Canto CCCXLII: Ron Maydon

Gentle cabrones:

How many emails do you use? I have seven.

There’s my public email, the one that’s easy to find and remember ([email protected]) and which I use to respond to ustedes. There’s my work email for the L.A. Times. My private email, which isn’t really that private, but is the one I use for business that I need to take care of that rises above a “BOOM” or “HA!” or “HWUT” response.

I have emails for my classes at Chapman and OCC that I use exclusively for school purposes. An email for this newsletter that automatically goes to my mexicanwithglasses one, and from which I’ll never send an email from because there’s no reason to. And there’s the email that I’ve now had the longest, the one I had before we got Internet at home. The one I never use anymore, but will try to keep as long as possible:

[email protected] 

Don’t bother emailing me there, because I only check my email once a year — and only so that Yahoo doesn’t delete it. In fact, I checked it yesterday because Yahoo sent an email to my mexicanwithglasses one threatening to shut down ronmaydon if I didn’t log into it. So I did, and I found an email dated February 9 of this year: Happy 26th anniversary!

That means I started my Ron Maydon account in February 1998. That would’ve been the start of my second semester at Orange Coast College, when I was still studying to be a film student, and so was my best friend Art, who I’ve written about before in this canto.

I remember those times well. I remember the email better.

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The computer lab in Orange Coast College was in the old library, up in the highest floor. We were allowed, I think, two hours of computer time if no one else was using one – but the Internet was still so newfangled a concept that not many people were using them so I could stay there for hours.

Yahoo was how you discovered the world. The homepage would have categories and you would start clicking through them and finding things you never thought of caring for. I remember hearing midi files of Gershwin songs – it was, fun and informative and not the soul suck of today.

I can’t remember who told me about the concept of email — maybe it was during a class. Yahoo was for free and Bill Gates was considered evil back then, so I went with Yahoo. A name for it? I think most of my classmates went with the obvious — their name. If someone had already picked their name, they would add a number or the year of their birth.

That wasn’t gonna be me. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do — funny? Weird? Symbolic? Esoteric?

And then one day, I read about Ron Maydon.

That second semester, Art and I took an English 100 class. Our readings came from an anthology, which I know I still have somewhere in my stacks. I remember the cover — deep red, with some sort of Kumbaya world with bright colors even on the palm of an open hand. The book had different examples of styles of writing – fiction, nonfiction, essays, with a general multicultural bent.

That’s how we came to Ron Maydon.

He was a Mexican American from Chicago, and boy did he have opinions about race. He said that Mexicans in the city were used as a buffer between whites and Blacks — except he didn’t use those terms. And he mentioned Poles — but he didn’t use that term, either. Already, I was tiring of political correctness. I didn’t agree with everything he said, but I respected his frankness. It was one long stream-of-consciousness — just Ron’s words, nothing else — like I had never read. 

And then that name: Ron Maydon. What kind of Mexican name was that?

I had no idea about Chicago’s history at the time, especially as it relates to race and especially Mexicans. I just knew the name. Ron Maydon represented boldness, life, curiosity. It was like a chant. And our professor told us the context of this interesting way of telling someone’s story – interviewing someone, taking the best quotes, removing all questions, and crafting a narrative out of it. It was the bread and butter of the man who interviewed Ron Maydon, Studs Terkel.

Another great name! But [email protected] would be it.

I used it on and off for a couple of years, because we finally got the Internet at home via Earthlink (man, I miss their cool monthly magazine). I kept Ron Maydon even after I got a job at the Infernal Rag, an email that I used nearly exclusively for 14 years. I kept some important emails at the Ron Maydon account, including a prototype of a newsletter going back to 2001!

Since it was free, I assumed the emails I had sent and received from Ron Maydon would always be there. But about five years ago or so, Yahoo unceremoniously deleted all emails before a certain time. I never bothered to forward them anywhere else. They are now gone forever, along with my Geocities website.

I keep [email protected] as a reminder of how tenuous anything online truly is. But it’s also a reminder to be open to everything that comes your way. If it wasn’t for Ron Maydon, I would not have learned about Terkel, would not have absorbed his belief that the most profound people in the world are regular folks, that you should talk to everyone and anyone and let them have their say, even if you don’t agree with them.

Studs is one of my journalistic godfathers. Ron Maydon was the priest who sprinkled water on my forehead over the baptismal font.

You can hear Ron Maydon’s interview on Studs Terkel‘s website. He sounds like a guy I’d like to have a tequila with — and Google tells me he was a Chicano activist (the Chicago Reader referred to him as a “a maverick Mexican-American political activist”) and remains alive.

