Three Corner Views. Giving Pays.

Michael Sedano



The Old Cedars Change, Yielding Place To New Deodars

It's not just that tempus fugits, it's that it goes by so fast that you turn around and some of it's completely gone. Those shoeboxes of family photographs, abandoned albums in an estate sale box, yellow sliding containers of Kodachromes snapped around the house, envelopes stuffed with negatives.

Oh gosh, remember how sweet those plums grew in the back yard? This is the only foto of it, with Doggie and Licha when she was tiny. Hijole.

Everyday sights disappear with surprising suddenness. Here today, gone next year and you didn't even notice. That's a great reason to carry around a camera, which is the same thing as a modern cell phone.

Some photographs are made to be remembered, a way of defining people and subjects in their space and time, like Manazar concentration camp snapshots. Other photographs happen out of memorable moments, like the fistfight between a Maoist and a Marxist in front of the Silver Dollar one August 29th. These have equal value. But someone has to take them.

Digital photography puts history and memory in almost every person's hands. If you do a lot of walking, make it a point to capture fixed sights over time. Never hesitate to push the button. Turn off the sound effects and always push and hold if your camera repeats. Hint: download the phone to a computer and keep your phone's storage free.

A cell phone takes darn good images. Download them at full resolution for happiest results. The  fotos here are made with a Canon reflex camera.

November 2015, the Cedar Trees at El Molino and Rio Grande leave no doubt: drought-weakened, diseased, dead. Not only here at the corner, but eastward along half a mile of curbside. Drying relics of a more forgiving climate.

A replacement cedar struggles between two stumps.

Within a few weeks, city crews arrived then split with the leña. These California Incense Cedar would have made aromatic, BTU-rich firewood, on those days and nights the South Coast Air Quality Management District did not outlaw wood-burning fires. The AQMD is a little-known all-powerful unelected entity whose efforts echo a weekend warrior battling the surf with a butter knife. But it's nothing than better, that's for sure.

A few months later, crews finished the removal process, grinding the roots into compost, leaving only a few scars in the struggling devil grass.

November 2017, a rainy day refreshes the young Deodar cedars that survive the initial transplant. City crews pass by monthly, pouring water and nutrients on newly-planted trees.The opportunistic devil grass loves the monthly dousing.

To the right, above the parked car, a healthy incense cedar looms 20 feet above the asphalt, unravaged by whatever has killed its companions up and down this street.


No Matter What They Say, It Is.

In these days rife with Christo-fascist hate speech, I hesitate to cite a Christian tenet that giving is a greater mitzvah than receiving. Despite the truism even Old Scratch can cite scripture for his purpose, there's truth in the tenet.

When you give to a cultural group your reward far exceeds the fifty bucks. Or ten. The reward is inexplicable, and if you seek thanks or recognition, go give your shoes and warm coat to a homeless guy. But don't take a selfie when you do it, m'entiendes?

This is the season you exact a cultural tithe on your spirit. Think of your fifty dollar membership as twelve frappucinos you did not buy.

Leading La Bloga-Tuesday's list of worthy open hands is an example of what happens when communities support cultural organizations. For sixteen years, moving from location to location, Tía Chucha's has relied upon ganas and community support to grow, albeit hand-to-mouth, into an organization with the capacity to earn a substantial grant. Luis J. Rodriguez, with wife Trini, publisher of Tía Chucha Press as well as the centro, announces his aim to fund a two-year project addressing incarceration's social and individual damages.

Thereafter, we roam to Alburquerque, Los Angeles, and San Antonio for messages of hope.

San Fernando
Tía Chucha Matching Major Grant For 2018

All Tia Chucha Press books can be obtained at: http://www.tiachucha.org/tia_chucha_press

Via email from Luis J. Rodriguez

Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore, the nonprofit arts & literacy cultural space founded by Trini and Luis Rodriguez is celebrating 16 years of arts, writing, music, dance, theater, indigenous cosmology classes and pláticas, an art gallery, a bookstore, a performance space, a weekly Open Mic.

The centro serves 15,000 people a year in the Northeast San Fernando Valley.

Los Rodriguez & familia have raised over a million-and-a-half dollars with donations from community but also support from friends like Bruce Springsteen, John Densmore of the Doors, Cheech Marin, Lou Adler, and others in the music and film industry. Grants and earned income from Tía Chucha bookstore and Tia Chucha Press, round out the balance sheet.

Tía Chucha Centro Cultural & Bookstore announces its biggest grant yet—$300,000 over two years from the Art for Justice Fund, supporting the project "From Trauma to Transformation." The money is geared to change the narrative and reality of mass incarceration. This begins in April of 2018. The project will entail workshops, presentations, film, books, and more.

