Lifelong VC resident Brandon Cesmat has been honored with San Diego’s highest book award for his love song to his native Southern California.
He has won the San Diego Book Award for poetry for his book of poetry, Driven Into the Shade.
The poems in Driven Into The Shade were written in between the time Cesmat was 26 and about a year ago. Poetic Matrix, in Madera, California, is the publisher. About a thousand books have been printed.
They are about a young man who grows up in Southern California.
Cesmat describes the book this way: “This is what happens when a man grows to love California. It is a book of love. I don’t mean infatuation, because it’s a book that sees California with both a loving and a critical eye. Our relentless sunshine also casts relentless shadows and you have to love them both.”
Cesmat has been a fixture among regional poetry groups for years. He teaches literature and writing and film studies at Cal State San Marcos along with a film class at Palomar Community College.
He still does numerous poetry readings, at eclectic places such as the lodge at Yosemite National Park and the Cafe Internationale in San Francisco.
He has edited the Classrooms of Poets series and also had a chapbook published entitled Nightsinging.
“The idea is that if you publish enough chapbooks, you put them together and it adds up to something,” he says.
That’s what happened with Driven Into the Shade.
Cesmat had sent off a manuscript to the Poetic Matrix Chapbook Competition two years ago. The editor, John Peterson, was looking for something different for that celebratory publication, but liked Cesmat’s style and after awarding him an honorable mention, asked for an entire manuscript.
Cesmat also writes prose. He has piece coming out in University of Nevada Press this fall. The subject is the Paradise fire, a fire that has special significance for Cesmat, who saved his own home from the flames, but saw neighbors’ homes destroyed.
Speaking about getting the book award, Cesmat told The Roadrunner, “I’m very pleased with the attention the book has received recently, there have been some nice things said about it.”
Indeed they have. Such as Jack Grapes’s less than wrathful comment: “Brandon Cesmat is a man of ice who melts hearts with his words.”
Or Maria Melendez, who wrote, “These poems exemplify what can happen when a man grows to poetry from the land; in this case, the land that love springs from, and flows to, is the land of California— its crows and coyotes, its organic hybridity between cultures. Through this feeling of eros from and for a place, the reader participates in a deep connection to the creative earth.”
When it comes to its gaming compact, the Rincon tribe insists that “a deal is a deal.”
The Rincon Luiseño Band of Indians, owners of Harrah’s Rincon Casino, last week filed suit in federal court claiming that the State of California has “impaired its obligation, dishonoring the tribe’s 20-year gaming compact to the detriment of the Rincon Band.”
Named in the suit are the State of California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
The tribe, which has always maintained that it didn’t need more than 2,000 slot machines, objects to the direction that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s negotiations with the larger gaming tribes in the state is taking.
According to news reports, those negotiations could remove the 2,000 slot machine limits that were originally imposed on all tribes by the compacts. These compacts were signed in 1999 with then-Gov. Gray Davis. In return the state would get a larger share of the casino profits.
Any new tribal-state compact that significantly changes the fundamental principles and regulatory framework would impair the state in carrying out its compact obligations to the Rincon Band, the lawsuit asserts. This would constitute impairment, violating the U.S. and California Constitutions.
It would also destabilize the Indian gaming market with “unbridled expansions,” the tribal council asserts.
Rincon tribal Chairman John Currier has long publically said that the tribe didn’t need more than 2,000 slot machines. Currently it only employs 1,600 machines.
“In 1999, the Rincon Band had its criticisms of the compacting process, including a ridiculous offer to the new gaming tribes of 350 machines with a five percent growth annually,” said Currier. “Rincon constantly fought for parity for all tribes in the compacts.
“During the last two days of those compact negotiations, the state reversed its position and provided a machine allocation plan that came closer to parity for all tribes. Although the compacts were not perfect, they are what they are,” said Currier.
“Rincon has invested approximately $350 million in our casino and resort and made other business decisions based upon the tribal-state compact that we were forced to either ‘take it or leave it’ in the late night hours of September 9, 1999,” Currier said. “That compact set up several barriers for non-gaming tribes to enter gaming. Rincon has worked hard to overcome those barriers. Today, what we were forced to accept, we must now rely upon to remain successful in business. Now, with 63 materially identical compacts in force, the state is turning the tables in secret negotiations to make significant changes that will place Rincon’s business and our people’s economic future in peril.
