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Showing posts from April, 2008

Frankie

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It's Derby time again and my thoughts go to Frank.  I'll get all wrapped up in the race, the tradition, and my own memories of being at Churchill Downs on Derby day, but I'll also carry something of Frank with me.  Time to tell the story again. I love how shoes retain the personality of the person they belong to; just lying around, or sitting neatly on a shelf, or even abandoned, lost, or separated, as they sometimes get, they continue to reflect the identity and appearance of their owner. I saved my shoes for last, like a special dessert. They were the last things to get packed, the last bit of jagged grain to finger, the last sorting out to do. In the corner of the closet, on the floor, coiled, like a pair of sleeping lovers, were my black leather cowboy boots. Small wonder I hadn’t worn them for a while, my days around horses had ended half a dozen years before and they weren’t particularly kind to my aging feet. Yet, they made me smile and would obviously require a pl

BURCE Almighty

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Like many of you, I have a few credit cards and a couple of those grocery store "club" memberships.  I never have enough points for anything, but the ones that offer some sort of sale price or instant savings seem to work best for me.  There is one particular store in my neck of the woods that likes to personalize each transaction.  I'm sure you have had this experience a few times.  The clerk takes a quick peek at your name on the receipt and then, as natural as rain in Portland, says, "Thank you very much Mr. (or Ms.) Smith..."      Sure it's amusing, but they are trying to be friendly.  If you are used to being called Mr. it can be a bit deceptive.  My students have always called me Mr. G.  Even when I run into a former student, it's the same.  When the grocery clerk spouts that familiar greeting, I often feel I have known them for years.  For me, it seems very natural and probably makes me comfortable with people who really don't know me at all.

The Ash Grove

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Last weekend marked the 50th anniversary of The Ash Grove. The legendary folk and blues club on Melrose in Los Angeles was a Mecca for all types of musicians and progressive causes from the late 50s until the early 70s. Not surprisingly, it's heyday was in the late 60s. It was the quintessential music club. Let me take you there for just a minute. Please indulge me because I want to share with you the closest thing to Nirvana I have found. After a quick drive through Laurel Canyon, it takes only about 10 minutes to cross Santa Monica Blvd; go up Fairfax till Melrose and park in the closed gas station across the street from the club. It's 7:45 now so get out your student discount card because you can get in for $3.00 and have a couple of bucks left for a drink or two. If we hurry, we might find two seats at the bar up front of the stage. Check out the people here; lots of students, but many more musicians, all ages. Leftover beatniks, purists, Socialists, all ethniciti

Faith, Love, and Salmon

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It was the kind of day that held promise.  The temperature moved past 70 for the first time in six months, and robins were hanging out in groups of three plucking out morsels from the soft earth.  Renewal was palpable.  Hope was suddenly more than a sound byte.  I found myself being kinder than usual; less cynical, more enchanted with my motivation. When the media got finished with it's latest spin about "bitter, gun loving, disillusioned" Americans I could still cope.  It doesn't take a genius to see through half the crap that passes for news these days.  I'm particularly fond of how the story shifts from the real news to those who cover the news.  By the time the local Oregon news was presenting the defense of the couple whose religion prevented them from getting adequate medical for their child suffering from pneumonia, the cloud cover changed.  What happens when you put the life of a child in the hands of your faith is that your child can die.  It happened.  W

My Uncle's Gift

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The envelopes were unmistakable. They'd arrive in no particular order, at no particular time. Brown manilla envelopes, usually scarred from rips, tears, creases, despite the printed words "photos, handle with care."  Most were addressed directly to me. They were from my Uncle Murray, a reporter for the King Features Syndicate. A lifetime New Yorker, I met him only once when he appeared one night in a taxi and whisked my folks off for a dinner in Long Beach. He wore a hat. Men in the 1950s always wore hats. Uncle Murray was the source of those wonderful envelopes. He'd walk through the news service dark room and pick up what would have been tossed. Photos, mostly from baseball games, usually with wire service captions were jammed into the envelopes and sent to me. Maybe it was because he had a daughter and a wife who were not interested in baseball? Probably it was because like his wife and daughter, he was a generous, warm, caring soul. He wanted his Cali

You Could Look It Up

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Yesterday, while reading an Education blog sponsored by a progressive political action group, I was reminded how people perceive what they want to believe. I had contributed a post about how NCLB has as one of it's unwritten intentions the de-skilling of teachers. It's important to remember that one of the tenets of the law is directed at the manipulation and control of what passes as "enriched" curriculum. These scripted elementary programs as well as computerized, anthologized, approaches to Language Arts and Humanities take all the joy out of teaching. Further, they severely limit the depth and breadth of what is covered or uncovered. So here I am happily blogging along, making this point and inviting others to respond. By the end of the day I see another post under the heading of de-skilling teachers and students. The writer is making a case for rote memorization, harking back to the good old days, and even going so far as to include a 5 hour exam given in t

Like Desensitized

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Another troubling story about animalistic human behavior has surfaced. This one combines an adolescent crisis that began on My Space or Facebook and then had it's ugly conclusion videotaped for the purpose of You Tube. The holy trifecta of teen cyberspace here. It's another example of group pathology wherein one person gets pummeled by a horde of violent, self-righteous, voyeuristic, cold-blooded peers. Do they really think that taping this sociopathic scenario will bring them their 15 minutes of fame? True the adolescent brain is a work in progress, but what's so troubling here is that this desensitization to violence and the accompanying lack of moral emotions is on the rise. It could be the quadrangle of video games, TV, movies and music, but does it really matter which affords the most long lasting influence. The result all comes to the same. If you are interested, the studies are all there. Going back over the years, from the one at UCLA where two groups of kids

Stay or Go?

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My writing group is trying to self-destruct. What started as a comment of nebulous intent has become a grenade. The shrapnel has already picked off two people, but I fear that more have been wounded. Some, in fact, may already be dead. As for myself, I'm dazed at the moment. Dazed and confused. We were so seemingly close, reveling in our ability to support each other's endeavors like a rider. (writer/rider, isn't that wonderful?) Firm but gentle. Firm so we know who is in the saddle; gentle so that we don't rip the horse's mouth jerking on the bit. In a nutshell, here's the deal. Like a good friend of mine says when describing his wife, "She's a sheep dog, but she doesn't know that I'm not a sheep." We're suffering from micromanagement of the top down variety. The best writing groups I've ever been in were all leaderless. Or, they passed the leadership chores around the circle so that a different person was res

Is It Soup Yet?

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They call it the soup. It can be thick or thin, grainy as sandpaper or soft and slushy as a snow cone. You wouldn’t want to eat this soup; though some of the jockeys I know have certainly swallowed a good deal of it. It is, quite simply, mud: thick, oozy, viscous mud. When the racetrack turns to soup an entire range of possibilities rains down. Of course, some horses run well in the mud, and some don’t handle it at all. Most traditional dirt racing surfaces have a strong, solid cushion underneath, so running on a sloppy track is fairly safe. If the track is “sealed,” that is, compressed the night before an expected storm, then the water sits on the surface. That’s how it becomes soup. Some horses love the soup. It really is in the blood. That’s why pedigree researchers know the good mud runners. A few trainers will tell you it has to do with the size of the individual’s feet. The bigger the feet, the better they come splashing home. Most students of horse breeding get a