January 27, 2012

Ray Cook Memorial : 12/1/2015 at Fernwood Cemetery

Ray's official memorial will take place gravesite on Tuesday, December 1 at Fernwood in Tam Valley. *
We'll celebrate how fortunate we were to know him, if only for a brief moment.
Service is scheduled for 11:00 am, please call to confirm.

Haiku, "For Evergreen" dedicated to Ray Cook.

For Evergreen

"Stupid spilled and then

we sat back and watched until

it slipped on concrete."

----- Mari Tamburo

Ray would have celebrated 85 years on this planet on December 2, 2015. His 80th birthday post remains the most viewed post on the Homestead Beat since we started the blog. 

http://www.homesteadbeat.com/2010/12/ray-cooks-80th-birthday-post.html

--- MT 

for Homestead Volunteers 

Fernwood Address and phone number: 

Address: 301 Tennessee Valley Rd, Mill Valley, CA 94941
Phone:(415) 383-7100

Rupert Costo, the Pope and My Friend Ray

Posting this for fellow friends of Ray :
http://josephylibrary.blogspot.com/2015/09/rupert-costo-pope-and-my-friend-ray.html

Ray Cook : In Memoriam

We are saddened to share the news that Ray Cook has left this earth. I found out this past Sunday at that he passed a few weeks ago and a small get together of immediate family and his "AA buddies" was held about a week ago at the Mt. Tam Methodist Church

Ray and I became fast friends in August 2010 at a meeting of neighbors opposed to the build of an urban concrete slab along Evergreen Avenue in semi rural Homestead Valley.
In the short time I knew him, he taught me a lot about life and held up a mirror that revealed a part of me I never knew was there. I consider it a great honor that he trusted me enough to let me add a few words to his sandwich board.
We shared some walks and talks, he showed me how to safely navigate Homestead's winding roads and I will forever treasure the time we spent together.
Rest in Paradise, Ray. You've earned it.

--- Mari Tamburo
for
Homestead Volunteers :
HEAR US

p.s. If you have any photos or memories of Ray to share, please send them to :  hv94941 (at) gmail (dot com) and we will share here.

Related :
https://www.youtube.com/user/raysworldmv

Ray's Recommended Reading

A statement from Ray's invisible video editor.

Ray Cook Receives the Rupert Costo Medal!

In November of 2014, Ray Cook received the Rupert Costo medal and he announced it on his You Tube Channel on March 15th.

Congratulations!


 --- MMT
for Homestead Volunteers

Ray Cook Goes Viral on You Tube,

We have added a You Tube gadget to the blog. Check it out.



 Ray will be adding videos as the mood strikes, so feel free to subscribe to his  channel,

Raysworldmv

Homestead Haiku.2

Homestead Haiku.2

Man shoots a cougar.
Committee beguiles the lamb.
Sidewalks in Homestead.

Ray Cook

Connecting the Dots

Homestead Haiku

Connected the Dots.
An image to startle One.
Oligarchy Here.

Ray Cook

Homespun Lexicology

gymnasium: a structure placed and used for gymnastics, and such.

oligrarchium: a structure placed and used for oligarchy, and such.

Enough homespun lexicology for today. More later. Thanks for your kind attention.

Ray Cook

My Mill Valley Manifesto

1877

My Mill Valley Manifesto

Charles Powell was nineteen years old when Custer fell at the Battle of the Little Bighorn. That had been true since it happened – a long, long time ago, in another time, long before I was born.

When as an adult I learned survivors of that historic event were still being interviewed as I issued from my mother’s womb in southern Idaho, time was shockingly compressed into the awakening that Custer’s misfortune was not ancient history, but a very brief lifetime ago – mine!

Charles Powell was my maternal grandfather, a blacksmith whose calloused and kindly hand led me around our small Idaho town on his crony visits until his death the month before I started first grade in 1935.

I was born a Westerner and remain a Westerner, in fact and in spirit. My view of the world is, at least in the beginning was from the American Northwest, between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific Ocean. I was born in the Pacific Northwest because my ancestors had migrated there and earned their humble living on land which at the time had only recently been taken from the original inhabitants by means and methods I don’t approve of, namely theft and violence, and yet are glorified in the American flag. If it should be necessary to inform oneself of the particulars behind that opinion, one should Google "The Nez Perce War of 1877."