Next time I’m in Chicago, I need to hit him up. Any of you know him? Probably not — I never did establish myself journalistically in Chicago — or anywhere, for that matter…

**

Enough rambling. This was the semana that was:

IMAGE OF THE WEEK: View from City Club Los Angeles on the 51st floor of some DTLA skyscraper or other. Was there to attend a panel hosted by the Latino Media Collaborative about the crisis in local journalism. That skyscraper in the back center, just off to the right? That’s Graffiti Towers — FUUUUUCK…

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “I care. I care about it all. It takes too much energy not to care.” — Lorraine Hansberry

LISTENING:

“Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye,” The Casinos. Definition of treacle BUT…those double organs and mournful, repeating horns and tight harmonies make this neo-doo wop track from the late 1960s a song I cannot hate and actually enjoy.

READING: “7 Facts That Reveal the Wonder of the Ancient Maya”: This is less a plug for the article than it is for History Facts, which sends out a daily newsletter filled with their smart listicles. Read them every day!

BUY MY NEW CO-BOOK! People’s Guide to Orange County tells an alternative history of OC through the scholarship and reporting of myself, Elaine Lewinnek, and Thuy Vo Dang. There’ll be signings all year — in meanwhile, buy your copy TODAY. And, yes: I’ll autograph it!

Gustavo Events  

March 16, 9 a.m.: Myself and People’s Guide to Orange County co-author Elainne Lewinnek are doing a walking tour of Placentia. It’s FREE, but you have to register here!

March 21, 5:30 p.m.: I’ll be in conversation with folks from the Long Beach Public Library Foundation on why libraries have become the culture-war front that they’ve become at the Union Bank Building, 400 W. Oceangate, Long Beach. Tickets are $25, but it’s a fundraiser, so PAY UP. SOLD OUT. You snoozed, you losed!

Gustavo in the News

“Sergio O'Cadiz Fremont Elementary Mural Restoration 1973-2023”: I get a shoutout right at the start of this short video about the title at hand.

“Off the Bench: A Food Blog”: My former student Sean Vukan shouts me out in the inaugural edition of his newsletter — sign up!

“Part 85: The March 2024 Elections in Los Angeles – Political Legitimacy and Power Politics”: Legendary whistleblower Zachary Ellison shouts out Krying Kevin de León’s conniption on Super Tuesday.

“Words and Wine with Alta Journal and Alta Baja Market”: You missed out on a great event!

“The problem with grit in higher education”: An L.A. Times newsletter you should subscribe to shouts out a columna of mine.

“The primary is over. Here are three key takeaways from Times columnists”: Another L.A. Times newsletter you should subscribe to shouts out a columna of mine.

“With Senate primary over, political energy turns to California House races”: Yet another L.A. Times newsletter you should subscribe to shouts out a columna of mine.

“Who’s spending big bucks on California’s Senate race?": Still yet another L.A. Times newsletter you should subscribe to shouts out a columna of mine.

“Wake up, babe, a new cure-all just dropped: Inside TikTok’s magnesium craze”: Why still yet another L.A. Times newsletter you should subscribe to shouts out a columna of mine.

“Letters to the Editor: City councilmember says The Times got Latino power in L.A. wrong”: Monica Rodriguez doesn’t like me for reasons that are HILARIOUS. Talk about someone who was born on the political version of third base thinking she hit a triple…

“The Latino Vote”: The Mike Madrid-Chuck Rocha podcast shouts out my series on Latino political power in Los Angeles.

Gustavo Stories 

“Grítale a Guti”: Latest edition of my Tuesday night IG Live free-for-all.

“November run-off elections take center stage in OC”: My latest KCRW “Orange County Line” commentary talks about the supervisor races, the historic Orange Unified trustee recalls, and Huntington Beach being Huntington Beach.

“History Of Latino Politics In Los Angeles Explored In Gustavo Arellano’s New Four Part Series ‘Power y Glory’”: I appear on my old stomping grounds, AirTalk with Larry Mantle, to talk about my series with someone who WASN’T Larry.

“‘You cannot get close to’ Kevin de León at his surreal, high-security election party”: My latest L.A. Times columna goes to Krying Kevin de León’s confab. KEY QUOTE: “Soon, two burly guys gathered around Brown. Then, a group of women lined up next to them. It was the most laughable blockade since the last time I played “Battleship.””

“The legacy — and disappointment — of Katie Porter’s Orange County revolution”: My next-latest L.A. Times columna checks in on the Irvine congressmember turned failed U.S. Senate candidate. KEY QUOTE: “But sometimes, the big fish should stay in the small pond to defend the minnows from the sharks. And out of all the years Porter should’ve remained in place, it was 2024.”

You made it this far down? Gracias! Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram while you’re down here by clicking on their logos down below. Don’t forget to forward this newsletter to your compadres y comadres! You can’t get me tacos anymore, but you sure as hell can give them — and more — to the O.C. Catholic Worker!