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E.L. Doctorow
It's been a while since I've read Doctorow -- and he still blows me away! Still in Ragtime, loving it more than ever. My favorite of his novels, though, has been The Book of Daniel, and I think I'll tackle that one next. Exhilarating to read him!
    

The Manchurian Candidate
Saw this today. I generally do not like remakes -- some, like Psycho, are outrageous -- but I was curious because the original had a flaw that never worked for me, i.e. the love story. Indeed the new version has many story changes, resulting in a tighter, more convincing story including making the "love interest" functional and believable. Yet some things are lost as well. This is probably a better movie technically but the original was far more shocking and unusual for its day.
    

A teacher to remember
With election year upon us, I find myself remembering a very unusual election in which I participated in 1957 as a senior at Pasadena High School: we elected a fictitious person to vice-president of the student body!

The teacher behind this "class exercise" was a remarkable teacher named Paul Finot. A decade later he would be fired for coming to school with a beard, which he challenged in the courts (with the help of the ACLU) and won, a case establishing an important precedent. At any rate, in 1957 I was taking a senior elective on current affairs from him. Early in the term, during a discussion, he said in passing that if you knew how to use propaganda (which we were studying, using a book called How to Lie with Statistics) you could even elect a fictitious person to office. We challenged him to prove it and the phony candidate idea came up since school elections were about to start.

It was an extraordinary project. Under Finot's guidance, who used the Socratic method to let us discover strategies ourselves, we created a student not permitted to run for office by the administration over some technicality who was waging a write-in campaign. We communicated with the student body with fliers -- some posted or left in rest rooms, others slipped into the notebooks of our classmates. Under Finot's guidance, we were a step ahead of the administration's response. We knew they would learn what was happening and say the student was non-existent. Those of you who have classes with me, read one of our fliers, speak up! I remember a girl telling me he was the shy guy in the back of our English class. To make a long story short, our write-in candidate won! Then Finot was called in, raked over the coals, and let go. He ended up teaching at the second high school across town, which is where he was a decade later when he got fired again for coming to school in a beard.

These are teachers you don't forget! More power to you, Finot -- "why not Fi-not" was his slogan -- wherever you are.
    
7/30/2004 07:10:29 AM | 4 comments

Thursday, July 29, 2004  
Anthology
My selection process is over ... I'm going to publish 26 stories, with excerpts from many more. Next week I'll start working on my introduction to the book.

Still have not found my rhythm on the novel -- high priority to bring that project front burner now. Onward.   
7/29/2004 01:35:01 PM | 0 comments

Wednesday, July 28, 2004  
More excerpts
More stuff I likely will use in the anthology:

The Traditional Family: Requiem or Revival?
by David Shetzline
5-10-81
"As Oregonians tighten expectations for the 1980s, is it wise to suspect that the traditional family will reappear? Certainly not. Gone with spruce shakes, backyard windmills, butter churns. And yet ...
"Take Beaver Creek in Lincoln County. Barely 15 miles from its headwaters in old and second-growth timber, this drainage is celebrated locally as watering one of the most picturesque of the coastal valleys. Although only three or four families make a living without drawing wages from their mailbox or working out, a third generation of homesteaders remembers when a dozen times that many folk hand-built their own places and nurtured families of five to seven children who shared chores, raised barns, milked cows and milled timber before resettling to city life in the decades between World War II and the last of Vietnam.
"...Unspoken things are remembered, too. Not because they were embarrassing or disgraceful or tragic. But they are pieces of a family's private traditions. Yet the steelhead still run, the bear peevishly feed on skunk cabbage, the coyote yet howl on the ridges -- if only once or twice a winter -- and new generations move in to build and raise their own families. Has the traditional life already returned with the challenge of self-help, alternative energy, backyard survival gardens, personal and moral reaffirmation?"

