My first encounter with August Coppola came shortly after I graduated from high school in 1966. (Yeah, I know, 90% of the world’s population wasn’t born yet and I just dated myself.) I had won a couple of scholarships, which I planned to put to use when I entered California State University-Long Beach in the fall. I was flattered to get an invitation from Augie—then a renowned professor of comparative literature—to apply for the General Honors Program. When I interviewed he asked me if I knew what “interdisciplinary” meant (remember, this was 1966) I gave him my best explanation. He smiled broadly and said, “This kid is the first to answer the question right.” I am sure he lied, but I walked out feeling taller and smarter than I ever had. I felt like I could take on the world.

I was accepted into the program, so I assumed there would be hundreds of others. There were only a couple dozen and they were the brainiest people I’ve ever dealt with. I was in his Freshman Honors Colloquium class for my full freshman year. In his class I did my first serious reading of Freud, Darwin, Kant, Marx, Jefferson, Sartre, Aristotle, Heidegger, the Beats, Saint Augustine, Buddha, Auden, Weiner, Yeats, Jung, Camus, Hesse, Mann, Kieerkegaard, Maslow, Kafka, Beckett, Buber, Dostoyevsky, Thomas Aquinas, Nietzsche, Bertrand Russell, a pile of contemporary playwrights, and so many more. Our reading list was 47 books long and included Freud’s Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, and William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience. I had never read so much in my life!

When we studied film he brought in his brother, director Francis Ford Coppola. When we studied Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf he brought in its playwright Edward Albee. When we studied music, it was for six weeks with fellow professor Frank Pooler, who had just finished his collaboration with Karen and Richard Carpenter on the Christmas standard “Merry Christmas, Darling” but had time to teach us about electronic music and had us composing music on synthesizers. Augie had us doing painting and writing poetry. And we felt good about it, even though we knew our work probably sucked.

(He even introduced me to his aspiring actress sister, Talia, with whom I had a memorable movie date. She went on to marry film composer David Shire a few years later and was nominated for an Oscar as Rocky’s wife Adrian, played a young bride in “The Godfather,” and many other roles.)

Our final project was a film based on Hesse’s Siddhartha. We adapted the script, acted, manned the cameras, edited the film, composed and played the music. His reluctant 3-year-old son Nick (now known as Nicholas Cage) was in the film (maybe his first acting role). When we held the premier of the film you would have thought the red carpet was waiting for us.

After my freshman year, I took some time off, then decided to serve a Mormon mission. I had talked to him about my faith and he had talked me through the writing of a paper on Mormonism and Existentialism. I gained a great deal of confidence from him because he accepted what I had to say and treated me with respect, as if I were the real adult I was. I returned to campus before heading to Peru and he was excited for me. He asked me to report my adventures when I returned. Lesser students and professors had ridiculed my decision to abandon my studies for at least two years to go off to South America to teach.

He later went on to become dean of the School of Creative Arts at San Francisco State University. He was a champion of the arts, working tirelessly and stubbornly to see that they got their due. As a result, in 1997 the school dedicated The August Coppola Theater in the Fine Arts Building in honor of his efforts.

About 20 years after having Augie as a teacher I had lunch with him in San Francisco. I waited nervously in a restaurant he had chosen, knowing he would never recognize me. He did, of course, and remembered much about my work. We talked about the nature of creativity in human beings, and how it manifests itself so differently in individuals, families, societies, and times. I was working for Gibbs Smith, Publisher, at the time and I was interested in the amazing creativity demonstrated by his family. His brother was one of the greatest film directors in the world, his son had won a Best Actor Academy Award, his sister Talia Shire is a much-lauded actress and producer and mother of actors Robert and Jason Schwartzman, his niece and nephew directors Sophia Coppola (”Lost in Translation”) and Roman Coppola, and his father was Oscar-winning composer Carmine Coppola. (See the Coppola Family Tree.)I wanted him to consider writing about his family as a study in creative influences. I had read his brother Francis Ford say that Augie was the intellectual core of the family. He took the project under consideration but eventually decided against it because he didn’t think he was talented enough to do it justice.

