Dad

Where I Was Yesterday

I'm sure you're asking, Martin where were you yesterday? Where indeed.

1976 - I read about it in the Chronicle and tore out the directions, borrowed a car and drove alone to Marin County to see the folly, the crazy Monty-Python-ness, the trickster's masterpiece, a 25-mile long white fabric fence, some of which you could see from country roads, much of which went over rolling hills westward out of sight, where no one could go - how weird is that? And then it went down to the Pacific Ocean, my ocean, and then - get this - it went out into the foam on the sea floor for like half a mile invisible. You can't see it, but you know it's there. You can't touch it, photograph it (I had no camera anyway, except my memory). It is there, and then 14 days later it is gone, materials donated to the farmers whose land it highlighted in the crossing. 25 miles long, 20 feet high: WHY, WHY, WHY?

And it's still there for me today because I saw it (and Ginsberg and Warhol in the next car), Running Fence has always been there invisible on those plain California hills, always will be in my  imaginary, in every word and gesture, even when I forget it, because I saw it, I went there as a pilgrim
to get what I need. Running Fence over my hills into my ocean over the creases in my brain, and moving, walking, slithering into the sea and under the sea and up on the beach at Iwo Jima and across Mongolia and quaint little Europe (I wave at it in passing) and back under water and on and on. I will always have Running Fence because I saw it as I saw lots of things (the snow plant, the baobab, fireworks in Mexico) after that in the same intense way, and I touched the fabric and the aluminum structure with my hand, as I touched the madness of Jeanne-Claude and Christo (which one?) who sold everything they had and paid for it all themselves to give me the truth and the joy. What a surreal divider between North and South, before and after, between me blind and lost and me slapped awake and put on the path to Canada or Valhalla or anywhere that chooses me (Sicily even).

Dreamland, Fantasyland, Wonderland - Everywhere is the same with a Fence running through pointing the way to something that still needs to be discovered, too deep for words, too strong for the senses, beyond, out there, other, beyond, perhaps where paradise is. Is that no gain, no purpose, unreal or real? The most fabulous foolish whatever of my entire life.

2005 - The Gates. Wow. Passing through each one I felt like a different person. Blessed and humbled.

2016 - Yesterday. A dream, in two weeks I'll wake up and it'll be gone. Poof, game over. Unreal, yet I walked on it, felt it with my bare feet, I laid down and looked at the sky, felt the sun, smiling, for the absurdity, the pointlessness. Don't give it a definition, a reason; it wasn't reasonable, it was nothing, a mirage, a miracle, a practical joke, a concrete dream witnessed by many (liars) photographed to death (all fakes). I felt it underfoot, weaving and waving, a membrane that could break or vanish, moving gently to rock me back to sleep, to see beautiful things with no purpose but joy, a world of Dr Seuss and Sal Dali', of children's nonsense rhymes and psychedelic drug trips - I did take the trip one whole day to get there and one back for art, which is nothing yet everything. Hey, check this out!

It's not money or language or world domination or the destruction of nature that renders us human, it is this, doing what would have no meaning to another animal. "Ridiculous," Christo called it, and he waved back to me from on the barge as if to say, "You get it." You get the 15 million dollar joke, the 46 years of work (by Jeanne-Claude and Christo), the orange cloth and floats, lots of each, but really only the idea - no sponsors, no corporations, no tickets, no grants, no volunteers, no souvenirs, no exploitation, no charge - just give what you can, just give yourself, give up, give in, come and be, be as you and it just are, not are something, just are ... The Floating Piers.

Me and you are not reasonable, we are alive and then we're not. We all will vanish in two weeks. So whoever sees the lake now streaked in saffron and then after as usual will always have the orange walkway burnt into the retina. It will always be there even if maybe it never was there (I'm still not sure), and therefore the experiencer will never see the lake again as a body of water but as a dreamscape, as anything could be, as everything is, you and me too, and all we see is different when we learn to look.

