Goodbye, My Huckleberry Friend

It's taken me some time to piece it together, but I know now why I will miss Andy Williams. It might be because of his quintessential version of "Moon River." It might have been his connection to the Kennedys and their tragic kingdom. It might have been his steadfast support of his ex-wife, Claudine Longet, after she was accused of murdering professional skier Spider Sabich. Eighteen gold and three platinum albums? How about his record company signing then little-known singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffet?
Nope. None of those. It was the bear.
Which bear? The cookie bear. It was a guy in a pretty obvious bear suit, usually sporting a necktie, who regularly appeared just about the time Andy was getting ready to croon on his weekly TV show. I wasn't watching for Andy's crooning. I was watching for the bear. I wanted him to stop Andy from singing. Not because I was particularly adverse to Mister Williams' vocal stylings, but it was better when the bear showed up. It was funny.
And the bottom line was this: Somewhere in this equation, Andy Williams knew that. Consequently, he allowed himself to upstaged by a guy in a bear suit at least once a week. A running gag. A similar ploy was used to get the Osmonds on the show on a regular basis. I didn't find this as amusing. But now that he is gone, I can forgive Andy for that. I think I'll have a cookie in his honor.
Aloha, Andy.

Making Room

Much in the same way that I wonder if our elected officials in Washington D.C. feel honor bound to root for the Senators when baseball season rolls around, I am curious how the family that lived in our house before us managed. Not so much their sports affiliations, but their living space.
Currently we have three humans and one canine comfortably ensconced in our home. When we first moved in, there was one bathroom, located in the middle of the house. This wasn't a problem for most of my son's early years, as his commitment to indoor plumbing was still being negotiated. Even so, whenever we had guests at the house, there were certain times of the night and day when access to that plumbing needed to be negotiated. This lead to the first big household renovation we made: a second bathroom. To be more specific, a half bath. This meant that whenever there was a need for showers or general hosing off, the line still formed outside the door of the one room with the facilities to handle such ablutions.
This past week our niece came to stay with us for a couple of days. A ten-year-old girl with hair that requires washing, rinsing, conditioning and drying far beyond any of those experienced by the rest of us currently under our roof also requires time and privacy that we don't normally encounter in the course of our nuclear family day.
Here's the thing: The family before us managed to raise five kids, three boys and two girls, along with two parents in that house with just the one bathroom. This boggles my mind. This is a mind that is not often boggled, since I tend to make up solutions even when they aren't particularly practical. Then I remembered the film "Yours, Mine, And Ours." Not the Dennis Quaid remake, but the 1968 version with Henry Fonda and Lucille Ball. I can remember watching that movie as a six-year-old, living with my two brothers in a house with three bathrooms, and trying to imagine how they managed. Hank Fonda played a naval officer who put all of his years of being in the service into a system that involved numbers and colors and coordination that left the kids just a little dazed. Ultimately, the twenty or so members of that family made do with the beast of a Victorian in which they lived and worked and played and slept. And no doubt, had to use the bathroom. It's what families do.
I don't know about you, but I suddenly feel considerably less boggled.

They Look Like Little Ants

"When you have a fire in an aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly, there's no — and you can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem. So it's very dangerous." These were the words of a concerned husband whose flight was forced to make an emergency landing when a small electrical fire was discovered on board. There is little doubt that his concern for his wife's safety initially overshadowed his concern for science. Rolling down the windows of a pressurized jet aircraft would lead to a much more catastrophic failure than a fire.
Such is the mind of Mitt "Don't Know Much About Science Books" Romney. It is this same quirky focus that had the Republican Millionaire Presidential Candidate defending his own very low tax rate: "I think it's the right way to encourage economic growth - to get people to invest, to start businesses, to put people to work," the former Massachusetts governor said. It is also a very good way for people with a lot of money to keep a larger portion of that money, but that's not the way he's seeing it. He truly believes that making the rich ever richer will encourage economic growth and get people to invest. It might increase the economic growth of the wealthy, and it would be nice if the middle class had something left over from their paychecks to invest, but that's not how things look from the top, is it?
Way up high in the sky it's hard to see the little people when your windows don't roll down.

Object Permanence II

How did I explain to my son the relative fairness of how his friend's dog was taken away, succumbing far too young to cancer? I didn't. He remembered how his cousins' dogs had died, both of them, within a year of one another. We had the talk then. I don't know if it made sense then. I am sure that it didn't make sense to him that his great aunt died the day after we had seen her poolside just down the hill from her retirement condo.
Then someone broke into our house and stole his video game system and the blanket from his bed. A couple of weeks after that, passing hooligans threw rocks at his dog and his house. And his father. At this point, I am grateful that he seems to lack the kernel of Charlie Brown that was deeply embedded in my youth. I sat and glared at the mailbox, expecting it not to be filled with invitations to parties and valentines from that pretty red-headed girl. I groomed that dark cloud over my head, and without any of the peculiar flurry of bad luck that has recently swirled around my son.
Now he has a new challenge. In a parental attempt to make lemonade from lemons, I bought us a pair of tickets to see Green Day at the Fillmore in San Francisco. It was my hope that it would take some of the sting out of the past couple of months. That was before Billie Joe threw a fit onstage in Las Vegas. and bought himself a trip to rehab, leaving us wondering what might happen to those make-good ducats I had so cleverly acquired.
Again, I find myself blessed with a son who has seemingly endless patience and understanding. No stomping about or slamming of doors. Just a sigh and a shrug of resignation. I still have so much left to learn from him.

