Giving thanks in Claremont

    This was my column in the November 15 Claremont Courier. Need I say more?

A FEAST OF LIVES UP ON THE STAGE

   When I Nyoman Wenten put on the mask, the world changed.
   Yes, his face had disappeared, replaced by another face, one with a garish, lascivious, all but evil smile. But he wasn’t just dressing up. He wasn’t just putting on a costume, putting on a mask. When he put the mask on, he was suddenly, for a few minutes, a garish, lascivious man, a charming snake of a character, glad-handing those around him.
   Mr. Wenten had the audience mesmerized, seized with laughter and amazement. Indeed, the world had changed, and we were in a place where we were in the throes of this sly stranger, so easily seduced by him. All this was done with a mask - a point made clear with this being the last of a series of masks that Mr. Wenten donned, creating not only different but varying degrees of effects.
   This was a stunning highlight in an evening of highlights late last month as Mr. Wenten, who leads the Pomona College gamelan dance program, joined Leonard Pronko and Thomas Leabhart, two other professors in Pomona College’s Department of Theatre and Dance, in a panel discussion on “Movement in Theater: Tradition and Innovation.” Moderated by Laurie Cameron, who directs the college’s Dance Program, the presentation in the college’s intimate Rose Hills Theater was most appropriate in this season of harvest. With Mr. Wenten, Leabhart and Pronko, all of whom have earned international acclaim, not only speaking about but also demonstrating their craft, it was a cornucopia of the extraordinary theatrical talent and wisdom that Pomona College and Claremont is privileged to enjoy.
   That Mr. Wenten, a native of Bali, came from a long line of great artists, including a grandfather who was a master puppeteer who he first studied with, and is one of the island’s most accomplished dancers and musicians is no surprise. There is a long list of productions, collaborations and performances that he has been involved in all over the world, but his great poise and discipline, his rich talent, was evident in the way he sat and smiled, in the way he walked and moved his arms, even before he took up any mask.
   Even though Thomas Leabhart does not come from a long line of renowned artists, he is certainly a master in his field, a physical movement discipline called Corporeal mime. As he explained and demonstrated, often with the tiniest of movements, the idea is not to imitate, as in pantomime, but to capture a spirit or essence, even an idea, in movement.
   I have long admired this in his work at Pomona College, where Mr. Leabhart has taught since 1982. While many of the plays he has directed here don’t feature what I think of as mime, there is a noticeable sensitivity, a delicate quality, yes, an elegance. I still think of a production of Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind that he directed years ago, emphasizing compassion in what could be a melodramatic domestic violence drama with off-kilter characters.
   Mr. Leabhart got much of his training in France, where he still teaches every summer and every January. He mentioned that while Hollywood is important and valuable, it is vital to do art for more than “the filthy lucre,” and it is clear that he is dedicated to his craft. He can be found every afternoon at 4:15 teaching Corporeal Mime.
   And then there was Leonard Pronko, who has been teaching at Pomona College since 1957 (“Do the math,” as Ms. Cameron said in introducing him). I have always known Mr. Pronko as a legend in Claremont, putting on Kabuki plays with the students and being one of the few - or only? - Americans to be trained in the tradition-steeped Kabuki theater in Japan. What I didn’t know is that he didn’t get interested in theater until several years after he began teaching at Pomona, having gotten his B.A, M.A and Ph.D in French and Spanish language and literature and starting off at the college as an instructor in French, occasionally teaching Spanish and Italian. It wasn’t until after he taught courses on French theater, occasionally directed plays and taught drama courses in the theater department and spent a sabbatical mostly in Asia and subsequently studied kabuki at the National Theater of Japan that he found his home in the theater department.
   Although, as he noted repeatedly, he is not as agile as in years past, Mr. Pronko demonstrated vividly how, in kabuki, small movements and gestures can convey volumes. He also showed how a prop like a fan can be anything from a sword to a vessel for drinking tea.
   This discipline and theatricality has been seen in not only the kabuki plays in English but also the many, many other plays he has directed here when not involved in other projects in numerous countries. Over the years, I have enjoyed seeing the kabuki works and how they have influenced his other period productions of works by the likes of Ibsen, Schiller, Wilde and Molliere, and it has been particularly pleasant to see these period pieces (perhaps influenced by a colleague?) not only done with poise but getting more and more refined and naturalistic.
   Seeing these fine men of the theater, each wearing a shirt that nicely reflected their distinct craft, talk about and share their art was a real treat. It was a delectable taste and a sweet reminder of the wisdom and talent that the colleges and Claremont are blessed to have in their midst.

