Uke Millennium

In Which the Author Relates How He Got a Mild Concussion

2011-03-12T18:37:00.001-08:00

I know. I'm milking this for all it's worth. But here is the story:

So we have this pep rally at Vista del Blanco High School, where I teach, and I have been asked to participate in the balloon Popping competition. There are five members to a team. Each team member has a balloon tied to his or her leg. When the whistle sounds the teams attack one another, trying to pop all of the other team's balloons.

I lead the charge, thinking my team will follow me. There I am, in enemy territory, when I hear behind me "Pop! Pop! Pop! POP! Run Mr. O! RUN!"

I turn around and see my team has been decimated.

A smarter man would have surrendered, but I am filled with tiger blood and I attack the other team single-handedly. The desperate battle ensues. I take a step and notice there's nothing to step on.

As I go down, I think that I'm correcting myself, but I keep going down. I fall on my knee, then my arm, then my shoulder, then my upper back, and finally, the back of my head, which hits the cement.

Apparently, I stepped off the stage and into the surrounding gutter.

I didn't lose consciousness. I thought that I might be bleeding, so I felt the back of my head before I got up. It was moist, but that turned out to be sweat.

I got up as many students rushed to help me. I was a little dazed and had to catch my breath. Then I told everyone that I was alright.

I walked back to my room, clear at the other end of the campus, and went to my desk and sat down.

As I sat there, I realized that, if I were brain-injured, I probably wouldn't feel it. So I walked back to the front of the school and into the health office and asked the aide there to look at the back of my head. She told me that it was very red and that a welt was forming and that I should see a doctor.

She called in the Assistant Principal who agreed.

This is where the "system" really broke down. My only excuse for what I did was that I had just hit my head on concrete.

What should have happened was that the Admin on duty should have taken me into the health office after I fell. They should have sat me down, given me an ice pack to minimize the swelling of my brain, asked me some simple questions like what day it was and where I was to see if my brain was functioning properly, taken a statement about what happened and taken me to their Workman's Comp doctor.

None of this happened.

I asked if they meant that I should go to urgent care. They told me that I should. So, I went to my car and drove myself to MY urgent care doctor.

Half-way there, I realized what a stupid idea that was--but I was almost there, so I drove on.

When I got there, I felt pretty steady. I checked in. A doctor put me through a series of balance and coordination tests and said that I had suffered a minor concussion. He prescribed a pain-killer for the headaches that were coming my way.

The headaches and other pains have been pretty minor, but I have been taking the meds about once a day. I didn't see the Workman's Comp doctor until Friday.

She performed the same tests as the other doctor and had me x-rayed. Said that everything looked good. Gave me a prescription for inflammation. I have a follow-up on Tuesday.

Insignificant memories 2

2010-08-26T21:19:00.000-07:00

So my students shared some of their insignificant moments today:

1. "I have three. The first is when my dad let me help him skin and butcher a bear he had killed. The second is when he let me help him slaughter a pig."

2. "The day I super-glued one of my eyes shut."

3. "My Uncle was supposed to be baby-sitting me, but invited some of my friends over and they all got drunk. They went out to the barn where the pigs were. I heard this squealing. Then they came out and built a fire and started cooking the pig they had just slaughtered. My mom came home and got really mad."

4. "When I was a little kid, I asked my mom if I could go next door to my cousin's house. She said yes. When I got there, two ladies answered the door. Nobody had told me that my cousin had moved. The two ladies made me a sandwich and let me watch TV."

Insignificant Memories

2010-08-25T20:46:00.000-07:00

Today, my sophomores finished watching Act Two of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Afterwards, as a lead-in to tomorrow’s viewing of Act Three, I had them write a about a memory of an insignificant day in their lives—one that may or may not have turned out to be significant later on. I gave two examples from my own life to show them what I meant, both involving my grandpa.

Both take me back to when Grandpa and Grandma lived on a ranch. I call it a ranch—we all called it a ranch—but I don’t recall any livestock or crops. All I remember is a couple of ducks…maybe a dog. There was a house and a barn.
The first memory is about those ducks. I must have been around four. My brother Billy C got the tall white duck. I got the little green duck. I use the term “got” loosely because, after all, they belonged to Grandpa and they lived on his ranch…for awhile anyway. For that matter, I don’t know that either of the ducks liked my brother or me because they only saw us when we came visiting. We’d drive up into the yard and there they’d be, flapping their wings, quacking. I suspect they flapped and quacked even when we weren’t around.

But in our minds, they belonged to us.

Then, one day we arrived at Grandpa and Grandma’s ranch and the ducks didn’t flap or quack. They were gone. If I remember correctly, no one came up with any euphemistic story about our ducks’ fate. I’m pretty sure that Grandpa just explained that he had them slaughtered and that he and Grandma had them for dinner one night.

Poor ducks.

The second memory is of how we used to fly kites there. Billy C, our cousin Byron, and I took our kites to a field next to Grandpa’s ranch and, with the help of Grandpa, Dad, and Uncle Bill, would get them flying. Once they sailed high into the sky, we’d send them “notes.” We’d take scraps of paper and tear them halfway and scribble messages to our kites. Then, we’d each slip our note onto our kite string and watch it glide up the string, spinning all the way, until it reached our kite. It was a wide, empty field, so the kites would stay up a long time without getting caught on any trees or telephone poles.

I must be pretty close to Grandpa’s age at that time, though he seemed ancient to me. Now, when I look at pictures from those times, we all seem endlessly young.

Things I Saw Today

2010-08-14T23:23:00.000-07:00

Two cats lurking around my mother's cat's food dish while my mother's cat sat under the tree, hoping they'd just leave.

Outside the grocery store, a toddler who called me Grampa. Cute kid, I thought. Later, in the store, she started one of those nuclear, screeching tantrums that shot through the store. How quickly they turn.

A tattered page from an old short story I had written.

A text from Billy C saying that Liam was on his way to PA.

My dryer full of wet clothes I thought I had dried a week ago. Ahhhh..mildew!

A student from last year walking into Wal Mart with her parents.

A bumper sticker with a picture of George Bush that said "Miss me yet?" I don't. Never will. Who would? Why?

A note from Emily asking me why I never write on her Facebook wall. I love you Emily.

Scarf

2010-01-05T10:20:00.000-08:00

First night of the new semester back at the Writing and Reading Center at the local Community College. As I walked through the door, I first thought that we had a new Instructional Aide, but I was wrong. The lady I have always worked with was wearing a purple scarf wrapped around her head so as to cover her hair. Not an attractive scarf. And it wasn't arranged very attractively--just sort of wound around her head and held in place by a couple of bobby pins.

The last time I had seen her, before break, she had cropped her long blond hair very short--but again, it was not stylish--just short.

And now, her head was covered. Had she converted to Islam? Well, she still wore her big wooden cross around her neck. Had she become a nun? I don't think nuns wear purple. Cancer? Maybe she wore the scarf to cover hair loss. But, unlike most people I know who have gone through chemo, she seemed pretty energetic.

I thought about asking her, but changed my mind because I thought she had probably explained her reasons a hundred times to others and was either sick of explaining and just wanted to get on with normalcy or that she'd offer an explanation eventually or I would just find out through the usual information grapevine.

Last Christmas with Mom

2009-12-15T20:11:00.000-08:00

It wasn't fun, but I'm glad I was there.

Everyone in Billy C's family was sick with that thing that was going around last year and they didn't want to expose any residents at Mom's assisted living facility, so they stayed home.

My gift to Mom was my time--money being tight, that's all I had.

So I drove through the pouring rain to Rubydoo to see her. Getting off the off-ramp, I was surprised by homeless guy sitting at the curb, holding his sign "Merry Christmas, anything will help" and scowling as the cars drove by. Also, another man stood on the island in the middle of the road, holding a sign advertising a local taco shop open for business nearby.

At Mom's, I put on a new DVD I had of the Soweto Gospel Choir for Mom to watch. I thought she'd like it more than she did. But she may have also been sad that day and, therefore, a little unresponsive.

While she watched and I listened to the choir, I tried to help her clean up the clutter of her room. She was wheelchair-bound and couldn't do much, so I did what I could and made a little more room for her.

The plan for the day was to see a movie and go out to dinner, so an attendant came and got her ready, giving her a bath and getting her dressed, while I repeatedly watched this one song that I liked on the DVD. The Soweto Gospel Choir sometimes does this weird harmonic thing where several people sing the same song at different times but somehow make it stick together. It's not exactly a round. I'm not sure what they called it. But I played this song many times because I just liked it a lot.

The rain came down hard and I hoped it wouldn't work against me. The food at this place wasn't so bad, but I didn't want to spend Christmas Day in an almost empty dining hall with silent old people who had no one to come get them. I wanted to get Mom out for a few hours.

I parked the car in the covered parking area and helped Mom get in the car, hoping that the rain would let up by the time we got to the Plaza, where we would be seeing the movie and having dinner. As we came out to the car, we had to pass a coroner's truck with a recently deceased person in a body bag waiting to be loaded up. I had noticed that someone might have died while going back and forth to Mom's room earlier.

We drove to the the Plaza and yes, the rain let up. But it was still cold as Hell.

First, I parked close to the theater and took Mom in to see "Doubt." A good film--but every few minutes, Mom would go "psssst" and ask me what had just happened. Now Mom couldn't hear very well, so, when I'd tell her what had just happened, I'd usually have to repeat it again. Louder. While other people tried to watch the movie.

After the film, we walked to the Mexican restaurant at the other end of the Plaza. The rain had stopped but a post-fog mist had settled around the shops and the cold bit at our faces. On our way, we ran into two teacher friends of mine, a couple, who were on their way to see a movie. I introduced them to Mom who told them what we had just seen and began critiquing the film for them , there in the freezing, foggy cold.

At dinner, I gave her her meds. And, as she often did, she began to zone out. Still, we had a pretty good talk.

My second gift to her was the gift of light. It was around 10 at night, and, as she always did, Mom began to dictate how we should get home. But I, as we drove down Arlington, turned down the first of the Wood streets and tuned to a radio station playing Christmas music.

"What are you doing?" she crabbed.

"I wanna show you something," I replied.

And there was the beginning of the Christmas lights. "Ooooh," she said.

And, except for the occasional "look at that house" or "those are pretty," we drove up and down the Wood streets, studying the light displays, filled with silent awe .

John Lennon's Dead

2009-12-08T22:08:00.000-08:00

At the time, I was 26 years old, renting a little guest cottage on Larchwood Place, behind a larger house where my landlord lived. It is among my favorite places where I have lived, almost like a studio apartment, it was so small.

I worked at Montgomery Wards, managing the catalog department. A job I hated, except for the parties after work most weekend nights.

I had just gotten a cassette player/recorder for my stereo system and had started transferring my LP's to tape. My brother called me with the news late that night. I had been recording my favorite songs from the White Album. In fact, I was recording "Julia."

I made joke (which I forget), mostly out of disbelief. It gradually sunk in about how this man was a force in the world who tried to use his popularity for good in the world.

Tom Snyder, host of Tomorrow on NBC, replayed his interview with John that night. Half of the interview covered the usual Beatle stuff and was pretty interesting. The other half included John's lawyer and was about his fight to stay in the USA--not really as interesting.

Double Fantasy had been released a short time before. Immediately after his death, local record stores had jacked up the prices for his albums...and people were buying them at these inflated prices. One record store manager told a local newspaper that it was only good business to do so. Eventually with enough public outcry, record stores brought the prices back down.

Yoko asked that people stop and observe ten minutes silence on a given day. I remember reading later in a newspaper that a girl had gotten fired from her job because she tries to observe the silence while on the sales floor.

A sad time.

The Writing Runs Through It

2009-12-04T20:32:00.000-08:00

Today at school, I had the students do a bit of SSR (Sustained Silent Reading). During past SSR's, I had been re-reading The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, a pretty good play by Lawrence and Lee, the fellows who wrote Inherit the Wind.

I had my TA re-arranging the books on my bookshelf, filled with books that I have recycled from my personal home library. The Thoreau play had been on that bookshelf, but rather than disturb my TA's progress, I just picked up a worn paperback copy of Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It that was on top of the pile of books he was re-shelving.

As I opened it, I found an inscription: "To Jeff, with Love, Christmas 1992." There was no signature, but I knew my mother's handwriting.

This book had been among my favorites. Mike Gribble had recommended it to me a couple of years before. Mike, a producer of Spike and Mike's festival of Animation, was always recommending books to me. As an English teacher, I envied that Mike always had the time and energy to read so much.

He died in 1991 of cancer. I called his home phone, hoping to get information from Dickie Mo, his housemate, regarding the memorial service. Instead I got the answering service. From it, came Mike's voice, thanking me for my call and telling me about future Festival of Animation shows coming up.

In an odd way, it was nice to hear his voice one last time.

I have no idea how Mom picked this book as a gift for me. When I picked it to read today, I had the notion that I had bought it for myself shortly after Mike recommended it.

Apparently not.

Mom had taught me about loving literature. When my 1st grade teacher told her that I had trouble with reading, she supplied me with lots of comic books to get my interest. Then, when she determined there really was no reading problem, she kept the supply coming and gradually introduced me to more challenging fare. I graduated from Donald Duck to Superman to Classics Illustrated to, eventually, books that had few illustrations, if any.

Today, I did something with A River Runs Through It today that I rarely do with any book. I read the introduction, written by Norman Maclean. He talks about writing the book in part to hand down his life's story to his children--something Mom talked about doing, partially did, but never completed--in part due to her inability or unwillingness to master her computer and partly due to her lack of discipline when it comes to just sitting down and writing. She got some of it out, but not as much as I would have liked.

Before she got her computer (was it her 80th birthday?), I offered to let her come over and use mine--I'd teach her how to use it.

She only came over for that purpose once. She was in her late 70's at the time and could still get around pretty well, if somewhat slowly. She had the Parkinson's, but it was in the early stages, barely noticeable.

I got her set up in my office. While I did some house cleaning, she wrote, occasionally calling out for help. I then went out for Subway and when I got back, we had lunch.

We sat in my living room and she told me about her vision for this--"I see this little girl telling her story through the different houses that she lived in."

Most of these stories, the ones that I know anything about, never made it to print. Sometimes, when I was with her, she would start telling me about her family history. A lot of characters in her family.

Her Mother and Father were among the most colorful of them. Grandpa was an alcoholic and the primary reason they had to keep moving from house to house. Grandma contracted Multiple Sclerosis and was the main reason they eventually had to move in with us toward the end of their lives. Grandpa just couldn't take care of her by himself anymore.

Grandpa started collecting birds in our old pigeon coop out behind our garage. He had a couple of parakeets, a canary, a cockatiel, and a myna bird that said "Hello, Bill." He spent a lot of time in that coop with his birds. Drinking.

He was supposed to have stopped drinking. When Mom and Dad found out that he had a hidden stash back there, it was good-bye birds.

Grandma was bed-ridden. She could move her head and had only the use of her left arm. She read all of the time: books, magazines, the morning and afternoon newspapers (my job was to help her find Ann Landers).

Mom had hinted a couple of times that, before Grandma became bed-ridden, her marriage to Grandpa had been troubled--that there had been loomings of divorce. "I've seen some pretty ugly things in my life," she'd say, and stop there.

After Grandpa died, Grandma would tell me daily that he had loved me. After she died, their bedroom became our den, but the walls were still lined with her books, most of which never left the house until Mom did. The shelves reached almost to the ceiling.

Some of those books, along with other memorabilia (and even some trash) sits in my garage. I have gotten rid of a lot of Mom's stuff. But I have trouble throwing away anything with writing on it. Some of it is hers, some of it dad's, some of it Grandpa's--mostly notes and letters, none of it organized for posterity.

I have found old birthday cards Dad to Mom, Mom to Dad. Some unsent letters from Grandpa to people I never knew.

I haven't thrown this away because, it seems to me, that's where their spirits are.

Today, I even found a part of Mom's spirit on my school bookshelf.

After my last class, I walked up to the office to drop off my weekly attendance report when I ran into a former student--now a senior--waiting outside another teacher's classroom. He was reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, another book about another river. I stopped and asked him how he liked it. We talked for a little while about that book and books we had read in my class and which ones he liked better and about books in general.

As I left him, he shouted out "Thanks for teaching me to love literature!"

I am haunted by books and untold stories.

10 Things I Learned at Open Mike Tonight

2009-11-29T23:40:00.000-08:00

1. No matter how unprepared you are, no how badly you need to rehearse your song, you're probably going to be much better than a guy with a puppet and a kazoo.

2. Stand-up comedy is always better when it's done by someone funny.

3. Dylan+accordion = just might work

4. Feedback happens.

5. Enthusiasm does not make up for being tone deaf.

6. Repetition usually works best in threes. But, if you're going to repeat the same word more than that, you'd better commit to it.

7. Wild Card performers are often more risky than satisfying.

8. SOME Wild Card performers are worth the wait.

9. The older folk are sometimes the best performers.

10. Some people who aren't ready to sing a deeply personal song to that special someone are often somehow ready to to sing that same deeply personal song to a large audience.

Last Musical Moments with Mom

2009-11-28T21:46:00.000-08:00

Last night, Billy C and were jamming on our ukes with our friend Victor K on guitar. This was a different kind of jam for us as Victor is a talented musician. I'm not saying that we don't know other talented people, but when you say "take it, Victor," he takes it. In fact, when Billy C or I asked one another to take it, Victor usually took it. The only thing we took was credit.

We finished our set with "So Lonesome I Could Cry," with Billy C singing melody and me singing harmony. It evolved into a meditation of sorts with Vic taking solo duties as we strummed along.

At the end, we began talking about music and its spiritual essence--not the exact words Victor used, but close enough. The main point was that words couldn't really express what he felt. He told us how there was nothing like playing with friends just for the sake of playing.

It made me think of Mom's last couple of years. Do did some research on Alzheimer's and learned that musical memory is something that stays with us even as our other memories leave. Mom didn't have Alzheimer's. She had Parkinson's. But the same truth still holds--at least in her case.

I stayed with her one night at one of the facilities where she had lived. She had had a very bad day and the woman who ran this home didn't know what to do with her. So I stayed the night.

I didn't sleep much because about every half-hour or so, Mom would try to get out of her bed. At the time, she couldn't walk much and getting out of bed would have been disastrous for her. So I'd go over and take her hand and say "Mom, you don't have to get up yet." She'd say "Can I sleep for just one more hour?" I'd say "yes" and then stroke her hair as she lay back down. Eventually, she'd drift back off.