Shortly before Christmas 2011, I received a Christmas card bearing an official greeting from a prominent American university, with whom the last contact had been nearly five years ago when by separate letters the University Librarian and the Special Collections Department acknowledged receiving a book I had written entitled, "California History through My Two Blue Eyes, Blitz Edition." In this case the word "Book" must be understood as a handy instrument to stretch the word "charitable" beyond its normal compass because the book was merely a document of seven pages consisting of the title page, an epigraph from Genesis, four pages of historical photos, and a final remark by the author regarding copyrights. All seven pages were magnificently bound in an El Cheapo plastic see-thru folio from the local drugstore.

Its contents, though, are the grist for My Mill Valley Manifesto. Herewith a recapitulation of the seven pages:

1. Title Page: "California History through (printed in blue) My Two Blue Eyes (followed, printed in black) by Ray Cook – SFSU 1957 Blitz Edition, March 31, 2007"

2. The Epigraph: "Then God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. Genesis 1:28, THE HOLY BIBLE – New King James Version


3. Vintage photograph of loggers: four men, enjoying a respite from their work, pose for the photographer; date of photo unknown but obviously before introduction of power tools. Two men recline on their elbows in an enormous notch large enough to accommodate all of them standing erect, which they have just hacked into a tree of gargantuan proportions. Beside them, standing on springboards driven into the tree’s deep protective bark about eight feet above the ground, two more men pose at ease. Wood chips the size of supper plates slope in a neat pile away from the industrious party. The caption reads:
"Pictured above is a typical scene showing the insolence and posturing theatrics of the loggers in Northern California. Here they pose amid the wanton destruction of the once loving giant Redwood trees." And, "Courtesy Humboldt State University Archives"

4. Vintage photograph – more than two dozen men in mounted formation on palomino horses – half of them posing atop that part of a fallen tree visible to the camera, half of them on the ground posing alongside the fallen giant. The caption reads:
"Groups of armed assassins such as these roamed the area of the Northwest. This photo is unidentified as to whether these men are volunteers or U. S. Army men. In either case, they have already murdered the forest. Now they are shown ready to murder the Indians. Matched uniforms, matched horses, and matched arrogance characterized such groups. Similar forces, both volunteer vigilantes and U.S. Army groups, plundered the north coast region from 1858 to the 1960’s" "Courtesy Humboldt State University Archives"

5. Vintage photograph of an Italianate brick church, its steeple clock showing ten minutes
past two, captioned, "THEN – North east corner California and Grant
Streets - 1899. San Francisco’s oldest landmark is the city’s first cathedral, St. Mary’s, which has stood at California and Grant since 1853…"

6. Vintage photograph of a twin-spired synagogue – captioned, "THEN – Sutter Street
looking west from Stockton - 1900. The minareted towers of the Emanuel
Synagogue were a landmark on the San Francisco skyline for 30 years until the
earthquake…"

7. Author’s remarks: "These photos were used in this hastily prepared little document without the knowledge or permission of the copyright owners, but with the devout belief that they would have approved, had there been time to ask. Ray Cook 3/31/07."

-------------------- -- -- <> -- -- --------------------

A week or so after my birth that I fleetingly mentioned in the opening paragraphs above, I was baptized – a Christian – an event that has clung to me all my life like a well sprung bear trap, and caused me no less anguish. A Christian, yes, but not by choice, and when it came time at age twelve to act on my own behalf at Confirmation and confirm the scourge my parents had unintentionally and unwittingly hung on me – I freaked out and never recovered.

I had been baptized a Catholic but unbeknownst to me, my father was a Protestant and always claimed that although he witnessed my baptism it was invalid because he had King’s X (his fingers crossed,) – or something like that, I’m sure. But according to Hoyle’s book of Baptismal Regulations it was legitimate and binding on all of us, and I don’t ever recall my father speaking fondly of Mr. Hoyle.

Somewhere in the opening paragraphs above I mentioned starting first grade in 1935? Yes. At Saint Paul’s Catholic Parochial, where the nuns wore uniforms called habits that were black (not really good syntax – sorry) that were finished or punctuated by a white, fluted and stiffly pressed – I don’t what it is properly called – rather like a lady’s fan, attached at their brow to the black veil covering their head and hair. The children, especially the boys, were fascinated with the doubt whether the nuns actually had hair at all, but I recall clearly as though it were yesterday that whether they were young or not so young, or thin or robust – their every hand seemed to have been hewn from the finest alabaster by Michelangelo himself.

But enough of that. My parochial education ended in May, 1943 during World War II when my family pulled up stakes and moved to California. Having already braved the trauma of joining my father’s Protestant faith and damning myself forever in my mother’s eyes, I left town still believing that the world was cloven down the middle into Catholics and non-Catholics.

