Jitterbug

 First day jitters?

I'm pretty much past that. This past week I sat in a room with my colleagues as we prepared to go out and be teachers for another school year. 

Because that's their job. The same job some of us have been doing since before the turn of the century. And yet, somehow, when the days tick down to just a few before we open for the business of shaping young minds, there is a tendency among many of us teacher types to panic. 

What if the kids don't listen? What about that new math curriculum? Will this group of parents read the notes I send home? In case any of these are concerns that you might be having and it's the night before your first day of school and you happen to be a teacher, let me see if I can help you out. Kids will listen to you if you're interesting. That's the way TV works. They listen to TV. When it stops being interesting, they change the channel. Don't be boring. About that math curriculum: Two plus two continues to be four, and half of the kids you tell this to will want to argue about it. Let them. It makes them better mathematicians. As for the books and the little teddy bear manipulatives you hand out on the first day because they're new, well, they'll be old soon and the mysteries that await them in the land of fractions, decimals and imaginary numbers are all on you. Not the new curriculum. The school district will buy new math books in a few years and they will come with tiny alligator manipulatives because they tested better in urban markets. Oh yes, and those notes you send home with your students? Remember how many of those you personally delivered to your parents when you were a student. How many of them lined the bottom of your backpack for weeks at a time, soaking up whatever moisture found its way inside that dark and scary place until, ta dah, I just remembered mom my teacher says you're supposed to come to a meeting this Tuesday at four. 

It's Wednesday. 

Better late than never. Another year of all that and more awaits just over the horizon and no matter how much sleep you get or you lose, it will be there waiting with all its triumph and tragedy. Labor Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and before you know it you're halfway through the year. 

It won't be boring. 

Sounds Like

 Whoever first suggested that a dog says "woof" should be given some sort of major award. It is not the only sound our canine friends make, but it does cover a wide range of breeds and sizes of these domesticated quadrupeds. Also, the term "barking" is completely adequate to the task of describing a wide array of doggie dialects. "Arf" will also do in a pinch. 

Turning our attention now to the feline species, we can probably agree that most cats "meow." For many years I was content to let this stand as a place holder for most, if not all, kitty communication. That was until I became the conservator of a cat. The initial wave of sounds can be quickly mimicked with your standard meow, but upon further exposure, I have found that cats are capable of much deeper and expressive vocalizations. "Meow" is selling this cat way short.

Admittedly, there are a great many sounds that start with an "M" but become winding and twisting and include many different vowels and plenty of "Rrrr." The arias he sings in the mornings after he has been fed his breakfast go on for several minutes. They could be songs of contentment, but more likely they are odes of triumph at having once again being able to get the bipeds out of their cozy bed to suit his need for food. Often he won't even eat what we have put out in front of him, but he serenades us nonetheless. 

I am suggesting that a simple "meow" does not come close to illustrating the emotions present in his kitty croons. 

Which brings me to the final question I have about onomatopoeias. Who was at the desk when the request for the sound roosters make? "Cock A Doodle Doo" is not what is going on out in the barnyard come sunrise. I am familiar with the sound myself since there are a number of back yards on my bike commute to school that harbor chickens, and the occasional rooster. That first sound they make does not begin with a "C." Instead, it is my conviction that the best description of their utterances is that of a car trying to start. At peak volume. And the suggestion that they have five syllable capacity is completely ridiculous. Roosters have a three note pattern that seems to be based solely on the letter "R" sound. 

Now it is possible that if I spent the kind of quality time with a rooster that I have recently started doing with our cat, I might be persuaded otherwise, but for the time being, I would like to know who is in charge of animal sounds, and if there are any openings. 

I must might be interested. 

The Tolling Bell

 I looked it up: indictment - a formal charge or accusation of a serious crime.

Such accusations rise above the hearsay that pollutes so much of our "news" cycle. This is where judges from a court have ruled, after viewing evidence, have decided to proceed with a trial based on those charges. The "news" cycle then proceeds to spin them in whatever way that they can in order to promote the hoped for outcome of the trial or trials. Mysterious leaks from this organization or that do not tend to result in indictments. Those are the ones that turn into op-ed pieces, or three minute rants from talking heads that are intended to make us all feel as if we really should be indicting people.