Fields of violence

   “Positive motivation is ‘Get the...up! You’re dragging, man! Pick it the...up! Suck it up!’ Because you feel like you know the guy. You feel like it’s your brother, and you’ve got to make that connection so that you can come together.”
   To retired NFL two-time All-Pro tackle Kyle Turley quoted in a recent Los Angeles Times article by Sam farmer, telling your brother - your little brother, “just like I would to my little brother in a pickup basketball game” - to “suck it up” and to “get the...up” is not only not wrong. It is expected.
   At least in the National Football League. As Turley explained, when Miami Dolphins guard Richie Incognito - I thought this was a joke at first! - left messages laced with racial slurs and profanities on his African-American teammate Jonathan Martin’s phone, Incognito wasn’t being a bigoted bully. Apparently reflecting what many NFL players think, Turley posits that there was nothing wrong with this behavior and also that it is possible that Incognito was carrying out orders from his coaches to “toughen up” Martin.
   Turley says it flat-out. “Positive motivation in the NFL could in the real world be considered bullying.” He goes further, saying, “It’s aboard for the real world to accept this [behavior], and nobody should, but this is not the real world. This is football.”
   Perhaps this isn’t surprising or even disturbing. Lately, we have been hearing a whole lot about the violence in playing the game and how many players are left with physical and mental disabilities, sometimes quite severe. A lawsuit resulting in the NFL pledging millions of dollars for disabled retired players, with many questions as to if the amount is enough, was big news, and there was lots of buzz about the PBS Frontline report called “League of Denial.”
   A few days after the Turley article appeared, Farmer had a story about a former NFL player whose eye was severely damaged in an initiation ritual. As the player described it, the rookie players had to run down a hallway lined with older players who hit and kicked the passing rookies in every way and as much as they could. This player had almost made it through the gauntlet when he was hit in the eye with a sock filled with coins.
   This was called an accident, but what is definitely disturbing is that this roughness and bullying is seen not only as not wrong and as expected but as an important way of bonding. As Turley put it, “You feel like it’s your brother, and you’ve got to make that connection so that you can come together.”
   Even more disturbing, as Bill Dwyre pointed out in a column accompanying the Turley article, people decry the bullying and the injuring that goes on in the NFL but continue to contribute to millions and millions of dollars going to the league (broadcast deals, tickets, merchandise, etc.). Most chilling, though, is this strange way of bonding and where it leads. As Dwyre writes, referring to a reader commenting on Jonathan Martin who left the team, “‘The other guy’s a wimp,’ says Fred from Fresno. ‘Too gutless to fight back. I sure wouldn’t want to go to war with him.”
   So that’s what all this tough playing and rough bonding, which you know happens not only in the NFL, is all about? Being able to go to war?
   Meanwhile, Incognito has filed a grievance over his suspension. And I love what Dwyre had to say to the reader: “Whatever, Fred. As soon as you get off the radio, go outside and tear some wings off a butterfly. You’ll feel better.”
   Seriously, though, it’s terrible enough that the butterfly is getting hurt. If only that was all that’s being damaged.

Watts up

   Here is a column I recently wrote for the Claremont Courier.

