The D.C.-Lincoln Heights Connection

Published: May 16, 2013

Our next issue of LMU Magazine, arriving in a few weeks, will feature a piece we’ve dreamed about for almost three years: a photo essay and feature story on the murals of Los Angeles. L.A.’s murals are inspiring and beautiful, and they’re just about everywhere. They are why the city has been called the “Mural Capital of the World.” But to get the shots we’d need, we feared Jon Rou, the university photographer, would be faced with multiple, time-consuming photo shoots all over Los Angeles.

As we began planning the upcoming issue, we could resist no longer. Fortunately, we discovered the Mural Conservancy of Los Angeles and SPARC (Social and Public Art Resource Center), organizations that document murals and fight for their preservation. The Mural Conservancy, in particular, posts an extensive database with images of L.A. murals that is searchable by location, title, artist and topic. That allowed us to plan the murals we’d shoot, rather than wander L.A.’s streets for weeks. Members of the conservancy can also take custom tours of murals, led by Executive Director Isabel Rojas-Williams, and I joined one that featured some 10 murals within walking distance of Olvera St. in downtown Los Angeles.

The second step was to identify members of the LMU community who work on or study murals. I knew Karen Mary Davalos, professor and chair of the Department of Chicano/a Studies, would be an invaluable resource, because she teaches courses on Chicano art and culture in the region. She wrote an essay we’ve posted on the magazine’s website. She also directed me to Christopher Torres ’09, her former student who studied murals in New York, Paris and Los Angeles. He now works as a designer at Rios Clementi Hale Studios, architecture firm in Los Angeles. Then I rummaged through the roster of the Department of Art and Art History and discovered that Professor Damon Willick specializes in the history of L.A. art. Plus, he grew up in the San Fernando Valley, where he visited the “Great Wall of Los Angeles” as a child. Finally, Cecilia Gonzalez-Andrieu, professor in the Department of Theological Studies, explores art and religion in her research, and she has loved murals for years. They’re all part of the feature story you’ll soon see.

But my most exciting “find” came very late in our editorial process when I discovered Man One (Alejandro Poli ’93), an L.A.-based painter and artist — an alumnus who is a muralist. I say discovered facetiously. Man One’s work can be seen in Los Angeles, Mexico and elsewhere. He’s been featured in a KCET documentary and honored by the Los Angeles City Council for his dedication to the HeArt Project, an art workshop for L.A. youth. His work has been commissioned by MTV, ESPN and Adidas and others. Man One has a been an important L.A. artist for much longer than when I first began dreaming about murals.

Our staff was thrilled to have experts — professors and designers — featured in our story, but finding an alumnus who is a muralist felt almost like finding gold nuggets in a nearby stream. We had to get his work into the magazine. So I spent an afternoon in Man One’s Lincoln Heights studio hearing about his work and the inspiration he took from murals as a child when he began to experiment with graffiti art.

In the course of our conversation, I mentioned a legendary Washington, D.C., street artist who went by the name Cool “Disco” Dan. Man One knew his work. A few days later, I emailed poet Joseph Ross ’80, who lives in D.C., and who once wrote a piece about imagination for LMU Magazine. Joe, who has a Cool “Disco” Dan poster, and I have become friends, and I told him about my meeting with an LMU alumnus in Los Angeles, a muralist, who knew the work of Cool “Disco” Dan. Within a few weeks, I saw a post on Man One’s blog about a poem Joe had written about a Man One mural in Los Angeles.

That story borders on being convoluted, I know. But what thrilled me was that a creative idea that lay dormant for three years began to pull in members of the LMU community in Los Angeles as it came to fruition in LMU Magazine and then somehow managed to create a bridge between two very different artists, a poet and a muralist both LMU alumni, on opposite coasts of the country. I like to imagine that LMU Magazine draws us together, but I never imagined that it could happen quite like this. Like a spark that jumps a freeway, a creative idea can become explosive.

