Connections

He walked right up and began to direct questions at me. Interrupted from reading, I was defensive about men approaching me and his entitlement to ask me questions put me off. I was less than receptive. But his intention was firm and did not flinch at my wall of resistance. He merely “expected” an answer. As we learn in teacher crash course, if you expect it, they (expectations) will be met.

“Where do you live?” He asked with no uncertainty.
“Why do you want to know?” I retorted back.
“I just want to know if you live around here.” He replied undeterred.
“I live on that boat over there, the second from the left.” He offered. “I just moved into it May 2 because of my desire to minimize my carbon footprint.”

He was melting my resistance. I was piqued. Who is he? What does he want?

That‘s the thing about soul messengers. They don’t want anything. They don’t even know why they’re talking to me. At least that’s how it seems. They just talk as if it’s the most natural thing. And the topics never need preface. They just flow in a stream of consciousness. Coming from no beginning and fading into no ending. Somehow, the message is always exactly what I need to hear at that moment in time.

I thought of other soul messengers who have blipped into my life so far: The UXO detonator at Aberdeen who popped his head over my cubicle wall as I was transitioning into the first few weeks of my first job. He invited me to dinner that night for a similar interchange; Conversations that began before we met and continued into the smoke of the future; Insights of things and people he could not have known around me. UXO detonators are paid so well because of the risk of being blown up, he only worked three months out of the year. The rest of the year he spent kayaking and camping our nation’s waterways.

Joe, the left handed entomologist from Georgia, coming through DC at the end of my exploratory year at the National Science Foundation, just before a huge shift as I traveled to Taiwan. After a day-long meeting about non-chemical pest management systems, he also invited me out to dinner for soul searching conversation.

Julius King, who dropped his job at the Pentagon one day to live on the streets: “It was something I knew I had to do.” Emerging into my life at Funk’s, the vegan coffeshop one block down on Eastern Avenue, again at a distressed emotional transition moment in my life. Waving me down on Eastern Avenue during a downpour from the open window of his car, “Hey! Hey, I just wanted to say hi.” Who are you? What do you want?

They all seem to have a similar vibe to them; something free, unattached, yet balanced and weathered about their lives. They come in and then, blink! Out without a trace. All in the same way: with a presumption and entitlement to be there. To engage. To speak. Do you know me?

Tom Maze, West Virginia native, PhD in English, Masters in psychology, gifted with a love of literature and universal ideas, will weather the winter this year in Baltimore in his 45 foot sailboat until he can get his office mobile. Then he will run his company while sailing around the world. He offers out of the blue to guide my writing. Who says angels aren’t looking after me?

Another soul come to deliver a message. Another connection for a reason. But I know exactly why. I know my reasons. And I am only eternally grateful to the guides and angels. To the universe.

Thank You.

Tent Revival! I gets religion.

Oh, Yes! Amen! And Hallelujah!

Today, I attended a downhome urban tent revival - complete with a drenching downpour! The Baltimore Book Festival took place in Mt. Vernon and was small enough to be manageable. I continue to find reasons why Baltimore is the place to be for me. The best part is always that it is bikable!

Amidst drenching downpours, I eschew umbrellas by subscribing to the belief of "the space in between." After an entire night and morning of solid rainfall, I left my house at 11:42 am and biked the 20 minutes from Fells Point to Mt. Vernon mostly dry. While finding a nice lamp post to tether my bike, the drizzle began again. Navigating my way to the literary salon, it began to do some real rain, but now I'm under the tent! It works every time: "The space in between."

I've been "gettin' my education" with Ron Suskind, so had to check him out when he came downhome local. He was invited through the One Maryland, One Book Council on Humanities to talk about A Hope in the Unseen. He gave a stirring account of his personal journey learning what it means to be human. Followed immediately by Amy Goodman who was down from New York to talk about the right to a free press. Using her past news reports, experience at the DNC and RNC (getting arrested!), and stories from her book "Standing Up to the Madness," Ms. Goodman organized her presentation like a well-crafted news report.

What was impressive and inspiring is the crowd of people who jammed the tent for these two documentarians imploring us with stories of crossing divides and creating social change by standing up in dissent. It did feel like an urban tent revival with audience callouts and response to impassioned pleas by the presenters. And like a true revival, everyone was drawn to their feet by the end. These are folks who knew what (who) they came out for. Dare I call us, "groupies?!" During the sessions, Mother Nature chose the moment to release her deluges, creating a sense of otherwordliness under that tent...

