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M.T. Karthik

~ performances, works, writings from 1977 – 2017

M.T. Karthik

Tag Archives: John

The GBC Reader, Issue 5: John Shea With Fresh SP-in-the-8 Data, Brisbee Covers the State of the Shift and some Cool Barry Lamar

25 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by mtk in GBC Readers

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AT&T, Barry, baseball, Bonds, Brisbee, chronicle, chronicles, coach, eight, eighth, giants, Grant, hits, hitting, infield, John, Lamar, less, marlins, McCovey, miami, mlb, park, pitcher, return, sf, Shea, shift, slot, spot

Giants got a couple back against the Marlins, but the last one we should have won … and let get away. Josh Osich may just need a second after the week he had. Consecutive beanings of the same DBacks player the second of which led to a bench-clearing, followed by giving up the dinger that cost us the last game. Ouch.

Just a quick Reader this week to feature, as usual, a few good bits you may have missed. In the parlance of our times ICYMI:

John Shea has an excellent piece on early returns from the experiment of using the Starting Pitcher in the 8-spot (which we of course love so much here at GBC). It’s too early to say anything definitive, but I LOVE that Bochy is committed to a serious sample size. This early data will be immensely useful down the road.

Brisbee has data about the infield shift and how the G-men aren’t doing it as much that is pretty interesting.

And with Barry Lamar back in town with the Marlins, Gutierrez at ESPN wrote about it, thusly, but I really loved this moment: Bonds seems so relieved of bad and idiotic and rude and hateful press. It is nice to see him laugh … and to hear him brag about himself again!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

21st Century Elections

07 Wednesday Nov 2012

Posted by mtk in elections, NYC, S.F., San Antonio

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2000, 2004, barack, Bush, chief, City, count, editor, F.Kennedy, fiasco, Filippacchi, Florida, frank, George, Hachette, in, Jeb, John, Jr., Karl, kerry, Lalli, lawsuits, loss, magazine, manhattan, new, obama, publisher, Rove, swiftboat, vote, W., york

In Spring of 2000, Hachette-Filippacchi Inc.,hired me and a half-dozen others to work as independently-contracted temporary employees to fact-check and conduct research for George magazine – whose founder and editor-in-chief John F. Kennedy, Jr. had been killed in a light-plane crash amidst fog off the coast of Maine eight months before. They hired us to ensure George remained, in the wake of its founder’s passing, an audible element of the political discourse during the Election of 2000.

As a national magazine which was read by hundreds of thousands of voters in many states, particular focus was paid to the Presidential Election between Vice President Al Gore and George W. Bush, the Governor of Texas.

My fellow employees, under Editor-in-Chief Frank Lalli, were a tight-knit, smart and savvy crew. In fact, on Election Night we were all together at Mr. Lalli’s beautiful upper westside home where he had invited us to watch returns. But Karl Rove’s fat face and a flipped state later, many of us were back in the office. A few of us stayed up most of the night and by 10 a.m. I was not alone in the office when I was posting coverage of Florida on the George website.

Though admittedly not a heavy-hitter politically, George was engaged throughout the Election and maintained an immense audience of voting readers before the magazine was finally brought to an end in 2001.

In 2003 I covered Schwarzenegger’s Election via Recall of Davis for KPFK, 90.7fm Los Angeles.

I also covered The Election of 2004 and the Presidential Race between George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry for KPFK, 90.7fm Los Angeles and in part for Pacifica Radio. Some of that 2004 Election work exists here and online at Pacifica’s Audioport and in the Pacifica Radio Archives, but I have complete digital copies of everything I did for KPFK and Pacifica between 2003 and 2005 backed up on disc in my studio as well.

In 2008, I was no longer working as a journalist, but did cover Obama’s Victory in Iowa for KPFK and produced short Audio-Visual Installments for Freshjive on the Internet. These were amateurish and clunky by design, yet carried considerable data for anyone who had tuned in to the broadcasts I produced for KPFK four years before.

When Obama won in ’08, I was with Lloyd Dangle, who hosted a book signing and Election Night Returns Party at the Riptide in San Francisco. Earlier in the day I had a drink with former SF Mayor Willie Brown at the St. Regis – we discussed Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s plans for appointing a Senator to replace disgraced Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, forced to retire.

This year,I did not work as a journalist, but rather observed as a reader of the news media and a regular Californian voter.

The biggest single predictor of the elections of the 21st century has to be the margin of difference in registrations for the two major parties.

There are many reasons for this: smaller parties are being absorbed and disappearing for lack of membership, corporate interests fund the two major parties only, people threatened by one of the two parties runs to join the other and the demography of the nation is changing.

I have successfully predicted the last two elections as a result of my study of data and my knowledge of voting history. I think I see the electorate again.

Some points on 21st Century US Elections:

It’s impossible to write a blog about all my experiences voting and covering General Elections in the United States in the 21st Century, but suffice it to say there is a distinct difference between these and the Elections of the latter half of the 20th century, in which I also participated.

Much of this is discussed in my talk Political Media, Messages and More.

2003 was the Recall Election and spawned recalls in the 21st Century because of Schwarzenegger’s success.

2008 was the Youtube Election.

2012 was the Twitter Election.

Money and media are the driving forces of what has become a political system mired in divided, brutal contests between two immense parties which are financed primarily by corporations and special interest groups that define their policies.

We are in desperate need of a new Federal Elections Reform Act, as was passed in the early 1970’s.

Our democracy is sick. Hardly half the people with the right to vote even participate.

We need to update, nationalize and standardize voting procedures and make them more secure. We need to increase registration and participation. We need to subsidize the creation and maintenance of additional parties in the face of the massive expenditures made by Republicans and Democrats that have taken elections out of the reach of the common person. We need proportional representation in Congress.

