend it? New facilities? A bust of St. Ronald?

As you know, here in Dissent, we’ve often noted our dependence on local property taxes, and we’ve monitored board discussions of the situation. We've been on top of it, baby.

So why didn’t I provide a link to yesterday’s articles?

It was because of lines like this one: “Orange County's total property tax values for 2009-10 are down 1.23%....” (LA Times).

One percent. Wow.

You know me: I have no clue about fiscal issues. But I do have a question: do we get a portion of the whole county’s property tax collections (which took a 1% hit) or do we get a portion of the property tax collections specifically for the cities that we serve (i.e., South County cities)?

I ask because some cities—e.g., Laguna Beach and Irvine—actually experienced an increase: they “have slightly increased their assessed values, mainly because of development,” reported the Times.

So exactly where do we stand?

Raghu likes to play the big man. We should just buy him a crown and then ask him to hide somewhere, incommunicado.

That would be best for all concerned, I think.

America the Undignified

I’ve been trying to ignore the endless craziness about Michael Jackson. But it ain’t easy.

Predictably, the reverend Al Sharpton has been milking the situation for all it’s worth. Like many others, he’s giving the people what they want: emotional blatherings about Jackson’s epoch-shattering greatness and his importance to each and every one of us.

Evidently, yesterday, a reporter asked President Obama whether he agrees with such assessments.

I was a little worried.

I shouldn’t have been. Obama did not join in the unseemly emotional gushfest over the death of the self-appointed “King of Pop.” Jackson, he said, like so many other black entertainers and sports figures, has raised Americans’ “comfort level” with African Americans.

That’s pretty understated. Let’s hope this doesn’t inspire calls for his resignation.

Yesterday, the New York Times’ David Brooks managed to put Jackson into some perspective—in a way that likely won’t inspire angry calls that he be fired. (In Search of Dignity.)

His piece concerned the importance of dignity, a trait once exhibited by some of our leaders. He wrote about the death of the “dignity code” and placed Mr. Jackson—and the rest of us—in that unfortunate retrograde saga:

The dignity code commanded its followers to ... put national interests above personal interests. It commanded its followers to be reticent — to never degrade intimate emotions by parading them in public. It also commanded its followers to be dispassionate — to distrust rashness, zealotry, fury and political enthusiasm.
…
But the dignity code itself has been completely obliterated.

Each week, Brooks writes, one witnesses horrifying new episodes “featuring people who simply do not know how to act.” Some recent examples:

First, there was Mark Sanford’s press conference. Here was a guy utterly lacking in any sense of reticence, who was given to rambling self-exposure even in his moment of disgrace. Then there was the death of Michael Jackson and the discussion of his life. Here was a guy who was apparently untouched by any pressure to live according to the rules and restraints of adulthood. Then there was Sarah Palin’s press conference. Here was a woman who aspires to a high public role but is unfamiliar with the traits of equipoise and constancy, which are the sources of authority and trust. ¶ In each of these events, one sees people who simply have no social norms to guide them as they try to navigate the currents of their own passions.

Brooks ends on a positive note. There is, he says, “the fact of President Obama”:

Whatever policy differences people may have with him, we can all agree that he exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity. The cultural effects of his presidency are not yet clear, but they may surpass his policy impact. He may revitalize the concept of dignity for a new generation and embody a new set of rules for self-mastery.

May he? Brooks is dreaming. For every dignified and intelligent Presidential moment, there are dozens—hundreds—of moments in which a celebrity gushes or weeps or lets it all hang out.

And America is riveted.

John Williams breaks out his smelly brown Crayon

John Williams—SOCCCD trustee and OC Public Administrator/Guardian—is nothing if not stupid. And so, a month after the OC Grand Jury noisily noted that, as Administrator/Guardian, Williams is an incompetent boob and brazen cronyizer (and a week after the GJ offered a second scathing rebuke, when Williams changed nothing), Mr. Dolt has come out swinging with his trusty bag of gas:

Public guardian fires back against mismanagement claims

According to the Reg’s Jennifer Muir, in his response, issued today,

Williams laid out his department's accomplishments and cited details in the report that he says are incorrect. [He spotted a split infinitive.] He said he took pains to explain complicated and technical procedures to grand jurors, but they just didn't understand.

That’s likely because John's IQ is very low, and he doesn’t understand this crap himself, so naturally his 'splainin' goes nowhere. (I once saw him with a box of Cracker Jack; he was eating the prize.)

Williams, who is joined on the SOCCCD board by former OC GOP chief Tom Fuentes, is of course a part of Fuentes’ world-o’-corrupt-an’-cynical-an’-butt-ugly cronies (WOCACABUC for short), and so, naturally, in 2005,

County Supervisor John Moorlach supported reorganizing the public administrator and public guardian roles into their own agency…. He also supported a change in 2007 that made whoever was elected to the public administrator job the ex-officio public guardian.

Yeah, that’s how this crew operates. Williams may be a dolt, but he does know how to suck on the public teat and milk it for all its worth. (Check out his five-hundred dollar a night stays in hotels—he especially likes to travel to Orlando—paid for by the taxpayers.) So, amazingly, he got elected to a minor county office, but it has somehow morphed into a big freakin’ job—with a nifty car allowance too!—and he now makes some serious bucks.

Only problem is that he’s fouled things up so badly that even his powerful right-wing friends can’t fix things for ‘im:

"We are very troubled," [Moorlach chief of staff Mario] Mainero said. "We need to sit down and read through Williams' response, and try to decide where we're going." [Lemme save you the trouble: we’re going to Orlando.] In the first report, grand jurors accused Williams of nearly doubling management costs and promoting an employee within a year of retirement, costing the county more than $1 million more for the employee's pension. The report also alleges the public administrator squandered the estate of a person who had died. Last week, grand jurors issued a second scathing report, accusing Williams of continuing the poor management practices, even after being warned.

So, anyway, Johnny has now responded in writing, which means that he had to break out the crayons and start scribblin’ for an hour or two. Using the smelly brown crayon, he has scrawled that

the grand jury reported that [his] office took four years to resolve the estate of a man who had died. … "The public administrator office didn't even handle this case," Williams wrote in his response. He also defended his staffing levels, saying they're in line with other county agencies and that the grand jury comparisons are misleading. He denied pension spiking and said his office has saved the county money.

Yeah, Williams thinks that a denial is a kind of argument, but a really good kind cuz it involves fewer words: "Did not!"

We all know where this is headed, and it ain't Orlando. Will John "Brown Boy" Williams be vindicated? No freakin' way. If you wait long enough, all the denizens of Fuentes/Schroeder World end up in jail or at least on the public’s brownest shit list. Tommy, I think, is headed for hell. I'm an agnostic, but I've already asked the Lord if I can watch.

Williams has two months to respond to the second grand jury report. I can’t wait.

I should mention that in recent years, Williams has fallen out of favor with Tom Fuentes and his nasty crew. Not long ago, Fuentes got his pal Steve Greenhut at the Reg to slam Williams for bein' a RINO (Williams is so cheap that he plays nice with the faculty union to get it to fund his campaigns).

Yeah, but I still blame Fuentes and his ugly and appalling cronyistic machinations. You'd better hope there's no God, Tommy Boy. Near as I can tell, the Lord is down on your M.O., bigtime.