It's 2025: Breathe

#176: Tamales & Racetracks, Reflections on 2025, Art, Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour, Elbina Batala Rafizadeh, Tommy Dixon, Athena Cooper, Tove Jansson (from Art Dogs), Frederick Elsner, and Fujii Kaze

THEN & NOW

Tinted photo of Bay View racetrack, 1870s-1880s. Santa Cruz Sentinel contributor.

Then:

I’m doing a little preliminary research on the history of the Westside Santa Cruz neighborhood and the street—Fair Avenue—that my mom and I moved to after we left San Francisco. I learned that it was previously the Fair View racetrack, later called the Bay View racetrack. Decades later, situated next to the Southern Pacific railroad tracks, it became an “industrial area,” which explains the nearby warehouses, factory buildings, and the cannery across the street from our house, where Mom worked for years. I do wonder if the “industrial” nature of the area provides a connection to the allergies and immune issues I experienced as a child.

As a side note, here’s an interesting food fact from Eric Ross Gibson (Santa Cruz Sentinel):

The staple racetrack food was not hot dogs, but tamales, the ancient Aztec tradition that predated the sandwich as the original hand-held meal. During the year, there were strolling Spanish vendors who’d visit the downtown saloons and sell tamales out of baskets. The most successful were Domingo and Nick Buelna. There was also Soquel Rodriguez, and the 250-pound Joe Dodero. But the best of them all was given exclusive distribution at the racetrack. He was Dario Amaya, a Branciforte descendent [sic] who lived on Bay Street. He worked at Elmer Daken’s Meat Market, and with the help of his family, wrapped the corn-masa and meat with corn husks, and cooked them. Beef tamales were a nickel, and chicken tamales a dime. The corn husks kept the food warm, and easy to handle.

I love tamales, by the way. Even though I'm not living there anymore I'd like to see someone open a tamale shop on Fair Ave.

I always thought of the beach town my family moved to as a very white community, where I felt out of place as a Filipino. But I knew very little about the indigenous, Mexican, and Asian communities that thrived there long before we moved down the coast from San Francisco to Santa Cruz.

So far, in January, this bit of research is the only work I’ve done on the letter project. I suspect that reading letters from our first years in Santa Cruz will bring up more memories.

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Now: Reflections on the New Year

That “overwhelm” has diminished, but I still feel a sense of heaviness, and the L.A. fires haven’t helped. Last night, however, I did a poetry reading for the Monterey Bay Poetry Consortium to honor the memory of slain Filipino farmworker Fermin Tobera;¹ also reading were Elbina Batala Rafizadeh and Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour. It was a lovely reading with a wonderful host. I was happy to include a reading of Jeff Tagami’s poem “Tobera” from Tagami’s book, October Light. Check out the Consortium’s schedule; the Pacific Grove Library provides a beautiful environment for readings.

Well, hello, 2025—Year of the Snake. Aside from surviving the chaos, I’ve been making art almost daily. It’s not always pretty, but I’ve been posting the art when done —not here, but on my website blog—even if I don’t like what I’ve produced. Also, I’m planning to move my Commonwealth Cafe blog to this site as a “section”; I have posted on it only occasionally, but it contains information I want to save, and its archival focus relates to this newsletter, so locating it here as a section would be more appropriate.

How to continue making art and writing in a time of great climatic and political upheaval? How best to stay creative when I also still need a paycheck? This is not for everyone, but I feel that one solution for me is: simplify, simplify, simplify. I think that as one gets older it becomes necessary to pare things down to what’s most important. For me, that means staying creative and exploratory, retaining my humanity (which may mean cutting down on social media), and staying as healthy as I can for the time I have left in this world. My simple 3-point to-do list:

• Make art and write every day—even if it’s just a little bit

• Focus my online activity on my website and newsletters, period.²

• Do whatever it takes to stay healthy

And here are three things I want to keep in mind/heart:

• The Five Remembrances of Buddhism;³

• The serenity prayer: “give us the courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what can not be helped, and insight to know the one from the other”;

• And something I have learned from ancestors on my father’s side, the Subanen people: the importance of gratitude.

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ART

As noted above, I’m aiming to make art everyday. I’ve been doing asemic⁴ art. Here is one piece inspired by the L.A. Fires:

“Palisades Wind Walker,“ India ink asemic, 12 x 18 in., 1/8/2025, by Jean Vengua.

And I’m continuing to receive Mail Art (lots), to the point that I’m running behind on replies and exchanges. But I will catch up. I’m also interested in the implications of Mail Art as a form that often (though not always) functions outside the mainstream gallery system, and want to learn more about the ideas behind that.

For folks who are interested in an in-depth theory and history of Mail Art, “The Paradoxes of Mail Art: How to Build an Artistic Media Type” by Lars Elleström is a great introduction, in Cultura 9-2-8.

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RABBIT HOLE

• Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour - performing for NPR’s tiny desk concert:

“Open your heart and receive, Breathe. Hold up your art and believe. Breathe . . . " He is perched on a cliff about eight blocks from the neighborhood where my parents settled on the Westside of Santa Cruz in the 1950s.

• Elbina Batala Rafizadeh’s Keepers of the Maliqgong Rice Terraces.

• Tommy Dixon on “The End of Our Extremely Online Era.”

• Athena’s Art Newsletter, “painting an extraordinary, ordinary disabled life,” by Athena Cooper.

• Tove Jannson and Moomins from Bailey Richardson (Art Dogs)

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SOUNDINGS

• Frederik Elsner (of the Greenlandic band Nanook) performing “Nutaaliorpunga” with Andachan. I’ve never seen Elsner sing or speak in English, and he never provides translations, which is fine with me. Yeah, I don’t think Greenland is going to be sold to anyone.

• OK, I’ll just say it: This performance blew me away: Fujii Kaze singing “Shinunoga E-Wa”:

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Sincere appreciation to all of you who read Eulipion Outpost regularly, and to those who have subscribed here or donated on my Ko-fi page to support my efforts.

My ongoing appreciation goes to the Mysterious M. for his editing.

Website and blog: Jeanvengua1.wordpress.com

A Crooked Mile (blog).

CommonwealthCafe

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1. In 2023, Watsonville and the County of Monterey issued a formal apology to the Filipino Community for past actions against them.

2. Ha ha! Easier said than done, I know! I’m one of those people who has always maintained multiple online presences. But I think I’m done with spreading myself thin.

3. I realize that for those who are not Buddhist, the Five Remembrances may seem harsh. But I see it as a gentle reminder that everything is change—and that is the reality. It doesn’t give you an excuse to give up; it gives you reason to live your life to its fullest, and to make every moment and every action count.

4. “The idea behind asemic writing is to create artworks that are based on the act of mark making similar to handwriting but without reference to semantic content or literary meaning.”—from Asemics.org