Downstream Bohemia

Second Thoughts, Again

2012-01-28T16:43:00.000-08:00

Right now, a month after our return from the latest south-of-the-border idyll, the common wisdom is that we--or at least, I--will put off retirement for a year or two. The thinking now is that we will move this coming summer to a little community just north of the city, right next to the Sound and a ferry to the Peninsula, but still convenient for me to work. It's odd how our Mexican retirement plan has been eclipsed.

The first doubt in that direction came from the emotional and political jolt of Occupy Wall Street. For us, it restored a lot of the hope we've had for years that something akin to good sense and humanity could actually come to inform our governing, and a wonder at what, together, we can become. We were inspired and invigorated to hang around here in the States for a while longer.

For me, there was also the realization that I've got a lot of invested in my work. I feel like I'm just now, after seven years, hitting my stride as a teacher, even though there are weeks, like the one just past. It was a struggle to make up for lost time from four snow days the week before. And all the time, in the back of my mind, has been anticipation of next week's 28 half-hour, mid-year conferences. Then, there's this long season of getting up in the dark, and coming home 13 hours later, also in the dark.

On the plus side though, I feel the heart-warming satisfaction of one of my ten-year-old students finally having four days of focused learning, accompanied by a steep decline in disruptive behavior. A couple of weeks ago, I confronted him privately about his habit of stealing and then denying it. Maybe that served as a catalyst to him becoming less self-destructive.

And then, there's the money and health care angle. I'm not sure we could have a decent life here in the States, so, if we stay here a little longer, I can bank more into retirement. BFF can carry the torch of our revolutionary flame, while guiding us to a more sustainable way of living, and working on better health.

Back Home

2012-01-01T16:26:00.000-08:00

We came back from Yelapa, Mexico two days ago, after ten relaxing days in the sun. This was our third December in Casa Ana Rosa, managed by the matriarch of one of this isolated fishing village's leading families. The only way to get there is by water taxi, half an hour from Puerto Vallarta.

The bottom floor of the triplex-sized building is Sra. Lorenzo's home where she lives with her husband Ronco, and, during holiday times at least, an extended family of two grown sons, and a daughter, her husband, and their two girls.

Joining this nucleus for Christmas Eve dinner on the patio were a number of aunts and uncles and cousins. We were also invited to the feast, along with the half-dozen others staying in the building, all presided over by Ana Rosa's stern-looking mother, Dona Antonia. At least, this small, elderly and intimidating woman gave me a stern look when I arrived some minutes after she had been seated.

From the core of the family, though, we were treated as good amigos, especially since BFF and I had just given a charity to a couple of the relatives present who'd had some bad luck. It was much appreciated. The last few years have seen tough economic times in Yelapa, following a decade of growing prosperity. This past year, unfortunately, was following the trend--still fewer tourists in the village, and especially on the cash-cow beach. Even so, our welcome was warm, as usual. One of the pleasures of being in Yelapa is the friendliness, or, at least good-humored tolerability, of the people.

Our balcony overlooks a cove (half surrounded by twinkling lights at night), and out into the huge Banderas Bay. Just below us is Cafe Bahia, run by an ex-pat female chef, refugee from NYC. This cafe is fronted by the pier (el muelle), where virtually all the people and goods come and go, to and from this small village.

We had a plan to spend the winter portion of our upcoming retirement here in Yelapa, while the rest of the year we lived somewhere higher, away from the coast, and thus cooler and not so prone to excrutiatingly sweaty summers--somewhere like, but not, Guanajuato. But things seem to be moving in another direction.

It's a Victory for the Heartland

2011-10-28T21:06:00.000-07:00

Oh man! That game tonight--those boys played so hard, and were rightfully jubilant in their win. St. Louis Cardinals, World Champions of Baseball.

More than a half century ago I scooted up next to the recliner of my dear old Granddad, in the pine room of an old house in a little town in the middle of Missouri, listening, summer nights, to Harry Carey calling the plays, with color by Dizzy Dean.

This one's for you, dear Granddad, and for so many, many others. Thanks, guys.

The happy tears flowed.

Preoccupied Seattle

2011-10-08T18:41:00.000-07:00

My dear wife and I went downtown this afternoon with a bag of oranges and another of apples. Our plan was to donate the fruit to the several hundred mostly young people who, for the past week, have been occupying a small park in the middle of our commercial district. Calling themselves "The 99 Percent" (the other 1% being the monied elite who pull most of the strings in this country), they are rallying in solidarity with the many groups that have sprung up recently, inspired by Occupy Wall Street.

From a block away, there was no sign of the rally, and I was feeling self conscious with my bulging bag of food. But as we rounded the shoulder of Westlake Center, we could hear drums, an unintelligible amplified voice, and vigorous chants of support.

We found the thousand or so folks at the rally to be much more heterogeneous than expected; there was a mix of people such as you might see almost anywhere about town, a few professional revolutionaries, and a lot of unionists. About two thirds were listening to a rotating group of speakers, and the other third--mostly the young occupiers--were lounging and eating. A lot of pictures were being taken. We walked around the park, listened, watched, and took pictures ourselves, applauded, and left our donation. It was inspiring to see the commitment, good feeling, and energy.

We're back to thinking we might just stick around.

First Week of School

2011-09-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

This week, after a summer of fun and relaxation it's back to work. That involves getting up at five, five days a week, and driving seven miles on I-5 to get ready to go on stage for six hours in front of thirty squirrelly ten-year-olds looking for guidance, entertainment and knowledge.

It's good, in the sense that these are all mostly sweet kids trying to do their best, and that I'm trying to help out. It sucks, in that I have to get up so early and do something I wouldn't necessarily do if I had my druthers.

Wednesday I went to the all-school assembly with my new class. I ran across many of last year's students, now with their new teacher, who all hollered out, "Hey, Mr. D," and smiled and waved. That feels good.

Thursday was a marathon. I called off building security at o-dark hundred, made lesson plans for two classes, prepped for art, and went to an hour-long staff meeting before greeting students. This was Picture Day, as well as PE and messy art project day, so you can imagine the conflict that brings to a few of the fashion-conscious young girls.

Since we're still getting to know one another, there was also sharing of stuffed sea horses, rubber elephants, and soccer trophies. During lunch break, I distributed thirty sets of paper, brushes and water colors for the first stage of making the Name Posters that will encircle the room.

One student was asked to please leave the class and sit out in the hall Two other students put a petition in my "Notes to Teacher" basket to have the aforementioned student moved because he talks and bothers them. He and I have had several heart-felt talks--a good kid with no impulse control.

Wednesday, after the anti-bullying assembly, I listened to a long, halting and whispered complaint by a wee wisp of a girl about a classmate named Gladys (I didn't know kids had been named Gladys for the past fifty years). Julia wanted to play with just Ellie, but Gladys insisted upon joining their game. I said I'd talk to Mrs. B____ about Gladys, but I doubt if I'll get to that for awhile.

There were also lessons in place value of numbers through the millions, how to write a good sentence and how to decode unfamiliar multi-syllabic words.

I checked out Craigslist Puerto Vallarta on my laptop at lunch, and didn't see much of anything except $1200/month condos. I sat, mesmerized, in front of the laptop looking at my screensaver: all the pics I took this summer in Guanajuato.

Now, at the end of the first week of school, I remember last night's dream was about work. I woke up thinking about how I might impress upon these young people the importance and joy of learning. Later today--Saturday--I'll grade papers, and tomorrow I'll go in to school so I can put up the completed Name Posters and laminate the Rats.

Changes

2011-09-09T19:55:00.000-07:00

In addition to enjoying the last few days of a late, late summer, and before the weeks of preparing for what might well become our final year of work, my dear wife and I have spent a lot of time talking about what our next pre-retirement step should be. Soon after our kind of disillusioning visit to Guanajuato, we seemed to decide that we should just stay in the States, in a small Oregon or Washington town near the coast, and work for progressive political change in this country. I began to channel Airstreams, and radical RV caravans to demonstrations on the Mall in DC.

The Little Virgin's Basilica in Talpa

A few days later, our feelings had changed.

First, BFW said that she'd checked Craigslist and even the tiniest of local towns had decent rentals that were too expensive. Although I privately disagreed with her--my research showed the rents were about the same in Seaside as Puerto Vallarta--I didn't argue because, second, neither of us really wanted to hang around in the same ol'-same ol' U S of A. Last, and most importantly, we really wanted the adventure of moving to a foreign land.

After realizing that we would like to maintain our connections with friends in the Puerto Vallarta area, we turned our sights to high up in the mountains above the bay, where it's cooler in the summer. We're thinking right now of a little town called Talpa de Allende, which is about 3 hours by bus from PV, and the home of the miraculous Little Virgin of Guadalupe, to whom infirm from all over Mexico and the world come to be healed.

Recce

2011-07-29T19:49:00.000-07:00

A week ago we returned from vacation in a city in the very center of Mexico. Guanajuato gained incredible riches and was the scene of almost irredeemable cruelty in the pursuit of silver 400 years ago, cradled the bloody beginning of the revolt against Spanish rule, was a beneficiary of Porfirio Diaz's excess, and then languished for the next three generations.

In the past thirty or forty years, the city rebuilt itself as global repository of appreciation for the Spanish author Cervantes and his greatest creations, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. It became a summer tourist magnet for middle class Mexicans, making the most of its UNESCO designation as world heritage site, its enterprising University students, and its old, quirky, and picturesque cityscape.

We went there for 8 days with the idea of a possible move when we retire next year, checking the place against our imagination of what we wanted it to be. The jury is still out, but, with me at least, it lost its idealized shine. We realize that a smaller, friendlier place would suit us better.

Hooray!

2011-07-06T12:31:00.001-07:00

My two daughters and I have made it a Fourth of July tradition to join tens of thousands of other revelers at Gasworks Park to witness, against a backdrop of the city's downtown towers, the incredible fireworks show over Lake Union .

We went again this year.

Hours spent sitting on a small blanket next to hundreds of good-natured, though occasionally raucous, neighbors, suffering severe sneezing attacks from the over-abundant allergens, remembering what a blessing it has been to not be downwind of smokers, enduring a never-ending stream of bumbling, stumbling late comers looking for their square yard of earth...this, and the good company, is what made it all worth the wait:

Solstice Sunrise

2011-06-21T10:34:00.000-07:00

I got up at 4:30 to witness sunrise on this auspicious day. The idea came from the "How-to of the Day" app on my home page, yesterday entitled, "How to Celebrate Solstice...No. 1. Witness sunrise." The perfect place to do it popped into my head immediately: on top of Zodiac Hill at Gasworks Park. The man-made hill is topped with an intricate mosaic zodiac, in a park that has dramatic displays of rusting boilers and cracking columns from the days when energy was created here, across a lake from downtown.

From the north, the park pedundas into Lake Union whose south end is rimmed with office towers. I took a picture of the rising sun reflecting off one of the thousands of windows. It's not so dramatic as the top one, but I like the form and muted colors.

It was before 5 when I arrived at the park, a short drive from home. I'd imagined that there would be dozens of druids there to await the moment, but as I began to trudge up the hill, I only saw one man, walking around with short steps, making small gestures as if talking to himself. As I went up one side, he must have gone down the other, for the place was empty when I arrived. But not for long.

As I stood at the edge of the hill and sussed out the spot where the sun would rise, I saw three women headed my way. Looking at them out of the corner of my eye, I was prepared to nod a greeting as they drew closer, but they didn't look in my direction. A few minutes later I glanced behind me and saw that they had joined hands, with eyes closed, in the center of the zodiac sculpture that is inlaid on the small plaza at the hilltop.

A few minutes later a young couple began making their way in our direction under the lightening sky. I heard them laugh as they dallied upwards, hand in hand. Only a few other people were then visible on the grounds of the park, maybe a hundred yards away, all of us in some way awaiting sunrise with a casual, but private, expectancy. Around us were the sounds of a city beginning to come to life for another day, and one that promised to be beautiful.

It was hard to define the exact moment. A point on the horizon got brighter and brighter, behind an occasional truck on the I-5 bridge. Then there came a time when the brightness became a gleam and the longest day of the year had officially begun.

I took in the scene and snapped pictures, the couple chatted quietly, yet playfully, as he shot a video on his iPhone. On top of the zodiac, the trio stood shoulder-to-shoulder, with burning punks in their hands, facing the rising sun. Time stretched slowly, ineluctably, into a new season.

A Fine Performance

2011-06-16T19:58:00.000-07:00

What a great year-end performance each of my 4th grade students gave as a young person living on an English manor in 1255. Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! is the name of the piece--a Newbery book in 2007.

To the compliments from parents, I responded with the truth: all I told the kids was to speak loud enough, slow enough, and tell your story. They did.

It was one of those times when I felt exceptionally gratified to be a teacher. What a great group of kids I had this year--so much care for each other and for learning.

Four Weeks After Surgery

2011-06-01T19:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, concerned about a hard bulge above the main incision on my belly, I called the young doc, and he told me what it was. Nothing to worry about, he said, it's just a seroma, some fluid that'll disperse over the next couple of months.

It's been two days since I've been back to work, not counting Memorial Day when I went in for six hours. The kids put up a big WELCOME BACK banner. Many of the girls gave me a hug. Boys yelled and gave me high fives.

My stamina is there--11-hour days, both--but I'm leaking and getting sore.

The month I took for recovery is like a dream now, in the past. Now, it's about getting through the last few weeks of school, getting a trainer to help me get back in shape, and then vacationing and looking for the future in Mexico.

Three Weeks After Surgery

2011-05-25T16:02:00.000-07:00

Take a couple of days and It's been three weeks since surgery. Since the beginning of this week, the only thing I've been able to really focus on is prepping for the medieval play my class will start working on in six days, Good Masters, Sweet Ladies, Voices From a Medieval Village.

