Memories with Auntie

Auntie Keiko Kuida passed away at the age of 82. She has been present my whole life. From middle school when I was the only person in the family to fit her shoes, I became the happy recipient of her love of shopping, and her generosity, especially shoes, clothes, purses and jewelry.  

When I started working in Inglewood in the 1980s, we would meet for pizza on Fridays. She was an avid bowler, golfer and gambler, who loved the race tracks and Vegas, lover of cats, and was an enthusiastic Tweety Bird, Peanuts, and Beanie Babies collector. When we started carpooling to family gatherings and driving her to doctors appts, at night or long distances, she would show up at our house an hour or two early, sometimes we’d still be sleeping.  

She was a breast cancer survivor, and a fighter. A Nisei, she was born on a canteloupe farm in Canoga Park, incarcerated as a child in Gila River, Arizona during WW2, before moving with her family to the Seinan/Crenshaw area in LA. She attended 6th Avenue School, Foshay Jr High and Dorsey High School. After she retired from the Gas Company where she worked over 30 years, she worked at Eddie Bauer folding clothes and spending way more money than she earned, and also worked for her dear friend Mary at Tak’s Coffee Shop in Crenshaw Square. 

Until the pandemic, she would play cards with her friends Katsu and Fujio every Friday night, and have breakfast with other friends in The Breakfast Club on Saturdays and Sundays, and regular lunches with her friend (over 50 years) Kayko from the Lunch Bunch. Maiya has grown up with her in our lives, with Auntie picking her up from school and afterschool programs, attending her basketball games, Nihon Buyo, karate, taiko and flute performances, and for that I am really happy and grateful.

During the pandemic, I became her shopper both online and in person, and in January she started needing help more and more. On February 3rd, she had another eye surgery, but her troubles breathing quickly took over as she was diagnosed with lung cancer, and I moved my remote work space from my living room to her kitchen, helping her to adapt to make her home safe for walker and wheelchair, dealing with a host of home maintenance issues, and started staying at her home daily for longer and longer hours. We brought in her friend Linda in the afternoons to help with meals and housekeeping as it became too much for me working full time plus. 

After almost a week in the hospital for procedures, I moved in with her March 1st as her primary caregiver and started staying with her weekdays and weeknights about 20 hours a day, with Tony and my siblings Darin and Gayle rotating 24 hour shifts on weekends. A few weeks ago we also brought in our young friend Joanna to help in the mornings as well. UCLA Home Health came in and became our lifeline of support sending nurses Pam, Hannah, Addie, Rebecca, Dr. C, Lillian and Claudia, social worker Luis, and physical therapists Audra and Alecsee who came, called or texted almost daily, who trained me on draining her chest catheter, and taught us about patient care as things progressed and her needs changed. 

Last week I went camping for a couple days of r&r with help from my whole family. The night I came back I called 911 for the 4th and last time since January. Hospice came on Wednesday morning and she passed later that night, at home as she wanted, having talked to and had visits from several close friends and family in her last few weeks.  Grateful to her and my friends, coworkers, family, her doctors, and her neighbors Argentina and Kent for so much support over these last few months. 

Love ❤️ to Auntie.  She will be missed.

Memories of Grace Lee Boggs (1915-2015)

Tuesday Night Café, Little Tokyo, Los Angeles

Jenni Kuida with Tony Osumi & Maiya Kuida-Osumi

10/6/15

Thank you to Sean Miura for inviting us to share at tonight’s Tuesday Night Cafe.  Our deep condolences to Grace’s family and friends in Detroit and around the country, and our thanks to friends like Shea Howell at the Boggs Center who have taken care of her, especially in the last years.

My husband Tony and I met Grace Lee Boggs in 1998, the year her autobiography “Living for Change” was published.  Grace stayed at our house when she came for the “Serve the People” conference at UCLA organized by Scott Kurashige.  I had never heard of Grace, but Tony had read Grace and Jimmy Boggs’ 1974 groundbreaking book, “Revolution and Evolution in the 20th Century.”

