First Impressions -- Sampa

It doesn't seem fair to judge one of the biggest cities on the planet from a mere three hours walking its streets.  Tired and jet lagged, at that.  But first impressions are about impressions, not fairness.

     Sao Paulo, familiarly known (although I've been here less than a day), as Sampa:

First, it's tough to breathe, and I don't think it's only because I'm asthmatic.  Gray air from the moving rivers of cars and trucks.  At least today.

     Second, I don't think I'll have to go to the favelas to see the rich-poor divide, again one of the biggest on the planet, and growing as Brazil itself grows in wealth.  Near streets with shop windows sparkling with clothing and lingerie, for instance, by global designers at jaw-dropping prices, are other streets where life looks very tough.  On those you don't walk at night, even at dusk, I am advised, for fear of being mugged.  Having forgotten it's approaching mid-winter here, caught by the short day, I found myself on a couple of those very no-go streets briefly, suddenly almost alone.  Sampenos know where to walk, when.

 

     Which brings me to the Third first impression: Residents of this town may be among the kindest, most outgoing and patient I've met.  Busy as everyone is, from airport arrival to now, I never had to lift my own suitcase, never lost someone's attention with my truly rotten Portuguese.  Every one of the several individuals I asked for directions insisted on walking part or all the way with me to make sure I understood.

      Oh, and the streets are peppered with art movie houses and live theatre.

     Can't wait for tomorrow.

Here's the Q&A from Crimebuster

Here is the conversation from the screening on the posting below.  

You won't hear the questions, but the answers can be interesting...

Crimebuster: A Son's Search for His Father

 Crimebuster screened at a 1940s-era New Rheem theatre in Northern California over the weekend, which fit perfectly with many scenes of the story of Louis B. Dematteis, district attorney and superior court judge, and father of internationally famous photojournalist Lou Dematteis.  Lou -- on the right -- produced and directed, I co-produced and co-directed, and Rich Giacchino, left, was one of our fine editors.
  (For the audio of the Q&A, see the posting above.)
Handsome attendees with Italian roots


 Dematteis, despite danger to himself, cleaned up the county.  A good lawman served to help, Hal Moore, father of Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel Corporation.  I interviewed Gordon, who looks just like his father, the deputy sheriff.


I also was honored to interview Sandra Day O'Connor, not to mention spend two hours travel time talking to her informally the day of the interview.  Dematteis gave the former Supreme Court Justice her first job as a lawyer when no one else would hire her because she was a woman.

Left: Giacchino, moi, Beau Behan, Program Director of the California Independent Film Festival, where Crimebuster recently played to a full house, and Lou Dematteis.  

 The New Rheem Theatre was the scene of the Crimebuster screening, with one of the best question and answer sessions afterward we have ever had.  Of course, the conversation after a film is only as good as the audience -- and the filmmakers -- but it has me thinking:  I wouldn't mind "conversation screenings" of major features where the audience might participate in reaction to what it has just seen, and conversation further afield, just as at documentary screenings, with the filmmakers or others.  I wouldn't mind paying extra for a "conversation screening," either.
     I also loved the theatre, a throwback in design, wonderfully refreshed, to the 1930s and 40s when people went regularly to the movies. It was a communitarian, social event, far from the isolation of Netflix and Facebook.  Movie goers then expected a glamorous, gilded place to spend the evening.  Who knew such a place existed in almost-rural Moraga?

Sandy Close Receives George Polk Award Today

A Hug from Here to Sandy 

Today friend and editor Sandy Close receives the coveted George Polk Lifetime Career Award,  placing her in company of some of the most illustrious and hard-working journalists in recent history.  I will not be present at the event at Long Island University in New York, but I know the tenor of what she will say, because it is what she says at such moments, like the time she called to  Central America to let me in on the extraordinary news (Pacific News Service was a small operation!) that she would be receiving the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship: "It's shared, Mary Jo.  It's not for me, it's for all of us."

Yesterday she sent an emergency message asking me to courier overnight postcards of my upcoming book to her hotel so she could distribute them at the event, and to colleagues at a Pacific News Service New York reunion.  Imagine.  And I don't even work there anymore!

Do we always share a point of view? No.

What is true however, as the call for the postcards shows, is that Sandy is self-effacing, loyal and collaborative, qualities that in addition to her remarkably keen sense of the news landscape mark her as deserving of recognition.  "We look for the chicken's eye view," she said years ago when she proposed I come on board. It meant the ramifications of policy on the ground, through the eyes and in the lives of ordinary people, were as important in reporting for PNS as an awareness of policy and how leaders think.  It also meant looking for how trends at the grassroots, among ethnic communities, shapes who we are as a changing nation.  As Pacific News Service became New America Media, those POVs remain firm.