Have been saying all of this for years, and it has only gotten worse. Here’s hoping the young people who are increasing in numbers at the polls pull off what my generation couldn’t.

The stuff that dreams are made of …

04 Wednesday Jul 2012

Posted by mtk in baseball, our son, S.F., travel

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Bogart, crime, Dashiell, film, Hammet, hotel, Humphrey, Huston, John, Lorre, noir, Peter, Pickwick, room, scene, statue, The Maltese Falcon, title

We took a room at The Pickwick for a night and streamed The Maltese Falcon online so we could watch it in the hotel where it was filmed.

with OMM

John Huston’s classic 1941 version of the Dashiell Hammet novel, The Maltese Falcon, was filmed in part at The Pickwick Hotel in San Francisco. The film stars Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade and features Peter Lorre.

The next day we checked out and walked down to AT&T Park to watch the Giants vs the Reds on 2002 Team Bobblehead day – we got two Barry Bonds bobbleheads.

The stuff that dreams are made of …

Lee Wins, Avalos Gets SFBG Clip-n-Voters and We Lose (Again)

09 Wednesday Nov 2011

Posted by mtk in politics

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Avalo, Avalos, Brown, Ed, gavin, instant runoff voting, John, Karthik, Lee, Mayor, newsom, rajan, san francisco, sf, voter turnout

Hardly anyone has voted.

That remains the story. Can a city official even be considered elected if a minority of the voting age population participates in the election? How is this democracy? We should pass a mandatory voting law for the City.

We must also protect Instant Runoff Voting, which did in fact force greater coalition building and less rancor amongst candidates. It did.

The need to be chosen as someone’s Number Two or Three kept these candidates honest and the results reflect it. Ed Lee’s silent treatment worked beautifully, and everybody who didn’t have a second or third choice in mind selected the Interim Mayor by default.

What a way to back into the job. Sound familiar? It’s what they accused Jean Quan of in Oakland. But guess what? it isn’t RCV, it’s voter turnout that’s the problem.

I am most disappointed in Melissa Griffin and her unfounded assault on Instant Runoff Voting or Ranked Choice Voting. This new system is good for democracy and proves useful at the aforementioned coalition-building and in encouraging more candidates (like myself, Joanna Rees, Green Terry Baum and many others) to participate. Ed Lee supporters should vociferously defend Instant Runoff, or Ranked Choice Voting.

Here’s a repost of my IRV PSA from several months back.

That said, everything has happened exactly as I expected since the Ethics Commission agreed Ed Lee could run – the main reason I dropped out.

This was a statistical inevitability. It’s a confirmation election – made from negotiations between Gavin Newsom’s crowd, Willie Brown’s and Rose Pak’s – to ensure that Ed Lee, the beloved Chief Administrator and Interim Mayor has no blemish on his record on the road to being the first Asian-American Mayor of San Francisco.

I am very happy for both the Chinese-American community and the Asian-American community at large, for the “breakthrough” that will be attributed here. But, the decision-making was done far away from most regular people, again, by power brokers who know we won’t bother to turnout, to look things up, to seek better representation.

I hope that instead of being threatened by what I am saying, Ed Lee supporters and the Mayor himself understand that my issue is with the Ethics Commission’s decision to allow Mr. Lee to run, not with him as a Mayor. He was a competent Chief Administrator and will be capable.

My issues on policy with Ed Lee are opposition to his Twitter Giveaway, the Treasure Island Boondoggle, the Park Merced “housing scheme that divides,” and his absurd idea for five-year budgets – given the huge number of interests to which he seems beholden. He lacks a progressiveness that I associate with our city. You can read specifics throughout this blog. I would have had him be allowed to run in 2015, against a real coalition-built Mayor.

I wish I could have been more active in this year’s election, but expected everything we are seeing today, months ago.

The promising numbers for John Avalos are a pleasant surprise from the standpoint of measuring the election against the power of the media to motivate. He was a non-entity before it began, Chris Daly stayed out of the way, and his absence helped Tim Redmond make Avalos run.

So Redmond pushed with his staid, old method and the numbers today are bigger. Pointless, but bigger. Redmond created the candidate and got him votes. Then had the SFBG report on the pretense of a Progressive Movement. Wow.

John Avalos’ numbers are largely due to the clip-and-vote effect observed for decades now, a method by which the Bay Guardian has become a shepherd for apathetic progressives-in-name, many very recent transplants here, who can’t be bothered to look into it, haven’t better resources or a competitive view of scale. These voters consider matters only in the last week of the cycle and do as Tim Redmond and the Bay Guardian tell them to do on election day by ripping out the page and following through.

This has been sustained because of a lack of competition for the Bay Guardian. But I restate my problem with Tim Redmond in this election: he wakes up everyday with all that power, and in recent years has seriously decayed in terms of courage or creativity. More often than not, he whines, laments and defines progressive space with his opinion of what is progressive. There is little or no collectivity and Redmond takes the centrist road nowadays leaving him as cliquish as the mainstream candidates.

That‘s the problem: the cliques at the Chron, SFBG and City Hall are the problem. That, and money … oh and the fact that nobody even cares to vote … (sigh)

The system needs a severe overhaul and I’d like to be a candidate again, but only if called upon. It isn’t real democracy – these aren’t real elections. It’s a sad decaying of SF political history.

The rulers are really stooges for the 1%, and the 1% themselves. They are out of touch and callous as so many of us suffer this terrible economy. They lack creative solutions, fear socialist ones and govern to protect themselves, their property and their right to party hard in our beautiful city.

