In Memoriam: Esteban Torres QEPD. Memories of C/S Veteranas Veteranos

 

Becoming C/S: Veteranos/Veteranas Remember

Chicano Literature is one United States literature with an actual known start date, 1969, when Berkeley California's  Quinto Sol Press edited El Espejo The Mirror Selected Mexican American Literature and re-titled it Chicano. 

A bit more ambiguous is the start date of Chicano Studies. It was around the time El Espejo was being revised from a "mexican american" anthology when scholarly ferment brewed in California, and Colorado, and Texas,  and other places. Graduate students were multiplying in numbers across higher education. They were originating an intellectual critical mass mirroring, in education, el movimiento in social justice. Both would eventuate in departments and degrees, jobs, hasta PhDs and ABDs, in C/S.

Some of the O.Gs.--Originator Graduate students--now gowned and academically ensconced, took time in early December 2021 to gather, reminisce, study, do a full-out Mental Menudo-like tertullia. 

In a series of video documentaries available at Latinopia.com, these raza scholars reflect on C/S, in the academy and on the streets, over the past fifty years of the discipline. The Reunion de Colegas scholars also felt it important to highlight the role of spirituality in the Chicano civil rights movement, and to reflect on lives and contributions of colleagues who have passed on in recent years.

Today, as La Bloga acknowledges the passing of Esteban Torres, it's appropriate to share remembrances of other Chicana and Chicano heroes and stories of the Elders of C/S.

 

Latinopia's Visual History of Reunion de Colegas C/S: Chicana Chicano Scholars

 http://latinopia.com/latino-cinematv/latinopia-showcase-reunion-de-colegas-encuentro/ 

 AND 

 http://latinopia.com/latino-history/latinopia-showcase-50-years-of-struggle-part-one/ 

 AND 

 http://latinopia.com/latino-cinematv/latinopia-showcase-50-years-of-struggle-part-two/ 

 AND 

 http://latinopia.com/latino-cinematv/latinopia-showcase-50-years-of-struggle-part-three/ 

 AND

 http://latinopia.com/latino-history/latinopia-showcase-reunion-de-colegas-remembrances/

QEPD Esteban Torres

Michael Sedano

Until the GOPlague shut us down, Esteban Torres and Michael Sedano met weekly for the better part of two years. The two-part project would tell a YA audience about Torres' youth and young adulthood, leading up to the Chicano Moratorium in 1970. Part two, for a general audience, would focus on Torres' political career from U.S. Ambassador and the Carter White House, and then his career as an environmental congressman.

The day Sedano and Torres first met to see if they could work together, Torres introduced himself via a pivotal incident from fifth grade. This introduction became the natural opening chapter for his story.

EXCERPT from Chapter One, “The Worst Day of My Life.” Autobiography of Esteban Torres As Told to Michael Sedano.

 

The day that changed my life forever started like every other school day. Mama heading for work and Grandma in the kitchen. Across the street, earliest daylight reflects off the white walls of my elementary school, making my mother a silhouette as she heads to the bus that takes her to work. 

 

I can smell Gramma’s avena. She makes avena with canela sticks, canned milk, raisins, and chunks of piloncillo. She probably has buttered toast to dunk. Rise and shine! What a perfect way to begin another day of Fifth Grade.

 

Jaime, la Licha, Fudu, and I take turns at tetherball until the bell rings and we race into Mrs. Osborne’s classroom and take our seats. I’m in Row 2 behind Licha.

 

“EDWARD,” Mrs. Osborne announces. 

 

The teacher has my attention just in how Mrs. Osborne says my name. Someone whispers, “uu.” Her teacher voice has an edge in it.

 

“Come to the front of the room, Edward.”

 

How would I know the teacher means to assassinate my character in front of my fellow fifth graders? What could I do if I knew?

 

This is one of those times that you live through once, then for the rest of your life, in school, at work, at social events, every time someone announces your name for no reason at all, you’re that little kid again, standing up in front of the room helpless, being wrongfully accused, everything a whirlwind.

 

Mrs. Osborne calls me a traitor, a traitor to the school, to my classmates, to myself. Over the weekend, Mrs. Osborne tells the class, someone destroyed the school’s Victory Garden, stole the fruit. The teacher tells the class “Edward was part of it.”

 

What can a fifth grader do? I stand there humiliated, tears running down my face. Mrs. Osborne is the teacher, she has absolute authority in her classroom, and anywhere on school grounds. 

 

So she’s right. 

 

In the eyes of my classmates staring at me standing there, on display alone at the front of the room, I am a traitor to the Victory Garden. I am worthless.

 

My friends look away when I look to them for support. Jenny Amador sticks her tongue out at me. Even Akiko frowns, looks away. Louie is laughing silently, pointing at me. For once, he’s not the one in trouble.  

 

Look at those eyes looking back at me. Friends, que no? We played together this morning before the bell. I thought they know me better than to be looking at me with disgust. No one’s jumping up and saying “No, he’s not! Eddie’s not a traitor!” 

 

I am on my own. What can I do but cry out of absolute powerlessness? I cry in front of the whole room standing there. A traitor.

