Streaming Sunshine in Colma

I don’t recall living in a place so accessible to the sun streaming through the windows. But that’s how it is in Colma on this pre - Ides of March morning. (Way pre Ides of March.) Most mornings I am out the door by 6:50 and the fog is still lingering. – Like in my picture of the Salem Memorial, just across the rooftop where I live. Colma - Home to thousands, more like 1.5 million – since the turn of the century – of corpses. This is San Francisco’s burial grounds and I live smack dab in the middle of 2.2 square miles, population 2500 give or take, and 17 cemeteries. Reportedly, the corpses were originally moved here from San Francisco - yes, bodies exhumed- to make room for real estate deals. The robber barons were at it back then – just like today! I haven’t had this particular perspective of Colma yet, but I assure you, it is nearby. Although I hardly feel the need to lock my door here, a co-worker said there had been some grave robbing last week! And my neighbor said he had ratted out a transient (early Occupy Colma guy??) from the creek area behind the apartments.

But I digress. At the suggestion of a few, I am re-activating, re-imaging this old blog. Whenever I relocate, the journaling seems to spew. And there is so much to absorb in this new life! Plus, since the venue is new and I am at a ridiculous age to begin again, the phone doesn’t ring as much. Gigs have yet to begin, and learning the new job is the priority.

“No, singing is not a hobby!” I told my co-worker. “Career goals?? I think I came to San Francisco because there would be more places to play.”

These people are dedicated social workers and I think I am even more of a puzzle than I was during prison times. At the prison, everyone was an oddball. Who would want to work at a prison? (Besides the custody guys, who with only a GED in hand, are there for the overtime and 6 figure paycheck.) Anyone who opts to go through the daily security checks, the clanging of the sallyport, the keys, the alarms and the subsequent paranoia is way out of the mainstream. Some of the teachers come with a mission of rehabilitation, like my friend Deborah. She was an artist facilitator who brought me to CMC to sing doo-wop with the guys. When her position was eliminated, she went into the outside sector to create arts projects for parolees. And she is doing wonderfully. See www.poeticjusticeproject.org And there were other teachers, who believed they could make a difference with these guys. But most of them came on when the state really did try to educate these men into a different world. - Instead of succumbing to standardized testing for guys that might be in your program for 6 weeks before they were shipped off to INS or another prison. Ay yi yi. . . . More musings after a swim