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.  ...