San Antonio • Immediate Action! • Time Certain

Literacy Group Closing On Target Today

San Antoino's literacy activists offer their own three-way deal. Give. Join. Buy Something From Them. See details click here.

Los Angeles
Latino Theater Company Launches Laugh Pachanga

Tickets

TktsTktsTkts

Alburquerque

National Hispanic Cultural Center Triple Play. You Can Do All Three.

Link to Membership and further information.
Be a Member - No Geographic Limit On Joining.

A Festive Sharing - old holiday tradition revived

Yesterday my wife and I hosted our annual Festive Sharing, usually held a couple of weeks before Christmas. Here's how the invitation read:

"In the spirit of less stuff, bring a gift to share, not to give away, something you or someone else created--non-manufactured.

"Come experience all the shares, like: A story, poem, song, play, dance or artwork, written, spoken, sung, performed or simply exhibited. Drawn, painted, sewn, photoed, carved or crafted. Baked, steamed, brewed, homemade, self-portraited, recently read, or--your choice. 10-15 min to present your Share.

"Food, hot mexicano cocoa, primo margaritas, beer, sangria and other liquids. Bring a favorite dish or drink to richen the communal meal. Dress code, tribal-informal. Wear your fave, faded, baggy, flabby whatevers. Drinks & eats followed by the Sharing. First-come, first to share."

Our event is a mix of family, friends, co-workers, neighbors and others, although our home barely accommodates the couple of dozen guests. It looks like a holiday party. Until the Sharing starts

And a teenaged boy performs his dance. Or a young lady sings.

A guitarist does an original composition.

A writer, her prose.

A man reading his favorite poet.

A self-produced documentary on remote-control airplanes.

A pot of jambalaya, and the story behind it.

A handmade fishing rod.

A fire-dancer out on the lawn.

You can't imagine the variety because there's no limit to what interests people or what they're capable of creating.

For our few hours, there's no worry about buying gifts or getting to the sale or wrapping presents. No one expects you to give any thing, No exchange of purchased presents. You give of yourself, and everyone receives that.

I enjoy the Sharing for its non-consumerist, non-materialistic, non-commercial qualities. It reminds me that once upon a time, our much happier ancestors gathered in forests, around campfires, on grassy plains or in caves, and had fun sharing what they'd made with natural materials and their own hands. Or shared a rock crystal or a bird's colorful egg they'd discovered. Maybe we were more like children then. Open to discovering, exploring, enjoying and definitely sharing that, with little or no stress.

Today we are social animals who've lost our tribe, our largest, safe grouping. We may still have our other circles--our close support group of 5, 15 sympathetic friends, 50 close friends. But the approximate 150 who once constituted our tribe hardly exist anymore. Social media friends in the thousands doesn't fill the void. And we suffer the loneliness, the vulnerability, sense of helplessness and lack of power, things we didn't so much have when we were part of a tribe.

That why there's cholo gangs, community and cultural groups where people regularly meet and engage with large groups. That why there's Ferguson marches. They're attempts not only to protest, but also to reacquire the power of our tribe. When we gather together in one place, we approximate a tribe; attending a rally makes us feel more powerful, less helpless.

Our neighborhood barrios, ghettoes and communities were once our modern-day tribes. Real estate development, eminent domain, gentrification and segregationist dispersal of working class people have eaten away at our communities. Now, in many cases, we don't know our neighbors and wouldn't want to. We can't imagine their being a part of our circle, our tribe.

I believe all the dystopias facing us and our descendants will again provide an enclosed environment where tribes will naturally arise out of dire necessity. As society--the economy, joblessness, debt, climate, deteriorating public services, and institutional violence--gets worse, our social genetics will induce us to gather with those who live nearby, like tribal villages of old, to protect ourselves and survive. And to prosper, for that matter.

I don't expect to report next year that I'm now a member of a thriving tribe. I'm simply doing what I can. What my genetic make-up and mind tell me is true and required. Our Sharing event is a piece of that. Try one for yourself. You don't need published authors, gifted artists, politicians or rich patrons to make yours worthwhile. You simply need to invite whoever comes to mind. And realize that in times past, they were integral to how we survived blizzards and saber-toothed tigers and enemy attacks.

It use to take a village to raise a child. You were one of those children and may need to be again.

Having a great sharing season,

RudyG, a.k.a. Rudy Ch. Garcia, Sharing host and author of fabulist mextasy tales