SoCal Myths: The Great Dodger in the Sky

Storm clouds over Mt. San Jacinto, June 3, 2009. Photos by Rich Seeley




Rain is so rare at this time of year that records were broken in Palmdale, Sandberg and Camarillo, where there had been zero precipitation on June 3 in all the years that the National Weather Service had been keeping records, the Oxnard office reported. -- from today's Los Angeles Times.

Grandma Saveraid lured my mother to Los Angeles at the end of World War II by writing her letters claiming "it only rains here at night."

My mother was living in Nebraska at the time and this sounded too good to be true.

And like everything else that sounds too good to be true, it was.

Eventually, my mother, who spent most of the rest of her life in Southern California, found out that it does occasionally rain here during the day.

But it mostly rains during just two months -- February and March -- all year. Dodger baseball games are rarely rained out because it almost never rains here during baseball season -- April through October.

So while Grandma's "it only rains here at night" was a bit of a stretch, it is true that there are very few rainy days in Southern California.



The fact that California has a unique climate when compared to the rest of the country and much of the world, causes meteorologists based back East to make strange statements on national television.

Sometime in September, when the fire season begins here, a guy on the Atlanta-based Weather Channel will say: "It's been five months since they've had any measurable rain in the Los Angeles area and by now they desperately need it in the fire-prone foothills."

Of course, anybody who had lived here for more than a year or two knows that it ain't going to rain in September. Except for a few little drizzles it isn't likely to rain here until February, if then.

Except right now because the high and low pressure areas are out of kilter off the Pacific Coast, we are getting freaky weather this June.

Yesterday and last night it actually did rain in Southern California.

But it still didn't rain out the Dodgers home game, which they won thanks to a great pitching performance by Chad Billingsley, and the benevolence of a local deity known as The Great Dodger in the Sky.

The Great Dodger in the Sky is supposed to protect us against rain outs. Among the other deities this is called nice work if you can get it.

Allen Ginsberg: 'Die when you die'

My "Poetry Speaks" calendar reminds me that today is the birthday of Allen Ginsberg, who died in 1997.

I remember going to see Ginsberg read and sing his poems at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica in 1982 with my friend Lisa, who died in 1989.

Lisa was even then fighting the cancer that would eventually kill her.

Most of our friends in L.A. went to movies or dance clubs or rock concerts on Friday and Saturday nights.

But Lisa and I went to poetry readings. We were especially drawn to the aging -- even then -- Beatnik poets.

A few months after we went to see Allen Ginsberg at McCabe's, we drove down to Laguna Beach to see Gary Snyder, a Zen Beatnik survivor still living and writing today at 79.

Every time we went to hear a poet the occasion had the importance of maybe being the last time.

As far as I know, that Friday night in 1982 was the last time Lisa ever saw Allen Ginsberg.

Despite his reputation for being the outrageous hero of the hippies, Ginsberg was impossibly gentle and charming and funny in person.

Lisa was fond of him because he was the kind of Jewish uncle she wished she'd had if she'd had better luck in relatives when she was growing up in Queens. A happy Buddhist convert rather than the dour Reds of her 1950s childhood.

The little bio on my Poetry Speaks calendar recounts Ginsberg's conversion: "After years of dabbling in various narcotic substances, a trip to India proved life-changing for Ginsberg. His exposure to Indian culture introduced him to meditation, a mode of mind expansion that replaced his former drug habit."

By the time Lisa and I saw him at McCabe's, Ginsberg was practicing Tibetan Buddhism at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He had taken on the happy outlook of the Dalai Lama. He was funny in a spiritual way.

That night, playing a harmonium usually associated with Hindu chants, Ginsberg performed his country western version of the Buddha's Four Nobel Truths. (You can see a video of his Gospel Nobel Truths on YouTube.)

The song is all about not taking your suffering too seriously and accepting life and death and everything in between.

The last verse says:

Talk when you talk
Cry when you cry
Lie down, you'll lie down
Die when you die

Lisa, in her gallows humor way, thought that was very funny.

It reminded her that although she was dying, as every one is eventually, there was no need to get ahead of herself.

The Virtue of Sitting & Doing Nothing

It is better to see God in everything than to try and figure it out.
- Neem Karoli Baba

Sitting & working.
Sitting & texting.
Sitting & figuring.
Sitting & talking.
Sitting & eating.
Sitting & drinking.
Sitting & waiting.
Sitting & worrying.

Sitting on the phone.
Sitting up straight.
Sitting pretty.
Sitting duck.
Sitting in the catbird seat.
Sitting on the edge of your seat.

