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The Virgin Guadalupe and I

The Virgin Guadalupe and I

8/11/2006 9:13:38 AM

It was a rather ordinary August afternoon in San Marcos, Guatemala. The sky was beginning to fill with the usual afternoon clouds that would soon make for scattered showers that are so common this time of year. I  was going about town with Lucia, my seven-year-old daughter, doing some errands – a spool of white thread, socks, stop at the supermarket for the usual. Suddenly I saw her. She saw me. Our eyes met and I knew at that moment I had to have her. Her hands were together as though in prayer, and out from the crowded street, she called my name.

“Pablo, how are you these days? I need to speak with you. The matter is urgent.”

I quickly looked around, wondering whom it was that had spoken, when I suddenly realized it was she – the poster of The Virgin Guadalupe. Among the other tacky posters around, two puppy dogs with some corny slogan in beveled font, Don Johnson next to a Mustang looking so cool, she stood out as something of exquisite beauty and value.

“I am fine Guadalupe. And why do you inquire?”

“In the last five hundred years, after my meeting with Juan, we have built thousands of fine temples, and given peace and joy to the down trodden and suffering.”

“I know, there are many fine churches throughout the land now. They ring their bells early and late. Is this something that you can help me with? It often wakes me early in the morning, especially on the weekends. I believe it is recorded bells too, which I find cheap and disingenuous.”

“I hear you clearly my dear Pablo. I find it strange that the bells never make a mistake as well. If they are recorded, the least they could do is play in tune. I will do what I can.”

“But I am speaking to you now as merely a friend. I need your help. I have listened to the weeping, the sadness, the troubles and miseries of the people of this downtrodden land for five hundred years, and to be perfectly honest, I am a bit tired and depressed. Take me home with you.”

“You seem to be a person of great quality but I have never brought someone of your stature home. I think it would also make my wife a bit uncomfortable… you know another woman in the house and all.”

“My dear friend Pablo, I am a virgin and I intend to stay that way. Your wife should not worry. Besides I promise that I will just blend into the wall as best as I can.”

“But what of that little cherubic kid at your feet? Does he have to come along too?”

“Yes, he is my son. The Son of God. I fear waiting here in the bus station any longer will not be good for his health. You see he is not breathing too well the last few days. The fumes from all the buses are affecting his asthma. To be quite frank, because of all the noise, he has missed his nap all week and has been a real pill. He bugs me constantly for suckers and candy from all the venders who pass by. I do not think I can last much longer. Besides that, this Don Johnson guy next to me is really getting on my nerves. He thinks he’s soooooo cool. What an ego!”

“But I thought you were a virgin? Is your son adopted?”

“No he is not adopted. It is a long story and something that Joe, my former husband and I, have had to try to explain so many times… it is complicated. But do not fear. I am a woman of great quality and believe me, a virgin.”

Lucia and I stood on the narrow sidewalk and were truly captivated by the beauty of Guadalupe. We tried to ignore her pleas and walked away more than once, only to be called back by some sort of magical force. She had cast a spell on us. We had to have her. She seemed to be a work of art, unlike no other, in this culture-starved city.

We asked her master what was her price, thinking that perhaps she was holding our dear Guadalupe hostage, and would suggest an outrageous ransom. “Ten quetzals” she replied. I was astonished. A little over a dollar and I could free my new friend and her child from their misery.

As we walked home with Guadalupe rolled up, she continued to speak to me. “Pablo, thank you so much. I promise to look after you and your family. You know that nasty stomach infection you had. It was the water. Always brush your teeth with the bottled stuff. I promise, it won’t happen again.”

When we got home, we let Guadalupe have some space by herself at the end of the hall. She now looks after us daily. Her little kid who always hangs out at her feet no longer whines and is reading Mark Twain for a change. We all feel the arrangement is just grand.

From The Pelican Café Essays from Guatemala

The Pelican Café Essays
from Guatemala
By Paul Lyons
Available as Paperback for $10.00

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Where is Janice Raymond?

The Internet has a strange way of broadcasting value and worth. A forty-year-old book about transgender issues can be a cornerstone of critical thought at the time but then gets misquoted and passed off as old fashion. Today the book is out-of-print but fetches around $100 used on Amazon for a used hard cover edition. You have to wonder why the publisher does not make another printing? Modern books read like pop self-help books, quoting daytime TV shows and sourcing checklists of acceptable pronouns. The Transgender Empire written by a “radical lesbian feminist” (how did she ever get that label?) is both academic, historical and cuts to the chase and journeys deep into the topic. Below is just a short quote from the 1994 reprinting.

The medical model is also a disease model. And here exactly is the rub. If transsexualism is treated as a disease, then does desire qualify as disease? As Thomas Szasz asked in his New York Times review of The Transsexual Empire, does an old person who wants to be young suffer from the “disease” of being a “transchronological, ” or does a poor person who wants to be rich suffer from the “disease” of being a “transeconomical”? Does a Black person who wants to be white suffer from the “disease” of being a “transracial”?

All these questions, of course, raise larger social and political issues and remove these conjectural “diseases” from the medical/psychiatric framework.