Hello From Recovery

2011-05-20T18:45:00.000-07:00

Click on the pic

This short video was shown to my class today by my substitute, Shereen. At least I hope it was; that was the plan, but I haven't heard from her today. She is a really good person to have teaching my class, but communication is not her strong suit.

I enjoyed putting together this piece together, shot it on my digital camera, and edited a little on iMovie.

Two Weeks After Surgery

2011-05-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

Two weeks since I went under the robot scalpels and I'm feeling pretty good. Improvements in the past week include ability to sit without discomfort, and only occasionally being bothered by pain from the incision sites.

The erection issue is coming along.

I'm still not able to fully control my peeing, but I am now allowed to do kegels to strengthen those sphincters. I've finally come around to seeing that the disposable diapers I have to wear are actually kind of a fashion plus with their contrast in textures and transparency. In addition, I get what looks like a pretty big package. So, there's an upside right there, but because of the incontinence that's especially evident when I go for a walk, I have, unfortunately, cut back on that exercise...

It's a beautiful, if chilly, day. Using the toy trebuchet BFF gave me, I've been launching gravel at targets in the garden.

And I've been planning our summer vacation in Mexico.

Ugh

2011-05-15T18:16:00.000-07:00

Last summer I wrote a poem, "Incontinence as Metaphor." Yesterday, I experienced incontinence as a bladder reality, and it was not pleasant.

The incontinant feels a warm loosening at the opening of the urethra to signal his lack of control. With repetition, this feeling is joined by a spreading wetness and warmth within the disposable diaper. Walking becomes difficult as one imagines oneself a large baby with one of those leaden loads, emitting that cloyingly sweet acidic smell familiar to all parents.

In the incontinant, this does encourage empathy for babies and new parents, but on a more immediate physical plane, it also results in great discomfort, especially when one is five cock-clutching blocks from home.

Rain

2011-05-11T15:03:00.000-07:00

The rain for the past couple of months has felt biblical, and not in a good way. Unfortunately the saturating gray pall has also been accompanied by wind, and temperatures ten degrees below normal...Jesus, it's wearing.

But at least we have flowers, like this lilac in our back yard.

One Week After Surgery - Good News

2011-05-10T18:33:00.000-07:00

All that cancer they found in February is gone! It took up the space of about 4 pennies, nestled inside a walnut-sized prostate gland. All gone now, along with the two seminal vesicles. Picture a fleshy bulb with two pigtails suspended above.

Clean margins.

The effect is that I can't make any more sperm, nor as much cum, as before. The docs saved most of the erection nerves, though, so there's still that. Which is a lot.

And, thank God, no more cancer.

Prescription: take antibiotics for three days to prevent bladder infection; over the next week, wean off mild pain medication; walk for exercise; wear disposable diaper to contain leakage; take it easy, like no kegels for the next two weeks, and no lifting or sex for five.

They gave me a chart to keep track off the number of diapers or pads used each day, suggesting it might take 6-9 months before I didn't need them anymore. Jesus! I'm hoping for less than three.

As far as getting it up, Viagra is prescribed, or using a vacuum pump (like the guy I've been corresponding with), but that's still down the road a bit.

The stitches will come out on their own.

I'll have a PSA test in a couple of months, a follow-up with the surgeon in three.

As to the other issue I was concerned about coming into this appointment:

Taking out the catheter was easier, and less painful than I had imagined. The procedure: the nurse cuts the catheter tube just above the shunt to the bladder's balloon. She injects 250mL of saline solution into the tube, thus into my bladder. While I try to hold this in, she deflates the balloon through the shunt. I get set over a basin as she counts to 3. On 2, I take a deep breath, and on 3 I let it out, along with the pee, as she simultaneously jerks out the tube and balloon. Whoa!

(They have a monitor measuring the flow rate to assess the strength of my bladder muscles. Mine looks pretty strong.)

During this first week of recovery, my perceptive wife reminds me that what I call being lazy is what many people mean by healing.

Surgery

2011-05-08T20:21:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow will be a week since surgery. I got a two-fer, and a gift, since the doc discovered and repaired a surprisingly large hernia in my gut before taking out the prostate.

My dear wife and I had taken the bus to the hospital that day, and then walked two blocks in a heavy rain. We sat together and made the same kinds of jokes and avowals of support, in the same room where I had waited with her, nearly four years erlier, for her mastectomy. So, deja vu from both points of view.

A short, broad and friendly Hispanic man, who introduced himself as "RJ," wheeled me into the ward where people undress and wait. Sweet wife stays right by my side.

On reflection, it's odd how I lay there feeling, for all intents and purposes, perfectly healthy, yet completely resigned to the scalpel. I had totally--with alacrity, even--accepted the medical diagnosis, as well as the prescribed removal of the infected body parts.

The surgery had been rescheduled, I had found out only a week earlier, from first thing in the morning to sometime around noon because my surgeon was assisting in a kidney operation. I figure that's because he's such a deft guy with the DaVinci (which is the brand name (?!) of the robotic hardware and software used to perform the surgery).

We waited an overlong time in that taking-off-your-clothes room, to finally be told by a concerned and friendly nurse, a plain but attractive redhead, that the kidney surgery was lasting longer than anticipated, so the doc would be delayed at least another hour. BFF was famished, so we agreed she'd go to the hospital cafe for lunch.

Of course, it wasn't long after she left that a new nurse came and whisked me upstairs to the ward where they take away your robe as you lay down on a gurney, waiting for the team to come greet you.

The friendly-faced operating room nurse arrived to reassure me that she and the doc have done a thousand of these surgeries, and everything will be OK. At that point, my concerned and mildly chagrined wife is shown in as this other attractive woman, who will be all over my body in another hour, says goodbye, and a laconic, older than expected, and still strangely attractive, anesthesiologist hooks me up to an intravenous drip as he tells me about the cocktail of knockout drugs he will be administering. Barely an ouch.

And then, The Guy Himself. I'd seen him at a computer station a few minutes earlier as I went to the bathroom (possibly entering his charges for the kidney op), but I didn't exist for him them. Now, though, I was the sole object of his attention.

The Guy Himself is average height, but built solidly, in his mid-forties, face tanned with freckles. He exudes such gravitas, I am now completely confident of a favorable outcome, whatever the situation. And as a bonus for the patient, Himself had this very same procedure to remove his own prostate a couple of years ago; so he was able to share stories with me of his own recovery in a brief, frank, yet encouraging manner. I'm totally psyched.

We shake hands and he gives me a rare, for him, and reassuring smile. Not long after that another friendly and attractive middle-aged nurse comes to take me away. My dear wife and I exchange our love, as we always do when we part, and an admonition to stay in the bubble.

I am wheeled into the nearby operating room, which I noticed was smaller (about as big as a medium-sized living room) and more crowded with equipment and purposeful professionals than I had expected. It was quiet though; the lighting seemed dim, and the ceiling low.

Two scrubs were prepping some monitors. The robot control console--the DaVinci--was in one corner, and the cart in another, with its three or four robotic arms articulated like a praying mantis, their business ends covered with clear plastic bags.

I chatted with the assisting surgeon (a smooth and attractive Chicagoan of Asian descent who had spent an hour talking me through this process several weeks ago) as he, the anesthesiologist and a new nurse moved me off the gurney and strapped my legs down on two rectangular foam blocks that were covered with a shiny black plastic skin, and scissored off a larger, square block of tan-colored foam for my corpus. The latter was stained the blood-orange of iodine.

I looked up at the array of multi-bulbed lights, not yet fully lit. I felt a little buzzing in my blood, and asked the anesthesiologist if he had started the juice. Affirmative. That's all I remember until about four hours later.

I must have started thrashing, trying to remove tubes, whatever, as I groggily came to, because I have a vague recollection of several people moving to restrain me. For the next twelve hours, my greatest discomfort was from where I had scratched my cornea during that brief struggle. My wife told me that when she saw me a little later, up in my room, she was saddened to see that my arms were in restraints.

I had the sweetest nurse--Jenn--that first night. Maybe you always fall a little in love with the ones who give you morphine. Jenn checked in often, but was very quiet so as not to disturb me. If she heard that I was awake; she offered me a couple of Tylenol and a tab of oxycodone about every three hours.

The pain now is pretty manageable without all that. I'm still taking some though, most consistently in the evening, but am weaning off.

I was dismissed about noon the day after surgery after my vitals checked out, no infections found, and I proved I could eat without getting nauseous, and walk without getting dizzy.

The catheter is more of a bother than a pain. After realizing the strap-on bag filled up in less than a couple of hours (it sprayed urine all over my sweats, slippers and the bathroom floor when I first tried to empty it), I've been carrying around the nighttime bag all week. Taking a dump is an awkward, unpleasant, and time-consuming task, graphically described here in a poem.

My uniform all week has been a robe over loose-fitting shorts and a t-shirt. The catheter bag hooks conveniently on the robe's pocket. I've walked around the house a fair amount, but because of the weather, haven't done much more than duck my head outside, although today I cut some lilacs to give my sweetie for Mother's Day.

Which Medicine Doesn't Belong in This Picture?

2011-05-07T11:58:00.000-07:00

Answer: There are several ways to look at this. All the medications except the one on the right (Oxycodone) are over-the-counter. On the other hand, all except the one in front (stool softener) are directly for pain relief. Of course, in a larger sense they all belong, as they work together to keep me as comfortable as possible.

Checked Out

2011-05-05T18:59:00.000-07:00

No blood in urine? Check

No infection at incisions? Check

Manageable pain? Check

Can eat solid food without nausea? Check

Can walk without dizziness? Check

Shortly after noon on Tuesday, about 18 hours after completion of surgery, I am dismissed from the hospital. Wheeled to the front door by a garrulous Jamaican immigrant, accompanied by my dear wife. She and I try to sleep during the bumpy 20 minute trip home; the only sound from within the taxi is the driver murmuring in Farsi on his phone.

Shortly after tucking in to my nest on the couch, my sweet daughters arrive with flowers and cupcake. It's an unusual occasion for them to see me laid up like this, and they express this realization in very different ways, one with barely suppressed tears, the other with awkward laughter.

After they leave, and before a needed nap, I notice the bag of urine strapped to my leg is full almost to bursting. Over the toilet, as I fumble with the bag's spigot, the pee sprays out uncontrollably, over my sweatpants, slippers and floor. Ugh.

Pre-Surgery Prep

2011-05-01T18:16:00.000-07:00

Early this afternoon I had my last solid food until after the surgery--sushi. Then, several hours later I chugged a small bottle of Magnesium Citrate, well-chilled.

I filled the in-between time by running up to Best Buy and getting a new modem for the house. This afternoon, the old one sputtered to the end of its five-year-old line, according to Qwest tech support.

I have no way to prove it, but believe I might give off a disruptive electrical charge that is especially evident during times of stress. For example, back in December, just after I got news that Mom was dying, our power went out, for no apparent reason. I think that's what happened to the old modem.

Back online, eating green jello now, appetizer for my chicken broth dinner. To be followed by red jello dessert, and then the first of two enemas. That joy broken up by a Chlorhexidine Gluconate sponge bath.

After midnight, "nothing further by mouth," advises my patient information sheet.

Cancer Boy

2011-04-30T20:02:00.000-07:00

When my wife and BFF was diagnosed with breast cancer about four years ago, she fashioned for herself a character called "Cancer Girl" who could get whatever she wanted, from whomever, in almost any situation, because of the eponymous disease. In slavish imitation I have adopted a similar nickname.

At Trader Joe's today, I grabbed the pre-made Carne Asada, and when BFF looked askance, I answered that it was for Cancer Boy. Similarly with the chocolate bar, and salt and pepper potato chips. An extra 6-pack of beer? Cancer Boy. Fresh scallops? Cancer Boy.

The expensive fifth of bourbon? You know who. Lounging in front of the NBA playoffs with a glass of same? Ditto.

After a big breakfast tomorrow, it will be chicken broth and jello until Monday's surgery. After that, I hope to be Cancer Boy no longer.

Twelve More Days

2011-04-21T10:58:00.000-07:00

It's 12 days until my prostate gland will be surgically removed. The extent to which it is infested with cancer is not exactly known, but believed to be contained within a quadrant, where the little buggers may, or may not, be nibbling at the shell of the gland. A complete biopsy will be available a week after the surgery.

Most of my thoughts lately have been focused on those two medical events--surgery and biopsy...well, not exactly true. I am also thinking about sex and my ability to give and receive pleasure without that walnut-sized secretor of semen, and without whatever portion of the bundle of nerves that stimulate an erection must be removed.

For now, though, it's spring break until next Monday.

As prescribed, I do Kegels, kind of fitfully. Take late showers.

Erections, and preparing lesson plans for next month's substitute teacher, have become the obsessive driver of my actions.

Twelve more days to have all the body parts I was born with...not that I want to be dramatic about it...

I look at brochures and video testimonies featuring the brotherhood of prostate cancer survivors. The visuals alone are encouraging. All these guys look confident, wryly humorous, attractive in an athletic sort of way, in short, virile. But, "That's going to be me," morphs into a questioning whine.

And then there's the daunting specter of the catheter...I'll think of it as torture: a healthy man caught spying behind the front lines of disease. I'll grin and bear it, soldier on, man up!...Won't I?

Good News

2011-04-10T18:53:00.000-07:00

My dear wife was--HOORAY!--clean of any new cancer. I am still blithely optimistic about my upcoming surgery. However, the weather has been awfully gray, rainy, and cold.

C'est la Vie

2011-03-08T19:27:00.000-08:00

On the same day, in a couple of weeks, my wife and I are seeing respective doctors to check in on our cancers. March twenty-second.

I don't think of myself as someone whose self-definition normally includes reference to a medical problem, especially one so iconically extreme.

