Two, One… ENGINES ON

This deserves two posts.

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I’m too lazy and hot (climate wise) to do two whole posts about two performances at one time.

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How would writing two posts demonstrate the sturdy regime one must adhere to when one is  as confident an underachiever as I have proclaimed to be?

Lift Off.

Suddenly, after decades away, I am called to the Beckman Institute Auditorium to perform on not just one night but two nights and for two different projects about one place. It was a three martini week.

Wednesday evening was the Celebration of the Arroyo. For my part, a poetry seminar for newspaper editors and city councilmen. The next morning, Larry Wilson of the Pasadena Star News would tweet a photograph of me with the caption, “An owl on her head.”

Photo by Tom Holaday

Maybe it was stress. I don’t know. Something went terribly wrong. Trees are growing next to me inside the auditorium. Some of them are NON-NATIVES. I peeled away from the squadron, as my friend Loretta often says, and the whole thing turned into a striptease with trees. It was very unfortunate -as evinced in this rare photo taken by the Arroyo Seco Foundation during my performance:
http://www.arroyoseco.org/images/20130529_celebrate/slideshow.php?directory=.&currentPic=7

All systems go.

Saturday afternoon at the TACIT House the preparation begins in the blazing hot outdoor scene shed. We read the play and work out some stage business. I’m just learning how to read, inexplicably. Why can’t I move my eyes off the page? Butterflies. Stage fright. This is why I left the theatre years ago!

We have launch. (It was a pizza from Blaze.)

My character in the play is Dr. Wright, Principal of Muir High School. I don’t come in until page 19, so the director Brian Brophy, gives me a rain water stick and a tube of boingo to make helicopter sounds. I go a little crazy with the boingo, cupping my palm over the end and pounding so loudly that the playwright, Marcus Renner, leaves his seat to get me to stop.

Floating.

The first line in the play is spoken by the little boy character:

JEFF

“Why does the Echo Princess stay in the tunnels?”

Jeff is played by a beautiful little girl with long hair stuffed into a boyscout cap. Her real life dad is a nuclear physicist. He is in the play too. A disc golfer. It’s Hahamongna. It’s all about the Haha. But where are these tunnels? Artistic license? Elsewhere in the Arroyo Seco?

I know about the tunnels under Caltech. A play about those tunnels would be far more psychedelic, I suspect. More like the episode of Mad Men when Sterling meets Dr. Leary. Tune in, turn on, drop out (I did, of course, and look what happened?)

It was wonderful to see so many of my friends there for both performances. Afterwards, I forgot to get a program for my scrapbook. Luckily, Kelly gave me hers with her extra special notations on it.

The whole week was so over-the-top fun I can hardly believe it really happened.

Thank you to all who made my participation in these two events possible.

I’VE LANDED!

-PROGRAM SEQUENCE ENGAGED-

Cast List

with handwritten notes by WCGB (West Coast Grrlie Blather)

Abdicating responsibility

Pasadena, CA  June 20, 2011    The Pasadena City Council continues to ignore their own real natural power to enact permanent protections for the Hahamongna wetlands and watershed that they own. Why? That’s the big $100,000,000,000,000 question.

Is it just laziness? Is it bureaucratic nightmare? Is it political?

Ever heard, “You can call  me ____ or you can call me ____, but you doesn’t have to call me _________“? It’s stomach churning this thing. It’s so complicated.

When a property owner doesn’t mow their lawn in the City of Pasadena, flouts the Municipal Code and lets the grass “exceed 10 inches in height”,  that owner receives a Code Violation and a fine. What if a city, that prides itself on being GREEN lets a bunch of L.A. County heavy diesel earth moving equipment operators (International Union of Operating Engineers Local 12) mow their lawn? What if their “lawn” is actually filled with natural filtration grasses, frogs, ducklings, and bunny dens?

What if their “lawn” isn’t really a lawn at all, but a water supply for the community? That is an awesome responsibility that an ordinary homeowner doesn’t have. Most Homeowner’s Insurance Policies don’t cover such things.

Maybe the City of Pasadena has more comprehensive coverage for people injured on their property by lack of water, or water that is contaminated? That must be one hell of a premium. Is it even affordable?

Instead of paying a huge premium, why not pretend the problem doesn’t exist? Why not abdicate responsible ownership  (a tiny white lie)? Magical thinking is not just reserved for three year olds.

That’s what the City of Pasadena is doing by not addressing what is going on in Hahamongna, in the upper Arroyo, and in the parts of the Arroyo Seco that they own. Unfortunately, keeping this information on the down-low is not working out so well. Some citizens are asking questions.

Dr. Robert James Tait shows up UNINVITED to a city council meeting. Who is this guy? Is he really a DOCTOR?

If that’s not bad enough, beautiful women suit up to talk about the thing that doesn’t exist. Reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring does not give you any power here. Be gone!

Myopia? Unparalleled possibility…

OH, what a headache.