Floating Piers may be nothing, but it teaches how to look. Those orange strips could have not been walkable - ok, it still works - or it could have been in the desert or in your bedroom or on the moon or on Wall Street, it would still make us look at our surroundings in awe, from a new angle, as if everything is a work of art (the worn crosstie I stared at from the train before it started off). North, South, East, West - Art everywhere, indistinguishable. And we are all inside every work, not observing, but one with constructed piers and the natural lake, the island, the people, the swans, the hills, sky and sun, all. We are all on the Floating Piers and in the Floating Piers and in the beautiful dream. Oh, thank you, Christo (and Jeanne-Claude), you have awakened my eyes, my nostils, ears, bare feet, you have saved me, to a degree, from a life of dreary monotony and ugliness, fighting and pettiness, hand to mouth, thank you for touching my heart, back then in 1976 and now and forever or until I'm recycled too.

So, where were you yesterday?

Happy trials, Martin



Mutt and Jeff are on a train going to Sulzano/Lago d'Iseo. They left me a note, "Gone fishing."

45 and Counting

I just finished the semester in my 45th year of teaching. I have told my students, whether they're interested or not, about how I started, when I was 16, in an experimental peer-teaching program in the juvenile prison. I volunteered because I already knew I wanted to teach; I had known since 4th grade, Mr. Griffin.

The job was to go a couple evenings a week with materials of my choice and meet these tough young thugs who knew a lot about life that I didn't know, how to look cool smoking for instance, as I, in theory, taught them to read. I took my little brothers' picture books, the Dr Suess stuff. The prisoners couldn't even read Green Eggs and Ham, but they sure could tell me to fuck off.

I pondered a strategy, I felt like a failure. Finally I decided that I needed to get them alone (could they be armed and dangerous, I thought they could), so, feigning a need for quiet, I invited one or the other into a nearby room, and we tried reading pre-school picture books. It worked a little bit for a few of the junior gangsters, but it didn't do miracles. When the program supervisor asked me to evaluate the initiative, I suggested they not repeat. That killed it. Oh did I say that I was also terrified to be in a juvenile prison surrounded by presumed killers calling me candyass and pussyboy?

Then student teaching, which started in my senior year of high school in the 6th grade class at the elementary school across the street with a first-year teacher who became my best friend and who I reconnected with last summer. And then a couple summers teaching English to the children of  Mexican migrant farm workers, then classroom application of every theory from every class in my education courses: science ed, movement ed, math ed, reading and writing, all through the four years at FCC and UOP. Then English classes for Vietnamese refugees, student teaching in Mexico, and in an experimental year-round school in rural California. Zimbabwe, Egypt, New Games, grad school arts ed, creativity in ed, recreation ed, folklore in ed, American studies, lit, public speaking. Then substitute teaching from K-12 and community college classes.

I wound up in Sicily by accident and immediately started teaching in elementary schools as a volunteer, supplementary English and music and American culture combined. Plus the main gig of English at the university, which used to be meant for future teachers and which I still consider most likely to that end. I have been a small part of the preparation of most of the English teachers in the schools in the area. Hopefully not a bad example.

After 45 years I still have the same enthusiasm as when I started, still the same certainty of career choice that drove me since 4th grade. I still like to tweak my courses every year to challenge myself and my students to learn more and better, even when most of them resemble slugs succumbing to death by boredom and fatigue at age 20. I focus on the live ones.

It's almost time to give it a break, but I've got a couple more years to go. I have plenty of writing to do, music to play, other stuff to keep me moving, but it will feel very strange when I hang up my spikes. For now, the old dog just says: 45 and counting.

Happy trials, Martin


Mutt:  Hello old man.
Jeff:  Who're you calling 'man'?
Mutt:  I've been reading books lately.
Jeff:  But you can't read.
Mutt:  I can look at the pictures.
Jeff:  What did you see? Let's hear it.
Mutt:  I learned that barbed wire was first used for de fence.
Jeff:  What else?
Mutt:  Before John Campbell invented lubricating oil, he was just squeaking by.
Jeff:  Oh brother. Listen, candles were first used on a birthday cake for people who wanted to make light of their age.
Mutt:  See? You get it. The cavewoman’s first words to her husband: “Don’t just stand there – slay something!”
Jeff:  Clothes hampers first became popular with people who wanted to throw in the towel.
Mutt:  Comment from the first photofinisher: “Someday my prints will come.”
Jeff:  Dental floss was invented in 1938 – that’s the tooth!
Mutt:  During the first labour dispute, a non-union laundry worker said, “Let’s iron while the strike is hot.”
Jeff:  First poultry reprimand: a woman had to scold her chickens because they were using fowl language.

