I think Steve would certainly appreciate the tribute, by Ben and friends but also here. I wore a KKUP Guthrie t-shirt today at Palo Alto Street Music Fair, to hear Palo Alto Jazz Quintet, in front of a chain-gated Varsity Theatre, and contemplated wearing my Steve Lacy shirt –use of which I am strictly rationing — but if I had seen this before I would have most definitely broken out that old SL magic…
Mind if I re-blog this to my site?
It’s hard to believe Steve Lacy passed away 10 years ago this week. Doesn’t seem that long ago.
For many musicians in the Bay Area, Lacy was a contemporary, a peer, a mentor, a correspondent, and even a fan. They knew him and admired his work, and his passing at the age of 70 was like a color dropping from the spectrum.
So when the members of ROVA Saxophone Quartet arranged a commemorative concert, it also served as a 10-year wake and a community catharsis. Held at the Community Music Center in San Francisco, back on June 6, the show was a celebration of Lacy’s music, a chance to share memories, and a repainting of Favorite Street, ROVA’s 1984 album of Lacy compositions. (The CD is even back in print, part of a re-emergence of the Black Saint record label, although ROVA noted it might be hard to find…
I went to a previous meeting on this project, and felt that the space might have been designed as amenity to the Ventura area residents, approachable by bike or on foot, perhaps via Pepper. I wondered about working with Smith-Andersen gallery for some sort of art-park amenity, with a big wall facing the cars going past on the expressway.
I feel the same way about Fry’s. If retail leaves, what about adding a huge new park to our inventory?
(The Ventura neighborhood houses are about $1 Million each below Palo Alto average — maybe a nice park in that neighborhood would raise all those values –of course, this idea would mean citizens organizing against a very powerful regional developer).
Mr. Schwab comes across to residents and observers as well-above average in terms of ethics and values; Northway likewise or even more so.
Neighbors in certain ways were more concerned about the former HP property, the Jay Paul project, relative to this.
I agree, however, that Keller generally stands alone as being pro-resident and not obviously pro-Growth.
Mr. Rosenblum, despite having a demanding career and a young family, shows a lot of promise for public service. Good luck, Eric! (He who missed this meeting…)
This is from their April 26, 2014 twitter feed. I presume the hashtag “made you look” means that part is a joke. I had to click thru to verify. I post this in context of a) my commentary on World Cup Buzz, The App which does take Google results and value-add and set to proprietary platform, to potentially valuable effect and b) comments on what role Lt. Zach Perron, the communications officer play in the case of the Gunn graffiti message-maker, and whether or not a 17-year old with a spray paint can should be tried for “hate crimes”. Also, I wrote about the irregularity regarding Happy Donuts change of management, reported as a “going out of business sale”.
Not to be confused with “shot locator” or shot-spotter, whether that is a technology or brand-name, we do not use here, although they may use it in neighboring communities.
Actually, I got into another conversation today about Lytton Plaza and its ordinance, which I contend is illegal, banning amplifiers during business hours. The context was whether existing law, based on noise levels measuring decibels with decibel-measuring devices, was sufficient, and “narrow-tailoring”. Somehow it made it into policy and then law that it was too difficult to enforce, partially based on not having the equipment, and I stated, to a colleague and fellow activist — a musician — that I believe that a decibel-measuring-device could be made available as a cellphone app.
Maybe we could develop and market a combination donut-shot-locator and decibel-level-reader, and could sell at least 97 here in Palo Alto. Or maybe there is a billion-dollar-hedge-fund-manager-and-Ivy-College-trustee who could donate funds toward procurement of such. Trade dollars for donuts for apps for tunes, best interests of baseball Bowie Kuhn kind of thing. And it is true that Jonah Matranga could not get arrested on Election Day 2012 by Chief Dennis Burns and Lt. Zach Perron at Lytton Plaza even though I said “hey, arrest this guy!” Dennis and Jonah actually discussed the schools of San Francisco, St. Ignatious compared to Lowell, if memory serves. And I am only so-so certain that that is Zach I was introduced to.