My Prostate Cancer Treatment Plan

2011-02-19T20:34:00.000-08:00

My urologist recommended my recently diagnosed prostate cancer be treated within the next four months. As far as he could tell from his digital exam, it had not yet escaped the gland, and my PSA was relatively low, but the biopsy showed it was moderately aggressive, though not advanced.

My father had prostate cancer and opted for radiation. It messed him up and bowel problems resulted, making the rest of his life pretty hellish. Even if I could get past Dad's experience, it doesn't seem like a good choice. For one thing, if radiation didn't work, the only further option would be hormone treatment, and that just doesn't sound good. Plus, I can't get over the fact that you don't get visual feedback on how effective the treatment has been.

After surgery, you know pretty clearly how clean you are, and radiation is then an option to kill any worrisome outliers that couldn't be surgically removed.

I'm planning on having a robotic laparoscopic prostatectomy, which has been described as the new "gold standard" for treating prostate cancer.

Having it done laparoscopically means much smaller incisions and faster recovery time. The robotic part of the surgery is desirable because it allows for extremely precise excisions.

Since this is a relatively new procedure, it's especially important to have an experienced surgeon, and I'll have someone who's performed several thousand of these surgeries. I read 25 reviews from those he has treated, and they all gave him 5 out of 5 stars, across the board (except for one patient who gave him a 4, for punctuality). He's the guy the doctors go to to be treated, and he both opted for, and was satisfied with, this type treatment for his own recently diagnosed prostate cancer.

The surgery couldn't be scheduled until early May, which my urologist says will be OK, but I'm on the waiting list for moving into a cancellation.

Sloan-Kettering has a nomogram--a predictive model that takes into account different variables--that tells me I have a darned good probability of not only surviving this but living for a good many years yet, most likely succumbing to something other than these damned spots.

At this point, the main thing that scares me is having, for a week, that damned catheter. I've got an idea what's involved, but I can't quite bear yet to fully look into it.

Oops

2011-02-02T19:31:00.001-08:00

"You have prostate cancer," the urologist just told me by phone. Biopsy, et cetera: seven on the Gleason scale of six to ten.

"Oh, shit," is my first reaction, and then, "Well, I can get through this."

And I can, although I was surprised by the diagnosis. When my doctor first told me in December that my PSA, although not exceptionally high, had been consistently creeping up over the past two years, making an appointment with the urologist was more a way of assuaging his and BFF's concern than any alarm on my part.

So...we'll see what this brings, but I'm not too worried. Yet.

Orphans

2010-12-17T13:25:00.000-08:00

Three days ago, on Tuesday, an hour before the phone call, I had finished a day of teaching and was writing lesson plans for today, when my wife and I were planning to arrive in Puerto Vallarta right about now.

It was my sister on the phone calling to tell me that she was with our mom at the hospital, and that it was time for me to come.

I left the next morning to cross the country so that I could be with Mom at what, that same evening, became her death bed.

Tomorrow is the first of two memorial services we will hold. It will be at the retirement home where Mom has spent the past 4 years living on a unit along with others who have memory problems.

My sister, from whose house in Virginia I am writing this, has been a weekly companion and caregiver for Mom during this time.

Our plans are fragile flags claiming country we hope to inhabit. The earth can shift in a second, changing boundaries, rivers, lives.

Downstream Bohemia Redux

2010-12-05T11:51:00.000-08:00

We are looking forward to our upcoming visit to Yelapa, a small Mexican fishing village on Banderas Bay, accessible by boat from Puerto Vallarta. Ana Rosa, our landlady, has graciously invited us to share Christmas dinner with her family. We will be combining our vacation there with a trip to Guanajuato capital.

This is a re-post written after last winter's idyll.

As a schoolteacher, I get a two-week vacation every December. In lieu of a raise in these hard financial times, BFF was given extra time off. That allowed us to spend over a week in a tropical paradise—a small fishing village in Mexico to which the only reasonable access is a 45 minute boat ride. Heaven.

As a consequence of its isolation, there are no roads, and hence no cars in the village. Virtually all the heavy lifting is done by human, and occasionally mule, power. We were fortunate enough to have rented a casita overlooking the town pier, where most of the people and goods are offloaded from the small boats, called pangas, that arrive two or three each hour.

Upon arrival, crates of beer, produce, dry goods, plastic pipe, you name it, are unloaded and moved by a small team of men with wheelbarrows. They work industriously for 15, 20 minutes, or so after every boatload, fanning out through the labyrinth of uphill alleys and paths to the ferreteria, the several tiendas, or wherever anyone has a delivery. Then they come back with their wheelbarrows to the benches near the pier to sit, talk, laugh and rest until it’s time to do it all over again.

As a person who has spent most of his working life in manual labor, I appreciate both the effort and the satisfaction these laborers must feel with the rhythm of their day. But, I have to admit, more than that I appreciate simply being able to watch their muscular and good-natured ebb and flow.

One fellow in particular attracted my attention. He was older, and he worked more often than the others. Roundly built and dressed a little more shabbily, he wore a sweat-stained baseball cap over his thatch of black hair. He was good-natured, and greeted me with a friendly, “Hola, amigo,” whenever we passed. He was also tireless, humping load after over-loaded load up the winding cobblestones, back and forth, until all the goods had been moved. My name for him was “El hombre mas fuerte del pueblo.”

Over the course of several days, looking out over the pier from our balcony, I produced a not-very accomplished sketch of this gentleman. I then got it into my head to give him the sketch, as a sign of friendship and appreciation for his labor. Our last hours in Yelapa, I hunted “El Hombre” down. He seemed a little taken aback, but smiled and shook my hand. Leaving him, looking back, I saw that he had carefully folded the picture and put it into his pocket.

About half an hour later, as BFF and I sat nervously with our bags waiting for the possibility of a panga back home, “El Hombre Mas Fuerte” reappeared. The two of us endured smiles, awkward attempts to converse, and even more awkward moments of silence as we tried to think of how to converse, until it became clear that he had assumed the role of our protector and handler, assuring that we would make our boat safely without having to worry or lift a finger. On parting, we shook hands--the solidarity shake. “Gracias amigo, hasta el ano proximo.”

I look forward to seeing "El Hombre" [whose name I now know as Cipriano] again this year. I flatter myself to think he might still have, somewhere, that poor sketch I gave to him. What he gave to me is an enduring memory of friendliness that transcends borders.

Snow Day!

2010-11-23T18:18:00.000-08:00

The weather here, two days before Thanksgiving, is colder than it's been for nearly 50 years. Yesterday evening the snow was blasting madcap out of the north, swirling wildly in the streetlights' halide haloes.

I woke early to moonglow on the back garden, reflecting brighter onto our bed than usual. Checked the school district's website for the news I knew would follow: school closed due to weather conditions. Yahoo for the break in routine!

Today, with customary good cheer, Saint Francis bears his burden of snow. The birds have returned, braving the chill now that the wind is not such a killer.

RA 11 875 290

2010-11-11T15:19:00.000-08:00

It’s been about 40 years since the much-anticipated day I separated from the US Army. I had been drafted during the last years of the Vietnam War, enlisted for language school, studied Russian for a year, gone to interrogator training, and spent 16 months stationed with a Military Intelligence detachment in Alaska.

It wasn't bad duty at all for that time, although it took me away from one path and set me on another one that for many years I resented.

I've pretty much put all that behind me though now, and hardly ever think about it anymore.

Tuesday, during writing class, we were working on personal narratives about a single event we remembered from our life. This is a new topic and I always begin by writing along with my students. The event that popped into my mind was something that happened during that time 40 years ago.

After writing, we share a little of what we've written. When I introduced my piece, these nine- and ten-year-olds were incredulous.

"You were in the Army?" “Mr. D, were you really in the Army?”

I assured them that although it was a long time ago, I had been indeed. Their response could hardly have surprised, moved and confused me more.

Each one of them applauded.

It wasn't just for me, of course. I stood for everyone who has ever worn the uniform of service to our country.

I can't say what prompted them to that simple and spontaneous act, but it seems churlish of me to hold resentment for something they recognize with such innocent gratitude and honor. Sure, it's much more complicated than that, but isn't it ever.

Liveblogging Halloween, 2010

2010-10-31T18:50:00.000-07:00

We are not expecting many trick-or-treaters this year. There are child-filled enclaves here and there throughout the city, where a critical mass gives impetus to join roving hordes of young superheroes and villains, but we are not among them.

Our neighborhood's business district has joined most others in the area, encouraging parents to bring their kids into the shops for guaranteed plentiful and safe, if homogeneous, treats. Ever optimistic, though, BFF bought some Reece's Peanut Butter Cups and special Halloween Kit-Kats to tempt tiny revelers.

It isn't long after the sun has gone down, the ritual jack o' lantern been lit, and rooster head put in place, that we do indeed hear our first excited, high-pitched voices, and the doorbell rings. Let's see what 2010's Halloween brings:

6:37pm PST. Boy and girl both about eight years old, Transformer and Wonder Woman store-bought. Kit Kat and Reece’s each.

6:40. Four boys all about eleven, different costumes, mostly home-made except a Scream carrying a Pulaski. Cautioned to be careful with that dangerous tool while going down the steps, he hollers, “I will, it’s only for killing people.” Rooster doesn’t blink.

6:47. Cute little boy about three wearing perhaps a mutant turtle costume. Father wearing ear flap cap, smiling. Boy wants to stay and talk but we can’t understand him so we shut the door on his face. Just kidding.

7:07. BFF, going out on the porch for a smoke, offers the conciliatory observation that at least it's held off raining. Moments later she comes back in and whispers that she thinks we might have a Spanish-speaking family coming up. Her clue: "Hola," and "Gracias" heard from the street. They arrive! A little girl about three years old, not sure about the costume since she's wearing a coat over it. Very cute! Mother accompanies her as father remains at the curb holding an even younger child and speaking softly en espanol.

7:15. BFF is dispirited by the lack of neighborhood participation in the giving ritual, as evidenced by the few houselights offering welcome for costumed children, especially the little ones.

8:02. We get through dinner without interruption, counting only eight kids in all, but when BFF goes out to snuff the jack o' lantern's candle, she's met by our neighbor with his friendly and garrulous three-year-old boy dressed as a Holstein cow. A good close to the evening.

What Moves Me

2010-10-26T19:47:00.001-07:00

It was miserable weather today, but surprisingly not a bad commute. Here in one of the most famously rainy cities in the country, drivers are usually strangely mincing in their habits, braking at the first drop of precipitation, and then proceeding reluctantly and at a slug’s pace.

But swinging onto I-5 early this evening all was copacetic; especially with Miles Davis's 'Flamenco Sketches' popping up on the iPod to accompany me down the pike.

Ten minutes later, gliding Red Ed into the parking space in front of our house, IZ brought my “Best of the Best” playlist to an upbeat close with his ukelele version of 'Over the Rainbow.'

I’ve got 67 songs on the playlist that accompanies me on my daily commute —over five hours of music for the road. That's almost two week's worth of head-bobbing inspiration to replace profane grumbling behind the wheel.

It’s strange how proud we are, as a species it seems, of our musical tastes. Witness the bass-thumping lowriders we all recall from the too much time we've spent together at the same stoplight. Just about anyone is willing to share their favorite song at the drop of an octave.

Tomorrow morning I’ll get into Red Ed in the cold and rainy dark, and plug back into the beginning of “Best of the Best:” Van Morrison mumbling and moaning his way through 'Vanlose Stairway.'

A couple of months ago I read in the new Marcus Greil book that once the lyrics are written, the Man sings them for the sounds of the syllables rather than the words' meaning. That's why I've always heard 'Vanlose Stairway' as the more cryptic line, “We’ve lost their way,” I guess.

Van Morrison comes in second, on the iTunes playlist, after Tom Waits--the most frequently played--and tied with Neko Case and Bob Dylan.

Oh, I could go on and on, through BB King and John Lee Hooker, Lucinda Williams, Marshall Tucker Band and Mark Knopfler. Don’t forget Cesaria Evora and the Drive-by Truckers.

Somebody stop me!

Buena Vista Social Club. Billy Bragg and Wilco. Bettye Lavette and Bruce—

This is who I am. These are my values!

Blind Boys of Alabama! Joan Osborne!

This is what moves me!!

Ahhh, Autumn

2010-10-17T09:43:00.000-07:00

Is there any common, natural wonder more invigorating than a crisp autumn morning? Taking care of the usual Sunday chores, opening the back door, recycling bin in hand, I take a breath of that bracing air, and squint at the sun rising over leaves turning scarlet and plum. Steam billows off the shed's asphalt shingles as last night's frost evaporates in the spreading, chilly warmth.

Tough Afternoon in Class, With Kindness

2010-10-09T13:38:00.000-07:00

Blain came late to school Wednesday—nothing unusual in that for him. What was a surprise were his apologies for the tardiness. After returning from PE, he remained cooperative, completing his brief spelling worksheet. And even held in for study hall during lunch recess, he finished a math test without complaint.

After lunch, however, he became angry with his writing partner, rose from his seat, throwing erasers and a pencil in Ben’s direction, and threatened to beat him up. He ran from the room, and walked quickly down to the end of the hall, but when I called for him to come back, he did, staying to calm down outside our door.

The last time this anger surfaced, Blain had shouted similarly at Ben while pressing a sharpened pencil into each of his own temples. That was the day before he was committed to the hospital for a week.

This was only his second day back.

At recess I walked with Blain to the office where our Family Advocate calmed him, and brought him back to our room just before the end of recess. He asked to not sit next to Ben, and not have to speak with him. I agreed. As I let the rest of the class in from outside, I spoke with Ben, relayed to him Blain’s wishes, and elicited Ben’s verbal agreement to cooperate.

