The Other Side of a Brutal City

On June 15 of this year, the torso of a man was found inside a suitcase in the Tijuana neighborhood of Colonia Reforma. At the time, authorities could not confirm whether a decapitated head found earlier belonged to the same victim. For better or worse, Tijuana has a reputation as a dangerous, brawling, heavy-drinking, violent town, the destination of choice for tens of thousands of Americans, out for a good time on Saturday night, cheap and legal pharmaceutical drugs, and a little bit of la vida loca. With a population of roughly a million and a half, it is about the same size as San Diego, just to the north, and despite the grim nature of the street violence there, its crime rate is about the same as Washington DC. What most people don’t know, however, is that despite its much-publicized violence and alienation, Tijuana has a sweet, soft side: it is a city that is passionate about opera.

Opera en la Calle, 2011

In addition to the widely respected City Opera, there are a number of small companies doing work all over the metropolis. In one of the most remarkable demonstrations of the city’s passion for opera, a collaboration eight years ago between the Colonia Libertad-based Café Opera and the Tijuana City Opera, led to a summer festival of live performances on Calle 5, the rough and tumble blue-color neighborhood, smack up against the border fence in the north of the city, a historic barrio minutes from the San Ysidro border crossing, on the other side of town from the Colonia Reforma. Organizers assembled booths to sell food and drink, installed portable bathrooms, vendor tables and cast costumed characters strolling the street. They set up 300 chairs for guests to watch their program of scenes, arias and art songs.

Six thousand people showed up.

Now in its eighth year, there is much that is remarkable about the Opera en la Calle, as the event is called. It is a full-fledged cultural phenomenon, a free celebration of opera, and art in general, written up in most major press and reported widely. It is a favored venue for artists who live in the area, and for many who ome to visit, just for the day-long party. The festival has never been interrupted, despite the surge of drug-related violence of the last three years. This year’s line-up included a traditional Japanese drum performance from San Diego Taiko, and a performance by an ensemble of Irish dancers from Lázaro Cárdenas Federal High School. There were selections from La Traviata and Boheme, as well as portions of the Phantom of the Opera, and Pietro Mascagni’s one act masterpiece Cavalleria Rusticana, which finished off the evening, the first full length opera to be presented in the festival.

Elisabet Mendoza and Jacob Perez

The event has even become an improbable destination for dating couples. Twenty-something Jacob Perez and his girlfriend Elisabet Mendoza snuggle in the cool afternoon air enjoying selections from La Traviata, with as much enthusiasm as they might for pop artists, like Café Tacuba, Los Tigres del Norte or Paulina Rubio.

Jacob explains “People will get even closer to music, and paintings and culture and all that stuff...I think if they go to the way of the culture, they can change.” Girfriend Elisabet Mendoza adds “To have you imagine other things that are not violence, is not our city. Just art, music, things like that…” Starting in 2004, as a cultural promotion of the city, and as an anniversary celebration of the tiny Café de la Ópera on Calle 5, part of the festivities celebrating the founding of Tijuana.

It soon became a renowned event, attracting up to 10,000 people from both sides of the border. In coordination with the State Government, the 22nd City Council, Tourism and Conventions Committee of Tijuana (COTUCO) as well as the private sector, the 2011 edition of the festival featured performances more or less continuously for 12 hours.

Architects from the Technology Institute of Tijuana transformed the working-class street into a tiny Italian village, which becomes the scene of the festival. There were more than 150 singers, musicians, actors and other artists from the region, and under colorful canopies, a variety of restaurants offered a sampling of their food and beverage. The day started around noon and lasted till past 11:00 pm, on a downright chilly July evening.

Jose Medina is a much loved local music teacher and singer. He has been involved in the production of Opera en la Calle from the very beginning, and many of his students are singing today. Though he looks a bit tired from all the planning and rehearsals, he is practically beaming with pride. “Everything you read in the paper, first thing in the morning is assassination and drugs and everything. But this contributes to change the image. This is important…So that at least gives you hope! Tijuana is not just this dark side, we do have this, too. This culture, this hunger of growing up to something so positive!” He then excuses himself, to go help with the set up for one of the acts he has been working on.

Maria Teresa Rique

Returning to run the festival, Opera of Tijuana Director Maria Teresa Riqué, described the rich offering of cultural activities the community offers, including for the first time a complete performance and the live transmission of the project via the Internet.

"The festival is framed in celebration of the centenary of the historic defense of Tijuana in June of 1911. We are preparing a program based on research done by the group Los Californios, led by baritone Manuel Acosta. The main intention of the festival is the promotion of the Opera…I am sure they will enjoy it. You can see the huge amount of talent we have in the city,” Riqué added. "It is great to be able to present a full opera for the first time," said Riqué, noting the involvement of tenor José Luis Duval and mezzo-soprano Ana Rojas. " People who may not be physically able to attend can enjoy the event via a live streaming webcast …a revolution in progress." she added. The performances are presented in a way to attract families, and to welcome everyone and was especially directed to those who have never had opportunity to attend an opera recital or performance, and to attract a young audience.

