Getting organized

Well, Memorial Day is almost over with. Just a few more hours. Spent most of the day cleaning, organizing, puttering around the property. Over the weekend, tried to get the last organization done on my retirement papers, so I can get those signed, notarized and mailed to Santa Fe.

Finished the weekend tonight by trying to get my writing projects updated. Printed a copy of my next planned novel publication: Fort Davis. Had my early readers check it out last summer and fall. Yes, that's how far behind I am and, now, with no excuse of having the distraction of a job, I need to get after it. Took me several hours to get the office reorganized to print a reading copy of the novel for Barbara to read and "give me the go".

A Work In Progress...

I started working at around the age of fifteen cleaning two hotel swimming pools, sweeping their sidewalks, painting dingy rooms back into shape, and clerking. From there, I moved on to college, over a decade in the media and well over a decade in the oil patch. For the sake of expediency, I'll leave out several other brief episodes of yet other digressions in my work experience. Now, as of today, I've finished up the career I've practiced for almost a quarter century: teaching.

Now. Retirement. My last day at school. I was reminiscing with a colleague today about those years in that last career. What I related to her, was that all those years weren't spent in the same area and I felt lucky for that. The first part spent teaching communications at a school that had a lot of at-risk youth. Young people going through puberty and their middle school years not always under the greatest of conditions. From there, moving to the high school level teaching literature to both regular and pre-ap students. Then.... on to working as a reading specialist with students who just needed a little extra guidance to master the difficulties some have with knitting together diction, syntax and overall comprehension of the written word.

And, finally, spending the past six years working with the gifted and talented. I appreciate my educational time being like a buffet: sampling a bit of this and a bit of that. And, it's cliché: learning as much from the students as they learned from me. Learning from other colleagues along the way from my first cooperating teacher who told me, "Never leave your drink unattended." Yet, somewhere back there a cliché was a novel truth. That's how they get started before we warn fledgling writers not to use them because they are old and dusty. And, as I stated to a neophyte teacher today who has only been at it two years, one learns from their own mistakes, probably learns the most, in fact, from those.

So, now it's retirement. Probably lots to learn there also, because as I began this reminisce, diatribe, introspection..... I am just a work in progress. Like all the rest of you.

A Cup of Espresso and a Good Book

Old friends I've come to trust:

a cup of espresso and a good book.

In the last few weeks as friends
and colleagues discovered my retirement
plans, they would inquire as to what I would
do. Will you travel? What will hold
your interest? Occupy your time?

A cup of espresso and a good book

and maybe occasionally,

that book will be mine.  

Another puzzle clue...

I guess no one solved the May 16th puzzle. Here's another clue.

Mars Swings By for a Visit

(CNN) It's a great time to get a close-up look at Mars, even if you don't have a telescope.

The red planet will soon be closer to Earth than it has been in 11 years: On May 30, Mars will be about 46.8 million miles (75.3 million kilometers) from Earth. Yes, that's still a long way off, but sometimes Mars is 249 million miles (400 million kilometers) from Earth.

The red planet. I didn't realize until tonight that Mars is the second smallest planet in our solar system after Mercury. It has long held the denizens of our own in awe, leading us to speculation, invention, and wonder. In awe enough that we named it Mars after the Roman god of War. We've speculated to its history. What were the canals? Was it once similar to earth? Is or was there ever life there? Long before we explored it to current standards we debated: did it have water? an atmosphere? could we survive there?

And wonder. 

What is that stone face on Mars?

We've made it home to our first invaders. Orson Welles frightened people with his dramatization of The War of the Worlds from H.G. Wells with its terrifying monster machines stomping over our cities. Some of those visitors could be humorous like Ray Walston as Uncle Martin with his antenna that sprouted from the top of his head (closely resembling rabbit ears) the kind once used to pull in network TV on our black and white sets and his amazing powers. There was the Martian raised, Michael Valentine Smith, from Robert Heinlein's Sci Fi masterpiece,  who like Tarzan of the Apes and Mowgli from Jungle Book, faced their original society with the alternated perspective of their unique upbringings with Martians, apes, and animals.

Now, a company is seeking volunteers to make the one-way journey to be settlers there, because as one can see from the vast distances at the beginning of the essay, it takes lots of time and the conquering of vast distances to get there.