So congratulations, Sandy, and a big hug from home base, in San Francisco.  Here is what the George Polk award says:

Sandy Close is executive director of New America Media, an alternative news source that supports thousands of ethnic media outlets. For 37 years, Ms. Close has guided the pioneering efforts of New America Media, formerly known as the Pacific News Service. She has mentored many journalists who now work in the mainstream press, including A.C. Thompson, one of this year’s winners of the Polk Award for Television Reporting. In 1995, Ms. Close received a MacArthur Foundation "Genius Award" fellowship; and in 1997, she co-produced the Academy Award-winning short documentary, “Breathing Lessons.” Perhaps her proudest moment in journalism came in 2007, when she organized the Chauncey Bailey Project, a team of reporters whose investigative work led Oakland police to arrest those responsible for killing Mr. Bailey, who was a Polk Award-winning journalist.

Before the Maya

 

      


THERE WERE THE OLMEC

The steamy east coast of Mexico is producing discoveries that are beginning to chip away at what we don't know about the mysterious Olmec civilization.  If they are famous at all, the Olmec are known for producing giant stone portraits in the round, beginning more than three thousand years ago in the regions of Veracruz and Tabasco. The imposing heads can weigh up to twenty-four tons. To see them  up close is to marvel at their individuality, and wonder how a people without the wheel managed to accomplish the task of their creation.

Those who have long claimed the Olmec were the mother civilization of Middle America, giving birth to the much-better documented Maya, have more and more to offer as suggestive evidence.

     When I think of Maya civilization certain images come to mind: the mighty jaguar; the Hero Twins whose valor and cleverness are central to the creation story in the Maya bible called the Popol Vuh; cranial deformation for beauty and status; the Maya calendar, still in use today and the Maya counting system expressed in bars and dots.

     The Olmec pieces from Mexico briefly in the United States now mirror these images, produced many years before that great Maya civilization appeared on the scene.  At the de Young Museum in San Francisco, where I visited recently as a member of the Bay Area Travel Writers
(allowing me to take these pictures inside the exhibit) colossal masterworks and fine smaller pieces are on display until May 8.  Have a look at the young twins on the left, and the larger royal twins on the right, and tell me if the Popol Vuh doesn't come to mind.  You haven't read it?  You must.  The translation by poet     Dennis Tedlock is my favorite.

                     In the same way, the bars and dots clearly seen here are like the Maya counting system, where the bar represents the number five, and the dot, one. The figures under the ball player's raised hand on the round stone on the right  (an altar?) might easily become, over the centuries, glyphs for three of the twenty "day signs" that mark a Maya month.

        The deformed heads, a sign of high status, are prominent in Olmec sculpture, as are jaguar faces on human bodies.

On occasion a pre-Columbian site will display both Olmec and Maya characteristics.  Last year I saw this at Tabalik Abaj in Guatemala near the border with Mexico, a site inhabited for more than two thousand years, from about 1000 B.C. until the great Maya collapse in about 900 A.D.  There are Olmec sculptures, and Maya features, a place where you can feel one civilization blending into another.

                                                         If you want to see how some of these huge pieces were moved from their homes on the Mexican coast to foggy San Francisco (very carefully), go to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacma/sets/72157624945753603/show/                                                      

Libya: Call a Spade a Spade

                             Regime Change: In Libya, Call a Spade a Spade

                                                           By Mary Jo McConahay 

New America Media, Mar. 19, 2011. http://newamericamedia.org/

            No one expects hypocrisy to be absent from foreign policy.  What is hienous and tragic is to lie to ourselves about it, or accept the lie given to us.  To say intervention in Libya is anything but militarized regime change keeps the door open for the U.S. Big Stick that has cost countless lives the world over in the last century, and robs us of moral authority every place we bring it down hard.

            In Libya the major world powers led by the United States are triggering a downward spiral to more human suffering and death for their own geo-political and economic ends.  In recent years Muammar el-Qaddafi has been our darling, a presumed bulwark against Al-Qaeda in Africa, just as Saddam Hussein was our champion in the Iran-Iraq war, both Qaddafi and Hussein beneficiaries of our largesse.  Recognizing national sovereignty -- better said: eyes closed -- we let them use money and materiel we gave them as they wished, including against their own people. 

            Then, we changed our minds about them.  Decided they must go.

            Forty-six peaceful demonstrators, including a fourteen-year old boy and a journalist, were killed March 18 in Sana'a, Yemen's magical-looking capital, adding to the deaths of non-violent resisters at the hands of a dictator in power as long as Qaddafi. Why not intervene in Yemen as in Libya?

            What began in quiet Bahrain a few weeks ago as joyful but serious civic marches for wider rights by Shiite and Sunni citizens has become a nightmare.  Even government killings of unarmed demonstrators were not enough to quell growing resistance, so Saudi Arabia's brother monarchy sent over a thousand troops in blatant occupation of the tiny island.  Why tolerate state murder and foreign occupation? Why not intervene in Bahrain as in Libya?

