L.A. Stories

A Tale of Two Reunions: West Coast & East Coast

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

There’s nothing like a high school reunion to remind you that you’re getting older. It was pretty easy to ignore my 10 year reunion, my 20 year reunion and my 30 year reunion. But, for some reason my 40th high school reunion was not to be ignored! Since I had never been to a high school reunion before it was somewhat surprising that I wound up attending back to back 40th high school reunions within a week in late August. The first one was on the West coast and my own reunion on the East coast happened a week later.

I attended the West coast gathering, the 1970 Westchester High School reunion, at the invitation of my good friend Cathy. Even though I’ve lived in the Westchester/Los Angeles area for 30 years, I only knew a few of the attendees. But as the “official” photographer for the event, I had the opportunity to meet almost everyone there. It was a wonderful appetizer for my own class reunion in Maine. What impressed me the most? How happy everyone was to see each other! Many of the Westchester grads told me this was their first high school reunion, too. More than 300 people packed the Westchester Elks Club. The exchange student from Germany even showed up.

Charles’ Story - Hand Drumming for Health & Fun

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Drumming is good for you. Just ask the hand drummers who gather in front of our percussion store Noisy Toys every Saturday afternoon. They come from all walks of life. They are all ages and all levels of expertise. Some are professional musicians, but most play their drums just for fun. We dubbed them “The Patio Players” because they fill up the patio area in front of Noisy Toys. Sometimes they spill out into the street. Motorists driving by usually slow down or stop momentarily, roll down their windows and give the thumbs up sign. Then they drive on. The Patio Players have been gathering at Noisy Toys every Saturday afternoon for over a year. It’s a free form percussion jam that’s different every week. The health benefits of music and drumming in particular have been touted by many. Here’s what one of the Patio Players, Charles Levine wrote about it recently at the request of a friend involved in a music teaching program. Charles works in telecommunications as an independent consultant. We think Charles did a great job of expressing how many people feel about hand drumming.

Michael McCarty - Storyteller (Part 2)

Sat, 5 Jun 2010 10:34:14 -0700

Michael is a multi-cultural storyteller who has traveled around the world sharing stories about everything from folk tales and spiritual stories to stories about the “brilliant and absolutely stupid things he has done in his life.” His stories inform, educate, inspire and amuse.

Michael - I run a monthly workshop in Leimert Park on the second Tuesday of the month called “The Griot Workshop.” Griot is a generic term for the storyteller-historian in African culture, especially in West Africa. The griot was the person who kept the history of the village and the king. If you wanted to know about your great grandparents you would go to your griot. The Griot Workshop is a place where people can come to work on stories or just to listen to stories. There are many storytelling groups in Southern California.

This July 29, 2010, the National Storytelling Conference is coming to the Warner Center Marriott in Woodland Hills. People are coming from all over the world to attend the 4 day conference that will include performances, workshops and story swaps. I’m the conference chairman of the event, which will be a lot of fun.

Sharon - You have a one of a kind car that many people in Los Angeles have seen and wondered about. Why is your car covered with stickers?

Michael - There are over 300 bumper stickers on my car and I call it “guerilla literacy.” Where ever I go, people read those bumper stickers. This is the fourth car I’ve done this to, starting in 1988. I started putting bumper stickers on my old 1977 Toyota Corolla station wagon bumper and then put them all over the car. I noticed a lot of positive reactions from people. As I drove down the freeway, people were honking their horns and flashing the peace sign.

When I return to my car in the parking lot, people are there taking notes and having discussions about it. Parents are talking to their kids about the bumper stickers. One woman told me she saw my car at The Bridge Theater complex parking lot, and her daughter and friend wouldn’t go in to the movie until they read all the stickers. I’m a literacy advocate and the bumper stickers make people laugh and think. They get people to read.

Michael McCarty - From Black Panther to Griot

Thu, 3 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Michael McCarty’s road to becoming a world renown storyteller began in the mean streets of Chicago in the 1950’s and he has traveled around the world as a professional storyteller since the mid 1990s. He’s the Director of The Griot Workshop in Los Angeles and member of the National Storytelling Network, sponsor of the 2010 National Storytelling Conference in Woodland Hills. Michael won the Leadership and Service Award from the National Storytelling Network in 2003 and the Spirit of Storytelling Award from the L.A. Storytelling Festival in 2008. He was also honored with a fellowship from the Just Stories Festival near Chicago and commissioned to create a story about his own life. Michael was awarded the Candlelight Award for Sharing Hope in South Africa in 1998. This interview was conducted at Michael’s L.A. area home in April 2010.

