Memorial to Ex-Slave Hannah Reynolds, Walter Scott, Electrifying South Carolina

Virginia is doing something good with the memorial to ex-slave Hannah Reynolds, the only slave killed at the Battle of Appomattox--and whose slaveholder thought it of enough significance to report it.  (You may remember from Huckleberry Finn, that when someone asks whether anyone was hurt, Huckelberry Finn says, "No, ma'am.  A nigger was killed," and she says she's glad that no one got hurt.)  And from South Carolina, we have the Proterra startup making electric buses under the leadership of Ryan Popple, though that hardly makes up for the shooting in the back of Walter Scott in South Carolina.  Similar things happen right here in the progressive Bay Area, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported on the front page today, writing about Captain Jason Fox, who should have been removed from office after he was sued for an outrageous abuse of power in 2005 for his treatment of a gay man named Andrew Marconi.    

Real Story behind "Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed"

          Juan Carrón Gañàn, the real-life teacher who made this trip,  asked Lennon to make corrections in his notebook. Carron Ganan  used to listen to Radio Luxembourg and write down the lyrics of their songs as he heard them, but he couldn't get the lyrics from the Revolver album right because they were starting to use more "psychedelic" words. When they met, the teacher gave him the notebook and Lennon corrected the lyrics and filled in the gaps. He also corrected errors in the transcriptions of songs written by Paul McCartney and George Harrison – 'Eleanor Rigby' and 'Taxman'.”

            Juan Carrón Gañàn is now 88 years old and still teaching English. “The notebook still exists,” says Trueba.  We are told at the end of the movie that after Ganan's  meeting with John Lennon, The Beatles included printed sheets of their song lyrics

Lennon said Santa Isabel, where they were filming, reminded him of a Salvation Army garden near his childhood home in Liverpool called Strawberry Fields.  It appears that Trueba saw "Strawberry Fields" as a song about childhood loneliness and isolation, but it was actually a refuge from those feelings--a place of comfort, according to John Lennon's Aunt Mimi, who said "'As soon as we could hear the Salvation Army Band starting, John would jump up and down shouting "Mimi, come on. We're going to be late."'  He and his childhood friends often played in the wooded area behind the building, which Lennon nicknamed in the plural "Strawberry Fields."

Let me take you down
Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever

Living is easy with eyes closed
Misunderstanding all you see
It's getting hard to be someone
But it all works out
It doesn't matter much to me

Let me take you down
Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever

No one I think is in my tree
I mean it must be high or low
That is you can't, you know, tune in
But it's all right
That is I think it's not too bad

Let me take you down
Cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields
Nothing is real
And nothing to get hung about
Strawberry Fields forever

Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed

Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed

            In the sweet, slow-moving Spanish  film Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed

 I like the main character, who teaches English and uses Beatles songs in his lessons.  His students repeat lines, and he explains what they mean in Spanish, the old translation method.  But he has his heart in it. He's very kind and gentle, so it's a little bit surprising that he hasn't become a family man although the examples we see of all heads of the household shows them slapping kids around.  The fact that he is a dedicated teacher who may not always be successful makes it easy for me to identify.  Of course, I associate "Living Is Easy" with the song "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess, but the title comes from "Strawberry Fields Forever."    I associate the Beatles with my brother David, who loves their songs--one of his pleasures (or escapes?) in his life at a neurobehavioral facility, where he's kept under lock and key twenty-four hours a day--except when we take him out to lunch, and yes, he would like to escape with us and go on a road trip far from the facility.  David used to sing along with the Beatles more than he does now.  He'd love this teacher's lessons provided the music, not just the English words,  was part of them.  The teacher, Antonio, is in his mid-forties, pushing fifty, but he lives poor and he lives alone in an apartment where he can't get the gas stove to work, so he heats his soup on an overturned iron.  He starts out on a road trip to see John Lennon, who's filming How I Won the War with director John Lester in Spain in 1966.  His dream is to speak to John Lennon and tell him about his students and get Lennon's help with lyrics he can't pick up from just listening, so in a sense he's traveling with his students, too, but the only people who get a ride with him are two runaways, ready to learn.  So what are the lessons?  You should get on the road to fulfill your dream (or to keep it from being dashed), and on the road, you should welcome the unexpected into your car, which will often break down, and  you will need HELP!    Juanjo and Belen are the two he meets at separate stops.  Juanjo has run away from home because his father insists he get his Beatles-length hair cut.  Belen has run away from a home for unwed mothers because she wants to decide what she's going to do with her body and her baby. 