Between 8,000 and 10,000 people attended throughout the day, enjoying the singing, scenery, art displays, drinks and food, as well as a range of children's activities. Fully a third to a half of the attendees at the Saturday event appeared to be under the age of 25.

Julieta Mesa and Melissa Sanchez

Melissa Sanchez attended this year with her mother Julieta Mesa. It gives her a lot of pride to be able to show off her city. “If you can show the other side of Tijuana, which is an innovative city, where you find that art and culture has much to offer to the country and the world,” she says, while resting in the afternoon sun. “Maybe it is the result that we are receiving so much talent from other cities of the Mexican republic that art and culture and the proximity to the USA makes as to have a fountain of talent. In this respect young people can contribute in art and culture” she concludes.

Singer Marco Antonio La Bastida is a local favorite, and a regular at Café Opera – he sings the title role in ‘Phantom of the Opera’ tonight, and has seen the changes that opera in general and this street festival in particular have brought to this little rough and tumble neighborhood. “This is a very nice event…with all this very bad situation with what’s happening in Tijuana, this is the other side of the coin saying ‘hey, you know we are making something good…’ I think they [the media] should always promote this kind of event.” La Bastida agrees with Maria Theresa Rique’s assessment that this community’s love for opera is not abstract or pretentious. There is an obvious, natural, and enthusiastic love for this art form they say. “It was a way to tell people not to abandon the streets, to tell them to not be afraid,” says Riqué. “Opera won’t bite you; it’s not elitist,” she insists. “You just have to feel it. After all…” she added, “this type of festival is a reminder that the streets belong to the people.”

Jose Medina Interview

Photo Gallery of July 9, 2011 Opera en la Calle

…Sat on the Park Bench Like Book Ends

Time it was and what a time it was,

A time of innocence,

A time of confidences,

Long ago it must be,

I have a photograph,

Preserve your memories,

There all that’s left you...

- Paul Simon, ‘Old Friends’

The term ‘old friends’ could be interpreted a couple of ways. In common usage, it means colleagues, companions and acquaintances of long standing, people with whom you have a bond of affection lasting many years.

But it might also mean those friends who are on in years, aged and wearing experience on their face and body.

In either case, the idea of connecting with ‘old friends’ holds a special place in our hearts. With ‘old friends’, your shared experiences and memories come back with easy connection. With little effort, we connect with life’s landmarks – births, weddings, deaths and the like – without the need for a lot of explaining.

I had dinner this last week with friends of my family whom I hadn’t seen in perhaps 40 years. Barney and Pat were so close to our tribe in Nevada. He’s 88 now and I guess Pat’s a bit younger. They lived for a while in our funky little town of Virginia City, and shared hundreds, perhaps thousands of hours with us.

Barney was a geologist, with a big booming voice, a friendly grin and a kind of effortless enthusiasm that was simply magnetic. While we assumed that Barney was one of our dad’s endless parade of drinking buddies (and I don’t mean that sarcastically), as kids, we found him really cool. He could tell you anything you wanted to know about rocks. To this day, when I read or hear mention of the element ‘Beryllium’, it is inseparable from my memories of Barney’s expansive and engaging description of where this metal was found, how it got there, and why it was so important.

His wife Pat had her eye on the former sailor when he came in to cash a check at Harolds Club in Reno, where she was working after the war. Harold’s club is the real old Reno. Later eclipsed by its neighbor Harrah’s, Harold’s club was where locals went to drink, gamble, and cash their checks. We’ve had generations of relatives and pals who worked there, or had someone in their family who did as well, in their black pants and white shirts, as cashiers, waitresses, bar tenders, and Keno runners. If you don’t know what that is, you are obviously not from Nevada.

There was a year-long gap between the time Pat cashed Barney’s check at Harold’s Club, and the time she ran into him in Virginia City. She recognized the strapping sailor from the previous year and told her friends to pull over so she could say ‘hi’.

Pat was glamorous to us as kids. She was kind of dazzling – beautiful, confident, and pound for pound, at least as friendly as Barney. One thing led to another, and now they’ve been married for about half a century.

In the interim, there have been the foundation stories of my life: Pat Hart and the Brass Rail, Gordon Lane and his legendary bar next door, which was officially known as ‘The Union Brewery’, but simply known as Gordon’s to anyone who had spent five minutes in Virginia City would know. From Gordon’s, the great pantheon of drinking-legends from that town connected and became a community. There was four-foot-ten Kelly O’Keefe, an Irish miner who could drink anyone under the table. Highway Harry, Bob Dufresne, Agalee Del Carlo, Mike Nevin…they all spent long hours tossing them back and telling what seemed to me the funniest stories in the world.