(Above, a detail of “They Claim I’m a Criminal,” a mural by Man One (Alejandro Poli ’93) located at 6120 S. Vermont Ave., in Los Angeles, photographed by Jon Rou)

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Fri, 05/17/2013 - 07:53
Joseph Ross SAYS:

Great reflection, Joe --

In fact, tonight I'm reading at the Folger Shakespeare Library, a themed reading on graffiti art. I'm reading some of the Cool 'Disco'Dan poems, among others. I'm looking forward to your issue including ManOne. His work has heart.

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“42”

Published: April 15, 2013

This past weekend, “42,” the new Jackie Robinson movie written and directed by Brian Helgeland, was released. Helgeland earned a master’s degree in screenwriting from LMU in 1987, and his personal film pedigree is now lengthy: “L.A. Confidential,” “Conspiracy Theory,” “A Knight’s Tale,” “Mystic River,” “Robin Hood” and others. About four weeks ago, he stopped by our office for an interview that will appear in the next issue of LMU Magazine, which should hit mailboxes in late May and early June.

Before Helgeland and I spoke, I read “Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball” by NPR’s Scott Simon and most of “Jackie Robinson: A Biography” by Arnold Rampersad. I was as struck by what I learned of Robinson’s life after he retired as I was by what he endured in a Dodgers uniform. After leaving the playing field, Robinson wrote a newspaper column, had a radio show, toured the nation to speak out on civil rights, raised money for the NAACP, and met or spoke frequently with U.S. presidents, vice-presidents and others to press them on a wide range of public policy issues that were crucial to the nation’s future. Robinson’s second career was so full that I would be proud to claim one-fifth of his accomplishments as my life’s legacy. His contribution to U.S. society and politics in the second half of the 20th century, I’m convinced, still is not fully appreciated.

When Helgeland sat down at our small table to talk, I was itching to discuss Robinson’s later feats. I pointed out that even though Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier as a player, he found himself fighting the same battle against injustice after he retired: He visited Florida on behalf of the NAACP and was forced to stay in the same segregated hotels that he slept in as a player.

Helgeland agreed, and he made an unusual comparison: “I look at it using a World War II analogy. Robinson is Normandy, and the war [against segregation] isn’t over. But they’ve landed and there is a place to fight from and move forward.” As for his film, Helgeland said he intentionally focused on the two brief years of Robinson’s career in which he went through the fire, so to speak, as the first black baseball player in the segregated major league game. “I wanted to pick a crucible moment and illustrate the man through a moment in his life.”

“42” has been taking some criticism for being predictable. I have to confess that I haven’t had a chance to get to a theater to see it yet (but I’ve never seen a movie within five days of its release). But a colleague took her two young children to see it on opening night. She said the film made a powerful impression on them. Helgeland told me that one of Hollywood’s accepted wisdoms is that a film protagonist must change between the beginning and the end to hold the viewers’ attention. Robinson doesn’t change in “42,” Helgeland said. Perhaps Robinson’s self-assuredness and sense of purpose take the curve out of his character’s arc. Jackie Robinson knew who he was, and the people around him were forced to decide who they were as a result. I have a feeling that my colleague’s children saw that and learned something about themselves because of what they watched on a big screen. I hope the adults who see the film do so, too.

(Warner Bros. image)

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Wed, 04/17/2013 - 20:43
Walter SAYS:

Thanks for this commentary. I'm thrilled to read of Robinson's advocacy work. He set a wonderfully inspiring example. I can imagine a nation-wide organization: "The Jackie Robinson Committee for Justice in America" with branches across the U.S., and advocating for racial justice.

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Revisiting the Chickenpox

Published: February 19, 2013

This past Friday, Feb. 15, the Los Angeles Times ran an article about “Middle Men,” a new collection of short stories by Jim Gavin ’88. The piece was written by David L. Ulin, the paper’s book critic.

