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Showing posts from July, 2014

John Fahey-Red Pony 1969

When I stopped in at my local Powell’s bookstore this morning I noticed a new biography of guitarist John Fahey. I guess I knew died a few years ago, but looking through a few chapters and some of the photos of the book confirmed it for me. One thing that caught my attention was the author saying he regretted having only seen Fahey in concert one time and toward the end of his career at that. I realized that I hadn’t seen him or even heard about him for years but what was even more striking was the fact I used to see him often in the early days of his career. That would be the mid to late 1960s. John Fahey was a master guitar finger picker and had a he following back in the day. He also had a few albums out there and played a variety of venues from small clubs to large theaters. I recall seeing him in The Ashgrove, the famous L.A. folk club a few times but also while a student at UCLA. Fahey played a few times in Royce Hall, the UCLA landmark of Italian Romanesque architec

Consderation

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The question stayed with me.  It was so simple, so direct, yet it had been asked so many other ways before.  One of my writing project colleagues asked it of university students, but I couldn't wait to get it into my high school curriculum.  There were so many places it would fit.  the wait would not be long. About a week later, during my unit on the American Dream /nightmare in 20th century literature, the opening came.  The key to the lock was a small op-ed piece by an Asian American that also happened to be accompanied by a picture of Olympic champion Michele Kwan. The piece detailed how a TV reporter momentarily forgot that Kwan was an American and then went on to explain and illustrate the author's plight being misjudged the same way.  Hence the question: Do You Consider Yourself an American? I had my class respond anonymously to the question and then shared some of their statements with surprising results.  My students did and did not consider themselves Americans.

Shipping News

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The other day, I thought of something that happened decades ago.  I was 18 and a college Freshman, working a minimum wage job for barely a dollar an hour.  Summer...Southern California...no air conditioning and bottom of the totem pole.  The distributorship for Sony tape recorders had recently opened a plant in my home town of Sun Valley.  Cassettes were just coming within reach, video tape was a few years away, but reel to reel stereo recorders were the thing and this business was growing daily. I packed small electronic parts and weighed them for either United Parcel or the U.S. Postal Service.  I ran errands which could be anything from picking up food orders for the executives when they worked overtime to taking their Cadillacs to be washed and gassed. By 4:00 in the afternoon we'd load a VW van and whoever was working with me that day and I would take a truckload of small parcels to the post office.  Clean up and one last interoffice mail delivery and that was the day. I go

Open Up

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One of the books on my summer reading list is the currently popular self-help book called Mindset by Carol Dweck.  I'm not usually in the habit of reading this type of book, but Dweck's credentials are impeccable as an educational psychology out of Stanford, and ...the book was assigned, I mean agreed upon for  a small group of educators I'm currently working with...In other words, I gotta read it and be prepared to discuss its application to current pedagogy. The thesis of Mindset is simply that the way we approach a task often determines how successful we will become.  An open or closed mind might be another way t think about this.  Dweck offers numerous examples from the world of sports to the academic universe to support this idea.  The book is, in fact, quite repetitious. Is this idea new?  Not really, but it does force us to think about the mental attitude we bring to everything from daily tasks to life changing decisions.  She highlights the "growth mindset&q

No Ladies

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Im not quite sure when Feminism turned into Post-Feminism.  I see evidence all around me that the consciousness of the early 1970s seems to have vanished. Beauty contests abound, the media is rife with all the old stereotypes, just in slightly different forms, and much to my surprise, the language hasn't changed all that much.  The "B" word seems to be as prevalent as ever and men continue to put down other men through women whether it be motherfucker, bitch, son of the later, or any of the other possibilities. And then there is the use of the term lady/ladies.  I thought for sure that woman/women would completely replace that one.  Or so it seemed. The women I knew back then didn't want to be referred to by any term that smacked of "dainty" or "lady-like."  Ladies, they informed the world, were put on pedistels by the patriarchy.  Seemed reasonable. In one of the most memorable moments from my time spent in Texas I recall an angry young Feminist