Barney worked all his adult life as a geologist, and by all accounts, it was a profession he loved with a passion that was almost as strong as his passion for his beautiful wife. He also came to love our eccentric little town in the mountains.

They never had kids. My own circle of siblings all grew up and had their own broods; life went on, and all of a sudden, it’s four decades later.

Pat and Barney live on the water in a small, comfortable apartment in Newport Beach, just off the Pacific Coast Highway. They don’t get around so much, because of their physical limitations, but Pat managed to cook up a fantastic meal when I came by for dinner this week – crab cakes, Italian bread salad, pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy... The food was great, but it was passing time with these two ‘old friends’ that was so moving to me.

In a real sense, as kids we were exposed to a lot of personalities which we have ultimately combined into who we are as adults. Barney and Pat, along with Gordon Lane – who just passed away this last year - Pat and Penna Hart, and all the other characters who came into our lives each left a little something. A wicked sense of humor from one, a booming gregariousness from another, an unshakable need to stop and help out or, the ability to make an instant party from yet another; they have all become our ‘character’ as adults. Barney and Pat’s open, honest and joyful embrace have contributed to who I am as an adult.

Driving back up the 405 San Diego freeway toward home after that dinner, I pondered how wise the native Indians were in this country, long before the white man, something that had never struck me as strongly. For many westerners, the concept of ‘our elders’ or ‘our ancestors’ seems quaint and archaic. But after my visit with Barney and Pat, I felt a very sweet and fierce connection not only to them, but to my brothers and sisters, my parents, and to a younger, more wide-eyed me.

Barney & Pat Eglit

Whatever...

The fact that our congress finally consigned ‘don’t ask – don’t tell’ to the dustbin of history is not that big a big deal.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s historic, it’s moving, it vindicates everyone who fought for this decision, and it endorses our beliefs that our brothers and sisters serving in the military can ‘access their integrity’, to quote Lt. Dan Choi, who was booted last year after coming out on national television.

I’m not saying it’s not important, but I’m a little leery about congratulating ourselves for doing what should have been done not seventeen years ago, but 50 or 80 years ago. To be sure, the battle for acceptance of sexual minorities in our military was a significant stop on the path to acceptance. But it seems odd to celebrate something that should have been done anyway, even without the battle.

We had no international celebration when our medical institutions defeated smallpox last century. We did not hold festivals for giving the vote to people who should have had the vote all along. We have held no celebrations when women began to earn equity in the work place (of course, they are still not earning at the levels of their male counterparts).

In the long history of the fight for civil rights of LGBT people, this military issue was not exactly at the top of the stack. The concurrent fights for the right to adopt, the right to fair and equal treatment in the work place and in accommodations, domestic partner rights which allow partners of LGBT people to visit their loved ones in the hospital, the right to inherit the estate of a gay partner who has died, and of course, the big, big question: the right to marry - these issues loom like skyscrapers over the landscape of public policy.

While LGBT people can serve openly in the militaries of nearly two dozen countries, including Australia, Canada, Israel and Italy, gay people are still persecuted, injured, jailed, and executed in Uganda, Iran, Russia and other countries just for being who they are.

With a growing number of states in the US and countries around the world affirming the right to marry, gay marriage would have to be considered the biggest and most vital challenge in the fight for civil liberties. There is no issue more central, more vital, and more momentous that the right to legally choose who is allowed to marry whom. On that day, I will feel that the biggest hurdle to LGBT acceptance has been breached.

My comment about the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask…’ is more of a rhetorical flourish than a deep feeling. News of the US Senate’s vote on the question made tears well up in my eyes, and a deep and emotional feeling of vindication wash over me. We will take whatever victories we can, and fight for the ultimate right: to marry whomever we wish. The repeal of ‘Don’t Ask…’ may not be the biggest victory for Gay rights, but it is certainly big enough.

When every person has the right to live their life openly, with dignity and standing in their community, then I will celebrate like it was 1999.

Whatever...

The fact that our congress finally consigned ‘don’t ask – don’t tell’ to the dustbin of history is not that big a big deal.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s historic, it’s moving, it vindicates everyone who fought for this decision, and it endorses our beliefs that our brothers and sisters serving in the military can ‘access their integrity’, to quote Lt. Dan Choi, who was booted last year after coming out on national television.

I’m not saying it’s not important, but I’m a little leery about congratulating ourselves for doing what should have been done not seventeen years ago, but 50 or 80 years ago. To be sure, the battle for acceptance of sexual minorities in our military was a significant stop on the path to acceptance. But it seems odd to celebrate something that should have been done anyway, even without the battle.

We had no international celebration when our medical institutions defeated smallpox last century. We did not hold festivals for giving the vote to people who should have had the vote all along. We have held no celebrations when women began to earn equity in the work place (of course, they are still not earning at the levels of their male counterparts).

