Bob Watson, Willie Crawford and Bobby Tolan were all teammates at Fremont High in Los Angeles. Tolan held his bat usually high in his stance. I was sometimes compared to him, for that reason.
A New York Times podcast mentions that in 2008 Tolan’s son was shot by the police in front of his parents’ Texas home, thus ending his baseball hopes. Ifill is discussing this in context of Rittenhouse the young thug who killed a man in Wisconsin recently without penalty. The headline contemplates a post-Democratic America though so far I am not following the argument or that conclusion. More compelling was an op-ed claiming our world is worse than that imagined in “The Matrix”.
Sherrilyn Ifill
In 2013 when I came back to lead LDF, we worked on a case, filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court in a case that I thought at the time was going to be the case that was going to center and lift the issue of police violence against unarmed black people in a way that we had never seen. This is an issue I had been exposed to from the time I was a child with police killings here in New York City, and I thought this case was it. And the reason I thought this case was it is because it involved a young man named Robbie Tolan and Robbie Tolan was driving a very nice car in Texas and he lived with his parents. He drove into their driveway in a very nice neighborhood, then the police tailed him and followed him and came out and started to question him and his parents came out and said that’s our son, like what’s going on. And the police made some kind of move towards his mom and then, of course, he was blocking for his mom, and the police shot him.
And I thought, this is the case. Not only because of those facts, but Robbie Tolan happened to be a baseball player and his father had been a Major League Baseball player. I thought this is it.
This is the case. Now I’m betting most people listening have never heard of Robbie Tolan. I thought the case was the exemplar. It turned out the exemplar was Mike Brown, actually. So we don’t even know what is going to get the consciousness of the people. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. And when it happens, it’s worthwhile I think, for people to see something in a moment that helps dramatize for them the nature of an injustice that they may have known about but that they couldn’t see as clearly as crystal clear as they can through a particular incident or case.
Bobby Tolan hit 86 homers in 1,282 games with five teams most prominently the Reds – the thing about the Atlanta high school hoops team comes from a review I saw about a book about W.E.B. Dubois and music, Prof Jeffers of University of Oklahoma but from Atl. Baker Butler high, maybe Butler Baker, but not the one Mack Jones attended.
Use serial comma, use serial comma, and use serial comma. Anonymous
1) I heard back from Brett Hall Jones, daughter of Oakley Hall and partner of Louis B. Jones. I thought it funny that he wrote books about money, and physics then the Times yesterday noted that someone left a box of $180,000 in cash at City College, for the physics department. I am sort of morphing the LBJ book with the one by a Dartmouth guy, about findind real money in a plane crash, simple plan. Of Dartmouth mice and men, catcher in the awry.
4) I made a joke about drug use, and got the word “MSM’ which people took or take for muscular or joint pain, but it stinks. EDM, MSM, MSNBC – t00 many acronyms. 5) Aaron Kim has a cool mural behind Ace Hardware or Hasset Hardware or Palo Alto Hardware. Clarence sold us a new grill, although his wife, who is Hungarian and not Ghanaian or Jamaican said if it were here prime rib she’d try an oven not a bbq. 6) Robert Christgau was writing about hummingbirds, but I made a joke about our fellow Dartmouthian, Jeff Crowe caw caw caw; 7) I watched Russell Wilson and Anna Wilson back to back and learned that their uncle Benjamin F. Wilson ’73 was recently a trustee of the College. As is Dr. Odette A. Harris who kindly answered my queries to her. I counted that I am older than 8 or the 20 Dartmouth trustees. A quick math job shows that I have been in the bond now for 40 of my 57 years, having been ED admit since December, 1981. 8) I just texted “greenwash mother fuckers” to something that texted me first: “Team 350” — a picture of the earth, with a red bow, the number “350”, Support 35 Today, Give a Gift to Our Planet. i think the planet was greener in 1994 when I left corporate America – I was writing ads for Chevron during the Gulf War — and started Earthwise. Dr. Cindy Russell suggested it in that i was reading Jerry Mander “in the absense of the sacred” which she noted. Longer story. To be continued. 9) I noted Bradley Concrete pouring into the bowels of the former Hotel President Apartments. I read that Palo Alto already has more poured concrete than biomass — sum of humans, worms, plants and trees. And squirrels. 10) I’m in the old new Varsity. Sad in here. Even with Rolling Stones “Start Me Up” piped in. Making dead men come. Take that, Chopped Keenan. They are having a lecture by David Patterson a computer honcho in February. How exciting. Chop said this new project would “rock”. I tried to put my Tom Harrell show here in October, 2019 but was told they don’t do live music, not even jazz. Now the system is pleading Credence, guitars at their feet, down on the corner, now ironic. 11) they have a montage of other random speakers here including Evander Kane the Black shark. isn’t he in some sort of trouble? Or is the the institutional racism creeping into my own bias?