Please stay in touch with comments. Hoping for a Sheriff Mirkarimi, I will be writing up an analysis of this election after the fact and posting it here. Thanks for your support and kind words.

Karthik

RePost of some Campaign Promises

13 Tuesday Sep 2011

Posted by mtk in politics

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2011, Avalos, Baum, candidate, Chiu, David, Ed, election, John, Karthik, Lee, Mayor, mayor's, race, rajan, san francisco, sf, Terry

I’ve grown to know and love the unique and special character of our city’s quiet pockets – what’s best defies definition, it’s called our spirit.

I pledge to stand with our neighborhoods and communities to retain their culture; to seek out input from communities into which predominantly private external interests attempt to intervene; to create jobs for people already living here, rather than imaginary future employees or residents.

We have plenty of people here who could use our support to create lives for themselves in neighborhood microeconomies. These would be of obvious service to our many residents and those who are soon to arrive.

3. To resist Manhattanization and HongKongification of San Francisco, in favor of saner development

Why does SF have to grow to a city of a million before we address the transit and infrastructural issues?

Why do we have to urgently build more residences for people who do not live here yet when so many who already do live here are suffering homelessness, job loss and an inability to keep up with the cost of living in San Francisco?

Why do we have to build housing for people who do not yet live here before working on cleaning up the Bay, preserving our heritage, adding better, smarter transportation and sustainable energy resources?

Why do we have to appease the nouveau-riche of our times: twenty- and thirty-something-year-olds from elsewhere who want to live and work in our beautiful city for companies that make money for investors who live elsewhere which – thanks to the board and the Twitter Giveaway – will contribute little to our economy?

In reality, we don’t.

The Voting Chamber, installation, 2000

01 Wednesday Mar 2000

Posted by mtk in Austin, collage, elections, installations, journalism, MTKinstalls, protest

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1st, 2000, austin, Barnes, Bush, canvas, chamber.movements, currency, death, gallery, George, John, Karthik, killed, logo, m.t., March, McCain, mtk, No, Odell, painting, party, Penalty, primaries, Primary, real, Republican, rights, State, super, texas, the, thyagarajan, timeline, Tuesday, voter, voting, W., wrongly

The Voting Chamber was an art installation at Movements Gallery in Austin, TX, six blocks from Governor George Bush’s Mansion, and the exhibition was open during the Super Tuesday Presidential Primaries of Election 2000 and the South x Southwest (SXSW) Arts and Music Festival of that year.

COMPONENTS:
No Real Choice [2000], 5’ x 3’8”, acrylic, currency on canvas
The Voting Chamber (metal rods, fabric curtain, tabletop, audio component
Civic Dimension (acrylic on stairwell walls; chalk on pavement
Internet Component, including data from State Website and Death Penalty Opponents

I flew into Austin from Brooklyn and immediately went to a local chapter meeting of an anti-death penalty group and introduced myself publicly as an artist planning to do an installation at Movements Gallery on 6th Street:

installed for about ten days:

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

OPENING RECEPTION: FEBRUARY 22, 2000
GEORGE WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY
6-8 P.M.
MOVEMENTS GALLERY
SIXTH STREET
AUSTIN, TEXAS, USA

“THE VOTING CHAMBER”

FEBRUARY 22-APRIL 22, 2000

A MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION IN PROXIMITY TO THE TEXAS GOVERNOR’S MANSION

THE STATE OF TEXAS EXECUTES MORE PEOPLE THAN ANY OTHER JURISDICTION IN THE WESTERN WORLD. THE CURRENT GOVERNOR OF TEXAS (1994-2000) HAS OVERSEEN THE EXECUTION OF MORE PEOPLE THAN ALL FIVE PREVIOUS GOVERNORS TAKEN TOGETHER. HE IS CURRENTLY RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND EXECUTING AT LEAST 18 MORE PEOPLE.

ACCORDING TO A TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY STUDY, MOST TEXANS FAVOR ALTERNATIVES TO THE DEATH PENALTY OR ARE UNDECIDED:

47.5%    FAVOR LIFE SENTENCE
39.5%    FAVOR EXECUTIONS
13%     ARE UNSURE

Source: http://www.lonestar.texas.net/~acohen/tcadp

“THE VOTING CHAMBER” HAS BEEN DESIGNED BY NEW YORK-BASED FORMER TEXAS RESIDENT AND UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS GRADUATE M.T. KARTHIK, TO PROVIDE A PLACE TO REHEARSE FOR THE UPCOMING PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES AND ELECTIONS.

The State posts the Execution Schedule online

Texas State Execution Schedule: 23 Feb – 27 APR 2000

23 FEB 2000 Cornelius Goss, born May 25, 1961
24 FEB 2000 Betty Beets, born March 12, 1937
01 MAR 2000 Odell Barnes,Jr., born, March 22, 1968
15 MAR 2000 Timothy Gribble born, August 27, 1963
22 MAR 2000 Dennis Bagwell born, December 27, 1963
12 APR 2000 Orien Joiner, born, October 27, 1949
18 APR 2000 Victor Saldano, born October 22, 1971
26 APR 2000 Robert Carter, born March 7, 1966
27 APR 2000 Robert Neville, born October 5, 1974
27 APR 2000 Ricky McGinn, born March 11, 1957

Source:  http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/statistics/stats-home.htm

OUTLINE FOR INSTALLATION

COMPONENTS:
“No Real Choice 2000” (5’ x 3’8”, acrylic, water, American currency on canvas)

“The Voting Chamber” (metal rods, fabric curtain, tabletop, agit-propaganda, and audio component)


“Civic Dimension” (acrylic on stairwell walls and sheetrock; chalk on pavement)
4.  “Internet Component”

THE INSTALLATION:

“No Real Choice 2000” was installed on the wall opposite top of the stairs to Gallery space. The 33’ wall was painted sympathetic to currently existing artwork in gallery while extending the theme of the canvas, including:

“The Voting Chamber,” a simulated voting booth: U-shaped curtain rod with a red curtain. This curtain is to be drawn around individual viewers to simulate a voting booth and allow a private viewing space of the canvas and of specific propaganda material. A looped, repeating audio component of the attorney of one of those on Death Row was played next to an empty chair.