Mutt:  Eve asked Adam to start the first garden – the first thing he dug up was an excuse.
Jeff:  Eve was the first person to eat herself out of house and home.

Mutt:  I'm tired. Working too hardly.

Jeff:  Goodnight old man.

Mutt:  Who're you calling 'man'?

Touched

I was touched yesterday by two events. The bombings in Brussels seem so wrong, so passé, so outdated, so stupid, so brutal. Anyone can destroy, that's easy. Go on, kill yourself. But don't take other people's children and parents with you. That's psychopathic destruction. A match can burn down a house; sugar in the gastank can fry an engine; a casual infidelity can wreck a marriage. Building, that's what's hard, that's what takes so much time and effort and overcoming failure. Maybe a whole lifetime hoping what you're doing is right and never knowing. Think of your grandparents working long and hard for a better life for their grandchildren -- you. They deserve our attention and our gratitude and a resolution to carry on that building, no matter how overwhelming the problems we face / we created (see climate change).

The other thing that moved me was watching the baseball game between the Cuban national team and the Tampa Bay Rays. Barack Obama and his family sitting next to Raul Castro watching our mutual national sport together is such a triumph. The interview he gave from the stands was inspired. An African American president at a ballgame in Cuba with John Kerry (Vietnam Veterans Against the War) sitting behind him near Jackie Robinson's wife (42) seemed like a summary of my life of over 60 years. Plus Jimmy Carter's dream of baseball diplomacy that Reagun cheated him out of. Back in the 60's and 70's, we sang We Shall Overcome without going into specifics, but we knew what we meant. We hoped that wars would end (most have), we hoped that a black man might someday become president (though I doubted I'd ever see it), by the way, the best president of my lifetime, and we hoped that nations could come together freely and hash out their differences with words and sports. Thank you, Mr. President.

Happy trials, Martin

Mutt and Jeff are on assignment. Kruk and Kuip will substitute for them.

Music in Memoriam, 2015

My annual list of musicians and others whose work has affected me:

A.J. Masters (songwriter)

Allen Toussaint

Andraé Crouch

Art Thieme

B. B. King

Ben E. King

Bill Keith

Bobby Jameson

Buddy Emmons

Cory Wells (Three Dog Night)

Cynthia Robinson (Sly and the Family Stone)

Dave Ball (Procol Harum)

Ervin Drake (songwriter)

Gunter Shuller

Guy Carawan

Jack Ely

James Horner

Jean Ritchie

John Renbourn

John Trudell

Johnny Gimble

Leon Bibb

Little Jimmy Dickens

Luigi Creatore (songwriter)

Lynn Anderson

Mack McCormick (musicologist)

Michael Masser (songwriter)

Ornette Coleman

P. F. Sloan (songwriter)

Peggy Jones (Bo Diddley)

Percy Sledge

Pino Daniele

Popsy Dixon

Ray Charles

Richard Watson

Ronnie Gilbert* (I met this grand lady of song in Mendocino 2008, see photo)

Rose Marie McCoy (songwriter)

Scott Weiland

Stan Freberg

Theodore Bikel

Tim Drummond

Tut Taylor

Ward Swingle

Wayne Carson (songwriter, The Letter)

non-musicians:

Al Rosen

Carol Doda

Christopher Lee

Eddie LeBaron (my father's football playing classmate)

Ernie Banks

Francesco Rosi

Haskell Wexler

Julian Bond

Lon Simmons

Meadowlark Lemon

Oliver Sacks

Omar Sharif

Patrick Macnee

Rod Taylor

Taylor Negron

Yogi Berra

writers:

Alan Cheuse

Ann McGovern

C. K. Williams

Charles Tomlinson

Christopher Middleton

Don Yoder

E.L. Doctorow

Franz Wright

Gill Dennis

Gunter Grass

Ivan Doig

James Salter

James Tate

John A. Williams

John Leggett

Justin Chin

M.H. Abrams

Miller Williams

P.J. Kavanagh

Paul West

Richard Corliss

Robert Stone

Rod McKuen

Sam Simon

Samuel Charters

Stephen Rodefer

William Jay Smith

William Zinsser

Happy trials, Martin

Mutt:  You know, Jeff, I heard that an old printer died, but old printers never die, they're just not the type.