Gavin attended the well-regarded master’s-level creative writing program at Stanford University not long ago. I learned about him in 2007, when I was trying to put together a feature story of LMU Magazine’s predecessor, Vistas. The feature was composed of essays by six writers on the subject “The Persistent Power of the Written Word,” and it included three well-known L.A. writers: Lynell George ’84, one of L.A.’s best essayists, Brian Helgeland ’87, one of the film industry’s best screenwriters, and Denise Hamilton ’81, one of the city’s best novelists. We also published Cecilia González-Andrieu ’80, ’01, professor of theological studies and a fine columnist on topics religious, and Patrick Furlong ’06, who was keeping a fascinating blog about his experiences doing service work in Ecuador. The only fetter I roped the writers with was the theme itself. I encouraged them to write what they wanted.

Gavin was the only one of the six about whom I held no preconceptions. That meant I was taking a bit of a gamble. But he had been awarded the Wallace Stegner Fellowship while at Stanford, and I certainly knew who Stegner was, along with his work. Stegner is one of the U.S. novelists whose work I most admire. If Gavin was deemed worthy of an award named for one of the great writers rooted in the West, then he probably belonged in the Vistas feature. (You could say that hunch was a pretty good one: A short story he wrote called “Costello,” which is in his new collection, was published in the New Yorker magazine Dec. 6, 2010.)

My biggest fear in the project was that one essay would be weaker than all the others. Fortunately, none were weak, and Gavin’s was quite strong. A line I particularly liked was “I suddenly wanted to be a writer, which is different, of course, from actually wanting to write.” That one sentence conveys ideas, explicitly and implicitly, that could easily take three, maybe four, sentences to make obvious. I remember that when the issue was completed, I looked forward to what Gavin would produce, and I hoped the burden of receiving a fellowship with Stegner’s name on it wouldn’t be a heavy one. I haven’t picked up “Middle Men” yet, but I always look forward to reading a writer who wants to actually write.

Here’s Gavin’s 2007 piece in Vistas:

The Chickenpox

“In Joyce Cary’s ‘The Horse’s Mouth,’ Gulley Jimson, painter and felon, counsels a young man who claims he wants to be an artist: “Of course you do. Everybody does once. But they get over it, thank God, like the measles and the chickenpox.”

“I guess you could say I caught the chickenpox at LMU. I had entered my freshman year as a communication studies major, but after a few classes I realized the strange and hermetic concepts of that discipline — situational dyads, belief congruency, adaptive structuration — were beyond the limits of my understanding. I spent most of my freshman year playing basketball and Ping-Pong in the pungent hollows of the old Alumni Gymnasium.

“I also met some great friends, members of that bright, lazy and morbidly curious apprentice class who graze in the shadows at every university. We traded books, records, movies; the more obscure the better. I had no idea what I wanted to do with myself when I got to LMU, but whatever it was, I was drifting happily away from it. This type of ‘awakening,’ I suspect, is all too common and probably represents a threat to the prosperity of our nation.

“In any case, I eventually stumbled on a copy of ‘The Crying of Lot 49’ by Thomas Pynchon. I knew nothing of the author or the book, but it seemed to jump off the shelf, like it had been waiting for me. Pynchon’s grand and looping narrative was also beyond my understanding, but beautifully so, instilling the ordinary world with a vivid and enduring sense of mystery. In pursuit of this mystery, I finally retreated, like so many vain and romantic young men, to the English department.

“Inspired by many excellent professors, my symptoms got worse. I suddenly wanted to be a writer, which is different, of course, from actually wanting to write. At this giddy stage, being a writer somehow means drinking rum in sultry foreign capitals and showing up for the occasional honorary banquet. The blank page, the empty room, the freighted hours — such horrors never cross the mind.

“Thankfully, in the coming years, as my illusions faded, I still found myself carving out time to sit down and put together sentences. Whether or not I ever become a writer, I am going to write. The condition is terminal.”

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Alex Cowling’s Gift to LMU Sports History

Published: February 13, 2013

When I began working at LMU in 2006, one of the first things I noticed was that the Paul Westhead years seemed like the lightning rod of LMU athletics. Call it the third rail, if you wish: “The Hank-Bo-Fryer years are our greatest legacy!” “No, the Hank-Bo-Fryer years are our greatest albatross!” You could argue those points all night long over at Tomkins Square Bar and Grill, and if a fist on a face finished the debate, I wouldn’t be very surprised. As someone who wasn’t here then and isn’t an alumnus, I can’t say.

