Posts

Showing posts from April, 2014

Corners of Light

Image
A couple of events this week got me thinking again.  The state of Georgia thinks it's just dandy now for people to carry guns anywhere.  That's what I said, anywhere.  The grocery store and the gas station.  Guns to church and to your favorite restaurant.  To the dry cleaners and of course to school...any school.  Don't forget to the neighborhood bar.  Anywhere means anywhere according to their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.  This will play out in rich fashion. Some have suggested that inserting on little clause into the 2nd Amendment might be just the ticket to clear things up.  The right of the people to keep and bear arms (when in a militia) is guaranteed...  Of course some will also say that the National Guard is such a militia.  Then there are those who are just waiting to form new militias.  Get your camo ready and invest in Smith and Wesson. What would it look like if people lived and worked and paid taxes and made laws in countries that were essentially alig

Rock Steady

Image
Here's a four letter word that opens up a world of possibility.  ROCK.  You rock! You are my rock.  Rock me mama!  Green, green rocky road... I always picked up rocks as a kid.  Still do.  Only I don't put them in my mouth and crunch down as if I knew how to test for gold.  That practice stopped, when, as a nine year old, I crushed a dirt clod and spent the better part of a day washing out my mouth. Rocks are all around us.  Literally and figuratively.  I see people who walk around all day and never lift their heads above the horizon.  That used to bother me because they seemed so preoccupied with smaller things.  Maybe they like to look at the ground for the same reason that others like to look at the sky? If rocks are evidence of the beginning of this planet, then that evidence is all over the most concrete cities and the most remote wilderness.  How long would it take you right now to walk outside your home and pick up a rock? We all have people or things in our lives

Be Prompt

Image
Writers like to talk about writing.  They like to write about writing too.  Most of the time it's worthwhile.  In my writing group we often employed a feature where someone would "share" something about a writer, or an excerpt of writing that resonated with them.  This "share' could be anything, even a bio of a writer or a favorite poem.  It all helps to keep folks thinking critically. So it was with similar interest that I somewhat reluctantly clicked a link that offered a daily writing prompt.  Even if I didn't write for 10 minutes a day based on the suggested prompt, I figured it's be a good thing. I'm always interested in writing prompts.  I collect them on occasion. So far I've written about accordions and been asked to consider what people say when they are uncomfortable.  Today the prompt is to simply write a scene about goggles.  Don't think I need to do that, although I will tell you the last time I tried on a pair of goggles I

A One and A Two and...

Image
Her name was Jennifer Goodspeed.  She played the accordion.  Musical family; big time.  For a few years we'd see her mom, Betsy, on TV. She was the harpist in the Lawrence Welk Orchestra.  Jennifer's step-dad, Bert, worked for CBS as a technician.  He helped pioneer color TV.  In fact, they had one of the first color TVs anywhere.  It required a special TV antenna that looked like some form of witching hoop on stilts. One summer evening, the entire neighborhood was invited into their living room to see a"spectacular" presented in "Living Color." All I remember is a woman dancing around in a pastel filled background with a sheer pink skirt and lots of changing colored lights.  Baseball would come much later. Jennifer Goodspeed could play the accordion fairly well.  She even had a rendition of "Lady of Spain." Of course Jennifer didn't shake her accordion for the big finale like the guys on the Ted Mack Amateur Hour did.  But she did play it

Carrying On

Image
The sun is making frequent appearances in the Northwest these days.  So it was amid a bright glare that I drove toward the little Oregon town of Sandy to meet with the first year teacher I'm currently mentoring there. This was not an observation or a consultation.  She'd asked me to be a guest speaker and give a presentation to her three Sophomore English classes.  I'd worked with these groups before a few months back.  Modeling a couple of lessons on writing voice, I was able to co-teacher with her for a bit and get to know her students.  This time, my purpose was to be a resource. Her classes are reading Tim Obrien's powerful book The Things They Carried .  As is often the case, the class has benefited from having a Vietnam veteran come in and talk about his experience.  Since O'brien, himself a Vietnam vet, reveals his own conscientious struggle with participating in this undeclared war, this teacher thought that my experience as a conscientious objector to

Hear This

Image
Ross Perot, that strange little billionaire who ran for president some years ago, used to talk about a "giant sucking sound," when speaking of the NAFTA trade agreement.  Of course Perot was referring to the jobs being sucked away from American workers, out of the country, and into Mexico. In many ways that came to fruition, but today, I hear that sound again, only this time it's coming from millions of Americans being sucked out of the Middle Class and back down to the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid.  In fact, the Middle Class in the U.S. is disappearing faster that an ice cube on the sidewalk on a scorching July afternoon. Two glaring consequences of this phenomena crossed my path last week.  First was in the form of a film called "Paycheck to Paycheck" that was produced by Maria Shriver.  We'll dispense with the irony here and simply say this documentary on the life and times of a single mother trying to raise a couple of kids while working in an