Capers With Carroll

I was slow going digital with my photography. As late as the summer of 2000, I dragged forty roles of slide film and my Nikon SLR for seven weeks across Europe and Uzbekistan. I still hadn’t organized and viewed all those slides when I bought my Canon G3 during the summer of 2003, and now, of course, when I want to use one of those European shots, I first have to digitize it. My G3 has been twice to China and twice to Brazil. It has recorded weddings for my five children, gotten me nearly three years into grandfatherhood, and illustrated these first five years of Capers with Carroll. On a single day in Yunnan, I shot 600 keepers from a bus window. In Pernambuco, I captured 120 images of one male Frigga sp. to get the picture I use at the top of this blog. That would have been a prohibitive four 36-shot rolls of film. I love my G3.

However, in September, I spent some time in the camera section of a big-box electronics store, helping a visitor from China choose a pocket-sized digital. Suddenly the G3 felt pretty bulky. My favorite shirt is a guayabera with four pockets. They will hold the G3, but it’s awkward to maintain for more than a few minutes. I usually carry my camera on a belly strap, but that creates other problems. Whether I’m photographing urban wildlife or grand kids, the key to success is to have the camera perpetually at hand. Even as a junior high teacher, whether I want to record evidence against a graffiti artist or a cute candid shot to forward to the yearbook, a camera in the pocket is worth two in the closet.

I don’t want to give away the part it plays in my story, but I spent last weekend researching the sport of sweep rowing, especially as it’s practiced in the waters around San Quentin State Prison. The Marin Rowing Association has its boathouse up Corte Madera, in Larkspur, just a few hundred yards west of the prison. Over a year ago, I started following their website. Then, on my last visit to San Francisco, I dropped by and watched the activity as the teams returned from a big race, cleaned up the equipment, and put it away. I tried to stay out of their way, but picked out one fellow to catch in the parking lot with some questions. It was my great good fortune to pick Ron Arlas, Larkspur city councilman and former mayor, with rowing experience going back to the 1960s. He has gone over-and-above, not just answering questions, but taking an active interest in my story, offering suggestions, and opening doors. In short, he’s become a friend.

So last Saturday, with the weather perfect, I got to ride along with the coach in a launch as we followed the morning workout. In this shot, we had already been out near the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge, and were headed back. That’s Ron in seat three from the bow, and East Block of the prison directly over his head.

My pen-pal on Death Row mentioned once that from his cell he could sometimes see the teams practicing. My angle was so much better.

On Sunday, I went back for the two-hour Learn-to-Row workshop that MRA offers. I’ve rowed rowboats and canoes, but these boats offer a different feel, and I wanted to experience it. We began with an hour of land-based instruction, and then proceeded to launch into Corte Madera, four novices with four veterans and our coxswain-instructor.

Research done, now it’s back to writing.

My interest in Japan goes back to high school. I finished a year of Japanese language at Pasadena City College and a year of its history at UCLA. So I’ve been vaguely aware of the Clark Center for Japanese Art & Culture for several years. I’d just never gotten there. The Clark sits only 28 miles from my doorstep, but it’s not in a direction I’m accustomed to travel.

Kings County is largely dairy country, the milking sheds and herd corrals interrupted only by the alfalfa fields that support them. Most of the dairy families trace their roots to recent immigrants from Holland or the Azores. It’s not the kind of landscape where one would expect to find one of only two museums in America dedicated entirely to Japanese art.

The land has a poor record for supporting high culture. In the late 1970s, a Canadian hoping to found a Shakespearian theater studied a map, saw a ‘Stratford’ (another 14 miles of dairy land beyond the Clark) roughly midway between the Los Angeles and San Francisco markets, and came for a look. At Stratford, he found a fork in the road, a hay barn, and some farm-worker housing. Not ready to give up, he backtracked through Hanford and all the way to Visalia before he could find a host community for his company. For several seasons, they produced some fine theater, but the L.A. and S.F. crowds never materialized. Without those crowds, the show went dark.

So it is pleasantly surprising to see another attempt at world-class culture birthed among the dairy herds. In this case, the herds help insure the endowment. Founder Willard G. Clark began the center with money earned in the international bull-sperm market. He still lives on the property, separated from the museum complex by Japanese gardens and a pond. While the literature rack presents opportunities for sponsorships and donations to help expand the work, the existing program looks healthy.

My immediate inspiration for making this visit was to preview a possible reward-trip for a handful of my hardest working students. (I’ve taken students to the Getty, but the round trip is 370 miles.) My seventh grade history class does a unit on Japan, and the Clark Center came to mind as we talked in class.


I arrived on a Saturday afternoon, the final day of an exhibition on contemporary Japanese bamboo art. The Clark is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 1:00 to 5:00 PM. One building houses the offices and an impressive collection of books. I didn’t come with either the credentials to poke through their rare texts or a subject I was ready to research, but I know where it is now, if I’m ever up to that.