So Long, Woody: Woody Guthrie in the Northwest
by Ralph Friedman
5-8-66
"One thing for sure: among the dust bowl Okies, who were his soul kin, he was as much at home as turnips to greens. There was hardly a soul in those ditch weed camps who was second cousin to a dollar, so Woody settled for what the other Okies were eating, and maybe a pair of patched pants or a sweater two sizes too big or a couple of nickels to carry him on his way. Every once in a while our drifting paths would cross, like the smoke of two twig fires sieving through each other.
"Just before I entered the Army I heard Woody singing with The Weavers, the other fellows being Pete Seeger, Lee Hays and Millard Lampell, certainly the most gifted quartet of all folk singers. They were rousing out some of Woody's songs, with him staying mostly in the background, maybe just half a step behind the others, as was his way. A lot of young singers, on their way to the bank, could take a few lessons in humility from the way Woody performed."

The Way to Wounded Knee
by Art Raymond
4-15-73
"American Indian spokesmen, both great and small, have pleaded for action, for results. Talk, talk, talk and the words sound good. The words have sounded good from the BIA from the time of President Jackson to this day. But the talk and the words have not brought the Indian peoples out of the economic doldrums nor the social servitude in which they exist.
"That is why in February, 1973, members of the Indian Movement (AIM) occupied Wounded Knee. Settled in the large rolling foothills of the sacred Black Hills of the Sioux, Wounded Knee is in itself a symbol of the Sioux. Its big hills, and sweeping valleys, marked by tree- and brush-lined streams, stand as a symbol of the Sioux for all time.
"Regardless of the eventual outcome, Wounded Knee will not be brushed aside or forgotten. It will stand forever as a symbol of man's inhumanity to man."

A Boy and His Mitt
by Steve Erickson
9-7-75
"The mitt, the mitt. It is really a glove, but he'll call it a mitt to his grave.
"It is a Wilson Ball Hawk, manufactured only briefly before the company desisted in embarrassment. The two-fingered model confounds even its occasional admirers. On the little finger, which is bigger than the thumb, are the faded instructions, 'two fingers here.'
"The mitt used to have padding, but en route to the major leagues its owner removed it. Deeper pocket. This accentuated the pain from catching line drives, but big-leaguers, he believed then, don't cry.
"It is, incidentally, a righthanded mitt with a southpaw personality. On its wristband the boy emblazoned his initials with a woodburning set."

Bluegrass Is Booming In Oregon
by Charles Denight
7-24-77
"By Sunday morning the lawyers, accountants, musicians, et. al., who made up the bluegrass bands had begun showing beards. There was a relaxed joviality. The group on stage represented a mix of all the bands, and the feeling was fun. Between familiar gospel tunes the singers dropped country jokes and the crowd guffawed.
"The gospel crowd, the kids, the middle-class grown-ups all looked familiar. The scene resurrected memories of years in Southern Illinois, where on a Sunday morning the television dial flipped from a station in Kentucky, to a station in Southeastern Missouri, to one in Southern Illinois and they were all singing gospel tunes. The hair was shorter and the singers older, but the image was the same. Let's twang in the name of the Lord and have a little fun. Those were country people and so were some of these -- and a lot more were trying to get back there, to that togetherness spirit. Perhaps that's where the popularity of this music form is to be found, in the cultural hoopla that accompanies bluegrass. The open smiles, the Howdee greetings, the unamplified music (you can talk with your neighbor during a bluegrass concert) must appeal to a segment of the young and not so young, reviving, perhaps, a friendlier American spirit."