Listening to Dr. Robert by The Beatles

Listening to some sweet homeboys

Tonight, I’m listening to Greg and Thom Moore, the Moore Brothers.  The particular CD I have on right now is called Now Is The Time For Love. It’s not their latest, but is the one that I find most inspiring when I paint. There’s something natural and leafy about it. It resides in the air around here. It feels like Altadena, the region above Pasadena up against the mountains. The sound affects me like the intense Altadena sunlight shining down on my cheeks, freckling them.

It’s really no accident their music seems to talk to the flowers, the fruit, and the rest of the molecules floating around this place.  The Moore Brothers grew up in Altadena.  They are two young men that channel  Simon and Garfunkel with a little bit of the worldly William S. Burroughs thrown in. They are their own  unique sound and wonderful original very open-earthy-Altadena-esque concoction.

I’m not accustomed to writing music reviews. So, this is not a music review. It’s only that I’ve been thinking about my children, and their friends. They seem to possess a natural beauty, a glow. It’s different. It’s not mainstream. I would say it is healthy and charming but with a confidence in themselves. There’s no shame. They stand as who they are: An uncomplicated beauty that is as complex as all of the elements that make up a place like Altadena.

There is no place quite like Altadena, and no people quite like its people.

Racially, Altadena is mostly black and white; famous Black Panther activists, and white, white Caltechian nerds. Their children grew up appreciating plants, music, and nature… and being connected to it. All of it mixed together has created a lovely tuned-in sort of atmosphere.

In this CD, you can hear the farmy influence… Angst is there too,  the innocence of exploring love.

Falling

dream, has it been changing your way?
rolling down a hill, we’re falling.
please, don’t take away this day.
we’re trying to help each other out but we’re falling.

falling, falling.
what is this dreaming?
falling.

please, dont take away this day.
rolling down a hill, we’re falling.
dream, has it been changing your way?
were trying to help each other out
but were falling.

falling, falling.
what is this dreaming?
falling.

and in the moonlight, i didn’t know what to do.
and in the moonlight, i didn’t know what to do.

From this same ingenious generation of Altadena born around the ’70-80s,  the creation of a Co-Op organic grocery store, and a burgeoning  goat farm- cheesemaking, chickens, and all things grown organic from Mariposa Farms. This is also on the spot of the Zane Grey Estate, where on Sunday, May 29th, there is an Urban Farmers Market from 1-4 pm. So many innovative ideas are coming from these lovely children of Altadena that it’s too much to list.

The Altadena Public Library has no doubt been an influence on the Moore Brothers music as evinced in this sweet tune, Sorting Books:

…just to prove she’s sorting books 

that no one ever reads

she knows time

she’s my wooden guide

precious stone

she’ll come rolling home with her crown and her skin and her bones

you go to bed with his soap on your tongue

you smell like a lemon and I’m almost won

in the curl you complain the feather’s too warm

just to prove your sorting books

that no one ever reads…

I know what you’re thinking,

MG, there’s a lot of non-sequiturs in this post, and in these lyrics. (and maybe you’ve got those lyrics all wrong!)

What can I say? This is how some things get processed. It’s not always neat and tidy. Perfection is not the tool of nature, although it is perfect–isn’t it?

Listening to this CD calmed my rattled nerves tonight. I came from a meeting at La Canada High School that was called by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works where they presented their plans to carve up Hahamongna with their big ten cubic yard carrying dump trucks. Nice. When asked about all of the wildlife in the wetlands they would be destroying they replied, It’s not their job to be concerned about that.

What a mess. It’s Pasadena’s mess visited upon the residents of Altadena, and all of the natural wild critters that live in the wetlands. It’s too bad the City Council of Pasadena has no concern for LIFE in Hahamongna or for the people surrounding in Altadena. What terrible neighbors and stewards of the environment we are!

It’s an unseemly deal with the devil when one city (Pasadena) blames the county (Los Angeles) and the county blames one city. It leaves us in the middle with nothing.

Go to the next Pasadena City Council Meeting, Monday June 6th, and let them know that all of the route plans the county presented are devastating to either neighborhoods and/or wildlife. Make sure Councilman Victor Gordo, and Councilman Steve Madison are awake and listening since these two are suffering from severe testosterone poisoning, and are encouraging the rape of Hahamongna (and Altadena) most emphatically.  Geese, I hope they recover soon.

The Moore Brothers played May 14, 2011 cancer benefit in Altadena. (My son-in-law on the drums)

Hahamongna/Devil's Gate Dam Haul Routes, Meeting at La Canada HS May 26, 2011

This rendering shows the existing sports field,

and the small parking lot. The rest of the area surrounding is beautiful existing woodlands/wetlands to be destroyed by LA County removing sediment, and then further developed by the City of Pasadena into what they believe is ” a park” and “open space.” Many living beings will die in this Hahamongna Holocaust. It’s all about revenues, isn’t it folks? In the end, it’s what the capitalist system is all about. You have only to feast your eyes every year on the fabulous parade of dead flowers down Colorado Blvd. to know how capitalist Pasadena is.