Wednesday, December 16, 2015

It Is Really Hard To Be Creative. Really. I Mean it.



THIS IS KATHERINE TODAY.


I was at a work retirement party for my boss at his favorite Mexican place the other day and a colleague noticed I ordered pozole.  I like pozole.  She asked me what was in it and why I liked it and then she made a comment about my hair and then I braced myself for her next comment.

Sure enough, the financial leader of our educational department, drew back a little and said, "Katherine--you are just so creative."  At work it's a comment that often comes up when I share an idea that isn't a normal approach to the current educational trauma facing us.  Sometimes someone will smile and tell me that I think outside the box.  My ideas are generally not taken seriously.

There was a time comments about my creativity made me proud or happy or something different than they make me feel now.  The comments make me nervous now.  They make me worry that I am not working at being creative enough.  

There is a perception problem here.  From my side ordering pozole and having a noticeable haircut have nothing to do with my creativity.  I like pozole.  I think the financial leader of our department might like pozole if she tasted it too.  I like my haircut--obviously.  It doesn't mean I am creative though.  It just means that I am lazy.

The thing is--I am creative.  And it has nothing to do with my taste in food or what my haircut looks like.    I like that I am creative.  I spent years in graduate school learning to define creativity and to teach it and to nurture it in myself.  It was and it is hard work to be creative.  Part of being creative is having task commitment.  Task commitment is hard.  You have to keep trying to do stuff you suck at.  You have to create rituals for your creative outlets so they don't get sucked into the day-to-day vacuum of your life.  You have to learn content and skills and aim for production and try processes that scare you to death and take risks that people might decide you are creative.   It's just as hard, or maybe even harder, than filling an Excel spreadsheet.  Really.

That's the problem.  Others often see creativity differently.   Some see creativity as this little gift from the gods.   They think there are lucky creative souls who just go around creating stuff.  They think creativity is rather foolish and inefficient.  Being creative isn't cost effective.  Being creative is great if you create the company, but not so much if you are at the bottom of the heap.

Though I expend a huge amount of creative thought and energy coaching my teachers (I love that part of my job), most of my creative energy is devoted to knitting and these odd little drawings I do.  Both are mentally challenging, physically demanding, and spirtually mediative.  They keep me off the streets and a certain part of my soul sings better if I stick to my creative rituals.

Right now I am knitting happily and designing my next project.  Unless you know me pretty well, you might not realize that my knitting isn't the ugly Christmas sweater type.  Right now I am trying to "paint" by knitting lace.  I created a shawl meant to be an impressionistic painting of the opera house in Santa Fe that looked exactly what I imagined.  I'm pretty proud of that sucker.  It was hard work and took months of learning, and thinking, and knitting intricate stuff with intricate and tedious beading.  I did not just "whip it up."

Next up in the knitting world will be a Teton shawl filled with thunder and lightning.  It is my reaction to all the rain and storms we faced at Jenny Lake last summer.  I keep changing my mind about it's shape and lace design.  I wake up at night thinking about this.  There are hundreds of dollars in the yarn and beads.  There will be months and months of work.  I can't wait.

On the other hand, my little drawings are stalled right now.  They are simply ballpoint pen on small pieces of brochure weight matte paper.  Nothing fancy.  They are small haikus of my life or geometric efforts to settle my head.  They are what I do in the morning to become me again.

My little drawings are in the stuck stage.  I have spent close to two years with purposes in mind--an alphabet, numbers, the names of Samantha and Brooklyn--these drawings were for others and were going to be gifts someday.  For my soul, there were some drawings of Wyoming based on memories or photos.  For two years, for most mornings, I got up, drank coffee and drew for as long as my focus and time would allow.  And then, one day,  the alphabet and the numbers and the names were done.  And then there were no new purposes.  I stopped drawing.  I have been looking for new purposes ever since.

I am close to a new idea.  Jim helped by pointing me to a perfect poem.  We will see.  I have tried to draw this week.  That's a start.  I'm feeling a window opening.  It's just so hard to look for something to look at when I'm living in a visual world.  It is really hard to be creative.  Really.  I mean it.


Sunday, December 13, 2015

Mithridates, He Died Old

"There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt.
--I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old."

(The last stanza of "Terence This Is Stupid Stuff" by A.E. Housman)

This poem, like so many other things in my life, was introduced to me by Katherine when she gave me her copy of Sound and Sense to help me prepare for a poetry class.  It is still a little amazing my professors at Regis didn't introduce me to it as well.  I'm sure it would have made all the difference.

In a nutshell, Housman's poem gives us two speakers.  One is the title character who evidently writes downer poems.  The other is his bon vivant friend who asks him why, since he is obviously a good drinker and loves to eat and otherwise enjoy life, he insists on writing such depressing stuff.

Terence answers the guy in the second stanza (sorry I'm sounding like an English teacher) by suggesting that if it's fun and entertainment he's seeking there are better routes than poetry.  Terence himself has led a wild and crazy life as a youth.  He's looked "into the pewter pot/To see the world as the world's not."  And through all the drunken revelry of youth he details, he discovers that when sober the world "was the old world yet,/I was I, my things were wet. . ."  (one of my all time favorite lines of poetry).  Terence learned, as his questioner will no doubt learn, that the world basically sucks and the wise path is to prepare for it.  Thus the parable of Mithridates.

Let me explain.  You have to understand that I am a major worrier.  My worrying will probably end up being the most significant legacy I leave my three children.  Whenever I return home after some absence long like a vacation or short like a trip to the store, I can never turn the corner or crest the hill to my neighborhood without looking to see if my house has burned down or exploded in the interim.

If Kathie is late getting home from a day mentoring teachers in Castle Rock or some faraway place like that, I always panic and reconcile myself to the fact that her Infiniti has been hit by a truck somewhere on 85 (or whatever the number of that highway is).  I figure, like Mithridates, it pays to be prepared.

It follows that I would be something of a hypochondriac and I am.  I'm a lot like Yossarian who liked to make lists of diseases so he could worry about them.  My current focus is on Hodgkins Lymphoma.  The week before I was pretty convinced that this mole that is only visible when my hair is short was a sure sign that I had a brain tumor.  When my ears started ringing about a hundred years ago, I was afraid to tell anybody.  I figured if I didn't say anything about it the certain cancerous growth would just go away.

All this brings me to the point.  I had a physical two days ago.  Like always, I had to build up a little courage to make the appointment.  You know, when you're 67 you don't feel as good as you did when you were 30.  At least that's been my experience.  And the thing that's worrisome is that it's probably going to get worse rather than better.  I mean if things keep going at their current rate of decline,  I shudder to think how many times I will have to pee in a night.

Anyway, I made the appointment and showed up.  I was happy to note that Kaiser doesn't charge co-pays for Wellness appointments like physicals.  I sat in an almost deserted waiting room (I don't think Kaiser patients have discovered the office in Ken Caryl) and I didn't even have time to check Facebook before a nice nurse took my vitals and led me to the examination room.  Dr. Arroyo performed all the necessary tests (I'm especially happy to note that they no longer waste your time by giving you those awful prostrate tests) and assured me that I was the picture of health.  Go figure.  I've been paying through the nose for health insurance for almost fifty years and, just my luck, nothing has ever happened to me.

You know that scene in Hannah and Her Sisters where Woody Allen, convinced he has a brain tumor, goes to a doctor, takes all kinds of tests and finally hears that there is nothing wrong with him.  Where at first he slouched into the doctor's office, he now strides out joyfully, a smile on his face with "What a day this has been/What a rare mood I'm in. . ." lilting away in the background?  That was me walking out of Kaiser.  The sun was shining.  The temp was an invigorating 64.  I jumped in the car, put my elbow out the window and cruised home.

The problem is, I had this little cough when I woke up this morning.




Tuesday, October 27, 2015

A Platonic Refrain

Given the depressing nature of the comments trashing the very idea of democracy that I reacted to yesterday in this space, I decided to go back a few years to a post I made about PLATO AT THE GOOGLEPLEX, a terrific book expanding on the conceit that Plato is on a book tour for his latest,THE REPUBLIC, and in the course of the tour speaks to many iconic figures of our current culture.  The  great thing about the book is that, since it is Platonic as all get out, it does a beautiful job of explaining democracy.  I wish some of those sad thirty somethings who have despaired over the state of the world would consider the following thoughts I posted a couple of years ago:

But I want to talk mostly about laws and justice here.  Plato proposes a fascinating thought experiment.  Imagine you had in your possession a ring that would render you invisible whenever you wore it, reminiscent of Perseus’ helmet in CLASH OF THE TITANS (“I’m invisible.  Can’t you see that.”).  When invisible you could do anything you felt like with no fear of getting caught, no fear of retribution.  You could walk into a house and take whatever you wanted.  You could rifle money out of cash drawers.  Lurk around girls’ or boys’ locker rooms.  Steal cars.  Take free rides on airplanes.  Anything.  Would you take advantage of that situation?  Regardless of your answer, what percentage of the rest of us would?  Most everyone would answer, “Of course not.  Of course I wouldn’t take advantage.”  But do you think that’s an honest response?  If you had the ring long enough, wouldn’t you be tempted to use it for little stuff?  You’re short of cash and you’ve left your bank card at home.  Wouldn’t you slip on the ring and score that Twinkie, or that $100,000 bar?  Who’s it gonna hurt?  And wouldn’t that make the next transgression a little easier?  I mean, that’d just be human, right?

