Famous Banjos

Know Eastman Johnson? He was a contemporary of Winslow Homer and in the 1880s, there was a similar skill level though Johnson is now considered a "genre" artist which is an unfortunate category. This painting is at LACMA here in LA right now in the traveling exposition of Americana art. It's a lot brighter and warmer in person. He looked like this:

Ole Winslow worked for hire as most of them did, doing magazine illustrations until he discovered his watercolors would make him a living instead.

Found this interesting site of Self-portraits:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3aRcv9LEIAc/SnZ5JeAp7CI/AAAAAAAAPRs/fKdxncuLGFg/s400/Eastman%2BJohnson2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://portraitsofpainters.blogspot.com/2009/08/eastman-johnson.html&usg=__7cyexkN-tbCeBr3ZSotwn7NzXAI=&h=400&w=321&sz=13&hl=en&start=11&itbs=1&tbnid=dvhPOm8nsGDnhM:&tbnh=124&tbnw=100&prev=/images%3Fq%3DEastman%2BJohnson%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:official%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1

Like Watching Your Dog Die

Well, the verdict is in. The bike frame is cracked -in several places- particularly in the front which would make me go:

if it broke apart. There's a hill I zoom down every morning that would hurt a great deal if I had to slide down face first. I've had it for almost twenty years. I got it right after the twins were born, there was a place up in Hollywood that was having a sale on large frame bikes. I've ridden it all over kingdom come. Probably have 100,000 miles on it. 

It's predecessor was given away to a homeless guy, but I can't really give this one away. Someone could get hurt. Can you bury a bike? Are there bike cemeteries? Maybe I can turn it into a lawn sculpture.

  This one is in the Danube. If I did this here, they would say I'm littering or dumping illegally. I ordered a cheap bike with an even larger frame from a place on the internet- I'll let you know how that goes. But the dead one was pretty much purchased the same way- based on its size and cheap price. 

Did Ya Ever Have One Of Those Days When Nothing Felt Right?

Love and Art (And Fidelity) In the 1870s

Helena DeKay and Maria Oakey were among the first women to study art at the Copper School and The National Academy in NYC in the early 1870s. Helena and Maria shared a studio together at a time when women were not expected to live on their own. They married. 

Helena married Richard Watson Gilder, who became the editor of a very popular magazine called The Century and was a famous poet (at the time)

Maria married Thomas Dewing who became a famous painter

The two men were friends with Stanford White, a famous architect, and Augustus Saint-Gaudens, a famous sculptor of the time.

Stanford was a great womanizer (he got shot and killed later for fooling around) and had a bachelor pad in the city where he would throw parties for his male friends and had prostitutes swinging on swings and dancing on tables. Dewing and Saint-Gaudens had mistresses and probably partook of White's parties. It was said the Dewing had several affairs withe other artistic type women (perhaps Emma Lazarus' sister). Saint-Gaudens had one illegitimate son. Did I mention that Stanford was married as well?  

These four men were close. Why do I think Richard did not participate in the swinging?  

Because his children loved him? Because he went with his family to the summer house when the other three stayed in the city? Because he was a sentimental poet? Because Richard was closer to Mark Twain and Grover Cleveland, who never cheated on their wives? I hope to dig more with this new source of readable stuff I've found.

Stuff novels are made of.

Unclear on the concept

Samoa produced a superb display to beat New Zealand 33-12 and win the first USA Sevens Cup title to be contested in Las Vegas.

"At the outbreak of World War I, New Zealand troops took possession of the island country. Following WWI the newly formed League of Nations gave New Zealand its Mandate to administer the islands, which resulted in close ties between the two countries that still exist to this day. The newly formed United Nations extended New Zealand's mandate until January 1, 1962, when Western Samoa, or Samoa i Sisifo as the Samoans called it, became the first independent Polynesian nation. In 1997 the island nation officially shortened its name to Samoa. Today, Samoa has a parliamentary style of government and an education system reflecting its former ties with New Zealand."


Below is the response from Random House New Zealand to my response about being rejected because of my return address. (The entire book is set in Samoa- which it appears that he missed- but Lady Jersey means Australia wants it- Sure, why didn't I think of that?) I think they are sore about the soccer.

Hi Dan,
I'm sorry you feel that way. I did notice the link with Samoa but as we get
over 600 submissions a year, of which we are only able to take a very small
percentage, we have to draw the line somewhere and can afford to be
particularly selective. The mention of Lady Jersey could be enough to meet
the Australian criteria. You may like to try them as your next port of call.

