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In Los Angeles, the wilderness is as close as a national forest campground. They're usually full this time of year, but we were lucky enough to get a space, a nice level space, at Millard Canyon.
Little salamanders swarming around in the sand beside the stream bed. Later, walking up the road above the stream, we saw a salamander far from its home. Joe wanted to put it back, but I said no, it was part of the salamander life cycle to be eaten by birds, in the Hobbesian state of nature where life is nasty, brutish, and short. "Ha ha, very funny," said Joe.
When we were driving home we saw a huge rat running full tilt across the Harbor Freeway from the north side where the ill-fated Belmont High chool construction project is located, toward the south side where the high-rise office buildings, art museums and concert halls can be found. Wise rat.
Over the weekend we visited a new restaurant specializing in those robust French pancakes called crepes. It was started by the parents of one of my son's fifth grade classmates, and has been open for just a week. We all had the brie and bacon crepe, enjoying it tremendously.
In a sign of the times, we enjoyed a movie on Friday about an awkward 15-year-old who, although rendered speechless when required to talk with girls, had nonetheless been recruited as a CIA spy.
Chow Yun (Yun Fat?) looks like he's put on a few pounds since he appeared in John Woo's action classic "Hard Boiled", but since his monkly powers give him the ability to behave as if gravity occasionally does not exist at all, it hardly matters, does it? He'll still be able to protect the sacred scroll from the evil enemies who want to seize it and (???) do whatever bad thing they must do. In order to do his, he will journey to one of the strangest places the world has ever known, at least to him.
Of course I'm talking about New York City.
I haven't seen it, I can't review it, I can't recommend it, but after watching the trailer (which this being the internet you can also view right now), there is no way I would miss Bulletproof Monk.
On Saturday night, March 15, 2003, fourteen brothers in the Occidental College chapter of the Alpha Tao Omega fraternity (class of 1949) put on their coats and ties and returned to campus for what the college president described as a quaint ceremony. One of their ukelele-playing college chums, Guy Carawan, was going to give a guitar recital in the college chapel. Guy had majored in math before getting a Masters in Sociology from UCLA, but he got involved in folk singing and hadn't been back to campus since 1949.
They played folk and protest songs from the days of the civil rights movement, and in keeping with the spirit of the occasion, most everyone sang along, too. These songs, based on long-term friendship and solidarity, are naturally moving. On the eve of a confused and political war, we need more of this kind of stuff. A lot more.
Now as it turned out, Zilphia Horton, the cultural director at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, where Guy and Candie now live, used to sing an old song which had been sung by members of the Negro Food and Tobacco Union when they were on strike. She used to sing it a capella, meditatively and out in the open. Guy Carawan thought he could improve it by adding a new chord progression and what he called a new pulse. So, back in 1959 or 1960, he gave it a try.
Just before the intermission Guy Carawan played this song, which everyone loved, at least judging from the standing ovation. Then, after the intermission Occidental College president Ted Mitchell gave a short speech and awarded Guy Carawan the honorary degree of Doctor of Musical Arts. That's what Ted usually does when an alumnus lays down some really killer riffs. There was another standing ovation as Guy donned his pink sash. After saying thanks, he doffed the sash and donned his guitar once more. Then, after some more songs, we all went and had fruit and cookies in the lower level of the chapel.
And that is the story of the night Guy Carawan got an honorary doctorate for 'We Shall Overcome', an influential and by now historic song which has been sung by hundreds of millions of people.