In the long history of the fight for civil rights of LGBT people, this military issue was not exactly at the top of the stack. The concurrent fights for the right to adopt, the right to fair and equal treatment in the work place and in accommodations, domestic partner rights which allow partners of LGBT people to visit their loved ones in the hospital, the right to inherit the estate of a gay partner who has died, and of course, the big, big question: the right to marry - these issues loom like skyscrapers over the landscape of public policy.

While LGBT people can serve openly in the militaries of nearly two dozen countries, including Australia, Canada, Israel and Italy, gay people are still persecuted, injured, jailed, and executed in Uganda, Iran, Russia and other countries just for being who they are.

With a growing number of states in the US and countries around the world affirming the right to marry, gay marriage would have to be considered the biggest and most vital challenge in the fight for civil liberties. There is no issue more central, more vital, and more momentous that the right to legally choose who is allowed to marry whom. On that day, I will feel that the biggest hurdle to LGBT acceptance has been breached.

My comment about the repeal of ‘Don’t Ask…’ is more of a rhetorical flourish than a deep feeling. News of the US Senate’s vote on the question made tears well up in my eyes, and a deep and emotional feeling of vindication wash over me. We will take whatever victories we can, and fight for the ultimate right: to marry whomever we wish. The repeal of ‘Don’t Ask…’ may not be the biggest victory for Gay rights, but it is certainly big enough.

When every person has the right to live their life openly, with dignity and standing in their community, then I will celebrate like it was 1999.

Red Earth and Pouring Rain

The towering, sprawling masterworks of Indian literature – especially the love poem the Ramayama, and the Muhabarata, which includes the Bhagavad Gita – are unruly, shaggy dog tales that read like a combination of Beowulf, Dante’s Inferno, and Milton’s Paradise Lost rolled into one. They are story upon story upon story, and to many westerners first exposed to them, they were seen as inferior literature, because they didn’t follow Plato’s unities of poetry. But the authors of these great Hindu epics have produced some of the most soaring, transcendent literature civilization has ever produced.

We have advanced somewhat since those years of the Raj, an era which demeaned the great Indian literature, in a spasm of Victorian judgment one hopes, with an ability to appreciate these shimmering, epic tales of wars, gods, love and death, and all the rules that make up ethical living, the works have come to take their proper place in the pantheon of world literature. Despite the west’s long standing ignorance, many have come to appreciate the awesome literary efforts that these works represent.

Vikram Chandra channels these ancestors in his novel Red Earth and Falling Rain, which in some ways out does even those two thousand year old Vedic texts. The title of the novel comes from a Tamil poem nearly 2,000 years old, which at least in translation, echoes contemporary passions:

And how

Did you and I meet ever?

But in love

our hearts have mingled

as red earth and pouring rain.

In post-modern western literature, we have become accustomed to stories within stories; wordsmiths shattering rhetoric and syntax for some deeper truth, but mostly we remain cued to the importance of one central story. So as writers like James Michener and William Faulkner (not exactly post-modernists; but the point holds nonetheless) spin their complex tales, we always refer back to the central story to know where we are and what is the perspective from which we are observing.

In Chandra’s epic work, our attention is constantly pulled, to the point we don’t quite know what is the central story: a young Indian, returning to India from California with a broken heart, a magic realism tale of a monkey pulled back from the brink of death by his ability to tap out fantastic stories on an old typewriter, visits from a number of the best known Hindu deities – most notably Ganesh the laughing Elephant god, and Hanuman, the monkey-like god of war, battle and alliances.

In the tradition of those great Hindu epics, Chandra leaves our head spinning, unable to decide where the center of the story is. In a playful way, we are always brought back to the story of the type-writing monkey, whose story – as fantastic as it is – is no comparison to the swashbuckling tales of the two young men – Sikander and Sanjay, born at the same time – as they travel across the subcontinent, facing adventures, growing up, suffering and becoming men.

Oh, and for good measure, Chandra even throws in a connection to Jack the Ripper in Victorian London.

Even if your brain is being stretched, trying to figure out which hand to watch while Chandra weaves his magic spells, the tales within tales, the endless stories within stories, are hypnotic, and somehow, deeply moving.

It is said that authors speak through their characters. If this is true, then we can conclude that to Vikram Chandra, humanity’s ability to tell stories is what renders us something like gods. Everyone has a story, and each one makes us a little more human. The stories invest us with dignity, position, and the weight of history, with each telling.

If you try to summarize what the book is about, you would be lost. To be sure, there are some overarching themes of honor, duty, and the unshakable love of family. But to say that, no less than saying the Bible is a book about sin, misses the point entirely. Red Earth and Pouring rain contains the material for at least ten novels. Each story is woven into the others and each leaves off where another begins. Like the nearly endless cycles of life that Hindu tradition tells us is the fate of the world, Chandra’s masterpiece resonates with the vibration of life itself.

