Mother’s Day behind bars
By Lucy Nicholson
The children bounded off the bus and ran excitedly towards a tall fence topped with razor wire. In the distance, through layers of fencing overlooked by a guard tower, huddled a group of mothers in baggy blue prison-issue clothes, pointing, waving and gasping. Many had not seen their children in over a year.
Frank Martinez jumped up and down, shrieking with delight. “Stay right there Mommy,” he yelled. “Don’t cry.” As the children disappeared into a building to be searched and x-rayed, a couple of the mothers began sobbing.
An annual Mother’s Day event, Get On The Bus, provides free transport for hundreds of children to visit their incarcerated moms at California Institute for Women in Chino, and other state prisons. Sixty percent of parents in state prison report being held over 100 miles from their children, and visits are impossible for many.
California locks up more women than any other state in the U.S. — 11,250 in 2007 – and three quarters are mothers. The children left behind with family or in foster care often feel abandoned and some don’t see their moms for years.
Satan and the partying bunnies
By Lucy Nicholson
For those who have a dark view of Southern California, it might seem fitting to find Satan buried in a cemetery in Orange County next to a Carl’s Jr burger joint.
That’s where I found him resting on another heavenly day in sunny California, in between gravestones for other beloved pets that had departed for the great beyond.
The Sea Breeze Pet Cemetery in Huntington Beach has gone to the dogs. And cats. And bunnies. And guinea pigs. And parrots.
I was driving to lunch between assignments photographing Olympic swimming champ Janet Evans when a flash of color caught my eye on a wide boulevard in Huntington Beach. It wasn’t the gaudy color of strip malls and billboards, but an expanse of flowers in a cemetery.
Nice headline. You just have to read the story. In Mexico, ‘Jesus’ (pronounced “Hay-Zeus”) is a popular name still used today. Wondering if a pet named ‘Jesus’ might also be buried in the same cemetery.
On the edge of reality
The soul selects her own society, Then shuts the door; On her divine majority Obtrude no more.
Unmoved, she notes the chariot’s pausing At her low gate; Unmoved, an emperor is kneeling Upon her mat.
I’ve known her from an ample nation Choose one; Then close the valves of her attention Like stone.
- Emily Dickenson
By Eric Thayer
Somewhere on the edge of reality is this place.
While an “interesting” photo-journal of our city, however, this is not the first, nor will it be the last to show some interest in our little desert community. There is an information kiosk at the beginning of Slab City, right behind the “Welcome” guard shack that Leonard Knight painted (and no, Salvation Mountain is not “concrete”, its made of adobe and paint. Its been an icon of Slab City for almost 30 years). While our community is pretty loose, we are not actually as anarchistic as it may appear. The Information Kiosk contains some guidelines for visiting Slab City, they are known as our Common Courtesies. You can find a copy here: http://www.facebook.com/groups/SlabCity/ doc/204987662868201/
We have been beset with a large influx from the fringes of the “Occupy” movement this year. We know that we are a valid alternative lifestyle. We love the way we live and being off the grid is great to us. We don’t want to have it screwed up by a bunch of low-life freeloaders. It takes a great deal of fortitude and resilience to live the way we do. We don’t have time for people that just want to use and abuse Slab City. As the Slab City song says… “we ain’t going back”, so to those who would come visit us… you are welcome, but please respect what we have here.
Drive-thru funeral parlor
By Lucy Nicholson
Nina Watson maneuvered her silver Cadillac into the drive-thru and pulled up to a big plate glass window.
She stopped and rolled down the passenger window so her mother, Flo Watson, could get a better look at the lifeless body of her late co-worker, Robert Sanders, who lay in a casket behind the glass.
Nina stepped out to snap a cell phone photo. Then she settled back in the driver seat, and put her foot to the pedal.
Truly bizarre, and disrespectful to the soul of the deceased. This is not a modern, prpogressive way of eath and dying in the 21st century!
California skateboard dreams
By Mike Blake
Recording how we as a society advance and decline amid a changing world is pretty much what being a journalist is all about. The changes are mostly man made, sometimes nature, but humanity rolls along and each new generation brings with it change. Put a camera in your hand and record the events with images and you have a better idea of my job for the past 26 years as a staff photographer for Reuters.
That may be a strange introduction to a piece about a kid from Canada who follows his dream to be a professional skateboarder in California, but not really.
Skateboarding got started in the 60’s with clay wheels and surfers looking out at a flat ocean. But nothing really happened with skateboarding until polymer technology advanced and created urethane. Then along comes a guy named Frank Nasworthy and the skateboard wheel clicks in his head. From that point on technology has advanced, and along with it, skateboarding. To the point where you have a little story about Jordan Hoffart, who follows his dream.
Chaos descends on Occupy Oakland
By Stephen Lam
It all started like a normal day covering Occupy Oakland. But little did I know it was going to be one of the most intense protests I’ve ever covered.
I arrived at Oakland City Hall around 1pm and there was already a sizable crowd gathered in preparation for the march. I was a bit surprised to see people carrying shields, but I didn’t think much of it and proceeded to photograph the protest as I normally would.
The march began as the group announced that they were headed towards their sound truck which was supposedly pulled over by the police. Sensing a bit of tension, I instinctively went back to the car to grab my gas mask and helmet.