F*** Paul McCartney: AARON KIM HAS WINGS!
12) Sharks now have Brian Bonino from Hartford, CT and Boston Terriers university. I saw his hat trick in Nashville during IEBA. 13) Bonino is number thirteen. # also, and this is so plasty, I had a little clip from the paper yesterday about a recently deceased nfl player – #13 in 1969 Topps set – – Harry Jacobs of AFL champs the Bills, and when I was looking for more info I found this great photographer of the same name who shot in the islands.
by harry jacobs
14) Spanish word here is “cat horse” Not to be confused with Lions with Wings. 15) I suggested to Dayna Stephens that he and Ethan Iverson do a piano and bass project. In fact, I will sign off here and try to pester, like a mosquito the spanish word for small fly, by phone. 16) house system here playing rocket man by elton john. [later: paul mcCartney wings somebody knocking on the door…] 17) quick medley of things I was reading yesterday or the day before: San Jose golf course; San Francisco Mime Troupe radio play on dickens; Reddit IPO; ten billion dollars; i literally said that out loud to annoy the people next to me oh no no no. Ten billion dollars; La Comida ad; Ken Kragen music exec from Bay Area; Biden Ukraine McCaul sic; et cetera. Hello, Dayna?
^When my 30 yo nephew was 4 he noted something hovering near the feeder and announced it as a “word-picker”. He was born 8-8-88 which they, before the divorce thought an auspice. He’s a dj, EDM which i hope is not a euphemism for MSDM or whatever. My freshman roommate Teddy Conway of the New Orleans Conways(and Pennsylvania Scotts)got cited for driving on the Bema perhaps looking for AD or Richardson on X, whereas i spent three nights in Dicks House on haldol. Oh (sound of tiny wings at high speed), david Middlebrook sold us briefly a stone and steel hummingbird the scale of TRex. He was a champion high jumper besides his girth, David not his subject. Actually Palo alto had a 7.00 man — one of only 8 in the U.S. Aaron Kim now at UCLA also did a poster recently for my nina simone (Jerry Jemmott) tribute and also has a mural very banksy on the back of the hardware store, our one and only: we have 10 types of coffee and three gelatos and likely a half a billion in venture capital each year — im parked in the shadow of Jeff Crowe ‘78 or his office. Norwest capital. Of the Massachusetts crowes. Caw caw caw Cccak
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# I’m forgetting how this post morphed from something about poured concrete and the varsity and hotel president to paly athletics but I learn that Harold Hwang is the boss man of a lab at Stanford applied physics and is from Princeton and MIT before here, and his daughter is a soccer player and runs track and may be at Stanford this fall whereas the oldest daughter is at Wellesley, where my cousin went. And she shot a photo of some random young musicians. And the C Magazine at Paly had a story on the Aaron Kim Vargas mural. Also, when I awoke this morning about five hours ago I was thinking about the neighbor who shall remain nameless and his mother said he was interested in CRISPR-CAS9 and I recalled that I have two Gunn classmates, Porteus and Witte who have labs, one wet one dry. I almost wrote Dray. Which is like Cray.
Something in the way he she they Cray Dray move. To wit:
Aaron Kim and Leonardo Vargas –we want more more more
Hailey Hwang daughter of Hwang labs boss man — I almost think the best part of this shot is the three girls watching, their respective expressions
This is a music blog foremost
a group of wild monkeys from Ethiopia called geladas not to be confused with the ice cream make gutteral babbling noises that sound like plastic alto read aloud; im a flea bit peanut monkey all my friends are Junkers; I have a neighbor named Patrick with “1636” on his BMW but when I asked what it meant he said “come on, man” and retreated into his garden, like Thoreau. It’s the year Harvard was fondled, no lie.
Hey I wonder if George Tabb and Furious George – the name is a pun on “Curious George” ever covered the Stone’s “Monkey Man”? I met George Tabb thru my then-girlfriend Joan Tabb — ok, we did the nasty once after namaste yoga — there are minors reading this. I did not say that Louis B. Jones donated $180,000 to City College New York, very CUNY puny punny. Funny ha ha.