Daniel Liebeskind’s Rocky Mountain High

Clearly, the standard was set by Frank Gehry’s gleaming museum in Bilbao and Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. Much has been written about how Gehry and his associates used sophisticated computer programs to scope out the complex forms that make up those dazzling buildings.

It always seemed to me, however, that the interiors of those spaces would be so reinforced and engineered that they would make the spaces claustrophobic and alienating, with essentially no vertical walls to enclose the space and windows punched out at strange, vertiginous angles.

Daniel Liebeskind’s new Denver Art Museum faces many of these challenges as well. Planted baldly to the south west of the older Hamilton wing, the prime motif of the new wing is enormous, slashing diagonals of space, bordering on the bombastic; and like the Gehry structures, sheathed in a gleaming metal skin.

To be sure, the outdoor shape of the building is dramatic and eye catching, especially by comparison to the forbidding castle-like Hamilton building, which looks like a ten story prison tower, except for the use of the beautiful dimensional stone-like surface and the elegant clerestory windows punched into that surface. But the Hamilton wing of the museum suffers in the way a lot of modernist/immediately post-modernist architecture does: while it may have looked grand when it was new, from the context of the times and the location, it has not aged gracefully. The Hamilton wing, which was completed in 2006, looks like it could join the ranks of those other modernist icons – Lincoln Center in NY, The Music Center in Los Angeles, The Kennedy Center in Washington, Empire Plaza in Albany – as dated and frankly, a little ugly. This is not to say that the Hamilton wing architecture resembles any of those other modernist milestones, but rather that the impulse of how you plan and build public structures is related.

The museum is set a bit outside of what has come to be called 'LoDo', the lively, popular neighborhood just south of downtown. The museum is in the Civic Center Golden Triangle neighborhood, adjacent to the State Capital, the Denver Mint, and the handsome Denver Public Library .

The great surprise is that inside Liebeskind’s angular prism-like structure, the interior spaces are lovely, slightly mysterious, in a playful hide-and-seek way, and they are quite welcoming.

While there may not be a right angle in the building (except for doors and individual window panes), the spaces never feel threatening or disorienting. Instead, they unfold in a series of surprising, graceful spaces, which seem quite happy to have humans within their volume.

It’s not easy to tell where you are, exactly. The windows in the Liebeskind wing are narrow, and looking out them doesn’t help much to orient the viewer.

Rumor has it that Liebeskind’s ideas for the museum were inspired by the nearby Rocky Mountains, the same inspiration Santiago Calatrava’s is purported to have used as the basis of his Denver International Airport main terminal. Their interpretations couldn’t be more different, but while Liebeskind faced endless challenges to replace the World Trade Center in New York, civic leaders in Denver largely embraces his adventurous ideas.

The result is one of the most eye-catching and welcoming spaces west of the Mississippi, and signals Denver’s arrival on the international scene, not just for it’s football team, mountains, and fresh air, but also for it’s art, culture and architecture.

NB: Form Magazine has just announced that Calatrava will oversee additions to the Denver Airport; the designs for which are typically dramatic and compelling. Take a look at Form's report for the details.

New Therapies Could Revolutionize HIV Treatment

This article in the MIT Technology Review journal outlines a novel new treatment for HIV that not only shows great promise, it could revolutionize how not only HIV is treated, but also how a wide range of infections that could respond to genetic therapies.

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Technology Review: Blogs: TR Editors' blog: Scientists Engineer Stem Cells to Fight HIV
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/24502/

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Jon Beaupre's Publish2 Profile:
http://www.publish2.com/journalists/jon-beaupre/

Where Have all the Glaciers Gone?

In the fall of 2009, I had the great pleasure of participating in a reporting trip to Peru with my much admired colleague Claes Andreasson, to cover a number of powerful and moving stories connected with environmental change in that amazing country. Over the course of two weeks, we recorded 30 interviews, 24 hours of audio, 16 hours of video, and close to 700 photos. For me, the trip was as much a luxury escape from Los Angeles, school, and the weekly drill of my life. The circumstances weren't luxurious, but getting away was. For Claes, this trip shows how he earns his bread and butter. There were so many stories that we followed, but I am only posting this one video as an overview of what we accomplished.

What do you put in the bird-cage?

Elizabeth Churchill's carefully reasoned take on the future of news is as much a nostalgic reminiscence of a medium that is fading. It's not simply a 'woe-is-me' take however, but an insightful analysis of the current media environoment.
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interactions magazine
http://interactions.acm.org/content/?p=1272

William Vollman's Brand of Imperialism

William Volman



William T. Vollman is consistently one of California's most provocative and prolific writers. His 'novels' are set in as disparate locales as the mountains of Afghanistan, Soviet era Berlin, and colonial Jamestown Virginia. His latest work takes on the Imperial valley of extreme south eastern California. This is the New York Times preview of the book.

I'll have more to say about Vollman a bit later, when I have some time to write...