What I can say is that in the six years I’ve been on campus, I’ve seen some legacy moments: Andy Stevens’ saves in water polo, (member, U.S. men’s national team); Heather Hughes’ kills (member, U.S. national women’s volleyball team); a Sam Fischer walk-off grand slam in her last home game (U.S. softball team), Tara Erdmann running through the streets of Westchester (seven-time all-American), Rafa Baca’s magic passes on the soccer field (member, San Jose Earthquakes), Nicole Hughes’ goals (all-time leading scorer, LMU women’s water polo), and Julie Gallaudet’s crosses from the left wing (co-holder, LMU’s career assists record in soccer). Lots of other moments I’ve missed, no doubt.

In the few years I’ve been around, we’ve enjoyed some team championships and witnessed some truly astounding individual accomplishments. Simply astounding. And then there are the individual plays. I bored at least two colleagues describing an amazing defensive play soccer player Whitney Sharpe made this year during which she chased down a speedy attacker with the ball, turned her around and smothered an imminent threat. And if you give me a call, I’ll gladly describe, probably for 10 minutes, how Alexis Love, in a basketball game earlier this season, guaranteed an uncontested fast break lay-up for teammate Hazel Ramirez by simply slowing down and effectively blocking the path of the only defender with a chance to stop the basket. I’m certain that Alexis knew exactly what she was doing. For a devotee of the game, it was sublime.

So here’s my point. If any fans of LMU sports have ever argued the Lions’ athletic heritage, I say stop jaw-boning for a little while because you’re likely to miss the next legacy moment: Alex Cowling is just this side of becoming the all-time leading scorer in women’s basketball in West Coast Conference history. That’s right: all-time leading scorer IN CONFERENCE HISTORY.

As I write, Alex needs to score 66 points in the team’s remaining five games (WCC tournament games, to be played in Las Vegas, will also count). Earlier this season, she passed Gonzaga’s great Courtney Vandersloot (2007-11). Ahead of her now is only Heather Bowman (Gonzaga, 2006-10) with 2,165 points.

LMU will play two more games at home: Feb. 14, 7 p.m. (Thursday), and Feb. 28, 7 p.m. (Thursday). Alex may break the record at home, perhaps on the 28th. But even if not, these games are the final occasions to see LMU’s greatest scorer (and LMU’s all-time leading rebounder as well) play on her home court.

Another LMU athlete is poised to make history. I’m planning to be able to say, “Oh yeah, I saw Alex Cowling play. I was there.”

(Photo by Steven Douglas ’16)

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A Good Story Wins the Day

Published: January 31, 2013

Here in Los Angeles, we’re passing our days in the season of awards: The Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild awards have already exchanged hands, and the new Grammy awards and Academy Awards will soon be in living rooms, safes or pawn shops.

I like to watch the award shows because they are spectacular occasions to spin thin theories about the state of U.S. culture. They’re the equivalent of a cursory Saturday workshop in culture criticism, a brief and superficial look at a subject — how popular culture reflects periods in American history — that would require much more time and effort to thoroughly and responsibly understand.

But award shows also are interesting because smart people produce good music and movies, and when smart, creative writers talk about their work, I consider it a particular treat. I always hope a witty screenwriter, musician or actor will say something wise in the 30 seconds on air that he or she is allotted. To a good writer, that challenge is not an injustice, it’s a dare.

This week, we learned that LMU Magazine won a very nice award. A higher education association, the Council for the Support and Advancement of Education — usually known simply as CASE — is a national organization with regional districts. LMU Magazine won a CASE District VII bronze award for Best Article of the Year. Editors in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Hawaii, Guam and the Mariana Islands were eligible to submit articles from their university magazines.

In our fall 2011 issue, we published a First Person story by Logan Metz ’10 called “Rockin’ the Bard.” It’s a funny, creative and well-written account of a student who combined his love for music (Metz was a singer/songwriter a touring alt-country band at the time called The Reflectacles) with a Shakespeare assignment.

