Tag Archives: California

Friday not-random Ten: ten favorite songs about California

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I’ve been so pleased by the way California bucked national trends this week; while much of the nation turned right, the great and good Golden State turned left. The campaigns I cared most about turned out as I had hoped, and if Jerry McNerney can hold on to his congressional seat in Northern California (he represents the land on which my family’s ranch is located and currently leads by a few hundred votes pending a recount), then every cause for which I worked or donated will have triumphed. (And also parenthetically, well done Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Massachusetts and New York — some flashes of progressive defiance in your fine states as well. The coasts and Rocky Mountain High aren’t folding over to Tea Party mania.)

So, not a “random” ten at all, but ten of my favorite songs with California in the title. And nothing from the Beach Boys, the Eagles, or the Mamas and Papas (the most obvious choices). The order is random — it turns out I have eighteen songs with California in the title on my iTunes!

Feel free to add your favorites in the comments!

1. “King of California”, Dave Alvin
2. “California Love”, 2Pac
3. “California Stars”, Billy Bragg and Wilco
4. “California”, Joni Mitchell
5. “California Cotton Fields”, Gram Parsons
6. “It Never Rains in Southern California”, Albert Hammond
7. “California Uber Alles”, Dead Kennedys
8. “California Sun”, Ramones
9. “California Sky”, Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash
10. “Going to California”, Led Zeppelin

Bonus Track: “Hail to California” (The alma mater of the University of California, Berkeley)

California love

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I love you, California, you’re the greatest state of all.
I love you in the winter, summer, spring and in the fall.
I love your fertile valleys; your dear mountains I adore.
I love your grand old ocean and I love her rugged shore.

– “I Love You, California”, Francis Silverwood (the state’s official anthem)

Throw it up
Let’s show these fools how we do this on that west side
Cause you and I know it’s tha best side

Yeah, that’s right
west coast, west coast
Uh, California Love
California Love

– “California Love”, Tupac Shakur

I’m a sixth-generation Californian on my mother’s side. And I’ve never been prouder to be a native son of the Golden State than I am this morning. While much of the rest of the nation swung hard to the right, Californians moved triumphantly left. We replaced a Republican governor with Jerry Brown, a quirky but undeniably progressive figure who was first elected governor when I was seven. (My father was Jerry’s philosophy T.A. at Berkeley in the early ’60s.) By a much wider margin than many anticipated, we returned a proud and unapologetic liberal, Barbara Boxer, to the senate. Both Democrats had to beat enormously wealthy Republican dilettantes; both did so handily. Pending the results of the attorney general’s race, Californians have elected Democrats to every statewide office, and even gained a seat in the state legislature.

Though we did not vote to legalize pot for recreational use, Californians voted overwhelmingly to reject Proposition 23, which would have suspended implementation of our landmark emissions law. Over 60% of voters chose to reject the appeals from big oil and other polluters; Proposition 23 even failed in famously conservative Orange County. I couldn’t be more thrilled and prouder of my fellow state residents.

All of this splendor for California comes on the heels of a glorious World Series, where the San Francisco Giants bested a team from the reddest of red states, the Texas Rangers. (I’m an Oakland A’s fan from childhood, but Bay Area pride triumphs in my heart.)

Yesterday, I spent five hours at the polls, working with the Feminist Majority’s “protect choice” campaign. Staying a careful 100 feet from the voting booths as required by state law, I stood with student volunteers (mostly my students, I’m proud to say) at a northwest Pasadena polling station and handed out literature for Barbara Boxer. We were jeered and cheered, but it was fun (and, as it always is, deeply moving) to play the part of activist on election day.