At around 3 AM, while still sleeping, she started singing. Now Mom had studied opera and had been an excellent singer in her day. She sang an aria and, considering she was lying on the bed, she sang in perfect pitch and kept perfect time, her foot tapping out the rhythm as it stuck out from under her blanket.

And she sang the whole thing. At full volume. Sublime.

A year or so later, as her disease progressed, we moved Mom into a rehab center for evaluation. Most of this time, she ate and drank very little and slept a lot. Sometimes, when awake, she would hallucinate. We would be sitting and talking (she, her bed), when she would suddenly get this look of horror on her face. She say "Don't let me go!" and I would hold her hand more tightly while the episode passed. I realized, finally, that she thought that she was walking with me and was losing her balance--that she was falling. So, when it happened again, I'd say, "It's alright, Mom. I've got you," and she'd calm down.

One day, I brought my uke by for a visit and found her asleep. I sat there for awhile, strumming a random chord progression. Lo and behold, Mom started singing with me--again, on pitch, even though my fingers traveled carelessly from chord to chord. No words, just notes. But I felt like we were talking, so I played until she came awoke and talked with me a little bit.

Soon Mom moved to hospice. We kept reminding ourselves that sometimes people go into hospice and they're still around for years.

Once in hospice, she began the three-month decline until her death. In the beginning, she'd drift in and out of consciousness. She'd be out most of the day because, at night, she would go into sundowning mode, staying too antsy to sleep. She said very little during most of my visits.

One time, again armed with my uke, I brought a fake-it book and played some songs for her, many of them hymns. I came across one I didn't know. It had a Latin title. I asked her if she knew it. She then awoke to lecture to me about an aria with a similar sounding title and then sang it to me--again in fill voice, in perfect pitch.

And then fell silent.

That was the last time she sang for me.

Now, I'm thinking of how Billy C and I used to play with our Tinker Toys, Lincoln Logs, and Erector Sets, sometimes building hybrid constructions using all three, while Mom had Madame Butterfly playing on the stereo as she did her housework. We didn't think much of it because we figured that's just what everyone's mother did.

Thanks for the music, Mom. I can hear you still.

A Random Act of Kindness

2009-11-16T22:32:00.000-08:00

I have this thing called trigger finger. It causes your tendon to lock. So when I make a fist and then open it, the unaffected fingers open smoothly, but the affected fingers flick open like a switchblade. My ring finger on my right hand is not too bad. I have mostly a full range of movement, depending on how badly it's flaring up. My left birdy finger is worse. I can't easily close it all the way. When I do, it often locks pretty badly.

I demonstrated this phenomenon to my classes awhile back. I was trying out a splint to give my birdy finger a rest, so I felt I should explain it , so my students didn't think I was flipping them off. I made light of it as much as I could.

You see this thing has occurred in the past--maybe for five or so years. The first time it was pretty mild and it went away for a long time. Then it came back a couple of years later and I got a couple of cortisone shots from my doctor. It went away for about a year.

It came came back over the summer and got worse. I'd wake up in the morning and my birdy finger would be locked and would refuse to open. I'd have to massage it. During the day it was better, but could be painful at times.

And of course my left hand is the one I make chords with. It is usually flexible enough for that--but there have been a couple of times that I had trouble getting that finger to go where I wanted it to.

Anyway, today, as fourth period was starting and I was firing up my computer to take attendance, this little girl walks up to me and has this bag with the Victoria's Secret logo on it. She gives it to me and I study the logo and the look on her face--a look of compassion. I decide it's alright to see what's in the bag.

Now, aside from my concern about the logo, I'm also wondering why I'm getting a gift a week before Thanksgiving. I usually get stuff from kids just before Christmas, but not Thanksgiving.

I open the bag and there inside is a box with some kind of gloves in it. My first thought is mittens for the winter. I read the label and it says these are therapeutic gloves that encourage circulation for people with arthritis.

There's a card inside from her Mom. In her note, the mom explains that she wears these gloves mainly at night to help relieve her arthritis pain and that she thinks they might help me too. She also tells me that I can get them exchanged if they're too big.

I got big hands. No glove is too big.

As I realized what this was about, I was just a tad choked up. No tears, but that lumpish feeling you get when you realize that you could cry.

So this girl probably went home and told her mom about my trigger finger. The mom files the information somewhere and then, one day, probably while getting herself a new pair of these gloves, gets a pair for me.

God manifests himself in acts of kindness.

10 things i saw today

2009-11-08T22:37:00.000-08:00

In no particular order:

1. a little girl in a restaurant, a toddler, waddling around her family's table giggling, making me wish all children could be that happy all of the time.

2. Ruby and Pearl not wanting to go on a walk, but willing to practice a few commands.

3. a hawk flying over my high school's campus.

4. the listing of aspartame as one of the ingredients in my yogurt--blecch

5. an old dog toy that looked like it had been buried years ago, dug up, and then chewed up

6. a closed sign on a bike shop I had hoped would be open

7. a girl walking by who looked like one of my students but wasn't

8. two employees closing up the clothing across the street, checking one another's bags to verify no one had stolen anything

9. mom's cat sitting outside, looking through the screen of my open window, meowing to be let in

10. a hand-written sign on the corner of my street teling how I could make money while working at home

An Attack at School Today

2009-11-06T19:27:00.000-08:00

Our AP sent out an e-mail that said that this muslim girl, one who wears a traditional scarf to cover her hair, was walking to class by herself. On her way, she crossed paths with five boys, whom were laughing amongst themselves, not paying her any attention. When they got close, one of them from out of nowhere, slapped the girl hard across the face. Then they ran off. She gave descriptions of them, but not very detailed as she didn't recognize them from anywhere.

Leader of the Pack

2009-11-03T19:36:00.000-08:00

So an earlier dog-walking adventure led me to wonder what it would be like to walk both dogs together. You'll recall that, when I walked Pearl one night, two escaped neighbor dogs went with us around several blocks, walking in step with pearl like a school of fish.

I got one of those Y-shaped leashes for two dogs and gave it a try tonight with Ruby and Pearl together.

I discovered that 90 pounds, eight legs,and two heads' worth of dog is not as easy as walking 45 pounds, four legs, and one head's worth of dog. Fortunately, I'm bigger and heavier.

Getting them out of the backyard, into the house, and then out the from door was the hardest part. We've developed this ceremony where they go flat to the floor and become dead weight and I have to coax them out one way or another. Once I got them to the door, they bounced right out and, other than getting confused about being on the same leash, they were relaxed.

Once I picked the direction, they were fine on the street. Ruby (the smaller dog by about 3 pounds) took the lead, walking on the left near the curb. Pearl (the bigger dog) followed Ruby.

Once in awhile, when we paused or turned a corner, the two of them reversed positions. When that happened, they started walking into each other a little, bumping shoulders--kind of like those two guys in Stuck on You.

But they both relaxed more than previous walks and seemed to have a good time. Ruby was still the more nervous of the two, looking around when she heard a car approaching and maybe getting out of step with Pearl. But being with Pearl did calm her down.

I worried that the evening would be a tangled mess, but the pack menatlity kept things pretty orderly--except when we rounded the last corner and they sensed that we were near home. Each dogs speeds up when we get to that part of the walk and I have to pull back a little to get them to slow down. This was much harder with two dogs.

Like a Kid on a New Bicycle

2009-10-31T23:15:00.000-07:00

Took my bike to get tuned up today and got a bunch of gizmos put on too. I could have installed every one of them myself, but I am mechanically challenged enough that I would screw something up. The shop charged me next to nothing for the installation and I figure I helped their economy a little by letting them do it. The main thing was getting new tires. My old tires are mountain tires and I never rode this or any bike through actual mountains. The closest I ever came to that was when I used to ride my bike around the paved bike path at Lake Peru. There is one hill that you have to climb if you want to do the whole loop, but I always walked my bike up and down that.

I almost got a new helmet, but thought I'd stick with my old one for awhile.

I miss the days when I would ride without a helmet, the wind blowing through my hair--but these days, wearing a helmet is pretty important around here.

So I go to a nearby Starbuck's (I know, again) and sat and did a couple of crossword puzzles and graded a few papers.

As I walked in I found a familiar scene. It was like watching myself or an actor playing myself and an elderly woman playing my mother.

Parkinson's Disease.

A middle-aged man sitting with his elderly mother, drinking coffee and eating pastries in silence. She had the sad, drawn face my mother often wore--a symptom of Parkinson's. She was dressed up to go out--sometimes Mom would do this for the simplest trips, usually to go to the doctor.

So they sat in silence, mostly. An occasional word--the son trying to get his mother to talk. After about 20 minutes, they got up, he said "thank-you" to the barrista and headed for the door, his mother walking slowly behind him with a walker.

It reminded me of a time when I took Mom on an errand--again, probably a doctor visit. She still lived in her house at the time, but it had become more difficult. Her world had shrunk to three tiny spaces: Her bedroom, her den, and her bathroom.

Her hallways had become long journeys from one point to the next. It could take her ten minutes to get from her bedroom to her chair in the den. It could take her that long or longer to get to the bathroom when she needed to get there. And, of course, there was the trip back to her bedroom at night.

And transferring from her wheelchair took that much time as well.

She used to like to like to travel, when she was able.

A friend from her church gave her an electric wheelchair that had belonged to their mother, and that made things easier.

When we'd visit for Sunday dinner, we'd end the night by taking her to her room and setting her up so the transition from wheel chair to bed would be easy. When that became too difficult, we'd help her into bed. She would watch TV until she dozed off.

At that point, we had visiting caregivers who would help her in and out of bed during the week. But they were expensive and we could only afford a few hours a day. Eventually, of course, we had to put her in assisted living.

But back to our errand: On our way home, she asked if I would take her to Starbuck's. We went through the drive-thru window. I had asked her if she wanted to go inside, but she said she wanted to stay in the car.

We parked and she asked me to roll down the windows so she could feel the breeze. I realized that, at this point, she could no longer go outside on her own and just wanted that breeze while she was out of the house.

So we sat in silence. Once she muttered "That feels so good."

After that, when on errands, I'd ask her if she wanted to stop somewhere on the way home. And we'd sometimes go inside--but sometimes we'd stay outside with the windows down, sitting in silence as the breeze blew through my mother's hair.

Another WTF @ Starbuck's

2009-10-17T14:16:00.000-07:00

So my engine light came on this week. Then it went off. Then it came on today. So I decide that I should take it to the dealer's service center, where a former student works, and get it looked at. Whenever I take my car there, I walk over to the Starbucks about two blocks away to relax read, write, or do a crossword puzzle while I wait.

So I'm wearing my wide-brimmed hat that protects me from the sun's rays. I am a little phobic about too much sun exposure, partially because of my reckless youth and partially because a medication I take makes me sensitive to sun exposure. So I wear a hat most of the time, or duck for the shade.

But, I digress.

So, in Starbucks, I place my order--a venti, iced, non-fat, chai tea latte (not a coffee drinker). As I wait for my drink, I realize the guy ahead of me is a former colleague from work for whom I did not care. I didn't want to talk to him, so I used my wide-brim hat to incognito me. I feared that I was trapped and that I wouldn't be able to get around talking to the guy.

He didn't notice me, but I did notice that he was picking up three drinks in a drink carrier: two venti ice coffees and one venti iced, non-fat chai tea latte. He carried the drinks outside and set himself up, alone, at a table. And began reading his paper and drinking his chai tea.

Meanwhie, I stood waiting for mine. After a couple of minutes, I noticed no one was making a chai tea for me. I asked about it. They apologized for the mistake and whipped one up for me. As the barristo handed me my drink, he said that he had already made one, but must have given it to another customer by mistake.

So my former colleague was sipping on MY chai tea! He ordered TWO drinks, got three, and decided to keep them all.

Nobody arrived to join him. It was just him and three beverages, one of them mine.

And he just thought it would be ok to slurp them all down.

I have no pint here. I'm just sharing the moment.

What Befell Me This Fall

2009-10-11T00:41:00.000-07:00

I tripped today in a very public way.

I was at UC Riverbed with a flock of high school students who were working on research projects. Sophomores.

So my partner teacher and I are in the library working with the kids. I noticed one student on her cell phone. I go make sure she is on task. She tells me that another student called her to tell her that she and two others were lost.

A big bell tower with a Carillon stands at the center of this campus and the library is very close to it. That's what we told the students yesterday. So I tell the girl to tell them to keep heading towards the bell tower and I will wait there for them.

As I approach the bell tower, I see the three girls. I walk to them. As I do so, I have to walk down the steps at this series of shallow steps (there were only three or four) at the base of the bell tower.

I am looking at the three girls and think that I have already stepped on the last step and am now on solid ground.

These steps, by the way, are kind of wide. That is, each step is probably a yard or so in width. So it takes a couple of strides to cross each one.

So I step out on what I think is level ground and realize too late that I am stepping into air.

I am in mid-air and trying to correct myself--but quickly realize that I either am about to step on my ankle instead of my foot and that I could sprain it or worse,so I decide that I am going to have to take the fall to save my foot, so I collapse and roll. The minute my hand hits the cement, I let my arm collapse and roll onto my shoulder and over onto my back.

Then I get up and the three girls, who think I'm very ancient anyway, run over to me and ask if I'm alright. I tell them that I used to be a stunt man. I try to casually walk back to the library with them, pretending it never happened.

I feel a little bruised up and down my right side: my hand my shoulder, and my hip. But no real damage.

Things Ruby, Pearl, and I Saw Today

2009-10-07T20:37:00.000-07:00

A couple of places where Ruby and Pearl tried to dig under the new fence my neighbor built.

The pain in a teenage boy's heart as he stood amongst friends, among whom was his recently ex-girlfriend, whom he clearly had not gotten over.

A half-dozen kids strumming different chord progressions on their ukuleles.

A locked front door with me on the other side without my key, which I had left inside.

A window through which one could get access to my house if they wanted to.

Ruby panic at the sight of cars or people as we took our walk.

Pearl not panic so much.

A cat who really wanted to jump over two dogs to get from my living room to my bedroom.

A fast-talking woman who didn't breath between questions nor wait for answers.

Four colleagues who sit in the front row of faculty meetings but don't all seem to pick up on what is said.

Random Things I Saw Today

2009-09-28T23:24:00.000-07:00

A guy standing in a public restroom standing there talking to himself but actually talking to a guy in one of the booths.

A former student walking to class at RCC.

An ambulance driving away from my school as I was driving towards it.

A large group of punk kids loitering around a local strip mall disturbing paying customers while doing tricks on their skateboards.

My tuxedo cat chasing a cat with her tuxedo colors in opposite places, like she was wearing a white tuxedo with black socks.

Some kid jumping out of his parents car and running in front of mine as he ran to class, his image a silhouette in the glaring morning sun.

Ruby and Pearl running out of my house into my back yard and looking around as if they had never been there before.

Long Time No Blog; Walk the Dog

2009-09-27T19:31:00.000-07:00

Maybe I'll write about some of the things that have gone on with me since the last time I blogged here. But suffice it to say I just haven't felt like blogging.

Tonight, I walked Pearl, the less trained of my two dogs. She and Ruby are both very skittish about walking. Ruby,after doing dog obedience training has become moreso. Oh, she's become more OBEDIENT. She sits, she stays, she shakes hands. Just likes going out less. I think the three incidents that happened at dog obedience school might among the reasons.

First Event: One night, about the 5th meeting, some guy who had to switch classes brought his schnauzer, a little bitch who tried to pick a fight with other dogs before she even got inside the building where we had class. Once in class, this little shit of a dog would not stop barking and growling at the other dogs. Now ALL of the dogs had some sort of barking behavior, but most of it was playful. This dog was being very aggressive. Ruby is shy enough, but this dog just made her very uncomfortable. So, for about the first half of the night, Ruby would do what I told her, but wasto upset to take treats.

Second Event: Same guy, different schnauzer. The Schnauzer was ok at first, when all of the others hadn't arrived yet. But she went crazy when the bigger dogs started showing up. Again, non-stop aggressive barking. This dog also got into a fight and bit one of the other dogs on the nose. No blood drawn, but it freaked Ruby out.

Third event: As we got out of the car, a big Ralph's delivery truck pulled up in the parking lot and, as it bounced over the speed bumps, made a huge racket that spooked Ruby.

Anyway, she passed the class, but is still a little jittery.

Back to tonight's walk, as Pearl and I left the house, I was surprised with the relative ease with which we hit the sidewalk. But, just as we got going, two strange dogs ran up to us, having escaped from their yard. I could tell by their behavior they were very friendly dogs--but my two dogs don't like to make friends very much. So I tested how Pearl might react and kept an eye on her body language and facial expressions and listened for that low rumbling growl that signals a dog's intentions.

Pearl tensed up a little, but didn't make any suspicious moves. So I tried walking a ways and the two dogs followed. Pearl was a little uncomfortable at first, but soon walked pretty freely.

Soon, they were like a dog pack, running as a herd, with me as their leader.

Every house I passed told me who the dogs belonged to, but they were wrong every time. This one kid told me he thought one of the was his dog, but couldn't tell me its name. He told me his brother who was playing down the street would know his name. His brother down the street didn't seem to know for sure whether he had a brother--let alone whether one of the dogs was his.

One guy said that the dog belonged to his next-door neighbor, but the next-door neighbor didn't recognize them.

None of this bothered me too much, because the dogs were clean, well-groomed, and very well-behaved. So we just all four of us had a very nice walk. When I got home, the neighbors across the street told me that the two dogs belonged to the house next door to them. The gate was open, the neighbors not home, so we got the two dogs back in and closed the gate.

Teen Pregnancies from Hell

2009-03-14T20:19:00.001-07:00

I have 5 former Rancho students in my night class at RCC. Two of them are girls who got pregnant while still in high school.

One is no longer a teenager and her son is probably around 3. She's still so young. Her son is autistic and subject to seizures. It's obvious that motherhood has not been easy for her. She balances child, work, and family and she's only about 21--if that. The father is still in the picture. They live together and apparently are engaged. But, at that age, it's going to be hard. I gather that money is already a problem. And I wonder, if the father is anxious to stay in this relationship, why he hasn't married her yet. I may be judgmental, but this is a red flag to me.

The other is this little girl from my class two years ago who got knocked up by this football player (a real creep, in my opinion), who, as far as I know, never even made an attempt to be a part of the baby's life. The girl was a real sweet kid, but very naive and maybe got taken advantage of by this kid. Anyway, I pulled into the parking lot and coincidentally parked right next to this girl's mother. I went to the cafeteria to get a bottle of water for class and, as I came back to the parking lot to get my briefcase, this girl and her mother were having a shouting match about the baby, who they were taking turns holding. The girl had apparently kept her mother waiting in the parking lot and it had gotten pretty ugly. Again, it build down to this girl, still a teenager, not being very successful at balancing school and motherhood.