Metz got some spotlight in the magazine because Theresia De Vroom, a professor English and director of the Marymount Institute for Faith, Culture and the Arts, told me of a screenwriting student whose band played L.A. clubs, toured regions of the U.S. and was among her best Shakespeare students. I looked up the band on YouTube and found their cover of “Man of Constant Sorrow,” an American classic. Theirs is an excellent version of a well-covered song. I loved the harmonica, rhythm guitar, harmonies and tempo. Metz, by the way, is the guy sporting vest, brown hat and banjo.

As I watched the video, a thought linked two synapses: Here’s a guy who loves America’s great country music tradition and Shakespeare — a genre rooted in stories and perhaps the greatest storyteller the English language has ever produced. “I have to get him to write something that connects music and Shakespeare,” I thought. Well, read for yourself how Metz accomplished that in “Rockin’ the Bard."

What does this award mean? At one level, I’m happy my peers who judged the competition recognized an excellent piece of writing in LMU Magazine. That an alumnus won a writing award is especially satisfying, because Metz’s work competed against the work of people who earn their living as magazine writers. It’s the kind of accomplishment that folks in the LMU community can be proud of.

But regardless of the kudos, I still get excited when I read Metz’s piece because, first, it tells a story of how he creatively completed an assignment and, second, does the telling in a creative, clever way. The story’s appeal doesn’t diminish, no matter how often I read it. Give it a read yourself. Don’t be surprised if you feel an urge to clap the end.

Logan Metz remains involved in creative ventures that mix genres, particularly with his collaborator, Lincoln Mendell ’10. You can learn about their work and get in touch here.

(Photo by Jon Rou)

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The Ace Adams Award

Published: January 15, 2013

This past December, the LMU men's lacrosse team received an award that recognizes sportsmanship and respect for the game. For the second year in a row, LMU received the District 10 Ace Adams Award, the first time that consecutive Adams award wins has ever been accomplished.

James “Ace” Adams was a coach noted for his teams’ character when he led Army and the University of Virginia, and he is a member of the National Lacrosse Hall of Fame in Baltimore. District 10, which encompasses California, Arizona, Nevada and Hawaii), is one of 11 administrative districts of the Men’s College Lacrosse Association.

Brad Chestnut, a junior who is president of the LMU men’s lacrosse team, said two factors that probably influenced the decision are the team’s cooperative demeanor on the field and its commitment to promoting the game in the Westchester community. They've been instrumental in establishing the West LA Lacarosse League for elementary school-age kids in the Westchester neighborhood. “We’re trying to make the sport something better and put lacrosse in a positive light rather than just trying to win games,” he said.

We did two pieces on the team last year, a video titled “Lacrosse Brings On the Next Generation” that focused on the team's work in the community and an interview with the 2012 Team President Johnny Gilbreath in the spring 2012 issue of LMU Magazine.

The team’s efforts are inspirational: college athletes working with parents in the neighborhood and teaching the game to kids. Chestnut said that since LMU Magazine covered LMU lacrosse last year, the kids have advanced to the point where teams are divided into two groups according to skill level. “The LMU players usually coach the less-skilled kids, while the parents work with the more advanced team,” he said.

A scene in our video that I can’t forget comes at the 3:19 point: a shot of little kids wearing authentic jerseys — with “LIONS” spread across the chest — and helmets that have their own names taped to the front. If I were a kid in love with the game, having a helmet with my name taped to the front would make me feel just about perfect, like the big time, the real thing. Learning from college players has to be a huge thrill for those kids, and what a gift the players are giving them.

LMU lacrosse, a non-NCAA club sport, competes in the MCLA’s Southwestern Lacrosse Conference. Game results and news can be found at the team website. Last year, the Lions finished 7-7 and advanced to the SLC playoffs, where they lost to Arizona, 14–12. During the season, they competed against teams representing the University of Texas, Southern Methodist, Washington State, Colorado, Santa Clara, UCLA and UCSB.