Best of luck,

Stuart

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Mc Nay [mailto:mcnay@usc.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, 26 May 2010 5:59 PM
To: Lipshaw, Stuart
Subject: Re: Submission to Random House New Zealand

Stuart,

I submitted because I assumed New Zealand might recall their association with
Samoa. Too bad you've forgotten.
What a criteria for rejection. Betcha ya didn't even read a bit of it, did
ya?

Thanks

Dan 


You notice he didn't say anything about actually reading it.

New Zealand Doesn't Like Me

Talofa Dan

Thanks for your manuscript we received  a couple of days ago.

Despite us saying that we will take unsolicited manuscripts we know from expereince that unless the author is

Well known and previously very succesful it is almost inevitable that the work will not be commercial for us. We have tried with a number of overseas Pacific authors and unless they are here to promote and market with us we find the effort we put in is just not enough to overcome the handicap of an absent author.

Therefore we are declining to take on your work. I shall destroy this copy you have sent unless I hear from you otherwise.

Regards

Brian

Brian Bargh

Publishing Manager

Huia NZ Ltd 39 Pipitea Street | PO Box 17-335 Wellington | AOTEAROA New Zealand| Ph +64 4 473 9262 | Fax +64 4 473 9265 |  www.huia.co.nz

AND:

Hi Dan,

Thank you for your submission, which arrived safely today. Unfortunately, we only publish titles by New Zealand authors or books that contain significant New Zealand content, so I am afraid we will be unable to publish your novel. Sorry to deliver the bad news but all the best with your writing and good luck with other publishers.

Kind regards,

Stuart Lipshaw Production Assistant Random House New Zealand Ltd.

P +64 9 444 7197  F +64 9 441 2714 18 Poland Road, Wairau Valley, North Shore City 0627 Private Bag 102950, NSMC, North Shore City 0745 www.randomhouse.co.nz

I responded to both, asking if they even bothered reading the first paragraph, or was I rejected solely because of my return address. Talk about Xenophobia. These were both sent the day they received the mail.

Just Like In The Movies (Werst Boss #3)

Just like in the movie (Lost In America) where the guy ends up working in a fast food place for a 15 year old. I had worked in restaurants from age 14. I was married, 18, and had just moved to Logan, Utah. In my second year in college. My wife took a waitress job at The Lofthouse Cafe when her job with the city rec department fell through. The owner was Joyner Lofthouse. The only thing they had open was a job busing tables. So there's me 6' 7" busing tables and all the busboys answered to the cooks, because that was how you became a cook- you started out as a busboy and worked your way up. The head cook was a 16 year old petty tyrant that had slaved to get ahead in the world. I got out of there as soon as I could. I think I stayed only a month. It didn't matter that I had cooked for three years and had been an assistant manager back home in Indiana. The bosses at the Del Monte Canning Factory were a step up. I was told there I couldn't keep a paper back book in my hip pocket and my last shift there they told me I'd never work for Del Monte again. This kid would have hired me back.

Helena

The original photograph

 

Helena in her studio, 103 East 15th Street, drawn by Vernon Howe Bailey for a Century Magazine article: "Life-work and Homes of Richard Watson Gilder" by Maria Horner Lonsdale

Richard is reading a book in a hammock right behind her.

I'm still trying to track down her artwork. She was painting and had studio space through the 1870s and 1880s. I've put up a little on the website www.helenadekaygilder.org but haven't found much more. She also showed in galleries and at the group shows into the 80s as well. 

She was supposed to be real cute. Stanford White, the architect, and general fooler-arounder, was taken by her as were a whole lot of folks. I'm anxious to see the transcript of her diaries I've sent for. I'm hoping there will be enough there for a 3rd or 4th of a biography.