After about ten minutes of class time, Ben moved from his seat and passed by Blain to the supply area. I did not see, nor did I observe, any interaction between the two. Blain, however, must have perceived something I did not. He rose from his seat and began loudly cursing his partner, two or three times loudly tossing the “f-bomb” as he gestured angrily, stumbling in circles.

I moved Blain, still shouting, through the door and had him again sit in the hall to calm down. About ten minutes after this incident, he was speaking relatively calmly to me, and agreed to go to the office to await his mother for early dismissal.

I spoke with the class and said the obvious: that Blain was upset. Mollie raised her hand.

“I think he has some problems,” she said sympathetically.

“We all have problems, don’t we, at some time?” I replied. “I have problems and I get upset. How many of you have had problems and gotten angry?”

Nearly everyone raised their hand.

“What do we do when someone has a problem, to help them feel better?”

“We can be nice to them.” “We can be nice to Blain.”

“Let’s do that.”

I love these kids. They are kind to one another. They understand.

Next week Blain transfers to a small program in our district for other kids similarly afflicted with demons.

Field Trip!

2010-09-29T19:06:00.000-07:00

Today was the fourth grade's traditional field trip to the Washington State Corn Maze. A good time was had by (almost) all. Farajan was disappointed we couldn't navigate the hay bale maze as well: an unfortunate glass-half-empty girl. But, on the almost completely full side, we spent upwards of an hour deliriously lost in a field of corn manicured to the shape of our beloved state, had lunch with Creamsicles for dessert, saw the Pig Race (funny), the Duck Race (even funnier), and picked the pumpkin of our dreams from the pumpkin patch...oh, and rode home in a school bus singing songs and playing hand games, arriving back at school just in time for recess.

Friday Night

2010-09-24T19:57:00.000-07:00

I’ve never been much of a boozehound,
But I really like my liquor:

Tequila straight,
With a beer chaser,
Every Friday Night.

Saturday morning is when I have
Second thoughts.

Indoor Recess

2010-09-23T19:13:00.000-07:00

Raining like an old dog outside at noon. Indoor recess: teacher's bane and students' change of pace. Combine that with a full moon. Kind of crazy. We talked about it, the kids and me, at the end of the day. Agreed that next time it would be helpful if we got up and ran in place, did calisthenics.

Ipod Wisdom

2010-09-12T08:53:00.000-07:00

Oh, am I ever full of life here
On the health club’s upright cycle,
Facing a bank of TVs silently presenting
College football games.

Ipod is in place, pumping
Bob Dylan into my ear.

“Forever Young!” Bob howls, and,
Head bobbing, my legs churn faster.
Up the burned calories!
Up the heart rate!

“Forever Young!’ Bob Dylan yowls, and
I agree with the sentiment, humping
Legs, heart, hands beating time,
Flailing my upright cycle.

Until
The Ipod shuffles to its
Next random selection:

And the "random selection" is? Check out That Oughta See Us Out blog. Or better yet, finish the poem yourself and send it in as a comment.

First Day of School, 2010

2010-09-01T18:52:00.000-07:00

This is the gist of the Rah-Rah speech I gave this morning to my 31 new Fourth graders:

Is everyone the same height?

Does everyone wear the same size shoe?

Does everyone learn the same way?

No, of course not. In none of those things are we all alike.

Some people are really fast at their basic math facts. Some can already read chapter books that are 300 pages long. Some draw beautiful pictures.

No two people are the same. But everyone belongs.

In this classroom we have a learning community.

A learning community is a place where everyone belongs—that’s the community part—and where everyone is trying to do their best—the learning part.

You might do your best at multiplication facts by learning strategies for finding the products, and by practicing with flash cards.

You might do your best at being a better writer by learning how to make a complete sentence, and how to organize what you write so it is more effective.

Whatever you are trying to learn, whether it’s math or writing or soccer or science, in order to do your best in our learning community there are five things you must do, and our success will be guaranteed:

PAY ATTENTION
ASK QUESTIONS
TRY
HELP YOUR CLASSMATE
ACCEPT YOUR CLASSMATE'S HELP

Adios al Verano

2010-08-22T20:03:00.000-07:00

From my desk in our homely house at the northwest edge of the country, I can see the setting sun burning orange into an archipelago of clouds scattered above the horizon. The neighbor lady has rolled her week’s worth of trash and recycling to the curb for Monday pick up. Tomorrow, I say goodbye to another summer. Parents and kids? You have another week.

Custodians of Memory

2010-08-16T17:17:00.000-07:00

I just got off the phone with Sis. Hard times for her lately. Mom continues to lose touch with her ability to behave appropriately, and Sis is bearing the brunt.

Four years ago Mom moved into a retirement community near Sis, into a wing called Comfort Cove, where they keep the ones who are losing their minds more quickly than most.

Of course, there has been deterioration. Through it all, though, Mom has remained almost always sweet, babbling goodnaturedly, and often touched with amusement. Lately, however, her occasional feistiness has begun to turn belligerent, angrily confused and ranting.

It was BFF's suggestion I send Sis a card. I wrote her a message, letting her know that I thought she was everything to Mom that a good daughter should be, and more. (It was Sis's care for Mom that an in-law had questioned, and that had occasioned today's tearful call to me.) I told Sis that she would always have my appreciation and respect for the blessing she was giving.

When I got through to Mom on the phone she spoke aimlessly, listlessly. Aimlessness is expected; she has great difficulty voicing a complete sentence that makes sense in the context of a conversation. She relies on stock phrases that she repeats quite often. She conflates me and and my dead dad.

Listlessness must be the effect of the Ativan she's now taking for anxiety. It was upsetting to not hear vitality in her voice--the sweet essence of our mom that has always shone through the hazy maze of her mind.

I kept repeating that I loved her, what a sweetheart and what a good mom she was, until she thought it was time to go.

Mom and Sis live on the opposite coast. I was last there in April. I used to go once a year. I'm feeling that I don't want to wait that long to see them again.

Oops

2010-08-14T12:40:00.000-07:00

I don't remember
Why it was
I put all that Vicodin
In the glove compartment
Of my car.
But I'm glad I found it.

What happens next? Check out That Ought To See Us Ou t blog. Or better yet, finish the poem yourself and send it in as a comment.

Traditonal Summer Holiday

2010-08-12T14:07:00.000-07:00

My daughters and I have a tradition of taking a summer camping holiday. We haven't made it every year the past decade or so, but most. This year we went to Mt. Rainier. Oh, the joy!

Three moments stand out:

First daughter and I walk along Sourdough Ridge, stopping to admire the views and wildflowers. She waits patiently as I pose scenery into pictures. We have time and place to appreciate together both our love of nature, and our pleasure in scuffhuffling up and down this rocky spine.

Second daughter follows me in creating balanced sculptures from among the river rocks. It’s something I have done for years, happily addicted to the tactile stimulation of the stones’ grain and heft. Add to that the concentration required to make subtle shifts to maintain balance...all while in a land of shattering beauty and vastness. What’s not to love?

After dinner I make a perfect fire. As the air turns chill, we chat until darkness seems to have suddenly developed around us. My daughters are separated by ten years and different mothers, but share a love of S’mores. They compare marshmallow roasting strategies while I facilitate. The crackling of the fire, the moving glow it throws on the wall of my tent, and mumble of their quiet, good-natured talk give comfort as I read myself to sleep.

“My daughters and I…” never rings truer than during these outings. It’s a good tradition.

History 101

2010-08-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

A week ago, an old friend, a high school girlfriend, happened to pass by in the ethernet and we ended up sharing what had been happening in our lives during the last twenty-five years or so. This is a slightly re-worked version of what I wrote to her:

My current, future and final wife and I first met about a quarter century ago in an arty bar downtown. It was, for both of us, love at first sight. Our first date a week later ended up lasting four or five days. She called in sick to work--"love-sick," we joked.

At that time I was living in a surplus elementary school that had been turned into a commune for less-than-successful artists. (A fellow communard had been dressed as a gypsy, telling fortunes, that night in the back of the bar.) We each made our living and studio quarters out of a classroom or two. My connection to the place was directing a couple of the resident dancers in a street performance that became popular the year before. My work for pay at that time, and for many years before and after, was as a self-employed gardener.

My second wife and I had been divorced for several years, and she had moved into another room at the school. We split custody of our 5-year-old daughter. During the half week she was with me, I lived at the school and took care of her. The rest of the time, I stayed with my lover in her apartment.

I remember standing outside her door at the beginning of our weekly sojourn, holding a bouquet of freesias; I could hear her exclaiming, “Oh boy,” as she came down the hall to let me in. In every way that matters we were and are, nearly perfectly suited for each other. We felt blessed, and for karmic payback we both volunteered as end-of-life caretakers for several people afflicted with AIDS.

She had a master’s degree from a prestigious university writing program, and had lived and worked in artists’ colonies in New York and California. She was working on a novel; her day job was coordinating temp help at a big law firm. At the end of that first summer—this was the mid-80’s—she spent several weeks in Guatemala doing research and writing.

We lasted together for two years. Living the bifurcated life, which was the only one that seemed possible, became too difficult, and we did not give enough credit to the love we had found together. Fights became more frequent and dramatic, until, when I thought it was finally over, I killed it for good by having a fling. She made it clear she didn’t ever want to see me again.

Back at the schoolhouse commune, a female glass artist moved in next door and began flirting. I was flattered, drug-addled, and responded accordingly. A faulty rubber was credited with the birth of my second daughter. Using a sledgehammer, I broke open a doorway between our rooms, the three and a half of us now sharing both spaces.

Bowing to her father’s insistence that we cement our nascent family’s togetherness, we got married in a more or less Jewish ceremony held on the stage. Guests gathered to view a strange kind of school assembly, among massive concrete heads of 18th century Transcendentalists being fabricated by a sculptor friend in this, his studio and living space.

I continued gardening, and, after displaying my chops in a quixotic theatrical venture (see Il Teatro Pescatore blog), worked as a hired hand for the local puppet cartel. I spent a lot of quality time with our little over-the-top craving girl—a quality that would bear some bitter fruit in later years. First daughter continued being a model child, with quirky sleepwalking and aura-perceiving habits that were also harbingers of trouble ahead.

The glass artist changed her focus and began making good money selling a line of arty nightlights. We got a divorce. The settlement was contentious, but we shared custody. The door was sealed and the wall made whole again. For the next several years it was just my part-time girls and me.

Meanwhile, I was invited to, first, a regional, and then an international, though locally staged, puppetry festival. The exposure garnered an invitation for Il Teatro Pescatore to yet another performance event, prestigious but further away. It was a tough decision not to attend, but I didn’t want to give up hands-on fatherhood by going down that road, especially in an unreliable vehicle. The sun had set on the traveling theater adventure.

Still paying the bills with pruning shears and clippers, my creative attention turned to storytelling as I began a new relationship that moved me out of the commune to a place not far away on a shady dead-end street. Second daughter made fairy shrines along the creek below our little house. First daughter won a scholarship to a small private college in eastern Washington State.

During our increasingly frequent fights, my lover would retreat to the attic and bunk among the boxes. It was crazy. However, as we floundered, fought, and eventually--thankfully--separated, the storytelling became increasingly popular at libraries and schools. Instead of the four or five street people who wandered in and out of ITP’s tent, I was emoting to hundreds of appreciative kids and their parents.

In the last few years of the twentieth century my girls and I began a tradition of spending a summer week or more vacationing with a California man and his daughter. Our felicitous first meeting was by chance at Yellowstone where our campsites adjoined. First daughter was old enough to appreciate, as did I, his witty and erudite ramblings. Second daughter and the California girl were exactly the same age and a perfect match of opposites.

Next year, they joined us on the Olympic Peninsula. The following summer we met them on their turf at King’s Canyon. On the way down we passed through Ashland, Oregon, and memories of my one-and-only came flooding in. We had spent several idyllic vacations there and had fantasized about settling in that theater town. I could not get the thought of her out of my mind, even—especially—after the girls and I returned home.

It’s not as if I had never thought of her in all the time—more than a decade—since she sent me packing. On numerous walks with my friend John we would pass the two apartment houses where she and I had shared good times, and I would lament the loss of the ‘’love of my life.” Now, though, it was different; thoughts of her were with me nearly every moment. Weeks passed and I finally decided to get in touch with her again, but that would not be easy.

“Re-Decorating Will Be Our Move”

2010-07-31T12:32:00.000-07:00

We decided not to move—a relocation that had been our focus for the past three weeks. What happened was this: a condo for rent with all the qualities we were looking for became available yesterday. (Well, all the qualities except price—a little too high—but we were ready to go there.) A skookum place as we say around here—local Indian for “swe-e-e-et.”

This place had its drawbacks, of course, and one of them was a deal-breaker: we still have too much shit to move; there just wouldn’t be enough storage space, we realized, even after all the sorting.

We don't consider rental of a storage locker an option. It's not what our kind of people do.

The decision comes as a relief, after all.

As BFF said, “Re-decorating will be our move.”

Moving Soon

2010-07-29T20:40:00.000-07:00

A year ago we moved from a home, and a neighborhood, that we loved. We have not been so happy in our present house, and we are soon moving again. However, one of the things we will miss most is our—or rather the landlady’s—garden. That possessive, though, kind of tells the tale—it’s not our creation. In fact, we have discovered that BFF can’t even go outside without breaking into hives. It’s the raspberries.

So we’re giving a big raspberry to this place and moving on to a condo apartment, but I, and she, will really miss the garden.