 

You can imagine, after being called a Victory Garden destroyer, that was a crummy day of school. You can disappear in a crowd and I did.

 

As soon as the last bell rang, I ran across the street. Usually, I get a quesadilla and a glass of water so when I just head for my room my mom asks what’s wrong? 

 

My mom taught me not to interrupt others because it’s rude, and besides, “get all the facts.” She reminds me not to open my mouth unless I have all the information and a plan. So I know how upset mom is when I no sooner say Mrs. Osborne called me a vandal and a traitor in front of the whole class, than mom interrupts.

 

“She said what?”

 

I didn’t have to start again because I know Mom heard me, so I kept going. How Mrs. Osborne called me up to the front of the room. Pointed at me. Told the class what I did. That I destroyed the school Victory Garden and stole all the food intended for the community. 

 

My tears tell my mother how helpless I still feel. Powerlessness has to be the worst emotion in the world, but my mother has a stronger power.

 

"You tell Mrs. Osborne that I work hard for this family. I put food on the table. You have all the food that you need to eat, and you don't have to go steal food from school to eat.” 

 

“You know that we don't allow you to do that, and you wouldn't do it. You tell her to apologize to you.”

 

Both of us took a breath. I was thinking hard and my mother had already thought it through.

 

“And if she doesn't apologize to you, you tell her that I'm going to come over to school and I'm going to beat the hell out of her." 

 

It’s funny looking back on it because my mother would have done it. I didn’t want to be the fifth grader whose mother beat the hell out of the teacher.

 

Here is my life’s most crucial moment and I don’t realize what’s going on because I’m a scared eleven-year-old boy who doesn’t want his mom charging into the classroom and shaking Mrs. Osborne around like a Cantinflas puppet. 

 

What’s happening is I’m taking a giant step into manhood, guided by my wise Latina mother. My mother says to take responsibility for the outcome by speaking for myself. 

 

Speaking up for yourself is the main part of what I learned to do. There’s more to it, I learned.

 

Ask for help when you need help, give help when you can. Don’t expect thanks. Mom didn’t tell me that last part, it’s what I learned as an adult, in organizing and politics. Do a thing because it’s right. You don’t equivocate, go maybe yes, maybe no.

 

Above all, stand up for yourself.

 

Today I look back on my life and career in community service filled with Firsts and unique jobs: the First Chicano with a White House position; the First Chicano to organize South American auto workers; the First Chicano UNESCO Ambassador. I was one of only three California Mexican Americans in Congress, Ed Roybal, Marty Martinez, Esteban Torres. I was the only Chicano.

 

A reporter asked me one day, “Congressman, did you ever feel amazed to be this Chicano from East Los Angeles sitting in Paris as the United States representative to UNESCO?” 

 

And the answer is "No". Not amazed. I think you’d be “amazed” if your results surprised you. I wasn’t surprised to be the First, or Only, Chicano in so many places in my life. 

We belong. Punto. I happened to be the one. 

 

It doesn’t matter that you’re The Only or The First, your foremost responsibility is to yourself. People will draw their own conclusions about you, about your raza, about your familia. Be effective and their opinions don’t matter.

 

 

Chapter Two: The Best Day of My Life: Same Day

 

The day after Mrs. Osborne assassinated my character in front of the whole world, I lay awake reliving my humiliation. Mom kissed me goodbye and didn’t say anything even though she knew I was awake. Gramma made avena but I just picked at the raisins.

 

I waited for the second bell then walked across the street to Rowan Avenue School. Mrs. Blanco in the office gave me a dirty look when I crossed the patio. 

 

I walked down the hall past the third grade rooms. They had a new teacher, a man, in Mrs. McCartney’s room. The fourth grade wall had a map with little flags and strings leading to the countries kids came from. Everyone here came from somewhere else.

 

You know that song, “we’re all in our places with bright shiny faces?” Well, my classmates were already seated, including Mrs. Osborne. Except they weren’t being all shiny. Everyone was giving me dirty looks, including Mrs. Osborne. 

 

But la Licha was looking away. She told Gilbert Manzano she likes me, now she doesn’t look at me. I am alone. As Mama says, no one else is going to do it, so it is time to stand up for myself.

 

When you’re scared, I learned much later giving speeches, no one knows your stomach is jumping and your knees are wobbling. Butterflies are flying into my throat as I walk up to Mrs. Osborne’s desk. I hope I will get through what I planned, lying there in the dark.

 

Teacher desks at Rowan Avenue Elementary School have a white line on the floor you’re not supposed to cross. I crossed it and my stomach touched the hard wooden edge of the desk. I don’t want the other kids to hear, but I don’t want to whisper. I aim to do as my mother says.

 

Licha and them have stopped messing around and the whole front row is watching me. Mrs. Osborne watches me, starts to say something when I step past the line, but she waits for me to speak first. I think of what my mother told me.

 

“Just walk right up to her and tell her,” Mama says, “speak up.” 

 

I take a breath, hold it, let air run slowly out my nostrils so all I feel is the warm soft. All eyes are on me.

 

The only difficult part of speaking up comes just before you talk. Then you do it. Your muscles force the air up your dry throat as your lips begin to form a string of sounds you’ve already thought through. You open your mouth, the first words come out, and you’re committed.