I just feel sorry for the babies.

I Lose Things Sometimes

2009-02-10T22:13:00.000-08:00

I just got a new flashdrive to back up my other spare flashdrive, which had nothing on it. I did this because I lost my old flashdrive I don't know where.

I think I lost it last Thursday, or whenever it started to drizzle. I remember going into Target on Day Street. I put my cell phone in my front pants pocket and remember the sensation of feeling two flashdrives rolling around amongst the pocket cargo. While in target, I called Mama C to she what supplies she needed.

Much later, I was getting my car keys and felt only one flashdrive in said pocket. But it felt like the one I now think I lost. The one I didn't feel is the one with all of the slide shows from the past five years of teaching.

Much, much later, while in a different pair of pants, I found the flashdrive I thought I had lost in a pair of pants I was preparing for the laundry. Somewhere along the line, I could not find the flashdrive I thought I had, which is now the flashdrive I think I may have lost.

The flashdrive I now think I lost has pretty much all of my school-related stuff, pictures, writings, etc. on it. I have most of this stuff--almost all of it scattered amongst my computer at school and my laptop at home--but the missing flashdrive has a couple of things that I have recently updated but not saved to the either computer, like my RCC syllabus.

If my past experience is any indication, I will probably find it in some pocket or shoe or something a month from now.

In the meantime, I did go back to Target to see if they had it in their lost and found. I discovered that the Target lost and found is at the photo developing counter. The girl working their looked through about eleven different drawers, several of cabinets, and even a couple of pencil holders.

I don't think she'll find it even if it's there.

So now I have two flashdrives with everything from my laptop on them. I got a little flashdrive holder to put on my keychain. It can hold both my flashdrives and, since it's attached to my keychain, they will be harder to lose.

I Know How Richard Nixon Felt

2009-02-07T13:35:00.000-08:00

I remember reading somewhere that former prez Richard Nixon cried during the finale of a revival of Carousel. I kinda know how he felt, although I don't know that I can explain it. I find myself feeling emotional about things sometimes, these days. I wonder if it's part of growing older.

Back one Christmas, when Pammmmmmy C-Hicklebottom and her family came out, we all went to see Finding Neverland the story of James Barrie and how he came to write Peter Pan)--Billy C, Leemie C, Princess C, Virginny C, Dave (Hicklebottom), and Laura, Michael and Emily Hicklebottom. Tears weeled up at two points: first where Nana the dog made her first entrance and second, where Julie Christy clapped to save Tinkerbell. I sometimes get misty just talking about that moment.

I think it's because I grew up when the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan was broadcast every year--not to mention that Peter Pan was the first musical that Mama C and Daddy C took Billy C and I to see back when we were just lower case c's. Pammmmy C-Hicklebottom was just an unplanned in Mama and daddy C's eyes at the time. Or maybe she was still an infant C.

Ruta Lee played Peter in this version.

So I took Mama C to a production of Peter Pan last night. I'm not sure the occasion meant as much to her as it did to me. Emily Hicklebottom, now a student at a local university joined us.

I mentioned to Emily the emotional tug of this show. I was kinda kidding, but not. Sure enough, through the first half-hour or so, I watched teary-eyed. Strangest thing.

The lady playing Peter was quite good. Her voice was strong and clear, boyish enough. During the one tune I had forgotten about, "Mysterious Lady," she also showed she could sing with great ellegance and range.

Hook also was good. His Mr. Darling portrayal was perhaps a little to fay, but effective.

The flying, while fun, did not have the range I remember. Peter especially had a good time with it. But the kids' flying seemed pretty one dimiensional. Peter used the body-language of flight. The kids often looked at times like they were just being suspended in air.

Mama C began to drift around nine, because she was so tired. So, I think it's matinees from here on. She just can't handle late nights so well.

But we all had a good time and she got to visit with Emily, so it was worth it.

Uke Circle

2009-02-01T21:47:00.000-08:00

We never potpone uke circle. Ever. Not even on Superbowl Sunday. It's just as well, because it had only just started when we broke up at 3.

We had about 9 people in attendance I think. I had told everyone that a couple of us would be there at noon to help people get tuned up and help beginners. Do got there on time, but I arrived 15 minutes late due to the fact I stopped by Staples and made copies of some songs.

When I did get there, I tuned my three ukes (I always bring extras, just in case we get a newbie--that, and it's nice to be able to switch instruments when the whim strikes). Then, we got to relax a little and chat with 2nd-timer Sidney, who showed up about when I did.

I think Billie C came in around 12:30.

Showing up early was a good idea because I could be a lot more relaxed--not to mention prepared to play.

I brought copies of three songs. Ana brought a couple. And Fu manchu Rich brought several. I had also laid out stacks of leftover copies I have made over the months--mostly songs that we have played and then lost by the time of the next circle. So we had lots of songs to play and we got of the ground right away and played almost all of them with time to spare.

I like it best when we play a lot.

TV's Kyle guested with a song about a cellar door that wasn't there, Do accompanying him on her uke. Then Do sang the classic "Health Science," a song that she wrote about her Health Science class last summer. Billy C sang the Jacques Brel hit "My Death."

I sang nothing.

We wrapped it up with a rousing rendition of "This Land Is Your Land."

I think next month is the 2nd anniversary uke circle.

Archy and Mehitabel

2009-01-28T20:42:00.000-08:00

Every once in awhile, I walk into a situation that makes it hard for me to defend the public school system. Today, I walked into another teacher's classroom to borrow a USB cable for my digital camera. A student teacher was discussing "poetry." She had a "poem" on the screen, the following selection from Don Marquis' Archy and Mehitabel:

The Lesson of the Moth

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires

why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense

plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became too civilized to enjoy themselves

and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity

but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
archy

I approached the teacher and said, "I'm a big fan of Archy and Mehitabel. She said, "Oh yes, I love poetry too"--not having the slightest idea what I was talking about.

I asked her if she knew the origin of this "poem." Not a clue. I explained how Don Marquis was a very popular columnist from after WWI and that he had created this character, Archy the cockroach, as a part of his weekly newspaper column. I explained that Archy was the soul of a free verse poet reincarnated as a cockroach and that every night Archy would crawl up onto Marquis' typewriter and hurl himself into the keys one by one and leave Marquis a column for the next day and, because he couldn't manipulate the shift or enter keys, the column would end up looking like a free verse poem.

I then explained that the Mehitabel was a cat who had been Cleopatra in a past life and now found herself living on the streets of New York.

She had no idea what I was talking about.

I didn't bother to tell her that, while certainly having certain poetic qualities, that it better fit the definition of parody because, in actuality, it Marquis was making fun of this new form called free verse, not to mention writers in general and how they suffer for their art.

Anyway, I love Don Marquis and I love the fact that people who have been to college have no idea who he is and don't bother to do a little background work on him. For that matter neither the teacher nor the student teacher had any idea that this poem had not actually been written by a poet named archy.

Don Marquis would probably be laughing his ass off.

Cooking with BABoR

2009-01-24T01:11:00.000-08:00

1. Chop two medium-sized onions
2. Mince four clove fresh garlic
3. slice one cup fresh mushrooms thick
4. Layer in crock pot
5. De-skin four bone-in chicken breasts
6. Place on top of vegetables
7. Pour in 1/2 cup of dry white wine
8. Sprinkle with 1/2 teaspoon each dried rosemary, oregano, thyme, cayenne pepper
9. Add one bayleaf
10. marinade in refrigerator over night
11. Wake up next morning, but not too much
12. Put on bathrobe
13. put marinading chicken crock in pot.
14. plug in
15. feed dogs
16. take shower
17. get dressed for work
18. put pop tart in toaster
19. Put water for tea in microwave
20. Note, while not yet fully awake, that crock pot appears to be set on too high temperature
21 Turn temperature down to lowest setting
22. eat pop tart drink tea
23. go to work
24. forget about chicken, except when anticipating how tasty it will be when you get home
25. return home after work
26. having forgotten about the chicken, stop by MacDonald's and get a Big Mac Combo
27. What the hell, get an extra big Mac
28. Arrive home
29. Fire up the computer and eat your first Big Mac
30. Try to figure out why you eat Big Mac's in the first place
31. eat your second Big Mac, not because you like it, but because you paid for it
32. begin to notice a faint death-like odor
33. remember the chicken
34. return to your crock pot
35. observe the chicken and lack of evidence of its cooking
36. remove the lid
37. note the lukewarm, disgusting chicken laying there like a corpse
38. note that, when you turned the heat down in your still half asleep fog, that you actually turned the setting to OFF
38. begin to throw the chicken, spices, and vegetables into the garbage
39. remember that tomorrow there is a potluck at work
40. Remember you signed up to bring a main dish
41. It is now too late to fix anything
42. set crock pot to LOW this time
43. allow to cook over night
44. take to the potluck
45. HAVE FUN, BUT DON"T EAT YOUR OWN CHICKEN
46. The next day, insist that you got sick after the potluck and that you think it was the lasagne someone brought to the pot luck

Snowy Egret?

2009-01-21T20:38:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Billy Canary, who really knows his birds. It was probably snowy egret, shown in flight here:

Except the one I saw looked more like this one, with the yellow beak:

A Big White Bird

2009-01-21T16:56:00.000-08:00

Today at school, after the bell rang, a group of students were stood around the window at the back of my room enthralled by whatever they saw. I could hear them saying something about a bird, so I went back there to get them to sit down, thinking that I've seen birds back there too and that it wasn't any big deal. Lake Perris sits in that direction and I have even seen hawks sitting on the fence outside my window.

This time outside my window, a tall white bird (I thought it was a white Ibis, but I have looked it up on Google and this wasn't the same species), strutted slowly about. This type of bird is common at Lake Perris and I have seen them flying over head many times, but never standing this close up.

It stood about three feet tall, maybe four, with long black legs. It was pure white with a long, straight yellow bill. The bird it most resembled would be the Great White Heron, picture above. But those don't go far beyond the Florida Keys. Also, I think Great Whites are bigger than this.

I went out and tried to shoo it over the fence back into its own territory, but it would just fly away a few feet ahead of me. I worried about what might happen if kids saw it during break. But, hey it wouldn't cooperate with me, so I went back to class.

I Thought Obama Was Going to Wait for Me

2009-01-20T21:18:00.000-08:00

I missed much of the inauguration festivities today. I had to go to Kaiser and do my annual diabetes triathlon with a registered nurse. The good news: I can still see , feel, and my blood pressure is down.

My intention was to go very early so I could wait in the waiting room and watch Obama's speech. But I couldn't find my car key, which has the little beeper alarm thingy attached to it. My first thought was that either Ruby or Pearl had nabbed it. They come from a long line of technology-eatin' dogs and have chomped down on a remote control or two themselves.

I spent an hour or so rummaging through places where I might have put it accidentally. Finally, I found it on the counter under the mail.

But I was an hour late for my appointment and the inauguration had already passed.

So I went to Kaiser anyway to see if I could get in because it says on the little card that no appointment was necessary, even though they had scheduled an appointment for me.

They told me to come back at 2 because they had an opening then

So I went to Starbucks and had some tea. Then, I went to Magnolia Bird Farm to look at the parrots and such.

They and some new birds in stock, many of which I had never seen before, species-wise. I am toying with the idea of getting a couple of birds, but am only at the early window-shopping stage. I used to have a few birds a long time ago and learned not to get another unless I could commit some time to it. While beautiful additions to any home, parrots and related birds are not good furniture. Canaries and finches, while they may appreciate the free food and water, would just as soon you leave them be. Parrots and related birds are very social and need attention.

They have a variety of cockatoos and Macaws at this place. But I'm thinking about smaller birds.

Actually, I'm toying with the idea of raising either parakeets or cockatiels.

Among the details of my visit, I noticed that a couple of Macaws had plucked their breast feathers out. I have a feeling this place is also a convalescent home for birds who have been neglected because the people here are very attentive to their stock. They hand raise many of their birds and give them lots of attention.

Another detail: there were at least three woodpeckers in the cages--two with the Indian Ringnecks and one with another mish-mosh of parrots.

Visiting this place relaxes me.

Speaking of relaxing, I walked the Roob and saw that fox again. This time, I got a real good look at him.

Add a Verse

2009-01-18T11:46:00.000-08:00

Just leave it where Jaysus flang it.
No reason to frame or hang it.
Forget who or whatever sprang it,
And leave it where Jaysus flang it.

Where Jaysus Flang It

2009-01-17T23:25:00.000-08:00

I think this may be a good euphemism for dying. Lately I have been referring to people who have "passed," because it sounds so much gentler than saying "he died." But to say that he or she passed describes few of the deaths I know of, because they were either sudden and chaotic or long and drawn out and probably painful.

So I think from now on I am going to say of the recently departed, "they went where Jaysus flang 'em." Special thanks to Howlin' Hobbit for the turn of phrase. I'd send you some cheese, but I'm broke right now.

Uke at Do's Dos

2009-01-17T00:37:00.000-08:00

Uked at Do's tonight with Billy C in attendance.

The night started slow. I got a call on my cell from Mike C, former student of many years ago. He's about 40 now and he's in own because his uncle is dying. He wanted to get together some time this weekend to take a break from the hospice.

Worked on Sweet Jane, which sounded pretty cool. We tried sneaking into it without the traditional opening riff, using Do on the dumbek instead, followed by me singing the first verse a capella (except for the dumbek), and then Billy C coming in with the riff on the chorus. After finishing one run-through, Billy C started into Satellite of Love which I thought was a cool blending of the two songs. It sounded like he was just finishing Sweet Jane, but--surprise!--it's now Satellite of Love!

The we did Tweedley Dee. I kinda suggested it because I felt Donita was getting sad. This weekend is the anniversary of Jim's passing. A couple of Jim momentos around the house caught her eye and she became bummed. I thought the song would cheer her up a little.

We then did Ofuskee. Not our best rendering, but we all like that song. One thing that pepped it up is Billy C doing a solo that was both odd and sublime. Up until that point, none of us did solos, I don't think.

Tomorrow, I'm going to join Mike in Murrieta for breakfast. Afterwards, Do and I may take Mama C to see her friend who is not doing so well. She and her husband are old friends of the family and they are the parents of a good friend who passed away a few years ago. She has diabetes and recently had her leg amputated and has trouble taking food. No appetite.

A sad weekend shaping up, but it had a good start.

For Those of You Who Think Obama Hasn't Done Enough

2009-01-11T21:24:00.000-08:00

I thought Obama would get me laid.

From Brecht to Gruber

2009-01-11T10:29:00.000-08:00

Last night, I went with Do and her girls and their boyfriends to the Largo at the Coronet to see Gruber--the Comic formerly known as the Naked Trucker--perform with some other guys, featuring sketch comedy from Gruber and his group, Two-headed Dog. I guffawed several times.

The The Coronet, by the way, is famous for being the venue where Bertolt Brecht and Charles Laughton premiered their English version of Brecht's GALILEO.

The Largo is a theater that used to be located elsewhere, but then moved to the Coronet, hence the name Largo at the Coronet.

Greg Proops had the actual Largo theater, while Gruber performed in a little room called the Little Room, which could hold maybe fifty people, tops.

As we waited in the Foyer for the doors to open, celebs abounded, most of them waiting for the Greg Proops show. Among them: Greg Proops, Margeret Cho, Andy Richter, Fee Waybill, This Guy Who Used To Be On Saturday Night Live, and I'm sure I have forgotten a few.

Like I said, the show made me laugh out loud. If you ask me to explain why, I couldn't tell you. I guess I could say that I just know funny when I see it. I once saw Lawrence Ferlinghetti give a poetry reading, during which he said trying to explain poetry was like trying to explain a bowl of roses. So, I guess trying to explain comedy is like trying to explain a bowl of rubber chickens.

That, and I think most comedy is disposable and, like a bowl of rubber chickens, is bound to wilt with time.

But, at the same time, I marvel how this ex-naked Trucker guy seems to churn out bits and pieces and do new material all of the time. I recently listened to a CD version of Steve Martin's "Born Standing Up," and it seems that Martin worked for years developing about three hours worth of material, then quit.

I met Gruber after the show. A pretty nice guy. Kind of intense, but upbeat and positive.

As both shows ended, the two audiences mingled again in the foyer, and, like Gruber, Proops walked through the crowd thanking people for coming. At one point, he walked up behind me and squeezed my shoulders and patted me on the back as if to thank me for being there.

I dind't tell him that I had just come out of a different there.

Climax Interruptus

2009-01-01T23:04:00.001-08:00

I have this condition called the I'm-Almost-Done-with-This-Book syndrome. I had an attack today.

It occurs when I'm reading a book and I have gotten to the climax and, just as the tension is building, I get a phone call, someone drops by to tell me about Mormonism, or something explodes and I have to run out of the house for my dear life.

Anyway, I have been reading this one book since summer. It's called Cloudsplitter and it's about the abolitionist John Brown as told by his son Owen, the last surviving member of the raiding party at Harper's ferry, who, by the way, settled in a shack out in Alta Dena after the raid, tending goats and sheep. He's an enigmatic figure because he kept to himself and never much talked about his father or the raid.

Anyway, I've got 20 pages left and I am at the part where the raider's kidnap George Washington's nephew, Col. Lewis Washington, and take him and others hostage in the fire station, when the phone rings. It's a friend. We talk for a bit. I get back to the book.

The phone rings again, just as Oliver Brown walks out of the fire station with a white flag and a hostage and gets shot. Another friend.

It happens again and I let the phone ring and the answering machine clicks on. It's Do. I am 5 pages away from finishing this book, so I figure I'll call her back. She will hopefully understand.

This happens to me almost every time I read a book and get close to the end. I get into the rhythm of the final moments and am really engrossed in what may happen next and I get interrupted. That's why I prefer reading late at night.

Awake!

2009-01-01T11:33:00.000-08:00

No, this isn't going to be about some religious conversion. I just wanted to add to yesterday's blog that another benefit of the CPAP is that I haven't felt like dozing off in the middle of the day. There was a time that I thought I had become narcoleptic. I would be in the middle of something--like teaching--and, if there was a moment when I was not being active--say, listening to a student presentation or showing a video clip or sitting in a meeting and listening to the discussion on a topic I had brought up--I would nod off. On days off, I would find myself wanting to nap, even if I had slept in that morning.

