Daily Blues & Views

                          60s Witness A 10 year-old boy crying at the funeral     of his older brother,  A warm summer afternoon, while my mother irons. I                          listen to a King speak and try to tell anyone who will listen that this is history-making, Fire hoses, snarling dogs, a Sheriff named Bull. College students are next.   We're told to carry plastic bags filled with water in our your pockets when the governor comes to campus, this will help when the tear gas flies, CIA agents are rumored to be attending our classes, watch what you say,                          or not. At a party in 1969, all they played was Creedence...one after another. Today we marched inside a draft board,  the clerks scared and outraged by our au...

 I had an idea that they would work.  They did, for the most part.  The writing prompts and strategies I used with 11th and 12th graders in high school had much to offer older adults.   That's what prompted me to take a leap of faith and offer a writing class for older folks.  There was the Tai-Chi group too.  For the past year, I've been taking Tai-Chi classes through my local gym and community center.  It was there I met an ice group of older folks who have lived a bit of life.  They have stories to tell.  Sometimes, they even want to tell them, but just need a little motivation.  I asked around, and when it appeared that there was a small core of folks that expressed interest in a class that would offer some writing opportunities, I decided to proceed.   I envisioned this little writing workshop as more of a volunteer effort.  But, when I asked at my local community center I learned that everything offered there went through...

 So the President is a sociopath.  The Emperor had no clothes.  Power corrupts completely, remember?   One of the more predictable things about our current President is that he projects.  Not the sound of his voice, the psychological defense mechanism of projection.  Remember learning about that?  If not, it's the one defined as attributing one's own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or impulses to others, as if to avoid confronting those own impulses or behaviors within their own psyche.   So, when the President says that the beliefs of his opponents are radical, or "crazy" or dangerous, or even false, he's really describing himself.  We all do this to a degree, but not to the extent that our President does.  If you can stomach him, or afford to spend the time, check this out.  It's remarkably consistent.   A well-known case in point: . In 2016, Trump criticized opponent Hillary Clinton’s use of an unsecured personal email serv...

                                There's a time a for joy                                    A time for tears                                    A time we'll treasure through the years                                    We'll remember always                                      Graduation day                                               ...

 In May of 1970, right before I ended my VISTA service in Houston, Texas, all the people who had lived in the house that became the Communications Center, posed for a group photo on the front porch of the decrepit home that endured at 1506 Rosewood Ave.  It has since become an iconic photo.  Iconic because it freezes time and represents a moment in that time that says so much. Aside from a 50 year reunion with most of the people in that photo, there always remained two individuals that were never heard from.  That's because they were not VISTA Volunteers like most of us, they were, in fact, high school students that often hung out at C-2*(C squared-Communications Center) See them on far right of photo. One of the programs that VISTA created that year was called "The University of Thought."  It was a "Free University" for high school students.  In those days, the concept of a free university was popular.  It was an opportunity for young people to take c...