So, take a few moments away from your job, TV, your iPhone, or speculating who the next president will be to step outside in the night and view our neighbor Mars as it swings by to what in space is a mere shout across the valley...

                                                  .....and ponder one's own miniscule part in the Music of the Spheres.

My Thumb

I stole a writing exercise from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance where you have your students write about their thumb as an idea instigator and diving board to jump off into the pool of your creativity. They're told to keep writing for an allotted time and if they can't think of anything else to fill the allotted time to repeat the starter.


.........my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, mi thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb,my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thum, m thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb,  my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb nail, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thmb, my thumb, my thumb, y thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumbb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb...It's all turtles, top to bottom. my thumb, myy thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb, my thumb.......

The Rite of Passage

A Rite of passage is a celebration which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society. (Wikipedia)

In our society, we have graduation ceremonies for the young and retirement ceremonies for the elders.

We march our young ones up with the songs written in the early 1900's by Sir Edward William Edgar. They march in robes modeled on the ancient toga---with vestments to signify their academic achievements as the Native Americans of the Plains once wore scalp locks on their lances to signify their battle triumphs. A mortar board signifying the "hawk" that bricklayers use to hold mortar before it is applied to bricks in construction. After the ceremony, a flipping of the mortar tassel signifies their exit from that level of academia and an entry into "life".

( http://www.hattales.com/discover/hatstorians/mortarboard-the-graduation-cap/)

Retirement ceremonies highlight the older employees' exit from that particular field of work. There is the cliché of the unnecessary gold watch given to the worker who has fulfilled his time (when he actually needed a watch) and supposedly leaves for the ease of twilight years NOT watching the clock.

Between lie the rites of:  birthdays?, baptism, quinceanera, at one time the first cotillion, arriving at the age to vote and drink, and probably some others that slip my mind.

Afterward, the one I'll avoid in tonight's post to avoid the maudlin. It varies from culture to culture just as most of these others do and is changing dramatically even in our own.

We, as members of a culture, crave this pomp and circumstance... these rite's of passage as an automobile driver rests easier seeing some directional signs along the HI way: 10 Miles to the next town, Eats, Gas, Motels, historic road signs. Our ceremonies place markers on that road either traveled or less traveled.  


  

Past 1,000 hits....

1000 or one thousand is the natural number following 999 and preceding 1001. In most English-speaking countries, it is often written with a comma separating the thousands unit: 1,000.

It may also be described as the short thousand in historical discussion of medieval contexts where it might be confused with the Germanicconcept of the "long thousand" (1200).

• 1000 is the smallest number that generates three primes in the fastest way possible by concatenation of decremented numbers (1000999, 1000999998997, and 1000999998997996995994993 are prime). The criterion excludes counting the number itself.  Wikipedia

The blog has been an interesting exercise so far. As I first said, I mainly began it to force myself to journal daily. Someone, can't remember whom, said a writer is someone who writes every day. A truism for certain.

It is heartening to see that some find it "read-worthy".

As retirement from education opens its yaw enticingly, but also menacingly, before me I must continue to perform acts that define me. In our society, we are known mostly by what we do. When we first meet someone, it's "what do you do for a living?" which usually issues as our initial question, how we size someone up, get to "know" them.

So, here's to a thousand...I guess I'll keep going. Open a few doors and see where they lead.

Clearing Out the Dust

A gentle rain patters on the roof of my writing hut. Something so soothing to the human breast, the sound of gentle rain, the whispering sleep-sounds of my two canine companions, some quiet New Age music on Pandora.

The blog posts, like the piano exercises I used to practice, hopefully, limbering up the fingers on the keyboard and clearing the dust away between the synapsis of this almost-retired teacher brain. Some of you may remember those old yellow Hanon piano exercise books with the ever more difficult finger exercises to practice left and right hand dexterity?

WK GGB

How one says it....

Sometimes, it seems, it is not so much the message, as how one says it?


Audience participation nite. So say it silently, or shout it out loud there in the privacy of your
domicile.....or step out somewhere and shout it to the heavens....mumble it under your breath
if it pleases you, or even whisper it to the side.

Insert what's on your mind: (                                                                              ).

Or submit it as an addition to the conversation as a comment. Communication is a two way street.

Spring Tiptoes in....