My Chosen Profession

2010-07-29T08:26:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading and responding to the above-headlined Atlantic article discussing the President's contention that teachers "must be accountable." This was my response:

As an elementary school teacher with six years experience who came into the field after a long career as a small businessperson, I have a few observations pertinent to the current debate about public school education. My college's teacher training poorly prepared me for the classroom. A “rigorous residency” would have helped me, at least, present a higher quality education earlier in my career. However, subsequent professional development is often wasted because there is not enough time or resources for its adequate implementation. If I could wish for one thing that would help me do my job better it would be qualified assistance with my lowest performing students in reading and math. This worked well at our school during the year when funding was available for a single grade. To ask one person, for six hours a day, to consistently and appropriately engage 30 or more students who are learning over a range of three or four grade levels is asking too much, regardless of the pay incentive. Finally, I have been consistently impressed by my colleagues’ skill and hard work on behalf of their students, but it has been my observation that the most reliable predictor of a child’s success in school is not the teacher but the parents.

The Evening, in the Backyard

2010-07-26T21:17:00.001-07:00

Sun setting deeper behind the mountains; cool, still air sinking to the earth: twilight, its quality impossible to capture in a photograph.

Hard Times

2010-07-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

There’s a fellow removing the siding next door so they can replace it with something more attractive. I’ve spoken with him a couple of times; he’s friendly, warm even, about 35, I reckon. Regular-looking—round face, short blond hair, a little pudgy, but muscles, I’m sure, and a tan, both from his line of work. Family-type of guy.

A couple of hours ago, our daily “Mornin’” morphed into a conversation about government regulations and illegal aliens, both of which he’s against, in a mild mannered but heart-felt way. It was getting uncomfortable talking with him, especially when the topic turned from paper to people. I avoid confrontations, sometimes to a fault, but I couldn’t be real and not express my disagreement with some of what he was saying.

Fortunately the conversation took a turn and he began telling me about his personal situation. He’d been accustomed to making upwards of $35 an hour but was doing this, his first major job in 18 months, for $10 less. The kicker, though, was his six-hour daily commute. There’s only scratch work out in the small town and logging-based county where he lives, and not much of that. He feels real fortunate to have landed this job 75 miles from home; now he can make enough to keep that home out of foreclosure, even though it means these long, long days, barely seeing his family.

Damn.

Another "there but for the grace of God."

When I inquired about future prospects, our carpenter fellow said he was looking to retrain, in fact had a plan to work at the big Navy shipyard hereabouts. He'd almost gotten a job there but it just fell through. The necessary security clearance was denied because he was in default on this home. Now that it looked like he would soon be out of that hole, he was planning on applying again. I hope he makes it, and I hope the work lasts.

As he kept talking I learned the back story, and it put a human face on all the news articles you read. Three, four years ago our carpenter friend was pulling down 75, 100 thousand. He saw lots of others a little higher up in his trade making that much money, a lot faster, flipping houses. He borrowed to build a couple himself and had just finished when the economy tanked. Finally sold one for a 38 K loss, ended up giving the other back to the bank. The American Dream, "it's not what it seems," as Willie Nelson has poignantly put it in song.

Free LiLo

2010-07-20T12:02:00.000-07:00

I just had a nice phone chat with my old friend Bob. Having a nice phone chat is not at all something in which I ordinarily indulge. I just don’t take the time; there’s always something else to do. Bob is retired, and during the summer, being a schoolteacher, so am I, in a way. So I have more time to nourish my poor neglected friendships.

It was sweet to talk, sharing things we hadn’t in ages, especially as we wound down our conversation in a manner that has become our custom: working up a juvenile fantasy about the current crush object.

We’ve decided to form a Lindsay Lohan support group. That was Bob’s idea but I enthusiastically jumped on board, being a big fan of freckles. I’ll skip the details; just say they betray our arrested development while lapping at the swill of mass media.

Let's see...What's next on the "To Do" list?

A Chaos of Objects

2010-07-19T15:59:00.001-07:00

The past two weeks I’ve been sorting through a chaos of objects, from large as a drill press to tiny as a post-it, in boxes and piles so spread about it was a dangerous dance getting through our good-sized basement. This is not a skill area for me, although I’ve come to, if not enjoy, at least be obsessed with its completion.

Much of the work has been fairly straightforward: put the chisels with the carving tools with the screwdrivers and call them all long-handled tools with a business end. Crescent wrench goes with pliers go with sockets and drivers because they’re all about loosening and tightening. Et cetera. That part was relatively easy.

The hard part came with all the papers and pictures and cards, letters and journals, the objets de whatever. That’s what got me to thinking about the larger meaning of this strange but commonplace activity. It’s like, “Are you on the bus or off the bus?” over and over again.

For example, take the daughters’ pictures. It’s not easy consigning a half dozen of sweet Second Daughter’s preschool graduation pics, even though I’ve already saved one good one, to the same box where I have thrown a leaky liquid nail cartridge. Ditto the Father's Day and Birthday cards. What do I look for when deciding which one makes the cut?

At least initially, that was a question I wrestled with when it came to assigning a fate to the embarrassing things, like the volumes of indescribably puerile writing trying to masquerade as something worthwhile. Fortunately, I argued myself out of the stance that saving a least a selection of such crap is important for understanding "my development."

Some of the stuff I've been going through is cringe-worthy and some of it downright sad, like Mom’s hour-by-hour description of what Dad went through his last two days on this earth. I imagine her detailing his suffering as a way to maintain her own sanity and semblance of poise in his time in extremis.

The sorting is complete now, at least for this move. I never came up with a formula. Every day it seemed like I had different criteria for the task, and some things I just put in boxes to give to the daughters. Let them perform their own triage. For me, for now, this shit is squared away:

Ripped Raw

2010-07-16T10:45:00.000-07:00

Last night BFF and I went to a local jazz club to hear Bettye LaVette. Every ache and yearning in her 65-year-old mind and body comes through the strongest and most raw voice you can imagine. It had me gulping back what she had touched inside, wiping the tears away after every song. One of life’s crowning glories is our ability to be moved far beyond our present circumstances by music.

Walkability

2010-07-15T12:16:00.001-07:00

A year ago BFF and I moved into a smaller and cheaper (rented) house, just downhill and a little south of a place where we’d lived for three years, half that time shared with Daughter Two. We’d liked that house and loved the neighborhood. Not so much here, though, down in the flats. We’ve decided to move again.

Two goals: less money and better location. We’d gotten spoiled having a great little grocery next door, cafes and taverns, book and hardware store, dry cleaner, boutique video, and coffeehouses galore, all along a shady not-too busy street. I recently discovered something called the “Walkability Index.” Our former house would have rated about 90. The one where we're living now? 25?

Money is the other thing. Now that retirement is only a couple of years away, we want to salt away all we can for our move down south. An apartment the size of our current house, even condo-quality, would save us a bundle. The calculus goes something like this: three months of savings here and now equal two months retirement rent in Guanajuato, or wherever.

Walkability--isn't that a great concept? A neighborhood that pulls you outside. We're craigslisting places near the central business district of our neighborhood, within easy strolling distance of an urban park with musicians and water features, public library, my fine gym, excellent movie theater and coffee houses, the best Mexican restaurant in town, sushi and other bars and clubs, plus acceptance for the many homeless around here who offer a bracing dose of "there but for the grace of God."

What a Way To Go

2010-06-08T20:21:00.000-07:00

As a consequence of
A troublesome bout of
Lower back pain—
Intimation of mortality—
I’ve recently begun imagining myself,
And it’s gotten so it’s hardly a stretch,
Retired, you know...

Read the rest of this poem at That Oughta See Us Out blog .

Lloyd or Floyd?

2010-06-02T20:28:00.000-07:00

In the beginning I thought the neighbor’s name was Lloyd but BFF insisted it was Floyd. Now we compromise and call him Oyd, and not just between ourselves. On the occasions when the man is due a shout out, we swallow the beginning of the name but end it firmly. This innocent social deception has been going on way too long for us to comfortably ask Oyd again what his name is.

Il Teatro Pescatore – Part 2 - Pinball Becomes Carpo

2010-05-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

A flying fish with the face of Groucho Marx? Giant clam shells dripping pearls from a pirate's booty? Head of a goldfish swollen a thousand times its natural size? What creatures we are to have such creations spring from our minds, eyes and hands!

Read the rest of this post at Il Teatro Pescatore blog.

Slug Haiku

2010-05-20T18:20:00.000-07:00

Slug in oblong niche
W/D and all mod-cons
No pumpkin this year

Over and Over Again

2010-04-22T19:52:00.001-07:00

...We laughed, muttered,
Staggered in circles,
Tried on faces and voices,
All across the wide backyard.

My mom was
In a suburban rest home
Not far away,
Up on the top floor
In a sheltered wing
Called Comfort Cove...

Read the rest of this poem at That Oughta See Us Out blog.

Valentine Getaway

2010-02-17T09:25:00.000-08:00

Il Teatro Pescatore - Part 1 - Christopher Columbus

2010-02-09T20:21:00.000-08:00

Ten years ago I performed at an international puppetry festival. These were puppets for adults. The show was my liberal adaptation of a surreal political satire written in 1929 by Michel DeGhelderode, a Belgian. “Christopher Columbus,” it was called.

Read the rest of this post at Il Teatro Pescatore's blog.

Punching Cardboard

2010-01-30T17:01:00.000-08:00

Trying to feel more at ease
In this wet and cold climate,
And not give in
To the twinges of pain in my lower back,
I decide to invest Saturday’s chores with
More than my usual panache.

Read the rest of this poem at That Oughta See Us Out blog.

Get NYT Behind Me

2010-01-19T20:44:00.000-08:00

I've removed NY Times, Huffington Post and the BBC from my Foxfire toolbar. Since we got back from our downstream bohemia, I've laid off the news a bit, but now I gotta kick this media addiction completely. It's bad, leads to worse. We don't need to discuss my reasons; they're plentiful.

I'm spending more time reading blogs, practicing my Spanish on Livemocha and writing.

Downstream Bohemia Found

2010-01-07T16:59:00.001-08:00

As a schoolteacher, I get a two-week vacation every December. In lieu of a raise in these hard financial times, BFF was given extra time off. That allowed us to spend over a week in a tropical paradise—a small fishing village in Mexico to which the only reasonable access is a 45 minute boat ride. Heaven.

As a consequence of its isolation, there are no roads, and hence no cars in the village. Virtually all the heavy lifting is done by human, and occasionally mule, power. We were fortunate enough to have rented a casita overlooking the town pier, where most of the people and goods are offloaded from the small boats, called pangas, that arrive two or three each hour.

Upon arrival, crates of beer, produce, dry goods, plastic pipe, you name it, are unloaded and moved by a small team of men with wheelbarrows. They work industriously for 15, 20 minutes, or so after every boatload, fanning out through the labyrinth of uphill alleys and paths to the ferreteria, the several tiendas, or wherever anyone has a delivery. Then they come back with their wheelbarrows to the benches near the pier to sit, talk, laugh and rest until it’s time to do it all over again.

As a person who has spent most of his working life in manual labor, I appreciate both the effort and the satisfaction these laborers must feel with the rhythm of their day. But, I have to admit, more than that I appreciate simply being able to watch their muscular and good-natured ebb and flow.
One fellow in particular attracted my attention. He was older, and he worked more often than the others. Roundly built and dressed a little more shabbily, he wore a sweat-stained baseball cap over his thatch of black hair. He was good-natured, and greeted me with a friendly, “Hola, amigo,” whenever we passed. He was also tireless, humping load after over-loaded load up the winding cobblestones, back and forth, until all the goods had been moved. My name for him was “El hombre mas fuerte del pueblo.”

Over the course of several days, looking out over the pier from our balcony, I produced a not-very accomplished sketch of this gentleman. I then got it into my head to give him the sketch, as a sign of friendship and appreciation for his labor. Our last hours in Yelapa, I hunted “El Hombre” down. He seemed a little taken aback, but smiled and shook my hand. Leaving him, looking back, I saw that he had carefully folded the picture and put it into his pocket.

About half an hour later, as BFF and I sat nervously with our bags waiting for the possibility of a panga back home, “El Hombre Mas Fuerte” reappeared. The two of us endured smiles, awkward attempts to converse, and even more awkward moments of silence as we tried to think of how to converse, until it became clear that he had assumed the role of our protector and handler, assuring that we would make our boat safely without having to worry or lift a finger. On parting, we shook hands--the solidarity shake. “Gracias amigo, hasta el ano proximo.”

I look forward to seeing "El Hombre" again next year. I flatter myself to think he might still have, somewhere, that poor sketch I gave to him. What he gave to me is an enduring memory of friendliness that transcends borders.

Loyal Dog

2009-12-14T19:37:00.000-08:00

I have my blog's address on the bookmark toolbar of my browser. Lately I've been avoiding the place like the plague. I glance at the top of my screen and scurry my cursor away: to NYT or BBC. Not threatening, non-involving.

I feel guilty avoiding you, Blog.

I don't want to talk about it...quit looking at me like a loyal blog that's spurned.

The beginning of my typical work day

2009-11-19T20:55:00.000-08:00

My day starts about 4:30AM and I leave home a little over an hour later. It’s about ten minutes up and down the streets across the city's north end ridges to I-5, and ten minutes more until I arrive at school. I can always count on third grade teacher Annie getting here before me. Three years ago she was the one who guided me, in the early dark of what seemed like a thousand mornings, as I struggled to adjust to a new school, age group, and teaching philosophy.

Annie is generally the only one there, except for Bob who sometimes surprises me walking out of the foggy darkness from the bus stop on Lake City Way. If the outside lights are on, Bob is there, but I sometimes beat him to turning on the room's heat. I met Bob five years ago at my first teaching post, a quirky middle school. I'm not sure why he always takes the bus, but my theory is that it might have begun with a court order.

I park in my usual spot, juggle coffee, lunch and laptop as I key the car's remote and walk head down into the usual rain to my room’s outside door .