I don’t recall the date or the place but I remember waking up one morning still groggy from the discovery that I’m a goy. (Apparently someone else had got hold of the cleaver!)

It must have been about then that I took to drink.

Now, to cut to the chase: I’m watching TV. It’s January 20, 2009. The scene is Washington D.C. Diane Feinstein is introducing the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, who then turns to inaugurate President Elect Barak Obama, who places his hand upon a bible held for him by his wife, Michelle. The President Elect places his had upon the Bible, raises his right hand and solemnly swears to defend the Constitution of the United States, "So help me God!" The synapses in the Westerner lobes of my brain throw sparks all over the room.

The Bible upon which Barak Obama swore his inaugural oath to God was reported as having been the personal Bible of Abraham Lincoln. My own family Bible (which, parenthetically, I gave away last year) was not as old as Lincoln’s - but nearly; my great grandmother first inscribed it in 1886, only twenty-two years after Lincoln’s death. Like Lincoln’s, it is handsomely bound in leather and it is safe to assume they are fairly similar in layout and text. The first page inside the cover of my family Bible is an etching of a cherubic baby boy floating among some weeds in a wicker basket like the kind my mother hung up the wash with, and a dark skinned maiden (as a youngster I was in love with her because one of her breasts is hanging out) is standing furtively among the tall weeds eyeing the baby floating in the basket. The title beneath the etching informed me that this was, "Moses Among the Bulrushes." The next page informs EVERYONE in shrieking red ink that this book is the "Word of God." ! ! (The exclamation points are mine, because my father never let me forget it.)

The image of baby Moses in the Bulrushes commenced blinking in my mind like a filigreed casino marquee and I’m wondering, what the hell does Moses have to do with our President’s inauguration? After all, isn’t the Bible more or less a history of tribes of people who wandered around the Middle East thousands of years ago, their adventures, and misadventures? Would it not have been more fitting if Obama had placed his hand upon a dream catcher or perhaps some history concerning Geronimo, or Sitting Bull, or Cochise, or Crazy Horse, or Red Cloud, or Tecumseh, even Buffalo Bill, or SOME icon representing the ground upon which he stood?

Recall please, on page 3 above, the parenthetical mention that last year I had given away my family bible? I gave it to the congregation of a small town Protestant Church in the state of Oregon where before World War One my father’s father was the resident Protestant pastor. His mother, my great grandmother, the one mentioned a few paragraphs above as having inscribed it, died in this small Oregon town in 1916 and is buried there across the road from the Nez Perce Homeland Project, right smack in the middle of the heartland from which the Nez Perce were brutally driven in the Nez Perce war of 1877, an historical event most conscientious readers would by this time already understand. My great grandmother shares the primal dust with the Nez Perce, and sensitive readers should now begin to understand my ill concealed antipathy to the bible having been the vehicle which validates the solemn word of President Barak Obama.

I believe that when Barak Obama placed his hand upon the Bible at his inauguration, he in fact as well as in metaphor not only explained to the world America’s doctrine of Manifest Destiny, he reaffirmed America’s commitment to it.

Ergo, my reaffirmation of "California History through My Two Blue Eyes."

Ray Cook
Mill Valley, California
December 31, 2011

cc of My email to Supervisor Steve Kinsey 11-27-11

Dear Supervisor Kinsey:

Looking back one year at the roster of the Board of Supervisors and with my 81st birthday almost upon me I trust you will understand the urgency I feel to get something off my chest before it is too late.

Yes, the Measure B parcel tax passed by a generous two thirds majority in the November 8 election and I, who opposed the Homestead Measure A parcel tax in 2009 lost this time too, leaving the reasonable appearance that I’m just an old crank who opposes parcel taxes. Which is not true, Sir, just not true, and if you will bear with me for a couple sentences I will tell you why, and how that bears on the Evergreen Avenue project in HomesteadValley.

My professional career - that is, the employment period with the savings plan which provides a modest income in my retirement - lasted thirty one years with the California Department of Transportation, commencing December 1, 1960, when I believed that population growth and economic development were good and should be encouraged, and that freeways were the lubricant to a prosperous and happy future. I was foundering at the time in an interlude of insanity. Thus, when I saw your name conspicuously among our conspicuous leaders who in public “Proudly Support the HighSchool Parcel Tax RENEWAL” my heart was overcome with a deep and troublesome disappointment. I am not against parcel taxes, but the 3% per annum automatic increase boggles my comprehension of reality, which was forged at the last job I had before Caltrans, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

In the light of the consistently dreary economic news I could not in good conscience endorse Measure B and its 3% kicker and still claim sanity formyself. (Recall that Measure A had only a 2% per annum increase!) THAT iswhy we are on opposite sides of the parcel tax issue and I am terribly saddened that we are separated on that account.

