Daily Blues & Views

 Moms Mabley, the late African-American comedian, was just about the funniest storyteller you could imagine.  She used to tell the story of an old man who saw a little boy sitting on the curb crying. "What'a the matter, little boy," he said. Why are you crying?" "Cause I can't do what the big boys do," came the reply. Then with impeccable timing, Moms would lift her head, turn to the audience and say, "Old man cry too." It's a miserable fact of life that as we age, our physical limitations increase.  Most folks are content to simply cut back or limit physically challenging activities.  The trouble arises when you realize simple tasks like going to the grocery store tucker you out.   I'm not there yet, but last week I got a wake-up call in physical limitations, with devastating consequences. I lost my favorite rod on reel while fly fishing on the Metolious River in Central Oregon.  Simply put, the bank gave way, I tumbled forward, lost ...

 With the passing of Willie Mays, comes the passing of a genuine icon.  While the label icon is thrown about so easily these days, Mays was the real deal.  Simply the best.  As my friend Bill said, "a part of my childhood died today." Willie was the idol of so many kids growing up in the 1950s. He entered my consciousness in 1954 as a 7 year-old. We all saw "the catch" on black and white TV.  There was no replay back then, but there was grainy film of that amazing play.  I'd go out in the backyard and try to replicate the play by tossing a baseball over my head and trying to be Willie.  By age 8 I had to have a Willie Mays glove.  Living in LA, that was not easy.  But my dad, a New Yorker and avid Giants fan, took me downtown to United Sporting Goods where they had a wall of gloves.  A brand new McGregor Willie Mays autographed glove became my most prized possession.  The day I robbed Joey Ball of a home run by leaping in front of t...

When the sun sets on the Golden Gate Bridge tonight, it will set permanently on Golden Gate Fields. The historic Bay Area track will have run its last race today.   There is something particularly haunting about the death of a race track. To many it means nothing, but to those in the industry it means job losses, uprooting, and perhaps most tragic, loss of community.  There is so much more going on connected to a race track than what the conventional wisdom holds.  An abandoned track is eerie.  It is a sad reminder of glory days filled with excitement and sometimes magic.  It is also a sign that our culture is shifting, again in a direction that may or may not be beneficial for anyone.  When I first began writing about thoroughbred horses and the people who rode, trained and owned them, I called the subculture of the racetrack the last American carnival.  By that I meant it was a world unto itself, full of color and excitement, characters and emotions ...

 Place. The noun not the verb.  A sense of place is a necessary and powerful phenomena.  In film and literature, place can be a character to advance plot, other characters, or themes.  Recently I began streaming a French TV drama called Mountain Detective.  Set in the French Alps, the backdrop to this typical police show is truly another character.  The French Alps, with sawtooth mountains, pristine rivers and streams, stunning wildflowers, and unpredictable weather pattern certainly exerts a powerful influence on all that happens in this program.   I'm fascinated how a sense of place appears in my dreams. Even though the street I grew up on in Southern California looks nothing like it did 60 years ago, it sometimes appears as it always was in my mind.  The neighborhood, the street names, the memorable personalities and the geography remain intact in my mind.  The same goes for classrooms in which I have taught, or cars I once had, and even f...