Plato goes off from that experiment to suggest that at the extreme end of the range of human desires lies the ring.  If heaven or hell were not hanging over our heads, we would all ultimately agree that being able to do anything we would like to do and get away with it would be ideal.  Of course, we would also agree that the worse that could happen to us is if someone else who was getting away with everything did anything to hurt us.  The space between those two conflicting desires is the realm of law and justice.  Since we have no choice but to live in a community (Plato thought that anyone who lived outside of society was by definition either a god or a monster), we have to cooperate to survive.  We have to have a social contract.  And to do that we would have consider questions like “What is the good life?” “What makes life matter?”

Even more than that, the good of the polis, the city-state, outweighs the good of the individual.  Anything else equals chaos.  Sparta honored collective glory.  Individual glory—a life that matters—was secondary to the glory of the state.  Athens gloried in the individual, but a life that mattered for the individual was still one that furthered the state.  The braid of beauty, truth, and goodness held this magical society together.  The pursuit of any part of this trilogy was the purest endeavor and one that could not help but further the good of the state.  All politicians in Plato’s utopia would be the poorest people in the state and forbade extravagance so as to guard against the inevitable corruption that comes from the combination of power and wealth.

In the ultimately unsatisfying chapter where Plato is interviewed by the Bill O’Reilly character (It is unsatisfying because you finally see that it is not possible to win an argument with a prating knave.), Plato asks Roy McCoy if he would rather refute someone, or be refuted?  Would he rather hurt another, or himself be hurt?  McCoy treats it like a trick question.  Of course, he would rather refute, would rather hurt than be hurt.  What kind of idiot wouldn’t?  Plato is just that kind of idiot.  He is the kind of idiot any polis needs to hold it together.  The USA of the first part of the twenty-first century is in short supply of such idiots and if we had them they would just queue up to be demolished by the pundits, the cable news hosts, the bought and paid for politicians.

Monday, October 26, 2015

Hillary doesn't know the meaning of FUBAR

House Republicans Do

There were these two incidents on Facebook recently that I need to sort out.  Let me quickly bring you up to speed on the first.  I posted Trey Gowdy's comment after his panel of angry, old males unsuccessfully attempted to scold Hillary for not agreeing with their narrative.  He said that there was nothing in her testimony that was new information.  I commented that the Republican response to this would be to start a new committee and then I wondered "how can anyone align themselves with this collection of vindictive nut cases?"  In other words, it was a typical political post for me.  It was a rhetorical question, but one of my friends replied "how can people align themselves with a lying dirt bag" like Hillary, or words to that effect.

My response read something like ". . . your comment is at once pedantic, groundless, and idiotic.  That's why I like having you as a Facebook friend, next to you I seem smart."

Okay, okay.  I admit that my remark was mean spirited, especially the part about him making me seem smart.  But there is a difference between his comment that Hillary is a "lying dirtbag" and my initial post wondering how people can align themselves with "vindictive nutcases."  If, for example, I walked into any gathering of people in the country and announced that I was getting sick and tired of all those "vindictive nutcases" on the Benghazi Committee, everyone in the room would know exactly what I was talking about.  They would have read the accounts of politicians pandering to their base, speaking for the microphones, looking for sound bites for next year's campaign.  The word nutcase and right wing Republican go together like milk and cookies, raw tuna and wasabi.  There is ample recorded evidence of their vindictiveness.

But to say that Secretary Clinton is a lying dirtbag is a different proposition.  It is, as I replied, groundless.  God knows there have been committees, eager journalists, and political rivals galore trying to pin something on her for as long as she has been in public life.  What?  Thirty plus years?  These inquiries, all of them, have been successful only at innuendo and weird conspiracy theories.  What did the latest batch of emails turn up?  The startling piece of information that Hillary didn't know the meaning of FUBAR.  I'll bet House Republicans do.  

I promised myself long ago that I would never let someone get away with a bullshit comment.  To say that Hillary Clinton is a lying dirtbag without a single shred of objective proof is bullshit, so I let the guy know it was bullshit and promptly unfriended him.  I'm  67 years old.  I don't need to waste my time with delusional people.  

The other incident is much more disturbing.  One of my Facebook friends made the following post:  "Please don't make comparisons of Obama to Stalin or Hitler or whatever.  Give it a rest."  Now there was a sentiment I could agree with, but then I regretfully read through the comments.  Let me share a few.

-"Why not?  They're all Rothschild's puppets." 
This one gave me pause.  I can only assume the writer is referring to the Jewish banking family and is therefore implying that all these politicians were bought and paid for, but I'm having a hard time seeing the Rothschilds giving Hitler much support, or vice versa.  Maybe the writer is being metaphorical.  Let's hope.

-"I have 0 interest in a system that says my rights don't exist simply because I'm outnumbered."
My first reaction is that this guy must have studied with some of the more right wing members of Green Mountain's Social Studies department.  Does this person have even an inkling of how our government works?  Last time I checked, the founding fathers went to great lengths enumerating that commenter's rights.  

-"I don't care what religion you follow or believe in, if anything.  These people in power are evil and not worth being considered leaders."
Words fail me.

-"I personally don't need a leader."
Maybe.  But you do need someone to teach you (personally) how to write.

-"Democracy is a joke.  3 wolves and one sheep vote on what is for dinner.  The sheep must die because it is for the greater good?"
This person must also be the product of a questionable social studies curriculum.  Someone should tell him that wolves and sheep can't vote.  

Let's get serious.  Don't these comments make you overwhelmingly sad?  I have smart Facebook friends.  Successful.  Family people.  Well-educated.  But the cynicism is oppressive isn't it?  

I wish I could end on a nicer note.









Thursday, October 8, 2015

Being Ben BenFranklin


This morning it is Katherine--NOT JIM.  Don't be confused.  I know it's hard to tell us apart.

I spend a lot of time lately trying to figure out who I am and what I need to do to feed my wee soul.  It is one of the things I have in common with Stephen Colbert.  He keeps having installments in a continuing bit called "Who is Me?"  He took a lie detector test on himself the last time.

It's hard not to lie to yourself.  My lies are kind of cute though.  I like the one I tell myself that I'm aging in something akin to Meryl Streep.  I used to think I was doing as well as Jane Fonda (leave out her hair), but she's not looking so good these days.  Mostly my lies to myself feed my vanity or rationalize away shopping.  My favorite lie here is about the practicality of buying something for myself--it just has to be cheaper than seeing some sort of therapist.

I won't even begin to talk about the lies I tell to myself about needing to purchase yarn.  Only a knitter could understand.  I'm amazed I knit, look at yarn websites online as though they were porn, and am contemplating joining my knitting friends for a fun-filled weekend of knitting classes in Ft. Collins next spring.  How did I turn into a knitter?  Anyway,  I'm working on a lie about needing to walk the CSU campus so I can go to a knitting fest.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Part of self-awareness, for me at least, is self-improvement.  Every time I take a good long look at myself, I discover there are these little things that make me not like myself as much as I would like to like myself.  I thrive on liking myself.  I hardly ever get into this mood and mode without going on some kind of diet and work-out reform.  It almost always coincides with a five pound weight loss.  It works out.  I work on the weight while I figure out what I really want to work on.  I keep using the word "work" intentionally.  This self-improvement shit is hard work.  I'm old.  I know this.

Part of this self improvement is also always a return to my life as a Junior Language Arts teacher.  It was one of many teaching assignments, but this one was a challenge.  The class covered the entire history of American Literature (we nicknamed the book BIG RED and it weighed a ton) and a virtual plethora of writing and speaking challenges.  It was tough to say if the kids liked reading the Iroquois Constitution, writing the multi-genre research paper, or giving the required speech the most.  I know the Horror Unit (God I hate the word "unit"--it is the most confining word in education) was a hit.  We watched PSYCHO (permission slips included).

Peter Herrold and I taught the class together.  We created together.  We often put our classes together for presentations.  We created quizzes and tests that were rife with really funny jokes.  Peter's jokes were the best.  I really liked our assessments.  It was working with Peter and our attempt to make Junior Lang Arts a vital and interesting class that made me fall in love with Ben Franklin and his quest for self-improvement.

BIG RED had a large chunk of stuff to read about the Revolutionary Period of our country.  You may have all sorts of patriotic feelings about Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, John and Abigail Adams, George Washington and any number of other tried and true patriots, but I want to tell you they are a bitch for a high school junior to just decode much lest get all excited about.  Motivation is tricky here.  That's where Ben Franklin comes into this.

