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Showing posts from July, 2016

Dog Tired

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We've hit the dog days of summer.  Uncommonly hot temperatures that help create the image of a pack of tired hounds lying around trying to beat the heat.  Even though the expression traces it's roots to the star Sirius, (the Dog Star)we use the term to illustrate that time of year when we're "dog tired," hot, and worn out. The dregs of July through the middle of August usually encompass this time to lay low.  I don't fly fish much in August. The fish aren't as active during the daytime.  They lie deep in the darker cooler areas of lakes and streams. Maybe, if your offering brushed close by they'll nip at it. If you go after them, you bake up top.  Sun screen, water, an oversized hat and some breaks now and then are necessary. The fact that the two political conventions take place during this period really adds to the theme this year.  We're enduring the process like walking, or rather slogging trough an enormous swamp. August is when teachers

Alex Part II

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After a while it was not uncommon for Alex to give me a phone call.  I became his companion to the dictionary.  Usually it was an idiom that made no sense to him.  It could be something like “let sleeping dogs lie” or perhaps a slang expression that he took literally. “Gree” what it mean when someone call something “raw” or “bad” but it not really bad.” Try explaining that bad is good and raw is a very positive connotation.  After a while it got humorous.  Very humorous.  But always, with thanks and plenty of relief, Alex seemed to get the difference between the literal translation and an idiomatic expression.  One afternoon he seemed very preoccupied with something.  When I pressed a bit, he told me that he was worried about a car that he had.  It hadn’t run for months and he was trying to save up a little cash to have it looked at.  His main concern was that he’d let the registration lapse because he had no plans to use the vehicle until it was running properly and just coul

Alex

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I met Alex at the race track.  At first he was just one of those familiar faces passing by in the line for a program, the line tomato a wager, the line to by something to eat or drink.  Something about his smile and his ability to be alone in a crowd was soothing.  He often huddled with groups of other Asian horseplayers.  They all spoke Chinese, I guess.  But once Alex asked me something in English.  It was probably the meaning of some footnote in the program. "What this mean, horse is two pounds over?" "It means the total weight carried by horse and rider is two pounds more than the assigned weight. "Why that important?" "Maybe the jockey ate too much last night or drank too much water, but they are just telling yo what the horse will carry." "OK, thanks." Our friendship grew from there.  When Alex learned I was a teacher, his questions about language usage multiplied.  He was always asking about idiomatic expressions.  I was always

1968 Redux

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It feels the same.  The pall of 1968 has returned.  The air is thick with questions...with "work left to be done," with the simplicity of polarization, and most importantly with the anticipation of what is to come when we look over our shoulders. 1968 was a difficult year to endure.  Like 2016, it was an election year where the choices seemed clear, no matter the fact that few felt comfortable with any candidate.  It was a year of surprises, of shocking media imagery, of calls for law and order, and, of course, of guns...guns...guns.  It was a year of assassination and civil disobedience. The Constitution was asked repeatedly to bind a bleeding wound.  We investigated with blue ribbon commissions.  The massive tome of the Kerner Commission boiled it down to one simple statement...that we were becoming two separate and unequal societies.  Didn't we know this?  Weren't we trying to teach our complete history? Hadn't many of us raised our consciousness considerab

Collecting people

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He enjoys seeing people every day that he's never seen before, such a simple thing that few think about, but he takes the time to note, takes the time to place them in his mind. Families, introverts, extroverts, the broken and disillusioned, the altruistic and naive. He notices them all he even imagines them as his friends, lovers, colleagues, companions, and relatives.  When a child, he watched twigs float down the gutter in watered-lawn runoff.  Boats on rapids, whole lifetimes, entire rivers that nurtured and then disappeared.  Microcosms that developed into alternative lives with people who entered his lifetime daily. That person walking ahead of him on the sidewalk, that waiter or waitress, that bus driver, that chance encounter in the grocery store.  They all entered his life and many never exited.  This age we live in now is one of fear and uncertainty.  It's no longer prudent to share everything, lest someone get the wrong idea. People build alternate families a