            This  2013 film won the 2014 Goya Award for Best Film and Best Director, but it took another year for it to arrive here, where it was submitted into the category as Best Foreign Film but wasn't nominated.  Now I read it's being sponsored by Honorary Consulate of Spain in Seattle, Consulate General of Spain in San Francisco, Cultural Office of the Embassy of Spain, The Tourist Office of Spain, Dragados USA, Bellevue Club.

            If Andrew Crocker-Harris had taken a road trip to meet the Beatles, I'm not sure whether he would have had two passengers.  He might have failed even at getting someone to accept a ride--unless a Taplow happened along. 

            John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote this when they were young, but the words conjure up someone who's older, so it seems reasonable that the English teacher in Spain would identify. 

Help, I need somebody
Help, not just anybody
Help, you know I need someone
Help!

When I was younger, so much younger than today
I never needed anybody's help in any way
But now these days are gone I'm not so self-assured
Now I find I've changed my mind and opened up the doors

Help me if you can, I'm feeling down
And I do appreciate you being 'round
Help me get my feet back on the ground
Won't you please, please help me?

And now my life has changed in oh so many ways
My independence seems to vanish in the haze
But every now and then I feel so insecure
I know that I just need you like I've never done before

Songwriters
LENNON, JOHN / MCCARTNEY, PAUL

Published by
Lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

A Better Ending for Sparks' The Notebook

            I put in the Netflix DVD of The Notebook, which I'd put in my queue after hearing Dana and Karl mention it on recommended movies.  I watched it more or less while peeling vegetables and roasting eggplant.

          We're made to suspect that the Gena Rowland-looking woman with Alzheimer's (played by Gena Rowland) is Allie grown older, so the question is who is the man called "Duke." who's faithfully coming to read to her every day from The Notebook.  Is it Noah, the man who won her heart by harassing her on the ferris wheel at the opening of the movie and later wrote her 365 letters she never saw, or is it Lon, the man she became engaged to and also loved but who didn't make her feel the way Noah made her feel?  We go from seeing the Rowland-Duke (James Gardner) couple to returning to the past for the various stages of Allie's love life.  We also see another woman in the arms of Noah, who treats her with coolness and never tries to comfort her when she feels unloved.  This is Martha Shaw.  There's a scene in which Martha and Allie meet and then Martha says goodbye to Noah, who stands there showing no emotion and not even suggesting, "You'll meet a wonderful guy who will love you."  There's also a scene in which Allie tells her fiance Lon Hammond that she loves him, but she's still in love with Noah.  Lon still loves her and wants to marry her.  Then, as the music swells,  we see Allie going back to Lon and the house he built for her.

            So Duke says that he's Noah, and Gena Rowlands is Allie, but we know it's not true.  At first we suspect that Noah is Lon replacing the memory Allie lost of their marriage with the marriage Allie sacrificed when she married Lon instead of Noah.  Even though she didn't wind up with Noah in reality, she can wind up remembering that she did.

            That's not bad.

            But the truth is that Gena Rowland is Martha, and Duke is Lon.  They wound up together after being rejected by their first love interests, and his loyalty to her as she goes deeper into dementia is the proof of the enduring depth, height,bredth of their love, which would never have been had Allie married Lon and Noah married Martha.  

As for Allie and Noah, we suspect that they were disappointed, disillusioned, and divorced after five years of marriage.  

The News and Me

I spend at least an hour and usually two hours reading the newspaper every day, which gets my brain into the spin cycle.  Not spin as in PR work.  Spin as in going, getting fueled and getting in gear.  So...just as an example, let's take today's Chronicle.  (I spent only one hour on the news because I have the 600-page Un avion sans elle to finish, and even though it's a bit phony, it's engaging, and we may be discussing it --rather than our objections to it--on April 15.)

