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Showing posts from July, 2012

The Other Side

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July folds into August.  I'm fortunate to be writing this from a cabin on the Metolius River in Central Oregon.  Not only one of the most beautiful places on the planet, but one that seems to remain unchanged, with it's ever flowing water that springs from the side of a mountain.  I've been coming here for almost two decades, but one notable difference this time is the fact that I'm seeing the river and it's  environs from the other side.  I've always seen the water flowing to my right, but now it's on my left side.  Although the remedy is simple (cross over ) it got me thinking about fresh perspectives on things I take for granted. The other night, while watching a baseball game, one of the announcers mentioned that he'd been thinking about the game of baseball with only one pitch per batter. "What if they changed the rules," he said, and each at bat was just one pitch."  Intriguing, not to mention the game would certainly speed up.

Evaporation

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"It's like flood control in L.A." That's the first thing that came to mind. The expression describes something that everybody gets excited about but then soon forgets. Growing up in the L.A. area, I recall being sent home from school because of flooding from intense rainfall. There would be prolific public outcry about improving the drainage system...and then the sun would come out and with each day the issue would seemingly lose its importance.  Finally it would evaporate. Gun control...effective gun control, never loses its importance.  But this isn't about gun control.  If any issue has ever had its day in court, this is the one.  There simply is no political will to change what passes for defense of the 2nd Amendment.  Still, the pundits discuss the issues.  They say things like who needs an assault rifle?  Deer don't wear bullet-proof vests.  They say things like we need safeguards like background checks on people who feel the need to order and own

Talkin' Dustbowl Blues for Today

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The comparisons have begun. This summer's drought is definitely the worst since 1956 but some folks are comparing it to the Dust Bowl. The news media is filled with reporters holding up pieces of shriveled corn. Cameras pan over dried caked lake bottoms. And well they should. The similarities are fairly accurate. With unemployment, corrupt bankers, Wall Street in chaos, and now the weather, it's easy to say, "we've been here before." But let's not get lost in these striking comparisons because things are not the same. True we could use a few federal programs to put people back to work and begin to repair our crumbling infrastructure, but there are glaring differences as well. The Middle Class is evaporating as fast as the water in south central Texas. The price of a college education has at least quadrupled in the last few decades. Technology has connected more people, but it has also separated them in new ways. What does it really mean to day someon

Woody Guthrie Centennial

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Woody Guthrie is 100. His official biography, by Joe Klein, is entitled Woody Guthrie, A Life.   But  about 30 years ago, when I was part of a production on Woody's life *  one of his old friends from the 1930s, Bob Dewitt,, casually mentioned that the book should be called, Woody Guthrie, What a Life! Enough said for now. * http://rudolfsdiner.weblogger.com/five/  Woody is an American treasure. Haunted by the threat of developing Huntington's disease, he wrote an autobiography at 29. His book Bound for Glory rivals Huckleberry Finn in many ways. Woody wrote over a thousand songs. Some of them are just now coming to light and life. I was fortunate to have befriended two men who knew him in his prime. When Ed Robbin first put Woody on L.A. radio station KFVD, he asked him, "Woody, who writes these songs." '"I do," he said. Ed then asked, "How many do you have?" "Oh I got two notebooks full," Woody said. "I had th

By the Cover?

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At first the title of the article caught my attention. What's on your bookshelf? A most intriguing question but a little too much like the advertising slogan, What's in your wallet. Sure enough, the "article" was nothing more than a front for an internet dating web site. And like the latter, it turned out to be just as superficial, just as loaded with all the complexities of shallow images and stereotypes. Ok, so here's the deal; if you look at somebody's book shelf, you'll get the portal to the soul. That way you can either pursue the friendship or let it be because there wouldn't have been a connection anyway. Please! Are people that naive? Aren't there any number of reasons that a book could wind up on someone's shelf? How about gifts, or classes taken, or even the ones that people just abandon. Then there are those books that come into and out of our lives through friends, family, neighbors, and happenstance. Found books, in

Still Life in Black and White

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Funny how Andy Griffith died so close to the July 4th holiday. This year the holiday came on a Wednesday, so many people began celebrating a day or two before. It'll probably linger well into the weekend too. Andy Griffith, and the TV series of the same name, were such a huge part of so many baby boomer childhoods that he's bound to be missed by millions. It was a simpler time in so many ways. Literally, in the early 1960s when the world of Mayberry, North Carolina came into living rooms and black and white TV screens, there were only a handful of channels to watch. Pity the poor attempts to compete with Sheriff Andy and the cast of Mayberry's good people. For the 13 year old world I inhabited back then, Andy reminded me, in so many ways, of my neighbor Homer Taylor. Homer brought his family out to California from Ripley, Tennessee at the same time Andy and Barney worked their way into the hearts and minds of people all over the country. Homer, like Andy, was as