I remember Grace, then 83 years old, so full of life and interest in everything; sleeping on our futon couch, rummaging through the bookshelves in our den, showing us VHS tape of her husband Jimmy speaking, reconnecting with Nobuko Miyamoto after 30 years (and who will dedicate her performance to Grace later tonight), and having dinner with Grace and Yuri Kochiyama.  Yes.

After seeing the Aloha Grocery mural that Tony and I collaborated on in the Venice Culver community in LA, Grace invited Tony and I to Detroit to help envision a mural with Detroit Summer, whose passion it was to rebuild and re-spirit Detroit, from the ground up.  That’s what she does, she offers invitations, and challenges.  We had no funding, and no agenda; we just went, and it changed our lives.

We found ourselves baling hay from an abandoned crack house into the trunk of our rental car with Farmer Paul, sweating and hauling logs down city streets with Detroit Summer teenagers for a new community garden, and a crash course in Detroit’s history.  Since I had never been to Detroit, I knew nothing of its post-industrial decay, 10,000 empty houses or 60,000 abandoned lots.  

At the time, I was working for Nobuko at Great Leap, and we had been engaging communities in performance residences in Watts, Boyle Heights and Phoenix, so with Grace’s invitation to explore ideas for Great Leap, we went back to Detroit.

Grace introduced us to Gerald Hairston, who created over 200 urban gardens on vacant lots with youth and elders. In 2001, Gerald passed away unexpectedly, and Nobuko was inspired to write “I Dream a Garden,” a Japanese American Obon circle dance, Detroit-style, incorporating multi-ethnic rhythms and movements.  The Fandango Obon, which will take place at the JACCC on October 25^th, was born out of the “I Dream a Garden” project.

On our many visits, we stayed at the Boggs Center, upstairs from Grace’s home.  Each morning and night, we would stop in to see her, and she would ask us how our day was, and give us more names of people in the community to meet and connect with.  

Tony and I went back to do another mural in Detroit’s Chinatown Association building in 2003.  The success of these projects would not have been dreamable without Grace’s guidance, the spark, energy and soul behind everything.

Grace continued to be part of our life after our daughter Maiya Grace was born in 2005.  Named after Grace, we continued visiting Grace every year or two. In the last 5 years, filmmaker Grace Lee’s documentary “American Revolutionary” and Grace’s book with Scott Kurashige, “The Next American Revolution” brought her more attention from the API and film communities, progressive, ethnic and mainstream media, and although she slowed down a bit, she seemed to gain energy from the good vibes of everyone she came in contact with.

Grace encouraged us all to think deeper, more creatively and more critically, thinking of ways to meet new demands and consider new approaches.  Grace’s circle of positive change is filled with murals, urban gardens, renovating vacant buildings, intergenerational book clubs, freedom schooling, teens and elders, neighbor to neighbor, with “visions for what Detroit can be and what America ought to be,” as she would say.

For all of you tonight, as activists, creators and producers of community arts, spoken word, music, and comedy, we should draw from Grace’s influence by listening, watching, and interacting with each other.

Grace lived 100 years.  You can read all of the amazing quotes that were trending all over Facebook, Instagram and Twitter yesterday, and even what Obama said about her.

I know that if she were here, and she is, with rockets on her wheelchair soaring high, she would love what happens in this space, on this stage in Little Tokyo on the 1^st and 3^rd Tuesday from Spring to Fall, and she would challenge us to continue to struggle and keep the conversations going.  We love you Grace.

Goodbye to Nancy

Sharing some of my FB photos here.

 Ms. J-town, the fabulous Nancy Kikuchi at the Taiko Gathering during Nisei Week 2013.  I called her the real Nansei Week Queen and the Mayor of Little Tokyo.

The two girls holding this sign, Olivia and Maiya were born during the making of this mural in 2004 and 2005. Maiya helped by placing her finger on the flame of a candle lit.. Olivia's actual image is in the mural, the baby sitting next to the Little Tokyo sign, under Nancy's image as a Bombu taiko player. Nancy loved babies and children, and this picture was taken for her last month in August 2014.