First there was what Leah Garchik (subject of last night's dream) related about Pope Francis and the homeless--an item provided by Frank Viviano:  Police are told to leave them in peace.  "Francis has ordered his almsgivers to distribute sleeping bags, and has installed showers for the homeless (not like those from St. Mary's sprinkler system) under the St. Peter's Square colonnade.  Hair-cuts are offered as well as lanundry services; clean clothes are distributed.  And on Wednesdays, when the pope has general audiences, many of the homoelss pass out prayer books."  I fear that some of our homeless would not want to help out.  I liked Caille Milner's column describing how much more St. Mary's is doing for the homeless than the rest of us are.  I really don't know WHAT should be done.  I know that Oxfam says the 1% will own more than half of the world by 2016, and that's reason to be plagued by doubt.  But that's doubt, not certainty or even clarity.

So then I read about a wonderful 93-year-old woman who "unites religions to do good," nominated as Visonary of the Year.  Among her many causes has been the homeless, and she's the co-founder of the winter  homeless shelter system.  She could shame me if I had a great sense of shame.  And I feel sad for my mother, who wanted so badly to do good, and died with Alzheimer's.  This makes me want to write about Mother rather than to do good myself!

I see a report on young female activists profiled by Sam Whiting, who once interviewed me and wrote me up as a fake indoor person.  (That was January 2006, and I could have been so much more honest if I'd left out the mess of papers to respond to encircling me.  Instead I'm in the corner of my study sitting demurely with my hands in my lap.)  Anyway, I look at these young women, two of whom are in dresses showing knees and all of whom are wearing very high heels, and I'm aware that nto all the world wears sensible shoes and avoids eating meat.  (The meat bit may seem like a disconnect, but it's connected to my world view.  I often feel that meat-eating is a barbaric rite of the past cultures only to be awakened to the fact that only 4% of the American population is vegetarian, and Americans define themselves at "meateaters."  Only in India, which has more vegetarians than the rest of the world combined,  is my worldview true.  There 40% of the world is Indian.)

Miss Manners is asked "How to talk to the dying" and I think of Pam Anesi, who wanted to read crime novels, and Andrea, who wanted to play Pictionary and just have a good time.  I also think of Jeanne, whose brother has stage 4 cancer,  and want to ask her how her brother's doing.  Dear Abby advisese a man who defends himself AS a man by saying that ihe'd served eitht years in the Army with four deployments between Iraq and Afghanistand and been twice wounded.  Does he have to be interested in sports too?  I wish a real man didn't have to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.  I wish "real men" didn't wage wars that are the ultimate crime according to the Geneva Accords.

I want to write to Javier about Pope Francis and "Why homeowners aren't cashing in" because after April he'll be selling the house in Millbrae.

I want to tell Jonathan about the Middlemarch opera Joshua Kosman has written up twice, focusig on Dorothea Brooke and the demise of her "utopian dreams for the re-engineering of society."  I don't like opera, but I'm tempted to listen, as I did to the 25 CDs of George Elliot's novel before a strand of it was made into an opera.

I'll send Linda Michael Bauer's review of Mourad Lahlou's new restaurant, named Mourad, because she once worked with him on some committee in Marin, when he had the Ksbah there or was abotu to begin it in 1996.  The review is one that oozes wishing the new restaurant was better and wanting to be both honest and supportive--very different from the critic in Chef--or the drama critic in Birdman.

Then there's "Ravages of mystery goo:  Resources target only oil, fuel spils" and the bill by two senataors to offer financial support to other gooiness.

Greece "Debt bail out revives claims from Nazi era" when, in 1943, thousands of Jews had to pay for their own transport to Poland's death camps.

Richard III has been given the burial he was denied 530 years ago after his bones were found in 2012 under a parking lot and long after he, the last Plantagenet King, was killed in battle by Hnery Turdo in 1485.  I think of our Shakespeare group.

The Prime minister who led Singapore ito the Modern Age, Lee Kuan Yew, made me wonder about the caning in that country and the law against chewing gum.  If that were Afghanistan, where we need to present a de-humanizing picture of the people, it would be attributed to the extremisim of  the Taliban.