As we approached the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Building, we were met with a strong police presence in an effort to block the protesters. The protesters attempted to avoid confrontation with police by maneuvering through Laney College. This is where the first face-off began.
My day in a California prison
The first inkling I had that it wasn’t going to be an ordinary day at work was the dress code; no tight or revealing clothing, no blue jeans, no blue shirts, no orange clothing, no jewelry, no cell phones.
For the first time, I thought of the possible mental state of the people I was visiting, and how little some of them would have to lose.
I had been in a car crash (not serious) the day before. I wasn’t expecting anything bad to happen to me inside the prison. But imagined that if it did it would be much the same kind of sudden violence coming out of nowhere.
I realized all my trousers that weren’t jeans were dressy. I thought of the absurdity of buying new clothes to visit a prison, and found a pair of (tight) brown corduroys. I dug in my boyfriend’s wardrobe and found an old black t-shirt that was long and baggy on me.
I asked him how I looked. He said brown and black was a bad color combination, but that I looked suitably dressed for the reception area for new prisoners.
My uncles in a prison in California. Unfamiliar with the justice system over there I just hope hes ok.I hear the sentences presented there are way too harsh for most. I wish they could have just deported my uncle and let him serve his time at home. He really has no one there. And hes missed his fathers funeral. Now were afraid his mother may never get to see him before she passes.
Surf therapy
Matthew Doyle grew up by the beach in Santa Monica, California, and with his slim physique and tattooed forearms, looks as if he’s been surfing his whole life.
But it took three tours of duty half a world away, many sleepless nights, and meeting a woman named Carly before the 26-year-old U.S. Army veteran braved the waves on a surfboard.
On a recent Saturday, I met Doyle and a group of 11 other young military veterans trying to overcome the horrors of war at Manhattan Beach, just south of Los Angeles, where occupational therapist Carly Rogers led them in a surf therapy class.
With the exhilarating goal of riding down the face of the wave, the constant paddling out through the whitewater and occasional wipeouts, the motion of the ocean is helping former soldiers, sailors and Marines return to normal.
Beachside politics
U.S. Election Day has its recurring motifs: red, white and blue vote signs, corrugated plastic voting booths, ballot boxes, stars and stripes. Voting photos quickly become repetitive, even before the sun rises on the West Coast.
Quirky polling stations such as laundromats, beauty salons and churches are hard to find, buried among hundreds of voting places listed only by address.
Hoping to portray something uniquely Californian, I woke before dawn and headed to the lifeguard headquarters on Venice Beach. During Obama fever in 2008, a long line of waiting voters cast shadows on the wall outside.
There were no voters as the polling place opened for these midterm elections. The room that had been full of voting booths two years ago now only had a few.
Often the California coast is swathed in early morning fog, but during cooler months, the air is crisp and clear. An open door gave a postcard view of surfers on the beach and when voters started trickling in, it became brighter.
Oaksterdam University in place to teach next generation of pot entrepreneurs
Reuters photographer Robert Galbraith spent some time at Oaksterdam University in Oakland, California where they teach the next generation of medical marijuana entrepreneurs. The city of Oakland had just passed Measure F, which created a special tax category for medical weed dispensaries, the first in the nation. As state and local governments look for new revenue streams in the recession, medical marijuana is becoming an attractive stream for new tax revenue.
Listening to another news report that stated there are more medical marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles than Starbucks coffee shops, I thought it would be a good time to look at Oaksterdam University, a “school” that teaches students the finer points of marijuana law and cultivation techniques. The school sits on a busy street corner in downtown Oakland, California with several of its business entities found throughout the neighborhood. There is a book store to sell students books and supplies, as well as hats, t-shirts and smoking paraphernalia; a glass blowing shop across the street; and a medical marijuana dispensary around the corner.
In the one-room school, students listen to lectures and grow marijuana for homework. Three type of students attend Oaksterdam — those with the intention of eventually working in the medical marijuana industry; those wanting to grow for their personal use, and others interested in the politics of pot and those who want to make it legal. Most of the students in the evening class are middle-aged medical marijuana patients eager to learn the trade and how to grow their own medicine.
Two blocks away, at Coffeehouse Blue Sky, customers come and go after picking up their medical marijuana in a neighborhood surrounded by a variety of other businesses. There is no cliché customer—younger and older, those dressed in shorts and t-shirts and others dressed in business attire coming in for an after-work prescription. Up front, customers enter and show their identification card from their doctor. A small room in the back of the café serves as the distribution center. Those seeking medical marijuana line up at a small window, where they choose among a variety of cannabis strains and prices before handing over cash.
While many patrons of the dispensary did not want to be photographed, few of the students in the classroom seemed to mind. It was both a fascinating and educational experience, and a glimpse at something we might see a lot more of in the future, with various forms of government looking to tap into a plentiful resource.
Hi, I hear that marijuana can help me off high blood pressure medication. Where do I see a doctor who agrees with this and would issue a certificate so that I may try marijuana? I dont think Kaiser doctors would agree. Thanks Brian
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Resident Photographers Blog Expert
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The Wall
Unlike other nations that allow mothers to either live inside sheltered facilities with their children, or have extended visits, the United States mandates punitive and restrictive relationships. These dire circumstances, for both mother and child, continue to destroy families, and make a breeding ground for future disfunctional and/or criminal offspring. Why is the American Justice System (Corrections Departments), focused on debilitating family relationships,instead of rehabilitation and unity?