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Showing posts from November, 2009

His Stamp on Me

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We finally got the key to the attic door.  It opens to reveal a rough-hewn stairway that winds around to some storage space in the top of our house.  That key opening that door is what initially sent me into my closet.  All I needed to do was go through a few storage bins to make sure they could sit in the attic for the next few months.  I threw out a broken picture frame in one, and decided to leave some artifacts from the last English class I taught in another.  That's when I saw my childhood stamp collection; not the book, that's still packed somewhere, but a box from a now defunct department store that my mom gave me when I was 10.  Inside the box were a Band-Aid tin and an empty Marlboro flip-top box, (both good for storing loose stamps,  lots of small envelopes with collectable postage and even more torn off corners containing stamps mostly from Mexico and Japan, that my dad used to bring me from work.  He commuted with a man originally from Mexico and worked for Sony.  

Sound Track

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                                                  Piped In   In the Men’s Room             at Portland Meadows,             Frank Sinatra is always singing. Through the white porcelain, up and around the mirror splashed    sinks, over the din of flushing urinals,             Frank Sinatra sings,                         every day. Into this private party, rat-pack, brassy big band braggadocio             Comes a post parade of wily winners and lowly losers. They unzip and position themselves to The …. Party’s …. O ver. Outside, in the real world, missing people bubble up in rivers,             seven-year-olds die in drive-bys from Maine to Mexico,                         a board of education president commits suicide,                                     Islamic terrorists stare back through wooly manes, rifle sight eyes, and layers of cotton clothing, But in the Men’s Room, at Portland Meadows,             Frank Sinatra is always singing,        

Out of Synch

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This is the time of year to be very careful.  Some say it coincides with the moon in Scorpio.  I'm not so sure about that, but I do know that the last couple of weeks in November are prime time for the strange and dangerous. Looking back, I first began to trace this delicate time to the Kennedy assassination.  If ever there was an example of something knocking the universe for a loop, that was it.  World views changed.  Many people, myself included, were never quite the same.  Loss of innocence I suppose, but something more.  At least it wasn't hope. Shakespeare talked of the music of the spheres.  When the music of the heavens in in synch, it's a lovely concord.  The dis chord is what results when things fall apart.  Think of someone learning to play an instrument...such sour sounds are only to be endured.  Hardly the stuff to sooth any savage beast.   If you think about it, many eerie and horrendous things take place this time of year.  I remember that week back in Novemb

No More

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He never knew that he was a veteran.  All he knew was that he'd traded in his life tinkering with an education, a girlfriend, and wondering about a future for an army uniform.  No Germany, no Korea, no local military base; Vietnam, just Vietnam.  It was 1968, we were down to one Kennedy, no more Dr. King, escalating death tolls, and hundreds of thousands in the street.  All he really wanted was to get away.  Tie up that relationship that would have never worked, get a chance to smoke and drink without being hassled, maybe learn a trade, and consider himself a man.   He wrote me a number of letters.  Particularly ironic for a guy that didn't really like to write.  He'd begun to harden; became less tolerant of those around him.  Hate began to leak through his beaming smile.  At home, the music was unifying our movement.  The opportunities to express our disgust and anger grew more frequent.  Yet, we never forgot about him.  We never judged him.  He was still our classmate, ou

In Zen

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It's nice to have a dose of pure joy to end this week.  Bad enough it poured all day, the leaves clogging the street drains, the water in small ponds over the curb, the freeway full of hydroplaning fools.  This week the health care bill took a few more jabs, the media convulsed repeatedly on missing children, new serial killers, and then the coup d' gras, the mass murder committed by an Islamic army psychiatrist.  Hollywood has nothing on reality.   Somehow, in the big middle of all this chaos I got excited about the Breeder's Cup.  Anybody who knows me well knows you don't mess with me during Breeder's Cup.  It's in my blood.  Thoroughbreds are one of my true passions.  Anyone with a similar bent will know exactly what I'm talking about.  For some reason I was particularly down this year.  Maybe it's because attending Breeder's Cup here at my local track in Portland has become a solitary affair.  Some of my old mates are either gone or living all ov

White Noise

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One big player in determining how safe any school or environment can be is the Code of Silence.  On a high school campus, this unwritten law enjoys health and wealth.  The deliberate choice to remain silent in the face of moral outrage thrives in an era of collective "don't ask don't tell." How ironic, in this era of instant messaging, that the code of silence still supports so many egregious acts.  Yet this glaring contradiction can become a savior.  It just might be the key to preventing crimes of group-think that outrage and threaten so many.   Some new studies show that the availability of anonymous outlets for reporting crucial information are having a real impact in preventing the serious crimes that threaten school security.  Some have even suggested that the presence of anonymous "counseling" seems to have a real impact on helping those in need actually seek help.  Here's how this might work.  Within a particular school/community, students have p