My entrance interrupted one of the curators at her work. She took my five dollars, showed me their literature rack, and then escorted me to the gallery. As we left the office, we passed a coat of samurai armor for an exhibit that begins next August.

One enters the exhibit hall through sets of outer and inner doors, between which the visitor slips out of his shoes. After a small anteroom, the main hall is large enough to display 25 or 30 works. (In storage, somewhere on the grounds, another 1,700 works from the permanent collection await their turns.) I was met at the door by an intern from Germany, and found one couple already present. Later, a mother and daughter joined us. Sometimes we gathered around a particular piece and discussed it with the intern. Other times we separated and enjoyed the art in silence.

I came to this exhibition with negligible background on bamboo art. As a child, I remember studying a couple of rattan and bamboo chairs, and I once spent ten days in an Amazon village where I watched the women splitting vines, soaking them, and weaving them into basketry. These pieces begin with some of the same basic techniques. Apparently, within the current generation of Japanese craftsmen, some who had apprenticed working on lampshades and containers shifted their attention to abstract sculpture. Their work demonstrates attention to form and texture, with color schemes that owe much of their subtle variations to shadows within the work itself. I found it interesting, but my 7th graders will probably be more excited by next August’s Samurai armor.

Outside, the Clark Center has a display devoted to Bonsai. In the afternoon breeze while I was there, it came with the authentic aroma of, well, this might be a good place to invoke the wisdom of Proverbs 14:4, “Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox.” (English Standard Version) The Clark testifies to such abundance.

I enjoyed my first visit to the Clark, and as new exhibits pass through, I hope to go back. Not quite fourteen years old, the museum has made an impressive start. I hope it grows.

More photos of both this exhibit and the next one can be found here.

This is my review of the Clark Center's May, 2012, exhibit on Kamisaka Sekka and Rimpa.

Yesterday I attended the memorial service for Luis “Lucho” Figallo, long-time Spanish teacher at Golden West, the high school where four of my five children attended. All four studied under Mr. Figallo, probably averaging two years apiece. That’s eight Back-to-School Nights, eight Open Houses, and somehow, we always got around to see Mr. Figallo, even when we didn’t have kids in his classes. Oftentimes we stayed late in his classroom. After all the other parents had gone home, Lucho would offer advice to my fledgling-Spanish-teacher wife. He was always ready to give help, switching back-and-forth between beautiful Spanish and his own ebullient brand of English.

For most of the nearly 20 years I knew Lucho, he insisted that he was “going to retire in another two or three years,” but he only left the classroom two years ago. He was a people person. He loved his students. He loved his subject. After teaching high school all day, he taught night school at the local community college, often to classes full of his former students. I saw a post today on the College of Sequoias site, from a former student at both schools who then went back into Mr. Figallo’s Golden West class as a substitute teacher. “. . . even though he wasn't there in person his loving presence was felt. I don't know if it was because of all the kind smiles on the student faces or if it was because of that jolly old piñata with Figi's resemblance.”

I know the history of that piñata. A committee worked on it, but it took its final form in a back bedroom at my house. And it did bear an uncanny resemblance to Figallo. He was wearing a beard in those days, but it was that smile (and if I recall, the Panama hat) that gave it away.

Each of my children who had him has fond memories of Mr. Figallo, but my greatest debt goes back to the year my eldest son entered 9th grade. We were just back from five years in Colombia, but my son was very unsure of his Spanish. Under Mr. Figallo, I saw his confidence grow. Then, just before Easter, Figallo pulled Matthew aside. The youth group from the church where Lucho was an elder needed a translator for their Spring Break trip to Mexico. Would Matthew consider helping out?

Matthew went. He was one of the youngest members of the group and had not been part of any of the team-building exercises or fund-raisers. However, as the translator, Matthew found himself where the action was, in a key position of leadership. He came home secure in his Spanish and suddenly aware of new gifts as a leader. But it did not stop there. Lucho continued to support and encourage Matthew through another decade and a half. The confidence Matthew gained studying under Mr. Figallo has carried him into fluency in German, Russian, and Portuguese and starts in a couple more. Thanks, Lucho.

Lucho grew up in Peru and came by himself to the US as a young man, learned English while working in a grocery store, and earned a masters degree in Spanish Literature. A coworker gave him a Bible. He studied it carefully and decided to base his life on what he found there. At the end of his life, battling cancer, he and his wife prayed that God would give him the strength to make one last trip to Peru, to say goodbye to the family he left behind, and to encourage their Christian walks. Coming back into Los Angeles, when the pilot announced “We are now beginning our descent,” Lucho said only, “I’m not going down. I’m going up.” With that, he stood in the presence of Jesus.

A life well lived.
Thanks, Lucho. I hope Mary has the piñata.