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Showing posts from September, 2009

Port Land

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Why I Don't Write Music I can only suggest what the world needs now. one thing that won't make the list is another song where tomorrow rhymes with sorrow. Sometimes when I sit and stare out the window it looks like it's raining, even on clear cloudless days. I look harder, it rains stronger, Then, lifting the blind, I'm confronted with a warm day, in the distance, three folks sipping wine, puttering in flower-beds, and digesting monthly statements. No rain. Yet in my view, rain continues to tease, continues to streak across my eye's horizon, continues to tempt me to write a lyric. No rain, no song. I wonder about things like holes in my Jeans. First the pockets unravel, the small one for change is most vulnerable, Five years to wear through the knee, even a thin wallet takes out the rear right, and then the bottom of the right front stares back. While I consider the comfort of another pair, someone is paying twice the price for a new pair with holes worn like mine

A Matter of Time

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Driving back from the Bay Area last Sunday, a funny , as in peculiar, thought hit me. It was smack in the big middle of the toughest part of the drive: the section between Vacaville and Redding. This is mostly agricultural flatland. Towns like Dunnigan, Artois, Winters, Corning, Red Bluff, Anderson, and Redding. I know I've forgotten some, but no matter, they are all very similar, hot dry, dusty, conservative, with the requisite gas stations, motels, and "restaurants." The choice is either the usual fast food suspects like KFC, McDonalds, Subway, with an Arbys or Carl's Jr. thrown in here and there. Occasionally there is a Bill and Kathy's restaurant, a Pilot truck stop, or an Indian casino, usually with feathers in the name. As if traveling through these towns isn't torture enough, some folks there go out of their way to place grotesque billboards by the highway extolling their political beliefs. I'm used to the usual reminders that Christ die

One Nation Divisible

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I was telling a friend of mine the other day that attempts at breaking up the present configuration of our United States are not new. Like the ideas about dividing California into three distinct states, re-inventing the U S of A comes and goes all the time. It's actually very useful as an educator to turn students loose with a vivid imagination, some maps, almanacs or online equivalents, and plenty of paper, markers, and pencils, and let them have at it. Demographically, economically, and politically we are very separate nations. The salad bowl is much more accurate than the melting pot. Levels of culture shock exist within our national walls. I remember working with three distinct groups of educators 10 years or so ago and confronting the fact that it would be very difficult for me to teach in Georgia, if at all. Even many I met from Michigan were not where I was philosophically as a Bay Area teacher at the time. "What country are you living in," almost passed my

Civil Service

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It’s fascinating to see the variety of tattoos on display these days. But something just crossed my path which, I swear, looked more like my Aunt Dorothy’s dinnerware from 1953. A malaise of semi-tropical flowers in semi-tropical colors. One person’s floor is certainly another person’s ceiling. This on the same day as a conversation I had with a woman in a coffeehouse earlier. It was one of those “I’m talking to you and telling you everything about my life whether or not you are interested moments. At first I thought she was just autistic or perhaps had Asperger’s syndrome. Her voice was a few decibels louder than most and it was clear she had no sense of social borders, social decorum. Big deal; I’ve got time on my hands these days. So after her spiel about a drug addicted boyfriend, how she’s waiting for God to send someone to marry and how her 7 year old cat is her only friend, she left as quickly as she enveloped me. Something about having to deliver motorcycle parts to

Love of Country, Fear of Government

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This little flap about having elementary school kids listen to a speech by President Obama isn't little; it's huge. There is much here. For starters, it mirrors the fear and paranoia (they are not the same thing) that some so-called conservatives harbor. I truly wonder what they think they are conserving? Reactionary? Yes, definitely. If nothing else, it highlights the irrational thinking that many teachers face daily when dealing with either parents, spineless administrators, or opportunistic politicos. Another laughable dimension of this episode is the use of the words "lesson plan" to describe both Obama's intention and their worst fears. Most of these folks wouldn't know a lesson plan from a bed pan. Are they that insecure about their own political beliefs that they must censor the President of the United States? In some ways my use of the word laughable is terribly inaccurate. It's not funny; it's pathetic. It is such convoluted think

The Public Option

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My writing group, The Guttery, had it's first reading last night at the Blackbird Wine shop's First Wednesday series (http://The Guttery.com) I had pushed for this quite a while and it's very gratifying to see that it all turned out so well. Aside from the recognition we got... items in a few of the local papers, listings on the web, and lots of friends showing up, I still can't get over the look on their faces as they accepted the applause offered. A real Sally Fields moment there. Yes, guys, they really, really like you. Only 5 of us read last night, so that means that the other 5 have yet to experience this thrill. Hopefully that will come. As the date for the reading came closer, I could sense the anticipation and excitement from some of my colleagues. We spent a couple of group days critiquing our "performances" and even practiced with a mic once. It was well worth it. Given that I've had the most experience in front of groups and performing,