Monday Funnies Extra Edition!

Sorry to interrupt your Friday for this special news edition. The Space Shuttle Endeavor, riding atop a big 'ole SevenFortySeven, was buzzing around downtown Sacramento and the Capitol only a few minutes ago. Pat Hill, the head of the Fiat Lux Jokester Department, was there for us, and I bring you his video live from the scene:

The mountains know everything

As you read this, I am in Sacramento, the capital city of California and the most prominent metropolis of the Central Valley, and a place where I've lived since the mid-1980s.

But there is so much more to the Valley than Sacramento, including our poets and artists. Above Central Valley towers the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and I've been taking a few days for hiking and enjoying the clean clear mountain air.

Yesterday came the announcement that a native son of the Central Valley, Phillip Levine, has been named the nation's Poet Laureate. He is a professor at Fresno State University, and his honors include a Pulitzer Prize a few years ago. Here is a poem he wrote about the Central Valley that I share with you:

Our Valley
By Phillip Levine


We don’t see the ocean, not ever, but in July and August
when the worst heat seems to rise from the hard clay
of this valley, you could be walking through a fig orchard
when suddenly the wind cools and for a moment
you get a whiff of salt, and in that moment you can almost
believe something is waiting beyond the Pacheco Pass,
something massive, irrational, and so powerful even
the mountains that rise east of here have no word for it.


You probably think I’m nuts saying the mountains
have no word for ocean, but if you live here
you begin to believe they know everything.
They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine,
a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls
slowly between the pines and the wind dies
to less than a whisper and you can barely catch
your breath because you’re thrilled and terrified.


You have to remember this isn’t your land.
It belongs to no one, like the sea you once lived beside
and thought was yours. Remember the small boats
that bobbed out as the waves rode in, and the men
who carved a living from it only to find themselves
carved down to nothing. Now you say this is home,
so go ahead, worship the mountains as they dissolve in dust,
wait on the wind, catch a scent of salt, call it our life.

Painting, Flatland River, 1997, Wayne Thiebaud

We've lost a saint today: Greg Bunker

I received very sad news this morning. My dear friend, Greg Bunker, the executive director of Francis House in Sacramento, died last night of a heart attack. It was my honor and privilege to be his friend and to serve on his board for many years.

Greg was a tireless advocate for the homeless, and found endlessly creative ways to get people off the streets and on their feet. He never, never, never gave up. He built Francis House from the ground up, and it serves thousands upon thousands of people who have no other place to turn. The world has lost a saint.

I saw him last in June at a tribute by Sacramento Cottage Housing for Catholic Bishop Francis Quinn. I've always been amazed at how the various organizations working on homeless and poverty issues in Sacramento have been able to work closely with each other. A big reason for that was Greg and his willingness to find the good in everyone. He didn't have a territorial bone in his body.

Greg Bunker worked with homeless folks on a daily basis. And he spoke truth to power, getting at the heart of seemingly simple things that had a huge impact. I worked with him lobbying legislators when he discovered that ex-cons were being paroled from prison with no Department of Motor Vehicles state identification cards (and thus could not apply for a job). Greg was relentless on that issue and so many others, and he won powerful converts like Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg.

When the state of California invoked its imminent domaine rights to claim the property of Francis House so that the state could build the (infamous) East-End office project, many thought it was the doom of Francis House. But not Greg. He found an old building over on C Street, and built Francis House bigger and better.

Greg was a prodigious fund-raiser; he managed to get United Parcel Service to give $100,000 to rehab the old building -- the largest charitable gift in the history of UPS. That was an amazing day when Greg called to announce the grant.

Here is a video of Greg at the tent city in Sacramento, protesting how homelessness has become virtually a crime: