Daily Blues & Views

Time's running out.  2009 has a day left, so it's time to take stock a bit.  No, not to worry, this isn't one of those year in review pieces.  The media doesn't even wait till the end of the year to do that anymore.  How many times must we see Tiger's women, the White House party crashers, or hear the impassioned pleas of John and Kate? No, time for another kind of review.  This one is simply to consider what happened in the last 12 months in a deeper way.  Looking at the big picture, I'd say it's all about the technology.  It's difficult to spot a real revolution when you are in the big middle of one.  No doubt, newspapers, books, TV shows, records, CDs music...it's all changing.  As we become closer to everyone through Facebook, Twitter and the like, we become farther away.  It's all about the unreality of reality.   But sometimes, we get a break.  Like yesterday.   On a day we expected to get a little rain and perhaps an hours worth of snowfla...

This morning there was a wonderful story in my hometown newspaper.  "Newspaper," you remember what that is/was?  I find that I enjoy buying one out of the little street racks because they will soon be gone. Anyway, the story, by one of the best feature writers in Portland, was about a very poor North Portland high school that is on the rise again because of the efforts of some alumni from way back in the day.  They dusted off their letterman's jackets, their yearbooks, and their memories and went to bat for the old school, encouraging clean up efforts and renewed interest in the school's needs given the current state of the economy.   Most of the article focused on a fairly well-off suburban family who were helping the football team.  It seems that the mother had read an article one day about the team wherein the coach had mentioned that some of his charges don't eat every day.  In the middle of her daily treadmill exercise, that thought wrapped itself around her ...

In all the gift frenzy of the last couple of weeks, I was quickly reminded of the kind of gift that comes unexpectedly.  Being an urbanite most of my life, I tend to spend winter fantasizing about warmer weather adventures to come.  Living in Oregon has only fed that habit.  On very rainy days, like this one, I dream of cloudless mornings where the smell of sage and fir trees surrounds me like the water in a stream.  I imagine the underground springs that feel my favorite rivers.  I picture myself seeing the water for the first time since last fall and releasing a sigh of relief that the water levels are healthy.  I think back to those gray wet days of splashing through the city of Portland.  It's all worth it when the summer comes and there is plenty of snowmelt, the rivers are running high and clear, the mountains are green.  Living in Oregon means seeing more wildlife too; even in the city.  I once saw a bald eagle while walking over the Broadway Bridge.  But yesterday, I chance...

It's certain now.  The mountain has taken three more.  And in the wake of the most recent climber deaths on Mt. Hood an argument rages.  Why isn't it mandatory for all climbers to carry a simple tracking beacon?  Pitted against each other are folks who think that the small signaling device, which rents for $5.00 would not only save more lives, but would also same the cost of search and rescue/recovery missions.  They don't forget that it was not too long ago that a helicopter full of rescuers crashed on the mountain in a vain attempt to find missing climbers.  Seems like a no brainer, but the adventurous do make a few points that merit attention.   They claim that part of their spiritual attraction to climbing the mountain is the risk involved; all the risk involved.  They claim that if everybody were "forced" to carry the beacon then people would take unnecessary risks.   Others, who do a bit of risky climbing themselves, say that part of being well-prepared, bei...

Tanzan and Ekido were once traveling together down a muddy road. A heavy rain was still falling. Coming around a bend, they met a lovely girl in a silk kimono and sash, unable to cross the intersection. “Come on, girl” said Tanzan at once. Lifting her in his arms, he carried her over the mud. Ekido did not speak again until that night when they reached a lodging temple. Then he no longer could restrain himself. “We monks don’t go near females,” he told Tanzan, “especially not young and lovely ones. It is dangerous. Why did you do that?” “I left the girl there,” said Tanzan. “ Are you still carrying her ?” Sometimes, one of the best things we can do is to suspend our need to measure anything with logic.  Most folks, myself included, spend far too much energy being disappointed that our dealings with the universe often follow no logical path.  We have such a great desire to make meaning for all we encounter, that logic, or at least some sense of reason, must come along for every ride.  I...

I have a terrible habit of not only listening to other people's conversations, but entering them on occasion.  I wasn't always this way.  With age, comes wisdom, right?  Sounds nice, but I know it's really the teacher in me.  I've guided too many discussions, wanting them to be like works of art, hoping the right question or response will trigger something more, something deeper, something uncomfortable, something thoughtful.  If I think I can be helpful, or offer advice on something they are struggling with, I'll speak up.  If someone has something on the tip of their tongue and just can't remember a person place or thing, and I can help, I will.   More often than not, I'll be invited into a conversation, at least momentarily.  I've met some cool folks, some curious, knowledgeable, passionate, empathetic, and most of all friendly people that way.  So it was the other day that I found myself listening to a coffeehouse conversation among three people who ...