Cicely Tyson is dead at 96. Wait a minute it says she died in January — I guess it was just a note about notable deaths this year that popped into my feed just now. Wiki says she was born on my brother’s birthday but in the year my father was born and then died this year on my 57th birthday. But this movie from 1974 written by Stanford grad Ernest Gaines definitely helped me become, over the course of my lifetime, and ally to Blacks.
I got here somehow reading an LA Times puff piece about Denver Lemaster of Oxnard, CA. Who played for the Braves.
Billy Williams Deron Johnson, Eddie Mathews, Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Johnny Callison, Mack Jones, Norm Cash, Ron Santo, Tony Conigliaro, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey Ten of the 17 top HR hitters that year were Black Only 7 were this year.
This t-shirt is referencing Bobbito Garcia a musician and athlete I met in Oakland at a soul food kitchen, though he is based in NYC. The item is sold out. Not sure what the words mean, but I like it.serI found Raven Solomon while researching a Cassandra Wilson song, “ravens” “song of solomon”. Her work here is about a killing of a man in Tulsa and there is a document wherein the police helicopter use this term “bad dude” in reference to the suspect.
Cubberley, aka Cubberley Community Center or the former Elwood Cubberley High, 4000 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto, CA, 94304; 35 acres owned by We The People and or PAUSD, slated for redevelopment and or subject to lease. Palo Altans and diaspora members from its 25 classes are well organized and opinionated – -they should be polled as to the outcome.
Castilleja aka known as Castilleja School for Girls, 1310 Bryant Street, Palo Alto, CA 94301; six acres, privately owned; subject to Conditional Use Permit for roughly 400 of the wealthiest area families and their school age chikdren; currently applying for major redevelopment and expansion and investment; although dissidents point out its zoned for housing and therefore costs Palo Altans tens of millions per year in lost taxes; plus the deliberations are divisive and anti-community , especially along class lines that is, pitting the rich against the middle and working classes, elitist and quasi-fascist.
Fry’s, area roughly bounded as 60 acres between Page Mill Road/Oregon Expressway, to the north (i.e., the south border of North Palo Alto versus South Palo Alto; or Old Palo Alto versus South Palo Alto; or white Palo Alto versus Asian Palo Alto —arguably the gentrification being plotted would be like annexing the zone to North white Palo Alto; ironically or not, NVCA is also Ventura, historically Palo Alto’s Black neighborhood; in 2010 San Jose based Sobrato bought from multi-generation dynastic Wheatley Smith Jacobsen the 14-acre Fry’s retail site but then started buying back, often from poor Black families single family homes then lobbied City Hall and their allies in leadership to “upzone” the sites — immediately doubling and trebling the value of their investment- as a special zone of 60 acres was established. Consultants were engaged, often at tax-payers expense, to create the illusion of participatory democracy thru various working groups, to run up the flagpole various outcomes, enabling various yes-men, shills and useful idiots.
F(60) + C (6) + C (35) = 101 potential new acres of parkland in the proposed FCC 101 initiative. If Palo Alto can dig deep in a moral sense to push back against the greed of these parcels’ current controllers, in would be an auspice of a Democratic re-boot here. Plucking the concrete and steel from these three sites and restoring the land as open space or perhaps pollinator zone (with natural plants and flowers that would help the honey bees), even for a temporary 10-year period, besides the environmental benefit would be a victory against creeping hyper-capitalism.
The cost might be $100m to $200m, perhaps less with a majority New Residentialist slate victory in 2022 and 2024 local elections and eminent domain. Castilleja could relocate their school to outside city limits, or potentially to Pinewood campus or Ventura school site. Maybe just two electeds who agree in principle to FCC-101 Parks plan would make it a mandate.
Maybe these three areas could be renamed for A, Al Young — California poet laureate; B, bell hooks, Stanford grad author; C, Clay Carson, Stanford historian who manages The Martin Luther King Papers — all Blacks with ties to the area. I also think of LenRay and Danny McCallister who lived at Margarita and Park for many years, both Gunn too soon, and remembered here, especially in Ventura.
Javier Gil and the late Danny McCallister both Gunn athletes in the 1980s
Mark Weiss, with Michael Heizer’s ”Levitated Mass’ Los Angeles, December, 2021: if 5,000 New Residentialist Palo Alto voters and activists work together we can move immovable objects like the cartel of builders and moneybaggers, who’ve controlled leaders here for two decades
Plastic Alto with Mark Weiss 