Today we said goodbye to Nancy Kikuchi along with 600 or more of her friends and family.   It was touching,agonizing, sweet and comforting to be among so many friends and coworkers who were so blessed to know Nancy. She loved Little Tokyo and we all loved her right back. After the emotional service at Higashi, was a lovely meal for us all to meet together and smile and relax a bit, and we were invited to walk the streets of J-town and take flowers over to the "Home is Little Tokyo" mural that is her legacy and her gift to us all.

Everyone loved Nancy... and Jtown just won't be the same without her spark and enthusiasm.

Grandpa Don’s Dogs

Grandpa Don passed away on April 11th.  We were fortunate that we got to travel with him twice last year, a week in Kalamazoo Michigan, and camping up at Lake Tahoe last summer.  He found out he was sick in October 2013. We were able to visit with him at home in Idaho last Thanksgiving and in March/April, less than two weeks before he passed away.  He was a good man, and one thing for sure, he loved Tony's mom Fran, more than anything.  

Maiya wrote this poem within a few hours after learning that Grandpa Don died.  

Grandpa Don’s Dogs

By Maiya Grace Kuida-Osumi

A greatful good grandfather,

5 dogs weren’t a bother.

A dog named Sadie,

Who is a very nice lady.

A dog named Magillicutty,

who’s my grandpa’s buddy.

A dog named Bobby,

who sits in the lobby.

A dog named Tito,

who likes to eat a burrito.

A dog named London Baby,

who could be a hound, maybe.

Who had a great wife,

and a great life.

We all love you Grandpa Don!

4/11/14

Lake Tahoe, August 2013

Grace's Groupies in SF

So it's been 10 years since I've been to San Francisco, when we went up with NCRR for a Report Back on our trip to Cuba in 2001.  When we heard our friends Grace Lee Boggs and Scott Kurashige (aka Tula's dad),  were going to be in San Francisco on a speaking tour of their new book, The Next American Revolution, Sustainable Activism for the 21st Century in March 2012, we decided to drive up to San Francisco to see them.  It's been two years since the US Social Forum, which was the last time we saw Grace and visited in Detroit.  Since it's late and I'm tired, this will have to be another photo caption blog post.  These are the top 13 out of 118 photos from the trip.

By kismet, our friend Joe Reilly was in Berkeley performing a
children's concert at La Pena Cultural Center that same morning.
It so happens that we met Joe through Grace at the Boggs Center, and our other friends in Detroit,
who at the time were part of the Long Hairz Collective.

Joe's latest CD is "Let's Go Outside," is one of his many works with
children, animals, nature and all things eco and Michigany.

Maiya with Daddy at the La Pena Cultural Center mural

One of a dozen or more self-portraits taken from the backseat.
I think this is one going over the Oakland Bay Bridge.

Maiya Grace wearing her Grace Lee tee

Visiting with Grace before her talk

Event sponsored by the Chinese Progressive Association (or whatever CPA stands for).
I liked how progressive and diversely API the crowd was, numbering around 400 people.
The previous day Grace had engaged in a conversation with
Angela Davis at UC Berkeley at a woman's conference with 1200 people attending.

Shea, one of our favorite and most knowledgeable Detroit-based activists
who we met in our summers volunteering with Detroit Summer

View from our hotel room

Grace Lee and Maiya Grace at an after party in Grace's hotel room

Tony talking with Grace about education or activism, I'm sure.

One of Daddy's original 3x5 cards

Meeting Tish!!!!

So, there's another one of our short trips, barely gone a day and a half.  I think we left at 4 am, and got up there in time to see Joe's 10am concert, then drove across the Bridge to SF to see Grace in the afternoon.  We then drove out to Grace's hotel near the airport to hang out, then back to our hotel near Chinatown.  The next morning, I went walking around San Francisco and loved it, and walked over to visit/meet Tish, one of my favorite blogger friends (and first blogger friends back in the days before FB when everybody was blogging) who I have been good friends with for 10 years, but had never met in person.  Something non-bloggers don't really get.  Tony and Maiya came to pick me up and ended up hanging out with us, just talking and catching up.  It was a great visit, and one that I hope to do again one day soon.  

Our only regret is that we didn't have time to see Manilatown, home of our Manzanar friends Al Robles and Bill Sorro, both who passed away in recent years, or our friend Jiro Kobashigawa, Tony's former landlord, an Okinawan activist, poet, artist, writer, who passed away this summer at the age of 97.