I posted this to the Weekly website, under the article from May 30 by Chris Kenrick.
I hope to get the chance to dig a bit more into the case and that what I find does not make me want to take back my message here.
I question the legitimacy of this story, by Chris Kenrick, and of the case itself.
I compared this to the version in the student newspaper, The Gunn Oracle, plus did a bit of legwork myself.
That one or more of our young people did a misdeed, there is little doubt, and they or their parents should be held accountable. I am questioning the characterization, by Perron, that this is a possible hate crime.
That, as reported in The Oracle, one of the messages started “Thank God…” makes me wonder if the utterance is a type of prayer, a religious utterance.
That it references the fact that Principal Katya Villalobos was re-assigned, from Gunn High to the Palo Alto Adult School, makes me think that the message in part was a political commentary.
That, as I confirmed walking the campus, the message was on the new Math Building, ironically labeled The N Building, — and I have a strong suspicion that the alleged perpetrator was himself a person of color — makes me wonder if this act, incomprehensible as it seems to many — is a statement about Measure A the 2010 “Strong Schools” bond. Maybe this person wonders what part of the $14 million expenditure benefitted he or people like him, from his neighborhood, or with his interests. I too sometimes wonder about our expenditures.
I don’t believe that being a member of a historically persecuted group would give one the right to, in turn, harm, harass or belittle others, or other persecuted groups, clearly. But I wonder why the Weekly plays up this angle, or what gives Lt. Perron the authority to characterize or judge the message or group of messages.
Also we have the unfortunate context that in 2008 people from certain parts of Palo Alto, near Gunn, and I am only guessing that the person here was from that neighborhood, families said that their sons were systematically harassed and profiled by the police here. This precipitated the replacement of Chief Lynne Johnson with Chief Dennis Burns. My understanding is that Dennis has done a good job, and there is less, maybe much less racial profiling – -of blacks and Latinos – -here.
But I’ve also seen photos or one photo of youngsters– our youngsters, local kids — on the front page of the local press, in handcuffs, if memory serves, and displayed as trophies with the tools of their allegedly illicit trade: spray cans, stickers, stencils. This is before trial, or before the right to defense. As in being tried in the press.
And also contextually to this Gunn “hate crime” incident we have a justice system that, especially in some parts of the U.S. does not guarantee Equal Protection, and that Gideon is not actually enforced, even 40 years later.
So I wonder if mitigating what this article or Lt. Perron state about this case that some of what was done was a not-well-educated person doing a poor job of communicating ideas of political or religious nature, that are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
I’d like to know the exact content of these messages, and hear from the person what he was thinking.
And I’d like to know that he is able to mount a defense to charges that the State (which is still We the People) may bring.
And further, I am not sure I’d be so pleased with the cultural vigilante nature of the other math teachers releasing their students from the study of math per se to amend or destroy or react to what they saw, no matter if they found it offensive. Nor am I so proud of school administration asking parents to snitch on each other, as a means to hold someone accountable for the damages, via mass emails.
I think the Weekly could do a better job on this story and not arguably doing a disservice with shoddy reporting and fanning the flames of conflict.
What is done wrong by educated people, the powerful, or We The People — in my name, in our name — to me is a lot worse than what a young person, on his worst day, might do.
Here is the link to the Gunn Oracle. I have a hard copy I picked up last week, on campus. Or to a cache, at least — the site says “under construction”.
Jason Green of the Mercury also writes a version of this and I hope will amend if necessary. Their headline says “Juvenile cited for racist graffiti at high school”. Actually the Mercury News twitter feed, with nearly 40,000 followers, used the term “racist” in broadcasting this story, on May 30, whereas a similar feed labeled Daily News does not.
“Palo Alto: Juvenile cited for racist graffiti at Gunn High”.
Lt. Zach Perron, who I believe I have met, is the Public Information officer for the department, and for example, is responsible for PAPD twitter feed, which has about 7,00o followers (compared to 500 each for PA Utilities and City Manager Jim Keane). Perron is notably a Palo Alto native and Stanford grad.