Sharon - You grew up in Chicago. How did your childhood in a pretty rough neighborhood effect your political and social views?

Michael - I was born in 1950 and I grew up on the west side of Chicago. I grew up in what was termed “the ghetto,” although like most of the families in my neighborhood my family had both parents. In most families one parent was working. In my case, my father was working at International Harvester. My mother was a stay at home mom, although she did clean houses at Evanston and Skokie. I went to Catholic school from elementary school through high school. However, I got kicked out of high school, which I’ll talk about later.

Yes, I grew up in a rough neighborhood. I can remember going to the theater and when I went to the washroom the thugs were there. It would cost a dime or a quarter to use the restroom. I got jumped on by some gangs and had things like that happen. But, that was the norm.

One more unusual incident happened when I was in the Boy Scouts. Three of my friends and I were trying to get our cycling Merit Badges. You had to ride 50 miles. So we determined we needed to ride out from our neighborhood around Fourteenth and Polaski to Crestwood, Illinois.

We set out on a Saturday morning and we rode out to, and maybe a little past Crestwood, Illinois and then we turned around to come back. On our way back there was a water fountain across the street from a ball park where there was a Little League game going on. One by one we stopped at the water fountain, and I was the last one.

I was trying to drink all the water in the universe. Then I became aware that my friends were yelling and screaming and pointing. So I turned around and the Little league game had stopped. The field and the stands had emptied and all the parents and people were running after us. Actually, after me, because I was the closest. They had bricks and baseball bats. They were cussing and screaming. I still have this image of a little white lady, about 5 feet tall with glasses on, yelling at me with something in her hand. She was calling me “nigger.”

I took off. And I quickly caught up with my friends and we rode our bikes for many blocks until we were safe. We laughed about it and rode home. I don’t know about my friends, but I never told my parents about it. That’s because that’s the way things were.

Sharon - Were those people after you because you drank out of their water fountain?

Michael - Yes. This was an all white community. Within 20 or 30 blocks of our neighborhood we were outside of the black and Latino community. The farther we bicycled the whiter the neighborhood got. So where we were around Crestwood, Illinois, that was lily white at the time. There were neighborhoods in Chicago where if you were black you knew you shouldn’t be there after dark. If you had a job in the area you went to your job, got on the bus or in your car and you left the area.

Just a mile or so from where I grew up was Cicero, which was a particularly racist community. It’s one of the communities where when Martin Luther King came, he almost got taken out there. Blacks were routinely beaten and killed in that area. That was the neighborhood.

Sharon - Was this experience the first time you encountered this type of violent racial attitude?

Michael - That was the most violent thing I had personally encountered. I had another incident where a buddy and I had ventured toward Cicero on our bikes and one of us needed air in a tire so we stopped at a gas station. As we were putting air in the tires, suddenly water appeared. One of the station attendants got a hose and was laughing with his friends at hosing us with the water. We just got on our bikes and left. The incident near the ball park was the most life endangering experience I had up until that point.

Sharon - Did you ever tell your parents about it?

Michael - No, I never did. I told my sister and my brother about it several years ago. One day I told me sister a bunch of things I had done that she didn’t know about. She said, “Oh, my God!”

Kay Carlson’s Memorial Tribute

Tue, 18 May 2010 14:46:01 -0700

Dozens of former drum and percussion students, friends and family members attended the celebration of Kay Carlson’s life Saturday, May 15, 2010 at Westchester United Methodist Church. There were a few tears, but mostly a lot of laughs as Kay’s students of all ages shared stories about the life lessons they learned from Kay, in addition to the music lessons. Kay’s Ensemble performed a couple of rousing “Drum Salutes” and the audience joined in at the end of the service, shaking egg shakers and making a joyful noise that would have made Kay very proud. Kay taught over two-thousand students during her 50-plus year teaching career. She began her teaching career around 1960 while she continued her very successful professional drumming career. See my previous blogs starting with “Kay Carlson - Veteran Drummer and Percussion Instructor” to read Kay’s own account of her inspiring life.