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Showing posts from November, 2008

The Real Deal

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It's all there. When a Wal*Mart worker gets trampled to death by an unruly mob at 6:00 a.m. on a day called Black Friday, even the clueless take pause. So many kinds of sadness. Horrible enough that he was only in his mid-thirties, a temp worker trying to survive in New York. Everyone has got something to say about this, from the cynics to the corporate defense lawyers. They will split hairs about who is at fault. They will gasp about how a few hundred people saw this blue collar lamb go down and kept on moving. Gives a new meaning to "shop till you drop." Over, under, around and through. No air. No life. They are no longer people. First they become their machines, fenders and bumpers, lifting the physically and/or mentally obese blithely into crosswalks, over curbs, fast lanes, much faster than the posted speed. So who is out there, hanging around all night for the chance to by a flat screen TV or a DVD player. High Definition TV certainly warrants

Bezerkeley

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Spending this week by the Bay has been an eye-opener. It's always a bit strange to return to a place previously called home. Driving from here to there, noting the changes, what is still there, what is long gone. Three years down the road and some people still take their places on the street where I left them. But a new anonymity empowers. Enables me to move swiftly through layers, decades, identities, and touchstones. Life is faster here. Nobody waits for anything. Public spaces are heavily taxed-by volume. The streets are filled with potholes; the same ones I knew; repaired, repaired again. And again. The graffiti remains unless it offends by volume. The land is dry here. Many more browns, tans, wheatstraw yellows. The diversity remains impressive. I miss that the most. The needy take so many forms here and ambush with their emotions laid bare. The cutting edge cuts a little deeper today. There are two places that have remained remarkably the same since I fi

Dark Side of the Moon

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Be careful out there. It's that time of year. I'm not much for astrology, but I hear the moon is in Scorpio. I've heard all the planets and stars have moved significantly since the astrological science was born, rendering it all meaningless. OK, I can live with that. All I know this is a funny time of year. Be careful out there. This is the time for political assassinations, for false prophets to unravel. It's when the macabre and the grotesque ambush us. Be mindful out there. Consider each step, make friends with purpose, watch your back. The economy isn't the stock market. Jobs evaporate daily. I hear the Salvation Army will have many new visitors this year; listen for that little bell, it's going to be important to tolerate the sound, your neighbors could be depending on you. In our bittersweet bath of hope and fear, let's look alive. It's that time of year. John Kennedy, Harvey Milk and George Moscone, and Jonestown's winter Kool-A

All I Have To Do

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Dream research indicates that as we get older the quality and thematic content of our dreams changes. For all their interest in dreams, very few of my psychology students were fascinated enough by that revelation to incorporate it into their individual research projects. It seemed easy enough to do. A good way to interview people of all ages, but delving into how our dreams change as we age never got proper play. I'm going to do something about that right now. Since my withdrawl from the daily grind, I have naturally been getting more sleep. That means more dreams. I've had the luxury, too, to think qualitatively about my dreams and if, in fact, I notice any changes. The answer is absolutely. While they seem to come in bunches, as the three I had last night, there is one real difference I sense, and that involves the physical sensations. Where once much of the physical and erotic quality were focused on various body parts (yup, those parts) I find that now t

Watch

Prolific

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And now for something completely different... Heard the piece on NPR this morning with Jonatha Brooke, the recording artist given access to the Woody Guthrie archive. Working with bits and pieces, scraps, and fragments, she produced a new CD of mostly unknown and previously unrecorded material. It's called The Works , and it's hauntingly beautiful. You might know that Woody wrote on everything.. constantly... matchbooks and napkins, envelopes and paper towels, like the one shown here. It's gratifying to see these little splinters come out of hiding and reform themselves into powerful art. I suspect this will continue to happen long into the future. Woody once wrote, "I'm gonna mail myself to you." He wasn't kidding. Of course there is the danger of romanticizing Woody and all that he left behind. Many that knew him well will tell you the other side of the man. The one that was capable of hurting people, the slightly amoral, busted, disgusted,

President Davis

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When Woody Guthrie was asked how he got his name he usually said, "I was born in 1912, the year Woodrow Wilson was nominated for president. My father was quite a figger is Okfuske County (Oklahoma) politics at that time, so he named me after the president, Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, which is too much of a name for a country boy, so I sawed off all the fancy work and just left Woody. I could remember that." I'm sure Woody wasn't the first and won't be the last to carry a president's name. I've heard of a few Lincoln Kennedys, many Andrew Jacksons, Andrew Johnsons, and a whole shitload of George Washingtons. But this week, in the wake of Barack Obama's election, I thought of one person who must be looking at all this from a most unique perspective. President Davis. No not Jefferson Davis, or anyone sharing that name, but a wonderful person I know named President Davis. That's right his first name is President. I remember the day we me

