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Our Tawny My

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By Ernie McCray

Our girl, Tawny Maya (Tawny My, for short), is now a mom and, as I watch her kiss and coo and cradle her little bundle of delight, looking at ways to adapt to his personality so she can best tend to his needs, I’d say he is one lucky son-of-a-gun.

I look at her in a picture, posing in her natural loveliness, as her mother had, in the same gown, a little more than thirty-five years ago and I can’t help but recall how we waited for Tawny and her sister, Nyla Summer, just bubbling with anticipation.

Oh, I wish Nancy could see this mom we raised, and all I can say for myself right now is if I had anything to do with who she has become today then please excuse me while I pat the hell out of my back. All I tried to do, basically, was treat her with love and respect, do somersaults when she accomplished something, anything, and go easy on the tendency grownups have to address their children’s screw-ups with B.S. jive like “Why, I’ve never heard of such a thing.” I tried to keep it real and what a deal because it paid off.   [Read more…]

Chunky Sanchez, a Living Legend Hero of Mine

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By Ernie McCray

Ramon “Chunky” Sanchez is a hero of mine and the why to that is because I love people who work to make the world a better place and that’s all I’ve ever seen him do, all over the place, ever since the late 60’s – right beside all us other “radicals,” carrying a guitar in his hands and songs in his imaginative mind filled with humor and bite and a Vato smile on his big round face – and we all went about the business of dealing with the problems in our communities, rising enrollments in gangs, cops cruising our streets with looks on their faces that didn’t do justice to any notions of “protecting and serving” that was detectible to the naked eye, schools waving white flags, lack of adequate social services and safe places for our children to play. The usual societal sins.

And it brought a tear or two rolling down my cheeks when I read the other day that in September this noble man with a heart of gold, this gifted musician who plays too many instruments to mention, will be honored with a National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship. To borrow words from a classic Johnny Mercer tune, this is “just too marvelous, too marvelous for words.”   [Read more…]

The Game (A Rhyme Shared Before the Showing of “The Other Dream Team,” a Basketball Documentary)

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By Ernie McCray

I don’t know where
the Regular Joe is with games
but I have lived to play all the games.
Hey, what can I say,
starting when I was but a babe,
I spent the greatest part of my childhood age
catching something
or knocking somebody down
or vice-versa,
copping a Heisman Trophy pose
and sidestepping some clown
who’s trying to run you down
so he can knock you down…   [Read more…]

No More Ho, Ho, Ho?

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By Ernie McCray

I got a call on my message machine asking for my help regarding a “secular” matter. It was my first such request in all my 75 years so I couldn’t help but wonder, “Why me?” since I don’t, although I’m not religious, necessarily consider myself a secular human being, and also since this particular worldly problem pertained to La Jolla.

I mean when I moved to San Diego in 1962, I was, in and of my 6 foot five black self, a problem in La Jolla, feeling, whenever I visited, about as welcomed as a seal in the Children’s Pool, like an unwashed heathen in a pristine hallowed place.   [Read more…]

Making Room for Lyric Allen on the Family Tree

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By Ernie McCray

Lyric Allen Anderson arrived on this earth on May 29th, 2013. He’s become the tenth person I can claim as a grandchild and every one of them is dear to me. But this beautiful baby boy is particularly special in that he’s the first to carry within his veins the blood of his Grandma Nancy, who passed away four years ago, and mine. She was my valentine and I welcome Lyric Allen to the world in behalf of both of us.

Oh, I don’t know if I can describe what it felt like holding him in all his raw innocence, for the first time, as what words can convey how one feels when one of the dearest beings in the world to him gives birth to someone equally as cherished? I’ll portray it as simply a wonderful moment in time.

And we’re just the family for him. I mean he was due on Wednesday of one week and didn’t as much as take a peek until the Wednesdayof the next week – and we can relate to that. We are true blue late kinds of folks, disciples of “Hey, we’ll get there when we get there or sometime thereafter” kind of thinking. So he passes the muster with us, with flying colors.   [Read more…]

On a Slow Ride from Golden Hill to South Park

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By Ernie McCray

Often when I tell someone I live in Golden Hill they say “Oh, yeah? Where?” 30th and Cedar is my reply and then they say “That’s South Park.”

“No, Golden Hill,” I say and they, like we’re in a debate competition, and they’ve got me on this one, start quoting passages from a map to prove that I’m not a Golden Hillian. And then I have to explain to them, in a nice friendly “home is where the heart is,” kind of way, that no matter what some chart has to say, I live in Golden Hill.

And I don’t say that out of any animosity towards them or South Park. Not at all. It will be a slow ride if it happens but I might claim to live there some day since I do “officially.” It’s just that I’m a Golden Hill O.G.   [Read more…]

Shining a Beam on Black and White

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Thoughts on the “Fluency of Light”

By Ernie McCray

As I sit writing as a still new 75 year old, I’m so glad I’ve lived, in spite of how scary our world is at times, to see shreds of promise rise before my eyes, hopeful happenings like Arab Spring, gays marrying, and Occupy. I love anything that keeps hope alive.

That being said, I just read the most inspirational memoir, “The Fluency of Light,” by Aisha Sabatini Sloan, the niece of a new friend of mine. I was feeling good about the book before I even fluttered the pages because I found out on the back cover that Aisha lived in my hometown for a spell and has a masters from the University of Arizona, as do I. And she taught creative writing there too. All of that, alone, represented hope to me as back in my day at the U of A it was very unlikely that she would have even been invited for an interview to teach Wildcats. My school has come a long way.   [Read more…]

Trying to Stay Wise at 75

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By Ernie McCray

Just turned 75.
As I think about being a year older,
my first thought is
I’m so glad to be alive.
No jive.   [Read more…]

No More Hurting People – Peace

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by Ernie McCray

Everyone, perhaps, has now seen the picture of Martin Richards, 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.   [Read more…]

Kinya Letting Her Light Shine in Honor of MLK

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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.   [Read more…]

You Make My Heart Sing

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A Shout Out to the Arizona Wildcat Basketball Team

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.
…..   [Read more…]

The Two Ends of a Bridge (Seeking Environmental Justice)

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I look at a picture of the San Diego-Coronado Bay Bridge emptying into the Crown City against a waning yellow and orange sunset and the word “beauty” sums up all that I see.

And as one drives into Coronado there’s more beauty to be seen, little plots of sand, the green colors of a park and a golf course; it’s pleasant to the eyes.
As I reverse the trip in my mind, I find the sunset and gentle setting fading behind me and I remember how just a few days ago I listened to a woman’s voice tremble and watched as she, in mid-muddled-sentence, fought back tears. She was sharing a story out of her community’s struggle for environmental justice on a “Barrio Live” bus tour which was put on by the Environmental Health Coalition (EHC). She so desperately wanted not to cry but her emotions couldn’t be put aside as she described a neighborhood where people have had to keep their doors and windows closed at all times because the bad stuff that is in the air is at levels way, way, way above what is considered “unhealthy.”
How does one tell about a little boy who lived in one of the homes and became seriously ill, remaining so for years, and not feel like weeping?   [Read more…]

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