 

“Mrs. Osborne, I have something to say.” 

 

I had mentally rehearsed the opening words walking down the hall. They came out like practice. 

 

I made the sentence come out like a statement, word for word, a little emphasis on “say.” Inside I was wary at how Mrs. Osborne would respond. I couldn’t read her face when she said to go on, what did I have to say?

 

I heard my mother’s voice telling me what to tell Mrs. Osborne and I used Mama's words, almost just like Mama expressed.

 

“I told my mother what you did yesterday. How you made me stand in front of everyone. How you said I stole the Victory Garden and was a traitor.”

 

I struggled not to cry again. I loved the Victory Garden. I was American, I supported the war effort, I wouldn’t do anything to hurt my country.

 

Mrs. Osborne looked at me over her glasses, she was biting her upper lip. I continued.

 

“My mother got mad that you would say that. She says to tell you she works to put food on the table and she makes sure I get fed. I don’t need to steal food.” 

I would never do that, I added personally. I was mad and that just came out.

 

I am almost out of breath. No one talks to white people like this, especially a teacher. I inhale and finish saying what I planned to say.

 

“My mother says you need to apologize to me. She says if you don’t apologize she’s going to come here to school.”

 

I didn’t elaborate on what would happen after Mama got here. Mrs. Osborne didn’t ask. 

 

“Wait a minute,” she told me.

 

“Class,” Mrs. Osborne called. 

 

It wasn’t like yesterday when she called my name, but it was out of the blue. The kids who weren’t entremetidos already eavesdropping me and the teacher, looked up.

 

“Edward's here. You know what I told you about him yesterday? Well, I want to apologize to him. He didn't do that.” 

 

“He really wasn't responsible, and he didn't do that." 

 

That was my first First, in a life of them. I was the First Chicano at Rowan Avenue School to be wrongfully accused and vindicated in a public apology. For all anyone knows, that was the First Time in United States history. 

 

That doesn’t matter. I was innocent, one of the good kids again. 

 

Ever since that day, I've never been afraid to stand up for my rights. When you stand up for yourself, you’re standing up for somebody else's rights, too, because even if you’re the first, you will not be the only one who needs to confront injustice.

 

I learned to be eager to speak up, ready to talk matters out, whether negotiate in a conversation at a fancy restaurant or argue across the bargaining table. 

 

Talk changes situations. Talk produces mutual understanding. Big stakes or local, having vocal advocates who speak up for equity and justice is a key to winning.

 

I have no idea how long my playground fame lasted at Rowan Avenue. When you’re in fifth grade so many new things are happening to your body and your mind that last week’s highlights flow away into good feelings and you concentrate on the moment.

 

Read and Listen: Aftermath of August 29, 1970, Esteban Torres Remembers

From Chapter Nine: The Movimiento.

The Autobiography of Esteban Torres As Told To Michael Sedano

 

Michael Sedano

There’s a reason Esteban Torres remains el movimiento’s unsung hero: no one’s sung his song, though there are chapters and essays by other people that circle around the man and his career. No one can sing what only Esteban remembers, so right now, Esteban and I have the music, we need a publisher.

 

And we need the pandemic to abate to reopen the possibility of writing part two of Esteban Torres’ story. That’s the part where he becomes a United States Ambassador, then Jimmy Carter’s White House organizer for all things raza. When Jimmy loses, Torres comes  home, runs for the House of Representatives. He serves eight terms in Congress. In Torres' view, he is the first Chicano in the House. He was elected to serve with a couple of Mexican Americans, they weren't Chicanos, he says.

 

I devoted two years before plague-time hit, in weekly meetings with Esteban Torres and wife, Arcy, and various adult kids. Loquacious Torres, meet Loquacious Sedano. We met memory limits, too. These memories happened so long ago, it sure doesn't seem like yesterday. It wasn't. So it goes. 

 

Part One of Esteban Torres’ Autobiography As Told To Michael Sedano recounts the early chronology growing up in East Los Angeles, graduating Garfield High, joining the Army for six years occupying Germany and guarding the eastern front. Returning from the Army on the eve of the Korean war, Love happens and Torres lands a good solid Union job welding together Plymouths in South Gate. From there, Union leadership takes him to Washington, D.C. and international organizing. He's the first Chicano, the Only Chicano, he fits in and succeeds in good times and hard, and he knows why.

 

Chapter Nine brings Torres back home to ELA. He has a mission from the Union. Use the model of trade unions to fashion community growth through mutual ownership. Thus TELACU in its original conception happens and does good, especially helpful to the burgeoning movimiento. They occupied the identical community space. This is how Chicanas Chicanos fight the War on Poverty.

 

Bert Corona and Esteban Torres vie to lead Congreso, a coalition of dozens of activist groups pursuing diverse causes para el pueblo. Torres is elected and he’s in the position to finance demonstrations that culminate on August 29, 1970.

 

In this excerpt from the movimiento chapter, Torres recounts the aftermath of August 29. Follow along as Sedano reads the text with you.

 

From Chapter Nine: The Movimiento.