Bad people. Criminals. Ne'er do wells that deserve to be put away and kept away. In prison.

Instead, we find this line blurred. The people that need to be put in prison, according to actual indictments, are free to roam about the country promoting their oh-I-don't-know presidential campaign. Rather than shrinking into the shadows, the former game show host who was also impeached twice and found guilty of sexual abuse and defamation. Did that slow the mean old Grinch? 

No. He seems bound and determined to keep running. Not just away from the mounting piles of evidence, but away from the conventional wisdom that suggests that we as a nation would never vote for a convicted felon for Commander in Chief. However, as witnessed by recent events and by the lack of specific evidence to the contrary, you can run the country from a jail cell. Even now, preparations are being made for trials that will run concurrently with the 2024 campaign for president. After each of the several state, federal and local indictments have dropped for the past several months, not only has the most indicted man in American politics continuing to hold rallies where he diminishes and complains that he never did anything wrong, but his followers don't raise a single question but continue to contribute to the election/defense fun of their favorite candidate. 

The most recent indictment charges dropped on the former game show host are regarding the radical plan that he and his assembled gang of idiots came up with to disrupt the lawful and constitutionally assured transfer of power. The plan that culminated in the attempt to physically interrupt this process by breaking into our nation's capitol, threatening government officials, police, and wreaking havoc in our halls of power. Insurrection. 

Insurrection - a violent uprising against an authority or government.

I looked it up.

He should be locked up. 

Buh-Bye

 Have I mentioned that I don't like change?

If I haven't brought this up before, or maybe you're reading this for the very first time, I apologize for making a fuss about what is inevitable. The very title of this blog is a testament to the disorder in a system. Attempts to bring order to chaos only exacerbates the problem. Trying to teach pigs to fly is a waste of your time and will only end up with pigs joining the pilots' union and we don't want that do we? 

I will not be pontificating on the possibilities of porcine aviation here. Instead I will be discussing something else that used to fly: a bird. A blue bird, to be precise. I came to Twitter later than many, but once I landed there, I found a playground for the type of pithy quips for which I have become so fond of generating in places like this. Sometimes the words I have don't fill a page. They are just random bits of pith, that would need hours more thought than I have to give to them and never see the light of day provided by this blog. 

Those are the ones that end up on Twitter. That funny blue bird where I found a community of individuals every bit as committed as I was to the written word, even if those words were measured out by the eyedropper. Which was a discipline that I found refreshing. 

Then, somebody came and bought my favorite word snack restaurant. A man-child but not in the Pee Wee Herman mold, God rest his soul. This guy came in with billions of dollars and a yearning to remake the site in his own morbidly twisted image. Four billion dollars, and then he let us all know that there was a cost for "free speech." If you wanted to be noticed on his newly acquired sandbox, you would have to pay eight dollars a month for a little blue check mark after their name. 

And in the spirit of all this eight dollar free speech, he started letting folks who had already distinguished themselves as being unable to follow community agreements made under the old administration back onto the platform. Angry people. Misguided people. People who felt they had more of a right than others to their opinion and felt the need to shout down others who don't agree with them. Stupid people. 

Sorry, that last one was an opinion, and I apologize to anyone who isn't really stupid whom I may have offended by suggesting that they are. With a note or two: Climate change is real. The election of 2020 was not stolen. Black lives matter. 

And Elon Mush has not invented anything. He continues to buy things and run them into the ground until they explode or become useless. The most recent outburst from Mister Mush is the "rebranding" of his four billion dollar albatross. Taking a company that was internationally recognized by its logo, a little blue bird, and turned it into a black box with an X. If you bought Coca Cola, would you put it in a black can with an X on it? And let Nazis help out with the secret formula?

On August 1st, I took a day off of Twitter. I have friends and family who have been asking  me why I don't just bail and go somewhere else. There are lots of places that will allow one to spout pith on Al Gore's Internet. 

But I was there before Elongated Mush, and I don't want to leave. I want him to leave, and take his big black X and his pointy-headed minions with him to some other corner of Al Gore's Internet. 

Buh-bye. 

We've All Got Big Buts

 Yes, sometimes I bring you folks 'round here to talk about someone who died. We kick around their career and their bio a bit, and then we bid them farewell. 