Boo!

We're closing in on one month left until Election Day, and the conversations about who will become our next president are not showing any signs of becoming more civil. Digging in the dirt for an "October Surprise" is a tradition that dates back to 1980, when it was alleged that Ronald Reagan's campaign conspired to keep the American hostages in Iran until after the election in spite of incumbent Jimmy Carter's best efforts to work for their release. In 2008, many point to the financial crisis that boiled over in the midst of the presidential debates that year. Not a surprise, really, for those who had been watching their neighbors lose their houses.
What could it be this year? World politics are such a train wreck that it would be hard to find a particular spot to single out, but Libya certainly seems to want attention. So does Europe. And then there's those pesky unemployment numbers. Do we count the number of people without jobs, or the number of jobs created? And how about that forty-seven percent, or the ninety-nine or the one? Math is hard.
Who will be the voice of reason in the midst of all this name calling and finger-pointing? Who will stand up to the media and the pundits who are making hay while the mud is flying? How about Ann Romney? “Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring. This is hard and, you know, it’s an important thing that we’re doing right now, and it’s an important election, and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt’s qualifications and experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.”
Okay. It would be simple enough to snicker at how it was the candidate's wife had to come out on the front porch to admonish us all to pay attention to the real issues of the campaign. America can be a pretty tough town. While I wouldn't find myself agreeing with her on the matters that face our nation, she does have a point. Right now, even his own party won't cut Mitt a break. I suggest everyone take a stress pill and think things over. And keep your eyes open for that October Surprise.

New School

I feel that I was very fortunate to only have experienced that awkward feeling associated with transferring schools in my sophomore year in college. My path up until then was a pretty straight line, and I have nothing but the stability that my parents offered me as a child to thank for that. I wish I could say the same was true for the kids at the school where I teach.
It is not a bizarre occurrence for a kid at our school to attend for the first few months then, just before Christmas break, announce loudly that their family is relocating in some faraway locale like Stockton. Off they go, with construction paper letters of farewell and attendant files sent along by the front office wishing them success in the next phase of their young lives. Only to bounce back again a couple more months later, after whatever opportunities in Stockton abruptly ended or ceased to exist in the first place. Back again, without a real sense of how the yo-yo experience might affect them down the line.
Then there's the kids who showed up on our campus as a result of their school closing at the end of last year. Never mind the friends they might have made at their old school, or the relationships they had forged with teachers and other adults where they had once felt comfortable and safe. Or as comfortable and safe as kids in urban Oakland ever feel. Now they're confronted with finding their way with a whole new crop of kids and grown-ups. Nobody at their old school told them not to kick the four-square balls. There was no upstairs or downstairs at their old school. Everything was better at their old school. They hate their new school.
At least that's how it has to feel. Sometimes. Until the walls come down a little bit, and the soccer goals at this school are pretty cool. So are some of the kids. It will take time. And patience from all of us.

Not-So-Instant Replay

Steve Sabol is gone. If you read that name and said, "Who?" you haven't been watching professional football closely for the past fifty years. Steve was the son of NFL Films guru Ed Sabol, and even though his dad got into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, it was Steve that gave the induction speech, and it was Steve that made those slow motion pictures of grown men running into each other so very pervasive.
My own experience with the Sabol family was not always so easy. When I was nine years old, at the YMCA Camp of the Rockies with my Indian Guide tribe, we were offered an evening of football entertainment in the main hall. Presented by NFL Films. As it turned out, the sixteen millimeter projector set up at the back of the room was showing "Football Follies." Again, if you're unfamiliar with the genre, these are collections of foul-ups and mistakes made by ordinarily graceful athletes caught at their worst. The rules of slapstick humor have not been lost on me, but at that time in my life, I wasn't able to accept the sight of my nascent heroes looking like fools. On top of that, there was the oh-so-familiar vocal stylings of Mel Blanc layered over the mayhem.
I ran from the darkened auditorium in tears. My father, who had no way of knowing how his overly-sensitive son would react to this supposed treat, followed me outside where we sat and he listened as I tried to explain my confusion and sadness. Eventually, he helped me understand that this was comedy, and maybe it wasn't funny to me. That happens sometimes. I didn't get the joke.
Since then, I have learned to appreciate all that NFL Films has done to bring the once lowly spectacle of professional football to the forefront of American culture. I was happily relieved when our local cable company added the NFL Network to our lineup. Watching a game in slow motion takes longer, but it's endlessly entertaining. Just don't ask me to watch Football Follies. 
Aloha, Steve - in super-slo-mo.