My good pal, Marc Cooper, has had the excellent idea of weaving the war stories of his younger years as a reporter into a chapter by chapter series of blog posts.

The site where these stories live is called, logically enough, Reporter War Stories.

And the tales contained make for intriguing reading.

The first is a tale of Chile in 1971: The Day Fidel Arrived. But you should begin here at the prologue.

I particularly like the next entry Chile 1973 My .22 And Me Parts I & II It opens like this:

Lest you think ill of me, I had some legit reasons to carry. After all I worked for a Socialist president at a time of great social unrest. And there were literally armed fascist gangs running in the streets. And being a good citizen and all, I had legally registered the gun with the Ministry of Defense as required. I did not, however, have a permit to carry. And I can’t imagine I would have ever used the gun except to maybe throw it at somebody.

On a night in late May, the evening before Allende was to deliver that year’s equivalent of the State of the Union speech, the fascists had blown up a major oil pipeline. Allende declared a state of emergency, putting more militarized carabinero police and some army units out on the street.

It really wasn’t that big of a deal. I had finished translating an advance copy of the speech that afternoon and I spent the evening with friends at a very good French restaurant called La Cascade. On the way home, around midnight, our taxi driver spotted a police roadblock and check point. No sweat he said. No sweat, as ling as nobody in the car had a gun.

My girlfriend at that time told me not be stupid and give her the gun. She would put it in her panty stockings crotch and the polite Chilean cops would never check there.

I did my on-the-spot risk assessment and decided against the crotch option. I figured there was little chance the police would pat down a car full of happy gringos. And if they did, it would be easier to talk my way out of it all rather than tick them off by hiding it on a girl.

That didn’t work out quite so well.

Read the rest.

HBO has a new movie for television debuting this weekend. It is a bio pic of sorts based on the life and memoirs of writer/biologist Temple Grandin.

If you’re not familiar with Grandin, she is an autistic woman who is considered to be one of the nation’s top animal biologists. She credits her exceptional facility for understanding animals’ fears and needs and actions to the perceptual lens her own autistic condition has—for better and for worse— uniquely provided.

Her 2004 book, Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior, was easily my favorite book I read that year.

Terry Gross has interviewed Grandin three different times on Fresh Air (once for the release of each one of Grandin’s books). This past Friday, Fresh Air played a compilation of the interviews to coincide with the launching of the HBO movie.

The movie, which would have been all to simple to wreck, is thankfully reported to be excellent. Mary McNamera at the LA Times said it was:

Utterly and gorgeously unsentimental, “Temple Grandin,” arriving Saturday, clomps across the screen with all the wild-eyed grace of its main character, chronicling the life of a woman who not only overcame a host of physical, mental and social obstacles but actually used her autism to create a career for herself in animal husbandry.

The film stars, of all people, Claire Danes, who in the clips that I have heard, is stunningly good.. The Huffington Post says of Danes:

Finally, she has a found a role where she is beyond great, she is stupendous. Claire Danes is revelatory as Temple Grandin animal behaviorist, best-selling author, autistic and expert in autism. This is a fascinating movie and I learned so much about this woman and about autism. Temple did not speak until she was four and if not for her mother would have probably ended up spending her life in an institution. What a loss that would have been.

I’ve got it TiVOed and plan to watch it tonight.. (It is playing off and on during much of the week.)

But, whether or not you watch the movie, at the very least, if you don’t know about Temple Grandin, do yourself a favor listen to the interview mash-up. Her unique and entirely unsentimental ability to feel into an animal’s perspective tells us a great deal about our fellow creatures and also, frankly, about ourselves.

UPDATE:

I saw the film late last night, and it’s so, so incredibly good. Claire Danes is spectacular. She utterly vanishes into being Grandin.

Please, just see it. You’ll thank me. If you don’t have HBO, wait until it’s on DVD and go for it then. But if you miss it, you’ll be missing out. So don’t.

I was reading Lit, Mary Karr’s alcohol-soaked but sequin-bright third memoir, when I received this second essay from Venice High School senior Nina Montoya. Nina, if you’ll remember, is one of English teacher Dennis Danziger’s students and part of a PEN-in-the Classroom workshop run by author Amy Friedman., who is also Danziger’s wife.