Being a book festival, the authors were very accessible, hanging around for a few hours afterwards, shooting the breeze with all of us groupies. Incognito, I think Cedric Jennings was hanging out next to Ron Suskind... No one acknowledged this, but I'm guessing this was so. I was not going to be the one to cry wolf. Let it not be ME to be the one to blow his cover. I'm excited my new bookmark for my book "One Percent Doctrine" has Ron Suskind's email written on it (by his (left) hand) with the promise of further correspondence! I'm going to draw him a map for his book! Amy Goodman is left handed too! Coincidence.

Asking for another "space in between" I made it back home only slightly damp. Another great day biking around my city.

Surf

On my netflix account, I was warned the following films would not be available after October 2. So I'd better get cracking and watch them now while it's available.

The first two nascent films for Bruce Brown, Slippery when wet (1958), and Endless Summer (1966) were the first beginnings of a filmmaker dynasty; Now going on three generations of surfer filmmakers. Slippery When Wet, the first endeavor, had a budget of $5000, which included airfare to Hawaii for 5 surfer guys, $250 for the songtrack from a musician friend, and the purchase of all of his film equipment!

My impressions? I like the storytelling of Bruce Brown. Travel the world and surf? Live on a shoestring. Boys who know how to play in a big way. Real life always butts in. Sigh.
Endless Summer

Edge of America

Add this to my cache of teacher/coach flicks. Let's keep our eye to the truth of our country's origins. I like the term, "The Edge of America" referring to "Indian" communities. It injects a good dose of humble pie to any sense of "entitlement" we may harbor.

Daniel Junges' film, Chiefs, is made the way a documentary should be made. Homegrown in Wyoming, he grew up a spectator on the sidelines of the Chiefs singular mindedness around their basketball team. Curious and eager to tell their story, he goes home to do just that.

The Edge of America is a fictional reconstruction of reality in Utah. A real mishmash of race in this country. Perhaps a relevant reminder in our current day and age.

"You tell me why I'm pissed off."
"Because you're a black man in America."
"That's right. I'm good and pissed off."
"Well, get over it! You're talking to Indian People here. Get over it! Get on with it! Or get the hell out!"

Scenes from My Waterfront

I was so inspired when Ron Suskind got up out of his "Director's Chair" and exclaimed, "I need to walk. You know, when I write, I'm always walking around. Getting my ideas and then scrambling back to my desk to write it down before I forget!" I relate to this!

The walk along the waterfront serves many functions. It destresses, relaxes, and purifies the mind. This helps the mind to think, the spirit to regenerate, and the body to unwind.

Saturday, September 20 was the Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup day and lo and behold! There was an event scheduled in my hood: The Living Classrooms Foundation sponsored an event.

The same old realizations continue to prove themselves. Back in my Civil Engineering student days, we dissected trash so we could design waste management systems. We learned that certain things remain in landfills forever.... We had NO WAY to manage this waste. What are they? Plastics, styrofoam, and aluminum. Life never strays very far from the basics. What did we fish out of the water this day? Let's see...

Be kind to our waste stream. Eschew the use of these materials. Aluminum can be efficiently recycled, so that's ok as long as you DIVERT them from the waste stream. NO PLASTIC BAGS!!! Bring your own when you shop. Bring reusables with you when you go out to eat or drink. Is this strange to ask? You tell me where these materials will end up if we continue to generate them?

Here are shots taken from my waterfront walk. Muse. Regeneration. Relaxation.


Who wouldn't be inspired!

Stop-Loss

Beautiful Young Statues wrestle with their demons. God Bless America.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

To grease my writing chops and curtail my consumption of easy video and passive entertainment, I have instituted a requirement for myself! For each film (play) I consume, I am required ("momma takes charge!") to write some thoughts and reflection. To satisfy my continued appetite for film and books, I scramble to catch up...


On a gorgeous autumnal Saturday night, after grapefruit gelato from Pitango, I swing by The Waterfront Hotel, swiftly becoming a venue nurturing local music talent, to catch Nelly's Echo for one hour before waltzing across the square to the Vagabond Players where I viewed Ma Rainey's Black Bottom by August Wilson. Where else, but in Fells Point?