The Theater Workshop: Its Time Has Come
by Charles Deemer
12-17-78
"[Mildred Hughes] and Portland composer Richard Moffatt founded the workshop as a response to the early years of television. 'The talent shows then kept using the same performers over and over. They didn't have anyone else. There was a real need for a training facility and an opportunity to perform on television.'
"...'We thought there wasn't anything we couldn't do,' Ms. Hughes told me. 'We did original musicals, plays and operas on KGW-TV. This was all done live in those days, of course. Sometimes we'd be called in at the last minute to fill in for a program that was cancelled. We had no lack of energy, and we also had the encouragement of Dorothea Lensch, who headed the park bureau. She gave us magnificent support.'
"...The 1950s were a golden age for Portland television for those who would demand of local productions something more ambitious than a talk-show format. For Mildred Hughes and the workshop, original theater on TV was all part of a very busy schedule."



  
7/28/2004 08:34:14 PM | 0 comments

 

De-Lovely
I like this movie a lot, even though many critics didn't think much of it. More than most biopics it successfully dramatizes the organic relationship between the work and the life of an artist. Kline and Judd are outstanding in the main roles, and the makeup crew should get an Oscar nomination. I didn't like some of the song interpretations, especially Begin the Beguine, but this was a small discomfort in an otherwise moving film.
    
7/28/2004 08:25:25 PM | 0 comments

 

Stefan Minde
Minde has requested the libretto and vocal score of Dark Mission. He's probably the most experienced opera director in this region (see reviews), so this is a great opportunity. Crossed fingers and all that, hoping he loves it. Onward.
    
7/28/2004 02:18:16 PM | 0 comments

 
Update
God bless the textbook publisher, he doesn't need a hard copy after all.

Back to archives tomorrow -- might be my last trip. Next week write my intro.

First priority for rest of week, bring the novel back to front burner and when that is secure, return to the libretto as well. Get the major projects back to the highest priority. Onward.   
7/28/2004 09:45:17 AM | 0 comments

 

Obama's vision

Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

    

Watching the convention
Thank the gods for C-Span! You actually can watch the convention. Media coverage, from CNN to the networks and even PBS, is shameful. You see very little of the actual convention. They are in love with their own commentators. You get what amounts to an interpretation of an event without seeing the actual event.

The most educational and interesting part of a political convention is being introduced to up-and-coming politicians you are not familiar with. Media coverage dismisses this possibility, focusing only on the headliners.

C-SPAN turns on the camera and lets it run! No moderator, no interviews, no interpretation ... you are there, period. This is the best service on TV.
    
7/26/2004 06:37:27 PM | 1 comments

 

Monkey off my back
Stayed at it and finished the textbook, or close enough to send to the publisher, which I did as an attachment today with a hard copy to follow. Now we'll wait and see what changes they may want. But getting this off my back is a big relief! Now I can focus on more fun projects. Onward.
    
7/26/2004 02:55:23 PM | 0 comments

 
A challenging week
If I put in a good week, taking breaks for house and lawn chores, I have a shot at accomplishing three things (at least):

1. Getting back in rhythm with the novel
2. Finish the excerpts for the anthology
3. Finishing the textbook manuscript -- and sending it to the publisher on Friday.

Convertible weather
103 again today! I love it. But down to the 80s tomorrow, they say.

Meanwhile I enjoyed today. To wit: my wife sent me to the store for a milk substitute for our houseguest. An hour and a half later, I returned with it. Where were you?
Where do you think? Cruising! Jazz on the radio, ice cold Pepsi at hand, driving across town to a very distant market, which didn't have it, so off to another distant market, which didn't, so back to a super huge market, which did, and by that time, well, an hour plus had passed, what's a guy on a chore to do? Got something else for me to get, I'm ready!

    
7/24/2004 05:20:30 PM | 0 comments

 

Heat wave
103 yesterday, predicted 100 today, then back to the 80s. I love it!

House guest flew in last night, just for a few days. May escape to a coffee shop with the keyboard. Hope to get back on the novel today. Onward.
    
7/24/2004 09:58:33 AM | 0 comments

Friday, July 23, 2004  
Anthology progress
Spent 3 hrs in the magazine archives today, making progress. About 5 hrs away from finishing this step, going on to the next.