Peace. Out.
NaBloPoMo12 #7
(Backblogging March 2012)

Year of the Dragon, that's me!

Year of the Dragon, that's Me!

Year of the Dragon:  Notice the growing out first-time cellophaned, but fading red hair and the grey roots poking out?  See the tiny wrinkles?  Actually, my eyes are open.  I am literally (I can't say literally without thinking of Rob Lowe on Parks and Recreation, a show I am enjoying nightly on Netflix at the moment) serious that my eyes are open in this picture.  Anyways, I am getting a Metro TAP card for the train/bus pass and I needed a picture.  I think that me, Maiya and several coworkers tried to take pictures of me, dozens over the last few days for me to submit, and they all turned out goofy.  This one, has got to be the goofiest, and no, this one won't be on the train pass.

Anyways, as usual, I digress, again.  It is Year of the Dragon, and no, sweet and naive of you to guess that I am 36, but yes, as of today, I am 48 years old.  When I talk about childhood friends, then we start saying, "oh yeah, we've been friends for 40 something years."  Anyways, I'm in much better health than I was at 46 (Blog Post Forty-sicks!) and for that I am extremely grateful.  Grateful to my dear friend Victor Shibata, who passed away earlier this year, who helped me with health and energy issues ranging from fertility to asthma and many other ailments over the last 15 years or so.  I miss you Victor.

Picture taken with the Iha's, a Cuban Japanese family we visited in Cuba in 2001
 (me far left, Tony seated, and Victor far right)

So on my birthday, one of my "wishes" and my "hopes," is that I can stay healthy and be lucky enough to keep watching my beautiful, funny, spunky, smart kid grow up.

Peace, out.
NaBloPoMo12 #2

Last day of preschool (#12)

I know, NaBloPoMo is supposed to be about me blogging and writing every day.  I committed to it, but really, I am using it to catch up on this blog.  If you're on FB, chances are you saw these photos back in August.  Here's Maiya and Devin's last day at preschool.  We carpooled with Devin for 5 months.  I think it was a good challenge for the two of them in terms of learning how to get along with others, and that you don't always get your way.  Looking at these pictures, you would never know that on this last day of school they fought in the car almost the whole way.

Cutie pies!

I took a picture of Maiya by this rock 2 1/2 years ago.

  See?  First day of preschool February 2008

Devin looks so grown up here.  He's like my 2nd child.

Here, they were bickering, as they often do, but it looks like a catalog ad for striped clothes.

 Maiya with Justin and a book that the kids in her class made for her.

 Maiya and Ryan, first "boyfriend," or maybe 2nd

 That night, we went to Mickie's going-away party at 410 Boyd. 

 Yes, that's preschoolers hanging out at the local bar.  

Actually, these kids kind of grew up there.

 Saying Sayonara to Mickie.

NaBloPoMo#12... so you know that coming soon will be pictures of the first day of school.

Saying Goodbye to Larry's House (#7)

Well, today was our last day at Grandpa Larry's house.  Larry's house is in escrow and should close this week.  Tony and Hector went up yesterday and moved and gave away all the furniture.  Today, we drove up and packed up the rest of the kitchen, bathrooms and loaded up what was left of the garage.  

Last Summer, we went up almost every weekend, packing up and cleaning up the house.  We went back and forth in trying to decide whether to sell, rent or turn the house into a vacation rental.  While we were spending time in the house, it reminded me of my family's condo in Mammoth and many years of happy memories.  Maiya and I enjoyed going down to the "beach" at Lake Gregory 1/2 a mile away while Tony worked at the house.  It's been a year and a half since Larry passed away, and almost 3 years since he got sick, so saying goodbye to his belongings and his house has been a long process.  

Kind of a sad day.  The house is empty now--but our garage and our memories are full.  

Photos taken on my new Canon PowerShot S95.  NaBloPoMo#7.

381 Miles for Justice and Back (in one day)

On Memorial Day weekend, Tony, Maiya and I rented a car and drove 381 miles to Phoenix to join the march protesting SB 1070, the recently signed Arizona law that will allow/force/legalize racial profiling against people of color.  It will authorize police to stop "suspected" undocumented immigrants based on the color of their skin and ask them for their papers.