Ben, though not a piece of cake to read, at least is readable and he has a really cool sense of humor about himself.  We had a chunk of his Autobiography in the book and a play he wrote about his battle with gout and something else that I just don't remember right now.  The play was a real kick.  Peter would dress up as Ben (he looked great--really) and I played Lady Gout who attacked him with the gout.  The kids liked it.  They laughed at the right parts and watching Peter standing there with a loaf of bread under his arm to show his gluttony.  They were no doubt relieved they didn't have to read the thing as homework as well.  Anyway, after our performance, we launched into the idea of self-improvement and the part of Ben's Autobiography that was in the book that outlined his lovely, but failed attempt to become a better guy.

I re-read that sucker every year I taught that class.  I believe in Ben's self-improvement system.  It beats the heck out of anything I've seen on the Oprah show.   Just like Ben, however,  I fail at the system.  I think that's what I like about Ben's self-improvement system the best.  It's okay to fail.

Ben's idea was that you identify the virtues you wish to achieve and attack them one at a time.  You try each and every day to work on a virtue and put a dot on a calendar each day you make it through having upheld the virtue.  When you got a fortnight of dots in a row, you were ready to move to the next virtue.   I don't really remember the number of days you needed to get dots in a row, but I've always wanted to use the word "fortnight" in a sentence and this seemed like a good time.  What can I say?  It's not like the masses are reading this.  You get a lot of dots in a row and you move on.

I remember some of his virtues.  Frugality is one.  I hate frugality.  It's low on my list.  I know it's important, but it just looks like failure to me.  I usually start with something that has hope of success. That's why I start with the weight thing.  It's concrete and I have a history of success.  Frugality...I can't even make it through a week.

Last year I observed a teacher at The Ben Franklin Academy and they emphasized one of his virtues each month.  I hated who picked them.  December was frugality.  How can you do frugality with Christmas on the horizon?

I don't remember all of Ben's virtues.   The virtues weren't important.  The process was.  Thank you, but I have my own demons.

I have kind of Zen goals and creativity goals and figuring-out-who-I-am goals and I am, of course, in the process of trying to lose about five pounds.  The problem here connects with one of my Zen goals.  The goal I am working on here is DOING ONE THING AT A TIME.  Another goal, PUTTING SPACE BETWEEN THE THINGS YOU DO, is pretty much in place because it has always been in part of my nature.  I like hanging out between activities as much as I like the activities.  My next goal is to focus in on the activity that goes before the space.  I'm sucking at it.

Doing one thing at a time is hard.  I am struggling right now.  There is a football show on in the background that would normally be off, but I am taking care of Janet Simmons' Fantasy team and she has Andrew Luck and I am semi-trying to decide if I play Luck or Alex Smith for her.  I am a terrible Fantasy player.  The responsibility of this sits heavy on my heart.  I can't even type a post about doing one thing at a time without multi-tasking.

The other hard thing about doing one thing at a time is that another Zen goal is jumping into my life and I haven't even been working on it.  Or I didn't think I was.  It's about gratitude.  I keep bumping into gratitude and it's on my Zen list.  It wasn't near as high on my list as doing things one at a time, but it's looking like it might just disappear by the wee act of simply paying attention.

In the last few days I have found myself grateful for the following:
1.  The Pope.
2.  The Broncos Defense.
3.  Cowboy boot weather.
4.  Reading stories to Willa before her nap yesterday.  Gramps usually does that.
5.  Making meatloaf with Willa before Franny picked her up to take her home.
6.  That my jeans zipped.
7.  Jim made me poached eggs last night.
8.  Chris's family gets to go to NYC next week.
9.  Franny's new house is almost done; it is so amazing.
10.  Going to bed and waking up with Jim each morning.
11.  Living a life that does NOT involve dressing up as Lady Gout anymore.

That's enough.  I am going to stop writing and really give the Andrew Luck decision some real focus. It is nice to feel like famous people.  I like thinking I have things in common with Stephen Colbert and Ben Franklin.  Ben, like me, always improved and moved through virtues, but he back-slid with style and forgave himself with wine.  Me too.



Monday, October 5, 2015

A Note About Frank

We have been going to the YMCA at Mineral and Broadway for the past 18 years, although our attendance has been sporadic of late.  During all of those years a great old guy named Frank has been a constant.  He passes out towels and locker keys in the morning.  More often than not we locker next to one another.  He always has a friendly word for every one in his thin, breathy little voice and he has a twinkly sense of humor.  He's the kind of guy who understands and appreciates all the little ironies that fill a big place with lots of employees and lots of members.

We hadn't been to the Y for the past two weeks for a variety of lame reasons, so when we walked in this morning we were devastated to hear that Frank had died of pneumonia just a few days previous.  There was a sign on the check-in desk letting us know that there would be a small reception for Frank's family and friends the day after tomorrow.

I didn't know Frank except to joke around with him every morning.  I didn't even know his last name.  Still don't.  But I did admire him, and not just because he was some nice old guy with a locker next to mine.

For all those years we have been going to the Y, Frank never missed a morning work out.  There he was walking around the track, alternating laps between a straight forward stride and then once around backwards and then once around doing those scissor things that the aerobics instructors make their charges do in order to drum up business for osteopaths.  Frank wasn't fast, but he was determined.

About ten years ago, just when Kathie and I were beginning retirement, Frank was stretching by hoisting one leg up on the track railing and then leaning forward to touch his toes.  He promptly shattered a bone in his leg.  We all worried.  We all clucked that someone of Frank's age shouldn't be doing things like that.  On my part, I decided never to hoist my leg up on a railing and it is a decision that has been working for me ever since.

In a surprisingly short time, Frank was back at the Y walking with his various gaits around the track.  He was still stretching, but being a little more careful, and until the day he died he was constantly at it.  Here was a guy determined to live for ever or die in the attempt.

His passing has given Kathie and me renewed determination to follow suit.  I figure with a combination of daily work outs, healthy food, and lots and lots of sex we have a real shot at it.

Katherine and I miss Frank and mourn his passing.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

"Wouldn't It Be Nice"

About twenty years ago, Kathie and I were invited by Phil Gonring to be his guests at a gala dinner for Denver's movers and shakers honoring important teachers out of their pasts.  We met Phil at the old Hilton ballroom and sat at a table with, among others, Jared Polis, who at that time was just a fabulously wealthy internet entrepreneur beginning to get interested in politics, education in particular.  I remember Katherine tried to hit him up for a grant, but to no avail.

It was a lovely event.  It was unlike most events I've been to honoring teachers.  We didn't have to walk through a line and put slices of pizza on our paper plates, and instead of a giant transparent tank of punch in shades of pink, we were served wine and could even go up to a bar and get a drink.  To top it all off, there wasn't a power point projector anywhere in sight and no butcher paper.  Bill Cosby spoke instead.

We were looking forward to The Coz, but his speech was the only disappointment of the night.  He got up on that stage and commenced to commiserate with all of the noble educators gathered there.  He praised us for our determination to fight for the kids in the face of antediluvian authorities who are systematically bent on destroying public education.  He praised us for performing in appalling conditions, in over-crowded classrooms, and in buildings falling apart for lack of care.

As he was talking, it slowly dawned on all of us that this man had no idea what he was talking about.  His descriptions of public schools, dysfunctional buildings, and rampaging kids was right out of BLACK BOARD JUNGLE, maybe TO SIR WITH LOVE, but certainly nothing that any of us in that room had experienced.  Instead of addressing the very real issues confronting education, Cosby just reacted to his Hollywood generated conception of schools.  He relied on speaking points that missed the mark time and time again.  I almost felt sorry for him when he clearly couldn't understand why he wasn't killing.  Judging by recent developments in Cosby's life, you think he would have learned to stop feeding lines and assorted crap to his victims.

He thought if he fed off our anger about education he would be a success.  The thing was that we really weren't very angry.  We were well fed, a little high, and in the company of our favorite people, star students.

I've been taping Colbert and watching each morning.  I have heard him talk to Jeb Bush, Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump.  And after each conversation I thought of Bill Cosby telling us what he thought we wanted to hear on that night twenty years ago.

I will start out by saying they all seemed like nice people, even Trump.  Jeb and Ted seemed very uncomfortable, as if their staffs had insisted they appear against their wishes.  Joe seemed exactly like Joe.  He was funny, wore his heart on his sleeve and always said exactly what he meant.  Poor guy.  That's why he hasn't a prayer of getting the nomination.  Trump was witty, with a confidence bred of billions of dollars, and he did a nice job of spelling out his fantasy of a 2000 mile wall paid for by Mexico.  Elizabeth Warren was an emotional basket case who actually left Colbert a little embarrassed and completely speechless.

That brings me to Bernie.   I agree with almost everything he says, just not the way he says it.  Quite frankly, I don't see that much difference between his progressive rage and the conservative recalcitrance he decries.

A recent Daily Beast article explains that Bernie has a solid lead over Hillary among college types.  To offer evidence, they followed Bernie to one of his raucous campus events and interviewed a handful of attendees, asking them to explain Bernie's appeal.  What follows is a list of paraphrased quotes.

-I like Bernie's message on the environment and inequality.
-He's not making compromises in his vision
-Wants 12 weeks medical leave
-Wants to raise the minimum wage to $15/hour
-Wants to expand Social Security
-Wants to increase funding for jobs, education, etc.
-Wants to force (!) publicly funded elections by insisting (!!) any Supreme Court nominee pledge (!!!) to undo Citizens United
-Wants to raise taxes on the top tenth of the top one per cent.

