I wore the same bright yellow dress to SFMOMA's Farewell to the Rivera Mural of Pan American Unity that I'd worn in the early aughts, more than 20 years ago, when Dra. Guadalupe Rivera Marin was with us.

This time I'm posing with Jeff Goldthorpe and Vicki Simms, who both did a lot to promote the mural. The event turned out to center around Will Maynez, who's devoted his life to the mural for decades. Jeff Goldthorpe paid a tribute to Will as a slide of Will working on the mural was being shown.  I also spoke.   Michelle Barger, head of conservation at SF MOMA,  gave us the chance to write something on the back of the mural, and I wrote "Where there's a Will (Maynez), there's a way to keep the mural in the public eye." 

 Reading over my diary from 1988--for an article I'm writing about Journals of Peace:  a RPCV event to commemorate President Kennedy that November--I see that I've written, "We're ...trying to get a new Community College Board.  I don't hate the incumbents as much as the other teachers do; perhaps that's because I don't know them as well.  But I am tired of the unpleasant surprises we get each fall.  This fall, the college board voted to give administrators an enormous salary increase.  A month later 13 teachers were laid off because of budget cuts.  Most of the teachers...got their jobs back, but what a lot of grief this caused.  A lot of groups--and a couple of newspapers--are supporting our candidates over the incumbents, and that's unusual.  

I write about Dukakis, too, saying "Sometimes I feel a little like Dukakis.  ("Tina,  you're no Dukakis."  Lloyd Bentsen) "The harder I try the worse I fail.  ...It seemed to be easier to be a successful teacher in 1982, when I started teaching here.  Lately I've felt that I'm not doing as good a job, and yet I'm working harder than ever.  I can't figure it out, and I don't think Dukakis can figure it out, either."  

And I write about my involvement with a fundraiser for COSANDES, which I  describe as "the community college teachers organization that tries to help the teachers in El Salvador (who are being persecuted and sometimes even killed by the Salvadoran death squads the U.S. helps finance). " 

 Maybe this is more the CCSF-World connection than the CCSF-SF connection since the gathering I had this past Sunday, November 19th, was for us CCSF Returned Peace Corps Volunteers, some of whom don't live in SF anyway.  The montage is followed by a montage of 7 CCSF RPCVs in their countries of service decades ago.

 

The Rivera Steering Committee and others with Guadalupe Rivera Marin when I was the director of a grant for using the Mural across the curriculum at CCSF. 

This news came to me late.  I don't know how I missed it!  

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/sfmoma-city-college-diego-rivera-court-complaint-18422018.php

SFMOMA is suing CCSF?!  That certainly fits into a blog on the  CCSF and SF connection, and I'm sorry that in this case it's a connection that has disconnected!  

I got word of this on October 14 (I'm a bit behind on posting!)  and asked two mural-centered friends about it.  One said "CCSF was asleep at the wheel. The college thinks it can care for the mural with platitudes.  SFMOMA gave the mural the sweetest deal it’s ever had (600,000 have seen it) and when the College unilaterally canceled the PAEC in Nov. 2020, {that} created a situation, which has come home to roost."

The PAEC is still on the horizon, but not in time to house the mural when it comes back to the campus, and SFMOMA no longer wants to keep it on display and wants CCSF to use money to move it back to our campus, where it will go into storage.

I have a lot of good memories of  the mural!  Some are here in this video, but a lot has changed since this video was made before the mural was moved from CCSF to SFMOMA.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unbu6PVJ_NQ

 

 

 This is certainly the CCSF-SF connection!  Until I read that former mayor Ed Lee had appointed Rodrigo Santos to the Board of Trustees at CCSF, I'd been unaware of this in spite of the fact that it was in 2012, when I was paying special attention to politics at our community college because the ACCJC had given us "Show Cause"  and I went to one board meeting that went from 6 on into the next day.  

Explaining why he misled people on what he was really doing, he spoke of pressure to get the film school for CCSF.  I wasn't sure what he was talking about, but I just found this from 2016:

https://missionlocal.org/2016/03/engineers-plan-cinema-school-for-ccsf-in-tower-theater/

Rodrigo Santos, co-founder of Santos & Urrutia, says he is undertaking the roughly $12-14 million project purely out of a love for the neighborhood and an affinity for film. The school will boast a 200-seat movie theater for screenings as well as several classrooms, editing rooms, equipment rental for students and offices for instructors.

“I’ve always wanted to do something like this,” said Santos. “We’re going to be at the center of the action.”

Though Santos is contributing some of his savings toward the project, he expects to be doing significant fundraising to make the school a reality.

And from 3 days ago:  https://www.sfchronicle.com/crime/article/rodrigo-santos-sf-engineer-18272470.php#:~:text=He's%20paid%20back%20about%20%24450%2C000,on%20the%20board%20of%20trustees.

He's paid back about $450,000 of the money he stole from clients, according to his attorney, who wrote in court documents that Santos stole much of his ill-gotten gains in 2017, when he “felt financial pressure to establish a film school for City College of San Francisco,” where he was still on the board of trustees.

 

See the abundance of  plant-based dishes that can be made even for something as specific as food from Oscar nominated Movies?  When I invited my film-fan friends (good f-words), I told them I'd make some dishes related to the Oscar-nominated movies, and they'd all be plant-based since animal welfare and the environment are two pet causes for Joaquin Phoenix, Jessica Chastain, and others. I added parenthetically and sardonically, "We must always follow Hollywood's sterling example."  I thought it would be fun figuring out how to represent "The Whale's" over-consumption of just about everything!

Here's how it turned out!  (Two couples contributed to the food; most guests brought wine!)

 I just got back from delivering postcards to five branches of the San Francisco Public Library:  Glen Park, Parkside (on Taraval Street), Ortega, Sunset, and Merced, and I really appreciate the supportive comments the librarians made about City College, especially at the Merced Branch.  The librarian who took the CCSF postcards said, "Let's find a prominent place for them because this is very important."  The librarian standing by told me that she had taken art classes and a lot of other classes at City College and could hardly express how much she loved the college.  She complimented me on my orange-segment earrings and said she'd seen some fig earrings like mine at the Farmer's Market.  I explained that they were from my sister in Chicago but that someone who'd signed the petition outside another library had told me she'd seen fig earrings like mine at the Farmer's Market.  The librarian then asked whether I was the signature gatherer when she signed a petition for CCSF at that Market.  I told her I'd done most of my signature gathering at Yerba Buena Garden. 

 I took pictures of each display of our new postcards "We are the heartbeat of City College," and I'm happy to say that in most cases they were prominently displayed.  However, at one branch there was a postcards still there from two semesters ago--but just one. At the West Portal Branch of the SFPL, there was still a stack of CCSF postcards I'd delivered in December 2021!  (Otherwise, it's a great library.)  I think it was at the Glen Park Library that a librarian said, "Yes, people do take these postcards, and they used to take the catalogs, but I guess they're not being printed up so much anymore."  I told her I would pass on her comment!