         It is another lie to say the world wants this, and the United States is merely one nation in an alliance of humanitarian warriors.  Neither India, China nor Russia, representing far more of the world's population than France, England and the United States, would commit itself to voting "Yes" in the United Nations Security Council on the Libya operation, abstaining instead.  Likewise, Germany would not say yes.   Also abstaining: Brazil, the largest country on the South American continent.

             To recognize that Libya's rebels risk their lives by fighting the overwhelming might of the state is one thing.  To militarize the crisis further with the might of major powers is another. 

            Accepting Washington's line that our actions are based on something they are not is to enable a foreign policy, in our name, based on fatal prevarication.  This might be a good time to stop.

Journalist Mary Jo McConahay reported from the Middle East and North Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.  Her new book, Maya Roads: One Woman's Journey Among the People of the Rainforest, comes out this summer from Chicago Review Press. (Photo: Patrick Baz/AFP. Identified as rebel jet about to crash)

                                                               

The Send-Off

     Three hundred souls in a second-floor church under shafts of shifting colored lights from stained glass windows. Underneath on the first floor lunch being served to those who had no place else to eat, several of whom knew John and cared for him and climbed the two flights when their bellies were full.  Outside it was the coldest day of the year in the Mission District that was Ross's half-home, the other half being the heart of Mexico City where everybody knew el viejo.  Sadness was so deep there was more laughter than tears, stories of the man's brashness, his in-your-face insistence on the truth as he saw it, no quarter given to the hypocrite, no matter rank or station. Of the young Beat days. How he went to Mexico too but stayed when the others left. There were things you'd forgotten: how John was the first man in the country to go to jail (almost two years) for refusing the Vietnam draft. Things you didn't know: John had two grown kids, son and daughter, estranged for years then grown close explaining their love with the intimacy and soaring that showed those apples didn't fall far from the tree.
   And there were things you thought about that you wondered whether other people knew: that John had a son who was not there, who died as an infant because a doctor couldn't be found in the Indian village where early early early death was unremarkable, except of course to those who loved the small, fresh dead, over which a father could cry in a cafe in Palenque sixty years after the fact.
   No hymns, but good music, Spanish and English.  And the flock getting to its feet and standing many with right arms raised in a fist everybody singing the walls of that church ringing with the Internationale.  His request.
   Afterward a jazz procession through the streets of the Mission with the band leading the way and staying to play outside the Cafe La Boheme as mourners and the curious and street people packed the place to listen to each other's poetry, no-host bar, catering on unsteady paper plates by the cafe.
     Next door at the Nicaraguan Salvadoran hole in the wall with great pupusas a bunch of us sat around telling John stories and one of his basketball buddies remembered John took buses in Peru and described the rolled-up pant legs of the young hired men, his fellow passengers, suppurating sores redness and rashes on their legs where they smashed the coca leaves, the lowest human rung on the drug commerce ladder that led to dorm rooms and swank parties in the United States.  "Think about that the next time you cop some blow," was the last line of the story he wrote.  Imagine.  What a great journalist he was.  Chicken's eye view, all right, two feet from the ground, voicing for those without one, noticing, writing every day of his life.

And blogs (God how he'd hate the word) are supposed to be short mine I know are more slog but I can't leave it without giving you Kevin's poem he wrote the day after John died in his house because if you read this far you will want to read it. 

Dawn without john

There is no long hand attached to that sassafras cane

There is no bulging yellow eyeball behind that magnifying glass reading la jornada

That toothless mouth is not sucking on a joint.

There is no black pen cradled in the other hand ready to write

That fine fine brain can´t remember the history of mexico

Those new York ears can´t hear Coltrane or parker

My youngest daughter gabriela won´t be receiving a birthday present from her beloved godfather or dogfather as he liked to say.

And zoe won´t be skyping with her abuelo tonight.

The apple trees are still blooming

The sun rose again and the moon is full

Our neighbor is threshing his harvest of wheat

And the roosters are crowing

48 hours ago I held you in my arms as you struggled and fought:

And then for the first time in your life you surrendered, gave in,

And took your last breath with the rising sun.

24 hours ago as the day dawned we cried  and arminda and the saxophone of Oscar el vampiro; street musician from mexico city;  wailed over your cold lifeless body ,and in one last act of defiance, Oscar and I smoked a joint of the humboldt grass you smuggled into mexico , making it doubly illegal and especially irreverent, blew the smoke over you, and stuck the roach in your mouth.

Before you were baked we placed a pen in your hand

Compadre, I saw that smile on your face as you went up in flames with a joint in your mouth and a pen in your hand. 

It took two hours to turn you into ashes.

This dawn I am alone with those ashes, the flowers, the candles and Coltrane.

The beret, the magnifying glass, the leather vest, the keffiyeh , and the sassafras cane   

are all wondering?

WILL THERE BE ANOTHER JOHN ROSS ?         

Kevin Quigley   Santiago Tzipijo   jan 19 2011