I should really read-up on the statutes regarding “hate crimes”, I admit.
This doesn’t quite belong here but I actually had quoted the first stanza on another Palo Alto Weekly page, a column by Steven Levy about how great it is that we keep passing bond measures and “invest in our schools” — in bricks at least — and he not only deleted the lyrics — about St. Paul, and the poor — but deleted the fact that I had even posted! This is “Plantation Town” by Corey Harris, a Genius fellow, who studied to be a teacher before shucking that for being a blues and reggae singer:
There’s also a song by Michelle Shocked called “Graffiti Limbo” that is more on-point. “Plastic Alto” is a music blog, that bleeds into policy, so to speak, so you should expect a musical outro that obliquely fits. I did study Constitutional Law at Dartmouth College, an undergrad course with a man named Professor Vincent Starzinger, his famous Govy 60, although many others gleaned more from it than I did.
more edita: I started scrolling thru a search of the terms “graffiti hate crime” and found this nuanced take on the subjects, by Jeff Jacoby of Boston Globe. One fairly obvious, to me at least, categorical is the distinction between incidents at a school and at a private residence. I would think targeting someone’s home is more potentially harmful than a message targeting a more diffuse recipient like at a school.
Scott shot the blogger but he did not shoot the Retail Store Associates
Scott and I went to T-Mobil in Palo Alto on special assignment for World Cup Buzz, the App.
Ironically enough, I crashed a lecture right about kickoff time featuring a Stanford educated doctorate in computers now at University of British Columbia, at the Sheraton, the former Holiday Inn. It was tempting to blow off the lecture and munch a cheeseburger poolside while contemplating, with Juan, chances of advancement, from the perspective of Mexico, Croatia or Us.
Here are my verbatim notes on that, which I tapped into my Stupid Cell Phone:
And I am re-typing this because I don’t think these two devices synch
Kevin leyton brown stan phd u brit colu algo prac game theory Tv spectrum repurpose sellback FCC 488 page auctions Reverse Deferred acceptance algo descend clock auction airplane Frozen Feasiblity (sic) constraints 2,000 stations (although on my phone I write 2 and three small o’s because after 7 months I still have not found the 0 key) 130 K cons SAT encoding alto configuration tune clasp SAT MOOC positronic economist Asimov rich mozungo like me uganda 2011 kudu kudu radio diss tv spectrum
That’s about 60 words and 300-400 characters. The last five words were my analysis: I wonder if there is a cognitive dissonance between the first part of Dr. Kevin Leyton-Brown’s lecture, about how because electronic communications have changed so darn much in recent history that the FCC is auctioning off bandwidth to be more efficient and his experience in Uganda in 2011 where, despite bringing world class brainpower regarding cutting edge computer algorithm and game theory technology to the problem of market efficiency apropos of a local banana-like staple they found that Kudu their SMS-based platform only worked in conjunction with talk radio support. So isn’t technology relative to many other social and cultural and economic factors or is it appropriate for ruling entities or leadership to revise rules as they see fit and then say “technology is advancing so we must too”? Maybe SoMoLo also only works when supported by talk radio?
I may or may not edit to add with what all the above actually means. I also stole a copy of the program or schedule. All this prompted by meeting three young students, PhD candidates from CMU, MIT, one of whom wanted to check out Coupa Cafe for the Venezualan coffee, but not necessarily to look for a job or a business partner. He said his favorite baseball player was Andres “Cat” Garillaga, who I gleaned later is the 38th out of 240 MLB players from that country, i.e second wave you might say.
I still have notes that may or may not mean anything on the Economist editor lecture I crashed at Stanford and posted about below.
I failed to explain to Luca Mullane of T-Mobil, a former UBC now at SJSU student that Dr. Leyton-Brown applies GAME THEORY to ECONOMICS and COMPUTER SCIENCE and or is a world-leader of PRACTICAL ALGORITHMS. Meanwhile Angelique Paramore says that when not helping people upgrade their mobile devices she leads a spoken word event in San Jose in Japantown which sounds promising, and is of more interest to me, in theory, than how to tune Clasp.