Here are some possible excerpts:

Henk Pander: Why He Paints
by Daniel Yost
12-5-71
"He said there is a strong anti-American sentiment among European intellectuals and that his friends told him he was crazy for wanting to go to such a 'fascist place.' But Henk says he came here and remains, as a more or less permanent immigrant, because 'America is a creative, exciting place with fantastic potential. It is the greatest power in the world, the place where the destruction or salvation of man is going to be settled.'"

The Governor They Call Tom
by Douglas Seymour
11-4-73
"In his early seven years in office, McCall has met more people personally than any other Oregon governor in history and probably more than any governor in the nation. One reason was the weekly open house in the Capitol which he innovated when he took office. ...Unlike some governors, McCall doesn't have a regal idea of the role of the chief executive of the state. He abandons the formality often present in governors' offices. When he meets people, informality is the rule."

Memories of Wayne Morse
by Mike Lloyd
8-11-74
"Morse stood, and when the applause subsided and he spoke, I learned two things: Never judge a man by his pinstripes and never stand too close to the loudspeaker when Wayne Morse speaks.
"If there was anything old about him at first, it vanished when he spoke. He was a whirlwind of wrath, an inferno of energy, jabbing an accusing finger at his opponent, calling forth detailed histories of how the country got into Vietnam and why he did and said what he did then. And what he did and said was so true that it hurt to listen to him now and know that no one listened then."

Jerry Turner: Behind the Director's Mask in Ashland
by John A. Armstrong
8-24-80
"As for the experimental theater: 'I bristle at the term, borrowed from science, and I don't think it really applies. It implies you don't know how the play's going to come out. If you're talking about a theater which has very special audiences and tends to explore areas which a conventional theater doesn't ... I think we ought to take risks...
"It's so easy for a producing organization to always fall back on the tried and true, and if that happens, then we will ourselves become lazy, and we ultimately will not make the contribution that we're capable of making. There should be at least one element of the theater that is risky."

‘Squippies’ in the Outback of Oregon
By David Shetzline
11-23-69
"The Oregonian is an odd one about his artists, though. He stocks his library with western history, trail guides, Oregon lore. Yet too often finds little space for his own novelists, who make much more profound sense of the Oregon experience than any camp manual or photograph collection. And upon his walls hang excellent craft but not much of the more complex, extraordinary work northwest painters can produce. It is as if Oregonians are infatuated with their landscapes and seek works in accord, works blending with the countenance of Mount Hood.
"...Americans are coming. In the next generation they will seek more and more of what we have here, in the Oregon Preserve, the Territory Ahead. If under these pressures we are to accommodate them, we must take greater care of our own artists, our own dissenters. We must attend those who would make great monuments of our style, our special Oregon lore, our individual secrets, our beauty. Mount Hood will not be enough."

Do We Really Have A Right To A Clean Environment?
by Oral Bullard
4-10-77
"There is no longer a new land to which we can journey after we have fouled the old nest. In this way we have limited our freedom, and from that basis we must arrive at new decisions.
"What began, many years apart, as simple, good and basic urges -- individual liberty and the preservation of the environment -- have become complicated by their interaction one with another. The danger is that they will get bogged down in the area of political, legal and bureaucratic opinion until we become convinced that they are somehow on a collision course -- if one survives, the other must go. Somewhere along the line we will have to convert it to a win-win situation and prove we are big enough to accommodate both."

The ACLU: Reexaming Our Rights
By Oral Bullard
7-4-76
"The ACLU has been damned by the right, the left and the middle. It has defended Communists, Nazis, kids with long hair and, in a celebrated Oregon case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court, a Vietnam protester who was barred from passing out anti-war leaflets in the Lloyd Center. It has defended unpopular issues and individuals whose causes it did not espouse for the simple reason it believed those individuals' Constitutional rights were being violated.
"...Civil liberties have always been won by dissent, the American Revolution being a prime example. But the search for freedom began long before that, and somewhere, in some unrecorded time, some person rose to defend himself against the transgressions of the governing group -- and in that moment the first civil libertarian was born."