Due to her age, Nina is pretty new to this matter of writing. But as you can see from the earlier essay posted here (which you should read along with this one, if you haven’t), she has a knack for the work, however nascent. I bring up Mary Karr because, although when The Liars club, the memoir that forever put Karr on the literary map, was published in 1995, Karr was 40 and had behind her one marriage, the birth of her son, an MFA with a famous writer as mentor, and a whole lot of therapeutic hours logged talking about her spirit-gouging and deeply abusive childhood, there is thread of similarity linking Karr’s books and Nina’s newly-minted efforts.

By contrast, Nina has not yet graduated high school. Yet she has a budding writer’s voice and the willingness to wrestle with the hard stuff—both of which merit nurturing.

Scattered across Los Angeles, there are other talented kids like Nina who also have important stories to tell, and voices that merit nurture. With any luck, some of those LA stories—along with more of Nina’s—will find their way to WitnessLA.

Here’s Nina:

Inexplicable Love

by Nina Montoya

I believe that the love you have for your family is incredibly strong. Your family member can do something so horrible that it makes you want to hate them and never speak to them again, but in the end you will still love them, still end up contacting them in some way. Even if you claim to not love that person or state that you disown them. Deep down you know in your heart as much as you want to deny it, it’s there, that unexplainable love.

In the past I have been physically and mentally abused by my father. He has told me many times that I am stupid, that I should just give up, quit. When I would speak of college he told me that I shouldn’t bother, that they don’t care if you are smart or stupid, the only reason why they want you is to take your money. He has threatened me, put me in many unnecessary dangers, even threatened my friends as well. Inexplicably, I still love him. I always will love him, for he is my father and though he makes not the best decisions, I know in the end he loves me too. That he is proud of me, I have heard him brag to his friends. I just wish that I could hear the compliments myself, that he would tell me to my face that he is proud.
Even my mother who abandoned me I love her. She left me when I was merely a toddler. She even attempted to do drugs while she was pregnant with me, but I still love her. Though I wish not to speak to her, when she does contact me I tolerate it. This is because as much as I hate her, my love is stronger. Of all the times I have yelled and screamed that I never want anything to do with her, it is false. I do wish to be around her, I do wish to show my love towards her, but she has lost the opportunity. As much as I wish for this communication it cannot happen, she has chosen the needle over her own children, so for that she will not be able to experience that love.
As much as there is something wrong with each of my parents I still love them, no matter how much pain each of them has put me through, I do. That’s the thing, a love like the one you have for your family is not like any other love. I believe that this familial love is almost indestructible, can never disintegrate. There have been so many times I have felt that deep fiery anger of hate toward both of my parents but, the love that I have for each of them is stronger, especially for my father. He raised my sister and me and that is something I will always be thankful for. I have seen him break down, cry even and he has seen the same from me. In those times of need we are always there for each other, in the end we will always have one another.

NOTE: More news stories a bit later this morning, so check back.

Nina Montoya is a student in writer/teacher Dennis Danziger’s English class at Venice High School.

She is also part of PEN in the Classroom, a program that sends professional writers into their classrooms for creative writing residencies. In Danziger’s class the kids worked on personal essays, and the professional writer also happened to be Danzinger’s wife, Amy Friedman.

Ten of those students will be performing the essays that resulted in a spoken word setting on Monday, March 8, at the Powerhouse Theater in Santa Monica. (I’ll remind you again when the date is closer.)

But in meantime, I thought you would enjoy reading the biographical essay that the talented Nina has written.

It is a called: Never to be Seen Again.

Keep in mind as you read it that Nina, a senior, is an honor student, a cheerleader, on staff of the yearbook and has been accepted by Cal State, Northridge for Fall 2010.

Ten years ago I was sitting in my third grade classroom at Noise Elementary School picking up my school things, shoveling them into my Lion King backpack. Before I whisked out the classroom door my teacher caught my eye. I can hardly remember what she looked like, all I can remember was thinking she looked pretty and her hair was a dark brunette. She had just received a phone call and ordered me to accompany her to the office.

I cannot recall when I first remember seeing my older sister Kirin. Kirin, age nine, was either already in the police car or we stepped into the cruiser together. We were not allowed to go home and pack our things; it was straight off to foster care again, except this time I was seven, old enough to remember. I had been there once before, but did not remember anything about that place. My only knowledge of having been there before was from what my sister had told me.

My memory is foggy as to what exactly happened. I do not remember my sister’s reaction to any of this. We knew we would not go home anytime soon and that upset us. Home was in Pasadena, California and to me always seemed prefect. With warm weekends and seemingly endless sunny days. Most of those sunny days we spent on the perfectly manicured, bright green lawn, running crazy and wild through the sprinklers in the front yard.