The stairwell from the street to the Gallery floor and the sidewalks from the Governor’s Mansion to the gallery door (as practicable) were marked to point to the booth and to present statistics (see Statistics that follow) regarding the death penalty in Texas.

The Internet component contained elements: from http://www.georgewbush.com, the “Calendar of Events” describing the Governor’s current itinerary, and from http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us, the “Calendar of Executions.” and etc

CONCLUSION, 2008

It’s taken me more than eight years to write anything of what happened in Austin in the Spring of 2000. I installed The Voting Chamber and came to find out that Odell Barnes, Jr., was scheduled to die though likely innocent of the murder of which he was convicted.

The installation included an empty chair with the name “Mr. Bush” taped to the back, sitting beside a cassette player that continuously played a ten-minute audio loop of Mr. Barnes’ lawyer explaining that he needed more time to present the strong evidence of a frame-up he had discovered in Odell’s case.

The installation inspired a march of hundreds in Austin who chanted as they marched around the Governor’s Mansion against the Death Penalty:

This all occurred during the Super Tuesday Presidential Primaries as George W. Bush, the Governor of Texas, fought Arizona Senator John McCain for the Republican nomination, Spring 2000. The installation was up during the SXSW music festival, and the venue was a site for the Austin festival so thousands saw it.

George W. Bush and The State of Texas murdered the innocent 22-year-old, Odell Barnes, Jr. on March 1st of the year 2000. The message was clear as Bush ran for President on an active record of becoming the single individual Governing the execution of more people in U.S. history.

Odell Barnes, Jr.s’ last meal request was for “justice, equality and world peace,”

and his last words were:

“I thank you for proving my innocence although it has not been acknowledged in the courts. May you continue in the struggle and may you change all that’s been done here today and in the past.”

Nine months later, George W. Bush was appointed President of the United States by the Supreme Court – contravening democracy at the most basic level –  thanks to massive problems with vote counting and issues of voter suppression in the State of Florida, where Bush’s own brother, Jeb, was Governor.

The canvas “No Real Choice 2000,” finished two months before the election, was startlingly prophetic.

Xmas Time and the Last Days of 1996

31 Tuesday Dec 1996

Posted by mtk in Coastal Cali, essay, journal entries, S.F.

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airport, alicia, artist, artists, bergman, christmas, daniel, drive, east bay, freeway, Galvez, John, juana, Karthik, miranda, mtk, mural, oakland, rigo 96, san francisco, sfo, wehrle, xmas

The weather has been grey and wet.  Thick, dark, moody clouds hang over the Bay, and the water between the Golden Gate and Bay Bridge is green and grey and smoothed by high, grey skies.  There is neither fog nor mist.  Everything is different shades of grey.  Two storm fronts moved in last week.  The first came Christmas night and, the day after Christmas, the City awoke to rains.  It has been wet and damp and mucky.  And cool.

Friday morning there were sightings all up and down the Bay, of rainbows, double-rainbows and even, in the South Bay of a triple rainbow which spanned the Bay waters and ended in Oakland.  I saw the tail-end of one on Friday morning while waiting for the bus.  It stretched out over the top of the Rehab Center across the street.  A guy at the bus stop said it had been there for ten minutes.

This year, Christmas falls on a Tuesday and the New Year arrives on a Wednesday.  The work week’s are broken-up by the holidays leaving stray Fridays and Mondays to reconcile.  The Upper Management, The Owners, the Board Members, the CF and CO and CE O’s take the whole two weeks off while the workers are left to divvy up what remains of their sick days and vacation floaters from the aging year.

Offices in the financial district are composed of skeleton crews of bored staffers who find tedious, long-undone tasks to accomplish to kill the 9 to 5 on the lone Monday or Thursday they have to come in on.  “What’s the point of being here?” they ask with half frustrated, half-commiserating smiles as they pass one another in the halls, as they re-organize the files in the storage area together, and alone.

I am working as a temp.  So in this season, it’s easy to find work.  I am covering for “sick” receptionists and office service workers at a law firm in the financial district.  From this view on the 32nd floor, I can see the whole North Bay from bridge to bridge and the thick, rolling clouds and the green wavy water passing Alcatraz, Angel, and Treasure Islands.

It has been raining off and on and when it does, vertical lines slash down from black clouds like bold strokes of a charcoal nub on the sky or hard etchings on the billowy blocks of clouds.

In the financial district, people rush about prior to and after Christmas in the wet, in the rain.  They run about in slickers and galoshes.  They wear overcoats and trenchcoats and hats and carry umbrellas.  They carry packages to and fro in the rain, some grumble, some move more slowly.  The latter seem to enjoy the season.

*****

Downtown is dead. The hard pavement of the narrow streets of the financial district, usually abustle with Friday afternoon activity, pre-weekend revelry, happy hours and excitement is quiet today.  The break-up of the season leaves this Friday straggling and searching for an identity.  There are the few workers who have to stay over the holidays and put in hours to keep the offices running.  There are a few temps.  But the streets are mostly empty and those who pass one another share a silent camaraderie on the grey sidewalks.

