More Stories

Exploring the relationship between Native American people and their landscape, and all the animals and other beings living there, has been a longtime interest.

Excerpt from Saving the Bighorn Sheep Songs. 
The 71-year-old voice sings: He kwe ma to kai yu pe.
The 17-year-old voice repeats: He kwe ma to kai yu pe.
Ernest H. Siva is teaching his grand-nephew Isaac Horsman Rodriguez the Serrano Bighorn Sheep Songs (Paa'chucham). The Paa'chucham are a series of songs telling an ancient Serrano story about the creation of the Bighorns. Mr. Siva is perhaps the only person who has been singing the songs and sharing them in recent years. Now, he is teaching this fragment of the past to Isaac, for the future. (Written in 2008 for Dorothy Ramon Learning Center's Heritage Keepers newsletter, which I edit, design, and publish.)

How voices tell a story

"President Obama Honors Morongo Tribal Member"
“That day I started saving my money. Of every cent I earned and obtained over the next years, half of it went into my savings account. One must recognize that at that time there weren’t a lot of employment opportunities for little Indian girls living on a reservation. But when I pulled all my resources together some four years later, I had at total of $1,000 and change. Mrs. Adams’s visit was clearly a turning point. I knew I was 'smart' … But I had never thought about going college before her visit — and  I freely confess I had no idea what college was. But this nice, very important (in my view) lady took the trouble to talk with my mother about college and thought that it was important that I go.” (News profile and photo of Native American education leader Marigold Linton. Article employs narrative and voice through oral history techniques, published 2011, UC Riverside newsroom.)

July 4th bike parader in Long Beach area (Pat Murkland Photo)

One-Woman Band
A sampling of the spot news, news photos, community news, police and public safety news, enterprise articles and features written and photographed in a stint as a sub editor on a patch.com news site, over the July 4th holiday in 2012:
Star-Spangled Bikes Celebrate Fourth With Great American Kids Parade

Star-Spangled Bikes Celebrate Fourth With Great American Kids' Parade

About 600 paraded in the Community Action Team July 4 event

They came wearing Uncle Sam hats and waving U.S. flags. Bicycles and riders were as red, white, and blue as they could be. The crowd came and came, lining up until the parking lot at Granada Avenue was Fourth-of-July sparkly and star-spangled from end to end.

It was time for the annual Great American Fourth of July Kids' Bike Parade, sponsored by Justin Rudd and his nonprofit Community Action Team. Eli Lunde, 3, of Long Beach told his mother, Paula Lunde: "Let's go!"

Then off the paraders went, rolling along a red carpet and past judges looking for the best patriotic costume. Five winners each received $10 prizes sponsored by the Exchange Club. Event co-sponsors included City Councilman Gary DeLong and the Long Beach Dept. of Parks, Recreation, Marine.

The parade pedaled along the beachfront bike path, down Bay Shore Avenue to Second Street and back, two miles of streaming red, white, and blue.

The fun continued afterward with a patriotic speech contest and an old-fashioned watermelon-seed spitting contest.

Parader Phoenix Soto, 5, of Long Beach stood happily afterward on the red carpet, his mom holding his $10 prize. "I won!" he said.

The Red, White, and Blue of the Kids' Bike Parade
Their July 4 Was Busiest Day of the Year
Arrests Made in Long Beach Stabbing
Man Faces Attempted Murder Charge in Code-Enforcement Shooting
Police Will Try to Arrest Some of You This Weekend
Bay To Sizzle With July 3 Fireworks
A Few People Got Nabbed With Illegal Fireworks
(Published July 2012, belmontshorepatch)

Explaining the complex clearly
Murrieta Council to Consider Police Retirement Changes (On deadline, published Nov. 26, 2012, murrietapatch)

Sharing stories from history
San Gorgonio Inn: An Icon of the Past
San Gorgonio Inn, demolished today (April 18, 2011), has been a landmark of Banning for more than 100 years. 
The Inn also was an icon of San Gorgonio Pass, which for countless years has offered travelers rest and respite between coast and desert.
Along the way the Inn has mirrored the history of the region — and the nation.
(Published in patch.com, April 2011)
Mrs. Gilman's cookies Baking through time
(Published in The Record-Gazette, December 2010)