The picture in the window catches my eye.  It's old.  World War II ad of some kind.  I'm standing on the sidewalk looking in the window of a furniture store, but I don't see anything but this old advertisement.  Too small to be a poster, it must have been taken from a magazine from the time.   In the picture a GI sits in a trench with a small Christmas tree perched on a mound of dirt.  I mean small.  It's about 2 feet tall with small pieces of red yarn tied on for ornaments.  The soldier is reading a letter, I think.  I don't know because I can't take my eyes off a huge ammo clip for an automatic weapon that rests near the tree as well.   Such a striking image.  The peaceful holiday and the weapons of war resting together on the piled mound of earth.   A minute later I'm thinking about those WWI stories where Americans and Germans spent Christmas Eve together during a brief cease-fire and then went back to the business of killing each other the next day.   S...

We finally got the key to the attic door.  It opens to reveal a rough-hewn stairway that winds around to some storage space in the top of our house.  That key opening that door is what initially sent me into my closet.  All I needed to do was go through a few storage bins to make sure they could sit in the attic for the next few months.  I threw out a broken picture frame in one, and decided to leave some artifacts from the last English class I taught in another.  That's when I saw my childhood stamp collection; not the book, that's still packed somewhere, but a box from a now defunct department store that my mom gave me when I was 10.  Inside the box were a Band-Aid tin and an empty Marlboro flip-top box, (both good for storing loose stamps,  lots of small envelopes with collectable postage and even more torn off corners containing stamps mostly from Mexico and Japan, that my dad used to bring me from work.  He commuted with a man originally from Mexico and worked for Sony.  ...

                                                  Piped In   In the Men’s Room             at Portland Meadows,             Frank Sinatra is always singing. Through the white porcelain, up and around the mirror splashed    sinks, over the din of flushing urinals,             Frank Sinatra sings,                         every day. Into this private party, rat-pack, brassy big band braggadocio             Comes a post parade of wily winners and lowly losers. They unzip and position themselves to The …. Party’s …. O ver. Outside, in the real world, missing people bubble up in rivers,             seven-year-olds die in drive-bys from Maine to Mexico,                         a board of education president commits suicide,                                     Islamic terrorists stare back through wooly manes, rifle sight eyes, and layers of cotton clothing, But in the Men’s Room, at Portland Meadows,             Frank Sinatra is always singing,        ...

This is the time of year to be very careful.  Some say it coincides with the moon in Scorpio.  I'm not so sure about that, but I do know that the last couple of weeks in November are prime time for the strange and dangerous. Looking back, I first began to trace this delicate time to the Kennedy assassination.  If ever there was an example of something knocking the universe for a loop, that was it.  World views changed.  Many people, myself included, were never quite the same.  Loss of innocence I suppose, but something more.  At least it wasn't hope. Shakespeare talked of the music of the spheres.  When the music of the heavens in in synch, it's a lovely concord.  The dis chord is what results when things fall apart.  Think of someone learning to play an instrument...such sour sounds are only to be endured.  Hardly the stuff to sooth any savage beast.   If you think about it, many eerie and horrendous things take place this time of year.  I remember that week back in Novemb...

He never knew that he was a veteran.  All he knew was that he'd traded in his life tinkering with an education, a girlfriend, and wondering about a future for an army uniform.  No Germany, no Korea, no local military base; Vietnam, just Vietnam.  It was 1968, we were down to one Kennedy, no more Dr. King, escalating death tolls, and hundreds of thousands in the street.  All he really wanted was to get away.  Tie up that relationship that would have never worked, get a chance to smoke and drink without being hassled, maybe learn a trade, and consider himself a man.   He wrote me a number of letters.  Particularly ironic for a guy that didn't really like to write.  He'd begun to harden; became less tolerant of those around him.  Hate began to leak through his beaming smile.  At home, the music was unifying our movement.  The opportunities to express our disgust and anger grew more frequent.  Yet, we never forgot about him.  We never judged him.  He was still our classmate, ou...