The Autobiography of Esteban Torres As Told To Michael Sedano

 

Michael Sedano

 

As the leader of Congreso, responsibility came to me to make sure the permits were in place. The committee had secured our right to march. But it wasn’t free. You have to buy permits for Free Speech. 

 

I had the honor of walking into Los Angeles County Hall of Records and signing a check from the Congress of Mexican American Unity. The Chicano Moratorium march of August 29, 1970 had its permit. We were marching.

 

The August 29, 1970 Chicano Moratorium without question is the most well-known event of the Chicano Movement because it ended in a police riot. In the course of the day, three Chicanos were killed by sheriff or police…..In East Los Angeles, Ruben Salazar was killed by a Sheriff Deputy. In Los Angeles, Angel Díaz and 14-year old Lyn Ward, were shot by LAPD.

 

A Coroner’s inquest into the shooting of journalist Salazar held Southern California television audiences glued to their sofas. …. “The Coroner to the Stars,” Thomas Noguchi, and his staff, shared spell-binding testimony with law enforcement experts and street-level agents.

 

The march and killing came under a microscope, the community’s complaints about police brutality were placed on the record and spoken on live television to millions of people who knew “East LA” only as a phrase.

 

The Coroner concluded Salazar’s killing was a homicide, a man was dead at the hands of another man. The Deputy who fired the gun was not indicted.

 

The East LA antiwar protest killings followed a pattern. Earlier that year, 3 were killed at Jackson State University, and before that, Kent State University. El Pueblo Unido Jamas Sera Vencido, but at the same time we didn’t want to get shot to be heard. 

 

Despite the fervor of our intentions, after August 29^th there was significant shrinkage of public support. Congreso and the Moratorium Committee did not abandon the message nor abandon marching as a communication tactic. We experienced some push-back from the community, however.

. . . 

The Comité Civico Patriotico, the club that organizes the 15 de Septiembre parade, said we—Congreso and the Moratorium Committee—weren’t welcome at the quince de Septiembre parade down Whittier Boulevard. 

 

Conservative Mexicanos, they feared our activism, they saw our goals as unpatriotic. There clearly existed a cultural and a generation gap. But we shared cultura and that was enough to open a door. Comité invited us to state our case in a public meeting.

 

Once again, Rosalio and I were the portavozes for the Moratorium Committee. We heard their side; the Consul General of Mexico would be there, the Chamber of Commerce, the Lions Club, all manner of civic organizations. Why would they want our group in the line of march?....

 

Even the most conservative American of Mexican descent understood the unequal burden the Draft and the Vietnam war placed on the community. And that had been the focus of August 29. We urged them not to allow police rioting to silence our demands against the war and all our dead Chicano GIs.

 

The Comité Civico Patriotico said we could march. But we had to remain twenty yards behind their last official float.

 

That’s where we marched on 15 de Septiembre, 1970. Two weeks earlier, thousands took to the street. There were only thirty of us. 

 

Our spirits remained strong. There’s a funny photograph of our team marching back there behind the floats and bands. Rosalio, Richard Martinez, Max Avalos, and I are in the front of our group. I’m gesturing my happiness that once again, speaking up was the route to effectiveness. We understood the Comité as people and neighbors. We offered good reasons to let us march. My team had a spot in the big parade. My upraised fist said “We fight and we win and we do not give up. Y que?”

  

Oracy & Written Words

"What do I do with my video, once I've recorded my Best 2 Minutes reading my own stuff?

Save your video with Public settings on the Face, or Vimeo, or any site where La Bloga can link for the world to share. Send a Link via email to msedano@aol.com.  Include your mailing address to receive acknowledgement of your entry in La Bloga's 100,000 Poets For Change 2021 event.

Here are details (link) on the "My Best 2 Minutes." Celebrate Oracy through an effective, considered, oral reading of your own work. Additional details in two more links below.

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2021/08/augusto-al-gusto-reading-your-stuff.html

https://labloga.blogspot.com/2021/08/my-best-2-minutes-kmart-farewell.html

Esteban Torres' autobiography is written in conversational style. More formal, academic-scented narratives, offer readers the "he said she said" challenge, of using only the vocal expression of printed text to change speakers and characters.

Nonverbal behaviors offers visual cues, like holding a fist in the air as the text reads. Think radio. Hold that fist high overhead, but hold it in the sound of your voice visualizing that hand against the sky. We can't see you on radio. But we sure can hear you. In general, audiences hear what the reader sees.

"March in the Rain" January 31, 1971

Michael Sedano

Where were you on August 29, 1970, a day living infamously when police attacked an entire community, and got away with it?

KCET broadcast the coroner's inquest into the killing of Ruben Salazar. Killed by police were Lyn Ward, and Angel Diaz but, other than the date, quotidian shootings of Mexicans don't get much attention. The inquest wasn't about regular killings. 

16 days the inquest was on teevee.

Portavozes and regular everyday gente testified openly, victims of LAPD and LASD violence testified to the casual, routine lawlessness of cops who recreationally brutalized and terrorized. Community chiste held then, "If you want someone arrested, call the LAPD, but if you want them killed, call the Sheriff Department." 