Paul Reubens died this week. He was seventy years young. I say this in particular because Mister Reubens is the comic genius who gave us Pee Wee Herman. He will continue to be a treasure in the hearts of my wife and I, as well as millions of other dedicated fans. So, let's get this out of the way right at the top: Paul Reubens was arrested in 1991 for indecent exposure. In Florida. At the time, it signaled an end to the megawatt superstar surge that he had been enjoying since 1981, when The Pee Wee Herman Show appeared on HBO. 

It was a kid's show for grownups. It was a treat for anyone's inner child. Which is why that arrest ten years later was so troubling. How could this icon of youth be mixed up with something so naughty? 

That would be the grownup part. Pee Herman, as much as he seemed to be a fully realized human at times, he was a character. A bit of imagination. What if you got to act like you were eight years old when you were thirty? What would your house look like? What would you spend your money on? 

And if you're tempted at this moment to answer, "Going to a porn theater in Florida," then maybe you understand the trouble with Pee Wee. He was a man-child, with a mild emphasis on the man part. What made him so endlessly amusing to me and that room full of people over there who never grew tired of his antics was just that: Pee Wee was constantly on the edge of getting into trouble. Most of the time, whatever authority might have existed was ignored of confounded by his presence. 

Pee Wee's Playhouse was a place where adults acted like children who were acting like grownups. Captain Carl. Miss Yvonne. Cowboy Curtis. Pee Wee Herman. It was a special time and it provided my wife and I a brief respite each Saturday morning back in the days before we were grownups ourselves. We ate Pop Tarts and watched the show, making sure to remember the secret word so that the rest of the day anytime we heard it we would scream really loud. 

Okay. I know that it doesn't sound like magic if you weren't there. But I was. I was in the third row when he brought his touring show to the University of Colorado. I narrowly missed out on being named Tootsie Roll monitor for the whole crowd. That was the night that Paul Reubens, in the role that became his lifetime, gave me my secret club name: Dave-O. It's on my Pee Wee Herman Fan Club card. 

When Pee Wee made his big screen debut, I was invited to a preview screening. I went with my older brother and when it was over, we walked out of the theater with a new appreciation for all things Pee Wee. His daughter grew up with the manic sounds of his breakfast machine in her daily soundtrack. On the day Paul Reubens died, she sent a clip from the movie to me and my brothers. 

We will miss Pee Wee, and we forgive Paul Reubens for not being the character he created. He stomped on the Terra in big shoes. He will be missed. 

A lot. 

What Price Joy?

 I am certain that at this point I do not comprehend the American Dream. 

I used to believe that it involved being free to follow the path that you wanted to, and that path would eventually lead to comfort and success in that chosen field. Preparing yourself and your loved ones for a life that offered all the opportunities you were afforded and creating more for those less fortunate. 

I look around these days and I don't understand what amounts to "success." My son spent several minutes in line at Disneyland researching the salaries of the costumed characters that appear at regular intervals at the self-proclaimed "happiest place on earth." It was his observation that the only way that these folks could survive in the economic climate of Southern California would be to have multiple roommates and live somewhat close to that allegorical bone. Learning that these performers were protected by a union suggested some relief from the looming presence of poverty. Still, as we climbed into our Matterhorn Bobsled, we wondered if we had what it takes to stand outside with Pluto helmet, as my son referred to it, over our heads in temperatures exceeding ninety degrees. 

My son graduated with a degree in theater arts, but has always been drawn to the backstage elements. Lights, cameras, that's where the action was for him. Which hasn't kept him from harboring a dream that has him piloting a boat down the artificially murky waters of the Jungle Cruise, spouting tired puns and worse jokes with the occasional fresh bit. 

Which makes me want to reconsider the need for a six figure salary. Bringing a smile to the face of a tired family from Oakland after sinking a chunk of money into a Disneyland vacation? I'd like to make some room in the American Dream for some of that kind of action. 

No Regrets

 It started in a forest

and it continues

among the mountains 

and the trees

the creatures that inhabit

this happy realm

greet us, feed us

and share their blessings

we are fortunate to have

all these happy endings

and new beginnings

the sun shines

the stars twinkle

the heavens surround us

and we are swept away

on a high speed

turbulent roller coaster 

type ride. 

The adventure continues.