Exhausted and sweaty, I then drove over to the Beverly Hills offices of Feminist Majority for a victory party, where student volunteers and professional organizers gathered to celebrate California’s triumphs and to shake our heads in wonder at the choices made by Americans in other states. We found moments to cheer from other parts of the country, of course; I was especially heartened by the victories of Barney Frank and Raul Grijalva, two progressive congressmen who had been targeted by the right. The strangest moment came when we all stood and clapped for Harry Reid’s upset victory in Nevada. Reid, whose record on women’s issues is mixed at best, was applauded less for his own virtues than for his success in defeating a particularly extreme “Tea Party” candidate. Conservatives may be rejoicing today, but they would be rejoicing far louder had they sacked Reid and Boxer. There is no small satisfaction in denying them the fullness of their triumph.

But as we think about triumphs, it is good to reflect upon what John Pitney, writing at the National Review, remembers from Nikos Kazantzakis:

“A prophet is the one who, when everyone else despairs, hopes. And when everyone else hopes, he despairs. You’ll ask me why. It’s because he has mastered the Great Secret: that the Wheel turns.”

Filled with healthy dollops of both hope and despair, and staggering on three hours sleep, I’m off to teach.

Empty reservoirs, empty coffers, more men on campus

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Since I came to Pasadena City College in 1993, I’ve never seen such a bleak start to a new academic year as I’ve witnessed this week. This lovely foothill city remains shrouded in smoke, as the Station Fire continues to smolder, threatening the gorgeous canyons, cliffs and fauna of the nearby San Gabriels. On campus, it’s difficult to breathe and the stench of burnt material wafts through air conditioning vents and offices. After getting into the low 100s Monday and Tuesday, we might only see mid-90s today. The toxicity of the atmosphere matches the frustration and anxiety here at school.

Public community colleges, dependent on plunging state revenues, cut their course offerings and delay hiring new faculty in a recession. At precisely the same time, as unemployment rises, demand for classes grows as more and folks seek retraining. In a booming economy, our enrollment always drops (this actually became a bit of a problem around 1999-2000); in a slowing economy, the opposite effect happens. It’s not just unemployed folks, either. Many high school graduates who might have chosen to enter a healthy job market have decided to focus on their education for the time being, with plans to drop out or take a break as soon as hiring prospects improve. This means that invariably, increased demand coincides with falling resources. (Much, I suppose, like food banks.)

We don’t have the updated demographics from our admissions office, but here’s something many of my colleagues and I have noticed: we have far more men in our classes than usual. PCC is majority female, and my survey classes average about a 60-40 woman-to-man ratio in a normal year; my gender studies classes tend to have a much lower percentage of lads than that. But looking at my rosters, all four sections of my Western Civ survey courses have more male than female students — something that hasn’t happened before in all the years I’ve been here. The percentage of guys in the hallways seems higher as well, and the colleagues I’ve chatted with say they’ve noticed a similar shift.

Most evidence suggests that more men than women have lost jobs in the current economic slowdown. While this doesn’t mean that we’ve come close to achieving the vital feminist goal of pay equity, it does mean that layoffis in traditionally female-dominated fields (like health care and education) have been less draconian than in male-dominated fields such as manufacturing, construction, and sales. This may well-explain why after years of a slow but steady rise in the ratio of women to men, the situation may well be reversing itself. One wonders if that’s true at more selective institutions.

In any case, I have never had to say “no” to as many students who wish to add my classes; my wait lists, which usually average 10-20 aspirants, now average twice that number. Everyone seems to have a real, desperation-tinged tale to tell about why they need the class; I’m familiar with the appeals, but sense a different level of urgency — and in some, a heartbreaking sense of despair — that I’ve never seen before.

Five generations of my family have graduated from California public colleges and universities. Three generations have taught at one level or another in the post-secondary education system. But not in living memory has the situation been this dire, not in living memory have the barriers to achievement been this high. The rungs are being sawed off the ladder into the middle class. It’s heartbreaking.

But I’ll teach with my customary over-caffeinated energy, crowding as many students as I safely can into the rooms, and to the best of my most imperfect ability, offer inspiration and encouragment.

