Three Beautiful Things 05/05/09: HP Chat, Blogging Like It's 2009, HBO Front Page

1. I was having trouble getting my LaserJet printer to work on my new computer and Jai Prakash Baduni and I worked together via HP chat and my printer is working smashingly. I meant to ask Jai how the weather was in Duluth.

2. I blogged like an Orofino Maniac (inside North Idaho joke) today and am getting close to being caught up on the Sibling Assignments I fell behind on while I was working an overload winter quarter, lost my computer to a thief, and got this pneumonia. Don't worry sisters: I'll catch up and be ready to deal some assignments myself!

3. After a long absence at the Spokesman Review's North Idaho blogsite Huckleberries Online, I re-entered that world today and, to my surprise and pleasure, my blog entry about moving too far away but trying to stay close with my sisters got front paged.

Three Beautiful Things 08/06/08: Juniper Pizza, Coffee at Theo's, Juicy Huckleberry

1. Juniper delivers pizza for Eugene's Cozmic Pizza and I ran into her as she was heading out for a delivery and we hadn't seen each other for a while and embraced and did some shorthand getting caught up.

2. Jeff and Margaret and I had coffee at Theo's Coffeehouse and discussed the virtues and failings of "No Country for Old Men" among other things. Our conversation was riveting. Time flew.

3. I am happy to learn that DFO at HBO will be using what I wrote about visiting Kellogg, Oregon, here, in his Huckleberries column in the Handle Extra in the Spokesman Review.

Three Beautiful Things 03/07/07: More Grace, Crayons, Dang

1. I arrived at Lane Community College about 8:30 this morning. I set down my laptop in a chair at a study table across from my Intro to Poetry classroom. I unlocked the classroom's doors. I went to my office, without the laptop. I taught until ten. I scooted to my 10 o'clock class in another building. I finished class. I returned to my office. Eric came by. We talked. My office hour ended and I prepared to go to the Tutoring Center to meet Asuki for an appointment. I went to pick up my computer. It wasn't in my office. It was gone. I went to my poetry classroom. I went to my composition classroom. I called the Deke. I went to the parking lot, looked in my car. I remembered that I had unlocked the classroom. I went back to the classroom. I looked around at the study table. There on the chair was my laptop, where I had left it, four and a half hours earlier.

Mercy.

2. My composition students made pictorial representations of how "it's all connected" in Kim Barnes' book In the Wilderness and did beautiful work bringing the book alive in their imaginative projects.

3. DanG of HBO has me believing I can, once and for all, make elementary aspects of HTML work. I am very grateful for his lucid work and generous offer of it.

Three Beautiful Things 02/19/07: HBO Blogroll, Neko Case, Snug Smashes Bread

1. My sisters' blogs are now listed on HBO's blogroll. I hope this will help a lot of readers find their writing and pictures. If you haven't visited their blogs, Silver Valley Girl's blog is here and InlandEmpireGirl's blog is here.

2. When I went grocery shopping, I drove the Subaru and could listen to Neko Case's latest cd,
Fox Confessor Brings the Flood.

3. I went to Great Harvest and bought a nice loaf of bread and put it on the passenger seat. Snug came from the back seat to the passenger seat and sat on the bread, smashing half the loaf. Once home, I fixed a ham and swiss sandwich with the smashed bread. It tasted great. No harm done!

Three Beautiful Things 02/18/07: Blogfest, Sabbath, Velcro Dog

1. Huckleberries Online celebrated its third anniversary in Coeur d'Alene at Capone's yesterday and today the pictures and video began to surface on blogs and at YouTube and even though I don't know these people personally, Huckleberries has been my lifeline to goings on in North Idaho and I loved seeing these people whose comments and blogs I read having so much fun. Congratulations to D. F. (Dave) Oliveria for overseeing such a vibrant blog and for gathering the kinds of people together who can jump his car battery when it dies. (In his excitement to get inside at Capone's, did DFO leave his lights on? If he did, that is just plain sweet.) Photos by Taryn: Mommie Dearest.

