1. Got an email today from XM Satellite radio telling me that with the merger of Sirius and XM, I have a new line up of channels to listen to. OMG! Channel 57 is the Grateful Dead channel. I love having the cosmic country sounds of the Grateful Dead as the soundtrack to my life and I can hardly wait to have the Grateful Dead channel on though the night. I've always loved to sleep with the Grateful Dead playing. I mean, I love them when I'm awake, but it's great dream music and triggers all kinds of wonderful stuff in my unconscious mind while I sleep.
2. Today I played the hour long Bill Moyers interview with Coleman Barks to my World Lit students and I loved the silence that fell in the room as Coleman Barks tried to explain the mysticism of Rumi and as he read Rumi poems accompanied by the Paul Winter Consort. For me, this is the turning point in the World Lit course. With Rumi, it's like we are entering into a world so strange, so unlike what we are used to, and this is just what a World Lit course should do for me and my students.
3. It felt good to cut loose with a string of the vilest profanity when MB told me that her stalker had pleaded not guilty to breaking the stalking order. He came, in full view of me and Margaret and campus safety and later the sheriff's officeto LCC six weeks ago to bring MB a gift wrapped knife. I hope his not guilty plea doesn't fly with the jury and pisses off the judge and, when he is found guilty, the judge punishes him severely.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Three Beautiful Things 11/11/08: Steely Dan, Veteran Wainwright, Veteran Bennett
1. It's funny. I get older and music that was popular twenty-five, thirty years kind of went by me and now, in my mid-fifties, I'm recovering it. Pink Floyd's the prime example. Today, it was Steely Dan. I graded essays most of the day and gave myself a Steely Dan concert via Napster and, well, I've neglected Walter and Donald too long.
2. Veteran's Day highlight: I've know Rick over at Myrtle Beach Ramblings since I was five years old. At his blog, he writes with a smirk, but for Veteran's Day he put the smirk aside and wrote this piece on his military service and later wrote a deeply moving poem that (I think) he'll be posting on Friday. It'll feature him reading the poem and accompanying images. I'll link to it when he puts it up.
3. Melissa, WR 121 student, veteran of the war in Afghanistan wrote a haunting and moving essay about how she sacrificed for her country by going to war. She also sacrificed the very American Dream she went to war to defend. Very sobering essay.
2. Veteran's Day highlight: I've know Rick over at Myrtle Beach Ramblings since I was five years old. At his blog, he writes with a smirk, but for Veteran's Day he put the smirk aside and wrote this piece on his military service and later wrote a deeply moving poem that (I think) he'll be posting on Friday. It'll feature him reading the poem and accompanying images. I'll link to it when he puts it up.
3. Melissa, WR 121 student, veteran of the war in Afghanistan wrote a haunting and moving essay about how she sacrificed for her country by going to war. She also sacrificed the very American Dream she went to war to defend. Very sobering essay.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Three Beautiful Things on Freaky 11/10/08: Nathan Obama, Marge Reunion, Cassie Asks Hard Questions, BONUS! NMc's Feminist Groove
1. So last night I had this harmless dream about the Obama family and Barack Obama had a son about six feet six tall with curly/wavy brown hair who I recognized as my former student Nathan. I was fun thinking about Nathan as a member of the first family and I liked how Pres.-elect Obama jived Nathan about being a white kid from Newport as he put an encouraging arm around his shoulder. I woke up this morning smiling about Nathan Obama and went to work and conducted my 10:00 World Lit class, thinking I hadn't seen Nathan since midsummer when I was out walking Snug and Nathan was on his bike and stopped to tell me about his plans to work hard and move to Germany to live with his brother and focus his energies on writing and art so I went to my office after class and was fiddling around when I heard a knock on the door.
It was Nathan Obama.
Freaky.
2. Lately I'd been thinking about a student of mine from the 1990's who took all my composition courses and some Shakespeare, too, because I see a woman around school whose looks resemble hers and after today's swim through The Ramayana in World Lit I didn't even get to my office before, lo and behold, there was Marge. I hadn't seen her in at least ten years, she'd been on my ind, and as if on cue, she appeared. Freaky. I'd been on her mind, too, and she decided to stop by and see how I'd been and to tell me the latest about her life as a mother, a resident of Salem, and her continuing struggles with MS.
3. Sooo, I went over to Margaret's office after Nathan Obama shuffled off and we were talking about mental health and teaching and our team teaching when one of our Fat Cats students popped in, out of nowhere, and Cassie told us about her idealism and her blunt honesty in workplaces and the difficulty she was having holding jobs down and what was she going to do with the rest of her life, anyway: Did we have any ideas? MB did. I didn't. I was too preoccupied with how freaky it was that Cassie just showed up at the same time MB and I were discussing our teaching of the very course Cassie took from us two years ago.
Bonus Track!
4. As the evening stretched out, I read deeper and deeper into my World Lit. students' Antigone essays, a deep pleasure. I got to NMc's paper. Neil writes his papers from a feminist perspective and Antigone was a banquet of fine food for getting his feminist groove on. His essay provoked, stimulated, and stretched me. About three quarters into his essay, NMc addressed his displeasure with women feminists who claimed men couldn't be feminists. I gulped. Freaky. Only three hours earlier, I had taken on the same subject in this blog post. Freaky.
It was Nathan Obama.
Freaky.
2. Lately I'd been thinking about a student of mine from the 1990's who took all my composition courses and some Shakespeare, too, because I see a woman around school whose looks resemble hers and after today's swim through The Ramayana in World Lit I didn't even get to my office before, lo and behold, there was Marge. I hadn't seen her in at least ten years, she'd been on my ind, and as if on cue, she appeared. Freaky. I'd been on her mind, too, and she decided to stop by and see how I'd been and to tell me the latest about her life as a mother, a resident of Salem, and her continuing struggles with MS.
3. Sooo, I went over to Margaret's office after Nathan Obama shuffled off and we were talking about mental health and teaching and our team teaching when one of our Fat Cats students popped in, out of nowhere, and Cassie told us about her idealism and her blunt honesty in workplaces and the difficulty she was having holding jobs down and what was she going to do with the rest of her life, anyway: Did we have any ideas? MB did. I didn't. I was too preoccupied with how freaky it was that Cassie just showed up at the same time MB and I were discussing our teaching of the very course Cassie took from us two years ago.
Bonus Track!
4. As the evening stretched out, I read deeper and deeper into my World Lit. students' Antigone essays, a deep pleasure. I got to NMc's paper. Neil writes his papers from a feminist perspective and Antigone was a banquet of fine food for getting his feminist groove on. His essay provoked, stimulated, and stretched me. About three quarters into his essay, NMc addressed his displeasure with women feminists who claimed men couldn't be feminists. I gulped. Freaky. Only three hours earlier, I had taken on the same subject in this blog post. Freaky.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Discovering I'm Not a Feminist
During Whitworth College's spring break of 1983, I rode the Greyhound to Seattle land back to hang out with some friends, go to a few movies, and just enjoy being on a short trip.
I was a working as a full-time, interim instructor in the English Department. I was twenty-nine years old, newly divorced, and trying to secure some direction in my life. Through my youth and enthusiasm and liberal-mindedness, I quickly won the trust of quite a few outsider students at Whitworth, most notably a group of women who met regularly for dinner together off-campus to discuss their emergent ideas about gender. Several, but not all, of these students were lesbians.
In casual conversations at the store or in the cafeteria or in my office, I asked questions, not to challenge, but to understand what these students were discussing and tried to understand their perspectives. I was ignorant. They loved helping me understand their questions and how they talked about things -- and always made it clear that I would never be invited to their meals for women!
One of the students suggested that I read Adrienne Rich's collection of essays On Lies, Secrets, and Silence.
I read Rich's book on the Greyhound bus between Spokane and Seattle.
The book puzzled me. It challenged my assumption that consciousness, how we think, perceive, remember, and generally experience the world was a sexless/genderless experience.
