SAN PEDRO

The cushions at the pool in Banyon Bay
Are laid out every morning when I rise.
Waiters take drink orders through the day,
And I hang out and watch the cloudless skies.

A dock juts out into the morning mist
Where boats line up with bait and rods and reels.
They trawl for snapper and for other fish
To grill up on the beach for midday meals.

Estel's for breakfast always starts our day,
A walk along the beach with the whole group.
And don't forget the chicken drop on Wednesday,
When gamblers bet on where a rooster poops.

Palapas bars line every beach.
We ride our bikes from each to each.

BACKYARD SPRING

I love the backyard when things turn to Spring.
The ash have just begun to get their leaves
And mountain winds blow in with all they bring,
While cold night chill gives way to gentle breeze.

Lilac bushes line the cedar fences,
Old benches here and there for decoration,
Honeysuckle blossoms fill my senses,
And a garden for grandgirls' excavation.

I built a deck back there for get togethers.
We all gather there for family dinners
That last all day depending on the weather.
One thing for sure, no one's getting thinner.

The snow is gone; the sky is blue.
Another winter we've just gone through.

READING HABITS

I used to read The Post to F. each day.
Strapped in her chair down in the breakfast nook,
Gurgles and coos were all she had to say,
While I read ledes and pointed out each hook.

I read to her from other texts as well.
For instance, Dr. Seuss, L. Frank Baum,
And Maurice Sendak all had tales to tell.
There were others--too--that surely did no harm.

The Sanguin girls, although, have different tastes.
They want the reader to put on a show.
Without some random sounds, the book's a waste.
Sometimes, you have to be a clown, y'know?

My reading habits haven't changed,
But they have been rearranged.

FEELING PROUD AT THE TATTERED COVER

To give you an idea of how important it was for me to see Kathleen Belew read from her book (BRING THE WAR HOME) at The Tattered Cover last night, you need to realize that I chose not to go to a whiskey tasting paired with food at Butcher's Bistro scheduled for the same night.  When I first heard about the whiskey tasting, I immediately called my son-in-law Ken, a fellow whiskey lover, to see if he wanted to go.  He did.  When I started to call to make my reservations, I noticed it was scheduled for April 5, Kathleen's big night at the bookstore.  As it happened, that was the only night in the entire month of April that I had something scheduled.  I called Ken and told him to forget the whiskey night.  I had more important things to do.

After dinner with C. Fite (Kathie was too sick to join us.), we went into The Tattered Cover a little early so I could buy a copy of Kathleen's book and find where we were supposed to go for the reading.  There were maybe thirty or more chairs set up in front of a table and lectern on the bottom level and it was quickly filling with folks.  Nicole Gonzales (I forget her married name.) was there.  Jean-Luc Davis was there, fresh from a jazz tour of Australia.  Kathleen's folks were there and so were a bunch of other people, all armed with questions to ask after Kathleen finished her reading.

I just sat there next to Cindy basking in Kathleen's accomplishment.  I mean the book is a scholarly exploration into the development of the white power movement between Vietnam and the Oklahoma City bombing.  It has one hundred pages of footnotes!  The scholarly blurbs on the back cover of the dust jacket are expansive in their praise of Kathleen's scholarship.  And I'll bet the folks at Fox are apoplectic at Ms. Belew's scholarly indictment of white supremacy.  After all, white supremacy is what Fox is all about.

It was a terrific evening and I drove home happy that I was a teacher and able to work with young people like Kathleen, who in addition to being an author published by Harvard University Press, is an assistant professor of History at the University of Chicago.

The bottom level of The Tattered Cover on Colfax is devoted to young adult literature, middle school literature, and travel books.  As Cindy and I were browsing around waiting for the festivities to begin, I wandered around and found Mike Merschel's book (REVENGE OF THE STAR SURVIVORS)in the stacks.  It was an interesting position for a retired English teacher.  Here I was in The Tattered Cover of all places and two of my students had books on display.  I, of course, attributed all of their success to the fine tutelage they got at good old GMHS and wanted to go over to all those people sitting and waiting for Kathleen to approach the podium and let them know that I was the one who taught Kathleen how to master the Controlling Statement, content in the knowledge that the first thing she did when she finished her research was to reduce the entire thing into that one sentence formula.  I resisted the temptation and sat quietly down.  I even grudgingly admitted that Kathleen and Mike were at least partially responsible for their successes.

When I was driving home, I came to the rather thrilling realization that, yes, I was most proud of these impressive adults, but I remember feeling just as much pride, just as much satisfaction, when they were high school kids bringing down the buddy buzzer bullshit in the library and writing opinion pieces that caused waves among the powers that be.  It was with the same sense of accomplishment that I read Kathleen's succession of one page poem analyses in Advanced Placement.  It was with the same sense of pride that I saw hundreds of kids walk across the stage at Red Rocks.

I never thought I was responsible for all those successful graduates, just like it wasn't my responsibility for the ones that failed, or ended up in jail, or on drugs, or just held down by mediocrity.  Mostly, I just loved being part of it all.

In THE THROWBACK SPECIAL, one of the characters maintains that the biggest part of love is just the willingness to watch your loved one go about his or her daily life.  There are, of course, other things about love, but watching is key.  That's what happens when you are a teacher.  You get to watch scores of young people negotiate their ways through their teens and into adulthood.  That's what I'm really proud of, all that watching.