While we were being driven away, I was trying to recognize something, anything, grasping for some kind of hint, but I never did figure out where we were headed. The vehicle slowly pulled up in front of a small one-story house with an attached garage on the left side of our unwanted new home.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Sunday, December 20, a very interesting benefit performance is taking place at the Roxy Theater.

It starts at 8 p.m. and is titled BABIES BEHIND BARS-–because the $15 a person proceeds will benefit a group of organizations that work to keep kids out of the juvenile justice system: A Place Called Home, Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural, Youth Justice Coalition, and Youth Mentoring Connection.

The show is part of a series of educational events scheduled this weekend that aim to “bring awareness of the impact of the juvenile justice system on children and families across the country. ”

In addition to its charitable and activist ambitions, the concert features an intriguing line up of artists. There is Grammy nominated writer, musician and producer, John Forte, whose story I’ll get back to in a minute.

The night will also included musical performances by such groups and artists as Freddie Gibbs (who was the subject of LA Weekly’s cover story two weeks ago), Terra Incognita, the Bricks, and Broken Ornaments—which was co-created by Mike de la Rocha, musician, poet, activist—and the main legislative deputy when it comes to gangs and juvenile justice for City Councilman Tony Cardenas. (Who knew de la Rocha was also a rocker?)

Oh, yes, and about John Forte.

Forte knows a little something about being behind bars. He started life as a bright, musical kid who won a full scholarship to Phillips Exeter Academy, and graduated in 1993. Two years later, he co-wrote and produced two songs on the Fugee’s multi-platinum and Grammy-winning 1996 album. Three years after that, he found himself in a financial jam and made a colossally stupid decision that landed him a conviction for drug possession and a fourteen-year prison sentence. (It was his first offense, but there was quite a bit of cocaine involved.)

Seven years into his prison time, John Forte became one of the 14 people pardoned by President George W. Bush at the end of Bush’s last term.

Now Forte is back to music (obviously), and spends much of his time helping kids with programs like such as this one, and with the concert on Sunday.

Bottom line, if you’re looking for a way to celebrate the holidays with good music—for a good cause—try The Roxy on Sunday Night.

THE MATTER OF JUDGE MANUEL L. REAL

His reversal rate is estimated to be 10 times the average for sitting federal judges.

He has had ten cases outright snatched away from him by appeals courts.

In 2006, there was serious talk of impeaching him.

The Judicial Council of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has examined 89 cases in which his conduct was challenged.

He has been exhibit A in the ongoing discussion about whether federal judges need better oversight.

Now, this past Friday, U.S. Judge Manuel Real was sharply rebuked by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals for his bizarre and unaccountably high-handed handling of yet another case.

While he has his supporters, he has a long list of critics, including a string of prominent attorneys and some legal scholars have said publicly that, if Judge Real takes a dislike to one’s case or one’s client, it is extreme difficult to get a fair trial in his court.

Having observed his behavior twice close-up during the last two bail hearings for Alex Sanchez, I can fully understand the concern about his impartiality. It is not that he is overly conservative or overly liberal on the law. It is more that he seems often to make up his mind on things whimsically, facts and due process be damned, and then will skew the proceedings to match his personal view—all of which is pretty much what his critics describe as well.

U.S. District Court judges, like Real, are appointed for life, as a way of protecting judicial independence. It takes just short of an act of God to remove them, an arrangement that also has its distinct downsides.

As it stands now, Judge Manuel Real will be the one to preside over Sanchez’ trial.

In the meantime, Alex Sanchez’ attorney has filed an appeal with the 9th Circuit of Real’s decision not to grant Sanchez bail.

CHARLIE BECK’S AH-HA MOMENT

Joel Rubin has an interesting and thoughtful story in Sunday’s LA Times about the evolution of soon-to-be LAPD Chief Charlie Beck’s view of policing. Some of it we already know, some is new. But Rubin has re-contextualized the facts of Beck’s philosophic journey in a way that makes for a good an informative read.

NOTE: In a separate story, the Times also reports on some old unproved allegations of mismanagement when he was a board member of the Los Angeles Police Relief Association.

OHIO’S (AND TED STRICKLAND’S) CLEMENCY PROBLEM

According to the Columbus Dispatch, Governor Ted Strickland has 712 pending clemency applications sitting on his desk (metaphorically speaking. I am assuming all 712 aren’t, literally on his desk). Some date back to 2005.

The problem is not that Governor Strickland turns down clemency requests with great abandon (or that he grants them with that same abandon). The problem is that the governor of Ohio does nothing. He just lets the requests sit. And sit.