I thought of feminism as a movement centered on equal rights for women under the law and on equal opportunity in the workplace and on women earning equal pay for equal work.
It had never occurred to me that on a metaphysical level, women experience the world differently than men or that women have different ways of arriving at knowledge and of deciding what kinds of knowledge they find reliable. Nor did I ever think of questions of morality or ethics as being anything but a universally human concern, not a concern that women experience differently than men.
Rich challenged my universalist philosophical assumptions more strongly than they'd ever been challenged. Rich helped me begin to think of feminism as concerned with deeper issues of consciousness, with consciousness shaped by gender.
I felt a little threatened at first. I didn't like the idea that the experience of being a woman was quite different from mine, as a man. I wanted to believe that, at the level of perception and cognition and affect, men and women had more in common than differences and that if men and women could work things out socially and legally, if we could hammer out institutional equality, we could stop thinking of women's issues and focus more on human issues.
In other words, I'd thought of feminism as a legal/political/social movement. I was, and still am, a proponent of this kind of equality, so I thought I could call myself a feminist.
After riding a Greyhound bus between Spokane and Seattle in the spring of 1983 and after reading On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, I never thought of myself as a feminist again.
Ever since that bus ride, I have regarded feminism as a fundamentally philosophical way of women working to resist the idea that men and women differ only in terms of reproductive organs, the ability to give birth, and in other physical respects.
I came to understand that the differences between men and women are deeper than physical and chemical.
This difference is fundamental: men and women perceive, process, think about, sort out, understand, negotiate, and understand reality in fundamentally different ways.
The memory of my bus ride between Spokane and Seattle, my conversations with the feminist students at Whitworth, my years of further reading and countless conversations and discussions listening to women graduate students and faculty at the University of Oregon and fellow instructors at LCC all came back to me when Barack Obama was elected president last week.
Not only do men and women perceive, process, think about, sort out, understand, negotiate, and understand reality in fundamentally different ways, so do members of different races.
And that's where I'll pick things up in my next blog entry. How has being white (and male) shaped my consciousness and the way I experience the world I live in? I don't see the world the same way an African-American does.
It's why I don't think we can think of a post-racial world.
It's why in my happiness that we elected Obama president, I also feel very somber. It's not that I don't want to be led by a man who has and does experience the world fundamentally differently than I do.
It's the challenge Obama and our country faces that leaves me somber.
Enough for now: I'll pick this up in another day or two and try to sort out the question of racial whiteness as it applies to me, a North Idaho boy, and how being white has affected the very frame of mind I carry with me into the world.
I'm hoping that eventually I can explain why I think we should be saying that if we voted for Barack Obama, it was because he's black. And how I don't see anything wrong at all about voting for a candidate because of our response to his race. I think such a response is healthy and inevitable.
I was a working as a full-time, interim instructor in the English Department. I was twenty-nine years old, newly divorced, and trying to secure some direction in my life. Through my youth and enthusiasm and liberal-mindedness, I quickly won the trust of quite a few outsider students at Whitworth, most notably a group of women who met regularly for dinner together off-campus to discuss their emergent ideas about gender. Several, but not all, of these students were lesbians.
In casual conversations at the store or in the cafeteria or in my office, I asked questions, not to challenge, but to understand what these students were discussing and tried to understand their perspectives. I was ignorant. They loved helping me understand their questions and how they talked about things -- and always made it clear that I would never be invited to their meals for women!
One of the students suggested that I read Adrienne Rich's collection of essays On Lies, Secrets, and Silence.
I read Rich's book on the Greyhound bus between Spokane and Seattle.
The book puzzled me. It challenged my assumption that consciousness, how we think, perceive, remember, and generally experience the world was a sexless/genderless experience.
I thought of feminism as a movement centered on equal rights for women under the law and on equal opportunity in the workplace and on women earning equal pay for equal work.
It had never occurred to me that on a metaphysical level, women experience the world differently than men or that women have different ways of arriving at knowledge and of deciding what kinds of knowledge they find reliable. Nor did I ever think of questions of morality or ethics as being anything but a universally human concern, not a concern that women experience differently than men.
Rich challenged my universalist philosophical assumptions more strongly than they'd ever been challenged. Rich helped me begin to think of feminism as concerned with deeper issues of consciousness, with consciousness shaped by gender.
I felt a little threatened at first. I didn't like the idea that the experience of being a woman was quite different from mine, as a man. I wanted to believe that, at the level of perception and cognition and affect, men and women had more in common than differences and that if men and women could work things out socially and legally, if we could hammer out institutional equality, we could stop thinking of women's issues and focus more on human issues.
In other words, I'd thought of feminism as a legal/political/social movement. I was, and still am, a proponent of this kind of equality, so I thought I could call myself a feminist.
After riding a Greyhound bus between Spokane and Seattle in the spring of 1983 and after reading On Lies, Secrets, and Silence, I never thought of myself as a feminist again.
Ever since that bus ride, I have regarded feminism as a fundamentally philosophical way of women working to resist the idea that men and women differ only in terms of reproductive organs, the ability to give birth, and in other physical respects.
I came to understand that the differences between men and women are deeper than physical and chemical.
This difference is fundamental: men and women perceive, process, think about, sort out, understand, negotiate, and understand reality in fundamentally different ways.
The memory of my bus ride between Spokane and Seattle, my conversations with the feminist students at Whitworth, my years of further reading and countless conversations and discussions listening to women graduate students and faculty at the University of Oregon and fellow instructors at LCC all came back to me when Barack Obama was elected president last week.
Not only do men and women perceive, process, think about, sort out, understand, negotiate, and understand reality in fundamentally different ways, so do members of different races.
And that's where I'll pick things up in my next blog entry. How has being white (and male) shaped my consciousness and the way I experience the world I live in? I don't see the world the same way an African-American does.
It's why I don't think we can think of a post-racial world.
It's why in my happiness that we elected Obama president, I also feel very somber. It's not that I don't want to be led by a man who has and does experience the world fundamentally differently than I do.
It's the challenge Obama and our country faces that leaves me somber.
Enough for now: I'll pick this up in another day or two and try to sort out the question of racial whiteness as it applies to me, a North Idaho boy, and how being white has affected the very frame of mind I carry with me into the world.
I'm hoping that eventually I can explain why I think we should be saying that if we voted for Barack Obama, it was because he's black. And how I don't see anything wrong at all about voting for a candidate because of our response to his race. I think such a response is healthy and inevitable.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Three Beautiful Things 11/09/08: Sibling Assignment, Winded, Thanksgiving Shaping Up
1. I had a great time writing this week's sibling assignment and my sisters did too. It's really fun when these assignments we give each other hit the mark!
2. Snug and I went up to the Laurelwood area of Eugene and did some uphill walking. We both needed to get the blood flowing and the breathing accelerated.
3. Ed called. Our guys get together weekend in Cd'A is shaping up. I can hardly wait to make the trip, see my family, and be with the guys again.
2. Snug and I went up to the Laurelwood area of Eugene and did some uphill walking. We both needed to get the blood flowing and the breathing accelerated.
3. Ed called. Our guys get together weekend in Cd'A is shaping up. I can hardly wait to make the trip, see my family, and be with the guys again.
Sibling Assignment #80: The God Machine of Snow Speed
I gave this week's sibling assignment. It's offbeat. I hope it works, or at the very least, I hope my sisters and I have fun tackling this one.
Here's the photo Silver Valley Girl sent me and my story follows:
"Do you think it's big enough?"
"Yeah. It's big enough. How big you think it needs to be?"
"Big enough for my ass, I guess."
"There ya go. So put your ass on this sucker and let it rip."
I have to admit: I was apprehensive.