Favorite Bernie quote among the audience:  "While they have the money and the power, we have something they don't have.  We have the people."

I agree with almost everything, but I think messages get lost when they are shouted at you.  Now, I believe Bernie's shouting is legitimate rage.  I feel it.  Most people I know feel it.  But it's still shouting and the message gets lost.  Sometimes, like in the case of the Republican field, a candidate shouts because he has no message and he wants his audience to simply feel the rage.  Let's hope they come to their senses and realize their method destroys the country, and it doesn't do the Republican party any good to boot.

I've been working on "Wouldn't It Be Nice" by the Beach Boys.  It think it is the quintessential rock song and should be Bernie's campaign anthem.  But he needs to be careful.  There are a couple of chords in the verse that are nearly impossible to play.


Saturday, September 26, 2015

I Know My Religious Shit

There are these terrific people from St. Louis, Terry and Ellen, who stay a week at Jenny during our stay.  They've been going there longer than we have and they always bring Father Robert (I'm pretty sure that is his first name), a long time family friend, with them and put him up in his own cabin.  If you know the rates at Jenny Lake Lodge, you will agree with me that Terry and Ellen are building up big time points in their heavenly bank account with their largesse.

Terry usually shows up in the lodge around six in the morning to pick up some coffee for his group and we sit for a moment by the fire and visit about yesterday's golf game and today's hike.  My favorite chat this past summer happened the day after Pope Frances compared the excesses of capitalism to the dung of the devil.  Trust me, the vast majority of the guests at Jenny Lake Lodge are raging capitalists or they couldn't afford to be there, so it was clear that Terry was not pleased that the Vicar of Christ had basically condemned his life style (Actually, he only condemned capitalism's "excesses", not the thing itself.).

"Ya know, Christ hung out with rich people too," Terry said with confidence.

"That's right," I agreed, "like when he was kicking them out of the temple or comparing their chances of heaven to camels getting through needle eyes."  I didn't really say that.  I try really hard to refrain from news and politics of any description when I'm in the Tetons, but it took all my Christian charity to refrain.

I can't say I'm surprised by the conservative reaction to Pope Frances.  Rick Santorum must be going crazy.  Bill O'Reilly as well.  All those folks who want to defund Planned Parenthood, build a wall, and deport children simultaneously must be pissed.  The Pope evidently doesn't agree with them.  He even has suggested the possibility of forgiving abortions.  Has the whole world gone mad?

I am also not in the least surprised by the Pope's pronouncements.  I am the product of a Catholic boyhood.  The sacristy at Our Lady of the Mountain in Estes Park was my second home.  I was trained by Jesuits at Regis (You ever notice how didn't just go to a Jesuit school, you get trained by one?).  I hung out with Fathers Boyle and Maginnis at Ernie's at 44th and Federal.  Tom Steele baptized by first child.  So Pope Frances is what I would have expected of a Jesuit.

All the Jesuits I've known (lots) share some commonalities.  They are, to a man, remarkably erudite.  They are articulate.  They care a lot more about Aquinas and Augustin than they do about passing judgement on others.  In their theology classrooms, God was almost an afterthought.  They understood that there are precious few clear cut moral choices.  They drank great scotch and told ribald stories into the late hours of the night.  They were also deeply spiritual.  They knew the theology.  They practiced what they preached.

Frances is just reminding us who Christ really was.  What he really taught.  Contrary to what they would have you believe, He was not a capitalist.  Nor was he a socialist.  He was a humanist; that's what transubstantiation is all about.  At least that is the understanding I took away from 27 hours of theology and one incredibly gruesome reading of SUMMA TEOLOGICA.  He is saying all these great things, these seemingly liberal things, but if I know my Jesuits there is nothing liberal about them.  He's just speaking truth.

There was this great moment on Colbert's tribute to the Pope show the other night.  When Colbert asked Andrew Sullivan (one of my heroes) how difficult it was to reconcile his homosexuality with his Catholicism, Sullivan responded that it was his Catholicism that forced him to "come out."  Sullivan's Catholicism, he said, trained him to be honest, to be a truth teller, and to have courage.

I am not a practicing Catholic.  Far from it.  But I do know my religious shit.  I have Jesuits to thank for that.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Butterflies Get Sick And Die


Ursula is dead.

Kathie informed me about an hour ago and I just this minute walked out to the back yard to confirm her diagnosis.

There she was in the large planter base (or whatever you call the plate things that pots drain into) covered with the grass Willa and Jaydee fed her last Thursday, her larval stage a curled up, withered, and blackened husk of what it was just four days ago.

Her existence was in question from the moment Willa found her crawling toward The Girl Garden in the back yard, Jaydee prompting her along with a blue Tonka mini pick-up.  Willa quickly bent down to show her sister how to pet the little crawly thing and she was really gentle with the beast until it slithered onto the palm of her hand.  It was only a little flinch, but the would be butterfly was dashed to the ground.

I transferred the creature to the plant thing in hopes of prolonging her life long enough for Willa and Jaydee  to get a good fix of Nature and gathered them around to look at it as though in a frame.  Willa dubbed her Ursula and the two girls spent a good fifteen minutes gathering grasses from around the yard to put in Ursula's new home.

During dinner later on, we all took turns looking in on Ursula.  She didn't move much and when she did it was usually to flop on her back, little feet wiggling in the air.  Jaydee ignored her, moving on to other things.  Willa was determined to prod her back to a more lively state. Ken was skeptical.  I, having been to a butterfly farm in Belize where the guide assured us over and over that butterflies--all of them--get sick and die, was more resigned to Ursula's fate and poured myself another sangria.

The problem is I pick Willa up at school today and take her to our house to hang out until one or both of her parents picks her up and I don't know what I should do about Ursula.  Katherine is in favor of tossing Ursula into the bushes, betting that Willa will never notice.

I am more apt to take the Jack Nicholson approach to this situation:  "While transferring the insect out of the planter, Colonel Martenson, is expedient and efficient, it isn't exactly the American Way!"

No, I think this might be a great moment to teach Willa (Jaydee might be a little too young for the lesson to really sink in) about the ephemeral nature of life.

"Gramps, where's Ursula?  What happened to Ursula?"

"Ursula's dead.  She got all black and dried up and I threw her in the bushes."

You don't want to pull any punches when you're teaching kids a lesson.  Just lay it out for them.  But be compassionate.  You'll notice I'm not going to opt for the make-her-feel-so-guilty-she'll-crumple approach.

"Gramps, what happened to Ursula?"

"You kept touching her and she died."  

A little harsh you think?  Hey, it's a tough world out there.




Saturday, August 15, 2015

"I Walking"--Lessons in Living in the Moment from Jaydee & Santa Fe



Good Morning.  It is Katherine today.

We just returned from Santa Fe.  I learned so much.  Part of the learning process was the six hours of riding in the car on the return trip.  Jim did the driving.  I just rode along and thought about stuff.  This time I made shawls in my head and painted our house in my head and moved paintings from various walls to other walls in my head.  I kept trying to look at the scenery and pay attention to where I was, but my mind kept jumping hither and thither.

 This ride I found myself searching for ways to keep myself in some sort of Zen life "in the moment."  Pretty ironic.  You can't analyze living in the moment.  You just kind of do it.   I still analyzed it anyway while endless New Mexican plains rolled by.

I figured out that Jaydee is a pretty nifty teacher for living in the moment.  All I have to do is keep a one year old around all the time.  Not happening.  The kind of awareness Jaydee uses and takes is exhausting.  That's insight number one.  Living in the moment wears you out.

Jaydee forces me to live in the moment simply because of her age and language abilities and her total lack of concern about her physical being.  Jaydee has no auxiliary verbs.  She talks up a storm in two word sentences that point the way to seeing the world without future or past.  "I scary."  "I running."  "I excited."  "I funny."  "I sorry."  I could go on and on.  She has lots of these sentences and each is executed exactly at a perfect point in time and simply tells you what she feels or what she is doing right at that very moment.

I love  it when she says, "I funny!" the most.  She tells numbers of jokes.  One of Jaydee's favorites involves offering a tidbit of food or a toy to someone she loves and then withdrawing the tidbit with a simultaneous giggle of satisfaction at having pulled off a very funny joke.  Then she says, "I funny."  There is no judgment or concern.  Jaydee is simply reporting the truth.  "I funny."  She is right.  She is funny.  She is truly one of the funniest people I know.

Mostly Jaydee just lives.  She does stuff and reports it and feels stuff and reports it and she moves on.  It's a way of life I've been trying to figure out for most of my life.   That's lesson number two.  I need to report my life and not label my life.  "I funny" can work for me too.

I can capture that same in-the-moment feeling Jaydee models sometimes when I leave home.  When I am away from home, life is newer.  Doing the laundry is rarely new.  Trying to revel in the moment when I'm moving a load of towels from the washer to the dryer is something for a Zen prince--I just can't do it.  Paying attention to a hail storm hitting you sideways as it blows in from a Teton canyon is easy.   Picking out the correct setting on the dryer--not so much.