Annie's car is always there as I pull into the lot.

First thing I do is make a To-Do list while drinking kefir and munching the world’s best trail mix, Omega-3 blend from Trader Joe’s. I gather up yesterday’s strewn-about sheets of instruction and take the day before’s class- and homework out of the Purple Bin where, if I am lucky, it has been sorted by a revolving team of students doing the previous day's end chores.

I check to see who is missing assignments that will have to be made up during lunch recess study hall. I spend an hour or more grading the papers turned in, a mixture of multiplication timed trials, math homework, essay drafts and grammar work. During another hour or more, there are stacks of activity sheets to be made up and copied, and the mail to be picked up. I check for phone and email messages that need to be returned before the school day begins.

At least once a week morning is cut short by meetings beginning at eight and lasting up until the nine o'clock bell when it’s time to let the kids in.

Most mornings, as I post the daily schedule I can hear the class scout narrating through the gap at the bottom of the door’s blinds: “He’s writing on the board…turn in your social studies homework…no AR tests this morning.” Today it was, "Mr. D_____ got a haircut!"
Of course, by the time I open the door and get my first breath of daylight’s bracing air, this youngster has fled and blended into the two lines unaccountably jockeying to enter the classroom first, as if there was a mega-clearance sale going on inside.

Twenty-four ten-year-olds stream and straggle past my friendly "Good Morning" with a mix of drowsiness, exuberance, sniffles and juvenile jokes. The day begins again.

Rainy day in Ballard

2009-11-16T17:38:00.000-08:00

It feels like it's raining all over the world.
--Tony Joe White

Liveblogging Halloween, 2009

2009-10-31T19:13:00.000-07:00

7:15pm PST. It's been dark now for 45 minutes and we've gotten 5 trick-or-treaters, including one who came twice and who said, "I want some candy" instead of the requisite "Trick or Treat" the first time here. He was wearing that white Scream mask called Ghostface for a killer in a series of splatter movies. So, what would you expect about the kid's character? When BFF queried about his previous visit, he denied it and then, after getting his candy, compounded his brattiness by bragging that he had been here before. This was a bad start..That was about 15 minutes ago, and I just answered the door to a nerdy, fair-faced boy, about the same age as the little shit, wearing a green hooded top, saying, as I opened he door, "Greetings from the land of Eragon, I am the young prince, [and so on and on with his quaint memorized introduction]." I reply, "Greetings, prince." He takes the candy and hops in a half-graceful/half-awkward way down the steps with a good-natured "Happy Halloween." Now, that's more like it.

7:17. I hear voices. The sweetest girl, by herself, about that same age (where are all the young ones?), dressed as Dorothy, blond pigtails, fresh-faced with a bright smile. She takes a Nestles Crunch out of the offered tray, and demurely chooses a Kit-Kat when I offer again. A bright, yet shy, "Thank you," is echoed more heartily by parent at the bottom of the steps, dressed as a lizard. I can't tell if this is mother or father.

7:07. Doorbell rings while I'm seated in the living room waiting for the oven to heat. A youngun'--fairy princess type--followed by her pre-preschool brother wearing a red onesie with a fire department insignia on the little male chest. I figure his dad, who is at the foot of the stairs, is a fireman. His mom is shepherding him along while holding the daughter's hand, cueing the three basic lines: "Trick or treat...Thank you...Happy Halloween." The little fireman is in no hurry, carefully wrapping his chubby hand around each of the wrought iron railing posts as he approaches the proffered CANDY, and me, on my knees. He delivers his lines late, mumbled and jumbled out of order, but this must be a pretty weird experience for one so young. It's charming as hell.

7:20. I spill some red wine on our ecru couch and launch into a shamefaced drill to remove it. BFF and I have both being feeling kind of fragile today...I hear 4th grader voices in the distance...passing by.

7:21. Coming down the street, an adult is whistling "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" which, for some reason, sounds ominous...From nearby I hear a parent say, "Do you want to knock on the door?" A little girl's voice replies. Door opens. I hear mumbles and "Do you want to say thank you?" More mumbles...They're coming here next--I feel the excitement and call BFF. I tell her this will assuage her disappointment with previous Toters [Trick or Treaters]. She comes and we crouch by the door, trying not to get our silhouettes between the light and the giant spiders we have posed on the screen. We wait, nothing...They've gone next door--the young couple's house with one 2-year-old and one on the way. We wait and I say, affecting brightness, "They probably know each other." It's nothing personal, I imply, that they've skipped our house. BFF walks back to her office...I've resume liveblogging when I hear voices on our steps. A shout to BFF and she hurries to open the door to another Dorothy, in sparkly ruby slippers, held by a thirty-something dad in a red fleece jacket and they are all smiles. Parents deliver the now-standard coaching of Things to Say to confused effect from little Dorothy. It's all good, though. BFF coos and proclaims over the little girl's beauty and intelligence and we agree that "Thank you" will come next year. We intuit that "Happy Halloween" is too advanced, so we do our part and say "Bye-bye." Parents prompt Dorothy, we all wait expectantly, hopefully, but hear nothing until as we are shutting the door, comes a baby "Bye," and then it's repeated.

7:25. From next door to south I hear "Bye...bye-bye."

7:34. Voices on the street. It's a crowd, adults referencing our spider with a mock scream. Two cute young pirate wenches. I coax them to say, "Thank you." From their clutch of parents, someone says, "Nice spiders."

7:36. Hard on the heels of the two families with pirate-wench daughters, our doorbell rings, catching me still fumbling with the laptop and BFF dancing with the candy tray. I hurry to push the arrow to cue the mpeg of the "Ghostbusters" theme while BFF talks about my butt being in the way. She gives candy to 3 appropriately aged Toters while I strain to hear from behind the door. Hard on their heels I hear her compliment those just coming up the steps on their good costumes. I edge from behind where I'm trapped with the laptop to see two 11-year-old boys in knight's costumes. One has a foamboard shield with a Y on it. I ask what the Y stands for, but he doesn't know. He says his dad made it. That makes 13 Toters.

8:02. This might be it. The two pubescent male knights have been the last Toters for almost half an hour. We're going about our business. BFF preparing burgers and relish. Me? I'm taking charge of the Alexis frozen fries.

Next morning. BFF and I had bet on the number of Toters we would see. She won, having guessed 20 to my 23. I had thought the actual total Toters was 15, but can't picture the last two and neither can BFF. We're feeling more hearty today, Dia de Los Muertos, and happy the weather is unexpectedly sunny.

Satisfying the requirements

2009-10-11T12:37:00.000-07:00

Every five years, we teachers are supposed to have accumulated 150 clock hours of training. I recently became aware of this requirement at the end of my fourth year. Unfortunately, I had not been saving any of the paperwork to prove my adherence. I am currently taking a course in writing from which I will acquire 50 clock hours--so many because we meet on weekends and after school until March. Below is a piece I wrote during our first two meetings, in mid-September:

The boy can still feel the orange dust on his tongue that their car had bounced up from the rutted road. With his granddad, he wades now out of the shadows into the dappled sunlight, its reflections dancing on the underside of leaves that bend low over the creek. The boy looks at his granddad’s hairy arms beneath the rolled up sleeves, excited at this beloved man’s rare informality.

Later, the granddad rocks back and forth on the fly rod and reels in a fish. He passes the fish to the boy who slips its speckled green back through the narrow square of the woven creel. The trout’s desperate thrashing is so frightening in its intensity the boy distractedly puts his fingers to his lips and tastes the fishy slime.

The boy’s childhood passes with only a few of these summer idylls to remember.

On an afternoon, ten years and two hundred miles from that summer creek, the phone rings. The boy answers and hears his grandmother. Time in the narrow hallway becomes attenuated; space thickens. The boy calls his mother to the phone. He remembers later being surprised and proud that his mother, normally a nervous woman, keeps her poise so well.

The grandfather is buried in the Catholic cemetery at the edge of a town in the middle of Missouri. The boy learned the Hail Mary prayer from Burma Shave imposter placards posted where the highway passed on either side of the thin wrought iron gate to the gravesite. He especially remembers the pause between, “And blessed is the fruit…Of thy womb Jesus.”

Today the man keeps a picture in ritual remembrance of his grandfather. It shows a dapper, bald and white-haired Mick wearing signature suspenders and tie, posing a cigarette holder like MacArthur, and wearing a long-sleeved shirt buttoned at the wrists.

Fall's First Rain Tonight

2009-09-29T20:44:00.000-07:00

We just installed a nubby 70's low slung easy chair, faded several unfortunate shades of burnt orange, with silver threads--but you can't tell the way it used to look because it's all covered now with an ecru cloth. It sits against a slate wall in front of the chaste, gauzey curtains for the window that overlooks our new street. It’s in what we call ”the office”—one of four rooms in our new house. They are each painted a subtle Ralph Lauren shade. Not counting the bathroom that’s tiled like a spa.

You can go from living room to office (through bathroom) to bedroom then kitchen to living room and round and around again. Which we do, over and over again, to our childlike delight. Trying not to trip over boxes.

All Moved In

2009-09-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

What a grueling week! I took Monday off from work to vacuum and finish cleaning the old house. It took Morrison 3 round trips to transport almost all the weird stuff at the margin of the move. Daughter #2 came over to help me clean and load the few remains from her old room for a cadged trip to her new place. Quid pro quo except that, at her new apartment Morrison wouldn't start. With the only tools I had available, a vice grip and screwdriver, I removed the battery leads and then scraped them and the battery terminals bright and clean. It was half an hour before I could get Van to fire up for the 6 miles down I-5, exiting at James (giving $2 to curbside beggars, for their luck and my own) and over the hill to John's.

John brought me back and we shared a final beer in the now empty house. John declined the gift of a cunningly constructed old wooden ladder so I tossed it over the eastern fence--payback to the market for all the early morning wake-ups by beeping delivery trucks. Back home, BFF had heroically made the kitchen available for dinner. That was Monday.

Tuesday and Wednesday after work I went back to the old house for all the dribs and drabs. On Thursday, I dragged the log holder from the patio to the curb and put a "FREE" sign on it--one I'd printed using the edgy "Cracked" font. The next night, on Friday's traditional trip to Mr Gyro's, I drove by the old house and saw that the log holder was gone. The last tie, removed.

We're getting used to the new place. I think BFF likes it more than I, but I'll come to feel at home, I'm sure. So far, the best thing for me is the view out the basement door where I can pee into the drain and look up past roses and hollyhocks to the big sky.

Last Days

2009-09-12T21:53:00.000-07:00

The irony.

We have lived in this house for exactly 3 years. In that time, we have been continuously and increasingly bedeviled by cars and trucks crowding our driveway. Our side of the street is posted no parking, but that has never registered; there is almost always someone out front--no problem unless they make it difficult for us to get in or out. In those cases, we have grumbled, pointedly asked people to move, slapped an equally pointed note under their wipers, but generally, we adapted, because there is usually no other reasonable thing to do. This has been going on for 3 years, and since the market on the corner has been expanding, its construction has made this part of the block an occasional bottleneck.

One thing, though, that has never been a problem: we feel safe here. For us, early morning vandals, thieves, or worse have not existed. We lock our doors, of course, but even though we only live a hundred feet or so from a well-traveled arterial, I have seldom locked Fast Eddie, our car, feeling certain, albeit naively, that it resides within a circle of protection.

Last evening, we all thought our weather was the last reprise of summer—warm and still with a golden sun setting. It was our neighborhood’s monthly Artwalk and all the galleries, taverns and restaurants were doing booming business, beginning about six.

A little earlier my friend John had brought his old scabrous Econoline over for me to use transporting boxes to our new home. John was also going to take my faithful steed of many haphazard work years—good old Trucky, a small grey (I was opting for nondescript) Toyota pickup. I was giving Trucky to John. John is a mechanic, so I knew he could do the amount of work it would take to make Trucky cool running. I also wanted to keep Trucky in the family, so to speak, for that’s how I consider John. So he was dropping off his van—which BFF has since named Morrison—and picking up Trucky.

I had arisen early yesterday—not long after 4AM—just as I’d gotten up early the previous two days. Between the first week of school and this move to a new house, I had become tired and almost frazzled. BFF as well; she has been doing yeowoman’s duty, packing for at least an hour every day after work. Plus, when it comes to cleaning and organization she gets completely compulsive. So, when John came over, we neither of us had much gas in the tank, so to speak. John had recently injured himself again, falling downstairs at his semi-permanently under self-construction house, so he wasn’t at the top of his game either.

John was stoned when he came over and we started drinking beer and, after catching up on news with BFF, and giving me lessons on how to keep Morrison running (although he did not, I remembered later, remind me to lock Morrison), giving me lessons on how to run the rest of my life, after all that we went outside to smoke and drink another beer. A little later, by the time John had gotten around to trying to put legal tags over Trucky's illegal ones, we were both in a state. I was pawing through packed boxes from my workbench while he was swearing at a stuck bolt.

John was also late for dinner with his in-laws who were visiting for a few days from Back East. He didn’t like the old geezer who had married his mother-in-law (and been unspeakingly rude to John) so I guess it wasn’t a big deal for him. He did recognize the potential for a familial imbroglio, though, and at some point in the evening placed a call to his (often considered long-suffering) wife for an update before he he went outside again to begin cursing at switching the license plates. I spun around aimlessly, except twice when I had to politely--but pointedly--remind two different drivers that where they were planning on illegally parking (although the infraction was never enforced, which I did not mention) was also blocking my now overly full driveway. But finally, our own illegal deed done, and amid hugs and vows, John haltingly drove Trucky away. Farewell friend and faithful steed.