It's nice to have a dose of pure joy to end this week.  Bad enough it poured all day, the leaves clogging the street drains, the water in small ponds over the curb, the freeway full of hydroplaning fools.  This week the health care bill took a few more jabs, the media convulsed repeatedly on missing children, new serial killers, and then the coup d' gras, the mass murder committed by an Islamic army psychiatrist.  Hollywood has nothing on reality.   Somehow, in the big middle of all this chaos I got excited about the Breeder's Cup.  Anybody who knows me well knows you don't mess with me during Breeder's Cup.  It's in my blood.  Thoroughbreds are one of my true passions.  Anyone with a similar bent will know exactly what I'm talking about.  For some reason I was particularly down this year.  Maybe it's because attending Breeder's Cup here at my local track in Portland has become a solitary affair.  Some of my old mates are either gone or living all ov...

One big player in determining how safe any school or environment can be is the Code of Silence.  On a high school campus, this unwritten law enjoys health and wealth.  The deliberate choice to remain silent in the face of moral outrage thrives in an era of collective "don't ask don't tell." How ironic, in this era of instant messaging, that the code of silence still supports so many egregious acts.  Yet this glaring contradiction can become a savior.  It just might be the key to preventing crimes of group-think that outrage and threaten so many.   Some new studies show that the availability of anonymous outlets for reporting crucial information are having a real impact in preventing the serious crimes that threaten school security.  Some have even suggested that the presence of anonymous "counseling" seems to have a real impact on helping those in need actually seek help.  Here's how this might work.  Within a particular school/community, students have p...

I suppose it's just a matter of time until something or someone you know well shows up on tabloid TV.  Given so many cable news (?) outlets,  so many versions of "talk" shows, and so many TV personality types looking for something to talk about daily, something close to home will show up eventually.   So it was with the upsetting news that a 15-year old girl was gang raped outside a dance on the Richmond H.S. campus.  Shocking, no.  Sadly, this event could have happened in a multitude of places. The pathological mentality and group behavior needed are on display in every socioeconomic level.   Having worked, and at one time, lived in this community, I've seen firsthand the conditions that comprise the Richmond area known as The Iron Triangle.  A tough neighborhood is way too lenient.  It's depravity at it's worst.  This is a poor, ill-served, physically deteriorating, extremely violent and therefore dangerous place.  BUT, as such, it is also home to far more h...

"The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things"    -Rilke Today was one of those dark rainy Portland mornings that screams stay home.  True we get a lot of rain here, and we like that, but not today.  It pounded down in sheets that flooded streets in seconds and left some neighborly custodians of the storm drains battling just to stand up.   Part of me just wanted to roll over an die.  I've been battling a nasty cold that moved from sore throat to deep in my lungs overnight.  I would have just rocked in my favorite rocking chair and hoped for sleep too (God I sound old!) but Katie had to babysit for her niece and I needed to get up and get her there and just b on stand-by.  She likes it that way, and we try to be there for one another in bad weather. So here I sit in a crowded little coffeehouse on the border between NE and N Portland.  Somehow in this hour or two of need I went to the web and found my old friend Rilke.  Even his profundity can be so...

Sad day.  I just heard about the death of Soupy Sales.  Not sad for long.  It's impossible to talk or even think about Soupy without laughing.   Even the CBS Evening News had a piece about Soupy tonight.  For any Baby Boomer, the Soupy Sales Show was like no other.  Here's the thing: lots of slapstick, really bad jokes, two dogs for pets represented by huge white or black arms with claws.  (White Fang and Black Tooth)  Two puppets for friends (Pookie the lion and Hippie, a hippo.)  And lots of knocking on his door which usually ended in a shaving cream pie in the face. Soupy Sales made everybody laugh.  He was the perfect sucker, the perfect dupe, the grown up who acted like a kid.  His world was ridiculous.  That's why it worked.  If you came home in 1965 with Middle School angst, one episode of Soupy Sales would be all it took to release all those wonderful brain chemicals that come with laughter.   Case in point: Right in the middle of something his phone would ring.  ...

http://showandtellgallery.org/

This morning on my local Public Broadcasting station I listened to a portion of a call-in show on class size as a crucial issue in education today. I'm sure some figures were recently released placing Oregon among the states with the highest class sizes. I'm sure too, that some socially conscious producer put together a panel of "experts" to discuss the issue and invite listeners at home to call in and make comments. I admit I only heard a portion of the program, but I feel compelled to comment on what I did hear. OK, I'll go straight to the point; what got my goat was a panel member who had taught for a little while and is now a "policy wonk." When this person was asked why she left the classroom, her answer skillfully moved from never giving any specific detail to a description of how policy was her real calling, to some other murky mumblings about other murky things. My point: how can someone who has never taught more than at least one decade b...