He was a true eccentric. He was often serious, but never took himself too seriously. He was a kid at heart, playful all the time and willing to entertain any idea—no matter how wacky. He was a visionary in every sense of the word, reaching farther than anyone I have ever known to understand how things connected. He opened up in me a sense of wonder and an intense desire for learning about how things relate to each other: history, literature, film, music, art, political thought, and theatre. When I went on to teach at a university, I tried hard to help my students find those same connections. He cracked the door to a whole new world for me and that door has always remained open. I’ll always be grateful that he introduced me to a true interdisciplinary way of viewing the world.

Looking back at this blog post, I realize that it is as much about me as about Augie Coppola. He had that effect on people. Many of the news items are about the death of Nicholas Cage’s father. But all who knew him will smile at that irony. He will be greatly missed.

Some obituaries:

• August Coppola Remembered, Golden Gate Press, Nov. 6.
• August Coppola, professor, director’s sibling, Boston Globe, Nov. 3.
• August Coppola, arts educator, dies at 75, San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. 4.

This excellent music video was filmed and edited with the same sly reverence by fellow Israeli artist Guy Dayan.

Adam Ben Ezra, Michael Jackson, Guy Dayan

I have also written about the Foundation for Reconciliation and their laudable activities (see A Move Toward Reconciliation, Bring them In From the Plains and the Home at Last benefit concert). Wednesday, Nov. 4, the anniversary of the passage of Proposition 8 in California with tens of millions of dollars of help from individual Mormons and Mormon companies, all at the request of their ecclesiastical leaders, is another Foundation activity.

The Great LGBT Handcart Rescue begins at 1:00 pm at the This is the Place Monument. From there, the group will trek by handcart, as did so many of our pioneer ancestors, to a 3:30 pm gathering at City Creek Park, at the northeast corner of North Temple and State streets. At 4:00 p.m., the group will deliver a package with signatures from a petition asking for reconciliation with LGBT members to LDS Church Headquarters.

This is an important event in the continuing story of LGBT equality in Utah and in the LDS Church. I encourage all who can spare some time to join in the Wednesday afternoon trek—or at least a part of it—and join the gathering at 3:30. Because so few of us can travel to Utah for the event, we count on those of you who are fair-minded and care about your family members to stand up for them and participate.

And thank you, Foundation for Reconciliation, for your continuing hard work on our behalf.

Just to clarify, the bill expands already-existing hate crime legislation from 1969 (yes, 40 years ago!) to include crimes motivated by actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. It doesn’t mean that Americans who are gay or in wheelchairs have special rights that other Americans don’t have, as irresponsible right-wing talk show hosts would have us believe. Basically, it:

• removes the current prerequisite that the victim be engaging in a federally-protected activity, like voting or going to school, when the crime is committed, as in both the Shepard and Bryd cases;
• gives federal authorities greater ability to engage in hate crimes investigations that local authorities choose not to pursue (so if the local Hooterville, Mississippi, sheriff doesn’t investigate a lynching, the feds can);
• provides funding to help state and local agencies pay for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes (so it isn’t a financial burden on the local police who otherwise might turn their heads);
• requires the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to track statistics on hate crimes against transgender people (statistics for the other groups are already tracked).

(This list is from a Wikipedia article about the Act. Italicized comments are mine.)

The families of Matthew Shepard and James Bryd Jr. were present for the signing. There is no real comfort for those who have lost a loved one to such hatred and violence, but an act named in their honor is a lasting legacy to their lives and the efforts of their families to get this legislation through Congress. Finally!

How ironic it is that the Act was attached to a defense spending bill, while the military is the one federal agency that does not allow gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans to serve in its ranks.

Does this mean the federal government has done enough for gays and lesbians? Absolutely not! It’s only a start, but it’s something.

I recommend Andres Kessinger’s piece in today’s Washington Post: Help Gays Who Aren’t Hurt.

