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Nay to Hate and Yea to Culture at ECC

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Board meetings are usually not my cup of tea. But I attended one, not too long ago, at the Educational Cultural Complex (ECC) and as I sat there, anticipating data reports and budget considerations and other matters that might lead me to want to cop some Z’s, I experienced a few moments that absolutely captivated me.

Like, all of a sudden, from behind me, during a section of the meeting that highlighted “Community Connections,” I hear a woman walking towards the stage belting out:

“They call it stormy Monday

but Tuesday’s just as bad.”

And the next thing I know my shoulders are gliding from side to side and my head is doing likewise and my size 14 feet are patting along with my fingers that are popping to the beat and right away three more singers got me leaning forward in my seat with:

“Wednesday’s worse and Thursday’s also sad.”

Oh, such sweet music from my past. For a moment my mind began to stray to times when I had my moments up there where those singers stirred my spirit in song.   [Read more…]

“I Am a Man” at the San Diego Rep

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A few of us actors got together on a Monday night to rehearse playwright Omayo’s drama, “I Am a Man,” in preparation for dramatic readings of the piece at the San Diego Repertory Theater on Monday, March 18th, and Tuesday, March 19th at 7:00 PM. The San Diego Rep is presenting the drama in collaboration with the Vagabond Theatre Project.
Each evening’s performances support “The Mountaintop,” a play by Katori Hall, which has been pleasing theater goers for weeks now at the Rep. It’s a must see about Martin Luther King’s last night before he was taken from us in Memphis.

Our play keeps Martin’s spirit alive as it is based on the travails of the black sanitation workers who, back in February 12, 1968, staged a wildcat strike backing their demands for equal pay, better working conditions and recognition of their union.   [Read more…]

In America We Have the Power to Change (Thoughts of Freedom)

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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.   [Read more…]

Yeah, I’m Bad! (Honoring My History)

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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?   [Read more…]

Reflections from a Rally at the Hilton Mission Valley

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Much has been made of Bob Filner crashing the City Attorney’s news conference a little while ago but we shouldn’t forget that in that flurry of feistiness he pointed out that there are people among us, fellow citizens, family, friends, you name them, who are paid tacky wages. Like hotel workers.

He made it clear that the tourist industry isn’t going to ply their trade with $30 million dollars of the city’s money unless they pay hotel workers what they deserve.

How refreshing is that, a mayor for the people, a man standing up for the folks who make visitors to “America’s Finest City” comfortable and well fed, with nice pools for a swim on well manicured hotel grounds. These people get out and about town and spend money by the ton and the people who added so much to the fineness of their stay don’t get anywhere near their fair share of this bounty.

The hoteliers, however, get way more than their ownership status should allow and around these parts they have historically treated their workers as though they don’t care about them. The reason being? Because they don’t care about them.   [Read more…]

North Park’s Seven Grand and All That Jazz

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I love me some jazz. I love all music actually: Patsy Cline is one of my favorite singers of all time; Symphony soothes my mind; R & B practically raised me; Marian Anderson is a hero to me; Corridos stir my soul; I can’t get enough of that Rock and Roll and I have danced in a park to Blue Grass. But I love me some jazz.

And speaking of jazz, the other night I caught some nice sounds at a new place in town. Seven Grand Whiskey Bar in North Park. 3054 University Avenue to be exact.   [Read more…]

Can We All Get Along? (Thoughts on Civility)

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So, if we’re really going to do this “civility” thing we have to understand that we’re not “restoring” something

“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 USD, 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.   [Read more…]

You Got to be Yourself, Jack (Looking at the Likes of 5 Hour Energy by Keeping it Real)

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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.”   [Read more…]

Bonny Russell, a Woman for our Times (December 23, 1943 – January 14, 2013)

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For Bonny Russell’s Celebration of Life on 2-17-13 at the Unitarian Universalist Church

Jan says about Bonny,
her wife, her love:

“She brought with her an open and loving heart,
the ability to listen deeply,
and a passion
for addressing injustice and inequality.”
…
Come Inside for the rest of Ernie’s beautiful poem…   [Read more…]

Gang Girl at ECC

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“Gang Girl”
Friday, March 1, 2013
ECC (Education Cultural Center)
4343 Ocean View Blvd.
Showtime 7pm

“Gang Girl: The Story of a 22-Year-Old Girl in the LA Bloods Gang,” is a work of art in the form of a documentary that I had heard about and now I’m glad that I have the opportunity to see it, thanks to the San Diego Chapter of the Association of Black Psychologists. They’re bringing it to town so that all who care can spend an evening exploring critical issues and strengths in the lives of inner-city youth and their families.
  [Read more…]

A New “When Sunny Gets Blue”

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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.

It was Steph Johnson hanging out with Claudia Russell on the Jazz Ride Home – and, oh, she sang the hell out of that song.   [Read more…]

Enero Zapatista

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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.
  [Read more…]

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