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What You Don’t Know About Me (As If You Cared)

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By Ernie McCray

I like facebook. For me it’s been a nice way to get snippets, sometimes daily, of what’s going on in the lives of both new and old friends: students of mine from over time, some of my children and grandchildren, ex-colleagues, fellow actors and writers and activists – interesting people all.

Occasionally one of them will suggest a game for me to play and I usually don’t take part in such online activities because it’s too easy to spend too much time on social media without the temptation of getting involved in diversionary attractions of any kind.

But lately a number of my friends have been revealing a number of random things about themselves that no one knows or bits of information only a few people are in on and if you profess a “like” for or make a comment on what they have exposed they assign you a number and you’re to make a list of unknown facts about yourself equal to that number. I was given the number 8 by one of my favorite students of all times, Shannon, who disclosed that her name is really Shanna in keeping with the idea of the game.   [Read more…]

Groovin’ on a Sunday Afternoon

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By Ernie McCray

A little while ago while kicking back in a park with a few members of my family tree, I found myself humming the Rascal’s catchy tune, “Groovin’ on a Sunday Afternoon,” because that’s what we were doing. Grooving. Cruising. Schmoozing. Amusing. Aka enjoying ourselves.

On a Sunday afternoon.

As we laughed and talked about what’s going on now with us and what went on in our past, individual thoughts about each precious one of them would rise in my mind.   [Read more…]

Time to Give Voice Through a Choice- AKA Get Out the Vote

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By Ernie McCray

With the mayoral election coming up on Tuesday, November 19th, it’s time for one of those “Get Out the Vote” kinds of appeals and I’m up for the deal because voting is what being an American means to me.

But there are folks who don’t vote which I see as an insult against the very notion of a democracy. They cry “What’s the use?” claiming that special interests rule the day and our representatives don’t care about us. Well, there sure is a lot of truth in that but I can’t think of any better reason to vote than to take on such abuses of power.

Voting is at the core of our nation’s soul. The big cats know that well. That’s why they buy folks who’ll heed their will.   [Read more…]

Getting to Know Lyric Better in Palm Springs

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By Ernie McCray

Man, I love that Lyric. My tenth grandchild. I recently spent a couple of fun days with him at our family’s Palm Springs getaway. As I got to know him better I couldn’t help but think of Nancy, his grandma, who over twenty years ago decided that we McRobs (combination of our last names, McCray and Robertson) needed a vacation spot, some where close where we could just get away from our everyday lives for a few days. Palm Springs came to be that place.

I was on board right-away except I didn’t understand the “time share” lingo but Nancy spoke the language well and she just put the papers in front of me and pointed to where I was to sign and we were in business. It turned out to be one of the nicest gifts we’ve ever bestowed on ourselves. It always signified to me, a school principal, that the summer was coming to an end and a new school year would soon begin. But I was always – after a week of swimming laps and having it “made in the shade,” literally, with my journal and my pen and whatever book I was involved in, not caring about the placement of prepositions – more than ready to engage kids in discussions of “What I Did This Summer,” more than ready to dive in and make learning as fun as I could get by with in “the system” and that, in and of itself, at times, was a whole lot of fun.   [Read more…]

Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood

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By Ernie McCray

I’m not, necessarily, one for seeing movies or plays or other things that are staged more than once unless there’s something really special about it. That being said I can’t wait to take in my friend Calvin Manson’s wonderfully soulful musical “Don’t Let me Be Misunderstood” again.

I highly recommend this beautifully crafted piece of theater because it’s so personal to me. It features the songs of one of my show-people-heroes, Nina Simone. This inimitable singer and pianist not only dazzled the world with her sultry sincere soulful voice but she also, at the same time, actively pursued dreams of that world being one where all people live in freedom. With dignity. Like Robeson and Belafonte. That kind of service to humanity resonates deeply within me.   [Read more…]

Gentle Fathers in the Wild

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By Ernie McCray

I hadn’t camped since Nancy died in ’09. But there I was, this past weekend, laying my sleeping bag down on the ground, to spend some time in the wilderness, near Julian, for two days and two nights with some of the most delightful people one could ever meet in life. It would be an understatement to define those moments as nice.