That's lesson number three.  Living in the moment is easy when the moment is new.

The trip to Santa Fe was a real in-the-moment experience because is was new.  This time Santa Fe kept me awake to reality because walking there became very Jaydee-like and I kept saying "I walking" over all the uneven surfaces.  And then there was the opera.  I don't know how anyone can go to a really fine opera and not be overwhelmed by the moment.

None of the sidewalks or floors are even and flat in Santa Fe and pretty soon "I walking" was my mantra.  Walking from place to place was a balancing act in Santa Fe.  Really.  The streets are made of concrete or bricks, but are not flat.  The wooden floor in our hotel room was uneven.  It rained one day and after the rain, the sidewalks were pocked with water puddles where tree roots or haphazard construction created dimples and dips.  On the stairs to the opera, the rain moved east to west on the stairs and puddled on one edge.  No parking lot, street or sidewalk was even.  There were a few moments walking the Plaza when my mind drifted and I inevitably tripped.  Living in the moment while walking is a real safety necessity in Santa Fe.

The opera is a very in-the-moment experience as well.   The theater itself is gorgeous and worth just looking at.  When the opera begins, there is just so much going on.  The orchestra conductor is a joy by himself.  The fellow who conducted Rigoletto had a left arm that just made me happy whenever he flourished it around.  Then there are costumes and dance and the voices and the music and the set and the actual content of the story.  You hear words and music flow by and you read the script as it flows by on a small screen in front of your seat.  It takes an ability to let your right brain relax and capture the whole aesthetic experience while your left brain makes some attempt to make sense of the experience and classify it in some appropriate spot in your mind.  There is so much that it makes your head explode with awareness.   There is so much that is new that it is impossible to miss the moment.

We spent three days in Santa Fe toddling along the uneven sidewalks and watching opera.  When we returned home, we spent a day watching Willa and Jaydee and I'm full to the brim with lessons about staying in the moment.   At the same time,  the mundane chores of my life are piled high in front of me.  I need to tackle them with joy.  I want to tackle them with joy.

We will see.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

Senescence in Santa Fe

J-

The more I travel, the more I realize the ravages of aging.  For example, this was the second four or five hundred mile drive that did me in.  That never used to happen.  K and I could drive straight through to Santa Fe, or Jackson, or Sundance and hop out of the car, get a few drinks at the nearest friendly bar, hang out a bit, and then have a big dinner with a bottle of wine that night.  The next morning?  Nothing.  No big deal.  We'd go off on a hike or something.

But when we drove to Jackson Hole last month, I had to excuse myself from our dinner with David half way through the first course and I didn't fully recover till lunch two days later.  Of course, the bottle of Veuve Cliquot on the porch when we first arrived (a tradition we are not willing to forsake) and the Margarita I had in the lodge before dinner were probably contributing factors.

And then there's these last few days.  We drove to Santa Fe, hydrated constantly, stopped for small bites now and then, and peed at every opportunity.  In other words, all things were pretty much normal.  But then we got to La Posada de Santa Fe and things changed.  We had a couple of Margaritas (they were so good we had to order seconds) at the Staab House, did a little shopping on our way to the Cantina at Coyote Cafe, had some killer apps and, yes, another drink or two.  By the time we got back to the room it was early evening, we hit the sack, exhausted, both to wake sporadically through the night to vomit that day's intake.

And the next day I was on the verge of nausea all the way till the opening chords of RIGOLETTO.

RIGOLETTO, that brings me to the real topic of this post.  The opera was wonderful, but that's not what I want to talk about.  When we got back to the room and I took off my coat, I discovered that my iPhone was missing.  I instantly knew how it happened.  Gilda finally died after a few closing scales, the cast bowed, I stood up, and the lights rose.  Since, the walk back to the car promised to be chilly and damp, I took off my jacket and draped it over the back of my chair so I could put my hoodie on underneath.  The jacket promptly fell off my chair and I, with people impatient to get past, picked it up and threw it on in a hurry.  Unfortunately, my phone was in my inside pocket.  It evidently fell out and was currently resting under seat 103 in the second row of the balcony.

My first reaction was typical, I am told, of me:  "Oh shit, I lost my phone.  Oh well, fuck it."  That reaction never fails to infuriate, or at least frustrate, my long suffering spouse.  She, hopeless idealist that she is, has faith that a person, any person, encountering a lost iPhone would certainly turn it in to lost and found.  Make an effort at least.  In the spirit of full disclosure, her optimism is buoyed by the fact that my phone is so old nobody would want it.

She called the opera, told our (my) plight to some guy in lost and found and let him know that we would be back for that evening's performance of SALOME to see if it had been found.

My second reaction is always a little like Holden Caulfield's would be in a similar situation:  "I guess I just don't care that much about losing my phone.  It's not like anyone ever calls me . . ."

But I do have to admit, I was a little shaken by the idea that some creep could find my phone and start taking credit for my Lumosity scores.

Anyway, Kathie came to the rescue and saved me from my despairing nature.  And then when we got to the opera that night, we checked at the lost and found and there it was at the top of the drawer littered with more phones, a few sets of keys and a couple of jackets.

We walked back to the little food kiosk outside the main gates and I was floating on the largesse of human nature that Katherine always takes for granted, when I discovered that I had lost my debit card!  But again, I knew right where I lost it.  We had lunch at The Inn of the Anasazi just like a couple of boulevardiers because it was the first time our stomachs felt like they could handle it.  I had a great time and evidently left my card behind along with the bill.

My reaction was different this time.  More hopeful.  But when I told Katherine about my second losing incident in as many days, it was her response that ultimately gave me pause:  "Don't worry about it," she assured me.  "I should have been watching you more carefully."

"WATCH ME MORE CAREFULLY?!  Am I really that far along into my dotage?"  I didn't really say that, but I was a thinking it.

As we walked to our seats, I took umbrage in all the old men surrounding me who could barely make it to their seats and I realized it could be worse.  I'll bet their wives carry their check cards for them just in case and don't allow phones.

Friday, August 7, 2015

A Traveling Macho Freak Show

I have a lot of male issues.  I've probably mentioned that before.  About a year ago I admitted I was prejudiced against white males in my age group, especially ones wearing ill-fitting baseball hats. Whenever I see a group of them on the street, I cross over to the other side and avoid eye contact.

That's one of the reasons I don't go to workout as early as I used to.  I'm trying to avoid the gathering of bombastic conservative males who tend to congregate at ridiculously early hours at the Y, standing belly to belly, shaking their collective heads about the latest dreadful thing Fox has told them is looming over this exceptional country of ours.

I've always been more comfortable with females.  I was raised by females (grandmother, mother, aunt, two big sisters, and one absent father), so I suppose that explains it.  There are many "male" things that I just don't get.

I don't choke up when Kevin Costner plays catch with his father at the end of FIELD OF DREAMS.

I don't like special effects debauches like MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.  I'd rather watch THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA at home.

The one time I was involved in one of those stereotypical weekly poker nights with the guys, I stopped showing up after the second night.  It was boring and smoky and the table was sticky.

In RIO BRAVO, in any John Wayne movie, when he hits the guy in the bar with his rifle because he lied, I am appalled and wonder why someone doesn't lock him up.

When Tommy Lee Jones says "I don't bargain" to his newly deafened underling in THE FUGITIVE, I don't get some kind of macho thrill.  I can't help but think the guy is a psychopath.

I can't sustain a conversation about football, basketball, investment opportunities, drywalling, fishing, or hunting longer than five minutes.  I'm always amazed at how long men my age can talk to each other about meaningless bullshit.

I don't like competition.  My goal in a tennis match, for instance, is to keep the ball in play as long as possible.  Tennis, for K and I, is an aerobic activity pure and simple.  I don't even know why we bother to keep score.

I hate seeing couples at a restaurant where the men talk to each other about whatever it is that men talk about (see two items above) and the women talk about women stuff.  I think there should only be one conversation per table and it should include everyone.  Of course, part of the reason I say that is that I can't hear well enough to carry on a dueling conversation.

I'm saying all this because it informs my feelings about the upcoming (never ending) political season.  Republicans, if they are true to form, are going to nominate whoever is the TOUGHEST.  Toughest on immigrants.  Toughest on entitlements and welfare queens.  Toughest on Iran.  Republicans are going to nominate whichever member of their traveling macho freak show comes closest to saying "I don't bargain."

And the hell of it is that the whole country seems to be moving in that direction.  According to polls, Americans are against the Iran deal by two to one!  Why is that?  Is it because it is easier to latch on to fear mongering sound bites and calls to get tough than it is to pick up on all the nuances of Kerry's accomplishment?

I guess that's my male issue in a nutshell.  It just seems apparent to me that the get-tough-we-don't-bargain stance is one that requires no brains, only balls.  Unfortunately, all the evidence suggests the electorate prefers the latter.

Friday, July 24, 2015

We Are Art Collectors. Go Figure.


Today this is Katherine.  