GRANDGIRLS

It's nice to wait outside the grandgirls' school.
I stop and crack the window just a bit,
A magazine beside me as a rule,
With cars lined up behind me as I sit.

Jaydee's first and looks around for treats,
A sippy cup of juice, a bag of chips.
Sitting like she owns the place, she eats.
And then in half an hour we end our trip.

Later in the day it's Willa's turn,
Her face all smiles, she bounces out the door.
And in the car with energy to burn,
She laughs, she floats, she absolutely soars.

These grand girls, they make my day;
I hope our lives will stay that way.

GEOMETRY

That lonely highway running through the plains
Bisected all those verdant fields of corn.
And in our car so dwarfed by all the grain
I cuddled up for warmth against the morn.

I watched it all go blurring past the window,
The geometrics of the golden fields.
Straight and diagonal, the endless rows
Seemed to crosshatch fertile nature's yield.

One winter weekend we drove back that way.
The geometrics covered up with snow,
There was stubble where the rows of corn held sway
And in the field atop some hay, a crow.

My mother's brother died in bed.
The sky above looked just like lead.

A CoupleThings

The Blue Mountain School District in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania has seen to it that students be provided with rocks to hurl in case a shooter comes barging into their classroom.  One principal, in an effort to make the new policy even more effective, has provided each classroom with a bucket, not just filled with rocks which, depending on their size and mass, might have variable effectiveness, but with river rocks!  You know, the kind we see around the necks of weekend weather girls on local television.

While I think that arming kids with river rocks makes a lot more sense than arming teachers with AR-15s (for one thing, there are fewer moving parts), I can't help but see some logistical problems.  Will these buckets be locked up in a book cabinet when not in use?  If they are locked up, will the teacher have time to find the right key to the cabinet (Wait!  Is that a double A or a single A key?) and distribute the lethal projectiles to his or her students before the shooter, presumably armed with assault rocks, comes barging into the room?  Or, and this certainly gives me pause, will the bucket of rocks be sitting by the classroom door under the bulletin board as the students walk in?  Will the kids, then, just pick a rock and put it in his or her pocket (Is that a rock in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?) to have handy in case of an armed intruder?

What if all those kids are armed with lethal river rocks and no intruder shows up?  I had a few sixth hour classes where the thought of 30 kids armed with rocks would certainly have made me work extra hard to create interesting lesson plans.  An idea like that might even take the place of pay for performance contracts as a way to motivate all those lazy non-rock carrying teachers out there.  

I guess the idea behind the river rocks is that when the shooter breaks into the classroom, all the kids will stand up, start screaming "stone him, stone him, stone him" and he will end up like some biblical adulterer, dead under a pile of granite.  Of course, a handful of kids would end up dead as well, but that is the price we pay to guarantee the freedom of the NRA and the profit margin of gun manufacturers.

There is another rather large problem with the whole rock throwing scenario.  Kids today have rotten arms.  Have you seen them trying to play softball in the park?  Of course not.  They're too busy bullying each other on social media, arranging play dates, flash mobs, sharing gossip, and feeling ennui to work on their arms.  And what about primary grade kids?  Having a bucket of rocks at Sandy Hook probably would not have changed the outcome of that particular tragedy.  And that is not to mention the fact that most teachers, since we don't have driver's ed and shop anymore, are women.  At the risk of sounding like a sexist creep, women with rocks are no match for white supremacist nut cases with AR-15s.

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Today is Palm Sunday, the first day of Holy Week in the Catholic calendar.  When I was an altar boy in Estes Park, this was my favorite time of year.  It was my chance to be a star.  Why was it my chance to be a star, you ask.  Because I was the head altar boy at Our Lady of the Mountains.  I worked my way up from Acolyte, to Thurifer, to Master of Ceremonies, that's what Father Sanger called the altar boy who got to stand next to him during high mass and see to it that all the candles were correctly lit, all the things needing incense were properly addressed, all the cruets and patens and bells were there at the ready.  

First, there was Palm Sunday.  My mom dropped me off at church at six in the morning and I served every mass.  Then came Holy Thursday, a high mass and the liturgy a reenactment of the Last Supper.  Good Friday wasn't a mass; it was just a solemn service commemorating Christ's passion, kind of like something Mel Gibson tried to do, but without the gore.  Then, my favorite, Holy Saturday, another high mass.  And the best part was by this time all the parishioners couldn't help but notice that I was a prominent figure at all these services.  When I walked out of the sacristy after it was over, it felt like my granddaughter Brooklyn must have felt when she emerged from the dressing room after "Seussical."  Easter Sunday was another day where I served every mass and had breakfast (lunch) with Father Sanger and his two sisters, Margaret and Bess, after the noon mass finished.  Then, after breakfast, Father Sanger would give me a ride home and I would go eat Easter candy and colored eggs with my family.

Holy Week isn't like that for me anymore, but I have to be careful.  I make it a point to steer clear of churches emptying out their well-dressed congregations because I can't help but get a little emotional and nostalgic for not only the theater of that week, but also for what used to be my faith.  

Have a blessed week.