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William T. Vollmann, an Author Without Borders - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/books/29vollman.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

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Legislation to Increase Accountability for University Foundations & Auxiliaries Passes Key Committee

Legislation to Increase Transparency & Accountability in

University Foundations & Auxiliaries Passes Key Committee
Senate Bill (SB) 218 comes in response to financial scandals involving foundations in the already cash-strapped state university system

Legislation to make the spending practices of California State University subsidiary organizations and foundations more transparent was approved by the Assembly Appropriations Committee Wednesday.

Senate Bill 218 – authored by Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) – updates the California Public Records Act to include campus and statewide auxiliary organizations at CSU, University of California and California Community Colleges. The bill – which is co-sponsored by CFA and the California Newspaper Publishers Association – was passed unanimously by the committee with just one abstention.

“Placing state college and university auxiliaries under the authority of the public records act will safeguard the use of taxpayer funds and provide much needed accountability and oversight to state policymakers,” said CFA President Lillian Taiz, a professor of History at CSU Los Angeles. At the CSU alone, these auxiliaries manage more than a billion dollars with little or no public oversight.

As legally separate tax-exempt entities, they are not currently covered by the California Public Records Act, even though the universities that form these subsidiaries are. According to data from the CSU Chancellor’s Office, 20% of the CSU’s $6.7 billion budget is funded by these auxiliaries and foundations.

“This legislation will enable us to pull back the curtains that hide these foundations and ensure that taxpayer dollars for our public universities are used as they were intended and not for the pet projects and slush funds of campus administrators,” said Taiz.

The bill must now be voted on by the full Assembly, perhaps as early as next week. The bill previously passed the state Senate by a margin of 35-1 and has received zero no-votes thus far in the Assembly.

Earlier this year, a campus foundation at Sonoma State University was found to have used donated funds to provide huge personal loans to a former foundation board member. Some of this money may never be recovered. This money was intended to fund scholarships for qualified students.

There are currently 87 CSU-related non-profit auxiliary organizations connected with the 23 CSU campuses and/or the CSU Chancellor’s Office. CSU auxiliaries often operate campus bookstores, concessions and student unions, manage foundations to benefit students, and operate campus parking facilities, to name a few of their functions.

Many newspaper editorial boards from across the state have come out in support of SB 218, including the Los Angeles Times, the Sacramento Bee and the Riverside Press Enterprise.

NB: On Oct. 11 of this year, Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill, which had passed both houses of the state legislature with seemingly overwhelming support. One can only imagine that the UC and CSU systems together brought to bear considerable pressure on a governor who would not benefit much by passage of this bill. Needless to say, the veto was a great disappointment to advocates for an open and transparent operation of the state's two higher education pillars.

Gay Marriage and Women in the Military

While I disagree with many of his conclusions, this commentary on the changing roles of sex and gender is consistently provocative and a challenging analysis, by one of Colombia's most compelling commentators.

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Hombres casados y mujeres generales | ELESPECTADOR.COM
http://www.elespectador.com/columna156355-hombres-casados-y-mujeres-generales

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(Very) Strange Bedfellows

This is a fascinating story of how conservative icon Ted Olsen has taken up the cause of Gay Marriage. That's right, in SUPPORT OF, not opposed...compelling article in the NY Times

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Ted Olson's Supreme Court Adventure - Room for Debate Blog - NYTimes.com
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/ted-olsons-supreme-court-adventure/?hp

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Dems Give Up and Semblance of Bipartisanism

Health Care Legislation

In its typical fashion, the New York Times analysis of upcoming health care legislation is concise, accurate and reliable. If you don't have an interest in public policy, this might be considered boring, but for wonks like me, this is a good meal...

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Democrats Seem Set to Go It Alone on a Health Bill - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/19/health/policy/19repubs.html?hp

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Novel Economic Stimulus Package

Her name was Shannon, and she was the tallest, most beautiful woman I think I had ever seen in all of my 18 or so years. It had never occurred to me that I would find myself in the lobby of Joe Conforte’s Mustang Ranch, selecting a woman from the line up the same way you chose sides for softball. Frankly, I didn’t know what would happen, but at 18, the idea of asking for and getting sex seemed miraculous. My close buddy Jim had “connections” which meant more or less that with the little piece of cardboard, printed with some numbers on it, would equal someone putting her hands all over my body. But that’s the way it worked. Jim had selected a tall red head, as I recall, and Shannon threaded her way through the maze of rooms to her tiny, windowless space. She looked at the card Jim had given me, and said, “OK, just a minute…” and left the room with the card. When she came back, we got to work…



Legalized prostitution has been a part of Nevada’s landscape for a long, long time. While there were notorious red light districts in the gold and silver rush ghost towns of old Nevada, there was perhaps no more famous purveyor of sex than Joe Conforte. The millions of dollars he made from the world famous Mustang Ranch was paid out in taxes to Storey County, where I grew up in the county seat Virginia City. He was written about widely, including a couple of notable articles in Rolling Stone, Look Magazine, and The Boston Globe.

