Daily Blues & Views

A  friend of mine is dying.  She is a veteran teacher-colleague of mine that is also a lifelong friend.  Along with four others, we began our teaching careers at roughly the same time.  We were young, fresh from the 60s and looking to teach social sciences classes in new and challenging ways. Along with countless meetings, curriculum writing sessions, conferences, and Department get-togethers, there were times when we were all just there for each other for relationship issues, family emergencies, and all manner of difficulties adult life can offer. I would like to visit this friend.  But living about 700 miles away presents problems.  But I can write and was urged to do just that.  She likes cards.  She would like to receive cards.  I can do that. About 2 weeks ago I sent a card.  This morning I intended to do the same.      I looked at the "misty forest" portrayed on the front of the card.  Staring at the bla...

In his brilliant essay, "Jay Gatsby is a Man For Our Times," writer Adam Cohen makes a strong case for the timelessness of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.  What's important here is how the American Dram is defined mostly by materialistic criteria.  That is, financial success is valued as the pinnacle of the dream and achieving that success by any means necessary is the reality that sustains. In fact, Cohen goes so far as to suggest that the green light at the end of Gatsby's dock functions as a sort of traffic signal indicating "Go, get on with it, move, act, the coast is clear.  That's why the dream can become a nightmare for those who blindly go forward without heeding or caring about danger from blindly going all in.  It is also why so many times things American tend to be over the top.  There is no caution, no reflection, often no regard for consequences.  Some would argue further that this over the top mentality is a sure sign of a culture i...

I finally found some time to listen to Mo Rocca's wonderful new podcast called "Mobituaries."  He's got a book out, too with the same title.  Rocca comments on things that no longer exist, hence the name.  He does a skillful job of giving these people and institutions that have disappeared from our lives their just due. This particular show was on the disappearance of an American icon Lawrence Welk.  Once the most popular show in television in the 50s and 60s, Welk was summarily dismissed by the ABC network but was wise enough to re-launch his program independently and continue to bring to a segment of the population everything they loved about him and his show.  Sure Welk was a "square" and his show appealed and pandered to senior citizens, but he knew who he was and what his audience loved and in the end, he was as authentic as they come.  He was also one of the wealthiest musicians of his era. My father was a big Lawrence Welk fan so like many my age, ...