Always a treat to have live entertainment, I travelled back to 1920s Chicago, and was hit by all the ways things have not changed in America. Perhaps nothing ever really changes. Is this the beginning of dynamics I see in my City? My nation? Our World? Or was the beginning well before even Levee, Toledo, and Ma Rainey scuffled. Good storytelling taps into the human spirit in all of its struggle and beauty. All of its shortcomings and its strengths. It sometimes seems like the same thing happening over and over again. Sometimes, it feels so endless! Sometimes it feels so dependable. Sometimes it feels so full of joy!

I am entering the zone. Stories are being written in the air around me as I walk, as I think, swim, drive, bike. It is now my challenge to capture them and give them voice.

For the Love of WORDS - Part II & Part III

Part II
Last spring, I began to gauge the age of when I began my love affair with books. I remember persistently marching through the multi-book fictional worlds of Betsy, Tacy, and Tibb (Maud Hart Lovelace); Carolyn Haywood's pre-adolescents; Walter Brooks' animals on the Bean Farm, most notably, Freddy the Detective; Beverly Cleary's Beezus and Ramona; John Fitzgerald's Great Brain; Harriet the Spy (Louise Fitzhugh) and her friend Janie, the scientist who decided at her pre-adolescent age that she never wanted to have kids, so made it her lifelong goal to discover how to rid women of the requisite need to menstruate; and every girls' essential, Judy Blume.

...and begin to worry that my children, age 7 and 8, do not read as I did. The education system, with its debacles of teaching and learning theories, seemed largely deficit in the implementation, even outside of Baltimore City. In my mind, education comes from a desire within, and reading is the vehicle through which one achieves the goal. "Succesful" education is arrived at when a child retains a thirst for question and reads to find the answer. Do my children pass the reading litmus test?

I began with mandatory trips to the library, where we would select books that were never read. With the onset of our runaround lives, video, tv, and computers: quiet time with books just got squeezed out of the schedule. I knew that modeling desired behavior was an important way to teach. Unfortunately, being addicted to reading like I am, this had already been done to a fault for their entire lives, still without the desired result. There was no engagement with them as I sat removed from them, absorbed in my own word world.

I also read somewhere (!) that while children should read at their level, being read to at higher levels also promotes literacy. OK. Valerie's persistent efforts at encouraging literacy by gifting books (remained untouched in bookshelves from year to year) yielded the entire set of Harry Potter books. Thanks to the movies for this one, my kids were engaged in the marketing of it, and the moving pictured version of it. I can't engage them in reading on their own, but I can engage them in me reading to them. I'll start with that!

They LOVED being read to. What a joy! I was even able to use this reading time as leverage for correcting behavior! ("If you don't stop right now, no Harry Potter tonight!") It's still not what I hoped, and I was a bit worried that they were not willing to read on their own - not how I remember myself devouring books.

We completed Book One and was rewarded with viewing the film. Book Two came and went followed by viewing of the film. Book Three was completed at the end of the summer and we just viewed the film a few weeks ago. At this point, we were able to engage in comparison and contrast between the book and the film. How valuable! One of my favorite pasttimes. We just began book Four two weeks ago, but still without any concerted effort towards independent reading after 8 months.

I had begun instituting further restriction on library book choices - while they could choose any two books they wanted (often still picture books, comic books, and how-to diagram books!), the third library book had to be approved by me per my prescribed reading level. Lenient the first few times, I kept tightening my standards, pushing them towards levels I was hoping for. But where is the value of this if the books are not being read!

It was time for drastic measures. No more of this "do what you want" business. We had been setting up the CCC on our refrigerator: Command Control Central. Using overhead markers (from my teacher supplies), we were writing our things to do on our refrigerator. I took my marker, created a block, and carefully placed it on the CCC: "Reading Night"

Time for "momma" to take charge!

Tonight is reading night! No Harry Potter until you read, silently to yourself, for 15 minutes.

"I don't want to!" "I want YOU to read." "Mommy, can we read Harry Potter?"

It took about ten minutes of determined insistence ("Yes, I will read Harry Potter ...after you read for 15 minutes silently to yourself") before the three of us settled into our respective books. Can you match the book with the reader?