Breaking the Bond: The Need For Alternatives To Marriage
by Barbara J. Murphy
10-21-73
"Men and women are no longer content to act merely according to custom, hoping in the end some meaning will emerge. What they are really asking for are more flexible roles in society which give individuals more of a chance to develop and utilize their potentials than the traditional marriage structure with its dependence on the dominant male role has afforded. This may or may not result in other than traditional living arrangements. It most assuredly will involve other than traditional premises on which these arrangements are founded."

Translation: The Indian’s Dilemma
By Barry Lopez
7-29-73
"The Indian's world view is generally circular. He sees his life as already complete at each moment. There is, therefore, no need to 'progress'; rather, he expands as he grows older, like a ballooning sphere. The past and the present, not the future, are important to him. He has a strong sense of balance and harmony with the physical world and tends to live by negotiating with his environment. He is an opportunist, not a planner. He does not regard the earth as a hostile place and makes no long range plans to control it.
…"The scientific pursuits of the pre-Columbian Indians of Central America are well known. Less well known, however, is that some peoples, long before the spread of Western Europe to the four corners of the world, had a chance to develop along technological lines and then rejected that matrix. It still strikes some whites as preposterous that an Indian would reject technological convenience, but many of them do. Technology is entirely alien to their world view. You might as well ask the average American to embrace Shintoism."
  
7/23/2004 07:35:00 PM | 0 comments

Thursday, July 22, 2004  

Eugene Civic Stadium
At dinner last night in Seattle, my friends and I were reminiscing about watching the Eugene Emeralds, then a AAA team for the Phillies, in the late 60s and early 70s when their roster was filled with future stars like Mike Schmidt. Coincidentally, today's paper has an article on the Ems (now a lowly class A team) and its civic stadium, which some baseball experts call the best place in the county to see a ball game.

I would agree. It's small, funky, but old-fashioned and traditional, with real grass and a spectacular view. Man, we had fun going to those games when I was in graduate school! I remember a "dime beer inning" in which 11 runs were scored ... talk about a crocked rowdy bleachers.

The Red Sox old-timers sitting behind us said Safeco is the 2nd best major league park in the country, the first being Pittsburgh. Yes, Safeco is spectacular. But it also is huge and, well, modern, in a corporate sense of the term. Eugene's Civic Stadium is a step above Little League, a down home small minor league palace. I love it.
    
7/22/2004 09:17:57 AM | 0 comments

 

"Long Day's Journey Into Night"
O'Neill finished his masterpiece on this day and presented the manuscript to his wife, with instructions never to have it performed and to delay publication for 25 years. Neither wish was respected. Read the full story in Today In Literature.
    
7/22/2004 07:50:48 AM | 0 comments

 

"Oh what a beautiful morning!"
Today scheduled to be the first day of a four-day heat spell. My wife will melt, and I will thrive. Going to start the day by revising a chapter in the textbook, getting the least fun work done for the day. Tons to do. Onward.
    
7/22/2004 07:37:16 AM | 0 comments

Wednesday, July 21, 2004  

Fans and Friends
Up to Seattle yesterday for a Mariners day game against the Red Sox. The previous night the Mariners won a miraculous come-from-behind game in extra innings -- but yesterday the gods of baseball decided to honor our record of never seeing the M's win. We had a shot: two on and nobody out in the bottom of the 9th, 2 runs behind, with our three best power hitters coming up. Each in turn struck out.

Sitting behind us were 5 retired gentlemen who were traveling around the country to watch baseball. Red Sox fans. Today they fly to SF for a Giants game, later to Atlanta. Great way to spend a summer!

After the game, walked to Ivar's on the water, the smell of ocean strong as soon as you left the stadium, and we had dinner with old friends of mine from the 60s, who live now in Port Townsend. A great visit. Then the three-hour drive home.