Jeff:  And old cooks never die, they just get deranged.

Mutt:  You said it. Old photographers never die, they just stop developing.
Jeff:  I got one. Old seers never die, they just lose their vision.
Mutt:  Old cleaning people never die, they just kick the bucket.
Jeff:  Old bosses never die, much as you want them to.
Mutt:  Ain't that the truth. Old electricians never die, they just lose contact.
Jeff:  Old limbo dancers never die, they just go under.
Mutt:  We're on a roll. Old sculptors never die, they just lose their marbles.
Jeff:  Old hypochondriacs never die, they just lose their grippe.
Mutt:  Old professors never die, they just lose their class.
Jeff:  Tell the boss that. Old sewage workers never die, they just waste away.
Mutt:  Old investors never die, they just roll over.
Jeff:  Old owls never die, they just don't give a hoot.
Mutt:  Old hippies never die, they just smell that way.
Jeff:  Hey! Old steelmakers never die, they just lose their temper.
Mutt:  Oh, yeah. Old tanners never die, they just go into hiding.
Jeff:  Old policemen never die, they just cop out.
Mutt:  Enough. Old chauffeurs never die, they just lose their drive.
Jeff:  One more. Old sailors never die, they just get a little dingy.
Mutt:  Last one. Old archers never die, they just bow and quiver.
Jeff:  Okay, really the last. Old lawyers never die, they just lose their appeal.
Mutt:  And my last. Old quarterbacks never die, they just pass away.
Jeff:  Hwoo, glad that's over with. Maybe nobody else never dies.

Mutt:  Except that old schools never die, they just lose their principals.

Jeff:  We called last round.

Mutt:  But that wasn't a person, like old doctors never die, they just lose their patience.
Jeff:  I know your problem. It's like the clergy.

Mutt:  What?

Jeff:  Yeah. Old preachers never die, they just ramble on, and on, and on, and on....

Best List Addendum

Doesn't everybody listen to the NPR Tiny Desk Concerts?
There are now over 500, lots of surprises and a few clunkers. Sometimes your musical heroes/heroines just aren't having a good day (see Steve Earle).
Anyway, you like music that isn't dictated by the Hit-Radio Machine?
Go there.

Here's my choice for best Tiny Desk of 2015:  DakhaBrakha

Here's best Tiny Desk of past years:  St. Paul and the Broken Bones

And here's (drumroll) my best ever Tiny Desk of all time ever:  Dessa

Honorable Mentions:  Sarah Jarosz, Hozier, the Mynabirds

Not what you expected, huh? Okay then, send me yours.

Happy trials, Martin


Mutt and Jeff are listening to all 500 programs right now. They'll be back shortly.

Best Lists

I know, because I know, that you've been waiting all year for this:

Best films seen in 2015 (I watch most films on Sky television, so some are from past years):

Nebraska

The Great Gatsby (Luhrman version)

Gumshoe

La Notte

Tracks

The End of the Tour

Amy

Inside Llewyn Davis

Whiplash

The Railway Man

I Origins

The Normal Heart

The Imitation Game

Her

Best TV: (besides last year's list continued)

Les Revenants (French)

Fortitude (British-Norwegian)

Backstrom

The Honourable Woman

The Fall

Borgen (Danish)

The Killing (Danish)

Olive Kitteridge

Mozart in the Jungle

The Brink

Bron / Broen (Swedish/Danish original of The Bridge)

Deutschland 83

[For your information: I am not admitting and will not admit to having watched and enjoyed the first two seasons of Z Nation.]

