Daily Blues & Views

I have a very rare record.  It is a 7 inch 331/3 disc that was recorded in 1968.  This small artifact would have no real value save for a few songs by one of the artists recorded. Here's the story:  Early in 1968 I took interest in a new literary magazine being planned by some UCLA students.  I think it was an ad in The Daily Bruin newspaper that first sparked my interest.  I was writing a lot of poetry in those days and was looking for outlets to publish.  Since I had succeeded in applying for and then getting accepted to a poetry workshop course, I had the novel thought in my mind that what I was saying might be worthy of a larget audience. As is often the case, when I met with a small group of the students behind the newspaper ad/call for submissions, I emerged as one of the "poetry editors" of the magazine.  To be sure, this was a fledgling effort, but the people involved had some solid ideas.  I liked them and their vision. The magazin...

The country has quarantine fatigue.  The weather, in most places, is goading the people to action.  They want more than extended walks, trips to the grocery store or gas station, essential forays into the dystopia.  They want their lives back. In typical American fashion, many feel the need to demand their rights, quote the Constitution, and demonstrate their rage in public.  The government is, according to this view, not treating them as the adults they are and they are mad as hell and won't take it anymore. They want nothing to do with spikes, new waves, or predictions of the "darkest winter" likely to come.  They need to go to the beach, the neighborhood bar, any restaurant, no matter what form that might take.  It's bad enough they can't attend a live sporting event, but at least some car, horse, and possibly human races will soon be held in silence.  There might even be basketball and some form of baseball. They are Americans and demand thei...

Yesterday was the first Saturday in May.  It might have been a traditional first Saturday if the Kentucky Derby had been run.  It wasn't.  For the first time in 75 years, the grandstand at Churchill Downs was empty.  Along with sports stadiums and large arenas, most race tracks have stopped. The Derby is a real harbinger of Spring along with the leaves on trees, robins, and snowmelt that fills rivers and streams.  The birds are there and the streams are swollen, but we don't have Spring Training anymore.  Not this year. All, however, is not doom and gloom.  Yesterday no Kentucky Derby but it has been rescheduled for the first Saturday in September.  The management at Oaklawn Park, in Hot Springs, Arkansas did take advantage of the date and offered in place of "the" Derby the 2020 version of the Arkansas Derby.  Oaklawn's Derby has traditionally been an important prep race for would-be Kentucky Derby aspirants.  That still goes.  R...

I got out my old copy of The Grapes of Wrath this morning.  Something I heard on an early national newscast used the phrase "I to We." That's Steinbeck's phrase, I thought, and then later I opened my battle-scarred copy of the text to Chapter 14 and re-read the little 3-page essay that is one of the most powerful inter-chapters of this epic novel.  I say battle-scarred because my copy looks as if it survived a war.  I purposely chose an old, beat-p copy of the novel when I first began to teach it on a regular basis.  That's because I intended to mark it up, write all over it, riddle it with Post-it notes and bend every page...often. What Steinbeck was writing about during the Great Depression of the 1930s is happening again, right now as our country grapples with the Coronavirus pandemic. This public health crisis was always political.  Just as a worker's wages, hours, and conditions have always been.  But we are experiencing a very large dose of kindn...

It's in the air.  No, not a virus or even the abundant pollen this time of year.  It's swirling like a wisp of smoke over our heads and silently through our minds.  Some articulate, but most just think about it.  The earth is seeking to right the ship.  The earth has sent out a memo and as we all know the times, they are a changin.' We've hit the end of the spectrum.  Can't go farther.  Turn, turn, turn. Some called it the myth of the eternal return; others simply karma.  What goes around comes back around.  Or some other version of payback.  This is not revenge.  This is learning a lesson. This is old school actions have consequences. Any thinking person knows that our democracy is in grave danger.  We have some immediate tasks to resolve but after the coronavirus pandemic, we have to come together as a nation and purge Washington D.C. of a hapless President and an administration that lacks the will or intelligence to lead ...

Just now, on the "Breaking News" is a line of cars miles long somewhere in Texas.  People lined up for food.  No job and now no food in the continuing pandemic reality we've inherited.  All this while in other parts of the country crops are being plowed under and milk is poured in ditches to raise farmer's prices. 85 years ago, we saw the same thing.  In the Great Depression, people formed bread lines and instructed the soup ladelers to "dip deep, goddammit."  The soup was so thin that only a deep dip would retrieve a chunk of potato or an errant piece of carrot.  We've been here before as a nation. Just as the trauma of a national depression left permanent scars, so too will this coronavirus pandemic.  In preparing for a "new normal" we would do well to remind ourselves about the lessons of the Great Depression. In his remarkable oral history of the Depression, Studs Terkel interviewed many folks from all walks of life.  Some of the stories...

Outside it looks as if everyone is riding the range.  Bandanas make pedestrians all look like bank robbers or kids playing Western movies.   But they are necessary now that we've moved into our third week of quarantine. The gym is closed so we've taken to long walks trying to get in those thousands of steps.  It's easy to cross the street now.  Anywhere.  People approach on the sidewalk and come within 100 feet or so before the little game of "chicken" takes place and somebody either crosses the street or goes wide. Rarely do  I see more than a pair of people moving about together.  Nobody sits at the outside tables of restaurants or bars because they've all been removed.  In my neighborhood, like many I suspect, businesses are taking this time to remodel, re-do the floors.  The new businesses that we were waiting for are all on hold. This year my tax man would meet no client in person.  After a phone call, we remembered to take ...