This has been a slow, staggered spring. This pic is actually from a previous one. As I write this, it has been a cooler than normal day for this far along in May. But Barbara and I have both been out puttering in the yard. I've done some pruning. She's been working on our small garden with tomato and squash plants still just a few inches off the ground. One of our little dogs, Emily, has decided this is the perfect time to mouse hunt in the garden, so often we have to fill in a freshly dug hole. And that quandary comes up that's similar to other ones like why does one lose one sock in the dryer? Usually find one shoe by the side of the road not two. Why the moon always looks larger when it's nearer the horizon. That just as perplexing one: why is there always less dirt to put back in the hole than came out of it?

From human activity, spring is more obvious. Students in college and high school are holding end of the year band and chorus concerts, awards banquets and graduation events. More people are outside and shopping at the garden supply section of stores. Soon schools will be out and it will be Memorial Day weekend which everyone takes as the starting pistol of the summer race. Pools will open and we'll all be complaining about how extraordinarily hot it is with utterings about why is it taking so long to really warm up long forgotten.

Old Singer

This is an old Singer sewing machine sitting in a grassy field between Tatum and Bledsoe. Evidenced still, a finely constructed work of art. It is taking years to decompose back into nature. Non-electric. I believe, one pumped a trundle at the bottom, ground level with a foot spinning that wheel to turn with the energy to set your needle in motion through your fabric. An old iron and some other unidentified article sit atop.

This machine probably put together, with the help of its industrious housewife, clothing other than the "store bought" items the family was probably lucky enough to purchase in those days. The drawers would be filled with needles, safety pins, straight pens, buttons in various sizes and colors and of different composition, thread of various strengths, thicknesses, color: cotton, linen, wool.

I took this picture because we humans often see beauty in entropy....wasabi! Glued mortise and tendon or dovetail joints split gradually apart by cold, heat and humidity, desert sun. Paint fading, cracking, chipping. Wood grain relaxing its grip, softening, melting ground ward. I also chose black and white film (yes this was taken back when people still used actual film). Black and white seems to more quickly establish a mood that might require additional technique in color.

It might be interesting to find this old workhorse now, years later and see how far it has fallen in its journey back into the soil.

Masks

MASKS

We all wear them---

different ones for disparate

occasions to avoid feeling truly naked.

We don one to show to loved ones

maybe it's a smiling mask

but not always.

We've another for the various people

we work with; some see one mask

others another. Some feel

they see beneath our mask; others may be completely fooled

and accept the outward shield.

We protect ourselves with a certain one

when danger is perceived.

Yet, maybe we let ours slip a little

when we feel willing to open up to a particular soul. Maybe

sensing we've glimpsed, momentarily

beneath theirs.

Our mind, divided into various compartments

even shows masks to the others. The ID,

the Ego, the Superego all ensconced

behind their comfortable, individual veneer.

Though, occasionally the mask may slide to one side

allowing one member of the triad to see another.

We even attempt to wear a particular mask

from our version of an outside spirit; our particular god, as if trusting

we may even hide from omniscience

by donning a leather mask of subservience or love

while beneath lurks something far from obsequiousness.

Maybe in sleep, for a few hours

we might relax the string tie of our particular mask of the moment

and travel through our dreams behind our true face,

or maybe even there we hide behind the protection of metaphor.

Maybe that's why the word naked holds so much power,

naked, our mask dropping from our face

to reveal our true countenance.

                                                                                                         The one we guard so protectively

behind all those various masks.

  

 

Present, Past, Future...

Looking east from near the AG building at NMSU. Strolling the campus, these clouds seemed stolid guards over the alma mater that day, possibly hinting of rain. Though the only moisture that day: emotional, edging the eyes, held back tenuously as these clouds probably held back their burden. Visiting a suffering friend in a nearby hospice, a brief respite on a once familiar campus...home for over five years forty years ago. Hands in pockets, a slow, deliberate stride. The hint of newly mown grass.

Thinking of several students who were now calling it home. Eager to explore independence. Anxious to learn new things. Impatient to join this world of adulthood that occasionally leaves a lump in one's throat as one pauses further along in that journey to peer back at the traversed path.  Down a few bumpy, gravel roads, an occasional freeway, some streams and rivers with inadequate bridges spanning them. These present youth, seeing it with the fresh eyes this writer once beheld it with. Excited about their new excursion into this "adult" world that will too soon be solely theirs. For this silent walker, living this present sadness, as yet another initiation into the heavy tolls often paid along that road either more or less traveled.