On those days that I would complain about being too tired to do anything, folk, you have no idea how wound down I was feeling.

I only noticed yesterday, but I haven't even thought about taking a nap for about three days. And I haven't been sleeping excessively--just around 8 hours. before, I would sleep in and still feel unrested.

We'll see if this holds over when I go back to work, but I have a schedule next semester that should allow me to get to bed earlier.

So, if the people who make CPAP machines need an endorsement, I'm available.

All Clear

2008-12-31T10:46:00.000-08:00

So now I have my CPAP machine to help me keep breathing at night, a humidifier attachment to keep my nasal passages from drying out (and man do they dry out), a perscription for allegra, a perscription for flonase, and I'm good to go. The two medications clear me right up so I can breath through my nose. So I have been using the CPAP for the past few nights and it works like a dream.

Just before I satrted using it again, I actually had a dream where I could not breath. It was so real, my lack of breathing in dreamland caused me to wake up and gasp for air. I suspect it was one of those dreams that was triggered by the reality that I had actually stopped breathing.

I've been able to sleep the past couple of nights without any of that happening. Usually get the full eight hours. I still wake up a couple of times (I think three times last night), but I am still able to drop right back off into winkin-blinkin-and-nod-land. Some of the same things that usually keep my brain spinning are still there, lurking, but they don't keep me up.

Billy C, Ben, Jackson, and Me

2008-12-28T11:43:00.000-08:00

The Folk Music Center celebrated its 50th anniversary last night. I didn't get an invite, but all of the other Canaries did.

Billy C either found or got his invite yesterday, so he e-mailed me and we decided to go.

I at first thought that it would be like a tiny reception with maybe some snacks and stuff. So I left the house without my ax. Billy C brought his, which is when the light pinged in my head: this is a FOLK MUSIC center, people will probably play music, people will probably be INVITED to play music. So, I went in unarmed, but I figured that I could borrow Billy C's if there was an invitation to play.

Then I realized, hey Ben Harper owns this place. This may actually be quite the shindig!

Harper's grandparents, Charles and Dorothy Chase, first opened the Folk Music Center and Ben, when he became successful, bought it.

So, now I realized this shindig might actually be a hullabaloo!

We got there and a line had already formed, just like open mike night. Ellen, Harper's mother and the store's manager, opened the doors, and, sure enough, this was set up to be a real party. As guests walked in, they received commemorative t-shirts--they even had one in my size. And a gourmet buffet had been spread in front of the guitar wall. Harper himself had just snagged a gourmet cupcake as he greeted old friends from town.

As I shuffled through from the door to where the eats were, I looked behind me and there was Jackson Browne. Other players were there, band members and such. The stage had been set up, so clearly there would be music.

Ellen announced that anyone who wanted to play could get up and play one song. A guy with a kazoo got up and played "Happy Birthday." As the first few players performed, I thought about going up myself, but the acts got better and better. I thought about doing "The Green-Eyed Dragon" a capella, but the acts just kept getting better. Then Ben Harper and Jackson Browne performed.

I should mention here that the Folk Center is not all that big and could hold, at best, maybe a hundred people for concert purposes. So, I'm standing maybe 15 feet from the stage.

So they were good and they stuck, technically, to the one song per person rule. At the end of his song, Harper thanked everyone for coming and I thought that was the end. And I decided that I was not going to follow them if it wasn't.

People kept going up. Ben returned to the stage often, sometimes with his mother, sometimes with other musicians. The evening ended with "Goodnight Irene."

A good time.

Things I Saw This Christmas

2008-12-25T22:12:00.000-08:00

A guy standing out in the rain on a traffic island on Mission Blvd. holding assign pointing out his taco shop, which was open for business.

A homeless guy standing in the rain on a freeway off ramp holding a sign wishing everyone a merry Christmas. He was scowling at the passing cars and shouting profanities.

A couple visiting Mama Canary's new assisted living facility with three dogs on a leash.

My DVD of the Soweto Gospel Choir.

Some people from either the coroner's office or a funeral home removing someone in a body bag as Mama C and I left to go catch a movie.

Doubt. The movie. See it.

After the film, in the men's room, a guy standing at the urinal next me missing--basically peeing on the floor without bothering to correct himself.

Two colleagues of mine (actually, one is now a former colleague) who met at my school, fell in love, and got married.

A huge woman at El Torito who not only talked with her mouth full, but sometimes had food hanging out of it.

The Christmas lights up and down the Wood streets while Christmas music played on the radio.

An ambulance in my rear view window.

Soweto Gospel Choir

2008-12-24T11:35:00.000-08:00

I felt like I had never heard Amazing Grace before and will never be satisfied hearing anywhere else in any other way. And the whole concert was like this.

They sang traditional songs as well as popular (but not "pop") songs. And every one was a gem. And every time I asked myself how they could possibly move on and top the song they had just sung, they did.

And the dancing was energetic and wild. And they did a lot of it while singing. And I couldn't see how they could possibly do both. But they did.

The performance of Amazing Grace included four soloists, each of whom sang relatively straightforward with some improvisational flourishes and they were all beautiful. But then a final soloist came out and took her verse into a completely different musical universe. Then all of the soloists sang their verses at one time, improvising off of one another in a kind of dialog between sinners testifying. I just don't know how they did it or why it worked so well--but it was blindingly gorgeous.

They finished with a performance of several Christmas carols, some reworked with an African beat. They kept asking the audience to sing along and normally I would have but I didn't want to miss a note of their singing.

The carols were kind of an encore. Except the group didn't leave the stage to be called back. They just stayed in hopes of wearing the audience out. And wear me out they did. This was music as a catharsis, which good gospel music is. But I could have listened to this well into the night.

Let's face it, this is the worst holiday season in my lifetime, but this concert was the the best gift I could ever receive.

End of an Era

2008-12-20T11:49:00.000-08:00

I'm becoming more Buddhist in my thinking these days. Not actual Buddhism--more like Buddhist lite. Most of my enlightenment comes from movies about Buddhism. Like Little Buddha. There's this scene of some monks creating a mandala. A Lama explains to Kris Issak how, once the mandala is completed, it will be swept away with the stroke of a hand.

Our life experiences are like that. Never go into creating something thinking it is permanent. It will save you a lot of aggravation.

My teaching colleague, with whom I have been teaching for 7 and 1/3 years worked his last day yesterday. He has been hire to be an Assistant Principal in another district at a middle school, where he will make his living yelling at hyper-active 7th graders.

Just kidding about that last part.

Sorta.

So, yesterday, our class had a surprise party for him. Pretty simple, really. A couple of kids put together a slide show of the greatest moments in class so far. Then, I gave all of the students a chance to say something to him about how he has influenced their lives.

Lotsa laughs. Lotsa tears.

He then held a raffle, during which he gave away his school-logo type shirts and a few other items.

I threw in an extra surprise. I had just got an account on Facebook and had started getting friend requests form former students. So I made a secret group and spent a little time hunting down other former students and adding them as friends, then inviting them to join my group. At the group site, I shared the info about my colleague's leaving and invited them to come on campus and help us say good-bye to him at the party.

I got about 30 students. Two showed up in uniform. They spanned our entire history together, going as far back as 2001. It was pretty cool.

Then, we showed another slideshow composed of pictures going back about 4 years, which was put together by another student.

Many laughs. Many tears.

The strangest thing is that all of these former students looked pretty much the same age to me. So I kept forgetting that not all of them knew each other.

Anyway, it was a good time.

I'll have a new partner next semester. Time for a new mandala.

I Sight a Predator

2008-11-24T20:29:00.000-08:00

As I hiked the Roob at dusk tonight, I spied I furry little bunny who had just hopped across the road and up into the bushes ahead of me. Just after that, about five yards ahead of me, I spied what I thought might be another bunny--but, by the length of its furry tail, realized was a fox. Whether it was hunting the bunny, I know not. It wasn't much bigger than the bunny.

Anyway, it didn't seem to notice me at first. Once it had crossed the road into the bushes uphill, it stopped and looked at me as I kept walking. Once I passed it, I stopped, turned around and stared back at it. There we stood for a few minutes, staring at one another. It was a fox alright and, even though it was almost dark out, I could see it very clearly.

We were probably no more than 20 feet apart. If he had wanted to, he could have leaped from the hill and gone for my jugular. If I had wanted to, I could have thrown a rock and hit him.

I ended our showdown and walked away.

I've seen coyotes, deer, various birds of prey, raccoons--but never a fox until tonight.

Uke at Do's

2008-11-23T00:11:00.000-08:00

We hadn't played together for awhile, so Do and I decided to to try tonight. Billy C couldn't make, seeing's how how his beaked was stuffed up due to a recent bizarre snorkeling accident.

So I go to Do's. We decided to play all of these songs with lots of chords, starting with "If I Only Had a Brain" The version she has is in a key unfriendly to both of our voices. I have a version at school in a friendlier key, but that did us no good. So we look on the internet to see if we can find that version, or a simialr one. Of course, since this is a mega-chord song, we felt it would be best if the actual chord fingerings would be there with the song.

We found one and played awhile, but Do thought some of the chord progressions from her version would work better if they could be transposed. But the chords are like D6 with an subliminal 9th and C12 with an dislocated 2nd and stuff like that. You know, the kind that take tentacles instead of fingers to make.

I find that I get frustrated trying to figure stuff like that out as a committee. I tend to want to go off and figure it out myself or just play the damn thing. I think it's a product of me not being an experienced musician and not having as much patience as I think I have. Even so, I Usually like what comes out of that process. Do has more experience with that than I do. Do, on the other hand, has a lot more experience than me working with other musicians and hammering out an arrangement. Anyway, I found myself spiraling into terminal crank mode. I think she sensed my frustration, so we moved on to "Paper Moon."

So I guess she wins the diplomacy award. I win the cranky award.

This was also a little frustrating because of one tricky chord change, but, after having played this song half-assedly for about a year, I had an epiphany as to how that chord change could be more easily accomplished. I find that, where possible, if I just bar the offensive chord, that usually leads to a solution of some sort. This solution started out with barring and ended with sliding my fingers from the barred chord to the unbarred chord. Also, I have always had trouble with the bridge on this song, but we worked that out too. Didn't exactly nail the song, but we played through it enough that we can both practice it and eventually get it down.

We also tried "I'll See You in My Dreams." Our fingers were twisting all over that fretboard.

We fizzled into "Sway" and tried working into "Perhaps. Perhaps, Perhaps," but we didn't know that song well enough. "Sway" is perfect for Do's voice and, when I first heard her sing it, I thought it would be cool to work "Perhaps into it it somehow as either a dialog between two dancers or even an inner dialog for a woman.

A lot of baby steps for me tonight. So I got a lot to practice this week.

Another Insightful Political Commentary

2008-11-17T22:58:00.000-08:00

I admit that I've noticed this, but I didn't think that anyone would actually WRITE about it. I'm talking about this article in Salon about Michelle Obama's ass. I mean, I've seen commentary about each first lady's fashion sense and appearance, but to actually write about something this specific? Are we supposed to be thinking about this?

I think a little less of myself for posting this.

And I do admire the Obamas.

Update on Things BABoR

2008-11-12T20:13:00.000-08:00

I stopped using the CPAP for a few nights. I had just gotten over a cold and still had some congestion and couldn't breath very comfortably with it. I will probably get the optional face mask for such occasions. You just can't have too many breathing tubes. I could also get an optional humidifier attachment for if I become too dry nasalwise. I am dried out sometimes, but not uncomfortably so.

I was really tired when I finally got that thing, so my first couple of times with it, I slept pretty soundly. The last couple of nights I have awaken the usual four times, but have usually fallen right back to sleep. I wake up feeling more rested, so that's a good thing.

Mind you, I don't think the CPAP directly affects my ability to sleep. It's only purpose is to keep me breathing at night. But I think the airflow soothes me and encourages me to breath deeply.

I lost a tooth implant. It fell out of my mouth and then fell out of whichever pocket I put it in. It is an old design and sounds, by what my new dentist told me, that it will be more trouble to replace than it is worth. Yet, it needs to be replaced.

Yet, I have at least two relatives with several missing teeth, and they seem to survive.

Like everyone else, my retirement fund is taking a beating.

I'm sinking into post-election ennui. I am very happy Obama won. I read the news--mostly online, since our local paper has basically become a propaganda tool for the Republican party. I think the 24-hour-a-day news cycle that we now have makes everything a little overwhelming and at the same time gets boring, because, let's face it, how much can really change every ten minutes?

I am basically old fashioned, news-wise. I think it works best when I just get a massive dose once a day and that stop thinking about these things for awhile.

Improv in the Classroom

2008-11-10T19:51:00.000-08:00

Friday. It started during 2nd period. We were reading a selection from a novelized version of The Ramayana.A kid was reading the battle between Rama and the demon Ravana and, as I customarily do, I interrupted him to read a passage in my melfluous baritone. I had interrupted several students, kinda on purpose for comedic effect.

So, this time he interrupts me back, trying to be more dramatic. "Aha," I says to myself, "two can play this game," and I re-interrupted him. It became a kind of jam session/competition.

So the next period, I says to my teaching partner, "Why don't we do the same thing this period with you and me trading off?"

"Sure," he says.

So I begin to read the same battle-scene passage, once again in dulcet tones. Soon, my colleague interrupts me, trying to out-drama me. We go back and forth a little.

Then, he gets up on a desk top and starts walking across the desks, reading as he goes.

I then go to my prop closet (where I keep various thingies that students have left in my room unclaimed over the years) and pull out a retractable light saber and read while swinging and thrusting about the room, stabbing the occasional unsuspecting student.

Pretty soon, are flying about the room, putting on wigs and beards, throwing stuffed animals and other soft toys at one another. At one point, my colleague reads a passage as a rap. I pull out my uke and improvise a song in response, using a simple three-chord progression.

This went on for about ten minutes longer than it should have, but the students had a good time.

I got a couple of compliments on the song and have even began working out some actual lyrics based on the book.

The chorus:

Rama, forget your trauma.
Just chant your mantra
and you'll be just fine.
Ravana, don'tcha wanna
get right with yourself?

That's kinda the theme of the book right there.

Where I Was

2008-11-08T10:33:00.001-08:00

I'm not very good at calculating how long it takes to do things. But I try sometimes.

I teach a night class at Rio de Nada Community College, Sou Mo Campus. The class meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I had scheduled individual conferences in place of the regular class meetings--not noticing that it would take place during election week. So, last week I asked the students if anyone would like to come in early for their conference and, of course, most of them did. So I started the meetings at 5 and finished them by around 8--giving me time (so I thought) to go somewhere and watch the election results come in.

I thought the vote-counting process would take longer.

I was tired (sleep continues to be an issue for me). But I had two stops to get to.

The first one was at a friend's house. It was on the way to the 2nd one at Back to the Grind.

As I got out of my car, a friend was leaving my 1st stop. He told me that McCain had just given his concession speech.

Dang! I would have liked to see that Live, that is.

I got into the party just in time to see Obama and his family walk out onto the stage.

What a speech. People in the room, not all of whom are strong supporters, wept. I left soon after because I was tired.

I showed both speeches to my classes the next day. I don't do this sort of thing often because I don't like to foist my politics on a captive audience. But this was historic. A barrier had been breached.

My other point for showing the speeches was to show how it's supposed to be after an election. One candidate concedes, graciously, and pledges his support to the winner--reminding his followers that we are all fellow citizens. The other humbly accepts the victory and strikes a conciliatory tone towards the other side.

Yeah, I know the fighting is about to start again, but there needs to be a cleansing in this country--kinda like right after 9/11, where people unite. Yeah, I know we actually became a more divided nation and that our president steered our attention away from who the real enemies were, but RIGHT after, we were pretty united.

I teach at an ethnically diverse school. When I played the Obama speech, some kids wept like Jesse Jackson. I know a lot of people don't like Jesse, or Al, for that matter. But Jesse Was there for much of the civil rights movement and saw a lot of people go down before their time. When you think of how many people died on the road to civil rights, you have to admit this is a pretty amazing election.

Bobby Kennedy predicted in 1961 that we might see an African American president within 40 years. He was about 7 years off. But that's a pretty good prediction.

Mama Canary Votes

2008-11-03T20:53:00.000-08:00

So I go to Mama C's assisted living place Sunday Night and get her to fill out her absentee ballot. I knew that she wouldn't do it on her own. So, I read her each item and she told me what to mark. There were a couple of votes I didn't agree with, but it's her vote.

She was glad she got to vote. Today, I dropped it off at the registrar's office.

Go Obama!

Snore No More

2008-11-02T20:38:00.000-08:00

It's some kind of National Blog Month or something. I missed yesterday, but I am going to try to blog every day this month, no matter how short or stupid the post is.

I got a CPAP machine. I have no idea what CPAP stands for, but it's supposed to help me with my sleep apnea. I'm supposed to wear it when ever I sleep.

I always expected these things to be heavy and uncomfortable, but this isn't so bad. It's like the gizmo I wore for testing my sleep-breathing requirements a couple of weeks ago.

I strap this tube to my nose, using this head thingy that is soft a stretchable. It's not too tight. I push two buttons and the airflow starts and then increases gradually to my level of need. The nose piece is soft, pliable plastic. It blows air to my nostrils as I inhale. I can breath through my mouth if I want, but this machine kinda fights back to discourage me. So, presumably, I breath through my nose all night, thus preventing snoring and, more importantly, preventing the stoppage of my breathing.

The danger with sleep apnea, of course, is that you stop breathing in your sleep--and it's possible that you won't start again. It also prevents you from going through the entire sleep cycle and missing your most restive sleep. It can effect things like your memory, your blood sugar levels, and your heart, among other things.

Anyway, so I seem to wake up less often at night with this thing on(I used to wake up around four times a night and then have trouble getting back to sleep). When I do wake up, I tend to go back to sleep. The air flow encourages deep breathing, which relaxes me, which eases me back to sleep.

I think I still have trouble shutting off my brain at night, but this seems to be a good first step in solving my sleep problems.

"W"

2008-10-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

Went and saw this with Do.

This film turned Oliver Stone into the Anti-Stone in that he didn't spend the whole film hitting you over the head with his perspective. Instead, it was a high energy flatline. It fell short of everything it pretended to be.

The first of my concerns is whether or some of the details from Bush's life and presidency were true as depicted in the film. A few incidents have been in the public dialog for some time, but others were new to me.

The few reviews I have read praised several actors for not being caricatures of the people they portrayed. But That was one of the problems. As fine as many of the actors were, they were flat caricatures. Most of them played their parts on one note.