Evil Bosses #2

I followed a boss over to Cal State LA, which was probably a big mistake, but I thought it was going to be a good opportunity. It turned out having Higher Ed experience probably got me the job at USC. Anyhow, there was a guy in between me and her that turned out to be the craziest of the craziest. The only employee was an Accounts Payable clerk that was on probation. All the accounting records were in boxes with FBI tape on them. The previous management had embezzled a lot of money out of CSULA's Grant money and their auxiliary services funds. The crazy guy had been a Contracts and Grants guy there. The girl doing AP wasn't as bad as I was lead to believe, and I had to hire a whole new staff. Well, the guy liked to have long long conversations in his office about the work- like hours and hours- I felt under the gun to get the department up and running and get the new people trained etc etc, so I decided not to sit down when he asked me to come talk to him. I stood in his door. It cut down the amount of time in his office. He decided that I had little hand signals that I was making to the staff outside that was a way of making fun of him. It went down hill from there. He would come out at random times and take things off my desk and tell me he was going to deal with what he took and then sit on it for a week and then bring it back and tell me I needed to take care of it right away since it was late now. Every time I went in to talk to the lady I followed over, he would go out and pick a fight with one of my staff. I was told to fire two of them for no other reason than he didn't like them. I was forced to fire them. Finally, he took me out into the hall and threatened me with firing if I didn't swear then and there never to speak directly to his and my boss again. I was already looking for another job by that time. 

I was offered a job at USC and grabbed it. The look on his face when I gave my notice was worth all the pain. You've never seen anyone so scared. I had lunch with the lady I had followed and told her why I was leaving and told her if she didn't believe me that the guy was crazy, just give him the IT staff and see how long they lasted. She said she couldn't chance it. 

I told the Director how crazy the guy was as well. I heard that the place dissolved in disarray shortly after I left. The Director got dismissed, the lady I followed, moved on and the office got absorbed by another department. The crazy guy is still over there, if someone hasn't killed him.

The Details

I've had all sorts of jobs and odd jobs and have moonlighted various places. Both large places like Los Angeles Unified School District and little mom and pop places like Cary Beckham's Bookstore in New Orleans. There is a difference sometimes- not in the environment- but in the mentality. Cary was a good guy- there was little drama, little issue. I've always done what my bosses asked. I found major stupid employee behaviors in big and small places, but there is a mentality in small places that happen some times because of an insecure tyrant who really knows deep down in their heart of hearts that they shouldn't be there and everyone around is smarter and is secretly laughing at them.

There was a little hotel in San Francisco

that I moonlighted on weekends to get money together for our move to Tucson. I showed up the first night and there was another guy scheduled to work the same shift and when the lady manager was consulted, she said that the old guy was fired and I was his replacement. I got her into a discussion about it because I didn't want to take the guy's job. It was agreed that he would work with me to get me up to speed and then we would work out a schedule so we could both work. I had a full time job at a big hotel- I didn't need to be pushing this guy out on the street. She had fingernails like the ones above. She was the live-in lover of the guy that was leasing the hotel from the owners. The next exchange was when she was in a meeting with the head hotel engineer (one guy that did all the building maintenance) and she was not to be disturbed by anything. 

Fifteen minutes into their meeting, I got a call that a bathroom was stopped up and had flooded the room and was pouring out into the hallway, I interrupted her meeting and she fired me. After I explained why, the engineer went running out and she rehired me, but gave me a stiff warning.

When they (she and the boyfriend that no one ever saw) deserted the lease, they tried to take the chandelier out of the lobby and there was no toilet paper left in the hotel. 

She's been spotted since. There was a guy a Cal State LA that thought that I was making fun of him behind his back. There was a VP at USC that had "informants." There's a guy at my current place of employment. They make reality shows about them these days. 

God forbid, we still have to encounter them. You can spot them by their fingernails however.

The Dead Sea Rather Than A Dead Horse

"This strange body of water can actually teach us something: If we hold on to all we have. If we’re selfish, demanding, entitled, and lazy, there is no life and we’re not really living." -Curt Harding


I started out looking for a picture of a dead horse (so I could beat it) to talk about today, but you know the music is really the only thing I'm after these days.








Had a good lunch playing our songs with the guys.

Daughters (& Sons)

Joseph Rodman Drake

Janet Halleck (Drake) de Kay, his daughter, got The Culprit Fay published after he died. 

"I.'Tis the middle watch of a summer's night --

The earth is dark, but the heavens are bright;

Nought is seen in the vault on high

But the moon, and the stars, and the cloudless sky,

And the flood which rolls its milky hue,

A river of light on the welkin blue.

The moon looks down on old Cronest,

She mellows the shades on his shaggy breast,

And seems his huge gray form to throw

In a sliver cone on the wave below;

His sides are broken by spots of shade,

By the walnut bough and the cedar made,

And through their clustering branches dark

Glimmers and dies the fire-fly's spark --

Like starry twinkles that momently break

Through the rifts of the gathering tempest's rack."