Obama, Matthew Shepard/James Bryd Jr Hate Crimes Prevention Act

The sculpture stands in the middle of the Utah desert about 95 miles west of Salt Lake City and 25 miles east of the Utah-Nevada border (click on the map image below to see an enlargement). Financed by the artist himself, the piece was constructed over a four-year period. At 87 feet high, it is a clear landmark for travelers on Interstate 80 as they can see it 15 miles before they approach it towering next to the highway. The people in the photograph above provide a sense of scale. Five tons of welding rod reinforce the 225 tons of cement, over 2,000 ceramic tiles, and several tons of native Utah rocks and minerals. It has withstood desert winds for over 20 years without movement.

At the base of the trunk of the tree is a plaque inscribed with the words of Schiller’s Ode to Joy, as sung in the choral climax of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Momen’s canvas is harsh and bleak, though beautiful to those of us who love deserts. The bright colors and contrived vertical and spherical shapes contrast with the subtle monochrome and weathered horizontal plane of the Bonneville Salt Flats. The beauty of the desert is its ever-changing light and the vast sky that forms the backdrop. When I snapped this photograph a couple years after the sculpture’s dedication, the sky was a brilliant surreal blue that I have never seen since that day.

Metaphor: The Tree of Utah joins Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty and Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels as major works of land art in the Utah desert. Utah should be proud that its beautiful landscape inspires such creative explosions.

The Case Foundation Giving Challenge awards $1,000 to the nonprofit organization that receives the greatest number of individual donations on a single day. Today, Sunday, October 25, is the day for donating to Sunstone.

Help by donating $25 to the Sunstone Education Foundation this afternoon after 1:00 p.m. MST. You can donate online at http://doiop.com/25on25.

The Sunstone Education Foundation does an amazing job of keeping alive the idea of alternative voices in the Mormon intellectual community. With its symposia and publications, the group has brought us a steady stream of essays, literature, news, art, history, and social commentary about our theology, spiritual heritage, and culture. They have provided a voice that otherwise would not exist. Amazingly, they have done it with a shoestring—no, make that a “thin thread”—of a budget without compromising quality or sacrificing independence. They give us news and perspective that official LDS church publications would generally not consider. In fact, sometimes news and perspective that make us squirm a bit.

That’s the reason we need Sunstone and the reason you should join me in donating this Sunday. Come on, it’s only $25. It isn’t like it’s 10% or anything, and it sure goes to a lot farther.

$25 TODAY

P.S. You are more than welcome to donate more than $25, of course. Also, if you blow it and forgot to donate on Oct. 25, you can still go to the web site and donate through November 6 to help Sunstone compete for other cash awards.

Case Foundation, Sunstone Education Foundation, Mormon, LDS, Sunstone

Casa Diablo, which opened earlier this year, is owned and managed by Johnny Diablo, a self-described die-hard “ethical vegan” of nearly 25 years. The Mexican-themed menu is made up of wheat-based gluten-free soy ingredients. But that’s not enough. The dancers cannot wear anything made of leather, fur, silk, wool, or other animal products. One entertainer accidentally wore snakeskin stilettos one night and Johnny puller her aside to discuss “not bringing murder victims into the establishment.”

Although I have no interest in visiting Casa Diablo, I have to admire a guy for putting together something he believes in and that is completely, unabashedly Portland.

In the article, the dedicated curmudgeon speaks candidly about his grief over the death in 2007 of his partner, psychoanalyst Dr. Eugene Glynn, with whom he shared his life for 50 years. I was struck by their mutual devotion and I thought about how few heterosexual couples stay together for 50 years. Yet so many people spend their time, energy, and money in a paranoid effort to keep the Maurice Sendaks of the world from the responsibilities and benefits that come with marriage. The fear that the world with end if gay people are allowed to marry is irrational in every way.

In Where the Wild Things Are Max learns about irrational fears. The boy faces down his fears about the wild things and those very fears make him king. He emerges with bravery and a better sense of who he is. Nearly a half-century later, it remains a lesson for us all. Perhaps we should set aside our irrational fears and begin to spend time and energy learning who we really are. On that day “Let the wild rumpus start!”

Read the September 2008 New York Times article here.

Spike Jonze, Maurice Sendak, Eugene Glynn, Where the Wild Things Are