I'd waxed the rails of my not quite flexible Sears and Roebuck Flexible Flyer knockoff and flown down Chestnut Hill plenty of times. I'd borrowed the Morgan boys' Flexible Flyer and marveled at the whiplash eccentricities of its touch runner power steering and just last week I screamed down Chestnut with Cara and Mary and Jim on the monster logging truck inner tube Randy Dolphin's dad hauled over in the back of his three quarter ton burnt sienna Ford F-150 pick-up. Last year Randy Winterowd brought his turquoise Wham-O Spinmaster Tilt-a-Whirl Flying Saucer and when I dizzied myself through the Chestnut and Mission Street intersection, I never enjoyed throwing up hot chocolate and marshmellows more.
But what was this? It was not a tricked up ride, no maple polish, no Arctic lightning bolts tattooed across its top, or flashy Northern Lights color design.
It might have been a paint pan. It looked like the underneath of a ditto machine. It was as flashy as the front strut-mate mounting kit Dad bought last month when he and Art Listoe tried to shore up the suspension of our Chevy Impala.
But Lloyd promised me a great ride.
"Okay. I'll give it a try."
I dragged Lloyd's ride to the top of Chestnut Hill and then went a bit farther on a trail we'd built between the bushes on the little mountain above Chestnut Street hill. It meant barreling a few hundred feet down the mountain and then taking a hard right onto the Chestnut Street hill itself and screaming three steep blocks to Mission Avenue at the foot of Chestnut.
A wind had picked up and it blew the snowflakes like pine needles into my face. Whizzing down Chestnut on Lloyd's faceless snow glider was going to hurt, but if it was a great ride, it would be worth it.
I hit a couple bumps coming down the mountain that lifted me off the ground. My heart leapt into my eyes. The wind and snow wet my eyes, but I managed to lean into the hard right onto Chestnut. I laid back, just like the lugers in the Grenoble Olympics. My face felt flat. I zoomed by Carol Lee and Suzie Mac and the Absec boys and roared past Lennie.
Some of the kids stopped in their tracks. Later they told me that I streaked so fast they could barely tell who I was. Other kids quit climbing Chestnut and started to run to the foot of the hill to see me when I finished this run.
I'd ridden the Jack Rabbit at Nat Park and water skied behind the Ross's inboard/outboard on Beauty Bay and I'd cannon-balled off the high dive at the city pool, but nothing compared to the feeling of speed and power and dominance I felt as I flew down Chestnut Hill and blew through Mission Street and rocketed all the way through Mullan Street and finally came to a stop at Riverside.
No one had ever sledded down Chestnut Hill and made it all the way to Riverside. When I came to a stop, I looked back and all my friends were running toward me, hollering, whooping, laughing, jumping up and down, speechless in their ecstasy to have seen me achieve the impossible.
I never rode Lloyd's slate king of speed again. After my ride, Lloyd took his snow glider home and never used it again.
"I wanted my god machine of snow speed to go out on top," he told me a couple of weeks later. "No one will ever match what you did that day on Chestnut Hill."
I almost retired from sledding myself after that ride. I didn't, though. I went back to riding, savoring every ride from then on.
I never expected to have a ride like that again.
And I never did.
Take a picture of something weird or of something not weird in a weird way.Silver Valley Girl posted a Pulitzer Prize worthy poem, "Keeping My Eyes on Kellogg", here. Go right now and read about the great ice cold slug bait beer search in Mom's garage, courtesy of InlandEmpireGirl, here.
Try to make the subject of your picture either unrecognizable or take a picture of something really odd that your viewer won't know what it is.
Post the picture and write a post about it in whatever way you want. You might try to identify what's in the picture or you might write what the picture makes you feel or think about or whatever.
Here's the photo Silver Valley Girl sent me and my story follows:
"Do you think it's big enough?""Yeah. It's big enough. How big you think it needs to be?"
"Big enough for my ass, I guess."
"There ya go. So put your ass on this sucker and let it rip."
I have to admit: I was apprehensive.
I'd waxed the rails of my not quite flexible Sears and Roebuck Flexible Flyer knockoff and flown down Chestnut Hill plenty of times. I'd borrowed the Morgan boys' Flexible Flyer and marveled at the whiplash eccentricities of its touch runner power steering and just last week I screamed down Chestnut with Cara and Mary and Jim on the monster logging truck inner tube Randy Dolphin's dad hauled over in the back of his three quarter ton burnt sienna Ford F-150 pick-up. Last year Randy Winterowd brought his turquoise Wham-O Spinmaster Tilt-a-Whirl Flying Saucer and when I dizzied myself through the Chestnut and Mission Street intersection, I never enjoyed throwing up hot chocolate and marshmellows more.
But what was this? It was not a tricked up ride, no maple polish, no Arctic lightning bolts tattooed across its top, or flashy Northern Lights color design.
It might have been a paint pan. It looked like the underneath of a ditto machine. It was as flashy as the front strut-mate mounting kit Dad bought last month when he and Art Listoe tried to shore up the suspension of our Chevy Impala.
But Lloyd promised me a great ride.
"Okay. I'll give it a try."
I dragged Lloyd's ride to the top of Chestnut Hill and then went a bit farther on a trail we'd built between the bushes on the little mountain above Chestnut Street hill. It meant barreling a few hundred feet down the mountain and then taking a hard right onto the Chestnut Street hill itself and screaming three steep blocks to Mission Avenue at the foot of Chestnut.
A wind had picked up and it blew the snowflakes like pine needles into my face. Whizzing down Chestnut on Lloyd's faceless snow glider was going to hurt, but if it was a great ride, it would be worth it.
I hit a couple bumps coming down the mountain that lifted me off the ground. My heart leapt into my eyes. The wind and snow wet my eyes, but I managed to lean into the hard right onto Chestnut. I laid back, just like the lugers in the Grenoble Olympics. My face felt flat. I zoomed by Carol Lee and Suzie Mac and the Absec boys and roared past Lennie.
Some of the kids stopped in their tracks. Later they told me that I streaked so fast they could barely tell who I was. Other kids quit climbing Chestnut and started to run to the foot of the hill to see me when I finished this run.
I'd ridden the Jack Rabbit at Nat Park and water skied behind the Ross's inboard/outboard on Beauty Bay and I'd cannon-balled off the high dive at the city pool, but nothing compared to the feeling of speed and power and dominance I felt as I flew down Chestnut Hill and blew through Mission Street and rocketed all the way through Mullan Street and finally came to a stop at Riverside.
No one had ever sledded down Chestnut Hill and made it all the way to Riverside. When I came to a stop, I looked back and all my friends were running toward me, hollering, whooping, laughing, jumping up and down, speechless in their ecstasy to have seen me achieve the impossible.
I never rode Lloyd's slate king of speed again. After my ride, Lloyd took his snow glider home and never used it again.
"I wanted my god machine of snow speed to go out on top," he told me a couple of weeks later. "No one will ever match what you did that day on Chestnut Hill."
I almost retired from sledding myself after that ride. I didn't, though. I went back to riding, savoring every ride from then on.
I never expected to have a ride like that again.
And I never did.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Three Beautiful Things 11/08/08: They Laugh, XM Success, Rain Energy
People they laugh when they hear you're from my town
They say it's a sour and used up all place
I defended its honor, shrugged off the put downs
You know that you're poor, from Tacoma
1. This Neko Case song popped into my mind this evening while I was conemplating my racial identity. I've always listened to almost the entire song as being about Kellogg -- "People laugh when they hear you're from this town"... I hope you'll take a few minutes and listen Neko Case singing it on You Tube.
2. I love my small brushes with materialism and its pleasures. Today I had an XM Satellite radio installed in my Honda, and after some trouble shooting on line, with a robot customer service machine at 1-800-XM Radio, finally at 8:10 this evening my Honda Civic is now tricked out with satellite radio.
3. I know it's miserable and bone chilling, but the rain gives me energy. I've been energized all day and much of the day was sopping cold.
Lots on My Mind
The election of Barack Obama has plunged me into contemplation about race in the United States. I'm not quite ready to write it all out yet, but last night I did what I enjoy doing most when I am in a contemplative mood.
I drove over the Coast Range to Florence, my mind quietly working over the ways I've come to understand racial difference in our country. The drive did me a lot of good.