But the question here is whether we are equally separated by the issue of Evergreen Avenue, which I believe is being rammed down our throats (or up our…) by the same inexorable grind of the wheels that just gave us MeasureB.

Thanks for listening, and best wishes always,

Ray Cook

Oremus (Let Us Pray)

"From ghoulies and ghosties and
long leggedy beasties;
From things that go bump in the night" -
and From the insatiable lust for more money
that inflames us and leaves us no peace -
Oh Lord deliver us.
Amen

Measure B isn't about money.
Measure B is about MORE money.
3 per cent more will be fine,
every time,
but we gotta have it.

Vote NO on Measure B
(Tough Love)

(more money more money more money more money
more more more money more money more more more...)

FYI

(This is the complete text of an email I sent to Marin County Supervisor Steve Kinsey yesterday, Friday, May 13, 2011 at 9:22 am, which I couldn't post here then because Blogger was out of commission.)


Dear Supervisor Kinsey:

My first job after graduating from university in 1957 was "Management Trainee" at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco - 400 Sansome Street in those days (at the corner of Sacramento Street) - where daily I had my hands on millions of dollars in cash or securities of one sort or another, and had to account for every dime of it. When some years later the time came to leave for greener pastures, the Fed's gift to me was a deep and abiding sense of Fiscal Responsibility.

Now, in a single anonymous document, (the front page editorial in its Homestead Headlines issue for May 2011, "Measure A Funding Update...,") the Homestead Valley Community Association has soared to unbelievable heights of creative writing and sent my feeble old heart into convulsive spasms of disbelief.

Best regards,

Ray Cook

Gratitude

The May 2011 issue of "Homestead Headlines," the Homestead Valley Community Association's monthly newsletter, arrived in the afternoon mail. If you haven't received your copy yet, get one ASAP.

Best regards,

Ray Cook

MORE Good News !!

Tom Stienstra's column in today's San Francisco Chronicle (Sunday, March 27, 2011, Sporting Green, back page) has the Disciples of Progress turning handsprings of joy! Check it out!

Ostentatious Philanthropy vs Wages

THEOREM: "The magnitude of Ostentatious Philanthropy is inversely proportional to the welfare of the working class."

PROOF: Economic Letter, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, March 7, 2011: Long-Run Impact of the Crisis in Europe: Reforms and Austerity Measures. Quote: " However, a long-run solution to Europe's problems requires economic reforms that increase competetiveness and REDUCE LABOR COSTS (emphasis added - ed.) in the peripheral countires. Such reforms could promote convergence of the euro-area economies and enhance the long-run sustainablility of monetary union."

Saint Patrick and the Editor's Sidebar

Tying it All Together - PART 9 - posted March 17, 2011 - Saint Patrick's Day.

In the March 1996 edition of their journal, "Right of Way - for the Right of Way Professional," the International Right of Way Association published an article entitled, "Columbus Meets Saint Patrick, A Vignette of American History," written by one their members, which recounted that member's eviction of an American Indian woman from her ancestral home. The editor chose as a conspicuous sidebar this quotation from the article: "Her ancestors were witness to the transfer of land through discovery, conquest, revolution and war - polite names for theft and violence."

Which brings us full circle, to "Tying it All Together - PART 1, posted January 27, 2011.


Happy Saint Patrick's Day, all,
from shaggy old Ray, and recall
something today
that YOU should have done,
(except nailing him to the wall !)

A Prayer for HVCA

Tying it All Together - PART 8

The torment of a Christ upon the cross
in prayer, "Forgive them, Father,
for they know not what they do,"
was merely as a flea bite
likened, as it were, to us
as We devoutly pray,
"Forgive them, Father, for they know
Exactly what they do."

To be continued

Bridge to the Future

Tying it All Together - PART 7

Though costs of dentistry have risen since I subscribed to my dental insurance plan many years ago, my ability to pay for it has not. Insurance coverage has remained static. I'm caught in a pincers, and it is beginning to hurt.

Today I go to the dentist to begin replacing the bridge (last Post-this Blog.)

The good new is I like my dentist and his entire staff. They make dental visits a pleasure!

Which introduces us to the future.

To be continued.