Daily Blues & Views

By chance the other day, I got word of a fairly new book with fascinating, if not stunning conclusions. Put simply, the rate of violence, especially in the form of homicides and suicides, rises dramatically when Republicans are in the White House. Can't say I'm surprised, are you? But it's really no so much about war and the continuation of bankrupt policies, or outsourcing war, it's more in the area of socioeconomic stress that the data points convincingly. James Gilligan, in the book Why Some Politicians Are More Dangerous than Others states his case. Not really looking to prove this thesis out the outset, Gilligan, a professor of psychology at NYU, says that the data surfaced rather by chance and he could not leave it alone. Apparently he was originally looking at other non-specific causes of violent behavior but the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.kept getting into the equation. Of course there must be exceptions to these findings. Republicans have no mon...

Christmas nears. The Fox network continues to predictably defend it and it's traditions while it repeatedly airs commercials that re-write traditional songs with messages and tidings of greed. I even saw one this year which flips and twists the notion that receiving is better than giving. Surprised? Not really. More evidence of this over the top culture, pushing boundaries of commercialism to new heights. Gatsby's green light shines...glistens...blinds. But this year we have a new phenomena, the Layaway angel. People are coming forward and paying off items that the less fortunate (read less wealthy) are trying to purchase for the big day. I'm so tainted, I'm not sure I even believe these folks are on the square, as the old union organizers used to say. Likewise, the major news outlets and the local happy-talk teams are running stories about Secret Santas and first time food bank users. Where is the forest? Is everyone so focused on the trees that they don'...

I've been reading and listening to the poetry of Robert Creeley all afternoon. Relieved to find I still have an important little volume of his work, I found his voice all over the internet and You Tube. He'd like that. I do. Robert Creeley - A Form Of Women.mp3 Download at rapidlibrary mp3 music

As often happens, two figures in the world arena have died within days. I don't know if these passings come in triplicate, only the next week will tell. For now the death of Vaclav Havel and now North Korean president Kim Jong Il represent a most fascinating juxtaposition. I think I'm correct in assuming Kim was the more widely known. It's fairly difficult to repress and oppress an entire nation without being recognized these days. But Havel, the former playwright turned politico may leave a more lasting legacy. In the days to come North Korea may not even change as the son will take up where the father left off. But for how long? Even the most evil despots, the most pathological plutocrats all have a bit of a say in their own undoing. Perhaps in North Korea's case, the encroaching technology will open that country wide as a treasure chest as it appears to have done in China. But one person's treasure is certainly not always another's. I'm sur...

I like a hero as much as the next person. The U.S. intervention in Iraq, which apparently ended today, certainly produced it's share of heroes. As the late Andy Rooney once wrote, "If war brings out the worst in people, It also brings out the best." Lots of stories from Iraq about the best coming out. But then, that's human nature. While the media focuses on those heroic stories, the ones that feature dogs, kids, the maimed and psychologically damaged, they rarely look at the big picture. With this rather low ceremonious exit, especially during the height of the holiday season, I'm looking for more on the big picture. Haven't seen it yet, but I will give it some time. Those of us who learned many lessons from the Vietnam War probably never expected to see U.S. troops involved in an unwinable war again. Too bad those lessons were altered and ultimately trashed. When Dwight Eisenhower coined the term "Military-Industrial Complex" I wonder i...

Found object...found art. Sometimes the best "Christmas Cards" are right outside your front door. I've had my eye on this neighbor's display for a few days now, and when the sun came out today, I knew I had to grab the camera and get this photo. My favorite things: the juxtaposition between two seemingly unrelated things. Here we have greed, love, forgiveness, intolerance, eternal war, heavenly peace. I wonder how many people drive by this striking image everyday and simply just don't see it?

