Last Day

This is the day we take stock.  Depending on where you are on the graph of longevity, you focus on the past more than the present or perhaps the present and future are the privileged view.
We adore change when it might bring positivity, in our view.  But with the beginning of 2018 comes the chance to re-set.  For many, seeing 2017 go away can't come soon enough.
It's only the feeling that we can begin again, with fewer mistakes and more alert than before, but it is something.
Something needed.
Something welcomed.

In our commercial culture, we'll be mugged by all the advertisements for weight-loss and ancestry, newer, bigger sales, and the latest models of everything from cars to phones.
It's what we do.
Many folks will marvel at just being able to be...here...again.
It's been that kind of a year.
But for the uninitiated, the inexperienced, the folks who would rather not look back, they'll still have to be wary of what it is that just might be gaining on them.
I don't think people celebrate the new year as much as they just celebrate.  It provides focus from what might be just another ordinary evening.
This is usually a time of expectation.  I dropped those kinds of evenings years ago.  We all have those because we all know that apart from all the good things we're going to do differently we sense that this, too, is a time when darts get thrown, bombs drop and we suddenly find ourselves, (or could) out in the cold, just when we thought things were going to get better.
Yes, January lies in the heart of winter, and for some can be the cruelest month.
Like the snow and ice, things melt, the landscape drains, the sunlight emerges and wind dries out the wishes that we painted.

Existension

Dawn is only a few hours away
The airport is no movement empty
I sit in the dark
Hearing only “Early Morning Rain” in my head
Got the lyrics down now

My plane is on time and
I’m to let myself onto the tarmac
Shopping mall door slides open
Braniff Air taxis up from the mist
Flight attendant appears from behind silver door
Yellow and brown hot pants at 2:29 am
I’m in and on and belted

Four stops before Chicago
3 now Witchita is snowed in
In 3 months I'll appear before my draft board
For now, a window seat
next to a returning vet
we smile hello, nod and then sit back,
Our paths cross in the frozen wind

Slouching Again

I recently watched the new documentary about the creation of Rolling Stone magazine.  Like the music and community it documents, Rolling Stone has survived and flourished for decades.  Aside from the many behind the scenes film and video clips, and the stunning photography the film employs, what resonated most with me was a comment by the founder of this iconic publication.  Jann Wenner was talking about some of the young, unpublished writers that were assigned various pieces early on.  In one case, he took a young journalist aside after he'd written a noteworthy piece.  No, he didn't offer constructive criticism or even express disappointment in the piece.  Conversely, he liked the piece and recognized the obvious talent in his young charge.  What Wenner did was grab a book off of his shelf and tell the inexperienced writer to go home and read it and then use his considerable talent and write like that.  The book was Slouching Toward Bethlehem, by Joan Didion.
That book, a collection of essays written in the style of "New Journalism" has influenced countless writers ever since.  Its prose decorates the syllabi of numerous college courses, and like my own curriculum, it is often used to teach writing.  In short, Didion wrote the book on how to write non-fiction like fiction.

Last week I bought the book...again.  That's because I often passed it on by accident or design over the years.  Always there was a copy in my classroom library.  Somehow, after viewing the Rolling Stone documentary, I decided to revisit Didion's work.  Glad I did.
The title essay, "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" details Didion's experiences and observations during the summer of love in the Haight Ashbury District of San Francisco.
The writing is superb, but that's not what got me thinking.  I wondered how some of the most outstanding experiences in my life (and you in your's) would sound through the lens of Didion's talent.
I began to think of various travels and experiences that lend themselves to this style.  Certainly, my life and times in the late 1960s would be similar to Didion's experience in San Francisco. In fact, I first went to the city by the bay during that much-heralded summer.  No, I did not wear flowers in my hair, but I did open my eyes and other senses to what was obviously going on.  A feel for the dialogue and topics of conversation in Golden Gate Park would have been useful then.  Didion captures this remarkably well in her essay.  A few of my VISTA experiences would benefit from the Didion filter too.  The conversations I had with white Southerners who couldn't fathom the fact that I lived on the wrong side of town.  The conversations and the looks from Black Southerners who couldn't fathom why I lived on their side of town. (That was the purpose of VISTA, to live in the communities we served)
I'd love to take a few peak experiences I've had in the classroom and give them the Didion treatment. A tape recorder would have been useful as it was when I was actually a working journalist.
With all the advancements in technology, I wonder what will be lost and gained.  If we simply view people in their surroundings talking about things that matter to them, what skills go unused and lie dorment in the process?

Morally Bankrupt

So there he was, smack dab in the state of Mississippi delivering a speech on the occasion of the opening of the Civil Rights Museum in Jackson.  He read his prepared (by someone else) remarks as my insides did a slow burn.  This was a showcase for hypocrisy 101.
What occurred to me is that this is how it must feel to live in a dictatorship.  For the current occupant of the White House to talk about the courage of people like Medgar Evers, the Freedom Riders, and the 3 young Civil Rights Workers brutally murdered,  it was repulsive.  This is a man who believes and sustains the worst stereotypes.  This is a man whose party has rescinded the Voting Rights Act that many of those enshrined in the new museum devoted their lives to achieve.

Two of the events that stand out most in my memory of growing up as the struggle for Civil Rights was blossoming in the 1960s are the funeral of the 3 civil rights workers and the 1963 March on Washington.  I wonder where the current President was on those two occasions?  I recall my presence and my emotions clearly. What was he doing? Thinking? How had his life and worldview changed?
In this current climate, a news reporter would not even get the chance to ask such a question.
Of course, all this is set against the soon to be election of Roy Moore to the U.S. Senate.
The fact that the people of Alabama are comfortable electing an accused child molester to represent shows the real truth here.
Hopefully, the consequences will make them pay the price needed to join the 21st century.  So, this is the new normal.
There is an Arthur Miller quote that keeps tapping away at my brain.  In the Introduction to his famous play "Death of a Salesman," Miller talks about the change that has come over the Lowman house.  Says Miller, "Now it was quiet in the house and the wrong people in the beds."  Later on, he says, "Strangers in the seats of the mighty."
What we have here is a troop of actors playing at running a government.  The wrong people in the halls.