Now, I just had time to grab some money from BFF and hustle down to Mr Gyros, before it closed, for our regular Friday takeaway treat. The sidewalks were bustling on Greenwood Ave. but I was running on empty. Back home with the food I shook my head at all the cars crowding my narrow driveway and decided I’d have to eat before I had the fortitude to angle in next to Morrison. Besides, I wanted to mark the driveway as my territory so I paralled Fast Eddie to claim the front. I didn’t consider pulling in to block the sidewalk; with the overgrown chamaecypris there wasn’t any easy way around for pedestrians.

I stumbled upstairs with our orders and BFF and I collapsed into our somewhat Spartan folding chairs to eat. God, that food tasted good! Here it was, the final dinner in our beloved home! As usual, we spun stories about Ellen, Chester, Stormy and Cleanhead--elaborating on our fiction for their lives. They were out just then, in their driveway across the street along with the aging gay couple who run the corner gift store. They were all setting up for their part in tomorrow’s huge celebration of thrift at our annual neighborhood garage sales.

But something began to look out of place outside—a car idling, someone walking around purposefully in the street. I looked closely. It was a lady wearing pressed pants and a white shirt with some sort of epaulet on her shoulders. I looked more closely. She had the blinkers on her car, parked in the street behind mine. The car was white and looked biodegradable. The lady was from parking enforcement. She was leaving me a ticket. Without a thought, I rushed outside. She backed away from me as I prefaced my explanation and implied plea for relief with acknowledgment, which I hoped she would share, of the irony of this situation. How long we'd lived here and never seen anyone ticketed, how put out I'd occasionally been with illegal parkers, our last night blah blah weird person blah maybe a threat blah...

She did not appreciate irony, the ticket had been written, she said, and couldn't be taken back. For some reason she thanked me as she sidled to her flashing vehicle. I came back inside. The phone was ringing. It was John, asking me if I remembered the location of the restaurant where he was supposed to meet his wife, her mother, and her mother’s rude husband. We suggested Googling it.

Putting the long day and its strange ending behind us we went to bed and read and cuddled. We performed the ritual sharing of four Ricola herbal lozenges. As always, we turned on the Noise That Blocks All Other Noise--our air cleaner. We slept deeply and I awoke early, for this was the first day of our two day leave-taking. This was the day we would move all of the nearly 100 boxes arrayed along the walls of every room in the house. Leaving BFF in bed for a few more winks, and before putting on the coffee, I opened the front door to get a feel for the day. It was beautiful and peaceful outside in the early late summer morning. Stuck in the front door jamb, however, was a card with writing on it.

Officer Barron had left his business card dated 5:50 that morning, less than two hours earlier. An Incident Number was written in blue ink. On the back of the card was a straightforward recounting of inexplicable events that had taken place in our front driveway while the sun was still below the eastern mountains. This was so out of the realm of my experience here that it took me a few moments to make sense of what the officer had written.

What I later learned from the market employee who had called the police was that, on arriving to open the store, he had found an obviously disturbed woman pulling bags of ice from their outside locker. Asked for an explanation, she said she had "declared war on the neighborhood." She fled from him a short distance down to our driveway where he observed her opening Morrison. That was when he placed the call. She was gone by the time Officer Barron arrived.

What the officer and I both found on inspection was an odd assortment of objects taken from Morrison's dash and strewn on the van's floor and an obscene note scrawled on our basement window sill. After puzzling over some obvious questions, like, "What's this mean? Why us? Why now?", we concluded that this had been one of those Cosmic Messages. The events of the previous evening, it seemed, had been but part--a prelude if you will--of a small, but odd, and yes, ironic, concatenation of events that were clearly delivering the message: "You are no longer welcome here!"

It was, indeed, time to move.

Nine things I'll miss about where we live now:

2009-09-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

1. That I can stand on the sidewalk between the chamaecyparis and the house and look to my left and see the Olympic Mountains’ sawtoothed outline amid a crowd of softer shoulders. And then I can swivel 180 degrees and extend my vision over the nearby University District Ridge and then some 40 miles to the nearest foothills and low mountains of the Cascade Range. What’s that? Seventy miles a second? I used to imagine, when I was the age of my students, that I could leap from any point to another on the horizon of my vision, teleporting.

2. The restful bright beauty of our bedroom. Painted white except for a ruby red alcove holding the couch and fountain. It is bounded on three sides by a bank of many-paned windows looking down on sidewalk traffic, giving a peak of the western mountains. On one wall hangs the quilt my dad made of my granddad’s colorful ties—best family heirloom. Our favorite piece of furniture, the bed, is across from those windows, against the southern wall. Sacred objects speaking of our love adorn dressers and wall.

3. Being able to walk around the corner in slippers and sweatpants to our small, well-stocked and unadorned grocery market. Being able to call in an order for General Tso’s Chicken and pick it up across the street and through the little parking lot. Or walking a block up Greenwood to an award-winning neighborhood tavern that serves major league gumbo and the best reuben sandwiches in town. The friendly corner hardware store is a block the other direction, down Greenwood and across the street from a little snobby video store.

4. The patio that is paved in brick, bordered by the house and two high, perpendicular fences that are festooned with clematis and backed by bamboo and a tall cedar. It’s comforting knowing that the neighbors are all close and that we all share the illusion of privacy.

5. The yellow desert orange of our living room, soft sage of my office and the kitchen’s three shades of ecru…not the lavendar, though, and not the Las Vegas bathroom.

6. Being able to drop in on Daughter #2’s utterly hapless but good-natured life.

7. The abundant white cupboards, faux granite counters and picture window of our kitchen, the house's entryway with its split stairs going half a floor up and half a floor down brightened by the puttin’-on-airs cathedral window.

8. The brutish crow brothers who sit on the phone line in front, or at the top of the neighbor's birch and scraw complaints. And the rustling and sideways scrambling of Sammy and Sally Squirrel who have a nest in the ash above our patio adn use the fence top as their highway. And finally, the occasional racoon and occasionaler possum and occasionaest cougar that BFF swears she heard scream in the night last week.

9. All the friendly homeless men selling their publication, Real Change, in front of the market. The small, blond parrot woman with the eponymous birds on her hand and shoulder, always willing to engage in friendly conversation about such issues as the herbal therapy one of them is taking for his obsessive feather plucking. Occasionally seeing my friend Coby, with whom I share a similar Heartland upbringing, at the market. Terry and Roger, with his fake tan and dye job, the couple who own the twee gift shop around the corner. Ellen and Chester with their imagined dramas.

I pray to God that I have some warning before I die and can feel the appreciation for my surroundings at least as much as I have sealed and stamped in my mind and heart the value of where we are living now, for the next 4 days.

I'm OK. I'm OK!

2009-09-04T18:13:00.000-07:00

School--a great crew of good-natured, chatty and mildly motivated nine year-olds.

Living situation--lease signed on a fine workaday house on the crewcut Scandinavian flatland of Ballard--a neighborhood just down the ridge from us. It is owned by a sweet couple who got married not that long ago and are moving from this--her former house--to his remodeled home not much more than a block away from where we live now. Whew! We're moving next weekend. Tomorrow is my birthday.

Daughter #2 is taking to life away from the nest like a slug does to slime.

Moving Crazy Drama

2009-08-27T21:27:00.000-07:00

The house which, for the past two weeks, we have been planning on moving into is no longer an option. We had made a deposit and paid first and last but decided to get out before we got any further in. The last straw was finding a corroded pipe leaking shittypee onto the washing machine in the basement just below. That and a prospective landlord who finally allowed that he was only interested in doing the minimum required by law.

Now we are suddenly scrambling to find a new place to live by September 15th. We love the owners of our present house and they, us, but they've just today made a commitment to someone else. So, we have two weeks to find a place and move in.

Slipping and sliding, trying to accommodate beginning the new school year with this rejiggered move of all our belongings, all along with daughter #2, the 18 year old, leaving the nest, God bless her heart.

Airborne

2009-08-23T11:35:00.000-07:00

A smallish cream-colored butterfly just flitted from east to west in the sunny view outside my basement office windows. Coming from the opposite direction, a fly explored the possibility of those same window panes.

Our old neighbors

2009-08-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

Now that we are moving, a description of our across-the-street neighbors comes to mind as a necessary part of the epitaph to three years of living in this beautiful home. We know the house matriarch’s given name but we've always called her Ellen. She is about 50 years old, has thinning mouse-colored hair, is a strong gardener and obviously well educated. As usual about this time of day on Sundays, she just left home carrying a large woven basket, driving her new two-toned Morris Minor, wearing a medieval re-enactor’s costume.

Ellen worked at Boeing, we think or infer somehow (something she mentioned or maybe she gave me her card), or maybe she still works there for all I know. Her job is a vague construct but I imagine her as a senior accountant with flex hours--

Before I get any further along on this half-imagined biography, I should mention that we never assigned the family a last name, their first names are our own invention, and although everything we have surmised about them has a basis in extensive observation, BFF and I are the ones who have established meaning and motive. For example, a typical conversation: "Come here. Look at this...When did Chester start using a cane?..I don't know. He only started using a walker last week...If Ellen had put a railing in he wouldn't have fallen in the first place. It wouldn't cost that much; with all the money she spends on--...Well, she doesn't like him...I wonder where that comes from."

Over the past three years, I have had half a dozen interactions with Ellen that went beyond a simple greeting--in the street, on the sidewalk in front of our house, or in the corner market where both her sons have worked. On two occasions we had a sustained conversation and she acted almost compulsively self-confessional, both odd and endearing...

When Ellen first introduced herself to me she described her housemates thusly: a man lived in the basement apartment with his two sons, and she occupied the top half of the house. We soon learned from observation that the sons must be hers, as well, and we never saw the alleged housemate father.

We did see a man who would occasionally double park in front of the house, lean over and give a peck on the cheek to the man who was his passenger. This fellow would come around to the driver’s seat, pull a U-turn and exit, stage left. Maurice would enter the house to come out a little later with the two boys, his posture and demeanor obviously indicating a paternal relationship.

BFF and I came to conclude that Ellen and Maurice must have been involved, at one time at least, to the extent of parentage and now Ellen, disillusioned with men, lived a celibate life—a common enough situation if you know where to look for it. What Ellen perhaps lacked in her ability to judge the sexual orientation of the man she chose to father her children most likely came from the confused relationship she has with her own father—Chester.

I’ll get to the evidence for that last supposition in a moment, but first I must address the question of why Ellen would deceive us about the man in the basement and her children’s father. I suppose for the same reason that I would engage in such innocent duplicity: a desire for the situation to be less messy and complicated than it actually is.

I could go on for an awfully long time with this elaborate fictional edifice we've built on voyeurism, but the more I think about it, the more I begin to believe that the more interesting question is what needs compels us to build it?..BFF says it's all about our need to tell stories. I say we're hardwired to try making meaning from ambiguity.

Summertime

2009-08-20T15:08:00.000-07:00

The trek is now suspended and lower-cased.

These last 4 or 5 days, after nearly a week of rain, have been luscious. "The livin' is easy," as George Gershwin so descriptively wrote.

My generally good humor has been amped up on a few transcendent occasions lately. As easily as walking from indoors to out, I have felt a sense of well-being and rightness that cannot wholly be attributed to my stonedness. Or maybe it can.

Anyway, Gershwin is right.

Lake Union Trek, Pt 3

2009-08-11T18:40:00.000-07:00

My long-time friend Bob joined me on this leg of The Trek that had us shaking as we crossed University Bridge along with a slew of buses and heavy trucks. Bob has run this route before. A marathoner the past 30 years, he regularly makes the 8 mile round trip from lower Phinney Ridge (BFF, Daught and I live on the crest about two miles north), to the U Bridge and then along Eastlake, Westlake and back home.

There has been a lot of development the past ten years along the Eastlake stretch south of University Bridge. There are fewer boatyards and marinas than Northlake and overall things are more upscale. This is also the area where houseboats begin getting serious. Bob and I wished we had bought ours back in the day when they were going for the low 5 digits. A few of them remain virtually unchanged today, their roofs covered deeply in moss and the cedar shingles turning soft. Looking at them reminds me of Tom Robbins, Morris Graves and Gary Snyder--all icons of downstream bohemia. It's a feeling I can taste, smell and feel on my skin, but it's awfully damn ephemeral.

Bob and I saw racing shells sprinting east into Portage Bay from under the bridge and two big rowing clubs nearby. A stretch of funky houses next to a bountiful p-patch garden front the road across from the lake. Nearby we we spot a sign advertising "The Enclave...a landmark collection of 21 waterfront residences...prices starting in the low millions." The sign's picture shows the new glass and metal development replacing the funk.

Lake Union Trek, Pt 2

2009-08-08T08:53:00.000-07:00

I'm running out of steam for this project with the looming exigencies of looking for a new home both for BFF and myself and for the daughter who is leaving the nest. As the ship of my mind steams toward the new school year sitting like a rocky shoal surrounded by raucous seabirds, I shiver and clutch my gut.

Still, I managed a second leg of the trek on Thursday right after a physical therapy appointment. Pains in my neck have been bothering me for years. They've been virtually continuous the past 4 or 5 months. I never had this trouble when I worked mostly as a gardener. Then it was more likely to be my back that gave me a few problems.

Part Two of the Trek took me from Gasworks Park to just past the towering I-5 bridge over the neck between Lake Union and Portage Bay. In that area I found more houseboats, boatyards and marinas. Part Two ended at an iconic restaurant where, in the distant past, I had an obligatory parental visitation dinner with them and first wife, now dead 35 years--a motorcycle accident.

Along the way I also came across numbered waterways--small areas of public access to the lake where a street right-of-way continued into the water. Waterway 19 is an attempt to recreate the natural shoreline. Its wooded area had attracted a hobo's nest. Next to Waterway 16 is a small boatyard just west of the bridge that is the spine of our city's transportation system--I-5, the interstate that runs from Canada, not far away, to the Mexican border at San Diego.