Readers:Evains, UiSeng, Mommy
Books:The Korean Cinderella, One Percent Doctrine, Ms. Small is Off the Wall

...But to my surprise, I emerged ten minutes later from the secret room under the White House where I was meeting with George Tenet, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and Georgie to find perfect silence, except for the sound of pages turning. Let it not be ME to be the one to break this silence. Both Evains and UiSeng finished their book in this sustained 40 plus minutes of reading! Not content with purely "technical" reading, I even quizzed UiSeng with comprehension questions before rewarding them with Harry Potter.

This past week, UiSeng brought her current book "Not So Weird Emma" with her to school every day - so she could read it in holes of time - just like I did/do! - and brought it with her for the weekend to poppy's house. I think they've caught the bug! Finally.

Part III
One Maryland One Book selected Ron Suskind's "A Hope in the Unseen" as the book that "everyone" in Maryland is supposed to read together and scheduled book discussions at public libraries around the state. The Orleans Street Branch gifted me a copy of the book "if I would come to the discussion." I looked the librarian in the eye and told her I would come at 10 am. After seeing the schedule, I saw that there was a second discussion at Southeast Anchor Branch at 1pm followed by a screening of the film "The Great Debaters" Looks like it would be a library day. Luckily, it was also a great day for riding my bike around the city.

No one showed up at any of the discussions, but I had a wonderful discussion with Virginia at the Orleans Street library. Indigenous to the neighborhood, she shared with me her story of her family upbringing and her odyssey to attend college in 60's america. In the course of our discussion, she added several books to my formerly vacant backpack: The Pact, The Bond, And Still we Rise. Thank you, Virginia!

Southeast anchor was pretty lame. No one showed up, but the organizers didn't seem to care much about the discussion. They just wanted to push play on the DVD player and watch the movie. I don't blame the young men. I think their attachment to looking successful prevented from engaging fully in the content. Our discussion (me and the two young men working it) centered mostly around why this was a poorly planned event, why no one came, how can we get more people interested, how the book was too high-level for kids, ....!

Me and three people in a huge fancy room in the library basement greatly enjoyed Oprah and Denzel's film, though! The Great Debaters accentuates the phrase "The pen is mightier than the sword." I want to caution, though, that words are a double edged sword, with the power to strike down, but also with the potential to be meaningless blather. I hold this caution near, as we engage in this political season.

I am beginning a period where words gain a life of their own. Here is my training ground and my paying respect to the power of words.

"Debate is combat. But your weapons are words."

The Great Debaters

Universal Peace - Universal Life

Misty Upham and Melissa Leo star in a film by a woman, about women. Not a sissy or girly film, there, nevertheless , were marked womanness' in the testosterone challenged story. Perhaps it is the steely toughness that describes a mother in protection of her cubs that rivals a macho challenge anyday; A challenge which often lacks depth of commitment. Enhanced by a universal transcendance as protector, not just of your own cubs, but a shared protection of every mother's cubs.

The two women risk life and limb and capture to recover the cub of one of their charges; a Pakistani woman being smuggled across the Canada-US border. In the finale, Leo's caucasian privilege and anti-Mohawk sentiment is trumped by her shared protectiveness of her own children and what can be healed by and for Upham's character.

I'm not saying men are incapable of transcending boundaries and conflict nor that every woman magically possesses this ability. I do believe that there is a powerful force found in this universal motherhood that can be tapped by men and women alike in our quest for peace in our post-apocalyptic world. In the womanly spirit of Israeli and Palestinian women's peace efforts: Women in Black.

Frozen River

The RNC - Pre-emptive ACTION

So, the RNC has a ten million dollar contract with the City of St. Paul for lawsuits. A pre-emptive understanding that they will violate the civil rights of folks who will sue the city to the tune of 10 million dollars!

More ominous than variegated violence against compliant or confrontational (oh no! the angry left!) protesters marching within or outside unreasonable permit restrictions is the pre-emptive targeting of the press. This occurred on August 30, the Sunday BEFORE the convention.

The Cheney-Rumsfeld neo-con administration has embraced the idea of pre-emptive action! Ron Suskind does a wonderfully engaging job of documenting this process in his book: The One Percent Doctrine. And it has been implemented with a vengeance.