2. No schedule. Rest. Sorted out my del.icio.us bookmarks which got me back to thinking about some books I've ignored lately and got me listening to Playing in the Band and Uncle John's Band from the 6/23/90 Grateful Dead show at Autzen Stadium here in Eugene...if you were there, please tell me so in a comment.

3. Snug was velcro dog today. I've been so busy with the play and with work that I haven't been home for long stetches of time and today Snug stayed with me on the bed and was at my feet when I sat elsewhere. We'll have another day tomorrow together. I enjoy so much when I have hours in a row with him and today was the first such day in quite a while.

Driving to Kellogg

Are you sure that was the right exit?

Driving here today: The sky was slate or foggy. Low. No glare. A shaft of light broke through and illuminated a dinghy on the Columbia River. The roads were wet, dirty, safe. The lumpy hills in Washington across the Columbia River were not purple, but lime green, covered with young vegetation. As the mountains flattened into the rolling hills of the Palouse, lightly covered by snow, layered by fog, my heart began to race. I love the lay of this land. I left Eugene at 6 a.m. I arrived at 4:30 p.m. I'm ready to sleep. The blog world is quiet. It's almost a silent night at Huckleberries and 2Blowhards. Learning the Argenitine Tango might be done until 2007. Student of Life has been quiet. So has her husband, Rapid Eye Reality. No email today. I'm hoping to write more after some restorative sleep. More about Kellogg.

And being here.

"Hey, Pert!"

On the whole, as I daily observe and help educate college students at Lane Community College, I am deeply impressed with their determination, kindness, courtesy, intelligence, curiosity, and desire to be good.

I also, in my lesser moments, envy their stuff. I can't imagine what it would have been like as a NIC freshman in 1972 to have a device smaller than a baseball card that I could use to listen to Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey as well as Three Dog Night and Cream. My students carry the history of recorded music with them, not just the music of 2006.

But, they don't have nicknames*.

In 1972, when I strolled into a party or a bar filled with friends, someone would mark my arrival by calling out my father's name: "Hey,Pert!" If George White was present, he called me "Cotton". Some called me "Irish". I'd sit down with Stu(aka Sturt, Mulligan, or Ned), Byrdman(aka Blowtop), Lew(aka Bartalome), Louie(aka Dunbar), Chick (aka Pierce or Dodger), Jake, Bones, Snotz, Bach, Squirrely, Buck, Buff, Goose, Hog, Dogfoot, Abby (aka Brooks), Eddie, Kenny, Lars, Stinky, Magilla, Sparky and we might tell stories about Sweats, Fancy Art, Jeremiah Bean, Carmen, Dersky, Catfish, Trout, Poz, Sman, Ollie, Reuben, Chat (the Cat) and others.

Some of these nicknames were mean. Some were highly complimentary.

I still do it today, but more in private, calling people I know outside the home by nicknames with The Deke.

But, all in all, the nickname calling I knew thirty, forty years ago has dissipated (except in the world of hip-hop). I grew up knowing professional athletes by nicknames like the M&M Boys, the Say Hey Kid, the Splendid Splinter, Stan the Man, Hondo, Whitey, Yogi, Pee Wee, Dizzy, Yaz, the Human Highlight Film, Dr. J, Magic, Larry Legend, The Toe, Johnny U, Frenchie, and so on.


I don't know. The young people I work with are so respectful of each other's names. The only student in my classes I knew had a nickname was Tiffany, who former friends called Stiffy. I think of nicknames for my students all the time, but keep them to myself.

If they call each other anything, it's dawg. It gives them a hip-hop feeling. 'Sup dawg?

I'm not like my junior high band teacher, Wayne "Tank" Benson, who had a nickname for every kid in the band. I was "Beautiful". My fellow baritone horn player, Wayne Denlinger, was "Desdemona". Don Windisch was "Alfalfa". My little sister Carol was "Pooh".

If anyone reading this was in junior high band with Wayne Benson and you know other nicknames, please click comments and write them.