But sitting & doing nothing?

There is a virtue in just sitting.

And doing nothing.

Now when Buddhists talk about sitting they usually mean some kind of insight meditation practice, which can be a good thing but it does take some effort.

But another good sitting practice, which has the virtue of being easier, is just sitting quietly doing nothing.

There's no need to wrap your legs into the Lotus position. You can sit on a park bench or in a chair or on the grass.

Just sit out in nature and watch the birds and butterflies.

Or watch the clouds go by.

If there are no clouds or this seems too active, sit and watch the rocks.

If the rocks prove too distracting, close your eyes.

Charley on the Edge

Charley sits on the edge
One paw away from the fall
She sits easily, never tense
Not a care at all

Charley likes the edge
With the heat of the sun at its peak
She likes the view, the air
Nothing more to seek

Charley watches the birds
In the tree just feet away
On the edge, she’s as carefree
And wild as they

Charley sees the dogs below
On leashes she’s always shunned
Tied to people, to being good
Something she’s never done

Charley lives by her own rules
Makes it up as she goes
Confident of the way she is
And of the love she knows

Charley dreams of sailing
Across the sky and the sea
She loves the edge, for here
She’s as free as she’ll ever be

I see her there and wish
I were small enough to sit
Beside her on the edge
Just one more aging misfit

- Peggy Radcliffe

Stealing Light

This Chollo Cactus reflects
sunlight so elegantly
it appears to be illuminant.
It is as if this cactus
rivals the sun's power
producing its own light.
But it is desert trickery.
The Chollo steals sunlight
from that source of plenty
and offers it to us,
who have so little
illumination of our own.

- Photo & words by Rich Seeley

Wild Life Around The Home

Too many treadmill stints
left me with shin splints.

Couldn’t walk at the zoo.
Didn’t know what to do.

Confined with my Coolpix
in this apartment complex.

Dreamed of photographing lions,
a wolf or bear I might spy on.

But in this suburban bog
nothing but humans walking dogs.

Photo safari falling flat
can’t even find a cat.

Dullsville up to the gizzard
then I spot this little lizard.

But as I point the camera
lizard makes like a chimera

Before I even focus
he goes hocus pocus.

My finger on the shutter falls,
producing close up of stucco walls.

Reptiles may make some queasy
but photographing them ain’t easy.

So I revert to subjects inanimate
but I missed that lizard damn it.

It’s no use, photo shoot done.
Suddnely lizard comes out to sun.

Around the garden he is nosing
then stays still, almost posing.

He lets me focus, click bam, bam.
This lizard turns out to be a ham.

So despite my home bound strife
I’ve photographed some wild life.




- Rhymes and photo by Rich Seeley

Our Mormon Neighbors

Photo by Rich Seeley

O Give thanks unto the Lord; for he is good: because his mercy endureth for ever. Psalms 118:1

We live upstairs from an apartment occupied by young Mormon missionaries.

I have to admit that at 62, I am incredulous that some twenty-something is wearing a badge that identifies him as an "Elder."

The Mormon missionaries turn over every few months. One new group once asked me if I had been proselytized by former groups.

I said I am a confirmed Lutheran, hence all the beer you see me bringing upstairs.

This is bad fudging on my part. I have not been in a Lutheran Church in at least two decades.

Since 1969 I have been hanging with Hindus and Buddhists.

Is there such a thing as a Zen Lutheran?

I have no idea.

My beliefs or concepts merge Hindu, Buddhist and Christian teachings.

I am dangerously New Age.

An Irish Catholic friend believes I am a closet Catholic because I read Thomas Merton.

Oh well.

The point is I am not a missionary field for the Mormons.

When backed against a wall, I will throw in my lot with that ill-tempered borderline alcoholic egomaniac Martin Luther as opposed to whatever and whoever the Morons have to offer.

However.

I want to say something good about these Mormon missionary kids.

These Mormon kids downstairs are the best neighbors we've ever had.

They do not get rowdy and play loud music after 10 p.m. The police and paramedics don't visit them on a regular basis. They are polite and are not dealing drugs.

They do whatever they do to bring the good news of Mormonism to the great unwashed of Palm Springs, California.

The photo above shows some kind of giant stuffed animal that the Mormon missionaries have placed on their patio.

If you are not a Mormon, if you have ill-feelings about them from some childhood or adult experience, you will not love what I have to say.

I don't know where they got this giant stuffed animal, but it gave me the subject for the best photograph I have made in a long time.