After work I caught the bus home.  It took a good long time for the 21 to come on Market Street.  There were six 5 Fultons and at least three 38 Gearys which came before even one 21.  Not to mention the innumerable 71’s and 7’s and two 31 Balboas which passed us by as we waited.  A man commented, “I should move to Fulton … it’d be easier to get home.”  We made jokes some then.  We were the waiters for the 21, wet and miserable, huddled under the bus shelter grim but chuckling.

The bus finally came.  It was full, standing room only even that far down the line (we were between Montgomery and Powell which is maybe three or four stops from the start of the line).  There was a second 21 just behind the first, so some of us waited for it knowing we could at least sit down.

Once home, I was drained and bedraggled.  Rain takes a lot out of me in the city streets.  My shoes were soaked through at the ends giving them a black-tipped appearance.  I hopped out of my musky, wet clothes and into a hot, invigorating shower.  I washed the grime out of my hair and off my skin and afterward made a turkey sandwich and sat on my bed watching the rain.

Saturday the rain broke for an hour or so in the morning and the sun peeped through the clouds.  I didn’t see any rainbows but there must have been some.  Saturday was uneventful.  The rains kept most folks inside.  There was football to watch.  The Cowboys beat the Vikings.  The Jaguars upset the Bills.

The rain fell quietly and the air was damp and cool.  The second front came Saturday evening.  I heard it arrive.  I was having a bourbon at the Lone Palm listening to the rain outside and killing time before I had to go to the airport to pick up Rigo 96 who was returning that night from a visit to New Mexico.  The winds were picking up and the bluster became audible.  I drew a little picture about men and women while sipping my bourbon and waiting for the time to pass.  The picture is in a little sketchbook/journal I keep in my back pocket.

Rigo’s plane was supposed to come in at 9:45 but the rain and the holidays have made so many planes late I figured I’d just call in advance.  I sipped my bourbon, drawing, and listened to people trickle in on this rainy night. I checked the plane and it wasn’t to come in until 10:15.  I contemplated another bourbon but passed on it.  At around 10:00, I left the Lone Palm and headed for the airport.

I was driving Rigo’s truck.  The turn signals were acting up while he was gone (the front ones didn’t work but the back ones were fine. I guessed it was bulbs or fuses but didn’t do anything about it).  I took Guerrero down to Cesar Chavez’s Army Street and turned toward the freeway.  There was a police car on Cesar Chavez Street three cars ahead of me in the next lane.  The cop car held up traffic in his own lane and waited for me to go through the stoplight ahead of it.  I changed lanes and passed in front of the cruiser and was progressing toward the highway entrance to 101.  I was nervous.  The back turn signals were fine last time I checked. I had clearly been singled out but I didn’t know why.  Just before the highway entrance, the cops turned on their lights signaling me to pull over.

I was driving a truck with no turn signals, which had no insurance papers (nor insurance policy for that matter).  I had no drivers license.  I had just finished drinking a bourbon and a beer and not three hours earlier I had gotten stoned on some California green (marijuana) at Rigo 96’s house.  I was carrying a pipe (paraphernalia) and a small, plastic egg which contained a small amount of pot.

I couldn’t figure out why the cops had pulled me over and I didn’t have a license, so as a cop approached the driver’s side window in the rain and turned a flashlight beam on me, I said, “What’s the problem?”  I wanted to gain the cop’s trust.  Besides I hadn’t done anything wrong visibly.  I didn’t know why I was being pulled over.

A male voice came from behind the flashlight beam, “broken headlight,” he said.  The broken headlight I didn’t even know about.  I had an inkling that the lights were askew one night last week but I just thought they were aligned improperly and besides I was only just running up to the airport. There are a lot of cops on the streets during holiday time.

“License and Registration,” he said.  By this time he was close enough for me to be able to make him out.  I looked him in the eye as he turned the flashlight away from my face and into the cab of the truck.

He was young – younger than me – and he had a freshly shaved face and a short haircut.  His uniform fit snugly and was pressed and cleaned.  He is white and sees that I am not.  I felt immediately as if I had an advantage over him in age and it should be expressed in language.  I was honest.

“Well, actually,” I said, speaking confidently, “I don’t have my license on me. It was taken.  And now it’s at the Austin Police Department.  They contacted me but … I haven’t had time to …O I trailed off.  I waited and the cop didn’t say anything so I continued, “The truck isn’t even mine.  I’m just going to the airport to pick up the owner of it right now,” I said pointing to the freeway entrance ramp (It was so close the FREE way).  “I have the papers in the glove box,” I said pointing at the glove box and starting to lean over.

The cop asks to see the registration for the truck.  I lean over and pull out the fat booklet of documents Rigo has left in the glove box.  It is full of old traffic tickets, traffic court hearing papers, and other stuff.  I have no idea what the registration papers look like, so I say, “I’m not sure, I mean is it the pink thing?”  The cop doesn’t say anything.  “I mean, I don’t know what the registration papers look like,” I say as I dig.

I pull out the first pink slip of paper I come to and start to hand it to the cop.  As I do I notice it’s a traffic hearing failure-to-comply notice.  I quickly return it saying, “No that’s not it … hang on.”  The cop has turned the beam into the booklet on my lap to help me see.  Then we both see it at the same time.

“There it is,” he says as I pull the registration papers out and hand them over.  As he is looking at them I say, “That’s my friend, Rigo.”  I think momentarily that Rigo 96’s name may not be on the papers. His name changes with each passing year.  Next week he will be called Rigo 97.  I do not like calling him by his given name in public, out of respect but I am kowtowing to a cop who is younger than me, so as he looks at the papers I say, “Ricardo …” and I trail off.  As he is looking at the papers and standing in the rain and cars pass by with a swoosh of water I mutter, “I didn’t even know about the headlight.”