After all that thinking, I did what I enjoy doing when I need to let my mind relax from its thoughts. I played slot machines at the casino and lost myself in flashing lights, Diet Pepsi, bells, animated figures, and the suspense and tension playing slots helps me feel.
I had a meal coupon and so I took a break from playing and plunged back into contemplation over salad, cold shrimp, crab, breaded scallops, razor clams, breaded jumbo shrimp, seafood pasta, and more Diet Pepsi at the Friday night fish buffet.
The buffet was not very well attended, so while a pianist played the greatest hits of Celine Dion, Elton John, and the early Bee Gees not far behind me, I thought more about race and what it's meant to me be white and a native North Idahoan.
So often, when the word "race" is employed, it's in reference to people who are not white.
Last night, I needed to think about myself and my family in terms of race, our race, in terms of being white, and how strongly my consciousness and feelings of belonging, especially in North Idaho, are grounded in the fact that I'm white.
I'm not very interested in white guilt. I'm interested in looking as dispassionately as I can at what being white means to a guy like me who has lived, worked, and played with almost exclusively other white people my whole life.
But, I'm not quite really to bust my thoughts into words yet.
I am getting closer to understanding my vote for Barack Obama and closer to understanding why I have expressed my joy at the prospect of his presidency in sober, somber reflection.
I think it all began in the basement of my parents' house, when at ten or eleven years old I used to spend a lot of time reading Life and Look magazines' presentation of the Civil Rights movement.
My consciousness about racial difference in the USA began then and all these forty-five, fifty years later I am still retreating into the basement of my inward self, trying to understand.
If this sounds interesting to you, I hope you'll come back and read more of what I've been thinking as I slowly, somberly, and seriously start to write about my vote for Obama and my thoughts about being white.
Three Beautiful Things 11/07/08: Gilmour Tears, Ramayana and Crayola, Snug Walk
2. I loved watching and listening to my World Literature students talk and laugh and work with crayons, color pencils, charcoal sticks and other media as they drew, colored, and pasted pictures on large pieces of sketch pad paper. Their assignment was to work out their insights into The Ramayana and its treatment of dharma and make it visual.
3. Snug and I went for an autumn afternoon stroll. It's difficult taking pictures with Snug on the leash, but I did manage to capture leaves on the sidewalk and a shot pointed at our neighborhood's Baptist Church.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Three Beautiful Things 11/4-5/08: Obama Somberness, Sopa de Pollo, New Sheriff of Bunn, Burke, Eagle, Clarkia, Delta, Avery, Gem, and Murray, Idaho
1. Barack Obama is our 44th POTUS. His win triggered deep somberness in me.
2. I bought this spicy Mexicany chicken from Trader Joe's and used it as the basis for a soup with chicken broth, string beans, spinach, onion, and egg noodle. It's spicy, bone warming soup.
3. The country's election I cared the most about was finally resolved: write-in candidate Mitch Alexander defeated primary winner Gary Yergler for the Office of Sheriff of Shoshone County, Idaho.
2. I bought this spicy Mexicany chicken from Trader Joe's and used it as the basis for a soup with chicken broth, string beans, spinach, onion, and egg noodle. It's spicy, bone warming soup.
3. The country's election I cared the most about was finally resolved: write-in candidate Mitch Alexander defeated primary winner Gary Yergler for the Office of Sheriff of Shoshone County, Idaho.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Three Beautiful Things 11/02/08: Tsunami Nearly Over, Bacon and Eggs, Country Pop Rock
1. I'm getting caught up. I'm still behind in my paper reading, but I finished and returned over thirty essays today and I have quite a bit of time to work on papers tomorrow. Another deluge will come, but I'd like to be done with the last deluge before the new one.
2. Two slices of medium cooked bacon, a slice of Trader Joe's sharp cheddar cheese, an egg fried over medium sandwiched between two toasted pieces of bread made for a terrific breakfast this morning.
3. I didn't see it coming, but suddenly today I was in a Pure Prairie League/Poco/Marshall Tucker Band/Brooks and Dunn kind of mood and through the magic of Napster, I treated myself to a concert.
2. Two slices of medium cooked bacon, a slice of Trader Joe's sharp cheddar cheese, an egg fried over medium sandwiched between two toasted pieces of bread made for a terrific breakfast this morning.
3. I didn't see it coming, but suddenly today I was in a Pure Prairie League/Poco/Marshall Tucker Band/Brooks and Dunn kind of mood and through the magic of Napster, I treated myself to a concert.
Sibling Assignment #79: Christian Brothers Cribbage
InlandEmpireGirl asked us three siblings to write a piece on this:
All I remember about playing Canasta is that it involved about eight decks of cards and about a pack of Pall Malls for Mom, and it must have been a sad game because someone always cried when we played.
All I remember about Monopoly is that Grandma Woolum told us she got so sick of her kids fighting when they played Monopoly that one day during a heated game she tore the board away from her kids and threw it in the trash burner and torched it.
I do, however, have much happier memories of playing cribbage with my father.
I must have been about thirteen or fourteen years old when one of my aunts or cousins from Orofino gave me a cribbage board for Christmas.
I had no idea what it was. I took the board out of the box and all I saw was holes. They weren't numbered and I could see no purpose for it.
"What's this?"
"I'll show you later, Son. Wait until things settle down."
I don't know if things settled down that Christmas Day, but in the next day or two Dad got out a deck of cards, poured himself a brandy over ice, lit up a Camel straight, and began patiently explaining 15 two, 15 four, nibs, crib, double runs, suited Jacks and the other ins and outs of cribbage.
We played a few hands where he showed me what to do and then a game where he showed me what to do and before long I was on my own and Dad and I found something in addition to watching games on television that we enjoyed doing together.
Our games were calm. Unlike Yahtzee, as InlandEmpireGirl described, where Dad would blow into the cup and rattle the dice under his arm pits and plead with the "bones" to do his will, when it came to cribbage, we played quietly and respectfully.
I began to learn how to form a good hand for getting points in the first play, how to disguise my hand, what the juicy hands were, and how to keep my concentration and make difficult decisions about which cards to keep, which to throw away.
For some reason, I always enjoyed Dad drinking brandy when we played. Because we had to give a lot of attention to our cards, Dad drank the brandy slowly and I enjoyed watching beads of condensation form on his brandy glass as the ice slowly melted and diluted his brandy.
When I turned nineteen and was of legal drinking age, I started drinking brandy on ice when we played.
Our drinking together over cribbage made me feel like I was becoming an adult and that Dad and I were on more equal grounds with each other, not only in cards, but as guys.
Sometimes, usually around Christmas, Dad would buy a bottle of Crown Royal whiskey. This was long before single malt scotches and bourbons began to clutter the landscape of fine liquor. For us, Crown Royal was the top of the line. If we drank Christian Brothers brandy slowly, we took almost imperceptibly small sips from our Crown Royal glasses and heaved sighs of pleasure and eloquently expressed our pleasure: "Now, that's good shit."
In my early thirties, I decided alcohol was getting the best of me and I quit drinking. That was January of 1985. Dad and I still played the occasional game of cribbage when I came home to Kellogg for the holidays, but it wasn't the same.
The cards were good, but I could tell Dad didn't enjoy drinking his brandy or whiskey as much alone as when we sipped them together.
In the fall of 1996, I decided to see if I could drink alcohol again.
But, Dad had died in June.
I started drinking again too late.
If I had it to do over again, I would still have quit drinking alcohol in 1985.
But, I wouldn't have been so rigid. I wish I would have said to Dad, "You know, I quit drinking this shit, but I think for a few games of cribbage, it won't hurt me if we have a glass or two of Christian Brothers brandy with you."
Many hours of our childhood were spent playing games. Share a memory that involved playing a game(es).You can scratch your Yahtzee with InlandEmpireGirl, here and tear through Mr. Anderson's bushes playing hide and seek with Silver Valley Girl, here.