I'll be leaving for Kellogg on Thursday. Lars, Stu, Jake, Rooster and I are going to try to get a poker game together and play on Stu's boat, if the heater works.

Rooster, Jake, and I will go to the Casino for a day some time.

I'll see Tank out at Johnny's Bar for coffee in the mornings. Hog Hill will be there, too.

But, today, I'll send student papers out in the mail. I'll look at each of their names and wonder what their nicknames might have been thirty-five years ago in Kellogg, Idaho.

Wucky? Fanner? Vinnie? Linnie? Li'l Sweats? T.A.T Mongoose? Greebs? Rifer? Doc? Nifty? Goggles? Roscoe? Boafer?

Nope. Those are all taken. They live in the Silver Valley -- along with the scores of nicknames I can't remember.

P. S. I think I might have overstated my case about lack of 2006 nicknames. The students I act with come up with nicknames for each other. Matt calls Scott "Hoop" and I call Scott "Trump" and Scott calls me "Snugman". Nicknames are alive in LCC theater. One other place nicknames are THRIVING, is on blogs and in chat rooms. I write under a nickname in this very blog! The fellows over at 2Blowhards use nicknames. I read the comments of all kinds of nicknmamed writers at Huckleberries Online. So, what am I thinking of! Nicknames abound, just not in my classroom or when I am around the current generation of youth in the cafeteria or in the classroom.
*etyomology of the word "nickname": [Middle English neke name, from a neke name, alteration of an eke name : eke, addition (from Old English ēaca; see aug- in Indo-European roots) + name, name; see name.]

Amateurs

For much of my adult life, I've read and listened to analysis about how specialized and professionalized life in the USA has become. I know this is true. The examples abound in academia, athletics, politics, medicine, music, and elsewhere.

Many of us, however, are resisting specialization and are undaunted by not being professional in much that we do. In my whole life, at age fifty-three, I've never seen so much admirable amateurism in daily life. Much of it is right here on the Internet, but not all of it.

Using myself as an example, I revel in all the things I do that I am far from accomplished at, that no one would pay me to do, that I have no real training in, but that I enjoy immensely.

I'm an amateur actor. I'm an amateur photographer. I'm an amateur when I use Windows Movie Maker. I'm an amateur song mixer on CD's. I'm an amateur historian. I write memoir passages on this blog as an amateur. I am an amateur student of the working class and how work is experienced and how workers express themselves in writing and art. I'm an amateur movie buff and verbal film critic.

If you are reading this blog right now, you are reading the thoughts of an amateur writer. In the world of professional writing, I would have no business writing about what I'm writing about right now. I'm no sociologist.

One of my favorite blogs, Huckleberries Online, is like many blogs of its ilk in that it gives amateur journalists and commentators a place to write scoops, observations, raise questions, keep pressure on public and private entities, and write with a freedom often denied the professionals. The amateur doesn't have a professional reputation to uphold. The amateur can swing and miss, but can hit some pretty towering home runs sometimes, too.

I can hardly wait to get some writing together and go to lulu.com or a similar print on demand service and publish a book or two. Why put myself through the time consuming meat grinder of the book publishing profession? Do I need their cred? No. Am I looking to make money off my writing? No. Am I looking to groom and maintain a reputation in the world of publishing? No.

I'd like to publish some of my writing and give it to friends and family and if I sell a book or two, fine.

I want to approach it as an amateur.

I hope the glories of amateurism will flourish again. I enjoy knowing that so many people are taking writing, music, acting, journalism, sports reporting, and other avocations seriously, putting their work out for others to enjoy, but are not hamstrung by the idea that it's only worth doing if you get money for it or if it's nothing short of superb.

Amateurs don't have to be superb. Often there's not time to be superb. There is, however, time to enjoy doing a handful of things enjoyably, not letting the perfectionist demands of professionalism and specialization get in the way, or ruin what we love to do.

Together, we are restoring the luster to the word amateur that it has lost. If you tell me my efforts at writing and photography and acting seem like the work of an amateur, I'll smile and say, "Thank you. You can tell?"