(Photo by Jon Rou)

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The Next Step for SpaceX

Published: April 25, 2012

On May 19, an event I’ve anticipated for months should finally take place: SpaceX Corp., in Hawthorne, Calif., will launch its Falcon rocket mounted with a Dragon capsule from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida to dock with the International Space Station. (The launch is scheduled for 1:55 a.m., PDT, and it will be streamed live on NASA TV.

If the mission is successful, SpaceX will be the first private company to launch a vehicle that completes a rendezvous and docks with the ISS. The launch also is significant because the U.S. government decided to end the shuttle program after 30 years with the last mission in July 2011. With no shuttle, NASA intends to rely on private companies to take over the mission of resupplying the space station. Some say a successful mission by SpaceX will signal the start of a new era of commercial space exploration.

Tom Mueller M.S. ’92 is vice president of propulsion development at SpaceX. He is also a co-founder of the company, with entrepreneur Elon Musk. SpaceX and a second company, Orbital Sciences, are the leading players in the private space mission field, and Orbital Sciences is scheduled to test a rocket in May, then launch to the ISS later this year.

We interviewed Mueller in our fall 2011 issue. Interest in anything related to SpaceX and Tom Mueller is high in parts of the science community. The Mueller interview, in fact, became popular online after it was picked up by several science and space-related blogs. It’s easy to see why: Mueller talks about his own outside-the-box thinking as a designer as well as the future of private space exploration. The interview is informative, and my favorite part was when Mueller described getting in trouble as a kid when his father discovered he’d taken apart the family lawn mower.

A few weeks ago, I took a walk over to Seaver Hall to talk with Jeff Sanny, professor of physics in the Frank R. Seaver College of Science and Engineering, about the SpaceX launch. Although he never taught Mueller in a class, Sanny has been involved in space-related research throughout his career and has received NSF funding for his work for the past 21 years.

Sanny says the SpaceX launch is particularly significant because of its implications for business. Space exploration will “no longer be a monopoly of the government,” he explains. “There will be more innovation in research and development, and more competition. Every year, NASA funding gets cut, so it’s good that private business is picking up the slack.”

I also called freelance writer Doug McInnis, who conducted the interview, to ask him his impressions of the SpaceX project and Mueller himself. McInnis, who writes from Caspar, Wyo., has been published in the New York Times, New Scientist magazine and Dartmouth Medicine, so he knows a few things about the complex and completely fascinating world of science.

McInnis, like Sanny, sees the launch as important to the future of space research and exploration: “We are not likely to make significant advances in manned space flight, because of federal budget decisions, unless the civilian sector steps in to fill the gap. My conversation with Mueller made me a believer that this can and is likely to happen.”

I especially was fascinated when McInnis told me what intrigued him about Mueller. “What struck me about him is that he is quietly competent,” McInnis recalls. “There’s no bravado about the guy. He was simply addressing the issues as they came and trying to solve them.” To McInnis, that kind of persistence was one reason for NASA’s remarkable successes, despite the fact of occasional failures.

Launch schedules are always a bit iffy, and the SpaceX launch itself has experienced a few delays. But I’ll be keeping my eyes on the heavens during the next two weeks.

(Photo of Tom Mueller M.S. ’92 by Jon Rou)

Popular Mechanics recently wrote about the SpaceX launch. Wired magazine posted a story that describes the mission with some detail. Also, SpaceX co-founder and CEO Elon Musk appeared in an interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart that was both entertaining and informative.

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Sam Fischer’s Triple Crown Path

Published: April 10, 2012

It was a baseball fan’s dream: a 30-minute conversation with a player who will likely go down in the history books as the greatest hitter in LMU softball history — Sam Fischer.

In the upcoming issue of LMU Magazine, due out in May, you’ll find a story about Fischer, who just weeks into the 2012 season had established herself as the all-timeLMU home run leader and the all-time LMU RBI leader. Fischer also hits for average. Throughout the season, she’s been in the top 5 hitters in the nation for batting average, and is No. 2 at the moment. And she’s well on track to finish as LMU’s all-time leader in career batting average.