LOOK AROUND - THERE ARE TOWERS OF INSPIRATION

   I had no idea.
   It was like when I see an altar set up for the Day of the Dead. With it being the season of Halloween and El Dia de los Muertos, I thought of how, in the face of death, the lives of many, so many I didn’t know but so precious, are celebrated. I see and get to know these beloved lives in bright colors, new once again in the merry dance of skeletons, against the black.
   It was like when I go up to Mt. Baldy Village and am surprised to see a whole other world there. I don’t go for months and months, forgetting that it’s there (as if I don’t see it day after day), and then I’m amazed once again to see this nice little get-away less than half an hour away. Even if this world a short drive off isn’t a wintry white one, it’s always different.
   It was like when, as happened recently, I learned that a friend, a friend who lost his partner just a few months earlier, has lung cancer. It was a shock, a rude, abrupt shock, coming after his loss and all the more because he wasn’t a smoker. I was also reminded, though, of the important, valuable role he has played in my life and also of both the strength and fragility of our lives.
   But this was different. This was altogether different and altogether unique. I really did have no idea.
   Even if I did have some idea when I ventured out towards Los Angeles with a friend on a recent warm Saturday when there was a lull in Claremont. I wanted to go to a few places where I’ve been wanting to go for years, and one of these places was the Watts Towers. I have always heard that the Watts Towers were quite remarkable, and I had seen plenty of photographs and films, but, as I kept exclaiming to my friend, “I had no idea!”
   This was while we were on a guided tour - a tour that we happened to arrived just in time for and which made a real difference (well worth the $8 adult fee). Although one can get remarkably close to the towers without going into the property and seeing them that way is impressive,  it is the details and seeing them up close and personal that make this piece of art so very remarkable.
   It is a work of art, an outstanding example of what is called “folk art.” The Watts Towers were literally a backyard project, done right behind a small house by an Italian immigrant, Simon Rodia, who was a tile maker and construction worker by trade, a bit of a roustabout and hard-headed by nature and had no art training. The project, which Rodia had no help on - he didn’t want any - took about 30 years, ending around 1955.
   Rodia, who was also called Sam and several other names and whose first wife left him because of his drinking, may have known zero about art, but he definitely had vision, not to mention drive. I remarked to my friend that he must have been O.C.D and on acid.
   On the narrow, triangular plot, Rodia created something like a ship featuring the famed tall mast-like spires and with everything covered in cement embedded with all sorts of broken colored glass and china. As Rodia told people, this was all inspired by the gothic cathedrals, with their tall, narrow spires, and other religious art and architecture that he saw when growing up in Italy.
   Again, this was based on what he saw, not on any training in art, and, again, while seeing the towers from outside the property makes quite an impression, it is the work on the walls and smaller structures inside that is really stunning. For example, one wall features the bottoms of green 7-Up and blue Milk of Magnesia bottles - remember them? - creating an eye-popping effect. And, everywhere, there are pieces of china, from hundreds of colored plates and blue-and-white Wedgewood sets. There are pieces of tea cups and mugs with handles left on, and even the undersides of structures are covered with colored bits of all kinds.
   As I said, it is stunning and eye-popping, mind-boggling, and clearly the work of someone with unique vision and drive. One wall is embedded with shoes belonging to Rodia and his second wife, who left him because of him devoting so much time to his backyard project.
   The small house is gone - burned down around one Fourth of July, leaving behind its foundation and fireplace -  but there’s still more to this incredible story. When Rodia got tired of the project, he literally gave the property to a neighbor and moved north to Martinez. A bit later, the city of Watts wanted to raze the property, but a bunch of people raised all sorts of protests, and the city promised to leave the towers up if they survived a stress test. During the test, the truck that was chained to the towers - not the towers - fell over.
   So the towers, which Rodia walked away from after working on them for thirty years, are still there, still standing (though now with a few cables required by Cal OSHA), and I am amazed that I had not been there - yes, I really did have no idea! - and that there weren’t dozens of people there (only one other guy was one the tour, although it was awesome having the place to ourselves!). But that’s the other thing that makes the Watts Towers so very remarkable - that they’re in the middle of a neglected and drab, blighted area and right there, right on the sidewalk, with people living just across the narrow street. While I was there, a neighbor was playing loud ranchero music.
   As much as there is going on here in Claremont, with all sorts of creative activities of note, Simon Rodia and the Watts Towers are a striking reminder, in a place far and not so far off, of the power of vision and passion. They stick up, poke out, with the unlikeliest of bright colors when life is a bit too boring, a bit too expected, a bit too tiring.
   The towers have certainly given Watts, which has seen more than its share of beleaguerment, a poke. Next door is an arts center inspired by them, where the tour begins and end and where there is the buzz of community and creativity. When my friend and I were looking around the gallery, there was a piano lesson going on at the center of the room.

