Daily Blues & Views

 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...