All I remember about playing Canasta is that it involved about eight decks of cards and about a pack of Pall Malls for Mom, and it must have been a sad game because someone always cried when we played.
All I remember about Monopoly is that Grandma Woolum told us she got so sick of her kids fighting when they played Monopoly that one day during a heated game she tore the board away from her kids and threw it in the trash burner and torched it.
I do, however, have much happier memories of playing cribbage with my father.
I must have been about thirteen or fourteen years old when one of my aunts or cousins from Orofino gave me a cribbage board for Christmas.
I had no idea what it was. I took the board out of the box and all I saw was holes. They weren't numbered and I could see no purpose for it.
"What's this?"
"I'll show you later, Son. Wait until things settle down."
I don't know if things settled down that Christmas Day, but in the next day or two Dad got out a deck of cards, poured himself a brandy over ice, lit up a Camel straight, and began patiently explaining 15 two, 15 four, nibs, crib, double runs, suited Jacks and the other ins and outs of cribbage.
We played a few hands where he showed me what to do and then a game where he showed me what to do and before long I was on my own and Dad and I found something in addition to watching games on television that we enjoyed doing together.
Our games were calm. Unlike Yahtzee, as InlandEmpireGirl described, where Dad would blow into the cup and rattle the dice under his arm pits and plead with the "bones" to do his will, when it came to cribbage, we played quietly and respectfully.
I began to learn how to form a good hand for getting points in the first play, how to disguise my hand, what the juicy hands were, and how to keep my concentration and make difficult decisions about which cards to keep, which to throw away.
For some reason, I always enjoyed Dad drinking brandy when we played. Because we had to give a lot of attention to our cards, Dad drank the brandy slowly and I enjoyed watching beads of condensation form on his brandy glass as the ice slowly melted and diluted his brandy.
When I turned nineteen and was of legal drinking age, I started drinking brandy on ice when we played.
Our drinking together over cribbage made me feel like I was becoming an adult and that Dad and I were on more equal grounds with each other, not only in cards, but as guys.
Sometimes, usually around Christmas, Dad would buy a bottle of Crown Royal whiskey. This was long before single malt scotches and bourbons began to clutter the landscape of fine liquor. For us, Crown Royal was the top of the line. If we drank Christian Brothers brandy slowly, we took almost imperceptibly small sips from our Crown Royal glasses and heaved sighs of pleasure and eloquently expressed our pleasure: "Now, that's good shit."
In my early thirties, I decided alcohol was getting the best of me and I quit drinking. That was January of 1985. Dad and I still played the occasional game of cribbage when I came home to Kellogg for the holidays, but it wasn't the same.
The cards were good, but I could tell Dad didn't enjoy drinking his brandy or whiskey as much alone as when we sipped them together.
In the fall of 1996, I decided to see if I could drink alcohol again.
But, Dad had died in June.
I started drinking again too late.
If I had it to do over again, I would still have quit drinking alcohol in 1985.
But, I wouldn't have been so rigid. I wish I would have said to Dad, "You know, I quit drinking this shit, but I think for a few games of cribbage, it won't hurt me if we have a glass or two of Christian Brothers brandy with you."
Sibling Assignment #78: Sitting Around at Stein Brothers' IGA
Silver Valley Girl prompted me and InlandEmpireGirl to post an essay exploring the following:
A lull.
A handful of shoppers, most just grabbing a box of Oly or a six pack of Lucky Lager. No need for a boxboy.
The store's shelves were restocked.
It wasn't time to start sweeping and dry mopping the aisles.
Grab a Darigold crate.
Have a seat.
Let's shoot the shit.
My favorite hangout in high school was the stock room at the back of Stein Brothers' IGA where I worked as a boxboy for three years.
It didn't matter if it was Merle or ReillyJ or ReillyT or Boosh or Jimmy or Dickie or Dale or LeRoy or Chico or 'Sidro or Red or who it was, when Kellogg mothers had finished buying out the store and when the price changes were done or when the canned green bean display was built, I loved pinching a pint of chocolate milk or a cream puff in the bakery or a can of Pepsi from the cooler and pulling up a milk crate or a box of Carnation Evaporated Milk and sitting down with my fellow boxboys or bosses and shooting the shit at Stein Brothers' IGA on Hill and Cameron in Kellogg, Idaho.
We talked about Led Zeppelin and Neil Diamond, basketball games and biology tests; the National Football League and high school football; high school girls who came in the store, and the couple or three gorgeous checkers LeRoy always hired to keep customers coming in the store; we told jokes, lied, picked on each other, and kept our morale up.
The work at Stein Brothers' IGA wasn't bad. We carried customers' groceries to their cars, kept product on the shelves, incinerated scores of cardboard boxes, cleaned up broken jars of Nalley's Dill Pickles, delivered groceries to a handful of shut-ins, and kept track of weekly bargains and answered customers' questions.
But, it was hanging out in the stock room that I loved the most.
I still pull up a milk crate at work and shoot the shit now that I'm an English instructor at LCC.
Outside MB's office a small round table sits in the corner and from time to time MB and sometimes KZ and sometime PM and pull up a chair at this table and shoot the shit.
We talk about Pink Floyd and student essays and the politics of our workplace and we crack jokes and tell funny stories.
It keeps our morale up and makes our work sweeter.
Now my favorite place to hang out is the round table in the corner by MB's office. It's just like sitting on a box of Del Monte cling peaches in the stock room.
I get stuff off my chest, laugh, and learn about the world I live in in a way that keeping my nose to the grindstone denies me.
Like drinking pinched Pepsis with Merle and ReillyT, it's what makes the workplace a pleasure.
Pick a business in Kellogg where you used to "hang out" in junior high or high school and tell a story about an incident that happened at this location that was really memorable.InlandEmpireGirl remembers scarfing Awful Awfuls at the Brunswick Cafe in Coeur d'Alene, here, and here, Silver Valley Girl takes readers back to Pappy's Pizza and a Powder Blue Cadillac in Kellogg.
A lull.
A handful of shoppers, most just grabbing a box of Oly or a six pack of Lucky Lager. No need for a boxboy.
The store's shelves were restocked.
It wasn't time to start sweeping and dry mopping the aisles.
Grab a Darigold crate.
Have a seat.
Let's shoot the shit.
My favorite hangout in high school was the stock room at the back of Stein Brothers' IGA where I worked as a boxboy for three years.
It didn't matter if it was Merle or ReillyJ or ReillyT or Boosh or Jimmy or Dickie or Dale or LeRoy or Chico or 'Sidro or Red or who it was, when Kellogg mothers had finished buying out the store and when the price changes were done or when the canned green bean display was built, I loved pinching a pint of chocolate milk or a cream puff in the bakery or a can of Pepsi from the cooler and pulling up a milk crate or a box of Carnation Evaporated Milk and sitting down with my fellow boxboys or bosses and shooting the shit at Stein Brothers' IGA on Hill and Cameron in Kellogg, Idaho.
We talked about Led Zeppelin and Neil Diamond, basketball games and biology tests; the National Football League and high school football; high school girls who came in the store, and the couple or three gorgeous checkers LeRoy always hired to keep customers coming in the store; we told jokes, lied, picked on each other, and kept our morale up.
The work at Stein Brothers' IGA wasn't bad. We carried customers' groceries to their cars, kept product on the shelves, incinerated scores of cardboard boxes, cleaned up broken jars of Nalley's Dill Pickles, delivered groceries to a handful of shut-ins, and kept track of weekly bargains and answered customers' questions.
But, it was hanging out in the stock room that I loved the most.
I still pull up a milk crate at work and shoot the shit now that I'm an English instructor at LCC.
Outside MB's office a small round table sits in the corner and from time to time MB and sometimes KZ and sometime PM and pull up a chair at this table and shoot the shit.
We talk about Pink Floyd and student essays and the politics of our workplace and we crack jokes and tell funny stories.
It keeps our morale up and makes our work sweeter.
