Daily Blues & Views

 Last weekend I met up with a former student of mine.  He graduated high school in 2007, so it had been a good 20 years since we'd seen each other.  He was visiting a sister in Portland and looked me up.  We met for coffee.   David was always one of my most memorable students.  He was in a Jr. Honors English class with me and then took my Intro Psychology class too.  Aside from being highly motivated, and intellectually curious, David was a good athlete and quite a good looking young man.  His father is Jewish and his mother is Japanese, so he has that striking quality that bi-racial kids often do.  It occurred to me once that I had his mother as a student in my first year of teaching back in 1973.   We spoke of many things, especially world affairs.  David does geo-political analysis for a tech company, reflective of his educational background which includes degrees from UC Berkeley and Georgetown.  The conversation was heady,...

 Meet my friend Patty.  She's striking because of 3 things.  First, she always has a kind word and a smile.   She often has thin, brightly colored ribbons streaming down her  shoulder length hair.  And then there is her posture, or lack of it.  Patty is one of those folks who walks all bent over.  It might have been scoliosis, but no body asks.  On top of all this, Patty has been battling cancer for the last few years.   I met Patty in the Tai Chi class I've been taking for the past couple of years.  When she can, she shows up.  Sometimes she goes through the motions while sitting down, but more often than not, Patty keeps up, doing the best she can despite her physical limitations. Patty is inspiration incarnate.  When many of us older folks in the class are feeling tired, or sore, or just not our sharpest, Patty is there.  She shows up.  If she can, certainly we can too. Patty likes a good joke and is a faithfu...

 Maybe it was his eyes.  They certainly were wild.  It was as if he were living in a dream and trying to wake up.  But the voice was kind.  Want to buy a song?   For a dime or a quarter he's give you a live performance.  For those that did, it was either "Merry Go Round" or "Linda and Laurie."   He was a character found along the streets of LA and in 1968 most often on the UCLA campus.  He'd join the throng on their way to a class along this sprawling campus and peddle his songs.  His hair was curly long and contributed to the name he acquired, Wildman Fischer.   In the Spring of 1968, that most decisive and formative year, I was a Junior at UCLA.  Seeing Wildman Fisher was a daily occurrence.  I may have even given him a dime or quarter.  I had just submitted some poetry to a professor who selected 10 students for a seminar.  When I was selected to join that elite group, I fancied myself a poet even more.  ...

 I thought they might work.  After all, these folks didn't learn to write the way we teach now.  They probably came out of English classes with 5 paragraph essays, literature anthologies, and grammar Nazis. Most of us did.  So, perhaps many of the teaching strategies developed after 1970 would be liberating, doable, and most of all welcome.   So, I proposed the idea of teaching a writing class for older folks to the director of my local community center,  As luck would have it, Portland Parks and Rec already had a "Writing From Memory" class on the books.  It just hadn't been taught for a while.  I interviewed.  I developed some curriculum.   I taught the class at one of the 5 week sessions.  Slowly, it gained un popularity andI went from3students to 8.  Perfect.  With i hour sessions once a week, that is barely enough time to review something, teach a skill, and have the people read and get feedback for their work.  ...

                I am still every age that I have ever been                                             Madeleine L 'Engle When I look in the mirror now,     my grandfather looks back, Makes me laugh until the next person I meet    calls me "sir," with that "Hello in There"look, Did you know, I think, that the class of 1990 voted me      "Best to be stranded on a desert island with, that on my 40th birthday, I swam, at dawn in the Pacific Ocean with       a 25-year-old woman  who wore  a red bikini? Were you aware of the fact that I once owned a horse,       a beautiful chestnut mare that you could have ridden too. When I smile and say hello, you often look away.      I get it. Can't be too careful with those easy smiles these days,...

 She was only 16, that hot summer of sixty something,     I was not much older, I met her parents and a stern  warning from mom,     Do not go to the drive-in. No problem, I thought, the  magical summer movie was playing everywhere, When Jimmy, the double date driver asked if a drive-in was OK, She yelled "Yes" before I could answer. How's mom ever going to know? I waited for the right moment, Inching my arm closer to, over, and around, That was my decided limit. Before I could complete the task she pulled me over by the neck and planted a big wet one on me. The rest was easier.

