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Showing posts from October, 2016

The Luxury of Knowing

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We could hardly have known it at the time.  Known that there might be a way that we, as teachers, could keep track of how some of our students were doing long after they exited our classrooms for the last time.  Of course, there are some teachers who couldn't care less.  Just a few, in my view.  But for most of us, we care about the people our former charges are becoming. When I retired from full-time teaching I knew very little about Facebook.  Other than it involved being "friends" with one's peers, it was mostly used by college students and had just begun to infiltrate the universe of high schoolers.  That was only 10 years ago.  Since stumbling on to my own account on Facebook, mostly to sign an Amnesty International petition, I've been able to have contact with a few hundred students from about 25 years ago to the present.  I rarely ask them to friend me, as a sign of respect for their privacy.  But if they find me and request "friendship" I wil

Like A Rolling Stone

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When I heard the news, I gasped.  Breathtaking.  Bob Dylan has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. I fact checked lest I had been tricked by the artifice of the internet.  There it was in the New York Times. I let it            sink                       in. By the end of the day I brought myself back to my high school graduation weekend.  The Saturday night following my speech at graduation, in February of 1965 I went to a party with and for my classmates.  The Beatles were hot and hotter that month.  But a specific memory came to me of standing in a circle talking about music with my friends.  I was defending a particular singer, an unusual performer I'd recently learned about through my best friend.  Bob Dylan...the guy who wrote some of the Peter Paul and Mary songs and the guy with the very folkie sound who recorded my favorite song of the previous year, "The Times are Changin.'"  On Thursday nights when I put  out the trash cans for the next morning

The Color of Alienation

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I haven't felt that feeling in years...decades really.  That notion converted into a sinking awareness that the train is off the tracks, that those in the control room are so misguided that we are all in danger.  That feeling that mirrors the far side of what most believe to be accurate but is, in fact, a mirage.  A mirage with bad intentions. I felt it during the height of the Vietnam War.  When your personal freedoms are impacted based on age and gender, there is no way around it. The law comes calling.   As the evidence mounted of ill-informed decisions and a government that valued duplicity over the lives of it's youngest men...the feeling grew.  Simply stated, it's an "I gotta get out of here moment."  When you realize that there is no unity of thought, that there are people that are "face down in the Kool-Aid" and broadcasting lies and misinformation and it's all tangled up in life and death consequences, it gives rise to a specific emotion. I

Fly Fishing in the Bottom of the Ninth

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Yesterday was the day.  The clear October day, before the rain and snow set in and the transition to winter cannot be denied.  It was my chance.  Last chance to get one more day of fly fishing in on one of my favorite Mt. Hood lakes. These lakes fish best from 10 a.m. till 2 p.m. so the thought of being home to catch the Division series game between the Giants and the Cubs was also foremost in my mind.  I put my eggs in a 4 hour basket.  If I rise at 6:30, I can make coffee, drive for a couple of hours, get all geared up (inflate float tube, change into waders, assemble fly rod, tie on fly, and get down to the lakeside) and fish until 1:30 or 2:00 without getting in rush hour traffic on the drive home.  A few fish, some spectacular weather, and then a victory by the Giants to extend the series to a final game wasn't too much to expect. Right? It didn't hardly go that way. Things happened.  I did catch a couple of trout.  But they were on the small side and one ended up be

From All Sides

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A Tropical Storm that the Governor of Florida says "will kill you" plods toward the East Coast      Some have "hurricane complacency" and want to ride it out           The election is 35 days away and we must endure what passes for a debate                we must ride it out                     when a horse in a race has given his best, but it isn't enough for that day, the jockey                           must ride him out: keep trying or at least make it look that way The season is changing by degree(s) daily: we smell rain, breathe in spores with colder air and      calculate the consequences of turning on the heat too soon           By the end of the month, we'll feel some relief when Halloween reminds us to wear another                layer.  The price of gasoline climbs, competing with traffic fatalities.  It's increasingly                     dangerous to cross a street and night-stalker clowns await all who walk alone.