I'm sitting here looking at one of our barns.  This is The Old Woman Barn (Richard Harrington) and it holds down the fort in our TV room/knitting den.  I look at this barn a lot.  This barn has become home for me.  I put the photo of The Old Woman Barn up before I began so I could look at it while I typed.  It's funny--the walls of our house feel more like home than the actual structure does.  I'm not sure if this is good or bad.

Jim and I have entered our "art" period.  It seems to be following our "food" period.  Fortunately, we didn't have to stop eating or cooking as we moved into our "art" period.  The expense of the "food" period, however, did not diminish.  And the expense of the "travel" period has not diminished as we moved from there to the "food" period.  I am discovering our interests mount up.  I suspect I am not the first person to figure this out.  Our interests increase beyond the increases in our income. This sucks.  

In addition to the expenses of our interests, we just purchased a roof.  It is brown.  The old roof was just old and insurance doesn't cover "old" when it comes to a roof.  It is no fun buying a roof.  Again, our new roof is brown.  That's all I have to say about our new roof.

I have no interest in this new roof and that disturbs me.  I'm at a place where I'd happily trade the roof for a really fine painting.  I think this might be sick and twisted.  

This disturbing desire to have real live paintings has many strong roots, but for now I'm just thinking about how our "art" period connects to Jenny Lake Lodge and the Tetons.  There are other contributors (Santa Fe, Barbara Hauben, my grandmother, and Katie Hoffman come to mind at the moment), but I'd have to say that we buy barns and cowboys (so far) in Jackson because of a series of happy hazards that began at Jenny Lake Lodge.  We are having an "art" period because we return to this boutiquey-cabiny-foodie lodge in the Tetons year after year.  It's there we decided we like being surrounded by art because we ate in a dining room dripping in paintings and there that we met David Hezlep who led us to the Jackson Wildlife Museum and The RARE Gallery in Jackson.  

The dining room at Jenny Lake Lodge is filled with art.  It is all "plein-air" art.  It's the sort of thing where artists set up their easels at spots conveniently located in front of the Tetons and then they paint the mountains they see and try to capture the amazing way these mountains catch the amazing light.  Jim Wilcox is the Jackson big name in this style and we can't afford anything he does.  That's just fine with us.  Jim and I learned early on while having incredible dinners at Jenny, surrounded by "plein-air" Teton landscapes (many done by Wilcox himself), that, well, we didn't ever want to own any of it.  We just aren't "plein-air" kinds of folks.   

We remember a disillusioning moment over the "plein-air" style when some folks we know from DC discovered Wilcox often added or subtracted from a "real" setting to create better balance in a painting.  They own a Wilcox and one of their happy things was traipsing all over the park looking for the exact spot their painting had been created.  A trip to the Wilcox Gallery and meeting Wilcox's son taught the couple the horrible truth and they realized their painting might not exist anywhere for sure.  I'm not sure they have recovered yet.  

We are English teachers.  We suspend our disbeliefs easily.   We don't tie art appreciation to any belief in reality as we know it.  Our barns are, we've learned, inspired by real live barns.  We know we would never ever recognize one of the "real" barns in the flesh.  None of them are in Wyoming.  We're okay with that.  

Part of having an "art" period is knowing what you like and what you don't like.  The Jenny dining room taught us that we like being surrounded by art and that we don't like the "plein-air" Teton paintings.  That's a lot I think.

We've spent many hours in the Jenny dining room with our friend David discussing those Teton landscapes draped on the walls everywhere.  The dining room wouldn't be right without these landscapes.  It's amazing how you can learn to love and appreciate things you don't want to own.  Wanting to own something doesn't have near the aesthetic distance, but it is amazingly satisfying.  

Anyway,  David introduced us to the Jackson Wildlife Museum and The RARE Gallery.   Ritualistically, we visit these places when it rains or we want to rest from all the hiking and kayaking we do.  We love seeing new shows each year at the JWM.  This year a line of huge masks honoring the Chinese Zodiac critters lined the walkway from the parking area to the museum itself.  Artist Ai Weiwei created the masks.  They are wondrous.  



David also taught us how to bring art to the Jenny lobby.  He always bought the coffee table books at the JWM about the shows he saw while visiting Jenny and he gifted them to the lodge.  Those books became the beginning piece of our nightly pre-dining ritual--we have a drink by the fire in the lobby and thumb through one of the "art" books in the bookcase.  We have learned about art and artists this way (Weiwei this year) and once we discovered a photograph of my grandmother in an art class taught by William Merritt Chase in a book devoted to his work.  

We now follow David's lead and gift books to the lodge as well.  It makes us happy when we see others thumbing through them in a communal sort of way while they enjoy the wait for dinner.  Sometimes a classical guitarist plays in the background.  Jenny just drips in art in all sorts of ways.

David also introduced us to The RARE Gallery in Jackson.  It is different than the other Jackson Galleries.  It is more contemporary and more Eastern and more Western and more like a wonderland of things we would love to own.  The walls are not cluttered.  You can see individual works of art.  This is good.

We have visited for many years and were always welcomed by the owner.  She chooses the works based on connections with the artists.  Her knowledge of their crafts and inspirations and aspirations make gallery viewing a new experience.  We just loved going to the gallery.  She never tried to sell us anything.  She taught us about the artists the gallery loves.  It was during this time that we fell in love with the Harrington barns.  We didn't mean to do it.  Really. 

Our story with RARE continued when Chris gave Jim the first Harrington barn.  Jim has told this story in another post.  This seemed to free us and we bought a small Harrington barn last summer and a triptych by a new artist we have come to love (Michael Swearngin) at the RARE.  Then, in another wild and wacky move, we celebrated Christmas and our anniversary by buying The Old Woman Barn. Three of anything is a collection.  We officially have a collection of Richard Harrington barns.   I worry that this pleases me as much as it does.  Is this also sick and twisted?  We are art collectors.  Go figure.

We had any number of rainy days to rest in the Tetons during our just-finished stay at Jenny.  We visited The RARE Gallery as well as the JWM twice this year.  We bought a new Swearngin painting.  Ropers Under Full Moon.  Pretty big.  Swearngin is our cowboy guy and not as pricy as our barn guy.  He's newer.  He begins with a black canvas.  This intrigues us.  We like his "palette."  It feels weird saying things like that.

Swearngin seems to be to cowboys what Harrington is to barns in our life.  We seem to have developed an impressionistic western barn and cowboy approach to art around here.  I'm guessing neither one of us thought it would ever go this way.  



I like entering our house.  I walk in and see the wall with "Chris's Barn" (what we call it),  the Swearngin triptych  (I wish I could remember the title), Ropers Under Full Moon, and my Grandmother Wardin's  pastel portrait of my Uncle Harry.  There is another barn not pictured here--a watercolor done by Jim's uncle and probably the only work that has survived his death in WWII  (a story reserved for the book Jim is writing now).   

I walk in and the art on the wall hits me as soon as I open the door.   I look up at all this art and I feel home.  The cowboys and the barns do a square-dance on the wall that just says welcome to me.  I feel this same feeling of home with The Old Woman Barn upstairs.  

I see home in the art around me and I know a huge part of this is from our home away from here at Jenny.  I am liking our "art" period. 


















Friday, June 26, 2015

Sammi and Other Happy Stuff





Good Morning.  Today it is Katherine.          

It's 5:30 and my grand girl Sammi and I are hanging out watching a Disney sitcom about kids in a band.  We seem to be learning how to tell someone they sing like crap in case that comes up in everyday life.  I can tell you that lots of folks had no problems telling me I sang like crap when I was a kid.  The worst was when my 9th grade choir teacher told me to only move my mouth and not make noise during our Christmas concert.  I can also tell you that Sammi, who faces so much in her life, will never have to face being told she sings like crap.  Sammi has a beautiful voice.  It matches her beautiful spirit.

It is impossible to be around Sammi and sister Brooklyn without appreciating good stuff in your life.  They are joyous creatures.  Right now Sammi is singing along with the theme song of the next show up in the Disney line-up and sprinkling the den with musical magic.

Sammi is facing a hemispherectomy of the left side of her brain on July 20th in an effort to stop small seizures that constantly interrupt her thinking.  Medical marijuana has stopped the big, life-threatening seizures.  Yesterday she happily shared that she will be having brain surgery soon just before telling us that earlier a mean girl in her acting class bullied her and she cried.  Brooklyn and Sammi involved the teacher and all ended well at acting class, but some creepy girl made Sammi cry by telling her she didn't belong in the class.

Last night we watched Hairspray and played Uno and made drawings and colored and joy was everywhere and brain surgery and bullies vanished.  Brooklyn and Sammi laughed at all the right places in the movie (terribly important in the Starkey household) and Sammi won the first game of Uno and Brooklyn drew another self-portrait in her continuing series of Brooklyn crayon selfies.  Kids are a really good way to remind yourself that goodness and happiness are always right in front of you.

Even though I know making a list is a lazy girl's approach to writing,  this morning moment with Sammi (now munching on cold pizza and giggling over the new Disney show) makes me want to write a Happy List.  Sammi is happy.  She makes me happy and I'm wanting to remind myself of all the current happy things to ward off my worries.

