Bakersfield
Good News for Jesus at the Bakersfield Islamic Conference
At the sixth annual Bakersfield Islamic Conference, before a few hundred attendees in a hotel ballroom, crew-cut Joshua Evans, looking scholarly behind a long brown beard and matching brown glasses, delivered this information: you cannot be a Muslim unless you believe in Jesus, one of five great Prophets who brought about seminal changes. Islam also…
Read MoreSaber-Tooth Cat Revisits Red Rock Canyon
Let me clarify this point: I like to be called saber-toothed cat. Do not call me a Smilodon, that pompous academic name thrown at us by humans who’ve lived such a short time compared to the millions of years various branches of my family survived and flourished in a world far more beautiful than the…
Read MoreHigh School Grades of Earl Warren
enter archives at bakersfield high school look left at long glass case displaying handwritten grade book note highlighted name earl warren read four years reports revealing history his best subject and three times earned his top grade in final quarter many students before and since doubtless had similar trajectories only didn’t become three term governor…
Read MoreThe Right Room
first time on puerto vallarto tour quite hungover stand at basin looking into fright woman pops up behind and says sir are you aware this is women’s years later long sober at bakersfield movie women enter one says what’s guy doing in here leaving rapidly forget to say heat intoxication
Read MoreSherlock Holmes Needs Straightjacket
new sherlock holmes movie maniacal high tech farce detective robert downey relentlessly overbearing bakersfield patrons quite pleased
Read MoreBon Qui Qui at King Burger
I must’ve been beset by Baby Boomer inertia as I read about young comedian Anjelah Johnson coming to Bakersfield in a couple of days. She’s cute, I thought, and her act is probably funny and it’s cool she used to be a Raider cheerleader, but that was all until two hours before the show on…
Read MoreCriminal Justice in Islam
In blighted but affordable east Bakersfield old bank transformed into new mosque hosts annual Islamic Conference where keynote speaker Main Al-Qudah, PhD in Islamic law and imam at large mosque in Houston, steps to podium. He’s slim, stern, middle-aged, dressed in suit and tie, and resembles prosecutor as power points to screen bearing principles of…
Read MoreBetty Finch Transforms Gourds into Sculptures
I’ve long been collecting art with enthusiasm many call obsessive but confess to being indifferent when notified by postcard last month that the Bakersfield Museum of Art would be featuring an exhibition of gourd sculptures by retired police officer Betty Finch. What the hell is a gourd? I’d heard of people drinking from them but…
Read MoreFantasizing on Highway 99
Pretty soon you’ve got to drive from Bakersfield to Sacramento. You are, of course, thankful you don’t have to start further south in Los Angeles and thus crawl up and down scorched and barren mountains that separate the city of glamour and poverty from the rest of the state. Your journey, instead, will take you…
Read MoreFear Not, California – Bakersfield Shall Save You
Have you been to Bakersfield? Ask that of most people in California and they’ll say, “No, but I’ve been through it.” They just kept on rolling over parched Central Valley earth en route to Los Angeles or the Bay Area. Why didn’t they stop? Perhaps they were startled or saddened by the eternal glare from…
Read More- « Previous
- 1
- 2