Something's nuts

   The judge wondered “whether any penalty is appropriate when somebody is nuts.”
   Well, at least the judge - U.S District Judge Lawrence Karlton - and California prison officials are talking about the treatment of the mentally ill in prison. It is high time this population, consisting of a mind-boggling 1 in 3 state prisoners (I could write an entire post on this!, is being discussed. And it is too bad that the reason it is being discussed is that there are videos showing mentally ill California prisoners being pepper sprayed, often as they are naked and screening and sometimes in episodes that last as long as half an hour.
   But, at least it is, according to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, it is being talked about.
   Then again, doesn’t the fact that this is an issue to be discussed, that there is a staggering number of mentally ill prison inmates and confusion over how to deal with them, that prison guards feel it is not only okay but appropriate to pepper spray them, often repeatedly over a while and at least sometimes with them naked, have something to do with a federal judge in open court referring to the mentally ill as “nuts?”
   Even if the judge is trying to make the situation better, the message he gives - the same message all of society gives - is that the mentally ill are, to say the least, strange and only worthy of being dealt with if not dismissed. But pepper spraying them probably isn’t p.c.
   It doesn’t help at all, although there are now new rules regarding the use of pepper spray (including allowing “sufficient time” between uses to let the chemical take effect) and dealing with the mentally ill (including using alternative tactics when pepper spray isn’t working) in California prisons, that the prison’s head psychologist testified that psychotic prisoners have no memory of being pepper sprayed and “have a higher than average threshold for pain and noxious stimuli.”
   When people - a judge, much less a psychologist - who are supposed to aid the mentally ill see the mentally ill as “nuts” who “have a higher than average threshold for pain,” something is definitely crazy and wrong. Or - to put it another way - nuts.

The brink of hate

   Man! There are people who really hate President Obama. Really, really, REALLY hate him.
   They hats him so much that they shut down the federal government for more than two weeks, making life hard for millions  employed by the government and who assist them (restaurants near offices, hotels outside national parks, etc.) and inconvenient for countless others. They hate him so much that they very nearly didn’t allow the federal debt ceiling to be raised on time, which would have caused widespread panic in the U.S (people not getting their Social Security checks, etc.) and probably a global economic meltdown. They hate him so much that, in doing both of these things, they were willing to hurt America’s reputation in the eyes of the world.
   Evidently, insisting over and over and in the face of facts that Obama isn’t an U.S citizen and therefore not eligible to be president isn’t enough. If they can’t destroy Obama, then, damn it, they will destroy America. That’s how much they hate him.
   Sure, these people - conservative tea party types like Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican senator behind the latest maneuvering - don’t hate just Obama. At least at first, they were standing in the way of passing the annual federal budget and raising the debt ceiling, because they wanted to block or delay the new healthcare insurance law. Never mind that the law was passed by Congress and enacted by Obama several years ago, validated by the Supreme Court and approved by voters re-electing Obama and that it will make life easier for millions of people (at least once the not unusual glitches are worked out). They call Obamacare socialistic and communistic (as if that’s bad), but it’s not making life easier that’s the problem, especially since many people decrying the new law are poor and really could use it. What’s really going on is that they can’t stand people - especially others - getting something for nothing. To them, America means the freedom to work hard and to do one’s best in a hard life. (The only reason they don’t gripe about the disabled getting help - although they try to cut that back - is that would be just too unseemly.)
   Here’s where these folks’ hatred of Obama comes in. They can’t stand it that a black man got into the White House - and the fact that he did it not only once but twice drives them even crazier. It doesn’t matter whether or not Obama got ahead with affirmative action and was on welfare. He looks like someone who did. He looks like someone who got something for nothing. And the final kick in the pants is that Obama will get credit for a program that will give a lot of people, a lot of others, something for nothing and that very likely will end up being very good and popular.
   They rather take down America with them than to let that happen.

Not understood

   “I don’t understand him.”
   You don’t say. Why do you think I was having my attendant call?
   I was having my attendant call Social Security, because I had discovered a couple weeks ago that I had lost my Medicare card. I had tried going online to order a new card, but, because I get Medicare under my dad’s Social Security number as an “adult disabled child,” the website kept tripping up, saying I was “ineligible” or “don’t match.” So much for things being easier and faster online (and this wasn’t the first time I’ve had trouble with being under my dad’s number).
   I figured the representative, when we got through after about 20 minutes, would want to speak to me and have me answer a question or two to verify who I am. This is what usually happens, and, usually, upon hearing me, the representative gets what’s going on and speaks to my attendant conducting my business.
   But not this woman. She kept insisting that I say the Social Security number to her, and when I did, she kept telling my attendant, “I don’t understand him.”
   My attendant tried to explain the situation, but the woman kept saying she couldn’t talk to my attendant, because she couldn’t understand me and verify who I was. When my attendant asked to speak to the manager, the woman said it wouldn’t make any difference, because “it is the rules.” She suggested we go to the office.
   This is exactly what I didn’t want to do - go down to Pomona and take a number and sit and wait for it to be called. I felt defeated, hurt, angry - like I was kicked to the back of the bus, if not under the bus, because of my speech.
   The next day at the Social Security office, the woman who I saw ordered another Medicare card for me and also gave me instructions for creating an online account, so I won’t have to deal with the confusion over receiving benefits under my dad’s number and with having to call. I’ll see how this works.
   Meanwhile, I was out last week riding along in my wheelchair when a woman drove up beside me and asked if I was okay. I said yeah. She then asked me, “Do you know where you’re going?” I said yeah, but I wanted to ask, “And you?” And, “And do you have a life?”
   At least she wasn’t like the woman who, some years ago, followed me in her car for blocks as I sped along in my wheelchair, repeatedly asking me if I was alright, where I was from and if I knew where I was going. She gave up when another man riding along the street in a wheelchair appeared.

