Daily Blues & Views

I've been volunteering at my neighborhood elementary school.  There is a program called SMART, an acronym for Start Making a Reader Today.  I read with and to kindergarten kids for an hour.  I have three charges, all girls, and I spend 20 minutes with each, one day a week.  It goes quickly, most of the time.  These kids can't read yet, but they are learning to love books.  We read together whatever they choose from among hundreds of titles distributed around the small classroom.  Most of the books are clever little titles that can be read in about 5-7 minutes.  I did read one last week that was 48 pages long.  It took almost the entire 20-minute segment. My three "Smarties," as they are called, couldn't be more different.  The first little girl is very quiet and shy.  But she smiles freely and responds to my occasional questions with bright, alert, answers.  I've learned her favorite foods, animals, and colors.  The third...

I used to explore the theme of childhood with my Junior English classes.  In literature, it's very popular...also a winner.  Everybody has one.  Everybody loses one.  The stories are important and valuable.  Usually, when teaching the novel The Catcher in the Rye, I'd ask my students to bring in an object that represents their childhood.  I'd do the same.  This exercise came early on in the year and would work as an ice-breaker and help us all get to know one another better.  Of course, there was all manner of Barbie dolls, and model cars, airplanes, rocket ships, and superhero toys.  Some kids would bring books and others went conceptual, like the student who poured a container of water through the air into a container and said that water represented his childhood because he almost drowned.  One of the most memorable was the student who brought in some clothing from her native Iran and proceded to tell a story about how she and her...

I'm seen as an old man named after an uncle I never met, If promise was a flood, and fire was frost Twilight would be more than life-like dreams  that bubble over the ledges of time Give me the uniform of a minor league team that exists only in the mind, Just one more look to hold dear, with colors that make this life half as hard. As a young man, my lovers came mostly from ancient cultures but others from those busy being born, Most were restless within own their own boundaries, If I never wandered through dark woods the most beautiful would never have appeared.  Eventually, I moved on and away as they pushed years along like a noisy shopping cart. Old photos bring new smiles.

There comes a time when downsizing becomes more than just a good cleanout.  Some items that we seem to have clung too for a lifetime need new homes.  They are the objects with which we have emotional attachments.  They are the things we never could quite have let go of without an emotional toll. Yesterday I moved one such piece on to a new life.  It was a painting my father bought when a young man in New York City.  The piece was a signed oil by a rather unknown Austrian artist whose father was a bit more famous and thus more successful.  Nevertheless, because the painting is almost 100 years old, despite its condition issues, there is always a chance that it could accrue in value. I ended up selling the painting for a store...literally.  Well, not literally because I also got about half the asking price, which was fairly modest, to begin with.  The story is that a man bought the painting for his brother, who is beginning to show an interest in ...

Aside from all the other scandals and tales of corruption and greed, we're currently being exposed to these days, don't forget that this will go down as the year of the college admissions scandal. Today, the top of the news featured the headline that the 10th person (i.e. parent) was sentenced to jail time today. There is something particularly conniving and evil about the parents who would cat and buy their way into prestigious schools.  They have the money and the inclination to apply their sense of entitlement and privilege to the fullest.  Their kids will have the best...that's all their is to it.  But no, that is not all there is to it.  In fact,  I'd go further and say that is not all there is.  Getting into what you might consider a "good" school is highly overrated. Some of the kids whose parents got busted could care less about where they go to school.  In fact, a few were vocal that they didn't even want to go to college.  So what mak...

I recommend doing this.  Take a minute and search on Google maps or a similar website the home address of a residence where you once lived.  The older you are the better.  That way you can look back at how a neighborhood or specific street has changed over the years. It's been 50 years since I left the home I grew up in.  My folks were California transplants shortly after the end of World War II.  That makes me the classic Baby Boomer. Since they were older when they first had kids, their version of the American Dream didn't begin until they were in their late 30s and early 40s. The little home they purchased was finally paid for after both were gone.  What sold for about $15,000 then would probably go for $515,000, today.  That's a conservative estimate. Something sent me back to that old neighborhood yesterday and through the magic of the internet, I was able to walk up and down my old neighborhood streets. Back then, in the early 1950s, there w...

I found an old Peanuts cartoon panel I'd saved the other day.  Lucy is sitting on a rocking horse wearing a football helmet.  Charlie Brown says, "Football is the number one spectator sport in the country, horse racing is number two."  Lucy responds, "I can go either way." There was a time when horse racing was number one.  The old film clips show the grandstands jammed with thousands.  They once huddled around their radios to listen to the big races.  Telephones used to be banned from all racetracks.  Things have changed. As the sport struggles to right the sinking ship, there are a number of things that can be done and a number of things that already have been done. The track surface seems to be the narrative of the recent deaths at Santa Anita.  It's only one variable, and the abnormal amount of absorbed rain in Southern California last year is often cited.  Possibly.  But the strength and stamina of the breed factors in here....