"My gosh, that's just terrible," went people on the Westside and out in the Valley, "just awful." 

And nothing happened. (There was even a Federal Grand Jury into the deputy who shot Salazar, no charges. That would be in March.)

In January 1971, movimiento organizers still stung by loss of support from community dismay over the violence, felt compelled not to give up. They called for another public demonstration on the 31st. I've heard Rosalio Muñoz call that "the march in the rain" while others call the January 29, 1971 debacle, the final act of Chicano resistance of the seventies.

La Bloga-Tuesday today revisits that January 31, 1971 march, through the eyes of a key movimiento leader, Esteban Torres. This is a segment of Torres' as-told-to autobiography written by Michael Sedano, recounting events on 1/31/1971.

The Moratorium Committee didn’t give up in the face of shrinking community morale and fear. We called a meeting, in January 1971, in Belvedere Park next to the Sheriff station. 

 

August 1970 didn’t wear off. Jackson State, Kent State didn’t wear off. Official violence established itself as an inevitable consequence of protest.

 

The country was stunned, people in movements were afraid of police violence, of being killed at random like Salazar. Oppression had not won, however. In January 1971, the Moratorium Committee called upon the community to mass in public again, to reaffirm our commitment to mass protest and continue insisting on exercising our rights to be heard. It became known as “the march in the rain.”

 

We did not plan the rally to end in a march. Spontaneously, the crowd turned it into a march and headed from Belvedere Park toward Whittier Boulevard. We weren’t permitted for a march and the crowd was in the lead. As one of their Leaders, all I could do was follow.

 

The unorganized march passed the Belvedere sheriff building. Standing behind the fence was Lee Baca. I appealed to him not to unleash his forces. “Look,” I remember explaining, “the Committee didn’t sanction this, this isn’t a march, people are doing this on their own.”

 

Baca had already witnessed me gesturing at the marchers, “Go back! Don’t go down there!” Baca told me I’d better stop them somehow because if the crowd got down there to Whittier Boulevard, “they’re going to get in trouble.”

 

Trouble turned into death. The Los Angeles Times reported the next day “Chicano Violence Laid to Mob That Ignored Monitors.” The marchers confronted Sheriff Deputies. Some fools threw chunks of cement at the Deputies who fired back with shotguns. One deputy’s shotgun killed an Austrian immigrant named Gustav Montag.

 

That wasn’t the end of the Chicano Movement. The Moratorium wasn’t the movement. In fact, you might be reading my story as part of a newly-required ethnic studies course. Relevant education where we get to “see ourselves” in the curriculum is just one of the changes in United States education that the movimiento continues to deliver for our country.

 

When I hear some people say that the Moratorium’s three marches marked the end of the movement, I want to remind them that the movement was the collective labor of millions of people, raza and allies, pursuing community needs. The Movement is an organic feature of a community that develops and changes through generations. 

 

The police violence associated with the Chicano Moratorium drove the moratorium underground, four killings didn’t extinguish what others were doing elsewhere. Not then, and not to this day. As the old saying goes, “aqui estamos y no nos vamos.”

Weekend With the Word: Poets, Punks, Veteranos, Bukowski

Michael Sedano

Some weeks bring art gallery openings, some bring poetry readings, others bring reunions and activism. Some weeks nothing, others, like the one recently completed, come with a plethora of fun, the emphasis on the U in fun.

Happy Birthday to an Old Cultural Warrior

Rosalio Muñoz and Mita Cuaron at Muñoz' birthday celebration. Muñoz and Cuaron were in the
leadership that organized the Chicano Moratorium of August 29, 1970, along with other events.

July’s second week surpassed many other weeks for words, arte, and activism. There were poets in Altadena, chicana punk rock originators, a birthday meeting for movimiento veterano Rosalio Muñoz, and an homage to quintessential LA poet and writer Charles Bukowski.

These were big, wonderful events. But for me, the best part of the weekend occurred in a quiet moment with a trio of former classmates that brought me a rare gift.

I was bidding my despedidas to the hosts of Rosalio’s pachanga, Terry and David Trujillo, when a man told me “you were my teacher at Cal State.” Sadly I didn’t remember Ruben Vasquez exactly. For several memorable years in the 1980s, Terry and David and I were members of Teatro a la Brava. David wrote actos. Terry was a leading actor. I was the director.

“We had an argument about downtown LA,” Ruben remembered. I liked the central city area around Broadway and 7th and urged students visit for intercultural immersion. I celebrated the place, Ruben wanted me to focus on the deprivations. “There are a lot of problems down there,” he insists and I agree. Then the highlight of an old speech coaches life.

I met Terry as a member of a public speaking class, a GE requirement. Terry told her nieces at the registration table, "this was my teacher," then complimented me that I taught her to be comfortable in public speaking, even when she’s nervous.

Back in the 1980s when Terry was a freshman, professor me would have run through his standard communication-apprehension theory and coaching session. Even today the c-a lessons emerges as a reflex.