The truck radio is playing Joe Henderson and the lonely tenor saxophone cries through the one working speaker with a tinny creeeeeeeeee.

“What station is that?” asks the cop. “It’s ninety-one, one,” I say, “The Jazz station … KCSM.”

“I like that station,” says the kid.

He hands the registration papers back to me and says, “What’s your name?”  I tell him my first name and he asks for my last name.  I know these names are difficult for him to understand and so I say them and then I say, “it’s sort of long but I have my passport if you want to …”

He says, “I just want to make sure your license is clear and then you can be on your way.”  I hand him my passport and he holds it out in front of me and riffles through it briskly and thoroughly. He holds it upside down and riffles.  I realize he is making sure there are no visa documents lying loose within it for which he might be held responsible in a court of law.  He looks at me and says, “There are no loose documents in here, right?”  I nod.

He returns to his partner in the cruiser as I wait.  The cops turn their high-powered searchlight on and the light immediately floods the cab of the truck illuminating my face in the bright rectangular slice off the rearview mirror.

I look over at my bag sitting next to me and know the pipe and the egg with the dope in it are sitting quietly in the outside pocket.  I am warm despite the rain. Illuminated, I take off my seatbelt, and my jacket.  I dig a black, rubber hairtie out of my pocket and tie my hair up.  I know this makes me appear less threatening.

The cops are looking up my license based on my name off the passport. I sit hoping there are no violations.  I don’t think there are but nothing is for sure.  After all, the cops have just pulled me over slightly high, after drinking a bourbon and a beer, with a busted headlight and broken front turn signals.

I think about Rigo 96 waiting at the airport until his name changes because I’m in jail and I laugh to myself.

The kid comes back with my passport and hands it to me.  “All right, get that headlight taken care of,” he says, and he lets me on my way.

When I got to the airport, there were cars and people crowded in at every possible exit.  The cops were crawling all over the place making people move their cars  from the loading zone.  I parked the truck in short-term parking because circling around the airport repeatedly with a broken headlight is just asking for trouble.

By 11:00, Rigo still hadn’t turned up, though his plane had arrived.  Checking my answering machine messages at home there was no notice from him nor anyone else, that he had missed his flight.  I checked the airline register and it showed him as reserved for the flight but the guy behind the counter had no way of knowing if he had actually gotten on it.

At about 11:15 I gave up and decided to head back to the City.  (Rigo 96 had missed his connection in Albuquerque and so he wasn’t at the airport.  My roommate’s girlfriend had spoken with him when he called and then left the information on paper notes by the telephone which I didn’t get until I came home Sunday morning.)

I was nervous about the truck and so I ended up going back to Rigo’s place and dropping it off.  I took backroads.  In front of his studio, I parked the truck and leaped out and stood next to it laughing.  Free at last.

Afterward I caught the 14 and went to Cafe Babar where J. was working and had a few beers.  I wanted to wind down from the police run-in at the airport.

We hung out and played pool.  T. and I smoked out together and I helped them clean and shutdown the bar.  We had a couple of beers.  Later, I shared a cab with J. who lives in my neighborhood, and went home.

*****

Sunday, I got up and Rigo 96 called from the airport.  He told me his story about missing his flight because a man at the airport gave him wrong information regarding his connection. I told him my story about the cop and his truck.  It was still raining and we agreed it would be a bad idea to try to drive the truck out to the airport without lights.  Rigo had to catch a bus to my house because I had his keys.

Rigo 96 got to my house and we went to lunch at Art’s Barbecue.  The 49’ers were playing the Eagles in the playoffs and a television in the back of the little joint was broadcasting the game.  It was still raining and blustery.  The field at Candlestick Park was wet and muddy and the conditions for the game were terrible.  Rigo and I sat and had lunch and chatted about a number of things.

After lunch we walked in the rain down Church Street until the 22 came.  We boarded it and rode down to Mission Street where we were going to transfer to the 14 to go to his house.

Before the 14 came, I bought a December fastpass off an old guy standing at the corner there at 16th and Mission.  The guy sold me the pass for $2.  There were only two days left in the year, but the fastpass is usually good for a grace period of three days into next month and I knew I’d be traveling downtown on at least the last two days of the year to temp in the law office again so I’d save money (at least $2).

We went to Rigo’s place and he checked his messages.  Some friends of his were having a dinner get together in the evening in the East Bay. The group was comprised of artists and painters of some of the most famous and beautiful murals of the last twenty years in the Bay Area, Los Angeles and beyond.

The tradition of mural art in San Francisco is old and includes in its history the period after the turn of the century centered around the Mexican Revolution when Diego Rivera was living and painting here at places like the San Francisco Art Institute.  Rigo, a graduate of that same school, was asked to bring slides of some of his own murals to the dinner party.  The artists were planning to share perspectives on their work after eating.  Dinner was to be centered around turkey lasagna.  Rigo invited me to join him and I was happy to accept.

It was still early in the afternoon and dinner wasn’t until 7:00, so we decided we should make the pickup truck drivable because we were planning to be on the Bridge at night and it wouldn’t do to have the headlights out.  We smoked a little pinner of a joint, grabbed up a couple of screwdrivers and went to the auto parts store.  We bought new bulbs and some transparent reflective tape and were able to fix not only the headlight but the broken turn signals as well.  We did the work in the parking lot of the store.  Just as we turned the last screw in the headlight to align it, the sun was going down so we ended up needing the lights for the drive home from the auto parts store.

Before we went to the East Bay we went to see one of Rigo’s friends who was also having a party that evening.  C. has a studio in the SOMA-area called Refusalon.