It goes on for many pages. This was some of the best early 1800s American writing around.

An interesting piece is the ornamental framed mirror above. 

It was commissioned by Charles de Kay
as a present for their mother. Janet. 

It was designed and hand painted by Albert Pinkham Ryder, and
depicts scenes from "The Culprit Fay" written by Helena De Kay Gilder's grandfather. 

The gentleman portrayed in the middle panel on the right side is Joseph Rodman Drake. 

The middle panel on the bottom is
supposed to be Helena (portraying a earth goddess)

I've been trying to transcribe Helena and her husband's diary from the original (which was hand-written) and had just about given up, when I discovered a typed transcript of it at The Lily Library in Indiana. I should have a copy in a week. Done, by Helena's daughter I'm sure. There are the 1500 pages of Helena's letters to Molly Foote and her answers there as well, that her daughter transcribed and tried to get published without luck.

May we all be blessed with gracious children. 

WEEBEDEBEs

An old boss used to call them WEEBEDEBEs. Working in a University setting with lots of government money there are subcontracting plans that have to be filed to explain how you are spending some of their money to Small Disadvantaged Homeless Minority Blind Hub Zone Mentally Challenged Women Owned Businesses.
Back in the 80s, big corporations were setting up dummy front companies which they would sell to at their cost so the little company could sell to government funded people. The State Universities HAVE to spend a certain %. Private schools try, but sometimes don't. We all want to look good- like we are supporting local businesses and the little guys. Travel Agents and Caterers were good for reaching your goals. Asians and Middle Eastern folks were not minority. (Just like in LA Unified- mostly because they had money I suppose) American Indians were hard to find and buy from. And all of this relied on the company telling us what they were and how they were qualified to get business allotted to their category.

There was one that shall remain nameless, that hired a lot of black saleswomen and proceeded to sell on the basis of being a small black women-owned business. They got major contracts with State schools. My experience with them was that they were dishonest, bribed officials to get orders and jacked up the prices whenever they thought no one was looking. I signed and canceled a couple of contracts with them because they did not deliver what they had promised. One day we needed a new form from them to keep on file for our auditors. They refused to identify who owned them. My boss asked me to research them and I could not identify who did own them. I did find a picture of their General Manager with his staff behind him and he had too many employees to qualify as a small business. The judgment was that we accepted what they said they were.

LA Unified has a similar absurd program with their magnet schools. The magnets were originally created to get a balance of the races together and that seems a good idea, don't you think? But these days it means that if you are white, its easier for you to get into the magnet schools. If you are Asian or Middle Eastern, you are not a minority. And its all based on what you put on the form. Kids that are half-Asian half-white and kids that are half-black and half-white are not- they are either white or not. If the parents were smart enough to list them as white, they get in.

When I go set up my cart over on Venice beach, I'm going to bill myself as mentally-challenged. I've gotten myself in trouble for putting zeros on these kinds of government forms.

First Song

Blaw day today, overcast and my bike ride into work was a little misty. I came, I ate crow, I now move on. I did something wrong on my job and had to go confess and get it fixed. (The fix is to send it over to idiot that I was once given charge of because she couldn't do her job) At least its off my desk. It will never be resolved now. The amazing large organization that will kill your very soul and make you feel bad for bothering them. This place is depressing. Most of the staff have this hidden anger from years of frustration. But the pay is good and you really don't have to work that hard.

I wrote my very first song last week. I like it, don't know if anyone else will. My older daughter likes the words, my significant other said it was too high for my voice. Sort of ballad of my previous wife's life and all those ladies I've known that were following Jesus or some other cult leader.

The watercolor above is mine, I lifted it from my website.

Where I'd rather be:

I think I feel another song coming on.

Spent all day out at the Topanga Banjo & Fiddle Fest. I went out with the guitar player from our little wanta be band and found a couple of the Saturday morning meet up bluegrass folks and one of them competed in her category for banjo and won. They brought her back to play the main stage. Hung out with one of the Dads from the Boy Scout Troop. Saw these folks and brought home their CD. Maybe next year I'll take the banjo.  