But by the 1990s, Conforte had managed to burn a lot of bridges, and was accused of not only bribing any number of county officials, but also of underpaying his taxes by millions of dollars. He did what any self-respecting pimp would do: he got his money out of the country and moved to Brazil. You should check out his story: Google Joe Conforte and Mustang Ranch.

Prostitution poses some fundamental questions about life. It is at once the greatest betrayal of innocence and the most pragmatic business available. Most sensible people know better than trying to legislate morality, but remain uncomfortable with the issue of sex for money. It’s a hypocritical position – even for me – on one hand to condemn the idea of prostitution, while justifying the capitalistic egalitarianism of it all on the other. Oh, and possibly engaging in the commerce as well.

I even have one friend who believe that it is Johns who are being exploited. They are, reasons my friend, paying for what might under other circumstances be given for free.

Joe Conforte









In any case, since its legalization in Storey County in 1971 (my visit would have been in 1972 or so), the ‘cat houses’ as locals call them, have been limited to rural counties of the state, an not allowed from the bustling gaming metropolises of Las Vegas, Reno and Lake Tahoe. Those same (hypocritical) civic leaders felt legalized prostitution in those big casino areas would discourage families from visiting. This led to some of the biggest and best known brothels being located within a 30 mile radius of those big gaming centers.

The economic downturn has caused some of these communities to reconsider that reality, as you can see in this Neal Karlinsky portrait of brothel owner Dennis Hoff on ABC Nightline, Feb. 5, 2009. The 6:40 video even features a brief sequence shot in my home town of Virginia City.

Got Milk of Human Kindness?

There were a lot of emotions that swept over me watching Sean Penn's latest performance as San Francisco gay activist Harvey Milk. First off, it's a dazzling performance, with a gentle physical take on Harvey Milk. Penn found a sweetness and a believability in the character that was something of a revelation. Of course, we didn't expect a flouncing, prissy Harvey Milk - he was neither of those things. But Penn has shown himself again and again that often being among those called "the best of their generation" means turning down the fireworks to find some inner truth. Ditto James Franco as Milk's handsome boyfriend Scott. By comparison to Franco's performance in last summer's Spider Man, this is one of the most under-played and restrained performances of Franco's career, and he shimmers in the role. Even Emile Hirsch, who made friends with Penn last summer in "Into the Wild", and whom never seemed even vaguely "twinky", comes off as a sweet, genial Cleve Jones, equal parts youthful impetuousness and fiery activist. Ironically, the argument could be made that it was ultimately Jones who had a greater, more lasting effect on society even than Harvey Milk, a decade after the Milk episodes, as an AIDS activist, and a founder of The Quilt Project.

The heady years of the late seventies rush back to many of us, especially those with ties to San Francisco - remembering those rallies, marches and vigils in the Castro, and electrifying reality of gay pride, and the sense that the world really could be changed with just a few dedicated people standing up for what is right.

But Penn is also embroiled in a controversy for his support of dictators like Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Fidel Castro in Cuba. As outlined by Patrick Goldstein in a recent edition of the LA Times, Penn comes off somewhat hypocritical in his support for a number of regimes which have never treated LGBT people very fairly. This has to pose something of a conflict for the politically savvy Penn, who has never made his liberal, anti-Bush policies a secret. One wonders how he will resolve, either publicly or privately, the apparent contradiction of his loving, even reverent portrayal of one of Gay America's icons, and his support for those dictators.

Nonetheless, Gus Van Sant's treatment of the material was moving, even if the device of having Milk dictate his tale into a tape recorder, ostensibly prior to being assassinated, seemed strained, and some of the TV footage had the ring of "see, this really did happen, here it is on TV" - even if the actual news footage was produced just for this film. You have to assume there is supposed to be a sense that this was the way it was if we show it as a TV sequence. These quibbles detract nothing from the solid performances and the utterly affecting material.

Van Sant dips his Penn in Milk writes in magic ink.

His Name Shall Be Called Wonderful

They’re not exactly the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or the Cathedral Choir of St. John the Divine in New York or Saint Sulpice in Paris. They’re a Pretty Darned Good civic choir in Pasadena, and as a PDG choir, they are one of hundreds around the country, made up of executives, teachers, house wives and musicians looking for meaningful expression in their lives.

I’m not denigrating the PDG Pasadena Master Chorale, it’s just that there are a lot of really wonderful choirs to be found, so in addition to their sweet tone, and their challenging selection of numbers, there had to be something else about tonight’s concert that touched me so much.

Yes, you’ve probably heard of Benjamin Brittten and even the renaissance writer Michael Praetorious, but have you ever heard of Morten Lauridsen or Henryk Gorecki? I hadn't either, so, no, it had to be something else.