C’s own studio is a narrow little job and clean and sparse with art on the walls.  We chatted with C. and his friend H.  They had a beautiful dog named Sally there.  She has enormous black eyes and a beautiful face and disposition.

We visited with C. and H. for a few minutes.  We got to see some of C.’s work and it was quite nice.  There was a carved wood piece which I particularly liked.

Rigo told me that C. had an enormous Cadillac which he had obtained from another artist some time ago. He had organized a group of students he was teaching to assist him in making an art piece of the car.  The Cadillac was covered in pennies.

C. told us he had the Caddy parked out behind the studio so on the way we drove around to the parking lot to check it out.  The Cadillac has a brown hardtop shell which comes midway over the backseat.  Other than this part of the Coupe De Ville, every inch of the vehicle is covered in copper pennies.  The pennies have been affixed to the paint job permanently. The license plate reads, “0 Cents”.

After visiting with C. we headed out to the East Bay, headlights and turn signals intact.  The party was to be held at Daniel Galvez’s house in Hayward.  The house is located on a hill just below the Mormon Temple which predominated the view.  The Mormon Temple is a huge, brightly-lit, gleaming structure, with four towers, one on each corner with reddish-orange, glowing orbs atop them.  It also has a larger tower at its center with a dome of the same coloration.

Coming over the hill to Daniel Galvez’s house, the temple is extremely well-lit due to the holiday lighting and so it looks strange and exotic.  It appears from some angles like a great, white insect with orange, bulbous projections at the end of its angled legs.  From another perspective, it looks like an alien spacecraft from a science-fiction rendering.  The building is trippy-looking.  We stare at it in the rear- and side-view mirrors as we smoke-out on Daniel’s street.

Daniel Galvez is a muralist who has recently been commissioned to do a mural at the site of the assassination of Malcolm X.  The commission was the result of a highly-prized competition and is worth some honor, prestige and money – the latter being a rare commodity for muralists or artists in general.  Daniel was chosen on the basis of a proposal he sent to the competition.

The party is already rolling when we arrive.  There is food and drink and everyone is milling about and chatting.  There are maybe a dozen of us.  Some of the best muralists in the area are here.  Besides Daniel Galvez, we have Miranda Bergman, Juana Alicia, John Werhle and Rigo 96 in the house. Ed Casal will show images of his work as will a visitor from Cambridge, Massachusetts (named J.), whose work has appeared on walls in that area of New England, USA for 15 years.  Daniel arranged this evening to allow J. to get an idea of what sort of murals are being painted on the West Coast, in the Bay Area, by local artists.

The assemblage of talent, energy and motivations in this house is historic. The work in the house itself is quite nice, also with paintings and drawings and sculptures representing a number of artists, present and absent.  Daniel has recently bought the place and it has a layout which includes a huge 20 by 20 foot studio in back of the house where he can work.  Daniel showed us a number of the computer-composite images he uses to make proposals for projects.  They included a design for a mural on the history of Chinese Immigration to California.  Daniel uses the computer to cut and paste images into a poster- or banner-sized representation of a particular mural.  Later, when the mural itself is designed, the images he has appropriated for the banner are replaced with actual people.  (friends, relatives and influences are often represented).

Dinner was a treat.  The turkey lasagna and baked ham were tasty.  There was a carrot-ginger soup which was really strong and delicious. There was salad and wines and a delicious persimmon-pudding pie for dessert.

After dinner, Daniel asked each of the artists to give him their slides to put into a carousel and we settled down to look at the work. The artists selected slides from their collections and pored and picked.  It was fun to watch them choosing works.  They seemed, despite their years of experience and their past successes, nervous to limit and choose and delineate.

The work is glorious. It spreads across bridges and under passes.  Along highways and walls. Up the sides of buildings and around corners.  Inside and outside.  There are many images and paintings I have seen before, have passed while walking through the streets of the City or cruising by on Muni.  There are many different representations of hard work and political activism.  Friends and helpers and assistants to the muralists who have worked side by side with them for years are here, too.  They call out names of faces they recognize in the works, “Hey is that your daughter? … That’s John, right there …”  The images bring back aging memories of hard work and fun times.

Miranda and Juana’s portion of the group mural project at the Women’s Building (on 18th street in the City) were shown.  The beautiful work by John Werhle in a public library in Northridge (down in L.A.)  Rigo’s big signs.  Paintings by Ed Casal.  The images were fast and furious and we looked at them for over two hours and didn’t even notice the time passing.

The discussion between the artists about techniques and materials was lyrical and beautiful to listen to, though without being a muralist it was difficult to understand (about chime and oils and cement and acrylics and panels and MDO board – all kinds of talk).

There was a feeling of camaraderie in the room and an open appreciation for the monumentality of these tasks (“the women’s building murals took thirteen months,” Juana says and silence fills the room), and for the true beauty of the works.

But there was an edge in the room of realistic cynicism.  Each of these artists struggle and fight against the continuing frustrations of their craft:  lack of funding for new projects, lack of funding for reparations and maintenance of old projects, the careless destruction of their work without their consent.  Then there is the underlying fact that the work is often ignorantly underappreciated.  Passed upon daily by blind eyes.

I feel that these people, muralists, are, have been for twenty years, more, decades, among the more courageous and beautiful of us in this area.  They endure, have endured and continue to produce work with a verity and conviction which shines of an affirmative hope.  It is overwhelming to see all of these murals, all these feet and yards and miles of painted walls and ceilings and bridges and FREEways.  It is beautiful and a little sad.

John Werhle, whose contributions to the visual landscape mean (and have meant for twenty years) so much to so many, says he cannot get commissions in San Francisco.  He is a gentle man to speak with and to be near.  He has a quiet, self-effacing demeanor and a graceful style about him.  The work he shows is alight with clouds and egrets and waters.  It is peaceful and playful work.