What follows is an updated/edited version of an older post. Two additions here: first of all, I did hear from my "friend" and ultimately from my older friend, her father. All is well there. What wasn't so well is that the original illustration shown here needed to be removed because of potential copyright infringement. My bad. It was a wonderful rendering of a rather intense, pensive individual. Looked good here but apparently not for public consumption. No worries mate, it's gone. I really haven't heard it anywhere else. I'm sure people say "No Worries" in other parts of the country, but I never heard it when I lived in California. In Portland, I hear it every day. Yesterday, I heard a young man say the phrase three times in about a minute. I usually say "No Problem." But worries, for me are not problems. I'm a worrier. Most of my worry time is either early in the morning when I awake, or at the end of the day, if I can...

This is the time of the year I look for an old cassette tape of "alternative" Christmas music. I made the tape one Christmas Eve from a listener sponsored radio station in the Bay Area about 30 years ago. It's a wonder that the tape still plays, but it does if you stretch it out a bit by fast forwarding it up and back a few times. A good metaphor for me right now! This year, I decided to forego my search for the cassette and went straight to the net. The tape contains all kinds of Christmas blues, gospel, country, bluegrass, music and a few things that defy categorization. So far my internet search has enabled me to find much of what's on that lost tape. There are all the great Charles Brown holiday classics, Elvis Presley's version of Christmastime in the City (pretty baby) Bill Monroe's Christmastime's a Comin' and wonderful spirituals by the Blind Boys of Alabama and Clara Ward. I found some Conjunto music with Flaco Jiminez and Freddie Fen...

In this difficult time, I'm constantly looking for things to feel better about, or at least feel some optimism. I'm a firm believer that when things look the most bleak, you've got to dig down a bit further. You know: if you fall off the horse, get back up right away. It's too easy to lose perspective on your own situation when it doesn't take too much to realize that many other folks have it a lot worse than you do. I worry that so many of my former students must have placed their dreams and hopes on hold. Every now and then I see another college graduate, with increasing debt, and a new job at a temp agency. If I were in the classroom full time these days, I wonder just how difficult it would be to motivate kids given that the goal of a college education, and it's benefits, just might look a little hollow right now. And then this: From a recent Harper's Index comes this little statistic: • Chance that an American who earned a bachelor's degre...

For days the leaves have been falling. They soon become ground into a wet mulch that makes it's way into the house, the car, the soles of our shoes. They lie in a soupy mix like saturated corn flakes in an enormous bowl that nobody eats or even cleans up. Until today. The first of the city mandated leaf clean-ups happened this morning. When I see my neighbors park their cars and trucks on their front lawns then I know the time has come. Since we don't pay for this needed service, and our landlords are away, we got no forewarning this time. No matter. By 9:00 this morning most of the leaves were gone...momentarily. Must have slept through the tractors with the big cages on them, the small but highly maneuverable street cleaners and the water trucks. And all the while, the leaves keep falling. By tonight it'll be hard to tell the first batch was removed. It's raining now...cornflakes for everyone. My observations on leaves have much to do with the fact that...

This week, amid all the Thank Yous infusing everyone's thoughts and requests, saw a couple of mind numbing events. First, the overkill with the event known as "Black Friday." You'd think by the sound that this national day of consumerism was similar to the Black Monday that brought down the stock market some 80 plus years ago. But no. It's the orgy of conspicuous consumption that officially kicks off the holiday shopping season. It's the day after Thanksgiving. It's the worst in this culture all in a day. Imagine the mindset that waits in a tent in the parking lot or sidewalk in front of some big box store that features a midnight start time to get a few bucks off something that was marked up 50% to begin with. Do these people have no life? Yup. But wait. There is now evidence that the prices on the same merchandise will actually be better as the big day nears on the 25th of December. Would some folks trample over people to buy an electronic...