Tenacity

Tenacity.....................................................................
No matter our accomplishments
-----our attempts to tame her
nature stands ready
to reclaim what is hers
and if we become too audacious
and go the way of the dinosaurs
she stands ready to tenaciously
cover over our greatest achievements....

even the pyramids may one day
crumble to dust...

Black and White Heroes

I found this picture of a scene from I know not what movie thought provoking. The actor who played Ward Cleaver (Beaver's father) conversing with the actor who played Superman and Clark Kent on what I consider the "best" of the  Superman series, probably because, as a Boomer I can relate to it better.

Two "heroes" from the black and white era.

Ward Cleaver, the wise father figure, who was firm with his two boys, but fair and willing to admit when he'd made mistakes. A father who was raising his sons differently from the "children should be seen and not heard" era of his own father's. The previous era being: take a strap to them raise them tough era. Of course, the series is a little out-dated culturally, but its heart is in the right place even now. Ward went off to work each day, played a little golf occasionally, read in his study, and dispersed advise to all in the household when appropriate.

Then there's George Reeves (Christopher) Reeves predecessor eerily bearing the same last name. George, who died under mysterious circumstances: said to have taken his own life but who some believe was murdered, who played the roll of Superman for a generation of Boomers. Superman, who disguised as Clark Kent, fought a never ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way. Which usually meant keeping tabs on his friends at the Daily Planet and aiding Inspector Gordon, The previously mentioned friends who every episode to themselves into some sticky situation trying to cover a big story for the Daily Planet. As Superman receiving the accolades of all (and the animosity of all the bad guys in fedoras). Then as Clark Kent, having to self-deprecatingly accept teasing from Lois Lane (who hero-worshiped his alter ego).

Those of us who watched, enjoyed the triumph over evil maintained by Superman in  that fictional world that didn't necessarily pan out that way in our own. We could identify with his bumbling friends who (unlike us) could always depend on a super hero to rescue them from their travails. Relate to Clark who was secretly helping people but receiving only playful teasing about his cowardice, yet at the same time belaying that suspicion in the back of their minds that he (was) Superman. Identify with the common characters of the week who had a Superhuman enter their lives for a brief period. Maybe even have empathy for the crooks who always got their come comeuppance, justifying-ly so right before the closing credits.  Shaking our heads in pity that they still had to try that final act of helpless defiance in shooting at the invulnerable Superman's impervious chest. While he stood, with hands on hips, giving them a wise, pitying smile.

These, two of our champions, in a time before today when children know so much about everyone in our TMI times to uncover true heroes.

Childhood Is

Childhood Is

 Time stretched out

like taffy.

playing cards

on bicycle spokes.

Grass stains

stronger than superman

or kryptonite.

Drippy, sticky

Popsicles

and licking the bowl.

Childhood is

being bold

jumping in puddles

and growing old.

               alan wayne greenwood

Me and Tiny.

Does One Read As Well as Write?

Robert Pinsky has said that the trouble with poetry is there are too many people writing it. That generalization is likely further extrapolated by him if one pursues his speeches and writings.  Please, be patient with me. I'm going somewhere here if I can. I would add the point: maybe there are too many people writing it that don't read anyone else's. A case of the (me) confusing speaker and audience. Writing of any form requires one to practice craft. To read others, at first modeling excellent writing---observing what does and doesn't work and learning from observed mistakes to avoid the pitfalls one sees others make. Then one develops one's own voice. And other people might read (or listen) to you. As the cliche goes: turn about's fair play.

Entropy

Today's word: Entropy. Yesterday, a spring day. Last night, a winterish storm began pushing through even fooling the indigenous plants: mesquite, pecan trees, wild flowers, which had started to bloom.

Morning comes, looking outside, I notice fence work to do first thing. The northeastern wind had torn loose several sections of fencing which needed immediate repair. The world in a constant struggle to return to its original elements the ancients believed were: earth, water, air, and fire as proposed by Empedocles frequently occur; Aristotle added a fifth element or quintessence (after "quint" meaning "fifth") called aether in Ancient Greece, and akasha in India. (Wikipedia)

The universe constantly expanding, changing, fighting for entropy. Man, so sure of his dominance, inserted it in the Biblical book of Genesis.  American Standard Version And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

Mother Nature, patiently sometimes, slyly often, straightforward others, reclaims its elements, and then flows again toward entropy, bemused at man's brashness.