Today's Happy List:
1.  Sammi and her spunk make me happy.
2.  Brooklyn's ability to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders and be a creative and driving force in her own right makes me happy.  She loves to sparkle and she does.  My only regret about heading to the Tetons these days is that I will miss a chance to hear her sing a song with her Mom's band (Soul X) on the 4th of July.  Brooklyn has an amazing voice for an eight year old kid.  Really.  Chris was like that as a kid.  You knew you had a singer.  Brooklyn is the next in the family.
3.  English muffins with real butter melting into the holes make me happy.
4.  Finally figuring out how to make authentic carnitas at home makes me happy.
5.  I adore my new gym bag.
6.  Finding Bronco stories in the newspaper makes me happy.  Football is coming.  I like football.
7.  I did more than say "Who's he?" after the Nuggets drafted Emmanual Mudiay.  That was pretty good.
8.  Willa playing school makes me happy.  She starts school in August and we are working on "sit and stay" and raising her hand and thinking of answers before her raising hand.  Willa loves it.  It works best if I ask questions that involve princesses.
9.  The shawls I created last year make me happy.
10.  Thanking about the trip to the Tetons makes me happy.
11.  The sausages at Butcher's Bistro make me happy.
12.  The Supreme Court's decision about Obamacare makes me happy.  Reason has prevailed.
13.  I like it when Christine and Soul X perform Blurred Lines.  I know all about the Marvin Gaye rip-off here.  I just love the song.  I love Christine's voice and the band.  This reminds me that I want to ask Christine to make me a CD of Soul X songs so I can listen to them while I work out at the gym.  That would make me extra happy.
14.  Watching Nate's verbal jousts with his friends on FaceBook make me happy.  He's a funny guy.
15.  Jaydee's crinkly eyes when she smiles and her unadulterated love for her Gramps and I make me happy.  We were at the zoo Wednesday and when I returned from the rest room, Jaydee spotted me and literally sprinted to me with her arms wide open and so full of love that I could have wept with joy.  A nearby lady was wowed out by Jaydee's show of affection as well, making the moment even more exaggerated in its bubble of love.  Such unsought after love is a gift of the gods.  All the grandkids offer this happiness to me.  All I do is hang out with them and they all offer showers of love.  It is a constant wonder to me that they like and love me.
16.  Jim peels an orange and shares sections with me every night.  I love this.  All the grand girls love this too.
17.  Knitting ladies make me happy.  I am the outlier in the group of knitting ladies I run with because they all go to Costco and have refrigerators with water spouts in the doors and freezers full of stuff from Trader Joe's.
18.  Chris just picked up the girls to take them to today's acting class.  He was wearing a grown up suit and a baseball cap that I didn't recognize.  I love how he is both an impressive business man, remarkable daddy and the same little boy he always was.
19.   My daughter makes me happy.  She is a busy lady and I haven't talked with just her in forever.  I miss her.  I miss Nate.  I miss Chris.  This is happy.  I am having happy memories of when the three of them were living in the house and they were such funny and busy and, hopefully, happy kids.  We were never a Leave It to Beaver family, but we did lots of pretending.  Our family extended in unusual waves because the boys had both our family and Mary's family (their mother has an extensive family with its own rich memories).  Sometimes I look at any one of them and the entire history of all of us explodes in something they say or do or how they look.  It's an old age thing I'm betting.  It is amazing how happy it makes me to see any of me in the kids.  I find it a bit miraculous in the boys because there's no genetic boost for a step mother.  All three kids have been my teachers as well.  I know more and do more and believe more because of them.  Makes a girl happy in her Medicare years.
20.  Jim just told me the Supreme Court overturned the bans certain states have placed on gay marriage.  More happiness floating.
21.  It's time to celebrate all this happy stuff with the happiest part of my life--my sweetie.  He makes me happy even if he's still trying to teach me how to fill an ice tray with water (I sometimes resist instruction).  The best thing in my life is that I get to go to bed with him each night and wake up in the same place each morning.

I have lots of late that's made me worry and then circumstances sent Sammi and Brooklyn here last night.  Thanks to the gods for all such gifts.

Friday, June 19, 2015

Favorite Thing #5

Teton Road Trip

Driving up to Jenny Lake Lodge is favorite thing number five in my continuing series started five years ago when I wrote about mornings in front of the fireplace at Jenny.  In sixteen days we will make our nineteenth drive to Jackson Hole and I'm looking forward to it just like I did the first time.

We always leave on the Fourth of July.  I don't know if that was an intentional choice, but we soon discovered that whenever we weren't on an I-25 or I-80, we had the roads to ourselves.  It is a different story when we drive back on the eighteenth.

We have already started piling stuff up--bug coils, bug spray, rain gear, back packs--in the living room.  Soon we will be adding piles of shorts and hiking boots and water shoes for kayaking to the growing stacks.  We will eventually put everything in bags and stuff it all in the back of the car the day before we leave.

Whenever we travel somewhere, we wake up ridiculously early, raring to go.  That is especially true the morning of the trip to Jenny.  By five everything is somehow crammed into the car and the kayak is strapped in place on top.  A quick check of the house.  Windows closed.  Coffee pot turned off after filling our Disney World travel cups.  Computer shut down.

We are on the road--C-470--traveling by Red Rocks and on our way to Fort Collins on I-25 by six and at our first stop three quarters of an hour later.  We try as much as possible to avoid eating in fast food joints, particularly McDonalds, so we always stop for breakfast at Johnson's Corner outside Loveland.  I think we started stopping there the year after we entered a McDonalds parking lot in Laramie the same time two busloads worth of a high school marching band spilled their cargo.  The next year we started breakfasting on over easy eggs and German sausage so good my mouth is watering as I write this and all served by bustling middle-aged ladies who call you "Honey."

After breakfast, I check the straps holding down the kayak and we head for Fort Collins where we mercifully get off the interstate and take 287 cross country to Laramie.  Kathie's dad always insisted that it was better to stay on the interstate all the way to Cheyenne and then take I-80 to Laramie.  He was as wrong as he could be.  287 triangulates its way to Laramie and at speeds fast enough to keep you from getting bored.  It's beautiful country with rolling hills and cool snow fences lining the way.  I like driving through little places called things like Virginia Dale with one steepled building nestled next to the road and nothing else to indicate a village worthy of its own highway sign.

Once into Wyoming--I mean the instant you cross the state line--the first thing you see after the big welcome sign is a good sized fireworks stand already with cars, mostly from Colorado, filling its parking lot.  Other than that, Wyoming is pretty much like Colorado.  I have noticed that Wyoming tends to have better roads and rest stops than we do, but maybe I've just traveled in the best part of the state.

I've always managed to resist the temptation to check out Wyoming U's campus.  Instead, we take the I-80 exit and head west toward Rawlings.  Even though I hate the truck traffic on I-80, I like this leg of the journey for two reasons.  The first is the wind farm which fills the horizon with its giant white whirring blades.  I suppose I'm supposed to be aghast at the blight those scores of windmills have placed on nature and the noise pollution they create to anyone unfortunate enough to be living close by (of course, no one is living nearby which is probably one of the contributing factors to placing the wind farm in that desolate and wind blown section of the state).  But when I first see them spinning away in the distance, I feel a kind of a thrill at the juxtaposition of man and nature.  It's the same way I feel when I drive through Glenwood Canyon.  Sure, the canyon in its pristine state was a testament to the power of nature, but that same canyon with the swath of concrete carving its way along the Colorado River is just a marvel that can't help but thrill you.

Anyway, I like the windmills.  The second reason is Sinclair.  By any objective standard, Sinclair is a smelly eyesore.  It is a town developed around an oil field and you can smell the place before your first glimpse of sooty smokestacks belching dark clouds that settle over the dreary little community.  I find the whole place--the fact that anyone would choose to live there no matter the remuneration from the Sinclair Corporation--fascinating.  It reaffirms my cynical world view.

We get off the interstate at Rawlings and fill up the tank at a Shell station there we've been going to for years.  The most remarkable thing about this particular stop is that we have made it all the way from Johnson's Corner to Rawlings without either one of us needing a bathroom.  Of course, in Rawlings the need is urgent.  We take our time, buy a  big bottle of cold water, and reconnect with 287 for the rest of the trip.  I like the idea that 287 goes all the way from somewhere south of Denver through Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Glacier National Parks.

We drive up and out of Rawlings, past a multiplex movie house (Rawlings' biggest) and a relatively recent softball/baseball complex and head toward Muddy Gap.  There's nothing at Muddy Gap--not even a muddy gap--except a gas station and a road sign letting you know that going straight will lead you to Casper, while a left turn will take you to Lander.

If I had to live in Wyoming and couldn't afford Jackson Hole, I would live in Lander. It's a mid-sized high plains town with a killer hamburger joint on the southern end of mainstreet and a Fourth of July Parade that draws folks from as far away as Riverton and Washakie to line the street and watch floats on flatbed trucks, a marching band--30 strong--from the local high school, shiny new tractors from the John Deere dealership, and horses, lots of horses, pooping in unison every third block.  By the time we roll into town, it is close to noon and the parade is wrapping up.  We take the detour through a small neighborhood and reconnect with 287 on the northern end of town right where that John Deere dealership I was talking about takes up the entire block.