Best 2015 books: (excepting research)

Writing Down the Bones, Natalie Goldberg

Genesis: A Living Conversation, Bill Moyers

The Haiku Handbook: How to Write, Share, and Teach Haiku, William J. Higginson with Penny Harter

Moloch: or This Gentile World, Henry Miller

A Literate Passion: Letters of Anaïs Nin & Henry Miller

A Man Without a Country, Kurt Vonnegut

Haiku: Poetry Ancient & Modern, ed. Jackie Hardy

A Sense of Style, Steven Pinker

Anaïs Nin: A Woman Speaks

Henry Miller on Writing

The Air-conditioned Nightmare, Henry Miller

The Illuminated Rumi, Coleman Barks and Michael Green

Highway 17, Richard Beal

Locked Rooms, Laurie R. King

The Big Red Book, Rumi, trans. Coleman Barks

Dreaming Spies, Laurie R. King

Anaïs: The Erotic Life of Anaïs Nin, Noël Riley Fitch

Wild: Lost and Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, Cheryl Strayed

Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace

Mutt and Jeff’s Greatest Hits, by Mutt and Jeff

Happy Trials, Martin

Mutt:  Let me tell you a story, my friend.

Jeff:  I'd rather you didn't.

Mutt:  There was a new driver for the bus on Sesame Street. His first day on the job, he awoke bright and early, went to the garage, got the bus, and set off on his route. At the first stop there was a chubby little girl waiting for the bus. She climbed the step and got on, and said, "Hi. My name is Patty."

The driver replied, "Hi, Patty. Please take a seat."

At the second stop there was a second little girl, even chubbier than the first. She got on and said,

"Good morning! My name's Patty."

The driver answered, "Good morning. Please sit down."

At the third stop there was a little boy waiting. He was dressed in a white shirt and tie, and a suit with a vest, and he had a calculator holster on his belt. He said, "Hi. My name is Ross, and I'm special!"

The driver wasn't impressed, but he managed a smile and said, "Please sit down, Ross."

The fourth stop rewarded the driver with a grubby little boy with dirty jeans and torn sneakers. He got on the bus and said, "My name is Lester Cheese."

The driver replied, "Please take a seat, Lester."

Well, he's driving along and he looks in his rear-view mirror and sees that Lester Cheese has taken off his sneakers and is scratching at his foot. The driver pulls the bus over to the side of the rode, stops it, and says, "I can't take this any longer! I've got two obese Patties, special Ross, Lester Cheese picking bunions on a Sesame Street bus!

Jeff:  This is worse than waterboarding.

Mutt:  I got another one.

Jeff:  No, no, a thousand times NO!

Mutt:  Okay, here goes: There was a Russian man named Rudolph, a high ranking member of the KGB. One evening Rudolph and his wife, Helga, were walking along, and it begins to snow. "My, my, look at the lovely snow," said Helga.

"No, that is not snow, that is rain!" replied Rudolph.

"No, no, no, this is snow," she said.

"Look, there is a palace guard, we will ask him."

Rudolph went to the palace guard and said "Is it raining or snowing?" The guard was no dummy, so he said "What do you think it is doing, Rudolph?"

Rudolph replied, "raining." And the guard said "Yes comrade, I was going to say raining, also!" So Rudolph and Helga went walking off. The guard could just barely hear the KGB official say:

"Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear."

Jeff:  Oh mercy. They're getting badder.

Mutt:  Just one more.

Jeff:  I'm leaving.

Mutt:  During the invasion of Sicily in World War II, General George ("Blood 'n' Guts") Patton was preparing to take the city of Palermo. He checked with his meteorologists and learned the day he had chosen would be incredibly rainy. So he issued an order to place copies of the New York "Times" immediately beneath the tailgates of the transports carrying his troops. In this way the men could keep their feet dry.

His staff was mystified. Why the "Times"? Why not the New York "Daily News"? Patton was adamant; and one did not argue with the General. As five tons of old copies of the "Times" were being loaded, the General issued one of his greatest quotes to the assembled war correspondents:

"These are the Times that dry men's soles." 

Jeff:  I am going to kill myself.

Mutt:  Oh yeah, how?

Jeff:  With a poison pun.

Mutt:  Okay. See you tomorrow.

Jeff:  Yeah, see you.