I chuckled a couple of times, but never felt any empathy for any of the characters. About an hour into it, I was anxious for it to end.

Let me be clear that I hate what W and his cronies have done to this country. But this film did nothing for me.

Debate 3

2008-10-15T22:01:00.001-07:00

Tonight's debate was underwhelming for me. It didn't change my vote.

But one thing I found funny and very informative. Towards the end of the debate, John McCain laughed at a joke he had made and snorted. I don't think I want a president who snorts when he laughs.

New Heart, New Job

2008-10-12T11:17:00.001-07:00

I have 5 years until my projected retirement. I may be wrong, but I am determined to NOT work full-time past that date, even if my 401K doesn't rebound. I have this philosophy about quality of life being as important as money. I joke about living in my car, but sometimes I'm not sure that I am.

My friend Tom got to retire early at 55. His doctor told him that he needed to for his health. He had high blood pressure. He and his wife discussed this and decided that, with his Calstrs (Teacher's retiement) and her income (she's in banking), they could live very comfortably.

The part she left out was that she was seeing another man and had planned on divorcing Tom very soon.

So Tom retired, divorced, got an alimony settlement from his wife, stayed retired for about ten years.

His alimony settlement comes up for renegotiation next year and he decided that he would not go through a courtroom battle to continue getting payments--partly because their adult son has asked that they not go through another big fight.

So he decides to go back and teach a few more years.

Then he has a heart attack.

Then he has triple bypass.

Now, seven weeks later, he gets a call from the district where we both used to teach together. They have an opening. Would he be interested?

So, seven weeks after a triple bypass, he may have a job.

I counseled him against it, but his doctor has told him to go for it.

My reasons for it are because, after his bypass, he has made the time to eat right and exercise regularly--something he has never done in all of the years I have known him. I told him that having a job where he had to be on premises at fixed times--AND take home work on weekends, AND join committees, AND deal with students in all of their most and least pleasant manifestations--he would soon find himself making excuses and pretty soon going back to his old habits, which would be a bad thing.

But he's going to do it anyway.

Part of Tom's problem is that he didn't have much of a plan for retirement--at least not as a single man. He's tried other things, but kind of half-assedly. He tried real estate, but let his focus be drawn away by this crazy woman he was seeing at the time. He thought he might like working at a winery and settled in at this design-a-winery in town, where customers got to order wine mixed to their specifications. I don't know how it worked, but the wine tastes like soda to me and the owners had no head for business, so they never had customers.

I guess I just want to live in a world where everybody gets a prolonged recess after working hard all of their lives--one where they get to recreate themselves into new beings.

I guess you've just gotta let people choose their own poison.

Religulous and "Pundits"

2008-10-06T17:09:00.000-07:00

So a gaggle of us saw Bill Maher's Religulous Sat Night.

The good news: Billy C and I got senior discounts without asking.

The bad news: Billy C and I got senior discounts without asking.

When I realized what had happened, I felt like going back to the window and demanding that the young lady take more of my money.

The film entertained me. But here's my complaints about Bill Maher, whom I think is funny and whose shows I have always enjoyed:

1. The vast majority of the people he talked to were ridiculous people who had no idea how ridiculous they sounded. Other than a couple of catholic priests and one scientist, most of the people he interviewed were fringe people who clung a cartoon version of religion. It was hard to take them seriously. A couple of interviews with muslims were also pretty calm--but I find it hard to judge all believers by extremists. I know from panels Maher has had on both Politically Incorrect and Real Time, that he knows of religious leaders who have a more intelligent view on faith. Maybe it would not have been the same film, but why not talk to a few of those people.

2. Just as with his book When You Ride Alone, You Ride with bin Laden, he interrupts important points to remind you that he tells jokes for a living. It's as if he doesn't trust the material enough to let it speak, and get laughs, for itself.

3. He's a smart guy, but, like most contemporary "pundits," he doesn't have all of the answers. He may have a lot of them, but not all of them. I get tired of "pundits" who have no more qualifications than you or me telling me what to think. Ask the questions, Bill. I'll do the thinking for myself.

But I am glad I saw it.

Electronic Elephant Trunk

2008-10-04T14:53:00.000-07:00

I went in for a follow-up on my sleep study. You may recall that the therapist gave me a gizmo that I had to strap around myself. I then had to sleep on my back while numerous electrodes monitored my sleep patterns. Eve though I took a sleeping pill, I only slept for about 1 1/2 hours, woke up, and spent the rest of the night on my back trying to get back to sleep--getting up once to rage against the porcelain.

So, this time a therapist gave me breathing gizmo used for people afflicted with sleep apnea--which I believe is one of the reasons I have a hard time feeling rested when I get up. She starts talking about the results of my test and I interrupt her to interject that, while they wanted about 5 hours worth of sleep data, I may have only given them 1 1/2 hours. She replied, "So you cat-napped the rest of the night." I said "No, I stayed awake the rest of the 5 hours and then took the gizmo off. She sad, "Yes, catnapped." I said "No, catnapped."

I decided that, since I did think that I had sleep apnea, arguing was pointless. I would just bring it up when I talked to my doctor next time.

The purpose of giving me the new gizmo was to determine the specific gizmi that I might have to attach to my personal gizmo when I get it: like a humidifier attachment and who knows what else.

The gizmo was much smaller than I expected--about the size of a small CD player. It had a tube attached to a face mask that attached to a hole through which air pumped in to my nasal area. It would keep my nasal area full of air so my breathing tube wouldn't be closed off. She said I could return it Sunday, so I figured I had it for three nights.

Night 1 I could breath alright, but the noise kept me awake So detached myself from the gizmo.

Night 2 I took a pill and, although my nose was a little stuffed, I slept for a little while. When I awoke, my nose was more stuffed , so I detached from the gizmo again.

Tonight, I will take a sleeping pill my allergy pill, and snort some nasal spray and see how that works.

A Sound of Thunder

2008-10-02T23:08:00.000-07:00

I did something in class yesterday that I have never done in 26 years of teaching.

I farted in class.

It was during 4th period and the room was dead quiet--the students working more quietly than any classroom full of teenagers had ever worked. I was at front and center, my back turned to the class as I checked my wall calendar. If there had been a spotlight on me it couldn't have been more obvious who did it.

I could feel it looming inside of me and thought I had it under control, but somehow relaxed and it happened.

It wasn't very long or loud--more like the sound of a bubble bursting. But I know that at least a couple of girls in the front row heard it. When I turned around, trying not to look like I had just farted, they were both hiding their faces behind their books, trying to suppress their laughter.

Every move I made must have looked like I was trying to appear to have not farted. I tried not to look at the two girls for fear my eyes would betray me. I then looked at the girls for fear of not looking at them would make it look like I had done what I had done. I walked around the room, acting nonchalantly, but the cloud of guilt followed me.

Since no one else laughed or looked up, I'm pretty sure that only those two girls heard it. I'm sure that someone will write about this incident in their yearbook.

Another career milestone.

Rockin' Open Mike Night

2008-09-29T19:53:00.000-07:00

It has been along time since I came away from an open mike night at the Folk Center feeling this good. A lot of good performers--a couple of duds--but this was the strongest evening in a long, long time.

Highlights:

Do sang her song about her health class that brought down the house. It was a lusty romp. A few kids were in the audience and she worried about the graphic language--but pushed through anyway. This is a pretty liberal crowd and, I think, for even those parents who might have found it objectionable, she answered pretty much every question a kid could come up with. I think some even took notes.

I followed Do with my song about the eco-system. I think I'm calling it "The Carbon Footprint Blues." Here is a sample of the lyrics:

Hummingbird hides while I hike the mountain pass

He’s afraid to fly—he’d like to kick my ass.

Lizard reads the writin’ on the mountain slope

Sets in the sun as he tri-i-ies to cope

Cause we’re trampin’, stampin’, leavin’ our footprints everywhere

We’re pollutin’, de-evolutin’, can’t drink the water or breath the air

Pissin’ off the birds and bees

Whoa! Mama Nature’s gonna bring us to our knees.

Yeah, I know. I need to record this stuff.

This 12-year-old girl and her younger brother took the stage. I sat expecting the usual cute kid kind of performance. Well, they ripped into this version of this Indigo Girls song. The little girl started singing and geez-o-pete she sang like a trouper. She had this beautiful, authoritative alto voice that blew everyone away. Then the boy broke into this guitar solo. They just set the house on fire.

Billy C sang his song about our grandfather and his chili--a really nice tune. It captures some of the essence of our grandfather. Billy C wasn't happy with the song afterwards--but I think it is pretty damn good. I just think it was one of those nights where one doesn't fully connest to the material. That, and maybe the song has to metamorph a little--but that just takes time.

Anyway, it was a good evening and really went by pretty fast.

Two Birds, One Dream

2008-09-28T10:42:00.000-07:00

So in this dream, it was morning and I had to get to work and I knew I was running late. As I was going out to my car, I found myself in the driveway of my parent's house and my car was a station wagon and the back was opened up. There was a blanket on the lawn and I heard a cooing kind of sound. I knew it came from a bird and I feared that I had stepped on it. I pulled back a fold on the blanket to find this fat, gray bird that seemed to have trouble just standing up and walking. It had a pointy beak and an area where the feathers had been plucked out, which had ants and little spiders crawling around. I thought that it was kind of disgusting, but wondered what I could do to save the bird.

Another bird, tiny and almost as round as a ball, with a black head and wings and white body scurried across the lawn to me. Neither of these birds could fly, although they both had wings. I thought about putting them in cages, but didn't have any. So, I put them in my car and went off to work.

Somehow, I found myself in the back of my station wagon covered with blankets as it sped down the highway. I got out from under the blankets and saw that I had driven past the town where my school was and somehow ended up in San Diego. The station wagon stopped in front of a Mexican restaurant and I got out of the car. I tried to pick up the smaller bird, but it sprang up and fluttered its wings, turning out to be some strange sort of humming bird. The other bird allowed me to pick it up and tried a few times to poke its beak into my skin and suck up nectar, as if I was a flower. It tickled. I lifted the bird up to some hanging tree branches and it climbed up into the tree.

I got back into my car, hoping to still make it to work on time, but I couldn't remember which school I taught at. I drove myself to the freeway, where the bridges were to low for me to pass safely. I had to slow down and lean back to get through.

The freeway ended on a beach sidewalk and I had to drive around there for awhile.

Then I woke up.

Last Night's Dream

2008-09-15T22:22:00.000-07:00

I had a wacky dream last night where I was part of team of doctors who were going to perform open heart surgery on a young woman whom seemed to be a former student of mine--although she was not recognizable as an actual student. The team of surgeons included Billy C and former teaching colleagues Bob, Tim, and Phill. Someone kept asking me if I was the anesthesiologist. I kept telling him that, no, I was going to assist in the actual surgery. As the student/patient was put under and as the head surgeon began cutting, I began to wonder if I could take it. Would I barf while operating? Or would I faint? Or would I pull through? Somewhere along the lint, the dream morphed into a surreal version of a European trip I took with Bob and another Tim that almost cost us our friendship.

I'm sure this was triggered by my friend Tim's recent triple bypass, the half sleeping pill I took last night, my general worrying about things, and maybe even something I ate.

I have no idea what any of it means though.

Re-Thinking Poetry

2008-09-14T10:41:00.000-07:00

For awhile, I was into writing short forms of poetry: haiku, sijo, sonnets. I'm not sure that I ever mastered any of them, but they were good writing exercises. At a poetry workshop, the leader--himself a published poet whose work I liked--told me that I should try writing longer poems. Funny thing is that I used to write that sort of stuff all of the time and found that the restrictions of shorter forms required me to whittle away the luxury words and say it with less.

One thing the songwriting workshop showed me was that how some of those old classics like Under the Boardwalk, Up on the Roof, and Stand by Me really pack a lot into a structure that consists of two short verses, a bridge, followed by a final short verse--often just a repeat of the first verse. Sometimes you don't even get that third verse. And the imagery is usually so simple and direct, yet it resonates.

When Peter (the songwriting workshop leader) performed Up on the Roof for us one night, you could tell that the song had resonated with him. He sang with emotion and was practically weeping when he had finished.

Sure, these songs were written by people paid to generate hits, often working in an office building in teams, but something crept out of these song writers' imaginations or memories that gave the songs endurance over time.

The other day, playing Stand by Me at the uke circle was kind of a spiritual moment for me. There we were, just strumming, picking, with the lady singing in her deep, throaty warble. I felt I could have played that song for whole two hours and not get tired of it.

And this type of song grows with time, even though the words and music stay the same. It's kind of like William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience--except the innocence and experience are found in the same song. From a kid's point of view, the song is about the idealism of young friends or lovers. From an older woman's point of view, it's about how and why a relationship has weathered the tests of time--and it's a promise that, even when insurmountable problems close in, at least you can take comfort in those close to you.

Make A Horrible Noise

2008-09-09T22:50:00.000-07:00

So at this past Sunday's uke circle, somebody whipped out "Stand by Me." This is another one of those early tunes that I think is pure poetry when done right. This older lady in the group took the vocal. She had this deep throaty voice--practically a tenor. When she finished, we just kept playing and Uke Forever did this sweet little solo and it was very quiet and meditative. I think we could have played that song for the whole two hours.

So I decided that I needed to learn the song in a key that fit my range.

So I get a version off chordie and take it to school so I can practice between classes like I always do. I'm having a little trouble with it because I'm working with tabs and I only sort of know how the song goes.

So, as I'm struggling and concentrating on the tabs and words in front of me, this loud, mooing kind of sound starts beside me and kind of startles me. I stop and turn to my right and one of my colleagues is standing there. She says, "I love this song," and continues this cow sound that sounds almost like singing only different. I tell her that I'm having trouble with it and let her sing while I play--thinking that maybe I'm o far off-key that I am causing her to sound bad but, no, she really does sing like a cow and is tone deaf to boot but apparently that doesn't bother her and she keeps singing while students who often stand around with me playing rhythm instruments kind of stop as if they have just witnessed some horrible accident and can't look away.

But I keep playing because I think maybe on some level that it is a noble effort and that, if not beautiful, it is at least sublime.

Swollen Pearl

2008-08-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

Why oh why do dogs get themselves in so much trouble?

I suspect that Pearl was chewing on some plant she shouldn't have or trying to catch some critter she shouldn't have--but I'll never know for sure.

Last night, at around 9, when I called the dogs in, Ruby came bounding in like she has been since I declared her Beta Dog (I'm the Alpha Dog, Pearl is the Gamma Dog). Pearl did not bound in behind her.

I clapped my hands--my signal to tell them it's time to come in. Nothing.

I could see a whitish lump in the distance--not moving. I turned on the outdoor light, and the lump looked more like a dog. But the dog, or lump, made no sound.

Oh God, I thought, something bad must have happened.

I walked out to the lump and, yes, it was Pearl, wagging her tail, but clearly not wanting to move. I pet he, but she did not respond with the usual licking. I felt her nose: still cold. I felt around for injuries but could find none.

So I picked her up (which is no longer easy) and took her inside, putting her in the sleeping area she shares with Ruby. She easily walked over to her spot and plopped onto the floor. Nothing wrong with her walking abilities--no limp or anything. She looked at me with that sorrowful look dogs get when they know they have done something stupid but are too stupid to figure out what it was.

When she turned to face me, I noticed that she seemed swollen around the muzzle and eyes. I felt around her mouth, inside and out. I checked her teeth and gums. Everything seemed pink and healthy--except that she wouldn't open her mouth. I tried gently prying her jaws open and got them open a little bit. but could feel that she either didn't want them open or could not open them herself. I could see her tongue clamped between her jaws--it was also pink and healthy looking.

So I called Billy C and asked if anything like this had ever happened to one of his dogs. He said Dil had had something like this once and was over it the next day. Vivage thought that it might be a spider bite, bee sting, or even rattlesnake bite. She wanted me to take Pearl to the emergency vet.

I know enough about all of the above to know that if it were serious venom running through her veins, Pearl would be showing other signs of illness rather quickly. But I called the vet, just in case.

The nice vet lady who answered told me to just watch her and see whether things got better or worse and, if they got worse, to bring her in.

So I decided to give it an hour.

About 45 minutes later, Pearl, had regained use of her jaws and was almost her old licking and slobbering self.

This morning, she bounded out of the house with Ruby and seemed pretty much back to her old self.

To Sleep, Perchance to Apneate

2008-08-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

So I have trouble sleeping.

I wake up in the night. I start to think. Suddenly, I get caught in this vortex of the day's issues and I juggle them in my head, trying to solve them--but never solve them. Sometimes, I just wear my self down and fall back to sleep. Often, I juggle the problems until morning.

I also snore pretty badly. I have most of the symptoms of sleep apnea. I usually wake up a couple of times a night.

Since lack of sleep can effect a whole lot of things badly, I finally got my doctor to refer me to respiratory therapy.

I went to this workshop yesterday to receive a diagnostic machine that would monitor my sleep at night. The trainer showed us how to wear it and what to wear with it and answered all of our questions.

We were instructed to strap ourselves to our machines and try to record at least five hours of sleep. The problem for me was that we were told to sleep on our backs, which I never do.

I took a pill before bed, lay there for about an hour, then fell asleep. I awoke about an hour and a half later. And I just lay there--first thinking about the device and it's monitors wrapped around my torso, taped to my finger, and stuck up my nose. Then, I started ruminating on the day's problems.

And I tried to make myself comfortable on my back, but I couldn't.

So I just lay there.

I tried my breathing meditation, shifting my neck, rearranging my pillows--nothing worked.

Finally,at about 2:15, I took the gizmos off and soon went to sleep--still fitful, but at least it was sleep.

I managed to keep the gizmo on for about five hours, so I hope that tells the doctors something of what they want to know. But I'm going to call my doctor on Monday and ask for e re-referral and perhaps a stronger sleep medication as a one-time deal. I don't take my current prescription regularly--only when I think I'm going to need it--but I think that maybe I've built up a little resistance to it.

Anarkalele

2008-08-04T15:39:00.000-07:00

Our Riverside Ukulele Liberation Front has been going on for over a year now--I think a year-and-a-half.

Yesterday's meeting had a loony kind of feel to it. I t was probably the largest meeting so far. We started off small and our numbers swole to the gills.

The theme? Summertime. Only I brought a summer tune that wasn't really a summer tune except it was a Beach Boys tune: "Help Me Rhonda". I made copies of this song because I had procrastinated and, at the last minute, it was the only song I could find.