Miranda Bergman: what a driven energy she is.  Her words come from her lips like scuds. She speaks firmly and with conviction about the problems in Nicaragua where she has painted murals with Sandanistan children and had her work painted over with grey paint supplied by Sherwin-Williams, USA, to the Anti-Sandanistan government.  She tells of organizing and painting murals in Palestine with three other Jewish women muralists because she wanted to show the Palestinians that “all Jews aren’t Zionists.”  She jokes and laughs cynically about her frustrations and speaks openly about doing instead of talking, about achieving instead of wondering how.

Miranda’s friend and partner in representing the women’s building project tonight, Juana Alicia is the perfect foil to Miranda.  She speaks in her quietly strong voice and shows images of The Women’s Building and images of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Rigoberta Menchu (” … my name belongs to all women.  They got my name wrong, it’s Menchu-tum because like everybody I have a mother.”) whose image graces the top of one side of the building.  Juana tells us that Menchu-tum said when she saw the women’s building that she feels “women are finally being heard.”

Juana Alicia also shows pieces based on the works of Juan Phillipe Herrera, Chicano Poet (whom she calls softly, under her breath, in the dark as she shows her slides, “Laureate as far as I’m concerned.”) and the poet Lorna Di Cervantes.

And there are so many more works and stories.  The causes and statements and purposes and representations of unheard voices are numerous. As if the only way some of these stories will be heard is by screaming in 50 foot letters on a wall.

Rigo got up and showed images of some of his works, including the three Capp Street Project-funded pieces from Rigo 95.  The famous “One Tree” brings respectful commentary but “Extinct” and “Inner City Home” are more popular with this activist crowd.  Rigo shows one of his pieces about Geronimo Ji Jaga Pratt.  (Still in prison without bail – 1997ce – ed.)

One of the purposes for this evening is for Daniel to show his friend J, the muralist from New England, what kinds of work are being done on the West Coast.  These artists represent the currency of a living tradition of West Coast mural art which dates back to the turn of the century and Diego Rivera through to Chicano and Latin American paintings of the late sixties and seventies. The representatives of this culture gathered together to show their works is impressive.

For his part, J.’s works are quite impressive, too.  They are long and tall and broad works.  He has been painting murals for fifteen years and exclusively murals for the last four.  His work is all over New England.  But it lacks the political edge of the other artists here.  It is significantly more commercial and corporate-based work.

A comparison of these methods and treatments of art and corporate advertisement brings to mind an interesting issue: the paint on the walls is hardly a few millimeters thick, but the depth of the meaning can vary so much from artist to artist.  Those few millimeters can be as deep as a river of ancient resentment or as shallow as a sideshow pitch.

After the slideshow, the artists and guests asked Daniel to show images of his own work. In particular we hoped to check out the as yet unseen Malcolm X piece.  Our host was humble and kind enough to oblige us and our curiosity gracefully.

The Malcolm X piece was glorious. Daniel showed slides of nearly the entire process of creation, including sketches and composites, from black-and-white versions through to the final colored and treated piece.  A fantastic montage of images from Malcolm’s life and times blazed across canvases.  It was an honor to witness.  The awarding of Daniel’s commission was well-deserved.

After the party we all went our separate ways.  Rigo and I headed back to the City.  (We were going to check out the Mormon Temple, but they had turned out their lights already – “I guess without caffeine they go to bed really early!” we joked)

It was a nice drive across the bridge at night.  The financial district buildings were alit with Xmas lights. I have driven this drive by daylight before and seen Rigo’s murals from the highway.  It’s good to be riding with headlights and turn signals.  We stopped back at C.’s salon on the way home for a nightcap and apple pie. Sally the dog welcomed us and I gave her some of my slice.

*****

Today is New Year’s Eve and it’s still cloudy and grey.  It’s another of these straggling Tuesdays and the office here where I am temping is empty.  “Why are we here?” some of the employees ask.  There is talk about what plans people are making to celebrate tonight.  How they will ring in 1997.  Rigo’s name will change in 12 hours.  Tomorrow is College Football Bowl Day.

I don’t tend to celebrate holidays anymore. I used to go through the motions, but along the way they have drifted out of importance. I want to spend my time well and live well, but I feel untethered to many of these clocks.

I am thinking about those muralists I met and whose work I see everyday and who continue to struggle to do what they love to do.  They are brave and strong.  Women and men with drive, energy, motivation and purpose.  They make, they do, they achieve so much so that all of our lives can be improved, so that smothered voices may be heard.

The sun came and went, rains came and went, the new years came and went.  Time passed.  The tradition of mural art progresses and time memorializes it.  We are blessed to have among us a Rigo and a Miranda Bergman, and a Juana Alicia. We are graced to have among us Daniel Galvez and John Werhle just as we were to have Diego Rivera.

The onslaught of commercial uglification may continue but silently, as continually, the struggle against it trickles along.

–M.T. Karthik, December 31st, 1996

Fellow Trombonists at Twilight

21 Sunday Oct 1984

Posted by mtk in photography, San Antonio, TX

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antonio, Band, Clark, cougars, friends, gentz, John, matt, San, sherwood, texas, tom, trombone, trombonist, twilight

trombonists1984001

Matt Sherwoood and John Gentz, age 17

M.T. Karthik

This blog archives early work of M.T. Karthik, who took every photograph and shot all the video here unless otherwise credited.

Performances and installations are posted by date of execution.

Writing appears in whatever form it was originally or, as in the case of poems or journal entries, retyped faithfully from print.

all of it is © M.T. Karthik

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