The Little House Around The Corner

We ended up in a little house on Cabrillo Ave in Venice. 800 square feet. It was the first house that I developed my stupid home repair tricks on. And all the people came. David and Jim and Angela and Loraine and Roberta and Bobbie and Lucy and Judy and Steve and Kathy and Mike and Elena and Judy and John from next door and Blanca. People would just come by and we would cook and hang out and talk and write. The twins came and then another one. Parties came and went, we read purposely bad poetry to one another, I lectured on Robert Frost in this back yard. And had birthday parties and kid parties and we sang Christmas Carols around the block and scared the crack dealers off their corners and banged pots on New Years Eve.
Kyle passed out drunk in our front yard. Rex and Marilyn got fixed up there and got married in our front yard.
We watched John and his boyfriend die next door. And the crazy man yelled at the twins and their whistles in our front yard. Sco helped me put the keys back on the keyboard that the twins had removed and he read Green Eggs and Ham backwards to them on our floor. And it was a really great time. I may still have the shirt.

Riding Your Bike On The Beach

I rode my bike a lot in Venice over the years. We eventually got a little house on Cabrillo and I started working in the Marina and I would just ride the bike back and forth. I upgraded to a European Clone with a 38" frame, which I've had ever since. Then, after moving to Westchester, some brainiac (I think it was me) decided that we needed to do the Cycling Merit Badge for the Boy Scouts. My son was in the troop then. We ended up with about 25 kids that summer. Each scout needs a total of 150 miles to get the badge. Almost all the trips were on the bike path that runs from the north end of Santa Monica to Redondo beach (there was only one hill - on the way over to the beach from my house) And everyone's schedule was busy and so I would do make-up rides and re-rides and then for the end trip we would do a 50-mile trip from my house to Newport Dunes. That first summer I think I booked about 1500 miles on my bike with the numerous groups of kids and their fathers.

We had all the rest stops down. The hamburger joint in Venice, the ice cream shop in Redondo, and all the drinking fountains on the way to refill water.And where to watch for the sand that could make you take a spill. When the traffic was bad -always 1:00 pm on Sunday in Venice- you might as well walk.

The Dads that went were a trip. One rode twenty miles a day out there and he road along with us for about an hour, mostly for the conversation, and then he got bored and off he went. The only ones that could keep up with him was his own son and mine. One guy told me all about his experiences as a social worker in tthe South Pacific. One, a hot shot lawyer with a big corporation, spend an entire trip close behind a curvy roller-blade girl we didn't know. I kept telling him he was going to get in trouble. And then there was the girl on the swing in the red sun dress. Several of the boys wiped out and two of the Dads. I had my first aid kit ready so it wasn't too bad. One of the kids wanted to go home, but couldn't get a hold of his parents, so he ended up finishing anyway.

One Dad and his son only rode with each other and were usually a half an hour to an hour behind the rest of us. I had to take their word for it that they finished each trip, I'd have been there forever waiting for them to show up.

Venice at 5:00AM

I was divorced and living alone (well with the hamster that was left behind, but he stayed up all night and ran in his wheel and went to bed when I was getting up) but was on a schedule of waking up at 5:00 AM because I was used to helping with our daughter and getting her and us ready to go off for the day, but now there was nothing to do for 2 hours. So I started teaching myself to surf.

It was fun for a little while (I have given away my car to her who left) but it seemed it was more of an adventure to get over to the water than to actually get into the water and there were dead days when there was no surf. And I didn't really connect - the guys out there were all ten years younger. Then I took to riding over and running. Had a running partner for a while, then she married and ran off to Utah. (I didn't find out she had gotten married until six months later when I got into a casual conversation with another rider on the 436 bus downtown. -That was how I met her. I had just figured she liked her privacy- still wonder if the kiss goodbye after the morning run was followed that day by her wedding.)

I got real healthy doing all of this. Had actually quit smoking shortly before divorcing. Then decided I would ride my bike some 50 miles to South Coast Plaza for a long weekend and start to write a play I had in my head. Was stuck and went down to the lobby and bought a pack to unstick me and it was soon all over and I was back to a pack a day.

The early morning in Venice is still the best time of the day. The criminals are all sleeping it off. There's absolutely no tourists. And Sidewalk Cafe used to open fairly early.