 In June of 1969, two months after my 22nd birthday and two weeks after my graduation from college, I flew on an airplane for the first time.  I'd been accepted as a VISTA volunteer and was invited to attend the training in Austin, Texas.  I had been outside of California only once before, a brief visit to Tijuana, Mexico after a family vacation in San Diego.  VISTA had sent me a plane ticket and I was equally as excited to board a jet as I was to begin the training.   My flight took of from LAX  at 8:00 am.  It was typical Southern California June weather, foggy, misty, and cool.  The overcast day did not alter my excitement in any way.  When the 747 jet positioned itself for takeoff and the huge engines revved, I braced myself, trying to look cool as if this was old hat for me.  The jet picked up speed, the engines noise became overpowering and the big airplane rumbled down the runway and then slowly but elegantly lifted off.  Loo...

 Sometimes I wonder what ever became of the kids I played baseball with on the street where I grew up.  As we moved from the tweens to the teens, we developed different interests and a wider circle of friends.  Randy moved away to the Orange County area.  His father was a rocket scientist and took a new job in the aerospace industry which was growing in the early 1960s. Paul went to a Catholic  school, wasn't too motivated in the area of academics, and put his energy into cars, working with his hands, and avoiding the future.  He ultimately ended up in the army, but because he volunteered, was able to avoid Vietnam in favor of Germany or Korea, or both.  Last I heard, he married a woman who was slightly older, a single parent, and they both did fairly well flipping houses.   Jimmy is more a mystery.  He had no academic inclination either, so I guess he took a series of jobs and may or may now have been married with kids.   From left, Ran...

The best gift I ever got from my father was a love of baseball. His team, the New York Giants, became my team. His team also migrated from the East coast to the West coast the spring of my 10th year. This love for the game translated to love of playing the game too. In my neighborhood, three kinds of baseball were available. The first was watching the game along with all my idols on TV. In those days, it was the game of the week, televised on Saturdays. To see the World Series, we had to wait for the film to accompamy the "News of the Day" in our local movie theater. We may have heard of a fantastic play or a clutch home run, but to see it was another matter. The second kind of baseball available to me was Little League. Open to boys 8 through 12, it was organized baseball complete with tryouts, scheduled practices and games, uniforms, and a well kept field complete with foul poles, umpires, and a snack bar. Of course there were bleachers, screaming parents and off...

The life expectancy for American men these days is about 76. As I am about to reach my 79th birthday, I have a few thoughts on the matter. I wondered, today, if my life ended on schedule, and I were no longer, alive, what I would have missed by now. I made a short list: 1. Another chance to take to the streets in a No Kings rally. 2. Teaching my little writing your memories class at the local community center. 3. Dental appointments where I can wonder what now? 4. The chance to see the next election. (Im optimistic) 5. The first fishing trip of another year. 6. New lakes and streams. 7. A big bash when I reach 80. 8. The Kentucky Derby 9. More significant downsizing (Sweedish death cleaning) 10. Playing blues harp with my friends in our geriatric music group. This is a partial list, of course. I expect to add to it from time to time. All I have to do is survive. I shall do my best.

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  It was more than a guilty pleasure.  It was pure fansasy.  It kept hope alive.  I loved flipping through catalogues.  The Sears Christmas catalogue was the granddaddy of them all.  I’d sit off by myselfand peruse the toys, musical instruments, sporting goods and even, on rare occasions, the clothing.  At age 11, one particular catalogue held my attention more than any other.   Not nearly as big as the Sears tome, the Blue Chip Stamp gift redemption cagtalogue had something Iusted after.  About everfy third day, I’d open to the sporting goods section.  There, past the baseball gloves and football kicking tees, past the basketballs, golf clubs, and camping gear, were the fishing poles.  Most were spinning reels and matching ten foot poles made by Shakespeare, Mitchell, and Eagle Claw.  But nestled under these 9-10 feet giants was a beginner’s outfit made by Zebco.  The pole was only about 6 feet long and had a built in...