Today I am raring to go: house chores, lawn chores, writing chores. Onward.

    
7/21/2004 06:37:57 AM | 0 comments

Tuesday, July 20, 2004  

Home sweet home
Nice to be home ... but still catching up on grunt work before I can get into the routine of creative work. Should be there in a day or two. Meanwhile embracing another distraction, off to see a Mariners day game.     
7/20/2004 05:56:41 AM | 0 comments

 

Palouse Falls
This was one of the delightful surprises at the end of one of our many side trips during the recent getaway. A small campground (tents) oversees the falls -- and not a soul was there.     
7/20/2004 05:50:52 AM | 0 comments

Sunday, July 18, 2004  

The Palouse
Back home, safe and sound but with two surprises. The more trivial, our neighbor over-filled a swimming pool he built and managed to flood our driveway with mud and gravel, a mess to clean up. But the real news is sad: one of my wife's close friends lost her partner to a massive heart attack, at only 62.

Notes from the trip:

WED July 14. Camping in eastern Washington on the Columbia River, after it turns north to leave the gorge. Quite a nice state campground, spacious sites, lots of shade. Must be 100 or close, my kind of weather. Probably take a dip in the river soon.

Driving across the vast spaces of the west, what music other than country evokes the landscape and mood of the land. Of course, it's almost all you can pick up on the radio. Yet there usually is a public radio station coming in, giving you the choice between Mozart and Merle Haggard -- and the latter wins out every time. The landscape suggests the same forlorn emotions as the music while at the same time making promises, things will be better now, no matter how bad you've screwed up, hit the Oregon Trail, kiss the past goodbye, and one always can start over in the west. If the west is not as vast as it once was, there is still the sensation of endless open spaces, enough to hide away in, to begin anew without baggage, without history. The myth of the west is the myth of the geographic fix.

Tomorrow we'll do some local site-seeing before heading east and south to Lewiston. There's a petrified forest up the way that we've never seen. Nothing on the agenda tomorrow except checking into our motel, then driving 40 miles to Orofino to see Esther, Dick's mom. Take her to dinner if she's up to it.

We have two tents, the small quick up and down just to sleep in tent, and a large live in tent, and we brought only the former this trip. This is our only night camping unless we decide to take two days coming back. We've reserved 3 nights in the Lewiston motel, which is about halfway between Moscow and Orofino, the two towns where we'll be visiting. We decided to get though it means more driving.

Surprisingly quiet here. I expect more kids swimming. Quiet is good.

Reading a short bio of Galileo, very nicely done. Food for thought for a future project.

8PM. Peaceful and quiet, after a spurt of noise from late arrivals with kids swimming down the way. If I go for a swim, it will be at 6 or 7 tomorrow morning ... we'll see.

The cliffs across the river red-brown in the setting sun. The river very still. Never saw more than a few boats on it at a time -- 3 or 4 at most -- so this is one place to put in where you get a sense of "owning" the Columbia. Mid week contributes to this, I'm sure.
Only work I brought al kind of laptop, several years without a battery worry.

Going to take back roads instead of the Interstate tomorrow, heading east and south to Lewiston. Only 3 or 4 hrs away, even the back way.

THUR, I can't believe it! H is up and about, shortly after 6. We may get out of here before 7. I love to cruise, take our time driving, leaving early. H tends to leave later and drive like a bat out of hell. Maybe we'll do it my way for a change ha ha.

Time to enjoy the first cup of coffee at camp ...

EVE. 101 as we rolled into Lewiston today. A great day of exploring! Getting an early start, not pressured to make time, we drove back roads, including farming roads. Discovered Palouse Falls, very nice. Endless farmland. "The farmer is the man who feeds us all," says the old folk song but we're a long way from Jefferson's vision of a nation of family farmers. May have lost out as a result.

