Daily Blues & Views

April folds into May and here in Portland we get to see seasons change.  That's a fairly new one for me growing up and spending much of my life in California.  This past week we flirted with Tee shirt weather, people washed their cars, the heat remained off, and little seedlings began to fall from the enormous elm trees that line my street. If a young man's fancy turns to love in the Spring, then an this older man's fancy turns to the possibility of another Kentucky Derby and the opening of the trout season.  OK, love too.                                                                                                     The fever that captures my heart and mind first is Derby fever.  I usually catch it about Februa...

Last night I learned of the death of a childhood friend. Danny was bigger than most kids his age in elementary school. By middle school and then in high school, he was an excellent athlete and had established himself as the strong silent type. Girls had crushes on Danny. He was in a car club, a starter on the football team, and, as I recall, had a steady girlfriend. Earlier this week he died of lung cancer after a long battle. Danny was a retired L.A. firefighter, divorced father, who was apparently looking forward to more of his recently earned retirement. Like many of my high school friends, I lost contact with Danny. Too much water under too many bridges. Bridges like the Vietnam War, counter culture values, progressive politics, and distance. I could never live in Southern California; that was my parents dream. Had he lived and had I been so inclined, I could have attended next year's reunion. I could have seen, talked to, and rekindled some sort of lost friendship...

Amid explosions in Boston and West, Texas life skims along and somehow manages to go on. So too does the trial of Jody Arias. Even with hundreds of more important news items breaking instantly, a good portion of the country seems to be fascinated by this case and the violent death of Jody's ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander. It's hard to believe that CNN's sister station HLN devotes just about all their programing to the trial. It's got a following and ratings that most stations would be proud to own. There is something both intriguing and disturbing about that fact. If anything good comes from this obsession, perhaps it will be a better understanding of mental disorders and how dangerous and irresponsible it can be to engage in light-hearted diagnosis of people on trial for capital murder. Some weeks back I labeled Miss Arias a "good little psychopath." Flippant as that may sound, it was hardly my intention to be glib. That she is a pathological liar ...

66 years ago today Jackie Robinson did the deed. Baseball's "color line" collapsed and the stage was set for integration of most societal and cultural institutions in this country. The ball rolled. It rolled into the Supreme Court school desegregation decision of 1954, the Montgomery bus boycott, the March on Washington and every incarnation of Martin Luther King's dream vision. It's still rollong, isn't it? Like Rosa Parks, Jackie has become a cultural icon. His story is told anew in a new film called 42 and his legacy is firmly established. Robinson was soon followed by Larry Doby, Monte Irvin, Satchel Paige, and of course Willie Mays. Of those mentioned only Willie is around to see how much has changed. He sees quite a bit too. He sees players of color making more in a few seasons than he made in a lifetime. He sees African American baseball players on the wane as the Latino presence increases. He sees most African Americans even priced out of a...

Oh to be an English teacher this Fall.  Anyone fortunate to have a few high school junior classes is in for a real treat.  That's because next month the much awaited release of the latest film incarnation of The Great Gatsby is coming to a theater near you.  Not that we need another film version.  But this much anticipated version should appeal to high school readers because of the people associated with the project.  We've got Leonardo DiCaprio as Jay Gatsby; how's that for starters?  Toby McGuire has a leading role and the music features the ubiquitous Jay-Z and Beyonce.  Rad! Hope I'm fortunate enough to have a Language Arts teacher to supervise come September.  Gatsby, viewed by many an the venerable old chestnut of American literature is quite a remarkable novel.  That it stands the test of time well should be abundantly clear with the success of the new film.  I'm assuming, of course that the film will be successful.  The ear...

I'm always skeptical of the way certain terms are used in education circles. Two of the biggest offenders, in my view are the words "performance" and "achievement." The former makes me think of training seals and the latter is such a buzz word that it has become almost meaningless. And then there is a phrase like "No child left behind." As we seem to have discovered, it's not so much about leaving behind, it's about where you are headed. Of course no educator with a soul would advocate leaving any child anywhere if it meant no learning, no progress, dare I say no achievement. But sometimes it's not the child that's being left, it's all of us. With the privatization attempts at public education now going on, the data driven drill and kill test culture, and the exploitation and co-opting of everything from engaging curriculum to teacher's unions, it appears that the institution of the democratic public school is the one b...