By the time I got to Wordstock, Portland's very own literary festival, it was Sunday. I'd carefully underlined all workshops and author presentations about memoir, because, let's face it, I'd still like to market my book in this economy. Seeing and hearing, and hopefully talking to some writers who had scored book deals would be inspirational, fun, beneficial. Most of what I thought might be useful was slated for Saturday. In the final analysis, I was not willing to give up the opportunity to watch some of the Breeder's Cup prep races, and, of course, Zenyatta win her 13th consecutive race. So here I was on Sunday, touring the booths, the book sellers, the opportunities from self-publishing, to all manner of MFA programs. At noon, I noticed a pairing of authors that had both recently published memoirs. Giulia Melucci and Andy Raskin are both Brooklyn born writers, but that's where the comparison ends. Both have books out about their love lives. Raskin...

" By 2042, whites will no longer be the American majority. As immigrant populations -- largely people of color -- increase in cities and suburbs, more and more whites are moving to small towns and exurban areas that are predominately, even extremely, white. Rich Benjamin calls these enclaves "Whitopias" (pronounced: "White-o-pias"). A couple of days ago I listened with ever increasing interest to a program on NPR featuring Rich Benjamin, the author of the new book Whitopia. Benjamin a black journalist, went to live in 3 enclaves that are overwhelmingly white communities. Places like St. George, Utah or Couer d 'Alene, Idaho. His book looks at this phenomena and without any heavy handed message, simply asks some questions about how the changing demography of the U.S. will impact our lives. By the way, Benjamin was treated very well in these all-white communities, enjoyed playing golf, talking to people, and moving about without any problems. After the pro...

Spent the first two days of October on the Metolius river in central Oregon. This was my first time between July and December. I've seen the Metolius on triple digit days and covered with a white winter ground cloth. October brings the changing of the seasons to this miraculous topography. If you don't know the Metolious, be advised. It is like no other region in the world. It's silent beauty put the awe in awesome. With that comes it fragility. Nonetheless, the river and it's environs are protected by those who inhabit the area and the small hamlet of Camp Sherman. They know what they have; they get it. For fly fishers, the Metolious is uber unforgiving. That's part of it's charm. It takes more than luck or skill to catch fish there. It takes time. As in years. Even in the small tributary, Lake Creek, that I love to fish, I encountered nobody who caught anything. All were happy just to be there. If the fishing is difficult, the scenery more ...

Why I Don't Write Music I can only suggest what the world needs now. one thing that won't make the list is another song where tomorrow rhymes with sorrow. Sometimes when I sit and stare out the window it looks like it's raining, even on clear cloudless days. I look harder, it rains stronger, Then, lifting the blind, I'm confronted with a warm day, in the distance, three folks sipping wine, puttering in flower-beds, and digesting monthly statements. No rain. Yet in my view, rain continues to tease, continues to streak across my eye's horizon, continues to tempt me to write a lyric. No rain, no song. I wonder about things like holes in my Jeans. First the pockets unravel, the small one for change is most vulnerable, Five years to wear through the knee, even a thin wallet takes out the rear right, and then the bottom of the right front stares back. While I consider the comfort of another pair, someone is paying twice the price for a new pair with holes worn like mine...

Driving back from the Bay Area last Sunday, a funny , as in peculiar, thought hit me. It was smack in the big middle of the toughest part of the drive: the section between Vacaville and Redding. This is mostly agricultural flatland. Towns like Dunnigan, Artois, Winters, Corning, Red Bluff, Anderson, and Redding. I know I've forgotten some, but no matter, they are all very similar, hot dry, dusty, conservative, with the requisite gas stations, motels, and "restaurants." The choice is either the usual fast food suspects like KFC, McDonalds, Subway, with an Arbys or Carl's Jr. thrown in here and there. Occasionally there is a Bill and Kathy's restaurant, a Pilot truck stop, or an Indian casino, usually with feathers in the name. As if traveling through these towns isn't torture enough, some folks there go out of their way to place grotesque billboards by the highway extolling their political beliefs. I'm used to the usual reminders that Christ die...

I was telling a friend of mine the other day that attempts at breaking up the present configuration of our United States are not new. Like the ideas about dividing California into three distinct states, re-inventing the U S of A comes and goes all the time. It's actually very useful as an educator to turn students loose with a vivid imagination, some maps, almanacs or online equivalents, and plenty of paper, markers, and pencils, and let them have at it. Demographically, economically, and politically we are very separate nations. The salad bowl is much more accurate than the melting pot. Levels of culture shock exist within our national walls. I remember working with three distinct groups of educators 10 years or so ago and confronting the fact that it would be very difficult for me to teach in Georgia, if at all. Even many I met from Michigan were not where I was philosophically as a Bay Area teacher at the time. "What country are you living in," almost passed my...