So, we get in tune and we have this new guy and I think we better play an easy tune because this guy is really new so I pull out "This Land Is Your Land." The problem is that most of the people had no copy of--summer attendance being what it is, many of those who showed up were not there at the last couple of meetings. So, we shared as best we could and it seemed like music.

After we played that song into the ground, Anna passed around extra copies of her song from last week--"one More Bottle of Wine"--and we gave that a go. Nobody had ever heard it except Anna. Again, it seemed like music after a couple of runs.

It was so hot (we meet in a the basement) that, at one point, I began to feel a little light-headed. I didn't say anything. I jut kept throwing down beverages and just played most of the time.

At this point, there about 12 people and we were running out of stuff that we had enough copies. I was about to start with "Help Me Rhonda," when Joanne--this nice lady from the Claremont scene--came scootin' in and passed out five or six songs that she had brought.

We worked on those awhile and everybody had fun, so what the hey?

A former student of mine showed up with her ukulele. I hadn't seen her for a couple of years, so it was a nice surprise.

My Dogs' Cat Fights

2008-08-02T13:38:00.000-07:00

When I got my two new dogs spayed, I thought that, among other things, it would help solve the problem of their fights. It hasn't. These two dogs, from the same litter, get into these fights where they squeal and growl and sound like they are really tearing one another apart. Every time I go out to stop them, I find that Ruby (the brown dog, a little smaller) has pinned Pearl (white and brown and a little larger). They freeze in that position, until Ruby is sure that Pearl is finished, and then separate, lick one another, and come running to me, tails a-wagging. No blood, no injuries.

Ruby did this at home too with her siblings--even Zombie, who is much larger and a male. At a doggy party we had last year, where five out of six of the litter had been reunited, Zombie would assert himself as Alpha dog--except with Ruby. Ruby would kick his ass every time.

Every pair of dogs I have ever had, or seen, has gotten into fights at one time or another. But they have always looked and sounded tame compared to what I'm talking about here. And sometimes, there have been minor injuries. Joey used to get into fights with Gloria and later Roscoe. But I always thought it was because she was the smaller dog in both cases.

My neighbor asked me about it a week ago, and I told him what I have just told you--that the fights always sounded a lot worse than they were. But I decided that I really needed to see what I could do about it.

I looked up a solution on the Internet and found that I was a part of the problem. I am the Alpha dog of the pack. Ruby is 2nd in line--she has obviously been so since birth. Pearl, while larger and better looking, is at the bottom of our pack. I found this out by reading this article.

Being a compassionate human being, I always tried to make it up to Pearl when Ruby was rue to her. For example, when I would give them both chew toys or dog biscuits before bed time, Ruby would always take Pearl's away. I would give Pearl another, and Ruby would take it away. This could go on forever an I would wonder what Ruby thought she was going to do with all of those chew toys and treats and why she couldn't just share. So I just started giving Pearl her treat first. This created some confusion in the order of my pack. Ruby had been certain of her dominant role, but Pearl had gotten signals that maybe she was the 2nd in command here.

Ruby tried to explain this to me several times, but I hadn't listened. Every night, after getting her chew toy, Ruby would play this game with me where she would bring me her chew toy and dare me to try and take it from her. I would grab at it and she would pull away. When I did get a hold of it, she would clamp down harder and we would each tug on it for awhile until she let go. I'd try playing the same game with Pearl, but she wouldn't struggle, she'd just let me have it in much the same way that she would let Ruby take it.

After I began paying more attention to Pearl, making sure she got her fair share of the attention and goodies, I noticed Ruby acting funny. First, she was reluctant to come in the house at night. Pearl would come bounding and Ruby would just sit outside wagging her tail. I thought she might be sick, but she didn't show any symptoms of anything.

She didn't even play the chew toy tug of war anymore.

So the article linked above says that, as Alpha dog, I'm supposed to recognize the pecking order in my pack. I should always treat Ruby with the respect she deserves--give her treats first, pet her first, everything first. Pearl, alas, should always be second.

I have been trying this for the past couple of days and, while there has been one fight, they seem mellower. Ruby has started playing the game with me again. Pearl, I think, is trying to figure out where she went wrong.

The other thing is that I, as Alpha dog, am supposed to make it clear to them that fighting will not be tolerated. The article offers suggestions, but the difficulty is that the fighting occurs when I'm not around and stops when I come outside. So, its hard to punish or scold them when they ceased the behavior.

So, I am working on it.

Open Mike Family Affair

2008-07-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

I haven't stopped going to open mics at the Folk Center. I've just stopped reviewing them. But last night was a real event. The entire Canary Family (those that perform and are in town, anyway) performed.

The night was a pretty good one. Many talented performers. Uke Forever performed an evangelistical atheist tune he had written. Seriously, he could have had an altar call at the end to ask people who felt so moved to come up and publicly renounce the Lord. Very good song.

Bill ( a regular) followed this with a couple of Gospel tunes, both of which he played very fast as if to make sure he gave Jesus better than equal time. Bill is an odd fellow. He always starts with a joke. You know that he has opened with a joke because he always makes this face that looks like the kind of face a character might make early on in a cheap horror movie when he or she first discovers the horror that will propel the plot of said movie forward.

Soon UF's buddy Terrance got up and sang a song he wrote that had a more liberal spiritual point of view. He either followed or was followed by another guy named Terrance--an older guy with a few missing teeth and bald head with a curtain of long white hair around the sides. This Terrance is a multi-instrumentalist who brought a dobro on this night. He did a couple of very sang an anti-war folk song, "Mrs. McGrath," which you can find on Springsteen's Seeger Sessions CD and a medley of Jesse James tunes.

This one lady got up and sang a rousing gospel tune a capella and it just killed.

A great night for the first amendment.

As for the Canary line-up, I was first with my original tune "A Man without Arms"-- a song I am working on from the Peter Case workshop. I don't think it got the laughs that I had hoped, but did ok.

Billy C followed with his song about an old fictitious dog, based on an actual dog, but changed up enough so that it really is a fictitious dog. He got a great response. Princess Canary actually came with us and sang "I Will" by the Beatles as Dad Billy C accompanied her on uke and Do played bongos. I have played on this song also, but we realized too late that our ukes were tuned differently and there was no time to fix that. Just as well. While watching Princess Canary sing, I had one of those sentimental realizations that none of my nieces or nephews are children anymore. Princess is the youngest and will be a senior next year. Time passes.

Blowhard C got up and sang a tune. Most of us accompanied him. Do on conga, Billy C on huevos, me on stomping and clapping. It was a song that he had found on Myspace. We weren't sure when the song was over, so Billy C and I continued playing our instruments until Blowhard turned around and gave us "the look."

Do also played percussion for a couple of other folk. For someone who had not planned on playing at all, she was pretty busy.

Game Show

2008-07-24T11:48:00.000-07:00

My theory regarding audience participation-type game shows is that, while the producers want the audience to be rowdy and have a good time, people who show up to be members of said audience and/or participants are basically meat to be used to fill up the seats in the studio--happy, clapping meat.

Yesterday, the Sis and her family (Reverend Canary, Diva Canary, Sluggo--Diva's boyfriend--all visiting from PA) and myself went to a taping of The Price Is Right. We had e-tickets, which we found out were not as good as studio tickets--neither of which guarantees that you will get in. They overbook to ensure a full audience as well as a broad selection of possible contestants.

So, we all get there at 8 AM for the 4 O'clock taping. I won't go into detail, but three out of five of us were in nuclear pissy mode--largely because they didn't share the enthusiasm for going to a game show that my sister and I had.

About 900 people showed up for the 1 O'clock taping (there were 300 seats available--there were also around 900 people for the 4PM show). These folk were sorted by the pages, whose basic goal was to get the seats filled--not to be fair or compassionate. Each ticket holder would be assigned a priority number, which took a couple of hours--and these seemed to be assigned not in the order each person arrived, but depending on where each person was told to sit. For example, I ended up with a higher priority number than Pammy C, even though she had been seated in the row ahead of me because my page was quicker than her page.

If you asked a page a question--any question--you got "I'm sorry, there's nothing I can do about it." Some would go to the trouble of smiling, but most were brusk and dismissive.

It was funny to watch ticket-holders who would get into arguments with pages because they felt they had been treated unfairly or because they had a better idea of how to run things. Some pages were friendlier than others, but every time, the complainer would end up being told that they could always leave if they didn't like it. On more than one occasion, the page offered to call security to take a complainer away. So we figured out right away that, whether or not we got on the show would be helped by going to a page and complaining.

There was one lady who would not leave no matter how many times or how many ways she was told that she would not get a priority number because she did not have a ticket. She stayed up until we began filing into the studio and somehow managed to get into the taping.

The five of us got separated early in the process. Dave and I ended up in one row, while Pammmmmmmy C, Diva, and Sluggo ended up in another. Once you were seated, you sat--for a long time, until someone gave you a priority number. People got antsy and cranky and openly defiant while sitting--but nothing could be done about it. By around 10 AM, we were given priority numbers and told to come back at 1:30 to begin casting for the 4 PM show.

The five us strolled over to the Farmer's Market and moped around for awhile. Diva and Sluggo and I munched on savory crepes from the crepe booth--theirs were sweet, mine savory. Very tasty. I also got a fruit salad at a fruit stand which, although skimpy on the mango and papaya, was pretty good. They don't have fruit in PA, so Diva and Sluggo were amazed and delighted.

We than strolled in the midday heat to the new shopping mall across from the studio. Mind you, it was Tuesday, not a big shopping day. All around the mall were people we had seen at the studio, who were given priority numbers and told to come back. Huge groups of them, many wearing identical outfits so as to identify themselves as a group on camera, wandered around shopping, dining, strategize....

Rev C and theorized that, with the economy being bad it being a Tuesday, one reason the show was so overbooked was because even the people who left the studio angry and frustrated would probably stop at the mall and look around and probably even buy stuff. It was good for the local economy for them to overbook.

Anyway, we got back to the studio at 1:30 and they had already started the selection process. The Rev C realized that Pammmmmmmy C wanted to be on the show more than he did, so he traded his spot to her. Pammmmmmmmy C and I got on and the Rev, Diva, and Sluggo left us in our glory to go play in LA.

Pammmmmmmy C and probably sat there for another couple of hours as the standby's got moved in groups from bench to bench-each bench putting them closer to the studio.

Pages walked around taking pictures of everybody, checking our ID's and had us all fill out cards with our personal info. This was interspersed with long bouts of waiting, which, again, got people cranky.

My sister diagnosed a guy in line as having Assburger's, a condition in the autism family. He was alone, and you could see that the process was setting him off. He would lecture people about the television business and pace around into the comfort zones of others. From time to time, he did did this wiggly thing with his fingers that looked like he was casting a spell on his own head. Pammmmmmy C works with autistic kids and knows a lot about the habits and behaviors.

The final step of selection was the interview. We had heard all day about the interview. The interview would give the producers ideas about who they wanted as contestants. We had wondered how they could interview 300 people without keeping us there all night.

This was the interview. They lined us up in tens and stood us in front of a peppy guy who would go down the line and ask each person what they did for a living and then make a joke to see how that person reacted. Behind the peppy guy, this woman sat and made notes on a pad. From her notes, the contestants were selected. Each interview lasted 10 seconds. Maybe 20.

Bird Watching

2008-07-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

One thing that I have learned from the Peter Case Song Writing workshop is that you have to go out and not write sometimes. You've got to do something to take your mind off of what ever you are working on--or even take your mind off of what ever you aren't working on even. Ray Bradbury calls this feeding your sub-conscience. You must allow good things into your head in order for good stuff to come out. Hemingway used to spend hours in art museums looking at paintings and sculptures--really studying them.

So I have been trying to do something like this about once a week--just going out and looking at stuff. One place I have gone to a couple of times is this local bird farm where they have lots of parrots, finches, parakeets and canaries. I used to be a bird-owner and have been surprised as to how many varieties are available now. And I guess there have been great strides made in breeding some difficult-to-breed birds. One reason I never got a new bird after my last one died was because many were captured in the wild and shipped to this country in horrific conditions which left many of them sick or dead. Not good.

So I visited this week and walked around for about an hour and looked at the birds.

Many of the larger birds are in this area where people can look at them up close. Some are in cages, some are out on perches. And you can walk right up and pet them or talk to them and sometimes they will crawl right up your arm. I'm talkin' big birds like cockatoos, macaws, african greys--birds with serious plumage and serious beaks. If a bird this size bites you, they can break your finger, so it's important to read the sign next to each bird before reaching out to touch them, but many of them are very friendly.

Out in the aviaries, there was a cockatiel section. I hadn't realized the variety of cockatiel mutations. Most parrot type birds live in flocks and have the usual alpha male thing going on. When they want to show their dominance and/or warn off any intruders, they raise their crest and spread there wings as far as they can and screech at you. A couple of them were doing this to me--sitting right on the front perch and representing. One grey whiteface in particular was letting me know that I'd better not try anything.

In another cage, there was this lone blue and gold macaw in with a flock of ring neck parakeets. Parrots are social birds and travel in flocks in the wild, so this macaw wanted to be in a flock and, since this was the only flock available, he seemed to want to join the ringnecks. He sat on a perch towards the back of the aviary, several ringnecks on either side of him, keeping their distance, since he was about four times their size. Every once in awhile, the macaw would sidle over to one end of the perch to visit the ringnecks and the ring necks would scrunch up against the wall. Then, the macaw would sidle over to the parakeets one the other end and they too would scrunch up against the wall, clearly wanting nothing to do with this monster. Then, dejected, the macaw would return to the center of the perch, squawk sadly, and stand there alone--the ringnecks on either side remaining huddled together on the extreme ends of the perch.

I had other birdventures as well. All-in-all, a relaxing afternoon.

The Dark Knight

2008-07-20T02:56:00.000-07:00

When I mentioned the old "Dark Night Returns" Graphic Novel, Nephew Canary was impressed because--well--I am an old guy with no past beyond his 19 years. Before then, I didn't exist.

I explained that, as a teacher, I pride myself on keeping up a passing awareness of pop culture and that, back in the late 80's, I had a gaggle of students who loved that stuff and gave me copies of the graphic novels they had read. In fact, in the '90 yearbook of one particular yearbook, my faculty pic shows me at my desk reading "The Dark Knight Returns," proving to the world that I was a hip young English teacher.

So Nephew Canary allowed me to go see "The Dark Night" with he and his friends. Everything good that has been said about it is true. There were several predictable twists that I was glad to see happen, as sappy as they were. There were also several surprise twists--one of which I was unhappy to see happen. That Heath Ledger re-defined the Joker. Every other portrayal that I know of basically built off the same concept. This one is DIFFERENT. If this character ever returns, it will never be the same.

I'd say more, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone. I'm funny that way.

Song Writing Workshop with Peter Case II

2008-07-13T21:17:00.000-07:00

So I took that first songwriting workshop with Peter Case--he formerly of the Plimsouls. The guy knows his stuff. I liked the workshop, but many participants were reluctant to share any songs they had written. I myself am used to writing workshops in prose and poetry, but they are different animules. When the leader asks if anyone wants to read what they have written, there usually is a sort of breathing period before anyone volunteers. In this workshop, you had to be ready to throw down. Billy Canary says that it's a punk thing--or maybe just a musician thing.

So I shared my song at the final meeting. These are a reasonable facsimile of the lyrics:

I went to see my doctor

He said boy I know what makes you ill

And like with almost everything

There remedy is in a pill

There’s a pill that makes you jittery

There’s a pill that holds you still

There’s a pill that helps you sleep at night

And there’s a pill for that pill.

So take your medication.

Take it every day.

Take your medication,

And your troubles will melt away

There’s a pill that makes you happy

There’s a pill that makes you sad

There’s a pill that I can give you

For the best sex you ever had

I’ve got a pill that makes you tired

So you can take a little nap

There’s a pill to take once after meals

To help you take a crap

So take your medication.

Take it every day.

Take your medication,

And your troubles will melt away.

Both Billy C and Do took the workshop as well. Billy C wrote a song about the dinosaur's contribution to modern civilization and Do wrote a song called "40-Year-Old Woman with a Teenagers Mind."

Good workshop.

Billy C and I are enrolled in the follow-up workshop. This one meets at night and Case seems to be more in his element, biorhythm-wise. I brought 2/3rd's of a song and played it. Here are the lyrics:

A Man without Arms

Verse 1

G Dm

Sometimes I feel like a man without arms

Am G

Pettin’ a dog without any head

G Dm

I can’t feel the fur. He can’t feel my fingers.

Am G

So we both stand there reaching instead.

G Am C G

So take me as I am, I’ve nothing to offer to you.

Just come when I whistle

Or when you get this epistle

Am G

I’ll likely be waiting for you.

Verse2

G Dm

Sometimes I feel like a conductor

Am G

For a band in a land without song

G Dm

I stand in the gazebo, wave my arms and the players just sit there

Am G

In silence in front of the throng.

G Am C G

So take me as I am, I’ve nothing to offer to you.

Just listen right there

As I conduct the air

Am G

I dedicate this silence to you.

Note that it has a title and chords. It's in 3/4 and I envision it as a country western song.

The assignment this week is to write a teen hit and a B-side. My hit project is called "In the Bleachers at Midnight." I post it when it's ready.

I Did Not Know George Carlin...

2008-07-01T12:20:00.001-07:00

... but I saw him once. It was back in 1976 or 77--just after "The Seven Words." He had already started his journey into edgy humor and I believe this was before his hosting of the first episode of Saturday Night Live.

This was back when I was working at the Howard Johnson's Motorlodge on University Avenue. I think he had a concert at UC Rio de Nada up the street and wonder if it may have even been in the famous but now defunct barn.

He was in the restaurant having dinner before the show. I recall he had two hot dogs. I didn't talk to him because, at the time, it was not unusual for celebrities to stop at this Hojos due to the centrality of the location. Rio de Nada, while dumpish, does have several institutions of higher learning and a couple of concert venues--and back then, it had the Rio de Nada Raceway, which was a popular race track, boasting several giant annual races, including the Rio de Nada 500, complete with grand parade and all. As a rule, when celebs stayed at Hojos, I left them alone.

So, George was there enjoying his hot dogs in peace. Given his heart problems, I probably should have warned him.

On the other hand, he lived to be 71 and continued performing about as close to the end as possible.