Everything greener than what we're used to since this trip usually is made 6 weeks or so later. Drove into Orofino to visit Dick's mom, more frail than last year at 85 but all her faculties very sharp. Very humorous about how angry she was that her rest home flew the flag for Reagan at half staff for an entire month! This is the former chairwoman of the Clearwater County Democratic Council.

In the motel, a view of the river, air conditioning. A long hot drive to White Bird tomorrow as H boats up the Snake River.

FRIDAY. Back from the pilgrimage to my best buddy's resting place. The drive to Grangeville and down to White Bird brought back many memories of the several "running drunks" Dick and I went on in this area of Idaho. I recall one morning in Grangeville, waiting for Dick to finish some business, I was sitting at the bar in a tavern when an old-timer in bib overalls came in. The bartender had a short pitcher of beer and tomato juice waiting for him, which the guy lifted without using a glass and after a long swig, let loose of an extraordinary belch. Then he left the pitcher on the bar and walked past me toward the men's room, mumbling to himself about taking his morning constitutional.

Another time, at a bar in Riggins south of White Bird, we listened to a country duo called Rusty & Dusty. My wife at the time, a folksinger like myself, who dabbled in some country, was with us, and after the duo finished their gig we had a jam session on Main Street that grew a crowd until the local cop moved us on.

On the way back, drove through most of the small towns along the way, leaving the main road, towns with a few hundred residents, Cottonwood and Fenn and others. Hanging out in the motel now, but later will take the dog for a walk downtown, maybe get a coffee. Downtown Lewiston is quite nice, full of shade trees and sidewalk tables. Don't pick H up from her boat trip till 5, so have some time to kill.

Was good to visit Dick's resting place. I would be a very different person if he had not entered my life when I was a young man.

Later, Friday. Rerun of last Sunday's The 4400 is on. Love the premise of this scifi story, which hooked me last week. Hope it doesn't disappoint me in the episodes left. I don't watch much scifi any more but this one works for me. (So does ET, Close Encounters, but not Star Wars ... not into the futuristic wars, I suppose).

Sketch really conked out. Maybe I shouldn't wake him for a walk in 103 heat outside.

SATURDAY. Today is our mellow day, relatively speaking, hanging around Lewiston this morning, walking Main St, stopping for coffee, later driving to Moscow for an afternoon-evening BBQ at the home of Dick's son, Brad, and the other son will be there as well as the ex-wife (the mother of the sons), whom I've known for over 40 years. Thurs I was talking with Dick's mom about how different his life might have been except for a summer in the late 60s. Dick had a full fellowship to grad school at the U of Idaho, planning to study Poly Sci, focusing on China since one the country's top Chinese scholars was there and his mentor. But that summer he discovered his wife was having an affair with a good friend. She took the kids and fled to So Cal ... and before the summer was over, Dick had given up his fellowship to pursue them. He kept the marriage together for the sake of the kids, gave up grad school, ended up making his living thereafter in real estate. As soon as the kids were grown, the marriage ended anyway. But what would his life have been like had he become a professor, a Chinese scholar? Well, who knows. Pointless question, I suppose.

Overcast, news talk of possible thunderstorm, which would be great. I love them. Two things I miss from my short stay in the east, great thunderstorms and lightning bugs. Not much else. I'm definitely a west coast person. It felt like everyone in the east was on speed.

H had a great time yesterday on the boat trip but it doesn't sound like something I would have enjoyed, a noisy jet boat, speed ... I'm the mellow float on a raft type. I especially hate noise on a river.

Actually I'm ready to get home and back in my work rhythm. White Bird was the main reason for this trip. Yes, it will be nice to see Dick's sons but it will be nice to get home and back to work, too.