Good pratice

   One of the great things about living in Claremont, with all of its colleges, is that I get to always be a student. And I don’t have to worry about papers, exams and grades! Every year, once school starts in late August or early September, there is a terrific line-up of free lectures, not to mention performances, often more than one on a single evening (they also occur during the day, but I’m less likely to attend these). Unlike with the students, I don’t graduate and leave, and I get to enjoy these lectures, which are often by noted, if not famous, scholars, officials, authors, dignitaries, etc.
   If this makes me a slacker, then I’m proud to be one. And I’m a damn lucky one!
   These lectures are usually pretty good - I have heard that they get crazy amounts of money, so I guess they should be pretty good - and some are downright moving and inspiring, making me really feel like a student. On a recent Thursday night, I hit the jackpot and got a double whammy, going to hear two people I had not heard of.
   I started off by going to the Marian Miner Cook Atheneum at Claremont McKenna College, where there is dinner and a talk on most weeknights during the semester (I just go for the talks, although I understand the food, which isn’t free, is superb) and where Eric Liu kicked off the Fall semester speaking to the Freshman class. Liu, who was a consultant to the Clinton administration and writes and speaks on democracy and citizenship, spoke eloquently and fervently on being an active participant, whether in college or in society. (He noted that the C.M.C freshmen class is in an unique position, starting off with a new college president and able to “set a new tone” at the school.)
   Liu pointed out that there are three components, all equally important, to being an active participant, not only in society but in personal relationships. One is power and understanding how it is used. One is character - being honest and consistent. And the other is practice. As with writing, it is important to practice, practice, practice interacting with people and society, open to learning more, including from mistakes.
   I left a bit early, during the Q and A session, to head over to Pomona College where, in the first of a year-long series of lectures called “The Heart of Liberal Arts” on liberal arts colleges which I’m very excited about, Andrew Delbanco spoke on “What Is College For?” I was surprised to find the theater packed, but I guess I shouldn’t have been, for it turns out Delbanco, who first confessed to being like Woody Allen and disoriented anywhere west of the Brooklyn Bridge, is a well-known literary and cultural critic who teaches humanities and directs American Studies at Columbia University.
   After pointing out that colleges and universities and especially the humanities are “in trouble,” with institutions of higher education being seen these days as for the elite and spoiled, what with luxurious amenities and high cost and debt, etc., and with emphasis now on science, technology, engineering and math, Delbanco asked why we should be concerned, why we should be alarmed, about this.
   He acknowledged being biased and a romantic when it comes to college, noting that Fall is a poignant time of year for professors with the leaves falling and the weather getting cold (although maybe not here, he added half in jest) a reminder that they’re getting older as the students aren’t, but he went on to cite all kinds of references from Greek philosophy to Herman Melville’s Moby Dick supporting the case that higher learning makes one a better person, better able to relate to others. Delbanco posited that, more so than in medieval times when people went to college to learn about a specific thing, modern colleges and universities, particularly the liberal arts, are about opening the mind and dialoguing, with the ideal classroom being where one can learn about oneself and others.
   I couldn’t help but hear echoes of what I had heard Eric Liu say earlier in the evening about practicing relating with others and with society. Indeed, Delbanco, who noted that he is an Italian Jew, stressed that this is why diversity and affirmative action is important at colleges and that he is pleased that his university and Pomona College have generous financial aid and grants.
   I also couldn’t help going home that evening happy about what is happening in Claremont at the colleges and being able to see it happen.