In Per Petterson's sparse yet stunning novel, Out Stealing Horses , the 67 year old protagonist has a conversation with his daughter in one of the final scenes. He's gone to live in the Norwegian woods, near the Swedish border and is at first incredulous that his grown child has even found him. To be sure, he welcomes the visit, but the reader can't help wondering if he's disappointed that he's realized it's really impossible to escape. It may not even be desirable, he's coming to realize. Still he's not disappointed, and savors his isolation as a chance to reflect on his life and life's work. In a reflective moment the daughter says, "You were always reading Dickins at home...I remember you in your chair with a book, miles away...at first you didn't recognize me and then you replied "Dickins," with a serious look, and I thought that reading Dickins was not the same as reading other books. I thought it was a special kind ...

We can't save everyone. But we try. A teacher, a real teacher will never stop trying until...until...we're out of the picture. Even then, some students never leave us alone. Like that kid in your neighborhood, the one you catch yourself wondering about from time to time, it's fascinating to speculate how someone turned out. If it's any consolation, that turning out takes a lifetime for most. Others, however, make their presence felt through a newspaper, an obituary, a rumor, and even a Facebook page. Such was the case when I chanced to see a picture of Allen Woodard recently. My first reaction was he's alive, I think. Allen lived for the military. Specifically the U.S. Marines. Probably because there was no father in his life, and his mom was a teacher's aid at my old school, I came to take an interest in Allen. He liked to talk about world politics and when the U.S. got involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, he couldn't wait to get over there. H...

The writing prompt said Worst Case Scenario . That's all, just three little words. Some went to work immediately, others leaned back, leaned forward, squirmed, dug deep into the wells of their lives to retrieve the fully repressed or fully fantasized. No me. The thought came quickly. "What if" was the lead line. The substance was being perceived by others. Wouldn't it be horrible if people ...the people in your life to be exact, all shared a perception of you and your personality that was far...very far from what you thought. In short, what if people did not think of you in the way you thought they did? Writer James Baldwin once said, "If I am not who you think I am, then you are not who you think you are." That's what I'm talkin' about. Not being who you think you are. Worst case scenario. I suppose it could be a tremendous opportunity. After all, how many times do we get to adjust our personalities. How much insight do we reall...

When the photograph of two people holding a sign that read, "Occupy Tundra," first appeared, I wondered how many small towns were participating in the groundswell #Occupy movement. There must be some rather non-urban settings. My sister, who lives in Bozeman, Mt. made me aware of camps currently in Missoula, Helena, as well as Bozeman. Gotta love those college towns. (two out of three in Montana.) While they are nothing like the tent cities in Oakland or on Wall Street, they do contain the same amount of disaffected, disappointed people from retirees to veterans, to unemployed college graduates, to laid off factory workers. They have kids, and wet conditions this time of year, and less than adequate food, and all manner of hangers on. The media has a field day with the sub-stories. Recently, in Portland, the coverage centered on a rat in the food tent and a syringe found on the ground. Finally, an elder covering the story for an alternative radio station pointed out...

I love living in a place where I can see the seasons change. This is that time of year when some of the trees in my neighborhood celebrate Halloween by imitating fire. That they are ablaze is an understatement. The reds, oranges, and yellows are day-glow. But there are other transitions too. They don't come at predictable times of year. They move slowly, even slower than many people might imagine, but they too are everlasting. One such change is the gradual disappearance of the newspaper. We know this is happening, but the form it actually takes is just beginning to take shape. Every morning when I buy my hometown paper I'm aware that the little yellow metal box is soon to disappear. Hell, the paper is literally disappearing. It's often embarrassingly thin. And that's with all the ads still in tact. But there is a notion that maybe the daily newspaper could survive with a different function. One NY Times editor recently made the observation that the Ame...

It was one of those moments when you just don't think. You react. For me, it's complicated by the teacher in me. We write and talk about social justice all the time but when it comes to actually doing something there is often no time to think. I have a distant relative in my family that often spouts some racist notion. Everybody hears but nobody reacts. If it happens again, I've thought about what to say in such a way as to make a point without losing my cool. We'll see. I tend to go off around ignorance. That's when the teacher in me saves myself. I flip into the default personality that tries to make such an awkward situation a teachable moment knowing full well that my own demeanor and emotional state will make a huge difference. Out in the real world of grocery store parking lots, there if hardly enough time. So it was yesterday when a loud car horn blast shook me from my Saturday morning serenity and I noticed one of those Seinfeld moments. Some g...