SUNDAY. To Moscow yesterday, which is a drive up the Lewiston grade to a plateau of rolling Palouse country, green and golden fields from horizon to horizon, farming as holy work. If Lewiston is dry and arid, blue collar in feel, Moscow is a small college town, the university at the heart of the community. It was good to spend hours with three people I've known for over 40 years. Brad and Kass both are in danger of embracing their father's demons, and usually K is the one most visibly wrestling with them but he looked great yesterday and it was B I'm a little worried about. B is living the musician's life, with all its mine fields. He's beginning to look like one living the night life.

As soon as H is up and ready, we're out of here, heading home. I'm ready. A good trip but it's time to get home.

  

White Bird Summit
Here is the view from White Bird summit, Idaho, above the town and Salmon River, where the ashes of my best buddy Dick were scattered. Making the trip to pay my respects this week. Also will visit with his mom, in her 80s, in a nursing home in Orofino, and with his two sons, who live in Moscow. Should be a good trip. Onward.
    

Bandon
My wife finally uploaded her photographs from our recent trip. Here is Bandon, Coquille Point, at low tide, the view from our motel deck.     

The Noble Broom
Walking the dog, I passed a woman who was sweeping the gutter with a broom. A broom! I stopped to congratulate her on her choice of tools. My next door neighbor does the smallest sweeping task with a loud obnoxious blower. The broom, the rake, the push mower -- the best tools of summer!
    

Fireworks and War
One of the larger July 4th fireworks shows on the west coast is at Ft. Vancouver, Washington, just across the river from Portland. On July 4, 1993, I was living in a VA hospital near there. That night, after watching the fireworks from a great view on the hospital grounds, I returned to the billets. Later that night, nearby local fireworks began and several patients bedding near me instinctively rolled to the floor and scurried under their beds, yelling "Incoming! Incoming!" They were Vietnam vets suffering from PTSD. For them, fireworks brought back vivid memories of the war.

I think of them every July 4th now. I no longer watch fireworks with the same abandon. I think of some poor vet somewhere, scurrying under his bed, screaming "Incoming!" I've avoided fireworks displays ever since.
    
7/4/2004 07:30:36 AM | 0 comments

Saturday, July 03, 2004  
Elephant
Finally saw this on cable. Not moved or impressed, although I admire the attempt to do something out of the narrative mainstream with this material. I'm not sure I'd go so far as Stanley Kauffman in The New Republic, who described it as "a braggart piece of empty exhibitionism," but Peter Rainer's "art house hokey-pokey" (in New York Magazine) will do for me. Most critics, of course, loved it. Cannes loved it. I join the dissenters, though if the first hour were trimmed by a third or so I might have stayed with it. But it's still a tad too artsy cute for my taste.   
7/3/2004 11:39:47 AM | 0 comments

 

Wimbledon
Got up early to see the women's finals, rooting for the underdog. I happily watched Sharapova take Williams in straight sets. Serena was most gracious in defeat.    
7/3/2004 09:00:48 AM | 0 comments

 

Coquille Point
Returned from Ashland along the southern coast, spending the night in Bandon at Coquille Point, perhaps the best beach in Oregon. Good therapy after the diaster done to Durrenmatt.    
7/3/2004 08:53:09 AM | 0 comments

Friday, July 02, 2004  
Disrespect For Durrenmatt
The Visit in Ashland is an interesting play perhaps but it is not Durrenmatt. The director, who "adapted" it, removed all the verse from the play (pages of text) and replaced it with high tech effects and scenes of highly choreographed silence. Since I like the original so much, I hate this peculiar adaptation, and I especially hate the fact that many audience members, unfamiliar with Durrenmatt, went away thinking this work represented his voice as a playwright. Now that Durrenmatt is dead (and cannot protest), I suppose we'll see more of this sort of thing from directors who use work for their own agendas. No one can complain except an occasional critic and a rare audience member who knows enough about Durrenmatt to recognize the butchering; and so here I am, bitching away, blogging into the wilderness.   
7/2/2004 04:19:01 PM | 0 comments

Sketch says, "Happiness is sunshine and a bone." 

__The Writing Life