Now my favorite place to hang out is the round table in the corner by MB's office. It's just like sitting on a box of Del Monte cling peaches in the stock room.
I get stuff off my chest, laugh, and learn about the world I live in in a way that keeping my nose to the grindstone denies me.
Like drinking pinched Pepsis with Merle and ReillyT, it's what makes the workplace a pleasure.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Three Beautiful Things 11/01/08: Back, Gary, John
1. I posted again today. That really felt good. I've been overwhelmed lately with work and I've been struggling with some fatigue, and it was invigorating to write a blog post again and feel back in this groove again.
2. I ran into Gary, a former student of mine at LCC, and his wife, Jennifer, who was also my student once, at Border's today. Gary took about five or six courses with me and we became good friends. He is a veteran of the Navy and a very bright guy. We've lost touch since he left LCC and graduated from the U. of Oregon with a couple of degrees. I hope our reunion means that we'll get back to having a cup of coffee or something together again. He's a great guy.
3. I ran into John at the store today. John is a photographer and used to do a lot of work at LCC, but rarely works there anymore. It was good to see him. He's been through some personal grief and had some health problems. When I told him he was looking a lot better today, he smiled and told me that, indeed, things were going better. That was really good news.
2. I ran into Gary, a former student of mine at LCC, and his wife, Jennifer, who was also my student once, at Border's today. Gary took about five or six courses with me and we became good friends. He is a veteran of the Navy and a very bright guy. We've lost touch since he left LCC and graduated from the U. of Oregon with a couple of degrees. I hope our reunion means that we'll get back to having a cup of coffee or something together again. He's a great guy.
3. I ran into John at the store today. John is a photographer and used to do a lot of work at LCC, but rarely works there anymore. It was good to see him. He's been through some personal grief and had some health problems. When I told him he was looking a lot better today, he smiled and told me that, indeed, things were going better. That was really good news.
Sibling Assignment #77: Raymond, The Christian Skeptic
About three weeks ago, I assigned this prompt to my sisters and me:
As I posted in my last piece, I live my life skeptically, never really knowing if what I see or hear or feel is true. I experience the world as an unsettled, unpredictable, puzzling, inconstant, fluid, riddling place where we live our lives acting on partial knowledge, fallible judgment, and fractured perceptions. It's humbling. As much as I'd like to think I'm knowledgeable, exercise keen judgment, and am impeccably perceptive, I'm not. I do the best I can, but I'm living in a fog. I think we all are.
Therefore, I am a Christian. I have to live by faith in a mysterious reality of resurrection and forgiveness. Otherwise, I'd go mad. By all scientific and social scientific measures, to live a life of faith in what I cannot see or touch or taste or hear or smell and by a reality that cannot be measured, is to be a fool.
I'm a fool. I'm a Christian fool.
Over the last couple of years or so, I've not been going to church, primarily because my struggles with depression combined with my introvertedness combined with the demands of my work make church attendance draining. It's weird. Church fatigues me.
But, two weeks ago, I recommitted myself to church worship again. After services both Sundays, I came home and slept for an hour or so.
Church still fatigues me.
But, entering again into the liturgy of the Anglican tradition and once again drinking the wine of the blood of Christ and eating the bread of Christ's body at the Communion rail invigorated my spirit, fatiguing as that might be.
Returning to church is awakening what I think is my most Christ-like quality: my skepticism.
And this brings me to "Godspell".
I saw "Godspell" the first time at Cowles Auditorium on the campus of Whitworth College (now University) during the summer of 1974. The performance was put on by a group of Christian actors giving benefit performances in various cities in support of Caesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers.
I'd heard that "Godspell" offended some Christians because Jesus is portrayed as a clown.
I thought it was perfect. Clowns are skeptics. Clowns subvert the world as we know it, taking what we assume to be true about the world and showing us, no, that's not true. There's more. We think a small car can only hold a couple of people. Then we discover a small car can hold a thousand clowns.
Jesus was skeptical of common understandings of the Law, of the human tendencies toward strife and grudges, of the what the world says is the place of the poor and the infirm and the prisoner.
He was skeptical of the finality of death. Where others saw finiteness, this clown Jesus saw eternity, everlasting life.
"Godspell" helped me understand the subversive nature of the parables. We expect the holy men to help the man beaten on the road to Jericho, but it's the slimy Samariatan who aids him; we expect the prodigal son to be yelled at and punished by his father, but he his return is celebrated, laviciously; the world would say that if a shepherd had ninety-nine out of a hundred sheep in tow, be satisfied. Ninety-nine out of a hundred ain't bad. Jesus subverts that idea. In the subversive Kingdom of God, the shepherd searches and seeks and doesn't rest until he's found his one lost sheep and returned it to the fold.
I don't remember all that Jesus the clown does in "Godspell". It's been too long since I've seen it. But as one who is skeptical of worldly values and of worldly pursuits as ends in themselves, Jesus as clown helped me see worldly values turned upside down.
I can't change the nature of the world I'm so skeptical of, but I can live in faith, seeing through the eyes of Jesus, seeing things in reverse, living by a reality that transcends the one I'm so skeptical of.
But, there's more.
Complementing the experience I had with "Godspell" was the very different experience of "Jesus Christ Superstar". I first saw Jesus Christ Superstar as a movie, first with Silver Valley Girl when she was about a fifth grader and then again my junior year at Whitworth when it was the Saturday night campus movie and Cowles Auditorium was packed.
I'd been told in my high school youth group at the United Church of Kellogg that I should be careful about seeing "Jesus Christ Superstar" or listening to its music.
The musical presented Jesus as human. The show did not portray the resurrection. It looked at Jesus as a product of his followers' public relations and marketing. Was Jesus Lord? Or was Jesus Christ a Superstar, a Beatle, Joe Namath, Mickey Mantle, Marilyn Monroe, or Marlon Brando?
Put another way, I began to think the musical was raising questions regarding what happens when Jesus, in the 2oth/21st century is not so much Jesus Christ the Lord, but Jesus Christ Superstar.
I saw "Jesus Christ Superstar" live in London in the summer of 1975.
Afterward, I walked the streets of the West End, questions erupting inside me about Jesus Christ.
Who are you?
Are you what they say you are?
Is it all hype?
I heard the voice of Mary Magdalene: "I don't know how to love Him."
My faith grew as I questioned, as I gave in to rather than suppressing my skepticism. I experienced spiritual expansion. I experienced God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost urging me to doubt more, to ask more questions.
"Jesus Christ Superstar" opened the way for my interrogative living of faith. Even these thirty-three years later, questioning is my chief way of knowing God through Jesus Christ.
I don't want to worship a Superstar.
I continue to do, as I did that night walking the streets of London: in the words of Paul, I work out my salvation with fear and trembling.
In honor of the upcoming production by the Sixth Street Theater of the musical "Godspell" write a post explaining what your spiritual experience has been with "Godspell" and, if possible, how that experience is similar and/or different from your spiritual experience with "Jesus Christ Superstar".Silver Valley Girl's post is here and here is InlandEmpireGirl's.
As I posted in my last piece, I live my life skeptically, never really knowing if what I see or hear or feel is true. I experience the world as an unsettled, unpredictable, puzzling, inconstant, fluid, riddling place where we live our lives acting on partial knowledge, fallible judgment, and fractured perceptions. It's humbling. As much as I'd like to think I'm knowledgeable, exercise keen judgment, and am impeccably perceptive, I'm not. I do the best I can, but I'm living in a fog. I think we all are.
Therefore, I am a Christian. I have to live by faith in a mysterious reality of resurrection and forgiveness. Otherwise, I'd go mad. By all scientific and social scientific measures, to live a life of faith in what I cannot see or touch or taste or hear or smell and by a reality that cannot be measured, is to be a fool.
I'm a fool. I'm a Christian fool.
Over the last couple of years or so, I've not been going to church, primarily because my struggles with depression combined with my introvertedness combined with the demands of my work make church attendance draining. It's weird. Church fatigues me.