More Tales of Venice

It started with this guy. We had an upstairs two room apartment in the back (a 1/2 block up from the Venice Boardwalk) and we first became aware of how much we could hear from the apartment below because this guy was having an afternoon thing with the girl that lived below us. He's been a fixture on the Boardwalk for a 1000 years. Very loud lover as well. Reminded me of an opera singer in a boarding house near the IU campus who came with arias. This guy moved on I think. The girl didn't Late one night there was a sream and then nothing else, so we thought maybe it was her just having a good time. (Lesson: don't cry wolf, I guess) Anyway the next morning it turned out that she had been raped at gunpoint and the guy (not the one above) stole her wallet and her keys and ran out. The building guy was slow on getting the locks changed and guess what- the bad guy came back. The girl had gotten a big dog in the meantime and at midnight there's a scream and the dog barking like mad, so I slip on my jeans and run down stairs to make sure she's all right. I'm in the middle of the stairs

and at the bottom, running out is this guy with a gun.

I put up my hands and he runs out the front door. And a second later another neighbor from upstairs comes down with his gun. I was blessed that one was fast and one was slow or I would have been in the middle. The girl's dog had scared off the guy. The locked were changed the next morning.

Weird Places I've Lived

I didn't actually live here, but this was a trailer in the neighborhood where a couple did live. It caught fire recently and the couple had to be hospitalized for their burns. An ex-wife and I and child moved into an a small upstairs duplex apartment behind a small house in the middle of Oakwood because we were tired of trying to survive over by the beach with the armed robberies in our apartment building and the weirdo that set fire to an entire block of dumpsters in the alley behind the apartment building.

http://www.streetgangs.com/topics/1994/012794venice.html

Here's some background on our wonderful neighborhood. I looked for a picture of the real neighborhood but didn't really see anything that looked like it should. I had about six years there I guess. The first year was fights and then she left and took everything (cause I let her) I roamed the neighborhood and found old furniture and stripped it down and refinished it. I bought stuff from Thrift stores. I lived out of an ice chest for a long long time. The guy that owned the property had jumped a Polish Freighter in NYC and was working his way up in the American world. He and his wife lived in the front house with two dobermans. We were the only white people in a six block area. I can remember coming home late one night and watching a pack of wild gang boys chasing a girl across a park nearby. I stayed to make sure she got away. I'm not sure what I could've done if they had caught her. The hanger-arounders wanted to know if I could help them get jobs, mostly cause I wore a tie to work every morning. I had no car- walked over to Venice Blvd and took the bus to downtown  to work every morning.  There was a almost a murder monthly there.

Imagine the trailer with a couple of palm trees behind it and that's Oakwood. 

Had a beanbag chair. Finally had enough money to buy a car or a computer. I bought the computer.

Hosted a large group of intellectuals there for a presentation on Proust.

Friends came and went from the place. The neighborhood scared some women, didn't scare others.

Came home in a friend's car one lunch time and found gardeners at work on the yard. I chatted with them, got what I came for out of my apartment and left. Returned that evening to find that they were robbing all of us. A butcher knife was laying on my kitchen counter. One of them must have been in the apartment when I came and went. I didn't have much to steal and I guess I helped to scare them off.

Imagine two palm trees behind the trailer and that's Oakwood.

Where I'd Rather Be

1973 New Orleans Jazz Festival - Roosevelt Sikes and company

Buster Holmes and a plate of beans and rice for 55 cents.

I Was A Deadbeat Dad (How My Belief In America Has Been Restored)

http://divorce.lovetoknow.com/National_Deadbeat_Dad_List

Once upon a time there was a divorce and a child of the divorce. At one point, after the divorce was final, and the mother of the child of the divorce met someone else and was going to remarry, she told the father of the child of the divorce that her new husband was going to adopt the child and that the father should not come to see the child or send presents any longer or anything. So the father stopped. Twenty years later, when the laws all changed, the father was notified that he owned twenty years of back child support. He was willing to pay but wanted to see the child that he had never been able to see. He was told the law didn't care and it was two separate things. He asked that the law verify that the child was truly not adopted and he was told that the law didn't care and it was up to him to prove any different scenario. The father's lawyer suggested they file for a hearing to contest the rule of enforcement, so on the day of the court hearing, the father went downtown and stood in a big long line like this with probably thirty other deadbeat dads (which were mostly Hispanic) and waited with his lawyer for his fifteen minutes. The Judge didn't give a goddamn about any of the men and one after another told them that they had to pay. The same happened with our father of the divorced child. The lawyer didn't understand why his filing didn't work. But the father quickly understood that this did not have to do with him or any of the thousands of other fathers. This had to do with money and it was a machine set up by the DA's office in Los Angeles and across the country to collect the money no matter the circumstances or the guilt or innocence of any of the parties. So then the DA came after any money they could grab. Salaries, assets, cars, houses etc. It didn't matter if you needed a car to go to work so the DA could take your salary. It didn't matter that you might have other children to feed that were living under your roof. The father of the divorced child was a smart man and was able to protect his family, but the long line of not so smart poor men in the line (who didn't have lawyers) probably were ruined to the point that they dropped out even more, changed their name and identity and became illegal immigrants in Mexico where they could starve to dead without legal harassment.

