hit me

Rather than the deep wheaty aroma that drifted over downtown from the Taystee bread factory, where Dad and I would pick up a dozen loaves of day old white from the outlet store to be put in the basement freezer until T and I would load chocolate chips between two slices and stick them in the microwave for a midnight snack, perhaps the scent of lilacs from the unpruned bushes that hung above the tall wood panel fence bordering Mom's backyard garden rushed through me with the head pain and lost wind when the car struck on Grand between Larry's Grocery, where Ramsey kids would buy candy from the extra wide bellied man who'd flash his baseball bat if he saw trouble, and Ace Hardware, where Dad had been buying supplies for his never-ending interior constructions. So full hands could not grab the five year old who didn't look both ways.

It would not be the last time I was hit while crossing the street but likely the most memorable. Second most was the time, some 14 years later and less than four blocks to the east at Snelling and Grand, when a sedan took a right turn smack into my left leg. I rolled myself up the curb and onto the sidewalk, grabbing my cramp and shouting "what the hell!" as I tried to walk it off. The sedan stopped and backed up. The driver, who I noticed through tears of agony wore the collar of a cleric, glanced over his shoulder at me. Then, apparently satisfied it wasn't serious, he peeled off.

The piercing stink of rotting carcass grows in the nose as I walk down Burbank Boulevard toward the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area. A lump of dusty fur, sunken eye sockets that form crosses, sags into the dry grass.

Blessings cat...Blessings...

Stir it Up

The MTA executive loves numbers like my four year old nephew loves chocolate cake batter, except one time, when uncle wasn't looking, he used a big wooden spoon to start slurping it down like it was soup, so at dinner he had a tummy ache, and when daddy asked "Do you gotta go potty?", he shook his head no--too much raw egg.

The following is a letter I sent to the MTA board:

I teach at California State University Northridge and am the author of Watching the Traffic Go By, a book on urban transportation history published by the University of Texas Press, and I am writing to urge you to vote no on the MTA's proposed fare increase.

Our Mayor has admirably put forth a climate action plan to address the ecological disaster created by our city, but raising fares would do devastating harm to this plan.

According to the Texas Transportation Institute Los Angeles has the worst traffic congestion in the nation.

At the same time, U.S. census records show we are number 34 in the percentage of people who commute using public transit--less than 11%.

According to the American Lung Association, L.A. has the worst pollution in the nation, causing thousands to die from heart and lung disease and catastrophic rates of asthma and other health problems for children.

Just as bad as L.A.'s environmental crisis is its horrible conditions for the working poor.

Bus riders do the work that makes this city run--they are cooks, janitors, construction workers--but living in L.A. is increasingly harsh.

A study by Runzheimer International shows L.A. is the third most expensive city in the nation, just behind New York and San Francisco.

And according to the Demographia International Housing Survey, L.A. has the least affordable housing market in the world.

It is no surprise that we have 90,000 people living on the streets, a large portion of them families with children.

In short, raising fares would do tragic environmental and economic injustice.

(The official hearing on the fare hike is this Thursday, May 24th at 9 AM at the MTA headquarters--Vignes and Cesar Chavez.)

Numerical Severity

Screen capture from Telemundo, May Day 2007, MacArthur Park

"There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay."

In a stunning scene from the documentary China Blue we see a designer jean buyer negotiate with a Chinese factory owner a unit cost below 4 dollars. Matching this cost by deadline requires all-night shifts where workers, mostly teenage girls, clothespin their eyes open so they can stay awake. Wages, which account for about a dollar of the hundreds paid by the mad urban chic for our ripped denim, barely cover the cost of the 12 to a room dorms and bowls of rice eaten in stairwells.

This logic of corporate gangsterism is manifest in the MTA executive caw: "Other cities charge 2 dollars a ride, so we must keep up."

What is this, a competition to see who can most brutalize the poor?

Will Minneapolis start converting low rent flats into million dollar condos, pushing more families onto the street so they can experience the garbage picking lifestyle of slumopolis?

Will Boston spend millions more on police to better terrorize youth of color and cut funds from counseling, parks and job training?

Will New York cops start randomly whacking heads of immigrant workers?

Will our city be a model for the nation in fighting for the dispossessed, the disenfranchised, the despised, or will it be cruel city U.S.A.?

Did we elect a progressive administration, or is this urban revanchism West Coast style?

"The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live."
--Gil Scott Heron

There are two public hearings on the fare increase, both at the MTA headquarters (Vignes and Cesar Chavez).
Saturday, May 19th at 10 am
Thursday, May 24th at 9 AM--Official hearing, board members must attend.

King for a Day

Golden Evening Primrose/ Titus Canyon

Waiting for the Reseda bus around 9 pm is a man with a short white beard on a softly sunken face. A small rainbow colored sack hangs from his shoulder.

"You a student?" he asks.
"No, I teach."
"Oh, wow. How'd you get to do that?"

I give him a 15 second summary of my academic career.

"Man, that's great."
"How about you? Did you just get off work?" I ask.
"You really wanna know?"
"Did you just get off work?"
"You really wanna know?"
"Sure."
"Just got outa prison."
"Oh, wow."

He nods at me intently.

"Hmmm...So, where were you at?"
"Corcoran."
He looks off at the stoplights as they cycle through. "2 years. I was into heroine. It got me in trouble."

He turns back to look at me. "But I'm clean now, with God's help."
"That's great. So... do they help you, y' know, when you get out?"
"200 dollars and see ya."
"What about a place to stay? Isn't there some kind of transitional housing?"
"Yeah. Right now I'm on the street, but I'm working on it."

The stoplights cycle through again.

"They have programs... I might even go back to school." He smiles, "I just have to get through each day--one at a time."

The bus arrives.

"Well, good luck."
"Hey, you're bringing me positive energy!"

I smile and look into his eyes blooming desert flowers.

Punishment

Ron Mueck Dead Dad 1996-1997

The lifeless prose of Seung Cho undermines the friendless man's
effort to embody Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, but the media creation of a hacker film mega-star succeeded with pathetic enormity.

"Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off" evokes numerous B movie scenes of furious skin scrubbing after rash acts and, two days later, the scene of a bomb wasting 140 lives in a Baghdad market.

Just as the chain of hurt can't be cleansed from Raskolnikov's soul until he speaks his guilt, so our mitigation of global terror can't begin until we account for our crimes.

New York took a first step in this accounting when it released a carbon inventory as part of a climate protection plan agreed to by 678 cities across the world.

Although Los Angeles--leader in death by breath--has signed on to the plan, one wonders if the reckoning will ever happen. The notion of a collective burden runs counter to the neo-Reaganite drive of the urban cowboy whose "highway rights" are God given.

God Bless America.
God Bless L.A.