As its case in point, the Dispatch cites the story of a former business man with no previous adult criminal record, now a prisoner for a decade, Bradley Tapp, whom the Ohio parole board recently unanimously recommended for release. The board also recommended Tapp for executive clemency in 2008. Even the judge who sentenced Tapp to fourteen years in prison for his angry, drunken, violent assault on two neighbors in 1999, has signed an affidavit saying his own decision was too harsh.

Anyway, whatever the merits, or lack thereof of each individual case, one cannot help but wonder why Strickland continues to fail to make decisions on these 712 lives.

ONLY DISCONNECT: ONE MAN’S TALE OF DIGITAL HUNTER-GATHERING

This essay isn’t in the least social justice-y. But it was in Sunday’s NY times Magazine, and it’s very smart and funny and you should read it. (Really.)

It’s about giving up one’s Internet connection. Sort of. It is written by one of my Bennington pals, Wyatt Mason, who is ridiculously brainy, but who also (thankfully) has a silly side.

GRANDSTANDING OVER BLOCKING HELP FOR VETS WITH LONG TERM HEALTH CARE NEEDS

The first paragraph of Monday’s NY Times Op Ed explains the issue very plainly.

A creative plan to help wounded veterans and their exhausted families adapt to the strain of long-term home care is on the brink of bipartisan approval — but for the familiar obstructionism of Senator Tom Coburn. This is one of the most deplorable displays by the lawmaker-physician, an Oklahoma Republican who relishes playing the self-styled budget hawk by putting attention-grabbing holds on crucial legislation.

Read the rest.

MEDICAL MARIJUANA—GOOD SENSE AND NONSENSE

Today, Monday, a joint session of the City Council’s Public Safety and Planning and Land
Use committees will talk over (likely endlessly, if the past is any bellwether) an ordinance that would outlaw most of the medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles.

Under the proposed ordinance, medical marijuana “collectives’‘ would be allowed to grow pot for members with serious illnesses, but could not sell marijuana for a profit, and collectives could have no more than five pounds of dried pot or 100 plants at any given time.

MEANWHILE, in West Hollywood, reports the LA Times’ John Hoeffell, the We Ho city council has been rigorously and appropriately regulating marijuana dispensaries for years, and everything has worked out fine for all concerned without the kind of draconian restrictions the LA City Council is now about to contemplate.

PHOTO NOTE: All the roses in these occasional “Fresh picks’ or “Monday picks’ photos are taken in my garden. In the case, the rose is a classic yellow tea called Midas Touch

Saturday night, my pal Jesse Katz had a book reading at Vroman’s in Pasadena, for his newly released memoir, The Opposite Field.

Jesse is a former LA Times gang reporter, two-time Pulitzer winner and, up-until-recently, an LA Magazine feature writer. He is also an insightful cultural analyst and a prose stylist of elegance and great grace.

All his skills are brought to bear in this book, which is about baseball and fatherhood and divorce and love and loss and, in the midst of all the rest, about rescuing a kids’ baseball diamond,LLa Loma field in Monterey Park.

I love Jesse’s memoir for a lot of reasons, primary among them is the fact that it is truly an LA tale—in a way that so many books pretending to be about our city of angels are not. I usually find myself slightly depressed by that other ilk of supposed LA books, which seem to be about some kind of skewed Westside/Hollywoodesque vision of Los Angeles that has little to do with a city that I recognize or would have chosen to make my home. Whereas Jesse’s book reminds me of just why—despite the insane level of traffic, the city’s Olympic class problems, the state’s fiscal meltdown, and the general craziness of El Lay—so many of us cling to the place with a passionate fervor.

Writer/cultural critic D.J. Waldie has reviewed the book for TruthDig and his take is pitch perfect.

“‘The Opposite Field,’” writes Waldie, “is a lot like Los Angeles. It’s about desire and its consequences, some of them awful.”

Exactly. And here is more from Waldie.

The Monterey Park Sports Club needed rules when Max [Jesse's son] signed up for T-ball and Katz became the volunteer coach of his team. Until then, the veteranos of the club had been quietly taking a cut from registration fees, snack bar sales and the purchase of uniforms, equipment and trophies. Worse, Katz discovered, the joy of baseball at La Loma was being spoiled by the old regime through its meanness, its callousness toward talentless players and its faithlessness in the service of the game.

