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Showing posts from July, 2009

Big Price, Big Sky

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Just got back from a week in Montana. Katie's family had a little reunion at her Uncle Mike's place in Hamilton, just about 45 miles south of Missoula. It's in the big middle of the Bitterroot Valley with some of the best fly fishing in the world nearby...in every direction. These reunion things are tricky. With 4 generations, I fit into the second oldest. The age range present was 1 1/2 to 88. I always know there will never be enough time to fish where and when I want, but at least this time I did get a couple of chances, with one day to myself on the East fork of the Bitterroot. I like the E. fork because the water is smaller, much to my liking. Supposedly so are the fish, but I've managed to catch and land a few that go to about 12 inches. Works for me. I think that's what makes the East fork such a solitary place to go; it gets a bad rap. People generally believe that bigger is better. Maybe, sometimes. I rarely get to fish waters inhabited solely by

Climate Illiteracy

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My friend Bill Bigelow, an outstanding social science teacher and editor for R ethinking Schools , wrote an op ed piece published in the Oregonian last Sunday. Bill argued that the Portland Public Schools were failing their students with an inadequate textbook for Global Studies that contained only three paragraphs on global warming. He further stated that teachers were not encouraged to write and develop their own curriculum on this important topic. Therefore it follows that many Portland students are globally illiterate. When the piece came out, I followed its reception online and was shocked to find how many nut cases are out there. Not only are they in denial about global warming, but their vicious comments suggested that Bill Bigelow's concerns were nothing more than the "leftist" ramblings of an "ex-hippy" and that he has a radical/liberal agenda for compromising the minds of Portland's student population. Some even went so far as to suggest glob

Dark Moon; No Eagle

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40 years ago today, when Neil Armstrong and the crew of Apollo 11 were landing on the moon, the world watched and waited. I did neither. Growing up in the 50s, I was a child of the space program. I made drawings of rockets, I put together models, and even saved up the incredible sum of 75 cents to buy a Co2 cartridge in hopes of launching something. One time a friend and I built a mini Cape Canaveral out of my Erector Set. It readied an Atlas rocket for liftoff with a small electric motor. That's all it did. In the 6th grade, my friend Randy and I saved up a dollar and a half and bought a small paperback at the local drugstore called SATELLITE! We coveted that book and finally owned it. Of course we weren't quite up to the reading level of the text, but did our best to understand as much as we could. I can still see that shiny silver ball with four antennae on the cover of the book. A moon landing should have seen me in the front row somewhere. It didn't. In July

The Way It Is

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Walter Cronkite was the nation's elder statesman. He functioned as giver of news, bastion of integrity. Sure, he could be difficult to work for, but he insisted on accuracy. Contrast that with what passes for news and news-givers today. Imagine a time when there was really only one newscast most folks watched. Sure there were other outstanding broadcasters in the latter half of the 20th century, but Cronkite had it all. Even though he was the one who brought us the first televised war... Vietnam, he also had the courage to speak out against the foolishness of the policy that killed so many unnecessarily. When Cronkite questioned the war, you new you were in the majority all of a sudden. At 92, Cronkite's passing is a more than just a milestone. It is a painful reminder of what we are left with for journalists. I acknowledge that these are the ramblings of someone growing older, someone sensing the loss of an institution. I realize too that institutions change, grow,

Debit This

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I thought she was sad. I thought because her head hung down and she was motionless she was in an emotional state. He was equally as still. He just stared across the small table. Said nothing. She remained in the same position. Were they having a breakup conversation? Bad news? Some trauma-stunned revelation? No, she was texting. I wondered why it took so long to get a simple cup of coffee. With only a couple of people in front of me, why was this small line going so slow? Texting? No, morning coffee on a credit card. "He's either schizophrenic or has a bluetooth in his ear." How many times lately have I said that or you thought that? These are the new circumstances of our changing age. I watch my niece's 18 month old look at a computer screen, point to and press a button on a CD player, and marvel at the in-car images on the traveling DVD screen. His great grandmother can barely say DVD (it comes out more like VD) yet he knows all about cause and effe

'Trodes

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On a warm afternoon not unlike this one, I sat outside on a grass quad and listened to conversation between two middle aged men. Their appearance would suggest they had dropped out of the 9-5 world of gainful employment in favor of barely getting by; they were content nonetheless. Young people today would call them Hippies, or wanna-be Hippies, but back then they were just two individuals who dared to stop cutting their hair every few weeks, informed themselves about the political realities of the day, and tried to live by another set of values with the express purpose of seeing if it could be done. This day they marveled at their appearance as well as every other long-haired, multi-colored wearing person on the grassy expanse. Boots and bell-bottoms were in. Horn-rimed eyeglasses gave way to rimless or wire rimed. Blue work shirts, Levis, headbands, and flowers were everywhere. People wore their politics. As these two comfortable counter-culture participants sat waiting for the

"Wrong, Terribly Wrong"

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With the passing of Robert McNamara this week, comes the recognition that at least one of the original architects of the Vietnam War had thought a good deal about all the lessons of that huge mistake. In film and writing, McNamara had the guts to say he was wrong. That translates to "us." That we were wrong. Yes, it's too little too late. But at lest it's something. For those of us who survived that dismal time, those of us who made it back in whatever form that took, it's quite something. Nobody embodies the image of a stubborn federal government more than Robert Strange McNamara. With his rimless glasses, and slicked down hair, as if parted by a scalpel, he was every government bureaucrat incarnate. Back then, in the late 1960s, Robert McNamara conjured up images of flag-draped coffins, death certificates, draft lottery numbers, and the weekly scoreboard on the CBS Evening News. It must be Thursday because here's Walter Chronkite with American,