Lake Union Trek, Pt 1

2009-07-31T21:08:00.000-07:00

It came into my head to hike around urban Lake Union this summer. I figure it will be about 6-8 miles. I did the first stage today. This leg begins at Fremont neighborhood's drawbridge that goes over the cut between Lake Union and Salmon Bay. It continues past my physical therapist's and gastroenterologist's offices, each part of a huge campus-like waterside complex featuring high-end physical care, and software developers.

The first of two company picnics I ran across was in this complex--in a plaza at the top of broad steps going down to the canal, and then I passed the wrought iron, sculptured and locked gates leading into Adobe's cool and sunny gardens. I meandered under the towering gridwork of Aurora Bridge near where suicides land during the dreary months. Young men and woman sunned on docks and decks of houseboats and sailboats. Cyclists whipped by. A half dozen whippet-thin girls raised a racing scull onto its rack below their club's logwork spire. Yacht Sales, marinas and then the clanging Northlake Boatyard.

I passed the city cops' Zodiac and dive shop and came into the park as a Navy jet drill team loudly broke wind above the lake and then shot two thousand feet straight up over downtown.

I'm pretty familiar with this neighborhood. A quarter century ago I helped put together a large nighttime performance entitled "Dedication of Gasworks Park as a Spaceship Landing Site." It featured a bank of fog cut through by spinning lasers as a pitifully profane figure emerged and was greeted by two equally worshipful, but completely disparate and antagonistic groups, one comprised of grody female amazons and the other of entirely left-brained, goosestepping male clones.

One new thing I saw today was a statue of a local TV celebrity of the 60's--JP Patches, the dump-dwelling clown--in front of Adobe's (of Photoshop fame) campus.

103.8 degrees

2009-07-30T08:48:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had the hottest recorded temperature in our city's history. Even the crows are panting, beaks open.

BFF cannot stand the heat. We drag the futon and TV down to the basement, watch 3 episodes of Due South. The fan keeps us cool and we sleep only half under a sheet.

Time

2009-07-30T08:34:00.000-07:00

This past weekend we celebrated the eighth year anniversary of our marriage. We didn't exchange cards until late in the day. I gave mine to her first and then she disappeared into her office and emerged with my card a minute later. When I asked, she said she hadn't wanted to embarrass me with her thoughtfulness in case I had forgotten.

The soft-colored card I gave to her had two children, a girl and a boy, holding hands on a beach and gazing out at the incoming waves. Hers to me: a small Airstream parked on a grassy overlook above the ocean. To its right are two swayback deck chairs under an umbrella; again, facing out to sea.

It's amazing to me the congruity of us picking different renderings of the same theme. The cards seem to represent our past and our future. The constant, abiding and timeless presence, like the ocean, is our love.

We first met in a love fever when we were both forty. She called in sick and we stayed in bed for a week. Our separation two years later was acrimonious. We had nothing to do with each other for almost 15 years until I, haunted my her memory, re-established contact (she had moved to an island a hundred miles away) and we have been virtually inseparable ever since.

When we get back home from revisiting that slow-paced island, it is hot, hotter than it's ever been in this town.

Rollercoaster

2009-07-24T09:03:00.000-07:00

I just got back from visiting my mom, sis and bro in Virginia for a week. I spent a lot of time rubbing mom's head and holding her hand. She was in good spirits most of the time she was awake, though it's disconcerting to be mistaken for some combination of myself/my dad/her dad and Jesus--small price to pay for seeing her glow.

Bro got me high and I almost drank too much beer and tequila. He showed me Outdoor World which is Redneck Heaven and there's a little redneck in all of us. We went to Busch Gardens and rode roller coasters and saw the Commodore's ("Brick House")--fine entertainers.

Artful Slacker

2009-07-14T08:58:00.000-07:00

A very enjoyable day was spent yesterday walking, smoking and drinking with my good buddy John, who is the same age as me and is living the bohemian dream, even if it's sometimes a nightmare. John is a prince: a down-to-earth, friendly and fun-loving guy. It's great being able to share old guy sensibilities within the artful slacker context.

John, Wally (the epitome of that friendliest breed of dog--golden retriever), and I walked from John's houses on funky First Hill, across Capitol Hill and it's many stately homes along chestnutted streets, down Interurban's green canyons to Roanoke. Then back through the cruising fields of Volunteer Park which is bordered by some un-fucking-believable mansions. We alighted at Elysian Pub and Brewery where we sampled bitter brews as Wally was watered by our friendly and easy-on-the-eyes waitress.

It was a lovely day that made up for a lousy trip we had during early spring's cool and rainy spell when John bore the brunt of me acting out some hard feelings. I've really been missing his company, so it's good to have that particular rough patch behind us.

"God is watering our plants today,"

2009-07-12T11:11:00.000-07:00

proclaims BFF. I prefer heat and sun, but appreciate the spiritual positivism.

Kleenex Tefillin

2009-07-10T14:31:00.000-07:00

This past week has been a strange interlude. It began last Friday when I came down with a summer cold--a rare and unpleasant thing and so unfair only a week into vacation--and entered a fugue state from which I have been returning the past five days. Somewhere in there Farrah Fawcett died, within hours to be eclipsed by Michael Jackson (also unfair). I filled a shopping bag full of wet and twisted tissues. As evidence that necessity is the mother of invention, and inspired by a devotional practice of my wife's peeps, I came up with a Kleenex phylactery [see picture] which greatly facilitates the mucus from-nose-to-tissue movement. The weather turned cool and cloudy, but my health improved enough to allow me to attend a fantastic workshop on Bringing Theater Into the Classroom where I became more human while bonding with some 45 of my fellow teachers. A moth took up residence in our bathroom. The workshop ended joyously. Today the sun and heat are back. I captured and released the moth outdoors. Lord, let the funky interlude be over!

Flags for the Fourth

2009-07-04T19:56:00.000-07:00

Around here, at least, there's a laid back vibe on holidays. I took a walk through our beautiful, humble and liberal neighborhood this afternoon. I came down off the ridge heading east, meandered the streets almost to Green Lake. It was as relaxing and peaceful a stroll as I can remember. Here are pictures of the flags I saw.

The Greenwood Auto Show's self acknowledged unofficial photographer

2009-06-28T11:46:00.000-07:00

The Show: thirteen blocks of vintage, tricked out cars notable for the love lavished on their voluptuous, streamlined forms. Weather perfect. Garlic fries, tattoos and strollers.

The layers of paint and lacquer give incredibly saturated color. Geometry of many of the shapes is high art. Notice the same angles used in the yellow 'Vette and red Ferrari vents.

If American automakers want to compete, model these forms in a high mileage machine. Like the PT Cruiser, Chevy HHR and SSR.

I easily lose myself taking and editing photos. I made this collage using Picasa and sent a low resolution jpeg to the auto show's creators, asking them to contact me if they wanted to look at individual pictures. Maybe something work like this could work into a source of downstream bohemia income???

Work and Play

2009-06-26T03:58:00.000-07:00

Screenshots showing the two activities in which I have been most engaged the past week...and now SCHOOL'S OVER!! I will remember this year as the one in which the good days finally outnumbered the bad. The one when I had not 1--which would be joy enough--but 2 students who absolutely loved learning. I had not one kid--but zero kids with a sneering attitude. When I took the class outside for an unsanctioned break they expressed their gratitude with a dash back to the room ahead of me. There they greeted me with their impression of every teacher's dream--all students sitting erect in their chair, smiling, hands folded on the desktop, "Thank you, Mr Dailey," said in unison upon my arrival. I got hugs. I got mash notes extolling me as the "Greatest Teacher Ever." I got lots of more-or-less appropriate jokesters. What's not to love?

Yikes

2009-06-16T19:45:00.000-07:00

Impassive face dull copper, he was dressed in white with bright embroidery trim. I read that his people come to the fishing village from their home in the mountains about fifty miles northeast, above Puerto Vallarta. I don’t know. His mask is a little scary, though, pulling away from it quickly at low shutter speed.

We hardly knew ye

2009-06-14T19:52:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, May 31, I put up a post about the activity of a nearby nest of alleged wrens. A week later I questioned the accuracy of our identification and put forward the blackcap chickadee as a more accurate choice (since, conclusively confirmed).

Mid-week we realized the inordinate amount of cheeping we had been hearing was undoubtedly due to the erstwhile presence of Squad Car [pictured above], our name for next door’s cat, at a window not 5 feet away from the nest. Although we regretted the wee birds' distress, it had been months since we had last seen Squad Car so it was good to know he was still around. That was 3 or 4 days ago.

This morning at breakfast I commented to BFF that I was just then seeing an awfully lot of chickadees flying around. Roaming the front pavement a few minutes ago I slunk up to the nest box and heard nothing. Rushing back inside I related this latest news and BFF said I should Google to find out when the babies fledge: “On about day 16 the young chickadees leave the nest,” I read; that's what I had seen at our morning meal!

They're gone, now, just like the baby chickadees raised by Bird--BFF's name--four years ago inside a wooden mask hanging in the carport of our old house in Wedgwood. We had grown so accustomed to Bird and her brood--the mask was right next to a much-used side door--that it was a shock when they all seemed to suddenly disappear. It took us a while to realize they hadn't died untimely, rather just abandoned their home.

"We hardly knew ye, wee chickadees," Squad Car says for all of us.

Doing a weekend chore while stoned

2009-06-14T15:38:00.000-07:00

I was just sucking up dirt from the living room’s landlord-bought-Home-Depot rug, thinking of the timelessness of this homely activity when I realized what a marvelous, even revolutionary! machine is the portable electric vacuum cleaner. It practically makes possible the wall-to-wall carpet and totally obviates the need for a rug beater…Except among those Eastern cultures where one takes off one’s clogs, or whatever they’re called, upon entering the house...Which thought led me to images of several friends’ heaped and sprawling entryway collections of shoes, boots, slippers, et cetera.

Is there some constellation of behaviors, I wonder, more often engaged in by those who do, as opposed to those who don’t, have a household rule about taking off one’s shoes? What would they include? Separating the recycling from the trash?...insufficiently predictive; we separate our waste but don’t do the shoe thing…Having at least one item of clothing in a Guatemalan design? Maybe.

Which thought probably reveals in an unattractive way my own attitude toward these shoe-eschewers. They’re basically un-American, I think tendentiously. Lacking the pioneer spirit, left-coast-yoga-ish. Obviously new age. Poseurs. No-longer-radical chic...Now I've worked myself up into a state. So I relax...

On the other hand, for the more enlightened it might just be a matter of comfort and cleanliness in one's own home...Of course. That's what it is. It's just that I have an attitude, and now I feel defensive and embarrassed about bringing this whole thing up...One thing, though: the portable electric vacuum cleaner--widely believed invented in 1907 in Chicago by a janitor named James Spangler whose cousin married William Hoover--really is AWESOME.

Hope

2009-06-14T13:26:00.000-07:00

I have the sweetest kids in my class this year. More third graders than fifth, still, in their attitude. But a smart, fun-loving group. Sometimes their earnestness trumps even my mildest sarcasm. We are winding up the year and our Medieval Times unit of study with a readers' theater production of Laura Schlitz's great Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! It's a series of 19 monologues and 2 dialogues delivered by the children from all social strata in a medieval manor. Because of their good nature and sense of responsibility I've been able to involve my students in half a dozen productions before both life audiences and the camera. After the inauguration of President Obama I spliced together a video of each of them reading their hopes for the future. Here is a clip from one of my sweeties:

Significant behavior infraction

2009-06-13T19:10:00.000-07:00

Quoting verbatim from the second notice of an Incident Report filed recently by a supervisor at our school on a second grade girl [names redacted and substituted with "Girl" or "Boy"]:

Other children at the lunchroom table complained that Boy and Girl were not talking appropriately to each other. Girl told Boy that he "invented the fart;" she told him to "shut his piehole" and "talk to the foot." Boy told Girl that "there was a butt on the back of her head." When I talked to both of them about this, they were giggling and not taking the issue seriously."

Lush Life

2009-06-09T19:14:00.000-07:00

This is what we currently imagine as the Downstream Bohemia of mobile home living: our Airstream on a narrow lot that's fenced in (like all the others) and looks just like our rented patio. It's paved with old bricks and occasional concrete chunks. That's a 6' high fence you see, with two 2X6 horizontal pieces at 8'. These timbers support a flowering clematis vine trained to also cover an arbor in the back corner where I work and la-de-da and sometimes relax on a really funky couch. Party lights. For music--a Cuban son. Laughter.

Ooooooooooo

2009-06-09T17:38:00.000-07:00

My sweetheart emails me today at work with a link to Cape Town's swank Grand Daddy Hotel that features seven vintage Airstream trailers, each with a different decorating theme. "The two-person Airstreams are situated neatly around the rooftop bar [emphasis added]." I guess said bar may, or may not, resemble this establishment: the Apollo Lounge at South France's Belrepayre Airstream & Retro Trailerpark "nested in the foothills of the Pyrenees [emphasis added]."

Rela-a-a-x

2009-06-08T20:42:00.000-07:00

I've heard there is, or used to be, a cable TV show around Christmas time that consisted entirely of hours of a fire crackling in a hearth.

Wren or Chickadee?

2009-06-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

Another stakeout for the Bewicks Wren and this time it doesn't take long for the payoff. There must have been some kind of food in her beak because as soon as it shows inside the round opening I hear a chorus of tiny cheeps. Wife and I examine the photo and she isn't convinced it is a wren, thinks it's a blackcap chickadee. I can't tell.

Birthday Date Night

2009-06-05T18:41:00.000-07:00

At a restaurant named Cactus in a part of town where everyone, even our age, has perfect teeth. The food is great, like Mexican culture: vibrant, earthy.