“Nervousness is a good thing,” I start the rote respose and Terry makes my day, echoing the lesson she heard back in the 80s, “because if you’re not nervous it means you don’t care.” I give Terry a big hug while silently exulting to myself "it worked!"

top, David Trujillo, Terry Trujillo, Ruben Vasquez

The beauties of such moments belong only to those who have taught. What an affirming event, a former student remembering and attesting to the usefulness of long-ago lessons. A teacher's career is puro delayed gratification. Rarely does one get to know of the benefits students gained. The fulfillment of that magic moment fills me with joy.

With Terry’s words echoing in my heart I make my way to Avenue 50 Studio, getting there early to ensure parking in the lot.


Bluebird reading presents : Homage to Bukowski

Michael Sedano

The same sensibility that informs hard-boiled fiction inheres in Charles Bukowski’s work, except the wino poet replaces a sucker punch to the gut with a knee to the emotions and a sharp stick to the funny bone. In poetry and prose, that was the point in Bluebird Reading Series’ Homage To Bukowski, concluded Sunday at Highland Park’s Avenue 50 Studio.

Kym Ghee, John Martinez, Jim Marquez, Felicia Gomez Verdin, Tomas Benitez

Bukowski was honored more in the breach than the observance, as most performers honored the late artist with their own writing under the influence, along with a nice set by Felicia Gomez Verdin featuring Bukowski’s work, and host-emcee Jessica Ceballos’ inaugural recitation of “Bluebird,” Ceballos’ inspiration in founding the readings series.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?


For the writers on the program, they do their weeping onto their manuscripts. Their tears come off the page as personal narratives, the words with sharp edges that hurt so hard one has to laugh, grin and bear it. That was Tomas Benítez’ QED to open the readings.

Tomas Benitez

Benitez led off the afternoon with a set of beautifully crafted expressions that balance a satyr’s conscience against abruptly changing situations. In one, the poet has lost his woman, his six-figure job, and he’s broke. Wistfully, a poet recalls the shape and allure of his former wife’s leg, the perfection of it, then comes a heel stomp on the funny bone, “too bad it was yours.” The SRO audience let Benitez, who produced the event, continue well past his allotted time. He dug it, we dug it.

Felicia Gomez Verdin

Felicia Gomez Verdin sat at the table to read a few short Bukowski classics, including the classic valedictory every writer needs to hear annually, “So You Want To Be A Writer.” Verdin makes a beautiful change of pace from Benitez for the audience. He stood. She sits. He was loud and exuberant. She is cool, controlled, understated.

if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.


John Martinez tells the house he forgot about it for a number of years, but complying to his late brother Victor Martinez’ wish that John pursue writing again, he has.

John Martinez

In counterpoint to Benitez’ exuberant horniness, Martinez’ longings and lusts come from a dark place somewhere in memory, sometimes out of hunger, often an ineluctable regret. The Fresno native’s work is more unlike Bukowski than similar. Martinez belongs here for their correspondences, and no Bukowsky pastiche, he’s writing like no one else.

With Bukowski, Martinez shares a lust for talking about reality as he sees and lives it. Except where Bukowski lays bare a mind at the edge of incipient violence—will it be the bluebird or the mean drunk?--Martinez is likely to damn his consequences while baring unsalved wounds for which the balm is the poem.

Kym Ghee

Kym Ghee goes into harm’s way as an ingenuous literary journalist learning one of life’s hardest lessons: your dreams don’t matter to anyone but yourself.

Ghee discovers one of those unknown novelists found in a thrift store or a hoarder’s attic. She travels an hour north to visit her imagined genius. She meets up with an agoraphobic hypochondriac uninterested in the past. Worse, the man’s vengeful landlady makes her mission in life to tear the sweet young thing a new asshole right between the eyes for being all dreamy-eyed about the great author. Mean for the sake of being mean.

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.

Jim Marquez makes eye contact 3 out of 4 frames

Bukowski didn’t know Jim Marquez but the viejo wrote the opening lines of “So You Want to Be a Writer” about Jim Marquez. The author of 14 books in the recent 8 years, Marquez reads from his upcoming 15th title, "A Moveable Beast." It’s not about cooking nor Hemingway, it’s puro Marquez.

A high energy reader, Marquez’ writing explodes with drama and aggression. And, à la Bukowski, a lot of fucking sexual tension. A wino tío introduced me to Bukowski’s world so I would know to avoid it. From what I hear of Marquez’ Los Angeles, I’m glad I’m from over here, a homebody. It’s hard out there. Or it’s hard being the fictional Jim Marquez.

When the “filthy speech movement” arose parallel with Berkeley’s free speech movement in the 60s, poet Lenore Kandel proclaimed that the beauties of fucking makes the word inappropriate as interjection, intensifier, or curse. “May you not be fucked,” Kandel said, was among the worst things you could wish upon a person.

Kandel’s ethic had its five minutes’ fame and conscientious gente went ahead tossing out the standard seven-letter gay repartee without a hiccup. Still, I recommend Kandel’s sensibility to Jim Marquez.

Until Marquez took the Bluebird seat I hadn’t heard so many gratuitous “fucks” since the Army, though a pair of skateboarders came close one day on the bus. I wonder if Marquez goes home for thanksgiving dinner and, like the apochryphal soldier, “Mom, would you please pass the fucking mashed potatoes?”

