Digging My Heels In

#177: Now & Then, Art & Fire, Firelighters: Fire is Medicine, Octavia Butler (Persistent Bloom), Art Prof. Clara Lieu, Woodland Classroom, Yusuke Hanai, and PomplamooseMusic.

Jan 19, 2025

“Fire Season 2016: Soberanes 5,” acrylics on canvas (sold), by Jean Vengua.

NOW & THEN

Now:

Part of the heaviness I’ve been feeling has to do with confronting the realities of climate change and impermanence. Living in California, I’m seeing one major fire after another, including the “worst-case scenario”1 battery storage facility fire2 nearby at Moss Landing.

I’m putting together a “Go Bag,” and purchased a small, portable external drive in which to store my parents’ letters—something easy to carry. Not having a car, I realize that if a fire came down this hill I’d have to leave the boxes of my parents’ letters behind; I would also have to leave behind most or even all of my paintings and drawings.

Previously, a thought kept repeating itself in my mind that Canada would be better (for its healthcare system), or another country, or perhaps another state in the U.S. that isn’t constantly on fire followed by flooding and mudslides.

But lately the importance of community keeps foregrounding, especially as I view how people are pulling together in L.A., despite the lack of empathy and politicization from the incoming administration. It makes me feel like digging my heels in to the earth of Central California where I was born and raised—a place where “fire” is not just a result of climate change or administrative errors. Fire has been part of this landscape since before the colonizers and settlers arrived; it’s why indigenous people here did their own “prescribed burns” to clear areas in order to avoid larger conflagrations fueled by overgrowth of trees and brush, and because certain plants have a symbiotic relationship with fire, which helps them grow.

Me (in foreground) in front of my uncle and aunt’s house in Santa Cruz, with my cousins Barbara and Michael (left) and neighborhood kids. 1953 or ‘54.

Then:

Sometime during 1953, my mother and I moved in with my uncle Mike’s family in Santa Cruz. They had two small children. It must’ve been a huge adjustment for Mom—and perhaps for myself, too, since this began a period when I experienced health issues. Mom was used to living in cosmopolitan, international urban areas like Manila and San Francisco’s Chinatown. The neighborhood we moved into was by comparison practically rural, although a post-war housing development was being built nearby.

In addition, Uncle Mike had long been acculturated to the US, having lived here since the 1920s; my Aunt Simona (Mona) was indigenous Paiute and Miwok and had been raised on the reservation. Both had lived through some hard times, and did not have the great expectations about living in the US that my mother had.

There are many letters from my dad to my mom during the period, but I don’t see a single letter from my mom. In one missive from April, Dad even pleads dramatically with her to please send him some mail!

Are you really so busy so that you can stand to ignore the suffering of the one who means so much to you? I hope you are not, for you know darling, poor old Nick is about to disintegrate into a million pieces of loneliness.

I don’t know what accounted for her silence. What I do know is that by July 20, 1953, Mom had decided to purchase one of the houses in the nearby development—a decision that my father went along with, despite noting (at length) in one letter that he was very worried about his ability to make monthly mortgage payments.

As I work on the Letters Project, I’m struck by how much my parents sacrificed to make a home in the US. I know it’s a bit of a cliche. Yet, as I read their letters, my parents’ hard work and sacrifice looms large. Every working-class family who strives to purchase a house works hard for it, but my parents gave up the everyday intimacy and support that most families experience when they live together under one roof. In families with seafaring spouses, both partners go it alone, without family, often for months at a time. For such families, before the advent of email and social media, letters were a crucial lifeline holding them together, helping them to achieve goals, providing emotional and economic support.

It’s a familiar story for military families, but there seems to have been a silence about this for Merchant Marine families. Today, there are a handful3 of support networks in place, like the MerchantMarine Reddit, or the Merchant Marine Wives’ Club; nevertheless, I haven’t seen much evidence of institutional or community support.

For anyone doing genealogical or historical research on Merchant Marine families, several sources include: lisalouisecook.com, the National Archives Merchant Marine records, the Merchant Marine page on military.com, and for information about Merchant Marines during WWII: usmm.org.

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ART & FIRE

Back in 2016, I did a “Fire Season” series. At the time, it was my way to cope with what, for me, were the first “big fires” in Monterey County. I sold several of the paintings; they seem to resonate with people. But it was also a way for me to develop my painting skills and play with different levels of realism and abstraction.

Now, after so many other California fires (and fires in other states, too), I’m thinking differently about this phenomenon—and what it is teaching me. I’m wondering what would be my approach, this time around?

When I painted the pieces shown below, my feeling about wildfires was that they constituted an adversary and a frightening threat. They’re perhaps even more frightening now, but I’m considering the history of fires in this area, and the fact that—for local indigenous peoples—fire has been considered a seasonal presence and a force to be treated with respect—something you can learn from and work with. In this area, water is also a force to be respected. Having almost drowned twice in the bay waters and the San Lorenzo river mouth when I was a kid, I learned that from personal experience.

“Fire Season 2016: Sage Fire,” acrylics on canvas, 2016 (sold). By Jean Vengua.

“Fire Season 2016: Soberanes 6,” acrylics on canvas, by Jean Vengua.

“Fire Season 2016: Soberanes 5,” acrylics on canvas, 20x24 in, by Jean Vengua.

RABBIT HOLE

Controlled Burns Prevent Wildfire | Firelighters: Fire is Medicine (Worldchannel.org):
Science fiction writer Octavia Butler’s home was in Altadena. Her novel, Parable of the Sower, imagined a Los Angeles beset by fires, crumbling infrastructure, and a broken government nostalgic for a past that never existed. Back in the 1990s, I taught this novel to several classes at UC Berkeley. There were always one or two students who would approach me about difficulties they had with the apocalyptic and frightening nature of the material. They saw it as negative, although I think it was ultimately a hopeful work. Today, the novel hardly seems like fiction.

“All that you touch, you change. All that you change, changes you." — Octavia Butler

Persistent Bloom (Mel Mitchell Jackson) talks about the optimism of Butler’s Parable of the Sower and how it might practically apply to people living through the crises of our time4:

As I write this, Tiktok may be banned and people are starting to leave Facebook and Instagram. Artist and Art Prof. Clara Lieu takes a second look at social media, and comes up with some helpful solutions for artists; she also considers Substack (about 3/4 of the way through the video):
When I lived in rural Elkhorn, California, I took advantage of a planned oak burn on our property and culled the carbonized sticks for my own drawing charcoal. You can do it too! The method shown here by Woodland Classroom shows you how:
“Standing Up with Yusuke Hanai,” a Japanese artist influenced by surfing culture in both Japan and California:

SOUNDINGS

Pomplamoose Music does a great BeeGees / Jamiroquai mashup that I can’t help but relate to the recent fire disasters happening in California5:

Eulipion Outpost

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