My prayers this week have a hydrological theme; rain for our mountains and hillsides and depleted reservoirs, and mighty streams of revenue for our depleted state coffers.

“Kindly Remembrance”: of faith, ancestors, and debts to the past; a long post in response to Daisy B.

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After a week away, I’m back — just in time for midterms here at Pasadena City College. Our official spring break is next week, which I believe gives us the last in all of America. Some colleges are only days from finals, and we’re only halfway through.

Much about which to be blogged, but let me start with a couple of pieces from Daisy, who now blogs at Dear Diaspora. Daisy blogs as a young Jewish lesbian feminist, and many of her best posts at her old blog (and her comments around the ‘sphere) have been in defense of communitarian values. (See our exchange, as it were, around this post.)

As we eased into Passover, Daisy put up a pair of posts about what questions we who call ourselves people of faith ought to be asking. I’m in particular struck by her second post, in which she asks three questions:

What are the effects of practicing my traditions?
What are my obligations to my ancestors?
What are my obligations to my descendants?

Daisy sounds a bit like Edmund Burke here, suggesting that society is composed of three groups: the living, the dead, and those who are to be born. These are the sorts of questions traditionally asked not only by the religiously inclined, but also by those whose temperament is fundamentally conservative. Yet they’re worth reflecting on, particularly perhaps from a feminist standpoint. (Daisy asks another question about what Christians see as their “central question”, and I’ll try and get to that in another post.)

To summarize, the relationship between Western feminism and this Burkean sense of obligation to ancestors and unborn descendants is a complicated one. At the risk of over-generalizing, the feminist tradition in this country, at least, tends to be suspicious of appeals to grand obligations. It is women, more often than not, who have had to do the grunt work of living up to those obligations. It is women who tend to be the primary providers of care to the “living ancestors” (one’s grandparents or older in-laws.) It is women who carry in their bodies the “yet to be born”; historically, the labor of delivery is not the first nor the last “labor” of which women will assume a disproportionate share. So it’s no accident that the feminist message has so often been “You are more than the expectations of your parents and ancestors” and “You are more than a husband and a wife.” To be flip, sometimes feminist advice dovetails almost perfectly with the title of Sandra Tsing Loh’s famous commencement address at CalTech: “Dare to Disappoint your Parents.”

But many feminists, particularly those outside the white middle-class American tradition, have suggested that this almost contemptuous attitude towards tradition risks throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. With the understanding that yes, almost every cultural tradition has a less than flawless record on women’s rights, some feminists have long called for ways to reconcile the “ways of the ancestors” and the sense of obligation to community with a deep-seated belief in women’s radical equality with men. Feminism needs to be about more than individual choice and empowerment; it needs to find a way to center women’s voices and needs in ancient stories which still have value. And perhaps a way can be found to honor ancestors, to honor parents, and to still proclaim an uncompromising and uncompromised egalitarian vision. Continue reading →

“We must unhumanize our views a little”: on Kotkin, California, and the parasitical human animal

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A deeply misguided story in this week’s Newsweek magazine about my state: Death of the Dream, written by Joel Kotkin.

For decades, California has epitomized America’s economic strengths: technological excellence, artistic creativity, agricultural fecundity and an intrepid entrepreneurial spirit. Yet lately California has projected a grimmer vision of a politically divided, economically stagnant state. Last week its legislature cut a deal to close its $42 billion budget deficit, but its larger problems remain.

California has returned from the dead before, most recently in the mid-1990s. But the odds that the Golden State can reinvent itself again seem long. The buffoonish current governor and a legislature divided between hysterical greens, public-employee lackeys and Neanderthal Republicans have turned the state into a fiscal laughingstock. Meanwhile, more of its middle class migrates out while a large and undereducated underclass (much of it Latino) faces dim prospects. It sometimes seems the people running the state have little feel for the very things that constitute its essence—and could allow California to reinvent itself, and the American future, once again.

It doesn’t get much better. Continue reading →