And the sea all at Ocean Beach is being mended.

Explaining the Loss of the Civic Center to Those Who Care

(Because I can't access my San Francisco CCSF Connection blog!)

I'm privileged to have an ongoing correspondence with former City College students who have become friends over the years.  I call us the Anminiroti for Annie in France, Minako in Japan, Nicole in the USA, Rosa in Spain, and me, Tina, right here and trying to explain what's happening at City College, a school that meant and still means a lot to these  former students in other parts of the world. 

Back in the year 2000 we found out that Annie, who always dressed like a Parisian model, got her clothes not in Paris Boutiques but at  the Good Will Thrift Shop in San Francisco, so I related the report of the severed body parts found at Good Will South of Market, suggesting that this served as a metaphor for the plight of the Civic Center Campus.   This was  after Civic Center Teachers were told on a Friday afternoon, January 9, that they would not be teaching the following Monday because their school  was closing for earthquake retrofitting.  The students didn't learn about this until Monday, January 12, when they showed up for the classes scheduled there and  were met by teachers trying to explain the situation.  At first these students, who are learning English and need very clear explanations, were told that the classes would be held at 33 Gough,  where the administrative offices of City College are located.  That turned out not to be the case.  Instead the following month they were sent to the Chinatown/NorthBeach and Mission centers. 

The Anminiroti are more privileged than many, but four of the five are teachers  and very concerned about the widening gap between the haves and have-nots.  As Heather Knight reported last summer, citing a report from the Human Services Agency, San Francisco now compares to Rwanda in terms of the disparity in incomes.   The Tenderloin is an area NOT made up of the most privileged in that spectram. 

Now Steve Rubinstein is reporting on the missing prosthetic limbs!  The man whose prosthetic leg was found  turned out to be a victim of thieves pushing his  wheelchair to an area where they could rob him of everything he had of value.  They later tossed his prosthetic leg. 

Do you see what I mean by metaphoric?

(Actually, the first word that came to my mind was metamorphic, and that might work too.)

I'm not antagonistic towards administrators.  .  In fact, I've always felt sorry for them  and wouldn't take their job no matter how high the pay.  But I feel agony-bordering-on-antagonism over this closure of the Civic Center Campus and the way it was handled, so only by creating a new word can I express how I feel:  Very agonistic  

 Since the accreditation of City College was threatened by the ACCJC in 2012, I've attended a lot of rallies and board meetings, but one that stands out in my mind is the one in October 2012 that went on until 1:30 in the morning.  Faculty and staff had to wait until midnight to be heard, and then they were told they would have one minute each to speak. 

            http://fog.ccsf.edu/~mantonic/HTMLPractice/BOT_Excerpts_102512_3.html

Into the Woods

It was really thinking of my post-Oscar night party with the usual food theme that got me to the Century Plaza Cinema, and going to my seat on the second floor to screen 6 among dozens was a little like going Into the Woods, which is what I saw there--wanting to find a dish to serve from that film.  (I had already thought of and rejecting little girls and grandmothers.)  Of course, I thought of the bread she was taking, and that song came up quickly as did the song about the green things stolen from the witch's garden.

Greens Green and Nothing but green! Parsley, Peppers, Cabbages, and Celery. Asparagus and Watercress and Fiddlefern and
Lettuce

I'm even a vegetarian with aspirations towards being vegan, so I had my dish from Into the Woods.  But I stayed because I love musicals and because I thought it was all enchanting.  I'd gone straight from planning a reunion in Florida, getting my car washed, going to Andronico's and dropping perishables off at home to the movie, and I was surprised that I was the third person in Theatre 6!  After the movie, as the mother-daughter team were leaving and saying "I didn't know it was a musical.  There were too many songs," one person joined us--the janitor, and I thought of The Flick!

I'd like to write more, but I'm going to get ready first to pick up Javier and maybe make it over to Bill and Tom's from there.  I'd initially turned down his invitation for a pre-dinner tea, but his latest message coaxed me into it, and this will give us a chance to see his photos.