Skip to main content

Must Be the Season

I've been traveling across Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana for the past week. On occasion, I pick up a public radio station, and keep in touch with what's going on. Quite a week. The economy stumbles again, then goes all amusement park ride on us, 31 Navy Seals die in one helicopter crash, people become lost and found in the wilderness, a group of Bonnie & Clyde siblings still on an unbridled rampage, thousands more children in what's left of Somalia starve to death. Ironically, this is the month of Ramadan. It's traditionally a month of starving. The images become paradoxically baffling...double difficult to swallow.
The weather continues to baffle. 39 straight days of 3-digit temperatures in the dried to a flaky crust Southwest, and heavy flood runoff still swelling rivers and streams in the Midwest. And in London...fiery outrage about what? Police brutality..unemployment frustration?
Is this what folk/pop singer Donovan called a "Season of the Witch?" Seems like it.


My fellow teachers picked the wrong weekend to march on Washington. Ah but planning anything is always such a crap shoot. Too bad it had to coincide with the debt ceiling fiasco in Congress.
In Montana, I saw many many flags, veterans license plates, and way too many "Private Property" signs. It's still Frontier land, but quite beautiful. There is a wisp of diversity in towns like Missoula and Bozeman. I wanted to ask some of the more conservative, chauvinist/patriots just what they mean when they say that those Americans who have died in Afghanistan are protecting out freedom. How is our freedom related to an unwinable land war in Asia. Where are the lessons of Vietnam when we need them most? If Afghanistan goes the way of Vietnam, we'll be buying carpets in Ikea and Wal-Mart in 10 years and all those who gave their young lives on the supposition that they were protecting our freedom will be forgotten. Freedom to do what? Freedom from what? Oh, I know it sounds good...it sounds morally correct, but is it?
Recently I saw a film on the life of folk singer Phil Ochs. If you don't know the name or the body of work from his tragic 35 years on this planet, then you've got a real treat in store. Ochs once wrote and recorded a song called "Love Me, I'm a Liberal. One of Och's friends interviewed in the film makes the point that if you replace the President's name (L.B. Johnson at the time) with Obama, (or Clinton, Carter) the song is just as accurate and just as relevant today. We vote for one thing and get something else.
Today, after 2000 miles on the road, I arrived back in Portlandia, took a shower, and turned on the news to catch up on the crumbling economy. On CNN, I caught the end of a piece on education. The reporter referred to Obama's Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, as the "top educator" in the country. Top educator is someone who never taught a day in his life.
Washington...we have a problem.
On the last night of my stay with my sister in Bozeman, the sky turned a silvery black and spit out some thunder and lightening.  Ominous end to my attempt to drop out for a week.  In a few minutes, the ever-changing landscape offered up a rainbow.  I ran for my camera.  I've photographed a few rainbows in my time.  Mostly the trout variety.  But this one I really wanted to capture.  Just a reminder...just a reminder that it's not over till it's over.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

To a Tee

 I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt.  They are the foundational garment of my life.  My day starts with selecting a t-shirt and it ends with sleeping in one.  Once thought of as under garments, t-shirts are now original art and no doubt, a billion dollar business.   You can get a t-shirt with anybody's picture displayed.  You can commemorate an event, a birthday, a death, even a specular play in any sport.  Family reunions usually have a commemorative t-shirt.  Also, any organization that solicits your support in the form of a donation is likely to offer you a t-shirt. Where once I only had the basic white t-shirt, my drawers are filled with all manner of colorful choices.  Some recognize major events in my life, some, spectacular performances or plays I have witnessed, and some unforgettable places I have been.   I say I'm a sucker for a good t-shirt because I have taken the bait on what I perceived as a must-have only to be disappointed. ...

Mr. Greene v. Mr. Brown

I want to tell you about something. Something I've carried inside myself for a number of years now. Perhaps if I were a different kind of person I wouldn't need to talk about it. I'm not. My need to tell it is stronger than your need to hear it. Because, however, there are a number of teachers and former students of mine who may read these meanderings from time to time, I need to tell this story all the more. About 7 or 8 years ago I was asked if I would allow a university PhD. candidate to observe an English class. At first I decided against it because I was scheduled to have a student teacher placed with me the second half of the semester in question. After some urging, however, at the request of a respected colleague, I agreed. Soon I was committing to extra meetings, signing documents and explaining to the class in question who the young woman who thoughtfully pounded away on a laptop in the rear of the classroom three times a week was. I knew that the topic of ...

Fetishism of Pain

We all knew it would get worse before it gets better. Anyone who lives anywhere in this country knows that the racism can ambush you anywhere, anytime. It's no surprise in California's great inland empire that the Republicans in Upland see nothing wrong with their racist depiction of Obama on a food stamp. "It's just food," they protest. "Like spaghetti and meatballs is with Italians." (They often pronounce I raq and I talian alike) No, it's not just food; it's history. It's the history of racism in American something beautifully, if not painfully depicted in films like Marlon Riggs' "Ethnic Notions." I have a collection of this history. I often used it when teaching either history or literature. It's the kind of primary source documents you won't find in the textbook version of America's past, but the kind that exceptional teachers or teaching units don't omit. To think that this Republican racism is not h...