Sometimes, when it seems as if everything is too complicated to understand, or as one of my favorite baristas likes to say, "too many moving parts," it's best to go back to the basics. We see this all the time in music. So many musicians tire of the pace the amplification of sound, the artificial inauthenticity of it all and go back to the blues. Deep roots. So it is with this fickle economy of ours right now. In fact thee is much to compare with today's malaise and the big one of the 1930s. Another little chunk of knowledge to remember is to see what some of the finest minds, at least who you consider to be the finest minds, have to say on the matter. I reached back for Woody Guthrie today because a little quote trapped in my brain would not leave me alone. Seems as if Woody had a lot to say about Wall Street. No doubt in my mind where he's be were he alive and well today. In fact Woody not only wrote songs with Wall St. in mind, he also drew some cart...

Sometimes I watch the news in the morning. Often,the Today show will come on and while I'm working on something else or answering emails or paying bills, I'll have one ear on the content. It's fairly easy to do because they repeat their stories every year. All the recurrent themes about diet and relationships, child rearing, and of curse how to cook chicken and pasta, and the latest vegetarian discovery. But today, I chanced to catch a new feature. I think it's called Today's Professionals. The concept is a power panel, but essentially Matt Lauer sits down with three "professionals" and asks their opinion about a few of the current news stories. So here's Matt with the resident doctor Nancy Snyderman, the resident lawyer, Starr Jones, and businessman Donny Deutsch. The doc is OK with me but not so sure I care what the others think. First Matt asks them about the pregnant woman who gave birth after running the Chicago marathon. They kick that ...

Easily 5,000. The local media said between 3 and 4,000. Probably closer to 6,000 occupied Portland. In synch with the burgeoning movement that started on Wall Street, my town put it’s name next to those other cities where people want to express their frustration and anger with the current political malaise. Katie and I decided we needed to go there, so on a gloomy Thursday afternoon, we boarded the nearest bus and headed for Waterfront Park. Best not to drive anywhere near political demonstrations. My 60s experience always kicks in and I focus on what shoes to wear, having enough pockets, and something to write with. Too bad I forgot my camera. At least a couple of friends of mine didn’t and I can use their pictures as well as those of the Oregonian newspaper. For me it was all about the signs they carried. Those said it all. That and the cross section of people represented. It was billed as the other 99%, and if the diversity of the Portland crowd is any indication, it s...

"They don't know what they don't know." That's a line we often use in education. It can apply to teachers working with students, but more often it works best when considering teachers. Many of the beginning teachers I work with often think they have to continually reinvent the wheel. Of course, they don't. In mentoring or coaching someone else, it's important to listen more than talking to or at someone. But sometimes the notion to "drop knowledge" is just too tempting. Time and experience can inform what we don't know best. Ignorance is not an excuse, nor is it something to be overly critical about if a person simply does not know something. This morning, while making my way up one of Portland's narrow neighborhood streets, a car appeared in front of me rather suddenly. The driver, a young woman, appeared frustrated. I raised my index finger (none other) backed up and over to the side, and then motioned her forward. This hap...

I have no doubt in my mind that I could make it as a stand-up comedian. In fact, there is ample proof. In my 30 year teaching career, many's the time I did a routine or two. You get a lot of practices with 5 audiences a day. Timing can easily be fine tuned. Bad jokes eliminated (though I rarely did that) and new material is constantly falling all around. Anybody who can't find humor in a public high school isn't breathing. More proof that I could survive as a comedian comes from the couple of years I had one for a roommate. I met many others in the burgeoning Bay Area comedy scene of the early 80s and often socialized with them. It was a heady time. To say they are "always on" is an understatement. This is the class that produced a few Sat. Night Life alum and one or two of the comics I knew went to work for one of their number who really made it big...Ellen Degeneres. Success for a comic is to go the way of Ellen or Seinfeld or Larry David. F...