Felicia Gomez Verdin makes eye contact 

Notes On Reading Your Stuff Aloud

Last week I shared news that USC’s Digital Library now archives the video recorded performances of the poets and other writers who accepted an invitation to 2010’s Festival de Flor Y Canto. Yesterday • Today • Tomorrow. Like the 1973 Festival de Flor Y Canto that launched the floricanto movement, those were important readings and it was unthinkable not to have the record that now stands alongside the videos from 1973.

Jesus Treviño, creator of Latinopia, directed the documentation for the reunion floricanto. Latinopia will be a place to view snippets of performances with fast-loading convenience. Treviño limits each video segment to three minutes. USC’s Digital Library together with Latinopia’s ever-growing library—Treviño updates weekly--will be a visual index to writers of chicano literature reading in their own voice.

The Bluebird Homage to Charles Bukowski is an important literary event, too. It was recorded. When that recording becomes public, La Bloga will make sure to provide a link. Viewers will see how tough it is to read and communicate at the same time. Writers who do do it, owe their work, and the audience an effective reading, the best reading the writer’s ever performed. An early goal is ongoing improvement of eye contact.

Although this set illustrates Jim Marquez denying his audience eye contact, portraits for each
reader would show the same. Eye contact is a universal opportunity for improvement.

Eye contact challenges anyone working with text. Memorization works for prodigious writers, but manuscripts are de rigueur for most readers. Here’s a tactic for readers who are so text-bound they rarely look up from the page: sell everyone a book, have them turn to a page to read silently along with you, hearing you bring alive your prose, capturing every word in the poem.

Beside selling more books, this is an eye contact work-around. Writer’s eyes on the page, audience’s eyes on the page: eye contact irrelevant. Maybe every now and then you’ll look up together, make eye contact, and recognize what you people are doing here.

Kym Ghee can read at a glance but her facing audience can't see her

Eye contact creates opportunities where more is more. More direct, more convincing, more expressive, more personal, more satisfying minutes with each other here. Ditto the internet where that one reading is your unravished bride moment.

Jim Marquez presentation style is as energetic and edgy as his fiction. He’s comfortable in the narration, using voice and gesture to imbue key words and passages with power. What Marquez doesn’t do as well is establish a bond with the listener through more frequent moments away from the text.

John Martinez makes eye contact, establishes a bond with audience.

He’d be more comfortable and the goodwill engendered would encourage people to sit still during lulls in the energy, like elongated narratives to set up something or flesh out an irony. When Marquez hits a sizzling paragraph, he leans into the screen to capture the line; he sizzles along with it. Power flows out of the words into coiled arms, thrusting fists, whimsical appeals to the ceiling.

I would love seeing that energy he directs at that computer screen turned to the expectant house. Mejor for the writer, a break from the text to the seats is feedback, both to performer and page: what’s working? what do they want more of? Do they get it? Should I skip to the end?

“Old men love to give good advice. It consoles them for the fact they no longer can set a bad example.” Except for eye contact. It’s an expectation that doesn’t get old and the benefits so dramatic writers put a “kick me” sign on their back for a week after discovering the job satisfaction that comes with an eye contact personal performance best. So, if you want to read your stuff to other people, and you can’t find ways to make more eye contact, don’t do it.

Avenue 50 Studio • 131 N. Avenue 50 • Highland Park CA 90042 • 323-258-1435
www.avenue50studio.org

The Bluebird Reading series is a component of Avenue 50 Studio's literary arts programming. Avenue 50 Studio is supported in part by the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council, the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, and the California Community Foundation.



Altadena Poetry Summer Series at Coffee Gallery Backstage

Toti O'Brien and half the audience

Listeners enjoy the air-conditioned backstage galley and intimate interaction with the readers

There’s a great performance space just across the border from Pasadena. It’s the converted back room of a coffeehouse that advertises itself as the last place for coffee in Altadena on Lake Avenue, The Coffee Gallery. La Bloga friend and guest columnist Thelma Reyna, who is Poet Laureate of Altadena, secured the Coffee Gallery Backstage, for a series of readings featuring poets published in the laureate’s anthology, Altadena Poetry Review: Anthology 2015. (ISBN-10: 069239978X ISBN-13: 978-0692399781)

The day’s lineup included two poets I’d photographed at other venues—Ricky Luv and Toti O’Brien, along with three seasoned writers new to my ear and lens-- Gloriana Casey, Mina Kirby, and Mary Monroe. The highlight of the day was the way Gloriana Casey addresses manuscript conundrum readers face with each trip to the lectern.

Mina Kirby

Ricardo Lira Acuña, Ricky Luv

Casey explains she chose stiff carboard sheets to keep the pages upright, and writes in big letters. Holding the card at table top level, Casey catches the phrases with peripheral vision or a quick downward glance and in this way holds eye contact more than she doesn’t.

Gloriana Casey

Gloriana Casey prepares her readings for eye contact and legibility

Writers electing letter-size paper or a laptop screen will want to use 18- or larger point fonts and lots of white space between lines and stanzas or paragraphs. Such a tactic avoids situations when the speaker holds a manuscript up to the face providing an excellent view of the text while blocking one’s sight and muffling the voice.