From The Transgender Empire – Janice Raymond
Reprinted in 1994 by Teachers College Press, 1234 Amsterdam Avenue
New York, NY 10027
Originally published in 1979 by Beacon Press
Copyright © 1994 by Janice G. Raymond

Download the pdf

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Hector’s Hauling & Clean Up

Hector’s Hauling & Clean Up – Out with the old, in with the new – (415) 215-9120

Best hauling service in the outer mission district of San Francisco.

Highly recommended! I always get a kick out of Hector’s truck. The hand painted lettering just lets you know this is your guy when you need a bunch of crap moved, and moved ASAP.

Here are the before and after shots of my summer project – replacing a retaining wall. Hector hauled the concrete off to the dump. Swept it all up. Great guy. Excellent listener.

With Fencing – Pros

http://www.withfencing.com/

Need a retaining wall, these guys do it all the time

Lo Buglio Design

http://www.lobugliodesignbuild.com/

Need someone to give great advice on woodworking and construction. Nick is the guy.

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Open letter to Robert Thompson of NewsCorp

This is an open letter to Robert Thompson of NewsCorp. There is no link on your webpage on how to contact you so I thought I would write a letter. Sort of “old-school” don’t you think? I recently read Fake News and the Digital Duopoly in the April 5th version of the Wall Street Journal. Found it on a cafe table. Great op-ed, and I agree with everything in it. Clear and crisp writing and the article shed much needed light on lots of things.

Fake News and the Digital Duopoly
Google and Facebook have created a dysfunctional and socially destructive information ecosystem
Robert Thompson – Wall Street Journal

“publishers will routinely and selectively “unpublish” certain views and news.”

Robert Thompson – Fake News and the Digital Duopoly Wall Street Journal

I posted a piece on Facebook that was critical of Facebook and Google, the gist of which was just making sure all my “friends” know that Google and Facebook are private companies and that the space is NOT public and that they gather and mine your intimate personal history starting with – of course your birthday. This post of course disappeared from my history a few months later… never to be found again.

Your business model can’t be based on both intimate, gradual details about users and no clue whatsoever about rather obvious pirate sites.

I hate to tell you Mr. Thompson. Google and YouTube are the pirates. YouTube is one massive landscape of unlimited counterfeit movies and music. That should be the first thing addressed. It is called the revising of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It is wishful thinking that this will happen by the sense of goodwill and altruism of YouTube.

Read about it here –

https://sfjournal.net/blog/breaking-news-after-over-8-years-googles-content-id-system-is-still-in-beta/

 

and

 

DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT 18 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

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Mission and Valencia Street Repair Finished

Pretty refreshing that the city got around to doing some road repair on Mission Street at Valencia.  Por fin! This is a very busy intersection and in the repair they moved the bus stop further north which was a good move. Below are some composite creations of the old fading into the new. They did a pretty good job overall. Did some drainage work. More concrete! More concrete! Those buses are heavy!

(click om images)

San Jose Ave
Now just repair San Jose Ave. San Jose is a disaster and I challenge any city official to ride a bike down that bike lane. San Jose Ave has been like Swiss cheese for years.

The other amazing thing about San Jose is that for nine months the city and sometimes a contractor parks a backhoe at the corner of San Jose and Dolores Street. I know parking is bad in the city but parking a backhoe from months on end at San Jose and Dolores, a main thoroughfare  is pretty ridiculous.  Just finish the job! Maybe by the year 2020 San Jose will be resurfaced?

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BREAKING NEWS! We Insist! Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite – Temporarily out of stock.

$45.73 on amazon.com

Temporarily out of stock. Order now and we’ll deliver when available.

Great to hear that vinyl is still the go to medium! Booker Little on trumpet is completely amazing! This is an album that I am not familiar with that is perfect for these times. It is truly incredible that it is over 50 years since this was made. It gives you the feeling that in present times we are moving backwards

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Insist!

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San Francisco and the Saga of Terrible Roads

It was over a year ago in January of 2016 that I posted  the article below, imploring the San Francisco mayor Ed Lee to focus a bit more on infrastructure.  I called the mayor’s office and sent a print out of the post below to the mayor. No results.  The roads in San Francisco are simply terrible. It has been said that they are like the roads in a third world country. I must say that in most third world countries I have visited the road s are way better. Travel through Latin America. The roads are better.

https://sfjournal.net/blog/new-years-resolution-suggestion-for-mayor-ed-lee/

If you take the 14 Mission bus you get a feel for just how bad these roads are, as the bus is literally bouncing all over the road.  I mentioned this to a 14 Mission bus driver while departing from the bus and she said “all the roads in this city are really bad.” The wear and tear on the Muni buses must be great and the costs just get us down the road.

The San Francisco economy is bursting at the seams. Now is the time! How can the roads be in such ill-repair? One day last week while riding to work I saw a group of people meeting around a new sidewalk rock garden on Mission and Valencia. I asked a person what was going on and what was happening with the crappy roads. The man, evidently working for the city, said that they were schedule to repave this section of Mission this weekend but because of the rain it may be delayed. I asked about San Jose avenue a few blocks away and he said he had no idea. I am not confident anything will happen out here in the hinterland south of Cesar Chavez.

