Daily Blues & Views

He said it was like a dart.  Like being hit by a dart.  He was talking about being on the receiving end of a racial epithet or being the recipient of prejudice when someone speaks.  I concur.  I find dart to be a perfect metaphor because it probably won't kill you to be hit by one, but it stings, it's sharp, and you've become a target.   When Trump uses terms like "poisoning the blood," and "vermin," he's throwing darts.  Today we call them "dog whistles" but darts is a better term because they stick, they cause pain, and they are meant for specific targets.   Ever been hit by a dart like this?  If so, you know the sting never leaves.  I recall a few very specific darts thrown my way during childhood.  Once, while walking home from Elementary school, a girl in my neighborhood announced she had a $10 bill.  To a 9-year-old, in the 1950s that was a small fortune.  Apparently her parents were getting divorced and her father had re...

 I walked down to the Post Office this morning.  It's about half a mile round trip from my house or a couple thousand steps on the ol' step-tracker.  As I crossed the street behind my home and approached the main drag in my little section of North Portland, I noticed that the guy who regularly sleeps on the sidewalk was there, but just in front of him, another guy was bedded down.  Usually they just lay on or in sleeping bags, but this morning they had built a couple of little shelters from large cardboard boxes.  In fact between them they had about 4 little cardboard rooms.   There is a motorcycle dealership that specializes in Vespa scooters across the street.  They often receive their new vehicles in large cardboard boxes and then put them on the curb for recycling.  I've no doubt that's where the "cardboard bedrooms" came from.   I stepped deftly around the sidewalk sleepers and went on my way, but a thought struck me. My first reaction w...

 With the recent passing of my lifelong friend, Ken, I started thinking of some memorable times we had together.  Ken was an artist and extremely well read.  He unabashedly love living in Los Angeles.  He knew the city well and was a frequent visitor to galleries, museum shows, and concerts.  In high school we both shared one art class together.  It was an elective called Art Crafts taught by a rather quirky teacher.  In this class we created various projects, some required and some left to our own devices.  I remember discovering the tedium and magic of a crow quill ben and India ink in this class.  I took a photograph of the bark of a dead oak tree and painstakingly drew a tree whose truck was composed of thousands of little squiggly lines.  I got lost in the minute patterns, even writing a message of love to my girlfriend that was hidden in the fine patterns. Halfway through that school year John F Kennedy was assassinated and I vivid...