I wanted to heckle Leyton-Brown: dude, what’s your Weissman Score?
clasp is an answer set solver for (extended) normal logic programs. It combines the high-level modeling capacities of answer set programming (ASP) with state-of-the-art techniques from the area of Boolean constraint solving. The primary clasp algorithm relies on conflict-driven nogood learning, a technique that proved very successful for satisfiability checking (SAT). which to me conjures Donald Sutherland teaching Milton to hypothetical Dartmouth students, biting an apple and worshipping a dark lord, a couple years before Kemeny-Kurtz.
edita: this message brought to you by (see below, which come to think of it, would be an interesting basis for a performance piece or monologue or one-person show, only prop being an old school remote control device that does not connect to anything, we know of)
edit to add: I posted to Weekly on teacher tenure reform:
Why don’t we take the free market approach to its logical extreme and sell off the future earnings of our children to the highest bidders, perhaps utilizing the latest in pragmatic computer game theory algorithm and then let the market decide how to optimize their investment in little Isabel and Brandon?
Iris Chin, Katie Garvey and Emma Wager were named today to the Daily News First Team all-Peninsula softball team. Kudos for that! (Greek word, singular, for “praise”. They should know this, since the school has a pseudo-Greek theme, with the Oracle — newspaper — and Olympian — yearbook).
Alumnus and parent Matt Maltz (who married his classmate Jamie Sparaco) coached the Lady Titans to the CCS berth and a big win over rival Palo Alto. Ok, Matt and Jamie are parents of a former Lady Titan, Casey, now in college, and have two other kids, boys, including Andrew, a rising sophomore and returning letterman in football.
Here are the Daily News notes on these three players:
Iris Chin, Jr., 17-6 record, 1.50 ERA (earned runs not Equal Rights Amendment), 165 K’s, .344 batting average;
Katie Garvey, Jr., .324 average , “stalwart behind the plate” which is an AP-English word for saying she is Gunn’s version of Buster Posey;
(note to self to edit to add with etymology of “stalwart”, which is what English majors do, even 25 years out of school)
Emma Wager, designated hitter, Sophomore, .423 average, 5 triples, 8 doubles — I don’t believe we had designated hitters when I was in school, although we didn’t have chaperones typically, either, accept at the prom. (Designated hitters started in Major League baseball in 1977, I believe with Orlando Cepeda the former Giant, then a Red Sox — singular and plural. I actually don’t recall if high school baseball or softball had adopted the new rules by the time I graduated, which was 1982. My last game of baseball, for Los Altos Little League Senior All-Stars, at Stan Troedson Field, now renamed for William Sigua, was summer of 1979, if that excuses me. Close enough for the internet.)
Gunn also landed six players on the Honorable Mention list: Torres, Oda, Tevanian, Schwarzwald, Ostrom and Potter.
Matt Maltz was my teammate for 8th grade flag football, which tied for league honors, as it were, at Terman. In fact, he was a guard and I was right next to him, at tackle, although on passing downs I reported eligible and lined up as a flanker. I don’t recall him playing much baseball (or softball, for that matter), although I do recall that he won the CCS frosh-soph championship in swimming and said he partied with Greg Louganis at regional and national youth meets, although I probably should go there, degree of difficulty and all that.
I wrote about Matt and family about a year ago, and since it continues to get hits (my blog post, and hopefully his daughter playing collegiate softball), I thought I would update.
I think the big story in local sports, although it seems to be underplayed in the Weekly, is that a Gunn runner, Sarah Robinson, would a state title in mid-distance running and is on soccer scholarship next year to play for Stanford. I don’t know the family, although I know another Robinson family with athletic kids at Gunn. And not to digress too much or steal the Thunder from the Lady Titans, but I noticed that former Los Altos High All-American soccer player and local coach Albertin Montoya has three young ladies from his nationally-ranked LAMV Lightning going on scholarship to Stanford. Kudos for that! (I met Albertin when he was on the semi-pro Palo Alto Firebirds soccer team, for whom I worked as a freelance front office dork — Mark Bult and I designed a cool poster once).