Other people I saw and/or met while working at Hojo's:

Persis Cambata (the bald-headed woman in Star Trek: the Motion Picture)
George Will
John Shuck
Kyle Petty (lousy tipper)
Ben Kingsley and Patrick Stewart (on the same weekend)
John McCuen
Charlie Deerkopf (of Policewoman, an actor whose face looked like it had been flattened by a mallet)
Gorden Jump
William Christopher (Father Mulcahey on MASH--my sister baby sat for him one night. He has an autistic son. My sister now works with autistic children, as does her two daughters. How about that?
The guy who originally played Lionel Jefferson on All in the Family and The Jeffersons
Esther Rolle (Good Times)
Joe Don Baker
Bo Svenson
The St. Louis Cardinals

There was a host of others. The only time I went berserk was when Kingsley and Stewart stayed there. They had not yet become famous and were touring the UC campuses for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Two actresses were with them, and I had a crush on one of them. I don't remember who she was. I was a college student, majoring in English at the time and just thought it was cool that the Royal Shakespeare Company was there. They used to stand out by the pool and do vocal warm-ups together.

Adventures in Public Transportation

2008-06-25T13:36:00.000-07:00

Just got back from Downingtown, Pennsylvania. I flew back to see my niece and nephew graduate from high school. The niece, whom we will refer to as "Diva," will be attending Temple University, Bill Cosby's Alma Mater. The nephew, whom I will call "Mad Dog," is still undecided about his academic plans, but recently started a lucrative job as a manager at a big theater chain.

So Diva Canary needed to go to Temple to take several placement tests. The Most Right Reverend Canary (my BiL) and I went with her for moral support and for to wander the city, while she tested. The family has three cars and five family members. So, to ease the strain and save money (gas prices, ya know?), we took the train, which has a stop not a quarter of a mile from my sister's house.

MRRC and I took in the Philadelphia Art Museum while Diva took her tests. Quite a day. The museum is huge and has lots of art. The best part was the section with Asian art on display. Some great statuary and recreated temples. The Hindu section was my favorite, because I had read a lot about the deities depicted in much of the statuary. A lot of avatars of Vishnu represented.

My problem with art is that I don't know enough about it. If I take in too much, I go into overload mode.

What I enjoyed most was the train trip. I like the idea of public transportation. Someone else drives, while you get to read the paper, have a cuppa coffee, sleep, or whatever. It would be nice to live in an area where they had decent public transportation.

Later that week, I took a train excursion on my own, to Buck's county to check out a folk music store there. The trip took me through some really beautiful scenery. I actually saw a deer poking its head out from behind the brush at one point.

When I got to my stop, I found myself on a road filled with trees and singing birds. I could swear Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony was being piped in. I had a lovely walk and even walked past the music store. Twice. It didn't advertise itself very well. It looked like just another house.

While on the train, I thought about ways I might live a greener life, and save money on gas too. I decided that I ought to try our city's rapid transit system--no trains just buses.

Today I had to get to my brother's house and pick up my mother's car. I decided that having someone come to get me would be a waste of gas--and gas is about $4.75 a gallon around here. So I decided to take the bus, which I discovered would drop me less than a block from Billy C's house. The ride took about 25 minutes in an air conditioned, natural gas burning vehicle--all for $1.25. I expected I'd get lost, but the route was pretty simple. This probably won't be practical for all of my transportation needs, as I live outside of Rio de Nada, but I am going to try to do this once a week and see what happens.

The Man in the Hat

2008-06-01T22:45:00.000-07:00

I forgot to mention that I saw the Indiana Jones movie. What can I say? I laughed out loud and had a great time. Like Roger Ebert said (and I paraphrase) those of you who like that sort of thing will love it and those who don't--there's no talking to you.

This was old-school Spielberg, with several self-indulgent references to other films--like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Close Encounters. And there was some stock scream that apparently Spielberg, Lucas, and every other film maker try to work into every film they make. Or maybe it's the sound editors who do that.

There were a couple of sight gags that I know were sight gags, but I didn't quite follow them. Harrison looks too old for this sort of thing at first, but then works that into the story very well. The chemistry between him and Karen Allen made me wonder why Spielberg and Lucas ever dropped her from the series. Her character was much more interesting than the others Indiana Jones women.

The character plot twist at the end was not the plot twist I had expected. I expected the special effects plot twist. When you think about it, all of the Indiana Jones films have the same ending: basically that for all of our human curiosity, there is such a thing as too much knowledge and we should accept that.

But this series is a cartoon in essence and should be taken as such. As I left the theater, I realized that I hadn't had a single thought for the whole two hours and that's as it should be.

Dangerous Driving

2008-06-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Billy C, Do, and I were to accompany Princess Canary at a concert put on by her High School's vocal music program. We had a sound check at 11 AM. On my way there, I had to take a busy street congested by due to ongoing construction. I was stopped behind a line of cars for a red light, when this Ford Expedition rear-ended me. I was pissed, but mostly calm when I took down the information from this stupid lady who hit me, but I missed the sound check. My point is, what a crappy way to begin the day. I wanted to kill the woman.

So, performance time. Princess Canary sang beautifully. It is on film somewhere. She sang the Beatles' "I Will," which is the first difficult song I ever attempted. Never really learned it until now because it didn't really fit my voice. It's a cool song with chord changes about every two beats.

Princess has a sweet voice. She's not yet comfortable with it, but once she develops it, will be a fine singer.

Many other students sang solos, duets, and other conglomerations. One thing I felt (and this isn't a commentary on the quality of performances) was that song writing can't be as hard as I seem to think. So many of the songs sung were utter crap. And hits for someone.

Even some of the choral music wasn't that good. Zoe's group, the chambers singers, did some really great stuff, but the other groups did mostly pop tunes. And there was a whole lot of churchy music. Not GOOD churchy music. But current pop, sappy churchy music. Jesus, "Take the Wheel," about a woman in turmoil driving back home and deciding to let Jesus take over. She decides to let go of the steering wheel and I'm thinking, given my morning accident, that's a pretty dangerous thing to do.

This school is located in the middle of a highly conservative Christian community, so I guess many people feel it's ok to have that much religion at a public school. But I just wonder whether a student who wants to do a song about another religious or political view would be allowed to do so.

Is Anybody Home?

2008-04-05T23:39:00.000-07:00

Okay, I haven't written anything for awhile. I will probably blog about some of the happenings in the hear future.

Today, I started the first day of a songwriting workshop run by Peter Case, he of the Plimsouls. My only complaint would be that we could have written more. He gave us several writing assignments for the week, but we only tried one of them during the class. But he gave us a lot of ideas.

After class, Billy C, Do, and I ate at this Indian restaurant up the street. As we waited for our food, Billy C and I worked on "The Nipple Song," just throwing out ideas as they came to us. I wrote most of them down on my place mat. It's kind of a sequel to Do's "Bosom Song," which is a big hit in these parts.

I have written poetry. I have not written songs. When I try my hand at song lyrics, they become perhaps too dense with imagery. I think one has to hold back on that sort of thing in songwriting.

I have a couple of ideas. So, we'll see.

More Fun with O'Possums

2008-01-02T00:32:00.000-08:00

I tried to walk my two dogs, Ruby and Pearl, the other night. They aren't getting it though.

I have had other dogs (Gloria, Joey, and Roscoe) who, upon first being walked, got right into it. All I had to do was teach them to keep up with me. Even Mama C's late, great Gracie--who had never been walked until I dog-sat her while Mama was on vacation--even she would walk with me--and she was like 19 years old!

I had even had each dog's bowel movement synchronized so that we could complete the walk without decorating the neighbors' lawns.

So, when I put either Ruby or Pearl on a leash, their first impulse is to drop to the ground.

As with my other dogs, I try to walk them one-at-a-time. The first time with Pearl, she would drop, I would walk ahead and call to her, she would scurry close to the ground like a cockroach and drop again. We repeated this for almost a block, when she finally got spooked and just wouldn't move. I had to carry her home.

Ruby's first time was the same, except I took her in a different direction and she didn't make me carry her.

The other night I tried a different approach. I took each separately to my front lawn. Sat with each for awhile and petted, letting them get used to wearing a leash while having one-on-one time with me. After about ten minutes of this, I actually got Ruby to walk with me. Pearl wasn't quite that cooperative, so we spent most of the time just sitting on my stoop.

Later, long after we were done, I was sitting on my couch reading, when I could hear the two of them making a racket like no other I had ever heard. It was about midnight. I went out to see what was going on. They were hidden behind a large bush near their dog run, yapping like mofo's.

I couldn't see anything but the bush, so I returned to the mouse for a flashlight. I went into the dog run and turned on the flashlight and there lay a huge possum. It was either dead or playing dead. So, once they saw the light, both dogs came out and, one-by-one, I got them in the house and went back out to check out the possum, who had already left. So I guess he wasn't dead.

Talk to Your Mother While She Is High

2007-11-21T23:52:00.000-08:00

A while back, Mama C had a problem getting her Parkinson's meds. This problem had occurred before, but this time, we couldn't get the neurologist to OK the prescription before her supply ran out. So, by the time we got her more pills, she had gone without for a couple of days.

So, once we finally got the prescription filled, we--Billy C, Pammy C, the care-giver, and yours truly--all just figured we'd better put her back on the meds.

Soon, she became loopy: getting confused, hallucinating. This has happened before and was, as far as I can tell, meds-related. But Parkinson's can cause dementia, so each time this happened, we all wondered if we'd get her back. After a visit with her general phyzish, we'd get the meds cleared up and she'd eventually come down.

Brief Editorial: Yes, both Parkinson's and our health-care system are terrible.

Billy C and I take her to Doc Lars and, once again she gets things straightened out and instructs us to gradually re-introduce Mama C's meds just as if she were taking them for the first time.

Afterwards, I take Mama C out for a steak. But she's still kind of loopy, see. She's coming down, but she's loopy. We'd sit there talking, when her attention would suddenly focus on a large, illusionary spider crawling along the wall of our booth. Of course, I'd tell her it wasn't there and she'd come back into focus.

So she brought up the pictures of Officer Bertino at dinner.

Officer Bertino was the father of her boyfriend Kenny Bertino. She dated him before WWII. Officer Bertino died in the line of duty answering a routine domestic disturbance call that took him to the home of this guy he had arrested many times before in the "Mexican" part of town. This guy get drunk, get into a fight with his wife, maybe hit her a couple of times, and Officer Bertino would drive down and arrest him. While this guy sat in the jail cell, Officer Bertino and the other cops would get him cigarettes and play cards with him.

Except for this one night. The guy had a gun. He shot off a couple of rounds, one of which hit Officer Bertino in the head.

I learned about this one day while Mama C still lived in her house. She had been going through all of her old pictures. I came over and saw these three pictures of this middle-aged man in his police uniform: one with him just standing there, one with him and a little neighbor girl, and one with him posing on his motorcycle.

Apparently when she had found these pictures and contacted Kenny, whom she hadn't seen in about 60 years or so. She told him of the pictures. He told her that he didn't have a single picture of his father.

So, she promised to send these to Kenny. The next day one of the ladies that came in every other day to help Mama C around the house "put them away" and we couldn't find them anywhere. We knew they were in a manila envelope, but there were so many manila envelopes in every corner of Mama C's house. Everyone had kind of written them off as being thrown out with the trash.

Fast forward a couple of years. As I am taking out the last few boxes of keepsakes from Mama C's house, I find a manila envelope just sitting on top of one of the boxes of pictures that has been sitting out in the open in the same spot for the last two years. Yep, it held Officer Bertino's pictures.

This was just before Mama C's latest medication hub-bub. I had just mailed them to her Kenny. She has been very anxious about them and had asked me again if they got to him. And wondered why he hadn't called to say he had gotten them.

Knowing old people as I do now, I realize that the answer to that question, my friend, is blowing in the wind.

So she tells me her memories of Officer Bertino's funeral procession. She desribed how the entire Rio de Nada Police Department came out in their dress uniforms and lined Orange street as she sang "Ave Maria." She finished, saying "I was just never sure he cared about me."

"Mom," I said. "Are you saying that dad was your second choice?"

"No," she said. "It's just that Kenny was such a good-looking kid and all the girls just loved him."

Then she went on.

"I broke up with him during the war, while he was overseas. I wrote him a letter."

The things you don't know about your mother could fill a book, couldn't they? And if we were all given that book early on, we'd understand the so much better.

As the Day Begins

2007-10-22T20:48:00.000-07:00

You never know where the day will take you.

I teach with another teacher four periods a day and we share a big double-sized classroom. We also each teach a class alone. His single class is first period.

So I walk into our classroom during his first period, smile (or scowl--it IS 7:45 AM) at his students--many of whom I know well. My colleague is instructing his students to start an assignment while they wait for the bell to ring.

So, I sit at my computer and log on, when I hear a girl sobbing hysterically. I turn around, and this girl has her hands over her face and, as I said, is sobbing. A couple of students get up to comfort her, but she says nothing and just keeps sobbing. My colleague walks over and starts patting her on the back and tells her it's ok, but gives me a look that shows he has no idea what's going on either.

And she keeps sobbing. Usually, you can expect high school girls to begin crying like this at a moment's notice, but they usually calm down. This poor girl was heaving and sobbing and clearly unable to talk.

We both realize that she's not crying but is having problems breathing. So, I quietly tell my colleague that I'm going to call the school nurse and I do so.

The nurse walks in, very calmly, and goes to the girl. She knew who this girl was when I gave her our room number and begins telling her in a calm voice "It's ok Christy. Breath. Just breath."

The girl starts breathing and gasping and soon sobs "My body hurts! My body hurts!"

The bell rings and I shepherd the students out. I tell my colleague that I'm going to keep the students outside, thinking at the time that the girl will be alright once the crowd leaves.

So the class and I sit over at the lunch tables and wait. By the way, it's very windy outside, so dust is blowing everywhere.

Soon administrators come. Then the girls mother comes. Then the paramedics come.

I take the students to the library to get out of the wind and because I don't know what's happening or how long it will take.

Meanwhile, my colleague is in there with the girl, the nurse, the girl's mother, and several administrators. Tells me later how the girl went into seizure five times and actually turned blue. All the while, the nurse gently reminded the girl to breath.

The paramedics took her to the hospital and I don't know how she is but I haven't heard from my colleague or anyone else, so I hope that's a good sign.

But what a day.

Designed for Dogs by Dogs

2007-10-14T20:12:00.000-07:00

I got two puppies in August. I named them Ruby and Pearl. They are the mongrel offspring of my brother's latest dog, who is herself one of the ugliest dogs I have ever seen. Someone found her as a stray and somehow, Billy C got bamboozled into adopting it. Turned out she was pregnant to boot.

For mutts, they are quite beautiful. If I can get a picture of them where they don't jump up and try to eat the camera lens, I'll post them.

Anyway, when I moved into this house, the dog run out in back had an old dilapidated dog house, ripe with termites and other vermin. Gloria wouldn't go near it, but Joey would. It was so unsightly that I dismantled it (actually, it just sort of collpapsed when I touched it) and got one of those Dogloo things. Neither dog ever went inside it that I know of. It didn't matter if it rained, if the wind was blowing, or it was cold outside. Whenever I put a mattress in it, they would pull it out and sleep outside the Dogloo.

Roscoe, Gloria's replacement, would go inside either.

When I brought Ruby and Pearl home, I cleaned out the dog run and tried to give it some feng shui. I cleaned out the Dogloo and put in a mattress. At first, they'd go inside once in awhile. But, like their predecessors, they'd take the mattress out and sleep outside.

There was this old plastic garbage can on wheels that I got before the city started providing receptacles for the various grades of garbage. It's been sitting in my back yard for the past years--only being used when I had extra garbage. Ruby and Pearl knocked it over one day and discovered that it made a great doggie fort. They would use it to play hide-and-seek, king of the mountain, and some doggie games for which I don't know the rules.

The morning after the rain last week, I went outside and found that, instead of using the Dogloo for shelter, Pearl had used the garbage can. Then I thought, hey, it's big, durable, and the wheels make it easy to move around--the perfect dog house.

So I cleaned the thing out and put it right next to the Dogloo. They love it.

The only problem is that, when they are playing king of the mountain, the think makes a racket like a cannon every time one of them jumps on top of it.

I hope they don't play at night.

Riverside Ukulele Liberation Front in the News and the Meeting that Wasn't Going To Happen but Did

2007-09-02T23:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to the Press Enterprise article on the Riverside Ukulele Liberation Front:

http://www.pe.com/lifestyles/stories/PE_Fea_Daily_D_ukes0901.36221dc.html

If you scroll down to just below the byline to where it says "Interactive: The Riverside Ukulele Liberation Front" and click on the "Riverside Ukulele Liberation Front" part of it, you'll see a cool slide show featuring me taking to much time tuning my ukulele, as well as some f the circles musical stylings.

Last month, we had decided to postpone this month's meeting until the weekend after labor day. Big mistake. The article appeared and pretty soon, people were calling and asking about it. So, Do and I showed up just in case any newbies came.

There were seven.

So, we met some new folk and played a little. Not everyone stayed because it was so hot in the basement (today's temp was a round 110). Do sent home for a fan, so that helped a lot. Next week, we all bring fans.

Taos Poem 2

2007-08-07T11:17:00.000-07:00

Who leaps into the center of Chaos?

Consider powerful men wearing fine suits,

officers
whose shoulders are lined with stars,

or pundits
whose words click from their keyboards
or spit across the airwaves
into the wild confusion of debate.

Consider those who,
eyes wide,
smile the sad smile of duty,

whose expectant brown eyes
will be scorched with fear,
forever cleansed by the many ways one can die in war.

Theirs are the words of contemplation,
the candlelight of being,
the murmuring lips of prayer,
that light feared by all.

They enter that light,
childlike,
while others—
their suits and uniforms
unstained by blood or debris—
can only avert their eyes
and clear their throats

and keep talking,
assuring us that all is well.

But who dives into the eye of God?

Taos Poem

2007-08-02T10:43:00.000-07:00

American Flag crawls along the freeway.
A corner flutters weakly on the asphalt
as cars speed past.

Drunk stops at the roadside to piss.
Fireworks burst in the horizon behind him.

This is your warning. This is your only warning.

Mothers and children keening in the market place as coffins are carried past.

Dinner time:
family watches TV
and feels the compassion of distance .

Dogs, wolves, coyotes howl.

The internet bares its teeth,
and rears up,
ready to attack.

silhouette of a mountain, framed by a distant blaze.

Not Obssessed

2007-07-25T23:05:00.000-07:00

I visited a Barnes and Noble with my sister and bro-in-law this evening and couldn't resist picking up the new Harry Potter and reading the first few pages.