But, two weeks ago, I recommitted myself to church worship again. After services both Sundays, I came home and slept for an hour or so.
Church still fatigues me.
But, entering again into the liturgy of the Anglican tradition and once again drinking the wine of the blood of Christ and eating the bread of Christ's body at the Communion rail invigorated my spirit, fatiguing as that might be.
Returning to church is awakening what I think is my most Christ-like quality: my skepticism.
And this brings me to "Godspell".
I saw "Godspell" the first time at Cowles Auditorium on the campus of Whitworth College (now University) during the summer of 1974. The performance was put on by a group of Christian actors giving benefit performances in various cities in support of Caesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers.
I'd heard that "Godspell" offended some Christians because Jesus is portrayed as a clown.
I thought it was perfect. Clowns are skeptics. Clowns subvert the world as we know it, taking what we assume to be true about the world and showing us, no, that's not true. There's more. We think a small car can only hold a couple of people. Then we discover a small car can hold a thousand clowns.
Jesus was skeptical of common understandings of the Law, of the human tendencies toward strife and grudges, of the what the world says is the place of the poor and the infirm and the prisoner.
He was skeptical of the finality of death. Where others saw finiteness, this clown Jesus saw eternity, everlasting life.
"Godspell" helped me understand the subversive nature of the parables. We expect the holy men to help the man beaten on the road to Jericho, but it's the slimy Samariatan who aids him; we expect the prodigal son to be yelled at and punished by his father, but he his return is celebrated, laviciously; the world would say that if a shepherd had ninety-nine out of a hundred sheep in tow, be satisfied. Ninety-nine out of a hundred ain't bad. Jesus subverts that idea. In the subversive Kingdom of God, the shepherd searches and seeks and doesn't rest until he's found his one lost sheep and returned it to the fold.
I don't remember all that Jesus the clown does in "Godspell". It's been too long since I've seen it. But as one who is skeptical of worldly values and of worldly pursuits as ends in themselves, Jesus as clown helped me see worldly values turned upside down.
I can't change the nature of the world I'm so skeptical of, but I can live in faith, seeing through the eyes of Jesus, seeing things in reverse, living by a reality that transcends the one I'm so skeptical of.
But, there's more.
Complementing the experience I had with "Godspell" was the very different experience of "Jesus Christ Superstar". I first saw Jesus Christ Superstar as a movie, first with Silver Valley Girl when she was about a fifth grader and then again my junior year at Whitworth when it was the Saturday night campus movie and Cowles Auditorium was packed.
I'd been told in my high school youth group at the United Church of Kellogg that I should be careful about seeing "Jesus Christ Superstar" or listening to its music.
The musical presented Jesus as human. The show did not portray the resurrection. It looked at Jesus as a product of his followers' public relations and marketing. Was Jesus Lord? Or was Jesus Christ a Superstar, a Beatle, Joe Namath, Mickey Mantle, Marilyn Monroe, or Marlon Brando?
Put another way, I began to think the musical was raising questions regarding what happens when Jesus, in the 2oth/21st century is not so much Jesus Christ the Lord, but Jesus Christ Superstar.
I saw "Jesus Christ Superstar" live in London in the summer of 1975.
Afterward, I walked the streets of the West End, questions erupting inside me about Jesus Christ.
Who are you?
Are you what they say you are?
Is it all hype?
I heard the voice of Mary Magdalene: "I don't know how to love Him."
My faith grew as I questioned, as I gave in to rather than suppressing my skepticism. I experienced spiritual expansion. I experienced God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost urging me to doubt more, to ask more questions.
"Jesus Christ Superstar" opened the way for my interrogative living of faith. Even these thirty-three years later, questioning is my chief way of knowing God through Jesus Christ.
I don't want to worship a Superstar.
I continue to do, as I did that night walking the streets of London: in the words of Paul, I work out my salvation with fear and trembling.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Homer, Shakespeare, and Election 2008
Homer and William Shakespeare have had more influence on my world view than any other writers or thinkers.
Both see the world and reality as in a constant state of flux and see human beings living precarious lives because our ways of perceiving and understanding what's happening in the world are so limited and flawed.
Neither poet puts much stock in empiricism. Both dramatize the senses, especially sight and hearing, as highly unreliable and both dramatize characters acting on what they think they've seen or heard, only to find out their senses betrayed them.
Things are never what they appear.
I'm not a negative person. I am, however, very skeptical.
Homer and Shakespeare's shared vision of mutability and the human inability to understand things very well rings so true to me, I am so deeply skeptical, that I give others as much benefit of the doubt as I can.
Human limitations on knowledge and knowing move me to me lenient with others. I know things are never what they seem to be to me and that the same is true of others. Things are never wha they seem to be to others either.
We muddle through and the miracle is that we do as well as we do.
Daily, I read twenty or more political blogs, trying to understand what's happening in the election of 2008. I enjoy reading the perspectives different newspaper and citizen bloggers have regarding electoral strategies and campaign developments.
I read it all very skeptically. My skepticism is not born of distrust. It's born of Homer and Shakespeare.
I know these experts can't really know what's happening and what's going to happen. They write compelling analyses, make brave forecasts, survey the terrain of key states, and assert what they think has happened and what will happen and, ultimately, which candidate benefits, which is likely to win.
But they don't know.
The image of Odysseus tossed about the winedark sea, seduced by the Sirens, played with by the whims of Poseidon, lured to the Land of Lotus Eaters comes to mind. Odysseus is never sure what's coming next, doesn't know if what he sees and hears is actual, and so must shoulder forward with courage and skepticism.
I don't necessary share Odysseus' courage, but I sure don't know what I can rely on and what's coming next.
It makes me skeptical.
Both see the world and reality as in a constant state of flux and see human beings living precarious lives because our ways of perceiving and understanding what's happening in the world are so limited and flawed.
Neither poet puts much stock in empiricism. Both dramatize the senses, especially sight and hearing, as highly unreliable and both dramatize characters acting on what they think they've seen or heard, only to find out their senses betrayed them.
Things are never what they appear.
I'm not a negative person. I am, however, very skeptical.
Homer and Shakespeare's shared vision of mutability and the human inability to understand things very well rings so true to me, I am so deeply skeptical, that I give others as much benefit of the doubt as I can.
Human limitations on knowledge and knowing move me to me lenient with others. I know things are never what they seem to be to me and that the same is true of others. Things are never wha they seem to be to others either.
We muddle through and the miracle is that we do as well as we do.
Daily, I read twenty or more political blogs, trying to understand what's happening in the election of 2008. I enjoy reading the perspectives different newspaper and citizen bloggers have regarding electoral strategies and campaign developments.
I read it all very skeptically. My skepticism is not born of distrust. It's born of Homer and Shakespeare.
I know these experts can't really know what's happening and what's going to happen. They write compelling analyses, make brave forecasts, survey the terrain of key states, and assert what they think has happened and what will happen and, ultimately, which candidate benefits, which is likely to win.
But they don't know.
The image of Odysseus tossed about the winedark sea, seduced by the Sirens, played with by the whims of Poseidon, lured to the Land of Lotus Eaters comes to mind. Odysseus is never sure what's coming next, doesn't know if what he sees and hears is actual, and so must shoulder forward with courage and skepticism.
I don't necessary share Odysseus' courage, but I sure don't know what I can rely on and what's coming next.
It makes me skeptical.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Three Beautiful Things 10/17/08: Darcy and Kelly, Homer's Tender Moments, KHS Homecoming
1. Two years ago Darcy and Kelly enrolled in courses of mine and we became good buddies. Today Darcy dropped by my office to rekindle our buddyship. We hadn't talked for over a year. I left my office, trudged out to my car, and there was Kelly, trudging to her car and we stood in the parking lot and swapped stories. What a great day: Darcy and Kelly within minutes of each other.