Anyhow good luck, kudos, mazel tov and namaste to all the young athletes, their parents and their coaches. Go, Titans, especially.
Oh, yeah, one more thing: due to the nature of the internet, something I wrote a while ago about Cadence Lee (daughter of Emmie Fa and Hon Lee), still gets hits. My understanding is that Cadence Lee, Blaze Lee, coach Chris Horpel and them continue to fight fiercely for the Alma Mater in wrestling. I think I heard that Andrew Maltz is also wrestling, and one of the other-Robinsons as well, if that ties it all together, Plastic-Alto-style.
edit to add: “stalwart” is from Scottish/Middle English “stall” like “place” and “weorth” like “worth”. And although I am kinda chiding the Daily News for use of the big word, it turns out that, according to my internal search function, I have used that term 20 times in previous posts, including the article on Gunn softball that this is kinda sorta updating. In that case I was describing as a “stalwart” the pitcher Claire Klausner, daughter of school board member, at the time, or just before then, Barbara Klausner. I think I am gonna tag this post “stalwart” just for yucks.
another edit to add: fact-checking what I already published about the history of the DH, apropos of All-Peninsula Gunn Titan Emma Wager, reminded me to look up something I saw at Giants’ game the other night, a mural in the form of song lyrics, attributed to Danny Kaye, at section 118 lower, near the press box, which mentions Cepeda. It’s actually a “Dodgers Song” which is ironic for inclusion at the Giants park. Here is a fuller context:
Maury Wills at bat, hit it for me once, Stu Miller throws, Maury bunts
Cepeda runs to field the ball while Hiller covers first
Haller runs to back up Hiller, Hiller crashes into Miller
Miller falls, drops the ball, Conlan calls, “Safe!” Yea, Maury!
Gilliam up. Miller grunts. Miller throws. Gilliam bunts.
Cepeda runs to field the ball while Hiller covers first.
Haller runs to back up Hiller, Hiller crashes into Miller
Miller falls, drops the ball, Conlan calls, “Safe!” Yea, Conlan!
Willie Davis gets a hit, and Tommy does the same
Here comes Mr. Howard with a chance to win the game!
Hit it once! Big Frank – BUNTS?!
Miller runs to field the ball and so does Hiller so does Haller
Miller hollers Hiller. Hiller hollers Haller. Haller hollers Miller points to Hiller with his fist.
And that’s the Miller-Hiller-Haller Hallelujah Twist!
Frank Howard, by the way, is also the source of the bit of New York Mets trivia, the origin of the name of the indie rock band, Yo La Tengo (featuring Ira, Big Day Coming); Howard, a left fielder, ran into his teammate who tried to say “I Got It” or something. By the time I started watching baseball, Frank Howard was a big galug stuck at first base (and before DH).
Cepeda started in the first crop of DH’s in 1973, it says here. Also, I wish to state, here, although it fits better elsewhere, that “Viva Cepeda” the Vince Guaraldi song, I would Wager, is also a reference to the movie “Viva Zapata”, it occurred to me recently.
Opening the time capsule that was my Canon camera which I had not touched since 2009, I also found this so-so photo of Matt Nathanson Music in the Park in San Jose.
I tried to give Matt a copy of Wallace Stegner’s “Collected Stories” but he refused my gift. He wrote “Wallace Stegner” in felt-tip pen on his hand, however.
That was about nine years after he had last played at Cubberley, supporting John Doe. Here’s that poster:
Matt also played in Center Quad of Gunn High during those pre-commercial radio days, plus at Stanford CoHo and Menlo School. Kathleen Daly of Zoe Cafe once bought me a coffee for leaving Matt a voice mail suggesting he could play her super cool little venue in Menalto.
It’s hard to believe Steve Lacy passed away 10 years ago this week. Doesn’t seem that long ago.
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 