Papa and that Napalm Girl

Writing about our father yesterday, I found memories flooding back. I woke up this morning resolved to write more about my time with the man I now refer to as "Dad"--he was Papa growing up.

As I joined my husband in front of the television this evening I learned he was watching a show (probably Frontline) on the My Lai massacre in Vietnam. Normally when the subject matter is this grim I kiss Bill on the cheek, say goodnight and retreat with a good novel. Tonight I took a deep breath and stayed put. As I forced myself to watch photographs and interviews from this horrible time when U.S. soldiers murdered 100s of women and children and elderly civilians as they screamed in terror, memories of my childhood floated up.

My father, like my husband, never shied away from the truth of the brutality of humanity. He was an active organizer against the Vietnam war. While day might be filled with the light of picket lines (or in those days, protest marches--which I also loved). Night was Walter Cronkite on the television news showing us pictures and telling stories of the relentless wounded and dead. The soundtrack was Judy Collins singing "No more Genocide in my name" on our turntable. And the imaged seared into my mind of the war was this photo of the naked Vietnamese girl screaming and running in terror down the road after being napalmed in Trang Bang.

Many nights in this era, I would cry myself to sleep at night, covering my head with a pillow praying and pleading silently with my father to stop playing Joan Baez or Judy Collins (to this day I have an aversion to sopranos with a mission although I am one myself). I envied my father's ability to hold compassion and interest and anger and work for justice all at the same time when I just wanted to run screaming out of the room like that girl.

To me, to this day it is not motivating to know the horrible truths of the world. I don't want to believe or hold these kinds of images in my mind. I avoid gruesome movies whether fictional or documentary in nature. Yet as an aspiring minister, I am confronted and must hold people's real pain and tragedy. I am getting better at absorbing without embodying and becoming their pain.

Picketing Safeway for Life

Our father never met a picket line he would cross and seldom met one he wouldn't join. The right of workers to organize was sacred to him. I was brought up in his church listening to the hymns of Woodie Guthrie, the International, and Utah Phillips.

While other girls sold girl scout cookies in front of Safeways, I grew up picketing them with my Dad to support the Farmworkers boycott in the 70's. For a long time we didn't eat grapes. Sometimes we didn't eat lettuce. And often we spent Saturday morning together walking the line at a Safeway in San Diego (usually the one on Washington Boulevard nearest our home, but sometimes another one that needed us more).

I loved everything about the picket line. The crowds, the press, the urgency, the talking to people. Most of all the signs. Well, and the food. If there's one thing you can count on from a union, it's good food.

Eventually the Farmworkers settled in some way and we could eat lettuce again. To this day I feel guilty about grapes.

40 years later, I am just recovering from my grudge against Safeway. Given a choice between supermarkets, I also choose another one over Safeway to this day. And even though Safeway is by far the closest supermarket to our home now (a beautiful new one went in a few years ago in midtown Sacramento), I find that I've avoided it.

Recently I convinced myself this was silly. I can't keep holding against this company the feelings generated from a labor dispute so long ago. It's a good store. It's time to shop there more. I even went so far as to place a monthly order for Safeway scrip to benefit our son's school.

Wouldn't you know it, the last two times I've shopped at our local Safeway AFTER I've gone in and shopped a picket has appeared outside. I know it's after because there's no way I would obliviously cross the line. The sight of those signs and those workers absolutely sets off a visceral reaction in me.

The first time I asked the people on the line what it was about.

"Are you asking us not to shop here?"

She says, in broken English, "I no discuss. Call him." and hands me a slip of paper with a phone number and name. I call the number and leave a message. He declined to return my call.

Today, the picket appeared again after I shopped. I wince as I see it out of the corner of my eye while I'm paying for my groceries. I ask the cashier what she knows about it. She says that it's some dispute with a construction union in another city or state and nothing to do with this location. I nod and wonder what to take from it.

Should I cancel my scrip? Should I join the line for something I don't understand? One thing's for sure, I won't cross it and I expect good food.

Busted at the Co-op

Sometimes it can be difficult to live a coherent lifestyle. A former friendly supervisor once explained to her boss upon my departure why I could afford to quit my job, "She and her husband are hippies. They live in a commune. They eat rice and beans. They sleep on mats!" She couldn't hear that I lived in my own normal home in a close neighborhood, ate a lot of steak and slept on a $1600 tempurpedic.

The other day I came face-to-face with my own image of my self. I was at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op. In a 10 minute flurry, I picked up organic vegetables, organic spelt bread, organic green tea, organic shampoos, organic bulk oatmeal and a case of unsweetened almond milk. Because I was nursing a hurt shoulder, the clerk helped me take it to the car.

On the way to the car, a wave of shame swept over me as to what he would see when we opened the rear door. It occurred to me to have him load the groceries in the front or side just to avoid this exposure. But then just as easily as it came, I dismissed the thought. Surely he won't notice, I convinced myself. Or if he does, it won't matter. It's really not that unusual or embarrassing.

After two beeps of the key chain, the rear door to my Mazda 5 wagon/van unlocked itself. I raised it up and drew in my breath. "Woah!" said the clerk. "Lots of soda!" waiving his hand at the 4 cases of diet soda sprawled over the rear compartment.