And while we’re talking about amazing things seen at Smith Field, let the record show that Fischer has been pushed to the max by teammate Kelly Sarginson, a senior, who last year set an LMU record and a Pacific Coast Softball Conference record for homers in a single season, with 18. Fischer and Sarginson bat third and fourth in the line-up, and I’ll confess that when our No. 3 and 4 hitters are due up, I often imagine what it must’ve been like to see Mickey Mantle in the batter’s box and Roger Maris on deck. Fischer herself says they make one another better.

Any player who leads a team in home runs, RBIs or batting average for a season is worth taking note of. To lead in all three categories completes the legendary Triple Crown, last accomplished in major league baseball in 1967 by Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox. Others who’ve done it? Frank Robinson, Mantle, Ted Williams and Lou Gehrig, to name a few of the few.

Fischer, as I write this in mid-April, leads the PCSC in all three Triple Crown categories for the current season. But more amazing is that she will almost certainly end the season as the all-time LMU career leader in all three categories. Fischer will be LMU’s Career Triple Crown winner. It’s difficult to imagine that any future LMU softball player will match this accomplishment.

I became a baseball fan by watching the Baltimore Orioles lose a World Series in 1979, then win one in 1983. How I wish I could’ve sat down to talk with Cal Ripken about positioning in the field, with Eddie Murray about whether power hitters really have holes in their swing. Later, after moving west, I did get to ask Eddie Williams — a wonderful, and unheralded, Dodger pinch hitter whose career was slowed by injuries — about the mentality of the occasional batter. When I interviewed Fischer for our magazine story, I decided to ask her about hitting, and hitting only: Who would you most like to get a hit off? When you're at the plate, do you analyze all the possibilities like Kevin Costner in “Bull Durham”? When you have a chance to sit down with a great hitter, there's no reason to discuss anything else.

For LMU sports fans, especially those who love the game played on the diamond, the Lions softball team, with shortstop Sam Fischer, is a team one should consider changing one’s schedule to see. Although the season will end this month, the team plays two doubleheaders at home this coming weekend, on April 14 and 15 (the final games will take place later in April at the University of San Diego and Saint Mary’s College). First game starts at 10 a.m. each day. If LMU takes the PCSC Coastal Division title, then the team will play at home May 11 and 12 for the conference title. Follow all team news and check the schedule here.

(Photo of Sam Fischer ’12 by Jon Rou)

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Braiding Poetry and Jazz

Published: February 9, 2012

Last week, two events on campus brought together poets and jazz musicians, and the joining of the two was partly the result of two people, Paul Harris, chair of the Department of English, and David Ornette Cherry, whose collaboration goes back a generation to their fathers.

On Wednesday, Feb. 1, the English Department hosted a poetry reading featuring jazz musician Cherry, who accompanied Professor John Menaghan and several students as they read their work. Menaghan read from his jazz poems, which draw on jazz musicians, music and rhythms. He’s read them elsewhere, too, and you can hear him online in a podcast from City of the Angels Music, website about the jazz music community in Los Angeles. Students Nareen Melkonian, Zahra Lipson, Hillary Scheppers and Bianca Darby-Matteoda read pieces in a variety of forms. They were introduced by Sarah Maclay, poet and profess of English.

Cherry, son of the great jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, often accompanies spoken word artists by playing an electric keyboard or pulling selected instrumentals, DJ-style, from a vast music archive on his laptop. Cherry reads over the poems beforehand, then moves to the music that suits. It’s an exercise in spontaneity, of course, and it makes for a wondrous, improvised experiment in sounds. Watching the duet taking place between each student and Cherry was especially fun. Their interactions, made up of nonverbal glances and nods of the head, reminded me of the unspoken conversation between a drummer and bass player.

The next night, at the Marymount Institute for Faith, Culture and the Arts, Cherry brought his band The Ensemble for Improvisors and poet Kamau Daaood. Daaood’s poetry — an example is here — rumbled out from somewhere deep in the heart, and the band, overflowing with world music influences, brought the funk, as well as jazz.