I should say that I pre-ordered it and that it awaits my return home. If I had planned ahead, I probably could have had it sent to my sister's house so I could read it while visiting them--thus not falling prey to the spoilers out there who are determined to tell everyone how it ends. Frankly, there are only three possible outcomes for Harry: he lives, he dies, or he limps. And, as anyone who has read the books knows, there is heavy foreshadowing as to what that ending will be. As I told one of my ex-students who tried to spoil the ending, it really isn't how it ends, but the journey that takes us there. Otherwise, why would so many people have read book six, already knowing what happens to Dumbledorf? For that matter, how long has the Lord of the Rings been around and still the latest movie adaptations made millions upon millions?

Hell Agatha Christy and Arthur Conan Doyle are still big sellers.

But back to my story. I should have known that by standing next to the Harry Potter display and just opening the book, I was inviting trouble. But there I was, reading the first few pages, when I hear a voice behind me saying "That's the idea. Come to Barnes and Noble and read it for free."

The voice was not familiar to me. I turned t face the speaker: a man not too much younger than me, unshaven, bespectacled, balding, carrying a Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows canvas tote bag.

I knew this guy wanted to discuss the ending in the worst way, so I turned from him and said, "I don't get what you people see in this crap," and walked away, heading up the escalator the 2nd floor.

I might have hurt his feelings, but that canvas tote bag assured me that I needed to get away.

Sure enough, I noticed later that he had pounced on another victim. His voice was pretty loud, s I could hear that he was still talking abut Harry Potter, although I couldn't hear all of the particulars.

I may not be successful in isolating myself from all the spoilers, but I am determined to just not know until I've read it myself.

High and the Mighty

2007-07-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

So my flight to Philly ended with me landing.

As I walked through the metal detector, I kept setting it off. The third time, the lady in charge called for a specialist to come wand me as I tried to figure out what about me kept the thing buzzing. I realized that one culprit was my medical alert pendant that I wear to alert any emergency guys of my diabetes so they don't pump me full of candy should they find me unconscious. I pointed this out to the lady calling the wand guy, but she made me wait for the wand guy anyway.

He asked me if my hat had any metal in it. I didn't think it did, but sure enough it had a wire running through the rim.

So he wanded me and patted me down. I tried to feel good about these security measures keeping me me safe in the air, but couldn't since I already knew that I wasn't a terrorist. I don't get the feeling that any of these security people are any brighter or more professional than they were ten years ago.

A Gratuitous Attempt to Keep My "R" Rating

2007-06-22T10:29:00.001-07:00

I have figured out that my "R"rating is due to the violent content--specifically, my uses of the words "death," "shoot," "bomb," and "pissed." The last one surprises me because I so rarely use that word. Maybe once in awhile in conversation for shock value, but rarely. Anyway, the next few sentences just to help me keep my rating so as to lure more readers, since the "R" rating attracts the average consumer.

I bombed my recent driving test, which pissed me off to death. Shoot, I guess I should have practiced. But it is in my nature to shoot from the hip in all things and not really plan ahead. As often as not, that is the death of me. Otherwise, life is da bomb.

My Blog Rating

2007-06-21T23:26:00.001-07:00

No child under the age of 12 will be permitted to read this blog without parental supervision.

Mingle² - Online Dating

I'm so proud!

What Else I Have Seen

2007-06-19T12:49:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, as I left the house, I saw a hawk soaring by, clutching something furry and dead, or dying.

Walking the Roob, I saw two hawks making loop-de-loops. One casually left the formation and disappeared behind the hillside.

Too many dogs. Seeing as how few people ever clean up after their dogs, I have begun not to like the presence of dogs.

A couple walking a mini bike up the trail. Too late to disturb my reverie.

Dana M. Psycho-son of a friend of Mom's at the supermarket. He is a successful contractor or engineer and is known to have had violent outbursts. He has attacked both his father and his brother on separate occasions. He always was a weird kid.

Oh, the Things I Have Seen This Week

2007-06-15T14:36:00.000-07:00

As I searched a CVS pharmacy for twine and Depends one day, I found a display for Trim Spa featuring several splashy photos of Anna Nicole Smith, looking sexy and vibrant.

As I drove a truckload of stuff to the Salvation Army, I had to pull over four times as police cars sped past in the opposite direction towards Meade Valley. I counted nine cop cars.

Of course, the bunny.

As I sat in a restaurant, a family, each adult member of which was covered in tattoos of the gangster variety, entered and took a booth nearby. The children, or course, were antsy. One child began crying because he wanted to sit next to his big sister. The father responded to him by threatening to take him outside to spank him.

Twice someone has rung my doorbell this week and has walked away before I could get to it. In both cases, solicitors dropping off flyers that I will never read.

An evangelical team for some local church. Three of them, all wearing mismatched clothing, complete with loud paisely ties and checkered shirts and sportcoats on a hot summer afternoon. None of them seemed very smart.

In front of the Local Barnes and Noble, a busker playing guitar to no one. But it looked like he had taken in some respectable money.

A baby bird that had apparently fallen from the nest running from me as it saw me approach. It looked like it could have flown if it had really wanted to.

My favorite pho restaurant had a "B" rating sitting in its window. I took a chance anyway.

One of my favorite pastimes during the summer is to sit outside Starbucks, kick of my sandals, put my feet up in another chair, and sip iced tea while I read. Today, as I got up to get a refill, I left my book on my table to claim my spot. When I returned, a guy had taken my footrest chair and sat at my table across from my book. I picked up my book and moved. Does no one respect anyone else's boundaries?

Harboring a Fugitive

2007-06-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

Today, the rabbit let me pet him again. In fact, he stretched out and just let me scratch and then looked a little angry when I stopped. On my way to pay some Mom Bills, I saw that my neighbors were home and decided to go ask them if the rabbit belonged to them. I had actually considered keeping the rabbit, but yesterday, while out walking, I could see through there front gate an empty cage--like a rabbit cage, only smaller. So I decided that I'd better at least ask them if my new little friend was theirs.

It was.

So we walked to where the rabbit was lounging. When he saw his family, he perked up as if to say "uh-oh!" and skeedaddled under my front gate, across the yard, and under our common fence into their yard, where he tried hiding behind some bushes to no avail.

Poor guy.

When I first asked them about the rabbit, the dad asked me if I wanted it, implying that he abut had it.

Apparently, it kept escaping from its tiny cage and getting into their garden. Also, they were told it was a dwarf bunny. It might have started out to be a dwarf bunny, but it grew into a hefty bunny. In fact, when I think about it, I bet this rabbit was an Easter gift. The timing is about right for him to grow beyond cute size. And the bunny cage looks about the right size for a tiny bunny.

I don't think he wanted to go back. I have the feeling this is a too-many-pets type family--one that keeps all of their pets alive, but loses interest. I may drop the hint that I know where they can place the rabbit if they decide to get rid of him, creating the opportunity for getting him back, but nt appearing t anxious.

I'll think on it.

Another Little Visitor

2007-06-11T21:46:00.000-07:00

This time, I fund a rabbit loitering in my wee... er, lawn. He/she was clearly a per rabbit as he/she was too handsome/beautiful to be wild. The rabbits I've seen around here are all grey and brown with white fluffy tails and are usually smaller and leaner. This rabbit was big, plump and had a chestnut brown color. Also, although it hopped away from me, scurrying under my fence into my backyard, it let me get closer than local wild rabbits do. At one pint, I got up very close--about two feet from it.

I set some dog food and water, along with some carrot sticks and left it to hang out in my yard. If it's there tomorrow, I'll decide what to do with it. It has to be a pet, but neither of my next door neighbors has any rabbits. Maybe the neighbors behind me.

Seems like all our pets are getting sick and that all of us then get visitations from other animals.

A Little Visitor

2007-06-10T23:02:00.000-07:00

Around 4 PM today, I had just loaded into the pick-up truck my mother's dome-shaped barbecue that looks kind of like one of those three-legged thingies from War of the Worlds except it's dome-shaped. I had to carry it through the side yard and, when I went back to close the gate I spied it.

It had crossed half the length of the front porch and had reached the open screen door of my mother's house, sniffing around, exploring, possibly looking for adventure.

A baby skunk.

My first thought was about it's cuteness.

My second one was about how it stood by an open screen door and had I remembered to shut the actual front door of my mother's house as I had been entering and exiting absent-mindedly all afternoon, carrying stuff to the pick-up.

I watched silently as it sniffed towards the door. My first impulse was to take a step towards it to see if it would run away.

Oh yeah, skunk! I tried to remember in all of my knowledge about skunks whether or not the baby skunks could shoot very far with their spray. I decided I'd better not experiment with that idea.

So, I thought I'd take a wide girth around it and see if it would continue across the front porch. Thankfully, it galloped across the porch and into the bushes in the neighbors yard.

I thought about warning them. Then, I realized that this baby skunk was a sign of a healthy eco-system somewhere nearby and that, if I did tell them, the neighbor lady would have wanted it dead. Not only that, but she would not have rested until every member of its family had been found and killed. I realized that, if I did not tell them, it was possible that the baby skunk and its family might actually thrive for years to come. They might even be a source of food to the owls and hawks that nest in the area.

Plus, I wouldn't want to deny my neighbors the joy of discovery I had just experienced.

Stephanie, Stephanie, and Stephanie

2007-05-11T23:01:00.000-07:00

I drove to Borders this evening to look for a book, The Brothers K, by David James Duncan, author of The River Why. After I found it, I browsed a for awhile. I rounded the corner to check out the Afro-American studies when, who should I run into but two former students from about 5 years ago, both named Stephanie. I hadn't seen Stephanie since she had graduated, although Stephanie had stopped by school a couple of times to visit.

On her last visit, Stephanie and I talked about our common interest in music. We discovered that we both were fans of the Ditty Bops. She always had an indie streak in her. She liked the Donnas and had her own band modeled after them. I'm not sure how successful the band was--or that it even actually performed anywhere. She told me that she is majoring in Journalism.

Stephanie, on the other hand, is majoring in History. I noticed that she now wore braces and had darker hair than I remembered. I recall that she read an essay to the class about the importance of reading in her life.

As we chatted there in Borders, Stephanie's cell phone rang. She smiled and said, "Hey, it's Stephanie--Mr. Babor, she's here with us!"

A third Stephanie walked out of the Sci-Fi section. She always had this intense way of speaking so fast that I got dizzy sometimes listening to her. She liked Kerouac. Her major was International Politics. She was with a friend who had an Arabic name and complained about how boring it was to read Camus in French.

I agreed.

What a great way to end a day. I'm just sorry their friend Gladys wasn't with them.

Running with Scissors at an Institution of Slightly Higher Learning: a Trilogy

2007-05-10T20:58:00.000-07:00

Once, while still attending Grad School, I sat at my usual table on the patio at Starbucks, reading Death in the Afternoon. This group of Bible Study kids shows up. There were about four or five of them, one of them being an odd young man who felt that his duty was to be extra loud so that everyone could appreciate how much fun he was. A thin young man with long unkempt auburn hair, he would shout out the most idiotic comments while the others tried to discuss the Bible. They weren't biblical comments, they just were stupid and loud and meant to be funny.

On this particular day, the kids had brought artsy-craftsy stuff and had planned to create something. At one point, the loud kid, holding a pair of scissors in his hands, shouts "I'll go get it!" and runs down the sidewalk to "get it" with the scissors still in his hand.

Another time, after school, I stood in my classroom looking out the window. I saw the usual group of students sitting at their usual lunch bench, playing their usual role-playing card game. Two girls stood over them and one seemed to be nagging one of the boys as he played the game.

Suddenly, this boy, who was about 6'6" leapt to his feet and chased the two girls, grabbing the nagger in a choke-like hold, held her for a moment, and then gave her neck a jerk. She fell like a ragdoll as he marched triumphantly back to his game.

I hurried out to where nagging girl lay, her friend hunched over her. Nagging girl was sobbing in a heap. I asked her of she was okay. She said "Yes," through her tears.

As I walked over to the gamers, I asked another teacher to call security. I stopped behind the tall kid, who had now continued his game as if nothing had happened, and asked him "What did you just do?"

He looked at his cards and not me and said "She pissed me off."

I said, "That's not what I asked you."

"It's cool," he said, "She's my sister."

A couple of weeks ago, on my way to teach my night class at Rio de Nada Community College, I stopped by the cafeteria to get a bottle of water and a snack. Inside, in a booth, another group of gamers sat playing their game. Shouting ensued. One guy yelled something about wizards or trolls or death cards or something and started running out the automatic doors. Another guy jumped up an chased the first guy, grabbing a pile of campus papers on his way out the doors. They ran across the campus and the second guy threw the papers at the first guy and, of course, the papers flew everywhere. Second guy then stopped running, turned around, and headed back to the cafeteria, leaving the papers scattered on the ground.

As I walked to my class, I watched him to see if he truly was going to leave all of those papers scattered across campus. For a moment our eyes locked and I wondered if I really was going to have to tell this guy--a student at a college for God's sake--that he needed to go pick up after himself. He flinched at my look, turned around again, and picked them up.

There is no moral to this. I just wanted to let you know that we may be outnumbered

Riverside Ukulele Liberation Front, 3rd Meeting

2007-05-06T22:16:00.000-07:00

Each meeting gets better and better. We had nine folks today. Three of our regulars were absent and sorely missed.

The playlist: Beautiful Sunday with Do taking vocals. Jamaica Farewell, with Billy C singing. Eric lead us in Daydream. Then, Eric brught in Psycho Killer and we worked on that ne for awhile. Carl and Liam the Younger took uke solos.

What made it fun was that we really worked the songs, really layering the music. A great afternoon.

Jammin' with Bill

2007-05-05T19:54:00.000-07:00

I served the folk music public today as a volunteer for the 27th Annual Folk Music Festival Today. I took the morning shift, working first at a musical instrument check-in room and later as a runner for the fiddle workshop. I thought the fiddle workshop would be fun, but the instructor mostly talked and the group did very little fiddling. Only two participants played the fiddle with any skill. So the fiddling was Jack Benny-esque at best.

Otherwise, music filled the air.

The Canaries performed at the open mike stage, but we weren't ready. Do performed her bosom song. As she left the stage, we shouted for her to sing a song she plays on the uke, so she got back onstage and sang that. Then we shouted for her to do "Tinfoil Hat," so she did. She was very good.

Billy C and I got to see and hear John McEuen who used the play banjo and fiddle with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band back in the day. McEuen also taught Steve Martin how to play banjo. McEuen's guest was some 14-year-0ld mandolin prodigy who played like a possessed mofo.

After that performance. It was time for the final workshop of the day. Uke Forever was on schedule to teach a ukulele workshop, but Billy C and I wanted to go t a folk historian's workshop instead. Then, on our way, we saw an elderly man being guided to UF's room. He had to be in his 90's. He appeared quite feeble, in fact. I noticed that he had very thick white hair. That's when I realized that it was none other than ukemaster Bill Tapia. I realized that, indeed, he must be appearing in UF's workshop.

So Billy C and I zoomed over to UF's workshp and, sure enough, there sat Bill Tapia. He looked like he could be any elderly gentleman--frail, maybe a little alone. But when he began playing, he transformed. You could see the eyes light up and the body energize. He dominated the workshop, regaling us with stories from his early days playing in big bands and singing songs. His playing was spot on.

So there we were, about 30 workshop attendees, getting a performance from a uke legend.

UF ocassionally stepped in to show the newbies some chords and teach them some simple songs. UF led us in "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." I led the singing because no one else seemed to know the words.

I think Bill Got a little bred because he out of the blue asked me "How do you make a 'C' chord?" I made a "C"chord. Then "How do you make an 'E7?'" I made the "E7." I kind f panicked because he kept throwing chords at me. But I showed him every chord.

Then he turned to Billy C with the same drill. Then he asked "Now, everybody play those chords as I call them." Pretty soon, we were all playing the chords to "Ain't She Sweet" while Bill Tapia took the solo. I soon realized that I was jamming with Bill Tapia.

UF handled everything very well, allowing Tapia the spotlight, while making sure everyone walked away with a few basic chords.

Hey, I got to jam with Bill Tapia. It just doesn't get much better than that.

Stealth

2007-04-09T13:42:00.000-07:00

Stealth Bomber!

They wouldn't do well in an actual fight.

Spelling Tip for the Day

2007-04-07T12:03:00.000-07:00

I just read a blog where the writer misspelled "weird." They followed the old "i before e except after c" rule. But "weird" is an exception to that rule. In other words, "weird" is weird.

RULF 2

2007-04-02T11:53:00.000-07:00

The second conflaguration of the Riverside Ukulele Liberation Front spilt int overtime, in part because the lengthy tuning session at the beginning, I guess and in part because I kept asking if anyone had anything to play after I knew we had reached 3PM, our scheduled ending time. We had four new people. Carl, an older guy (probably a little older than me, actually) who brought his 8-string Lanakai and did a classical piece and a latin piece to play. Kurt, a local press photog that I've known for awhile but don't see very much. I invited him once during a chance encounter walking the Roob. He and I had been hiking two different routes when we crossed paths at the top. He joined me on my way down and we started talking about music and pretty soon, he was yearning to play the uke.

Two teens showed up. Friends of Leemo (Blowhard Canary's new nom de blogue).

'Twas a good afternoon.

Stealth

2007-04-01T10:49:00.000-07:00

This is me and the Stealth Bomber, or should I say the Stealth Bomber and I. Billy C took it. It was very difficult for the pilot to hold the plane still for that long.

Hey. Really. That's the Stealth Bomber and I together. No tricks. Really.

Riverside Ukulele Liberation Front's Next Meeting

2007-03-18T12:12:00.000-07:00

This is no joke! Don’t forget! The second convening of the Riverside Ukulele Freedom Front will take place on April Fool’s Day from 1 PM to 3 PM in the Gallery (i.e. basement) of Back to the Grind, located at 3575 University Avenue in Riverside, California.

Proposed Hidden Agenda:

12:49--1:00 Arrival of Dignitaries on Red Carpet
1:00--1:01 Tuning and facial exercises
1:01--1:03 Opening beffudlement
1:03--1:05 Return to decorum
1:05--2:59 Make beautiful music together
2:59--3:00 Closing Pie Fight

Bring your ukes, your music stands, a thirst for froo-froo caffeinated beverages, AND a song that you have been working on and/or a song that you would like to add to the RULF Hymnal.

In honor of the holiday, a silly hat would also be appropriate.

See you there!

Pictures of the Riverside Ukulele Liberation Front Maiden Voyage

2007-03-06T19:49:00.000-08:00

Well, links to pictures, any way. Try this link. Sue left before we took the group photo.