You also get your name on the lists and the websites like the one I included above. 

I paid my debt to society (and to the ex in Texas who probably bought herself a house with the money) and my current wife has forgiven me for my transgression and I assume my name is not on any more lists. I was also given other bad legal advice from lawyers who will take your money under the pretext of "helping you." And I still haven't gotten to see my child, who is grown now and married. 

The one bit of justice I did get throughout the entire process was when I paid the bulk of the money and the DA's office came back one more time and tried to bill me for the accrued interest for the money that I hadn't known that I owed, I was able to quote the law back to them and show them that they could not do it and the lady actually corrected their mistake and removed the amount owed.

Also, the ex and her family knew of my whereabouts the entire time over the last twenty years and could have written or called or filed at any time for the money. I am also a child of divorce and was supportive of my mother when she had to garnish my own deadbeat dad's wages to get her child support. But this had nothing to do with the law or justice. 

Where I'll Be

The latest from Crooked Still's new CD (are they still albums?) Just got it yesterday in the mail - "Some Strange Country" Best Bluegrass Cello in the world not to mention the vocals, the banjo and the rest.

I'm going to play me banjo off in Orange County with the Bluegrass Meet Up Group this morning and then drive 50 miles back to turn around and drive 50 miles back down to hear my Vunderkin's choir. - I think that makes about 250 miles in one day. (California!)




This is them the year before the Vunderkin was in it, but you get the idea

Where I'd Rather BE #2

I Don't Know What To Make Of This

Why go to the bother to write all of this? We are intrigued but not enough to look at it further since we are overworked (trying to publish every foreign author we can find, since everyone knows really good writing doesn't come from this country) and we have already bought books to publish for the next three years.

These are the culprits, they look European, don't they. Check out their list for Fall 2009:

http://www.ndpublishing.com/newtitles/2009fall.html

Another translation of Hesse, wow. They had it once, about 50 years ago.

Places I'd Rather Be

These posts (Places I'd Rather Be) you need to figure out for yourself.

People You Should Know

John La Farge, mostly because of his stained glass windows, but a great read:

"Reminiscences of the South Seas"
By John La Farge

Publisher: Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday, Page & Amp 1912

He and a friend (Henry Adams) traveled about the South Seas before Gauguin even got there. Visited Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa and wrote a great book filled with cool watercolors. A married Catholic, he didn't really take advantage of what he saw, so at times he came across as a little old lady. I had access to a copy at the USC Library, as far as I know its not in reprint, so a library or Abe Books are the choices.

 Not a flattering pic. It was said that he talked like Henry James wrote (and was James' painting teacher when Henry wanted to be a painter) Friends with Winslow Homer and taught women to paint, but was a sexist. He told one woman painter that he didn't understand why women didn't stick to painting flowers.
But he was capable of creating this:

The Other Side of The Coin

You've not really lived until you've sat out in freezing rain under a blanket and an umbrella and watched your daughters run around playing soccer in the slush and the mud. My older daughter used to get off on it. She looked liked she enjoyed being soaked to the bone. This is so obviously not an American sport. I sat in front of screaming banshees with cowbells and obscenities in a basketball gym. If you yell anything just a little off key on a soccer field, they will throw you out and throw your kids' coach out. The nice thing about AYSO, anybody that wants to play can play. They don't keep score when the kids are real young.

Later there are fights and nasty things (on the field), just like in basketball. We had a record of losing more than winning, but what are you going to do? No one died from pneumonia. The High School Soccer coaches were generally just as lousy as the High School Basketball coaches. AYSO coaches were the fathers of one of the girls, so it was hard to get mad at them. In fact the Refs were from the neighborhood as well.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, back in the 80s and 90s decided that there were too many fights and brawls resulting from sport events, so they began to schedule them for mid-afternoon. They are only now easing off of it and as a result if you wanted to see your kid play, you had to run out from work about three in the afternoon and drive great distances some times to watch (there were usually just a few parents there). I imagine some blue collar gut never ever getting to see his kids play. I was lucky to be able to sit in the rain.