A highlight was Harris’ “Don’s Horn,” also delivered to Cherry’s music. Harris practices constrained writing, a literary form in which an author imposes a condition on his or her work. (Harris’ “Alpha Rap” is on the Internet.) "Solo-O's Solo: To Honor Joys Born of Don's Horn," which pays tribute to Don Cherry, is a long poem whose words may use only the vowel “o.” That struck me as a contrivance for only a few seconds. Harris’ work soon became an eruption of thought and comment, full and complete despite its banishing of a, e, i and u. The combination of words and music blew the roof off and reached up to the heavens.

The gig was raucous at times, and to experience world jazz, poetry and shouts and hollers in the Marymount Institute struck me as an appropriate tribute to faith, culture and arts. You could say it was an evening made possible several decades ago. Their fathers were close friends who met in New Hampshire, where Harris’, Joseph Harris, was a physics professor at Dartmouth College. Cherry, who now lives in Portland, Ore., was an L.A. resident for many years, and he and Harris have collaborated often.

During both evenings, I often closed my eyes for stretches at a time. I wanted to prevent my ears from being distracted by my eyes. In church, I often listen to the reading of the Gospel in the same way, to hear and only hear, to imagine the scenes the words describe. That seemed appropriate last week. For me, jazz and poetry are the imagination at prayer.

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Red Cabbage and Cool Water

Published: January 13, 2012

I have a friend at work who, as any good friend would, has steadily been offering advice to improve my life. I’ll call him Good Ben/Bad Ben.

Lately, Good Ben has been urging me to go with him to volunteer at the Los Angeles Catholic Worker soup kitchen. The Catholic Worker was started in New York City in 1933 by Dorothy Day, and today about 250 Worker hospitality houses/soup kitchens operate across the United States. Here in L.A., they’ve been cooking meals for the city’s poor and homeless since Easter Sunday 1970. The kitchen is at Sixth St. and Gladys Ave. in the Skid Row neighborhood.

Two Saturdays ago, I took Good Ben up on his offer. I showed up at 7:30 a.m., joined in the morning’s prayer, and spent a half-day buttering bread, chopping red cabbage, filling plastic bags with bagels, and walking from picnic table to picnic table offering cups of cool water to the guests. I’m not asking for God’s gold star for cutting vegetables and pouring water. After all, God’s grace is given freely, we can’t earn it. The best part of the day was who I met.

An African American woman in a wheelchair came from the food line and asked me for water, then for my name. Hers, she said, was Mary. When I said Mary was my mother’s, as well as my sister’s — my sister, the nun — a five-minute conversation began. Mary told me about the poems she writes, reciting three, each about the faithfulness and providence of God. But the special moment came 10 minutes later, when she called out “Joe” from across the courtyard. I walked over to her table, where she introduced me to her friends. I arrived at the kitchen feeling anonymous, and in an instant I felt known.

The other special encounter was with an LMU alumnus, Rob Palmer ’85, and his daughter, Grace. I have a daughter named Grace, and, as sentimental as it may seem, I feel bonded to anyone who has named a daughter Grace. Rob’s been to Sixth and Gladys many times, and I was struck by how much fun he was having. I’m not sure he knew everyone, but he looked like a man surrounded by friends. At the end of the day, Grace, a high school freshman, was beaming, too. I shouldn’t have been surprised to find myself among the LMU community. Jeff Dietrich, a leader at the Worker, writes in his new book — titled “Broken and Shared” and published by the Marymount Institute Press — that he considers Greg Boyle, S.J., M.A. ’85, founder of Homeboy Industries, his pastor and first volunteer. And at least a handful of Jesuits across the country have helped shape Dietrich over the years.

I suppose I have Good Ben to thank for all of this. But what about Bad Ben? Well, 50 percent of Ben’s advice is excellent, dead on target — Good Ben’s. The other 50 percent — this I’ve said straight to Bad Ben’s face — is dreadful. For every invitation from Good Ben to head down to Skid Row, Bad Ben suggests a weekend in Las Vegas. Well, you know what they say. So I said to Bad Ben, “Let’s not go there.”

(Photo by Mike Wisniewski, Los Angeles Catholic Worker)

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