An educational research colleague of mine once referred to "ancient perceptions of the self." It's a particularly apt description of how learners in a classroom deal with all the emotional baggage of who to be as a student. I recall students asking me not to put them in a group with___ because "back in 2nd grade something happened..." We sometimes cling to outdated beliefs and unconsciously confirm their power and accuracy. Educators see this all the time. I saw it last week in a classroom when a student could not see a link between creativity and the study of anthropology. He truly believed that an anthropological perspective, the subject of the lesson, could only be expressed one way. This kind of resistance often takes root in an early experience that sustains the perception, "I am not creative." That theme seemed to predominate a number of events this past week. Those images of how things are seem to peek over the edges of our thinking f...

It's one of those small community spaces that's not sure what it wants to be. Like many in that vein, it's located in what is euphemistically termed a "transition" neighborhood. But last night, as I attended an event at the Variant Lab, in Portland, I was struck with a most stunning thought. What if these places became increasingly significant in the years to come. What if, and it's not all that far-fetched, these spaces were the only ones available for people to experience live poetry, avant-guarde ideas, freedom of speech, in all its manifestations, and the opportunity to share artistic expression across generations. What if? Maybe it was the fact that the polarization is this country seems to be reaching new heights. In a recent piece I heard on the radio, Speaker of the House John Boehner was asked about his relationship with President Barack Obama. "Sometimes it's like we live on different planets," he said. To which, I thought, so...

Soaring Poverty Casts Spotlight on ‘Lost Decade’ By SABRINA TAVERNISE Published: September 13, 2011 New York Times The aforementioned article spells it all out. The Lost Decade is a good description for the reality most Americans face today. 1 in 6 of us now live officially in poverty. That's about 47 million people. Very close to the number with no health care. Lost... What happened along the way. 40 years ago I became a VISTA Volunteer after reading Michael Harrington's book The Other America and seeing the CBS news documentary Hunger in America . Back then the median income was well below $10,000, today the poverty line is about $22,000. Do the math and see how a family of four can live on 22k in the U.S. today. I particularly like the use of the term "Lost" because poverty largely remains invisible. People expect that because someone wears an expensive pair of shoes or has a fancy electronic device that they aren't poor. They often argue t...

9/12.  We have reached beyond the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy.  Millions of words written, hundreds of songs.  Thousands of poems,  a myriad of art forms, presentations, interpretations, explanations, and exultations. For me, what remains is Paul Simon's haunting rendition of Sounds of Silence .  I read somewhere he was going to do Bridge Over Troubled Water , but changed it at the last minute.  I get that. My hope is that as a country, we have learned to ask the tough questions, the over-arching ones.  Hardly seems like this nation is a united one at all.  One look at the current political debates or the achievement  of Congress tells that tale.  So many non-parallel lives and belief systems under the 13 stripes and 50 stars these days. New York's Mayor Bloomberg has requested that the term Ground Zero no longer be used.  I get that too.  It's become a memorial now.  people etch names and leave all manner of ...

"...expressing anger rarely solves anything. It makes us feel powerful but draws a line between people subtly reinforcing one's own "correctness" at the expense of others. We often possess the same noxious qualities (expressed differently) as we target in others." This quote came from Peter Coyote in a recent Sun Magazine response he made to a letter critical of something he said in a featured interview. It's problematic. It begs the question, aren't some things correct? What if someone expressed anger about being held in slavery? What about anger over being victimized? Or getting in touch and finally expressing anger over being scammed, or dismissed with condescension? Are we that sensitive to the word correct that we can't allow the expression of anger? I know that anger is not an end in itself, but I think it's a step toward mental health if handled appropriately and without vengeance. Yes, I agree with Mr. Coyote that we do te...