The road from Lander to Dubois is called The Chief Washakie Trail and runs through the Wind River Reservation.  It is a beautiful drive of mostly three lane highway swooping up and down rolling green hills with only a few smallish casinos littering the way.  There probably isn't enough traffic through this area to support the kind of casinos that trash the countryside through Arizona and the traffic there is--people carrying kayaks and pulling campers to Yellowstone--is unlikely to stop off at a casino anyway.  But there is the little town of Washakie sitting by a river bed with FORT WASHAKIE  spelled out in giant boulders on the side of the mountains above the town.  Even better than Fort Washakie is Sacajawea's grave and you begin to fully realize that you are tracing the steps of at least part of the Lewis and Clark expedition.  It makes me happy I read Ambrose's UNDAUNTED COURAGE.

We hit Dubois an hour later just as their parade is finishing.  We stop and fill up the car again in an attempt to avoid the prices in the park and to give us another pit stop before the final leg.  Kathie usually likes to drive at this point and I happily sit in the passenger seat.  This section of the road is called Togwatee Pass and as it curls down the mountain into Jackson Hole it offers tantalizing little glimpses of the Tetons until the whole range opens up around a right hand curve.  Even after nineteen years, the view still takes our breath away.

From here it is an easy jog down to Moran Junction where I flash my lifetime senior parks pass (one of my favorite possessions) and drive immediately to Jackson Lake Lodge for drinks and bar snacks.  It is usually only about half past one by this time.  Still too early to get to Jenny.  Besides, the bar at Jackson Lake is a great place to sit by massive windows and look at Mount Moran.  Sometimes there will even be a moose or two in the willow flats below the lodge.

But enough about that.  It's time to head to Jenny.  The mountains are everywhere and getting closer by the minute on this final stretch.  When I hit the sign that points to String Lake and Jenny Lake Lodge, I'm home.  I like making this turn.  It makes me feel like I belong.  And I especially like making the final turn into the lodge.  I want the people riding in other cars to know that we aren't just there for some touristy reason.  No.  We Are Staying At Jenny Lake Lodge.  It is the one time of the year that I can pretend I'm wealthy.

When we walk into the lodge, it is like a family reunion.  The people at the desk either already know us, or have been told of our arrival.  If the chef is around, he'll come out and say hi.  Same with any waiters who happen to be in the main building.  It is all so familiar and so wonderful.

We order a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and enough champagne glasses to cover any other guests--old friends-- who might be stopping by.  Kathie deals with the paperwork stuff and I drive the car over to Bluebell.  She joins me there shortly and by the time we get the kayak down and the car unpacked, our champagne has arrived and our two utterly joyful weeks have begun.




Monday, June 15, 2015

Stamps Aren't Worth Shit Anymore


Again, don't be confused.  Today it is Katherine.

Friday I took my father's stamp collection to be appraised by one of the three certified stamp evaluators in Colorado.  I learned that stamp collecting is a dead art.  It is hard to get stamps to light up or beep and there doesn't seem to be a cool phone app that has anything to do with stamps.  People just don't care about stamps anymore.  My dad thought stamps would be eternal.  He thought they would grow in value.  My dad thought he was sitting on a bundle of money in his stamp collection.  My dad thought a lot of stuff.

When Dad died in 2007, his stamps were passed onto me.  He and I had mildly looked at stamps together when I was 12.  They've been in a closet ever since Mom gave them to me.  I got them out and looked at them a few months ago.  They were old.  There were a lot of them.   I decided I'd get an appraisal.  Couldn't hurt.

Dad was the first 12 year old Eagle Scout in America back in the late 1930's and the collection was part of his manic drive to get merit badges so he could earn his Eagle ranking before anyone else in the country.  It is a story all members of my family know well because Dad told it over and over and over again.

Dad's troop leader, Karl Meininger (the clinic one), was a lifelong inspiration to Dad.  When Dad was in hospice care, he talked to Mr. Meininger and other scouts as though they were there and I felt he was busy earning some sort of spiritual merit badge as I watched him speak and gesture to the invisible troop that seemed near him through the last weeks.  I like to think they were wonderful guides and Dad's now busy filling up some sort of celestial sash with badges.  He'd like that.

Dad, however, left a lot out of his Eagle Scout story.  He always talked about how poor his family was and how he had to kill rats at a drugstore to help make ends meet and how the Boy Scouts taught him to be a man (his father died when he was four).  He talked about camp outs and eating nothing but peaches and peas for a week when the troop was working on swimming badges by some river.  Dad never told the part of the story where he was a cruddy student and didn't do things meticulously because he was trying to get so many badges so quickly.  Basically, he could have done a lot better job on the Stamp Collecting Badge and he probably knew it.

I told Jim I thought there was no interest in the family for the stamps and I was going to get them appraised.  Maybe a stamp or two would be worth what my dad thought they were worth and he thought they were worth a bundle.  He said there were about a dozen really valuable stamps.  I had doubts.  I had seen other examples of Dad's childhood efforts.  Not really thorough or well developed.

Jim thought the appraisal was a great idea and he began having visions of Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade discovering that  $250,000 of stolen money was actually invested in a rare stamp attached to a letter Audrey carted around through the film.  Unlike Jim, I had no visions of rare and wonderful stamps that would catapult us into any significant money at all.  I knew my dad.

Dad had his own code when it came to valuing possessions.  If he had spent time on something or paid his hard earned money for something, then that thing was very valuable.  If something belonged to someone else and that someone else had spent time and money on that something, Dad thought it was worthless.  My favorite example is the 17 year old awful Oldsmobile that Dad could no longer drive.  It remained immobile and in the garage until his death because no one would give him the $4000 for the car he wanted (It blue booked for $700 at the time).  If someone had offered him that same Oldsmobile for $4000, he would have called the seller a thief.  Dad thought his stuff was great--everybody else's stuff sucked.

Dad also felt his opinions outweighed most facts.  My favorite story is abut Vail.  My family drove up to Basalt often in the summer so Dad could fish on the Frying Pan and Roaring Fork rivers.  Almost everything we did in my family was because Dad wanted to do it.  We lived in a very Fisher King kind of place where keeping Dad happy was kind of the constant goal and fishing was his constant goal when I was a kid.  Every time we went on one of Dad's fishing expeditions, we drove by Vail twice.  Each time Dad would go off on what an idiotic idea it was to put a ski village there.  It wouldn't snow.  No one would drive that far.  No one would want a wanna-be European style village.  We all knew Vail would fail before they chopped a tree down for a ski run or laid a cobblestone for the streets.  Dad said so.

Because Dad was in construction, a friend offered Dad a chance to buy a condo right at the Crossroads where Pepe's is now.  My memory is that it would have cost Dad around $5,000 and he had the money, but he thought it was the stupidest investment ever.  He never let the facts get in the way of his opinions and so he turned down the offer.  He ended up liking the golf course in Vail, but that was it.  He thought Vail was a failed place even as he teed off in a golf tournament I once played with him.  He was pretty stubborn.

Last Friday we went for the stamp appraisal.  I didn't expect much and Jim was still holding out some glimmer of hope that Dad had at least one hidden treasure in the collection.

The stamp appraiser was a wonderful fellow, age 70, who lives in the Polo Club down by Cherry Creek.  The building had an inner courtyard that made me dizzy walking to his condo, but his condo was full of art and antique furniture with stamp collection books stacked everywhere.  A very cool living space.  I felt badly for the guy though.  My email about the age of the collection and my dad's connection to Karl Meininger probably had him thinking there could be a real find somewhere in Dad's collection.

This guy knew his stamps.  He went through the albums and identified three stamps that were worth about $500 put together, but that would be it.  Several problems though.  They were bad copies and not in very good shape and that's a problem.   Also--try to find anyone who really wants to buy an old stamp.  He explained that stamp collecting is dying.

He explained that none of the collectors can find young folks to take on their collections and keep things going.   Also the postal departments around the world have killed collecting.  Postal departments discovered they could make pretty stamps and people would buy them and then not use the stamps so they made more and more and more stamps.   This makes them less valuable.   The US Postal Department even went as far as to make "forever" stamps so even the year is meaningless.  Stuff like that can drive a stamp collector crazy.  Stamps aren't worth shit anymore.  They are worth what you pay for them and that is all they will ever be worth.

The man was kind and directed me to the Colorado Stamp Library to donate the stamps.  We drove to the two small buildings housing Colorado's Philately Library filled with a whole ton of little old men who identify and file stamps and maps.  They were happy to take the stamps.

Discovering the map room at the library was our happy ending.  Jim has started his fourth book.  He needs some road maps from the 1950's for some research and he knows a place to go study real live maps now.  That was good.

I learned that stamp collecting, like lots of entertainments and hobbies of the past, is going to die and those who are keeping it alive are few and far between and they are desperate to find some young caretakers for the stamps they love so much.  I don't see much hope here myself.  They don't either.

Mostly I learned that my daddy is forever my daddy and his treasure of stamps was like all of his treasures--important to both him and me because the treasure belonged to him.  Without my daddy, there is no treasure at all and I kissed the stamps good-bye.