Two Presidents

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At 8:00 p.m. everything stopped.  One night a week, in prime time, they turned on the trusty black and white TV prepared to take in everybody's favorite show: Mod Squad.   This was something new, something never seen before.  One of us, they thought; one of us in a starring role.  Clarence Williams III was one third of the trio young, hip cops who performed weekly morality plays about the dangers of life on the wrong side of the law.  Ex-offenders, these bold, new, narcs often protected their peers from the oppressors who would use them to fund their underworld enterprises. This was it.  This was the first time the kids in Houston's 3rd Ward, where I was spending my summer, saw a black person on TV who wasn't a servant or a buffoon.  No butler, maid, cook, or janitor.  No Beulah, Kingfish, Willie, or Mammy.  No Yessuh, Nosuh, shuffling scamp.   His name was Linc; short for Lincoln, Lincoln Hayes (two Presidents!) and he was cool.  In the words of Blackpoet Don L. Lee, "

Take Your Place

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The vanquished know war. They see through the empty jingoism of those who use the abstract words of glory, honor, and patriotism to mask the cries of the wounded, the senseless killing, war profiteering, and chest-pounding grief. They know the lies the victors often do not acknowledge, the lies covered up in stately war memorials and mythic war narratives, filled with words of courage and comradeship. They know the lies that permeate the thick, self-important memoirs by amoral statesmen who make wars but do not know war. The vanquished know the essence of war – death. They grasp that war is necrophilia. They see that war is a state of almost pure sin with its goals of hatred and destruction. They know how war fosters alienation, leads inevitably to nihilism, and is a turning away fro m the sanctity and preservation of life. All other narratives about war too easily fall prey to the allure and seductiveness of violence, as well as the attraction of the godlike power that comes with the

You Think You Are

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If I am not who you think I am, then you are not who you think you are -James Baldwin The euphoria is dying down. Reality takes a chunk in the form of a University of Texas second string lineman's Facebook page. So ignorant he summons a "huntin" party cause "there's a n#$%* er in the white house." The arrogance of ignorance I call it, yet it persists. BUT, ignorance is curable, people learn, they experience, they see, they sometimes think, and they often evolve. The audacity of hope? As James Baldwin so beautifully cautioned, when you speak about me, you speak about yourself. Jung's shadow, the dark side, the less commendable part. Baldwin was black; he was also gay. In this historical moment, in the euphoria over the realization of the greatest of civil rights we do well to note that the battle continues: California bans gay marriage. The irony, the fact that African-American

Back Pages

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I love history...herstory...our story...I love it even more today. Grab the headline, while newspapers still exist, and stick it away. This one belongs with some of the others...some of the not so happy days. Last night we went with a couple of friends to a funky bar in SE Portland, settled in with a few beers (Katie drank red wine, but wanted blue wine) and watched CNN with an appropriately diverse group of fellow Portlanders. None of the symbolism of the evening was lost, from the smoke-filled room to the rain outside. Every time a state or projected win came into the fold a cheer went up. Until the moment of victory. Then it was like New Year's Eve. It is the eve of a new era. From error to era! All this will take a good while to sink in. Politics always has it's reality bite. What's possible? Who needs compensation? Who will best represent this complicated, convoluted, experiment we call a country? I was fascinated by Michelle Obama's dress

Sometimes Wind Stops

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Two days before my 21st birthday I am hardly thinking about any kind of celebration. It is 6:30 am and I am driving in my '59 black VW bug through the wasteland of the East San Fernando Valley about to traverse Beverly Glen Canyon. I have an 8:00 class in the Social Science Bldg. at UCLA. I am on schedule, but driving like a zombie. My eyes are forward, the radio is on but I do not hear the Beatles recording of "A Day in the Life" that surrounds me. It's foggy, both outside the car and inside my mind. I can't see the smoke that may be twisting up from South Central toward the Valley. I can't see going to any classes today. My fear supercedes my anger. In my mind, I keep seeing the one car careening around the UCLA campus the evening before. Holed up in a poetry seminar for the previous two hours, I learned of the death of Martin Luther King by watching this car's mad dashes stopping only for people of color. I wasn't able to put tha

Take It Easy, But Take It

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Studs Terkel died yesterday at the age of 96. Now there's a real American hero. Certainly was one of mine. Studs lived just about a century and from all indications, got the most from his time passing through. I've been tearing up my "cave" today looking for a letter I received from Studs around the time I was part of a show about the life of Woody Guthrie. My friend and fellow show member Ed Robbin had written a book about his own experiences with Woody and he went to Chicago to be on Studs' longtime radio show to promote the book. I asked Ed to give Studs my best and tell him how much my students and I appreciated his books and passion for oral history. Subsequently Studs and I exchanged letters and a few ideas. I loved that he took the time to write me a handwritten personal letter. He was that kind of guy. My letter from Studs Terkel is somewhere in my files. Since my move to Portland, I haven't managed to get everything from former home and cla