"haha, isn't that incongruous?" I babbled inanely. "I go to the co-op and shop for all this healthy stuff and then I drink diet coke. Haha! I've tried. I've talked to your management several times. I've repeatedly asked for the co-op to carry bulk free range organic diet coke but you never do!"

The clerk laughed nervously, backing quickly away from the car.

"Have a nice day," he says, pressing a button on the cart that flags me as a security risk from here on out. I peal out, lickety split.

Who's Earl Warren, 2010?

Caveat: different versions of this same rant can no doubt be found all over the internet for the past few weeks. I have not read them. This is just my obligatory rant on the Supreme Court.

I am sick of the White House and Senate Dems whining that they have to put up a "safe" choice that the Republicans will go for in order to get a confirmation on a Supreme Court Nominee because they "only" have 59 votes in the Senate. That is ludicrous. Democrats control the White House and they control the Senate. They can and should appoint and confirm someone to the highest court that reflects Democratic values, someone (as late liberal Senator Paul Wellstone used to say he was) from the "Democratic wing of the Democratic party."

When Republicans controlled the Senate and White House they used it to pack the court with young far right conservatives. You've all heard about the "balanced" supreme court? It has the right, the center and the far right. Well, it's time for some real balance on the court. It's time for the Democrats to put up some young pup that is a left-wing wacko that somehow passes muster.

The trouble is that none of the "fully vetted" people who are already on the federal bench are going to fit the bill by definition because if they were demonstrably far left they wouldn't have been appointed. Also the conventional wisdom is that we're never going to have any more surprise justices like Souter (appointed by Bush I and then moved from right to center) or Earl Warren (appointed by Eisenhower and then moved from center to left; pictured at right).

The Dems are terrified of nominating someone with a skeleton in their closet and then having it haunt them in the November elections. I, for one, would prefer that they'd be a little more scared of losing any semblance of civil liberties in this country and a little less scared about their own electoral hide.

For the love of God, President Obama: look under every rock, listen to your highest inner wisdom, cement your legacy, by finding and naming the next Earl Warren (preferably less white and less male).

5 Snouts Up for Someone to Watch Over Me at Capital Stage Closing this Week

(:)(:)(:)(:)(:) A combination of homework and computer problems has conspired to keep me from raving sooner about this amazing play in its last week at the Capital Stage.

This is the best production of any play that I have seen at Capital Stage and the best production I have seen at any professional theater company in Sacramento.

Dark but hilarious, political but completely personal, brilliantly written, staged and performed. Director Stephanie Gularte has won my respect. Run don't walk to see it.

Someone Who'll Watch Over Me
By Frank McGuiness



March 19 - April 25

An American doctor, and English academic, and an Irish journalist are taken prisoner in the Middle East. Having little contact with their unseen captors -- and none whatsoever with the outside world -- the men use dark humor and their vivid imaginations to forge their own reality within the walls of their cell.

Day 4--San Francisco

Got up at dawn to move my car that took me freakin' 45 minutes to park and had to park 7 blocks away at a meter, legal, but oh so moveable. Drove to Safeway to buy provisions for my Good Friday party.

Later walked with daughter to Mission Dolores. Bribed her with Starbucks to attend the Good Friday service with me. It was interesting in Spanish and English with the collection walking to the 5000 never ending stations of the cross. Loved the spanish singing, "Senor, misericordia" So much suffering and misery, what a Good Friday!

Spent the afternoon preparing for my Good Friday party, traditional crucifixion foods. I went with Middle Eastern (what else). Actually most of the food was take-out from a kabob place around the corner. To make it complicated I decided to re-write a passion play about the death of Christ. I didn't have a printer or time to go to the Fed Ex formerly known as Kinko's so I went upstairs to the landlords and learned a terrible dark secret. The gorgeous place that we were renting from them was made possible only by them living in hell upstairs. Truly. Their whole life is devoted to making the downstairs awesome. Upstairs it is like some scary backstage maids' quarters from hell. It reminded me of a short story I once read called The ones who walked away from Omeloskwhere this seemingly Utopian society depends on a small boy being trapped in a cage living in his own filth. It sort of harshed the mellow of the gorgeous and perfect quarters downstairs. It underscores my cardinal rule. Unless you're in the play, never never go backstage.

Speaking of the play, we did put it on, shouting, "Crucify him!" at the right times. It was fabulous and we topped it off by relishing the chocolate crosses that I had brought back from the Catholic holy land of Buffalo, NY. Sadly, no chocolate crucifixes could be found, only crosses, but they sufficed!

Day 3--San Francisco

Well, this is much later but we took Alcatraz Cruise to Alcatraz and then to Angel Island. Expensive ($50 each) but worth it unless you have a cheaper way to Alcatraz. Highly recommend the audio tour of the prison--like a 3 dimensional Ken Burns PBS documentary having real ex-guards order you around and real ex-cons tell it like it is. The live guide we had telling us about the only "successful" escape was fun and competent but milked it too much and we had to mock him afterwards.

Angel Island is so beautiful--did you know that if you camp there you and the 20 or so other people have that whole huge island to yourself after the ferries stop running (which is like 4 or 5) until morning--wicked cool! probably also freezing year round. We did the tour in a open air bus around the island--very interesting history.

Dinner at Il Pollaio on Columbus in North Beach--seriously awesome roast chicken marred this time only slightly by the drunk insane woman that was stalking us and that I made the mistake of blowing kisses to.