When I was working at a failing radical newspaper some thirty years ago, someone gave me the task of preparing a third-class mailing. This meant hand-processing about 5,000 envelopes, maybe more. Third-class mailings are supposed to consist of identical envelopes, with only the addressee different. For this job, however, the envelopes were of varying sizes […]
The Dead Guy
It’s an easily forgettable stretch of Ventura Boulevard. Deep in the valley. We live up on the hill. Some actress on KTLA reported that 100% of all self-service touch screens and shopping cart handles in the San Fernando valley were completely contaminated by fecal matter. We have tile floors and prefer glass smoke utensils. Needless […]
The Grammar of Loneliness
When the elderly woman spoke to me after I said “hi” outside our apartment complex’s communal laundromat, her words tumbled out with the unmistakable grammar of terrible loneliness. She had a slightly anxious, furtive look, as if she was caught red-handed committing a terrible crime at the same time that she seemed equally relieved to […]
Mamma Cheese
It was always a gamble going somewhere with Mamma Cheese. She was light-skinned. The white women disliked her because they thought that she thought that she was “as good” as them. But the black women disliked her because they thought that she thought that she was “better” than them. Mamma Cheese didn’t take shit from anybody. Once, when I was […]
Daddy Cheese refuses
My dad, Nathaniel Spain Chism, whom we all called Daddy Cheese, or just Cheese, told the following story. He got drafted and went into the Navy. But he ended up in the brig–in prison. Why? The Navy, of course, had wanted all its soldiers to declare that they were going to fight “the enemy” for […]
Another Person’s Shoes
In 2005 I was hired by a non-profit in San Mateo County to design and teach classes in a combined English as a Second Language and Family Literacy program in the community room of a low-income housing development. The development was run by a different non-profit, and yet another non-profit ran an on-site childcare facility. […]