A year later here are the photos of the same places as the year before.

 

 

 

 

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A Day in the Post Office

Standing in line at the Onondaga post office, in the outer Mission in between Mission and Alemany I experienced an amazing moment of humanity this afternoon. I had just entered and was standing in the back of the line. A white guy around 35 years old, was yelling expletives at the post office teller, complaining that they did not have the correct size box. He was trying to mail a new skateboard deck and it did not fit in the standard size boxes. “What the fuck! We are living in California. No fuckin’ skateboard boxes. What the hell is this place? Give me a fucking box that will work!” At that moment a woman in line told the guy “Please stop swearing and treat the postal worker with some respect.”  The guy then sort of softened and confessed that his best friend had recently died and that he was in a real bad way.   He then tried to shove the skateboard into the box that was too small. Eventually, using two boxes and getting help from two people in line, they got the skateboard packed up. The woman, then at the teller expressed her condolences in a kind way. “ I am sorry for your loss.” “Yeah, it has been really hard.”

San Francisco. A place of many people. Asian, black, white, arab, latino all standing in that post office line, and at that moment the very fabric of society was at stake. Do we as a society accept the concept of people being rude and  abusive to one another? Is this a form of entertainment? Do we think that acting like a two year old when you are an adult is adequate? At that moment, the character of San Francisco was on display and we moved forward one small step. Civility and empathy these days  seems to be in short supply but I witnessed it there in the Onondaga post office.

A big thanks and shout out to Sandy Cressman. She was that woman in line at the Onondaga post office bringing some humanity to the situation.

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The U.S. Constitution and White House Interpretations

On the new United States President’s website https://www.whitehouse.gov/1600/constitution is a page about The U.S. Constitution. What is strange is that it is not the actual U.S. Constitution but an interpretation of The Constitution – so inconsistent with the strict constructionism or originalists so popular with conservatives these days. Is Scalia rolling over in his grave? Why would the U.S. Constitution be presented on the whitehouse.gov website this way? It is actually a form of disinformation or what is often now called fake news. Kids, remember to always refer to the original source not some hack’s interpretation of the document.

Let’s do a comparison.

First Amendment

Actual U.S. Constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Trump’s Whitehouse Website

The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

So far pretty good, but why not just publish the actual text and not how to think about the text. Then things get weird.

Second Amendment

Actual U.S. Constitution.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Trump’s Whitehouse Website

The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms.

In Trump’s version there is no mention of the “well regulated Militia.” As always, people see what they want to see and disregard the rest. What we are witnessing here is what George Orwell called “Newspeak.” A simplifying of words, meanings and vocabulary.

You can read the novel 1984 or see more information at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak.

Welcome to 2017. A few years late, but we finally made it to that totalitarian state.

Read the source!!!

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Toots Thielemans – An Epic Life

A bit late on this post but it does not really matter as Toots Thielemans was a timeless artist. His life and music were extraordinary. If you want to read the standard obit, peruse the the New York Times – Toots NY Times Obit. We will be hearing his music for years to come and his genius will live on.

If you want my take on great Toots Thielemans albums see https://sfjournal.net/blog/essential-toots-thielemans-albums/

As the year came to and end it was interesting that there was a lot of media covering the musicians who passed away in 2016. Prince, Bowie and George Michael seemed to get all the press. Interesting artists for sure but their lives and music were retold incessantly in print and on the radio. Toots on the other hand lived to 94, at least 30 years longer than the three above and played in so many genres and eras it was a life that had a Forrest Gump quality. He was places that defined music and art for years. Imagine in the late 40s playing with Charlie Parker and then Benny Goodman the next year – two people who were at the top of American music but in very different social and cultural worlds. For many years he was working in New York just scraping along, playing jazz gigs and studio dates – TV commercials and movies. Then an amazing era where he played Brazilian music. A few years on salary with ABC studios. Imagine that happening today!

One thing left out of the usual obits is the fact that where he finally made some money was with writing a song called Ladyfingers that was recorded on Herb Albert’s Whipped Cream & Other Delights It was a simple little ditty but with every album sold – over a million, Toots got a penny. So he took his $100,000 and bought a house and probably breathed a bit easier.

There is an interesting eBook you can read about Toots written by his friend Paula Marckx. If is more like just hanging out with Toots for a few hours but fun to get his take on his life and the twentieth century.

The Sound of Toots Thielemans
by Paula Marckx

Within the book are a lot of links to unusual videos. Toots traveled a lot and did all kinds of commercials. Here is on from 1982 in Japan. Pretty hilarious!

http://adland.tv/commercials/suntory-toots-thielemans-1982-100-japan

Anyway, rest in peace Toots. Thanks for all the great music. Most people probably have heard Toots from the theme to Sesame Street and various pop albums. One that I remember that had that enchanting Toots Thielemans solos and sound is Night Game by Paul Simon, a song that is never ever covered. Too difficult to pull off with the changing meters and that amazing harmonica solo.

We will be discovering more of Toots work for years to come. It was an epic life.