We left at 3:30 in the morning, and arrived in Phoenix about 9:30 am.  I actually only slept about 2 45-minute naps the night before, and drove the first 3 hours.  Anyways, we found a place to park a few blocks from the beginning of the route, having seen that there was a train line that would take us back at the end of the day.  We had heard that the organizers were expecting about 50,000 people, but I really couldn't tell... altoarizona.com reported 100,000 people. Walking 6 1/2 miles in 90+ degree heat and not wanting to spend any money in Phoenix was something that I think our little family will always remember and was why we decided to go and come back in the same day.

Maiya wrote and decorated her own picket sign: 

"SB 1070: It's Not Right! Treat People Good"

Tony's sign compares SB 1070 with racist laws in our

history that target individual communities of color

Phoenix was hot... we heard 97 degrees... 

this is before we got to the 6.6 mile start line.

We were towards the back of the march. 

 Lots of families and strollers where we were.

Trying to beat the heat with popsicles, fruit, veggies and water

This sign was at the very end of the march, and passed us a few times.

Maiya's Si Se Puede Yoda sign was a big hit--

many people wanted photos and kids loved it.

Our sign "We drove 381 miles for justice" caused several 

groups of Arizonans to thank us for the support

KuidaOsumi--together for social justice

Some of the signs we saw said things like "Do I look illegal?" "Brown is not a crime." "We are all human." "European American immigrants were illegal.  1492." After walking almost 5 hours or so, we almost made it to the end. We actually got within about 7 streets from the end of the march and we could hear the speakers and the music.  We could see the State Capitol building just ahead of us. 

Unfortunately, I had kind of a dizzy spell/episode where the world started spinning and I started to feel like I was going to pass out.  I went to sit down, and kind of fell onto the grass in slow motion.   Anyways, after yet another bottle of water and a 20 minute rest, I was able to walk back to the train (yes, we did actually spend $3.50 in Arizona for trainfare and $2 or $3 for popsicles from marching vendors) to take us back to our car, where we took pictures in the parking lot.

After that, we got in our car, and Tony drove us 6 hours back home, stopping in Blythe for gas and making pita bread cheese and salami sandwiches out of the cooler in the backseat of the car.  I am glad we were able to go--since we missed the Los Angeles May Day immigrant rights march on May 1st.  It was Maiya's first trip to Phoenix.  And the only other time I had been to Arizona was about 17 years ago when I went with my parents and my brother Darin to the Gila River Camp Reunion/Pilgrimage, where my dad was incarcerated as a 10 year old during WW2 for being of Japanese descent.  

It was a hot and physically exhausting day, but an unforgettable journey... As I said to one Latino man about my age who thanked us for coming such a long distance, "We had to come."  Because according to Maiya, "SB 1070:  It's not right!  Treat People Good."

~~~~~~
This post is dedicated to the memory of father, husband, activist, organizer, teacher, poet, friend, 
John Delloro, who passed away at the age of 38 on June 5th, may he rest in peace and justice.

Goodbye to Uncle Meg

Uncle Meg, Aunt Janice and Cousin Tina with Maiya in 2005

Tony's Uncle Meg passed away on Wednesday due to heart failure. He kept a low profile over the last few years due to problems with his health, but in his earlier days he was very supportive in the fight for redress, involved with the UCLA Asian American Studies Center's Amerasia Journal, as an employment and labor law attorney doing social justice work, and serving on the Little Tokyo Service Center Board for almost 30 years.

My first contact with Uncle Meg was actually a few years before I started dating Tony, when he served on a panel for the Future of the Nikkei Community Conference that I co-chaired in 1992, my introduction into the JA community.

Tony has lost his dad, godmother and uncle in the last 10 months, all of whom had diabetes, which makes me really sad. My condolences to Aunt Janice, who was married to Uncle Meg for 39 years, his daughter Tina, Uncle Bill and Tony.

There will be a public presentation/viewing for Megumi Dick Osumi this Wednesday, December 23rd from 2pm-8pm at Fukui Mortuary in Little Tokyo.