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In a Morro Bay State of Mind

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Home from a roadtrip. One which was just that, a journey, a moving on, to another phase in my life.

We got going at a nice pace as I’m not fascinated with speed. It got a little slow through L.A. but, indeed, it wasn’t too bad. I approached it with a “low rider” attitude, set my own mood. Hey, my novia’s at my side so I couldn’t help but low ride as she rubbed her sexy little hands on my knee. Made me go “Good googily wooglily” like back in my teens wearing white t-shirts and levi blue jeans.

Next think I know we’re in Carpinteria and when I looked around I couldn’t help but swoon and sway as I stood there in view of an almost criminally beautiful day. It was like the sun was showing off.   [Read more…]

“Lucy in the Sky” by Another John

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I recently took a writing workshop at the Ink Spot called “How to be Funny Even if You’re Not” led by John Vorhaus, a man who is pretty funny which I think helps if you want to show somebody how to be funny.

And he’s been funny a long time, working in the television industry both here and abroad. He once recruited and trained writers for Bulgaria’s adaptation of Married… with Children which to me, for some reason, is funny in and of itself – as I try to picture a family as dysfunctional as the Bundys speaking and doing pratfalls with a Slavic flavor.

John’s got a book out that I haven’t bought yet but I’m about to amazon it. He’s actually got several books out but this one, “Lucy in the Sky,” intrigues me, particularly, since I was in an evolutionary state of being when Sir Paul and John gave us Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Reading a few words John sent me about his book, I picture myself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies. Somebody calls me, I answer quite slowly, a girl with kaleidoscope eyes and I can visualize John’s coming-of-age tale set in Milwaukee, in 1969, when I was thirty-one getting out of a marriage that was way over and done, so glad that I hadn’t murdered that woman whom I once thought of as The One.   [Read more…]

One HELL of a Sunday (Thoughts About Religion)

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Early on in my life, as a child, as far as religion goes, HELL plagued me like a recurring nightmarish dream. The first time I heard of that infernal place my heart sank in fear. “You burn forever?” I asked, followed by “forever forever?” And since the answer was always in the affirmative, HELL weighed heavily in the farthest corners and deepest canyons of my imagination, fueling my apprehensions pretty much on a daily basis and one Sunday morning, a few days before my 9th birthday, I became “saved” – somewhat in the manner of a soldier with bombs dropping all around him waving a white flag.

I can still see myself sitting in the pews, waiting like I did every Sunday for Reverend Kendricks to entertain with the cadence and rituals of Black Baptist Ministers, the play with words, the rhythmic prancing, the blotting of handkerchiefs against a sweaty brow.   [Read more…]

Looking at a Beautiful Sunset …and …Contemplating a Mayor – Bob Filner – Who Loves the Arts

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Looking at a beautiful San Diego sunset I thought of how there’s so much about our city that lends itself to art. A clip of a radio show on KPBS that a friend of mine, Seema Sueko, a leader in the San Diego arts scene, shared with me played a major part in my thinking.

On the show she expressed that she felt Carl DeMaio was a “little unfriendly” to arts and culture in our city. That really resonated in my mind because the arts, to me, is what life is all about as the arts let us explore who we are and who we might become. It could do the same for a city.

I realized just how essential the arts are to our well being as a society back when I was a beginning classroom teacher in Room B5 at Perry Elementary in the Bayview Naval Housing area.
  [Read more…]

Bob Filner, My Kind of Snarly Guy

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Both candidates for Mayor of San Diego are viewed as fighters, but only one has repeatedly and habitually demonstrated a genuine concern for the people he is elected to serve.

Carl DeMaio and Bob Filner have both been described as “snarly.” Maybe they are but Bob has got a lot of snarling to do to match Carl.

I mean Bob pretty much, from what I’ve seen personally, as a friend of his over the years, only snarls at the likes of the promoters of injustices in our society like the fat cats in high positions and places who spend their lives conniving how to deny us “regular” folks a nice slice of the American Pie, not caring whether we live or die.   [Read more…]

Helping Jazz 88.3 Cop a Plea

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The other day
I was kind of lowriding down the street,
feeling about as cool as a 74 year old
could ever hope to be,
listening to some sounds
on Radio Jazz 88.3.
Ramsey Lewis, more specifically,
running his fingers over a keyboard,
as per usual,
ever so funkily,
with a spacey
other world type vibe…   [Read more…]

The 99% and All that Stuff is a Movement That’s All About US

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The 99% and all that stuff
is a movement that’s all about US
and with that in mind
one might opine
that many of US
can remember times
when we could barely
pay the rent
and when the rent
was made good with all good intent
the food money
was gone…spent.
So broke
you couldn’t afford to
take time to resent
the predictament…..   [Read more…]

Hoodoo Love at Mo’olelo

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Sometimes when I’m feeling mellow I can’t help but reflect on the good moments in my life, on the things that make my heart sing. Being an actor, and a patron of the arts, theater is high among the list of things that energize my existence.

And there is a performing arts company in town called Mo’olelo (story in Hawaiian) that is dedicated to staging dramas that inspire us, no matter our ethnicity or creed or what we believe, to seek and embrace ways to respect each other for who we all are: human beings.   [Read more…]

Saying “Hi” to Whoopi

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by Ernie McCray

It was so nice seeing my old friend, Whoopi, the other night. It had been a while. The last time I saw her was a few years ago when my wife, Nancy, and I, found ourselves standing in a line that can only be described as very long at a book store in La Jolla.

When we finally crossed the threshold of the building and got a glimpse of Whoopi, her head was bowed as she was intently writing her name with swift sweeps of her wrist. We just looked at her with deep admiration as she made so many people’s day, smiling at them as she scribbled.   [Read more…]

My Dancing Feet

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Sometimes I get dancing feet.
I’ll hear a song
and can’t help but want to move
to its rhythm,
to its beat.   [Read more…]

A Hopeful Youth Town Hall Meeting at Jacob Center in Lincoln Park

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This old dude was so tired that evening but there was no way I was going to miss a Town Hall Meeting with such a compelling theme as “Silence is Worse than Violence” – especially considering that a number of youth leaders decided that such a gathering was needed to begin a conversation for solutions to the problem. I love it when our children take the lead.

The night was kicked off with a bumping rap about how, “We got to rise up above it” followed by a spoken word piece about love and respect and honoring our ancestries and histories. Amen.

That set a tone that was soothing to my aging bones and the featured speaker and moderator of the evening, Kevin Powell, a prominent voice in the hip hop generation, jumped right in without missing a beat with anecdotes about the rough edges of his youth and how he turned it all around and has devoted his life to positive hopeful causes like ending violence, in keeping with why we were all gathered at the Joe & Vi Jacobs Center.   [Read more…]

How About Telling Our Children the Truth?

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Thoughts Stemming from 9-11 My radio alarm woke me up with someone summarizing a study that found that a significant number of schools have not done much as far as engaging students in learning experiences involving 9-11. Because it’s too “controversial.” Is that not sad? That reminds me of a man on TV, not too […]

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