As I sat there in the nave of the First Congregational Church, listening to the second part of the concert – selections from Handel’s Messiah – the warmth of the music washed over me and sent me deep into thoughtful revery.

So first off, it has to be that Mr. Handel hit me somewhere meaningful. At a time when central European powers, the Hapsburgs, the Bourbons, and the Maria Thereses are setting the tone of the late renaissance, a Brit stands out for having composed one of the great pieces of music in the western canon (well, one Brit who was a transplanted German). While his “Music for the Royal Fireworks” and “Water Music” are dazzling in their own right, it is squarely on the history and reputation of his great masterwork “Messiah” (not THE Messiah!) that he has inspired and moved people, educated or not, since that day in 1742 when it debuted in a small concert hall in Dublin.

The quartet which led off this portion of the show here in Pasadena was sweet, and charming in its way. We could see that this would be a serious, if truncated version of the great oratorio, featuring just some highlights of the twenty-plus song cycle, sort of the ‘greatest-hits’ selections.

The early pieces “And the Glory of the Lord” and “Surely He Hath Born Our Griefs” were solid, competent and moving. And who can argue with the bombast and hummability of the Halleluja chorus.

But strangely for me, it was the ecstatic and lyrical “For Unto Us a Child Is Born” that raised a lump in my throat.

I don’t think it was because of the religious sentiment – I’m far too cynical to succumb to that sort of thing.

Rather, I think it is that in this beautiful, joyful refrain, this most British of compositions (composed by a German nonetheless) captures the sense of western civilization as it is declaring itself the most important power on the planet. And when I say power, I don’t mean mere military might or commercial domination. Rather, I mean these tones, voices and instruments have been organized in a way that celebrates western civilization, that joyfully proclaim to the rest of the planet that our music – and by extension, our art, our architecture, our commerce, our literature – has triumphed over the lumpen anguish of the dark ages.

The beautiful passages taken from Isiah say that this is more than simple engineering, this is art, this is man’s highest aspiration, this is western civilization, with God on its side, triumphantly saying to the world:

“…the government shall be upon His shoulder;
and his name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor,
the Mighty God,
the Everlasting Father,
the Prince of Peace.

We may have equaled those refrains since 1742 in great works by Beethoven, Haydn, and modern masters – Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Faulkner – but we have never exceeded them.

Prop 8 Backlash

Of all the amazing “firsts” to come out of the 2008 election, it is the just-developing rift between some African American LGBT figures and the rest of the “No on 8” crowd.

“8”, of course, referring to Proposition 8, which halted California’s short-lived Gay Marriage experiment.

Pollsters have noted that the same black voters who so enthusiastically supported the candidacy of Barack Obama, in large numbers supported Prop. 8, and essentially bought into the argument that our children would be ‘taught gay marriage’ in schools, and that would be a bad thing…

Of course, there are numerous black leaders who voted against the measure, not the least of whom is my friend and colleague Prof. Ron Buckmire, with whom I serve on the board of an LGBT broadcasting group. Prof. Buckmire was quoted in the Nov. 8 LA Times as saying “There is a lot of work to be done in the black community.”

But an astonishing number of black voters either felt there were not enough rights to go around for everyone, and blacks should get them first, or there are secretly deep currents of homo-gender-phobias we haven’t noticed before.

Latest to pile into the debate is LA blogger Jasmyne Cannick, who wrote in that same edition of the LA Times charging Gay leaders with essentially ignoring the plight of people of color, and only calling on them when they needed support. In short, Gay America, says Ms. Cannick, is every bit as racist and prejudiced as main-stream America, and they shouldn’t be surprised that Blacks voted two to one for the measure.

Ms. Cannick was briefly also involved in the broadcast venture for with Prof. Buckmire and I work.

I think for many of us who marched with our Black brothers and sisters, who signed petitions, who worked the tables at the street fairs and parades, who participated in boycotts, who insisted on inclusion in our faculties, boards, and governance and who have genuinely tried to right the wrongs of other generations and other times, those charges sting.


But I think it is also counter-productive to make claims that “white people think this way” or “black people think this way”… That’s too easy an explanation for something that is much more complicated.

I remain committed to the causes of equality, at every level, within any group. If our Black leaders feel that not enough has been done, I hope they will step into the positions of leadership and inspire by their deeds, not condemn by their bitterness.

LA Times Story “Why gays, blacks are divided on Prop. 8
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/orange/la-me-gayblack8-2008nov08,0,2231845.story


LA Times Commentary by Jasmyne Cannick(I can't get these links to work, so you'll have to copy and paste till I get them fixed...sorry...)
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-cannick8-2008nov08,0,3669070.story

NPR segment featuring Jasmyne Cannick
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96751056

NPR blog mentioning Jasmyne Cannick’s comments
http://www.npr.org/blogs/newsandviews/2008/11/blackgay_prop_8_backlash.html - commentBlock