“A deal is a deal,” said Currier. “Whether the state or Rincon governments change administrations, the compact remains the same. However, recent reports indicate that changes under consideration are likely to be major, cutting into to the heart of the original deal to the detriment of the business success of the Rincon Band and probably other tribes.”
When the new governor ran for office last October, he promised to make gaming tribes “pay their fair share” to the state’s coffers.
Currier claims that Schwarzenegger “didn’t tell [the people] them that in doing so, he was going to violate 20-year contractual obligations the state made with all gaming tribes. The tribal-state compacts were designed to constitute state policy governing the reach and regulation of tribal gaming in California for two decades. What kind of messages do recent compact negotiations send to the good voters of California who sided with the tribes in approving Proposition 1A, the state constitutional amendment that made tribal gaming legal in our state?”
The budget deficit isn’t sufficient reason not to honor existing compacts, says Currier.
“Fair Share, yes! Extortion, absolutely not!” exclaimed Currier.
The tribe voluntarily agreed to pay $6.34 million to the County for road improvements. It also paid several million dollars to to mitigate Endangered Species Act issues with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. “We’ve entered into a fire services agreement with the San Pasqual Fire Department. And, without being required to do so, Rincon has hired two county sheriff deputies at a cost of around $250,000 annually,” he said.
Rincon also claims that the state has failed to negotiate with the tribe in good faith, as required by federal law and the compact; has ignored requests to negotiate additional terms to the compact even though the compact requires the state to negotiate; and has cost the tribe $12.75 million to comply with a policy the state later changed.
For the last two years the band has tried to negotiation with both Davis and Schwarzenegger. “Despite contract provisions requiring the state to respond promptly to negotiation requests and federal laws requiring good faith, the state has delayed or ignored responding to Rincon’s requests.”
By CASEY ANDERSON
“There were various chalk drawings in the parking lots, toilet paper was everywhere, and six trees in the quad were cut down.
“It’s disappointing,” says Valley Center Pauma Unified School District Supt. Karen Jobe, about acts of vandalism that occurred at the high school last Wednesday.
The senior pranks, which many community members believe crossed the line, were discovered early Thursday morning by Assistant Principal Ron McCowan. Officials believe the vandalism occurred on Wednesday night after midnight.
The extent of the damage prompted McCowan to call the police. Six out of the twelve trees that shade the quad area in the school were cut down. The pranksters brought hand saws and cut about three quarters of the way through each tree, then pushed them over, leaving jagged remainders of trunks. Toilet paper covered various areas of the campus, and chalk drawings adorned walls and sidewalks.
Mrs. Jobe said they contacted the police because the damage to the trees, “goes above toilet paper and chalk. These trees were about six years old, many of them were planted when the school first opened.”
The cost to replace the trees is an important factor. “Because of how much it will cost to replace the trees, it makes it a felony,” Mrs. Jobe said, “and all the kids involved were 18 and seniors, except one.”
The students who cut the trees are being charged with vandalism, and none of them were allowed to walk at their graduation ceremony.
The administration knows that the groups of people who toilet papered and drew with chalk were not connected with the group of vandals who cut the trees.
About 22 students were involved. Ten formed the group who destroyed the trees. The students who were not part of that group of ten, were given community service as punishment. They were allowed to walk with their class at graduation. The vandals who cut the trees were not allowed to walk at graduation. The school administrators have decided not to press charges, but the students will be held responsible for the total cost of the damages.
The Roadrunner did not ask for the names of the minors involved, but did ask for the names of the adults. School officials were not willing to release those names.
“I am happy about one thing though,” Mrs. Jobe said. “On Thursday morning, as students were arriving, many of them immediately began to help clean up without being asked. The clean up went quickly and was done well. I appreciate those students who helped out. It shows that there are those students who do have pride in their school.”
The Valley Roadrunner
P.O.B. 1529, Valley Center, CA 92082
Tel. 760.749.1112 Fax 760.749.1688
Website: www.valleycenter.com
Email: editor@valleycenter.com
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