The backstage gallery provides excellent amplification. Microphone stands lure readers into planting themselves at the mic where they hold onto home base like their shoes were nailed to the floor. Speakers may swivel their neck or pivot at the waist to see and address the whole audience, but are as likely to ignore one side of the house.

Mary Monroe makes contact with both sides of the center aisle

The backstage space offers a tight and confined enough room that readers could easily project their voice across the twelve feet from lectern to back row, and, freed from a mic could use the ample stage riser to move about and encompass the entire house.

The next event at the Coffee Gallery Backstage is Saturday, July 18, featuring poets laureate from Altadena, North Hollywood, and Sunland-Tujunga.


Avenue 50 Studio Rocks Punks

Photographer Louis Jacinto likes his 4tych of Alice Bags

 What with the Bluebird Reading Series homage to Bukowski and the Saturday evening opening of several gallery shows, Avenue 50 Studio was LA’s happening spot closing July's second week.

In the main gallery, Roberto Gutíerrez paid homage to the up-for-demolition Sixth Street Bridge spanning the cement channeled LA River. Gutierrez’ work in the background of the Bluebird readers add just the right shades of color and design to the portraits.

Roberto Delgado is happy to take a foto with a young artist and his brother.

In the confined space of a side gallery, Louis Jacinto greeted visitors to his “PUNK MEETS ART” exhibition of photographs from the seminal Los Angeles Punk Rock Music Scene.

The wall of Alice Bag portraits held interest for anyone passing through from the refreshments table to the main gallery. La Bloga friend The Good Mexican Girl paused for a snap of herself with Alice Bag. Reina Alejandra Prado joined 2010's reunion floricanto; her Santa Perversa reading is here.

Reina Alejandra Prado with Alice Bags by Louis Jacinto

Followers of the music scene will enjoy a reading at Avenue 50 on Sunday July 19. Bag reads from her recent book, Pipe Bomb for the Soul, based on Bag’s 1986 Nicaraguan diaries. Publicity for the reading and performance observes the book offers a “post-punk look at life in a post-revolutionary socialist society, Pipe Bomb for the Soul explodes consumerist, capitalist, racial and gender assumptions and proposes a new model for growth from witnessing an alternate version of reality.” Link here:

Bits and News
Casa de Colores Call for Ideas: Poet Laureate

US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera has a call out for ways the laureate can build a magnificent Casa de Colores for the entire nation. Here's Juan Felipe's announcement:

Hey peoples -- Can you send me suggestions for rolling out projects under the banner of CASA DE COLORES, our National Laureate project starting September.

I definitely want a lot of participation with Library of Congress, with each other, across all communities, a lot of voices, languages and abilities, as well as translations of work into all languages, spoken word choruses -- just to give you an idea... then I'll see if I can incorporate your ideas into CASA DE COLORES, our HOUSE OF COLORS -- let's jam a little, brain storm...thanks mucho!

Contract Herrera with your ideas via his Facebook page, or via La Bloga.

Bits and News
Adult Stepchildren's Help Sought

La Bloga friend Dawn O. Braithwaite of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln writes:

So many focus on the negatives in stepfamilies, rather than the positives. My name is Dawn O. Braithwaite from the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We are studying turning points and communication in the relationships of adult stepchildren who have an overall positive relationship with their stepparent.

Please help us find adult stepchildren to take part in an interview with us. We are looking for adult stepchildren age 25 or older with an overall positive relationship with their stepparent. We are looking for stepfamilies that started no less than four years ago and at an age stepchildren would remember the start of the family. The parent and stepparent are currently living together or are married.

Those willing to participate should contact Jordan Allen jordan.allen75@huskers.unl.edu or me dbraithwaite@unl.edu and we will send you more information.  Thank you!

Please let the researchers know you heard about the opportunity via La Bloga.

Mariposa Poetry Workshop Applications Now

La Bloga friend Maritza Rivera, a woman recently retired from the world of work, opens registration for the fourth annual poetry workshop she sponsors in Pennsylvania's Catoctin Mountains. Rivera writes:

The 4th Mariposa Poetry Retreat builds community among poets and writers and provides them the time and space to focus on their work in a serene and beautiful setting away from the pressures of daily life.

The retreat promotes a safe and instructive environment that addresses the creative challenges faced by writers of all genres. The 2015 weekend retreat will take place at the Capital Retreat Center in Waynesboro, PA from Friday, October 2nd to Sunday, October 4th and is open to writers 18 years of age and older.

Email Maritza Rivera or visit www.MariposaPoetry.org for registration forms and details.

Thank you for visiting La Bloga. Please share your comments and observations by clicking the Comments link below. Be sure to click the "email follow-ups" link when you comment.


Barrio Writers Finds You Can Go Home Again

La Bloga friend (and 2010 floricanto reader) Sarah Rafael Garcia has created an impressive legacy in the Barrio Writers organization. Expanding into Texas when Garcia attended graduate school in the state, the founding term in California's Orange County grew moribund. No more.

Click here to read about this important development:
http://www.barriowriters.org/2015/07/barrio-writers-returns-home-to-santana.html