 I haven't been on the UCLA campus in many years.  But in the late 1960s, when I went there daily, I had a few favorite spots where I would hang out before and between classes.  One was the grassy knoll that surrounded Kerkhoff Hall.  It has a name, Meyerhoff Park. Back then there was a small free speech platform painted a bright Kelly green.  People of all persuasions would stand within the confines of that small space and address the crowd that would always gather.  This space is right next to Bruin Walk so there was always a constant stream of traffic moving by as they ascended to upper parts of the campus.   Many times this open mic attracted serious speakers who shared their opinions on current events of the day.  In 1968, a hellish year with huge anti-war and civil rights demonstrations, shocking political assassinations, and of course a profound generation gap, there was always someone with something to say.  Of course, that platform a...

 Lines Two lines diverged in my neighborhood. I'm thankful I only frequent one.  Line 1 appears on Sunday mornings.  My wife and I never miss dutifully taking our place in this one.  We leave or home about 9:20 and walk a few blocks to what she has deemed the "Bread Church."  No house of worship, we wait patiently for the opening of a bakery that appeared shortly after the pandemic.  This sacred place sells bread by subscription during the week, but on Sundays the door opens to a wonderland of other baked goods.  My favorite is the olive twist a spiral shaped roll laced with  three kinds of whole olives.  They are usually still warm when we get them.  Katie likes the cherry buckwheat scones best.  But there are so many other things to choose from.  Last week we saw marionberry hand pies, molasses cake, oat raspberry scones, and mushroom gruyere slabs.  The breads are composed of a variety of local grains, sunflower rye, tr...

 Seems like political demonstrations are an everyday thing now.  When a democracy is at stake, this should be the norm. It's got me thinking back to the days of the late 1960s when that was also the case.  As US involvement in Vietnam became increasingly unpopular, the opportunities to protest became frequent and the number of people involved grew exponentially as well. In November of 1969 the largest political demonstration in US history took place in Washington DC.  Called the Vietnam Moratorium, as estimated 500,000 people took to the street.  This event took place over two days, a Friday night and the following Saturday.  I was there.  This experience was probably the most significant thing (of which I'm aware) I have ever done.   While the Saturday march and rally featured speakers and musicians, and a march through the streets of Washington, the smaller march the night before is what I remember most.  On a rainy night, about 100,000 peo...

 Whenever I hear a politician say, "this is not a racist country," two things happen.  First I wonder who they might be (usually a Republican) to make such a ridiculous statement.  Either they never studied US history, or they have lived an incredibly sheltered life.   My first 20 years on this planet were spent in relatively all-white neighborhoods.  I was aware of other nationalities through the Latino, Black, and Asian populations that surrounded my neighborhood.  To be sure we had diverse groups in my school and community, but for the most part, everyone and everything was white.  I idolized Black baseball players as a kid, but even then I had little knowledge of the context in which they played and the unwritten rules they were subject to.   In college I studied US history and because of the zeitgeist of the late 1960s, I ended up majoring in African American history.  Reading books about the brutality of slavery and the autobiographies ...

 Recently I've noticed a new habit when I go to the grocery store.  I lift something off the shelf, look at it for a second, consider the price, and then put it back.  These days I simply don't want to pay $8 for a small jar of pickles, or $3.99 a pound for apples.  And i have a steady income.  I shudder to think how people on a real tight budget do it.  Most folks know that with few exceptions, prices rarely go lower once they hit new highs.  With the exception of gas, or eggs, every rise in price remains true. There is no percentage in reminiscing about the good old days when a quart of milk was a quarter and a loaf of bread was anywhere 50 cents and a dollar.  Gasoline used to be 25 cents a gallon and when we were fortunate enough to spot a "gas war" it could fall to 15 cents.   I know I'm only fooling myself when I return an item to the shelf.  Still, it feels empowering sometimes and I soon realize I can get along just fine without ...