I mean we were living good, just kicking back, underneath a sky that was black as it could be considering that there was a full moon at play, eating meals off the grill, over burning logs we needed to feel cozy in the evening chill.

It had been a while but nothing had changed since the days when Nancy and I and our offspring would get out into the woods. Like back then, no sooner than I stepped out of my car my spiritual nature rose to the fore. At first it was a reaction to the sheer majesty of it all: the emerging colors of autumn all around me in the oak and cedar and pine trees, the knowing that I was surrounded by mule deer and wild turkeys with bobcats and mountain lions watching the whole scene, the fresh air. How could my soul not feel moved when I was, by the very environment I found myself in, feeling such a connection to nature’s wonders?   [Read more…]

A New Day at San Diego’s City Hall?

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by Ernie McCray

The other night while watching tv I heard interim San Diego Mayor, Todd Gloria, mention that it’s “A new day at City Hall.”

Well, I’ve witnessed many a “new day” in my life and what’s going on today in City Hall doesn’t look anything like any one of those days to me. Instead, it looks like the same old same old to the millionth degree.

Oh, but there was a new day at City Hall. Not too long ago. And it wasn’t like any “new day” I have ever experienced before. It was something to behold. True blue. I mean no mayor, as in none, before Bob Filner, had ever cited visions for our city that coincided with mine, a vision that included people like me, many of us South of 8, activists, artists, performers, non-profit folks and business folks of common means, all trying to meet our community’s needs.   [Read more…]

City Heights, My Hero in the Era of “The New Jim Crow”

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By Ernie McCray

If a community could be labeled a hero then City Heights would be mine. I’ve loved the community for a long time. I used to live there back in 68 or 69 – when I was trying to get my life back in line after it had been weakened by more drama than one would find in a telenovela storyline. So, to my delight, I rediscovered the light in City Heights. That bonded us.

The word around town in those days was that there were streets in the neighborhoods that were “kind of rough” and there was some truth to that but I’ve kept the love.

Over time, though, “rough” became a pretty apt description of the area. Gang banging and drug handling came more and more on the scene. Abodes were crumbling. Citizens had nowhere to go to ask questions as there were no “public services” to speak of. Some definition of “disenfranchised” has to be included in that picture somewhere.   [Read more…]

Feeling Zihua

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by Ernie McCray

I love getting out into the world and I’m particularly fond of spending time in Zihuatanejo, Guerrero, Mexico with Maria, mi querida.

That little seaport town and its surroundings compose a world of beaches and bays and mountains and lush jungles and mahogany colored peoples – and kick-ass mosquitos who seem to savor the taste of tall old black men.

This part of the world, as I learn more about it, gives rise to my spiritual nature, granting me a sense of what it must have been like for the Tarascan, Aztec, Toltec, Olmec and Maya peoples who walked this world many yesterdays ago.   [Read more…]

Basking in a Baby’s Smile

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By Ernie McCray

I was a bit out of tune the other day from just dealing with whatever tiny bits of frazzle-dazzle life had laid in my path that day and as I’m mumbling to myself over my little “First World Problem”, my cell phone vibrates in my levis pocket and I turn it on and there’s a picture of the dude, my main man, the leader of the band: Lyric. Flashing a smile that says in its very cuteness “Hey, dude, let all that minutiae go, bro.”

And so I did, like the sun melting snow. I just let it slide off my hide. I do that anyway, via my DNA, but my grandson’s smile made me not only stop but pause. Any rose near my nose was going to be smelled.

I sat down at my desk in my refreshed frame of mind and my little black book of “what day it is and where I need to be” just happened to be open and at a glance I could see examples of just how good life is being to me.   [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…]

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…]

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