To save the game—to prolong a boyhood of afternoons—Katz reinvented himself as the “commissioner” of La Loma baseball, out-hustled his detractors, swelled participation by hundreds of new players and kept the accounts clean. He is everyone’s rabbi. In season and out, Katz remains a believer in parks-and-rec baseball, the return of spring, and tradition. Father and son bond over baseball, fall out in the usual ways of fathers and sons and ultimately reconnect on the fields of La Loma, where every player, however much a nebbish, gets a trophy, gets the opportunity to remember and be remembered in the game. “Standing in the center of it all,” Katz concludes, “I looked around in amazement at what we had created, how a park that had been given up for dead was now spilling with life. It was wonderful and messy … mixed up with all the complications of race and class and geography and culture, somewhere between Touch of Evil and Desperate Housewives.”

Far be it for me to tell you what you ought to be reading. Yet if you like really good writing, and the complications of parenting and other deep human relationships, plus a hard-wrangled dollop of redemption, and a down and dirty look at LA life viewed through the lens of kids’ baseball (or if you like any three out of those four), Jesse Katz’s The Opposite Field is very likely a book you shouldn’t miss.

FEBRUARY 27, 1968

Tonight, back in more familiar surroundings in New York, we’d like to sum up our findings in Vietnam, an analysis that must be speculative, personal, subjective. Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities? I’m not sure. The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw. Another standoff may be coming in the big battles expected south of the Demilitarized Zone. Khesanh could well fall, with a terrible loss in American lives, prestige and morale, and this is a tragedy of our stubbornness there; but the bastion no longer is a key to the rest of the northern regions, and it is doubtful that the American forces can be defeated across the breadth of the DMZ with any substantial loss of ground. Another standoff. On the political front, past performance gives no confidence that the Vietnamese government can cope with its problems, now compounded by the attack on the cities. It may not fall, it may hold on, but it probably won’t show the dynamic qualities demanded of this young nation. Another standoff.

We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi’s winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that — negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer’s almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy’s intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.

For nineteen years he was the nation’s narrator. He defined credibility. He spoke to us as if we were adults. We trusted him.

Good night, Walter. Sweet dreams. And thank you.

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UPDATE:

There is a huge irony that, although Cronkite’s famous 1968 broadcast editorial (above) has been referenced repeatedly and reverently since his death, by network and cable talking heads, which of those deliriously effusive broadcasters has ever have or ever would challenged the government line as truthfully as Cronkite did then—however belatedly.
On Saturday, Glenn Greenwald at Salon said it well:

Tellingly, his most celebrated and significant moment – Greg Mitchell says “this broadcast would help save many thousands of lives, U.S. and Vietnamese, perhaps even a million” — was when he stood up and announced that Americans shouldn’t trust the statements being made about the war by the U.S. Government and military, and that the specific claims they were making were almost certainly false. In other words, Cronkite’s best moment was when he did exactly that which the modern journalist today insists they must not ever do — directly contradict claims from government and military officials and suggest that such claims should not be believed. These days, our leading media outlets won’t even use words that are disapproved of by the Government.

Despite that, media stars will spend ample time flamboyantly commemorating Cronkite’s death as though he reflects well on what they do (though probably not nearly as much time as they spent dwelling on the death of Tim Russert, whose sycophantic servitude to Beltway power and “accommodating head waiter”-like, mindless stenography did indeed represent quite accurately what today’s media stars actually do). In fact, within Cronkite’s most important moments one finds the essence of journalism that today’s modern media stars not only fail to exhibit, but explicitly disclaim as their responsibility.

If you listen to nothing else from the Michael Jackson memorial today, give yourself a gift and listen to this.

Me we each renew our commitment to our best aspirations.

“And crown thy good with brotherhood….”

Have a terrific day!

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PS: If you want to have a brief semi-political moment today, read the smart essay written by my friend and Annenberg colleague, Roberto Suro, in the Washington Post, in which he makes a provocative pitch for dumping the Emma Lazarus poem from the Statue of Liberty, the crown of which has finally been reopened today for the first time since September 11.

Whether you agree or disagree (I’m actually pretty attached to the poem, myself), Roberto has an intriguingly thought out rational for tossing those fourteen famous lines, including an historical rundown on how the poem, “The New Colossus,” came to grace the base of our Lady of Liberty in the first place.

All of the above provides a perfect jumping off point for a spirited 4th of July argument….uh…discussion…while you’re waiting for the fireworks.

Then for an alternate point of view of Lazarus’ sonnet, here’s what poet Robert Pinsky had to say about those same familiar lines: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to……”