2. I love Homer. It's the small moments I love the most, the tender moments when in the midst of huge events Homer creates, with the lightest of touch, moments of intimacy. Athena tells Telemachus it's not time to be shy as readies himself to talk with Nestor; no one recognizes Odysseus when he returns to Ithaca, except his old and dying dog. My students probably think I'm a nut when I read moments like this in class and show them the goose bumps on my arms.
3. Ed and a handful of my fellow Class of '72 friends called me tonight from the grandstands of Teeters Field in Kellogg. They wanted me to help them enjoy Homecoming.
2. I love Homer. It's the small moments I love the most, the tender moments when in the midst of huge events Homer creates, with the lightest of touch, moments of intimacy. Athena tells Telemachus it's not time to be shy as readies himself to talk with Nestor; no one recognizes Odysseus when he returns to Ithaca, except his old and dying dog. My students probably think I'm a nut when I read moments like this in class and show them the goose bumps on my arms.
3. Ed and a handful of my fellow Class of '72 friends called me tonight from the grandstands of Teeters Field in Kellogg. They wanted me to help them enjoy Homecoming.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Three Beautiful Things 10/13/08: No Court, Winedark Sea, Pasta Pleasure
1. Turns out I won't be going to court to observe a hearing of MB's stalker. Tomorrow's hearing will only last about 30 seconds and will focus on whether the perp has an attorney.
2. In World Lit. we started our study of The Odyssey and it is awesome reading Fitzgerald's gorgeous translation of Homer's stirring hymn aloud. Just the simple words "winedark sea" stir something eternal in my soul.
3. The Deke bought these cherry tomatoes and put them over pasta with basil and garlic andolive oil it was as tasty to my palate as "winedark sea" is to my ears.
2. In World Lit. we started our study of The Odyssey and it is awesome reading Fitzgerald's gorgeous translation of Homer's stirring hymn aloud. Just the simple words "winedark sea" stir something eternal in my soul.
3. The Deke bought these cherry tomatoes and put them over pasta with basil and garlic andolive oil it was as tasty to my palate as "winedark sea" is to my ears.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Three Beautiful Things 10/12/08: Stalking Resources, Gilgamesh Joy, JBelle and the Mothers of My Lai
1. Why would I include studying at the Stalking Resource Center and watching an eighteen minute video about law enforcement and stalking as a beautiful thing? I'm trying to learn all I can in support of MB. When her stalker appears in court this week, I'm going to the hearing and I want to be prepared as best I can.
2. The ancient epic Gilgamesh is terrific story, but never easy for students studying Survey of World Literature. But, I spent this afternoon reading my students' first essays on Gilgamesh and they were, for the most part, engaged, insightful, curious, and probing essays. This class has thirty-four students and we've only met for two weeks. I don't have all the names and faces quite connected yet, but I'm looking forward to arriving in class tomorrow and learning better who's who in this class!
3. In email correspondence today, triggered by mention of her in yesterday's 3BT's, JBelle reminded me that she wrote a post at her blog, Notes from the 'Kan EWA, about what a spiritual experience she had bicycling through Vietnam. The mothers of My Lai moved JBelle profoundly and I'd like you to share in her experience, feelings, and reflections, here. In a time when some are crying out in fear of Obama and others of McCain, the mothers of My Lai remind us to turn away from fear and "walk toward a new future in forgiveness."
2. The ancient epic Gilgamesh is terrific story, but never easy for students studying Survey of World Literature. But, I spent this afternoon reading my students' first essays on Gilgamesh and they were, for the most part, engaged, insightful, curious, and probing essays. This class has thirty-four students and we've only met for two weeks. I don't have all the names and faces quite connected yet, but I'm looking forward to arriving in class tomorrow and learning better who's who in this class!
3. In email correspondence today, triggered by mention of her in yesterday's 3BT's, JBelle reminded me that she wrote a post at her blog, Notes from the 'Kan EWA, about what a spiritual experience she had bicycling through Vietnam. The mothers of My Lai moved JBelle profoundly and I'd like you to share in her experience, feelings, and reflections, here. In a time when some are crying out in fear of Obama and others of McCain, the mothers of My Lai remind us to turn away from fear and "walk toward a new future in forgiveness."
Three Beautiful Things 10/11/08: Friends With Differences, JBelle: Fair Play/Good Thoughts, The New Yorker's Perspective
1. Friendships and good working relationships at my job mean more to me than politics. This goes way back for me, in part, because my way of seeing the world has often been at odds with many of my best friends and I grew up in a political environment, in Kellogg, where my father's best friends were divided between labor and management, but left those divisions outside the door when they gathered to watch sporting events, play cards, go on road trips, bowl, and be friends with each other.
Therefore, when I discovered last night night that my wonderful blog friend MGM and I discovered that we are opposed to each other in every way regarding the upcoming election, I found deep relief, and it strengthened my affection for MGM, when we acknowledged our differences, and moved almost immediately into what we care the most about in our correspondence: our families, our love of North Idaho, our honesty with each other, our concern for one another's welfare, etc. I love being friends with people I don't agree with on social and political matters. Mainly, I enjoy listening, testing my outlook, reveling in variety, and admiring the many ways intelligent and passionate convictions take form among me and my friends who genuinely want what's best for our country, states, cities, families, and, lastly, ourselves.
2. Thinking along these lines of what we do with our disagreements and how we engage those we oppose, another wonderful blog friend, JBelle, comes to mind. I don't know if JBelle and I see things the same politically, but at a Spokesman-Review blog, Community Comment, commenters were heaving nastiness about Gov. Sarah Palin around. JBelle intervened:
I don't know if JBelle and I have serious differences, but we know we are different: in our taste, lifestyle, ambitions, and worship. We have North Idaho in common. Something in that region affected us similarly and we both want fair play, good thoughts for the candidates, good things for our country. Reading her post in the comments at Community Comment was a beautiful part of my day.
3. It's no surprise that The New Yorker strongly endorsed Obama. I found the endorsement not only ringing but eloquent. You can read it here. In the same article, George Packer goes on the road in Ohio and investigates issues of class and race in the election, here.
Therefore, when I discovered last night night that my wonderful blog friend MGM and I discovered that we are opposed to each other in every way regarding the upcoming election, I found deep relief, and it strengthened my affection for MGM, when we acknowledged our differences, and moved almost immediately into what we care the most about in our correspondence: our families, our love of North Idaho, our honesty with each other, our concern for one another's welfare, etc. I love being friends with people I don't agree with on social and political matters. Mainly, I enjoy listening, testing my outlook, reveling in variety, and admiring the many ways intelligent and passionate convictions take form among me and my friends who genuinely want what's best for our country, states, cities, families, and, lastly, ourselves.
2. Thinking along these lines of what we do with our disagreements and how we engage those we oppose, another wonderful blog friend, JBelle, comes to mind. I don't know if JBelle and I see things the same politically, but at a Spokesman-Review blog, Community Comment, commenters were heaving nastiness about Gov. Sarah Palin around. JBelle intervened:
I was in My Lai Viet Nam last December. I was astounded that under the circumstances the mothers there not only allow their children to talk to Americans but encourage it. It was then I realized that hate and fear are taught; I realized then as I do now that peace begins with me. The mothers of My Lai should be nominated for Nobel Peace Prize because they refused to let fear nor hate invade their children's psyche nor soul. Their powerful example stays with me so I encourage you to ask yourselves why GSP sparks your fear and then ask you, respectfully, if there isn't a better place for your fears than in "hate posts" here. And I ask you to think good thoughts for all the Presidential candidates and their running mates and for the people of the United State of America. We need it. In the most desperate of ways.
I don't know if JBelle and I have serious differences, but we know we are different: in our taste, lifestyle, ambitions, and worship. We have North Idaho in common. Something in that region affected us similarly and we both want fair play, good thoughts for the candidates, good things for our country. Reading her post in the comments at Community Comment was a beautiful part of my day.
3. It's no surprise that The New Yorker strongly endorsed Obama. I found the endorsement not only ringing but eloquent. You can read it here. In the same article, George Packer goes on the road in Ohio and investigates issues of class and race in the election, here.
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