As a counselor for College Match LA, I joined a group of current students in college and alumni at Perch LA, a restaurant in downtown with a rooftop venue. The views there are fantastic, the finger food yummy, and seeing some of my students delightful–they are at Oxy and loving it. Here are a few photos.
The view after dark.
Ice skating.
Tis the season to…
Feel joy when the morning
sun caresses your face;
Laugh when you hear
children playing in the
street;
Give thanks for being alive,
having friends and family;
Walk down your street or
take a hike, touch a flower,
a tree and appreciate nature’s
simple bounties;
Remember the time your
loved one took your face
in gentle hands and smiled;
Give the gift of kindness,
peace, and compassion to everyone,
strangers, friends, family,
the unknown;
Promise yourself to live your
best self in the year to come,
to never forget that life
is a gift.
Here is a book that I never managed to read when I was reading all those other classics. Finally, I did it and I am so glad. What an amazing story. I know it takes place in another era with different language and customs and so on, but it is well worth the read. The plot is so ingenious, the story a lesson in how not to live, how leading a double life destroys not only the person leading it but so many others and for what? Does selling one’s soul for any reason pay off? Rarely, if ever.
Now that I am writing this, I keep thinking of several present day people who were living wealthy and successful in “polite” society but now have been caught with their depravity in full view for the world to see.
vibrant fall colors
bring joy
in a troubled world
Every week I go to Mendez High School in Boyle Hts., CA. Between meetings with my students, I take a walk in one of my favorite neighborhoods. Frequently when a person mentions low income housing, a negative image comes to their minds. Wrong. The neighborhood where I walk is beautiful, lovely places full of flowers. In one area the buildings are painted in joyous colors that make me smile every time I walk there. Here are photos for you to see for yourself.
Downtown LA in the background.
bountiful autumn
pomegranates
scarlet lusciousness
A striking, foreign, young couple appear one evening in the Jeema of Marrakesh. The woman’s incredible beauty fascinates the observers. Suddenly, they disappear. Hassan, a traditional storyteller, invites those who observed the couple to tell what they saw and knew on that night as he presents his own stories to the crowd at the Jeema. His brother, Mustafa, has confessed to the crime of their disappearance, telling everyone he loved the woman whom he hardly knew. He is imprisoned for their disappearance. However, nearly everyone acknowledges that he had nothing to do with it. This novel presents all the different views of the couple, their disappearance, and what it means. Often observer stories contradict each other, raising the questions of what is truth, whose truth is factual, how can we know what is true and how do we define love. Hassan is determined in his quest which takes the reader through all these stories, Hassan and Mustafa’s childhood, the mysteries of the Sahara, and much more.
It’s 1932.
Movie roles promised to 22 Black Americans.
“Black and White” in the
Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic.
Treated like royalty, wined, dined, at
their own expense.
Hughes–ridiculous script. All went
home except Hughes. He stayed,
traveled, saw cotton grown from Aral
Sea water–now no water, desolate
desert.
In Tashkent, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Tartars
honored him, flowers, fruit.
No English.
He met a Red Army Captain from
high Pamir Mountains. Hughes
described him, Black with Oriental eyes.
Hughes called him Yeah Man.
He called Hughes Yang Zoon.
Weeks together never understanding
each other’s words.
Hughes’ poetry book
“The Weary Blues” first
American book translated to
Uzbek. Original English version
lost. He describes this new place:
“Look: here
Is a country
Where everyone shines.”
Note: You can find a version of this book translated into English from Uzbek by Muhabbat Bakeava and Kevin Young.
As a summer person, I’m less excited than others I know to see it end. This abecedarian poem allowed me to experiment with words without searching for profound meanings, allowed me to play.
Autumn
brings
chills
dreary
evenings
fog.
Gone
heat
intense
joy.
Kindness
lingers while I
meander
near
oceans
playing
quickly,
running in
sunshine.
Tomorrow
under a
vanishing
wind in a
xeroscape
yard, I will
Zoom my next meeting.
This book contains 20 fantastical and dystopian short stories. I found them fascinating with topics ranging from selkies to ogres to ghouls to jinns to witches (in this case positive ones). The settings range from US to Africa to a settlement in outer space (the story “Fallow”). Divided into two sections, Tender Bodies, Tender Landscapes, these stories address human frailty, anger, greed, extreme religions and how humans treat each other (both good and bad) and what might occur in the future if people do not behave better. “Fallow” is a sort of handmaid’s tale where instead of being on Earth–which has been basically destroyed–a group of extreme religious folks have made a place for themselves on another planet after escaping Earth. If anyone from Earth accidentally shows up, they are in big trouble unless they become just like the people already there. Otherwise, they do not kill them–that is wrong–but just sort of let them slowly die. These stories, both brutal and lovely, display an incredible imagination.
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