“Road Trip—Pt. I” [Facebook post from 01-20-2014]

A recent prompt for my writing group was to recall a road trip and write about some aspect of it.  One trip in particular stood out for me.  The following is a bit of a prelude, but also a preview.  More to come intermittently.

Newly graduated mid-year with my bachelor’s degree (December 1971), I couldn’t find a job.  My fiancée had decided we weren’t meant to be, so I returned the rings to the jeweler to have some spending money.  I celebrated my 21^st birthday just before Christmas curled up in the bedroom I was using in my parents’ home.  Probably goes without saying that I needed a change of scenery.  When I told my mother I was going to hitch to Georgia to see an old friend, she looked out the window at the newly fallen foot of snow and told me she’d buy me a bus ticket to Atlanta to at least get me out of the cold.

The heater on the bus didn’t work.  It was ten degrees in Atlanta when I got there the next day.  The girl I hadn’t seen in five years had written to tell me not to bother, but the letter most likely arrived in the mailbox as I was knocking on her door in a little town 60 miles south of Atlanta.  At least it was approaching 60° when I hefted my pack and headed back to Missouri.

I met all sorts of people on the trip home, and I made a significant life decision.  While camped in a downpour on the median of I-40 in eastern Tennessee after walking across the Appalachians at Rabun Gap in north Georgia, I vowed that as soon as I could return to school, I was going to get my teaching certificate.  Dad had often told me that teachers could always get jobs.

After I stood with my thumb out for an hour or so on the side of the road the next morning, the car that finally stopped was a neatly kept little sedan that exuded the spit and polish of its driver.  He turned out to be a terrific fellow who was doing some soul-searching of his own.  Although he was only in his early forties, he had just retired as the youngest commander of US forces in Korea.  He was driving home to a wife and daughter he hadn’t seen in several months, and he had no idea what he was going to do with himself.  We shared our stories and our hopes and encouraged one another.

Tennessee is a fairly long state from east to west, even at 70 miles an hour.  I think we both made the trip from past to future in those few hours together before he dropped me off outside of Memphis.  I’ve often wondered where his road took him.  Mine has not been as straight or smooth as that four-lane highway, but I’ve enjoyed the side trips—those blue highways of the everyday—more than any rest stop or tourist trap.  Most of all, I’ve appreciated the days when I have felt like I was out on the road again with my thumb in the air and nothing but promise ahead.

“Waterhole” [Facebook post from 01-16-2014]

It’s dusk, darkening quickly, and the herds are gathering at the local waterhole.  This is an important time in the lives of each separate herd and individual as well as for the entire ecology and biosphere.  Here is where most mating rituals begin (or end), where customs and traditions are passed on, where new information is passed along, where evolution continues.

Along one bank a group of young gazelles timidly approach, the does preening for the bucks who are jostling one another for the best vantage point to show off.  Nearby a group of old bulls sip casually while keeping watchful, wary eyes on the lurking predators, and secretly lusting in old memories.  Occasionally they snort in derision at the youthful antics.  Now and then a cow interrupts them all, bellowing her distaste of the overall foolishness.

As darkness descends, the process plays itself out.  A ready doe breaks from her sisters to claim a buck who believes he has claimed her.  The cow drives off one or two of the bulls.  Other herds have grown boisterous, creating a cacophony of unsuspecting ease.  Here and there sparring bucks draw crowds of rowdy hangers-on.  A pair of does scream briefly at one another.

Suddenly the muddied water explodes, and a monstrous ‘gator launches itself into the throat of a buck who has stumbled too deeply into the pool.  The herd recoils, backing thunderously away from the violence as the reptile thrashes from side to side and eventually rolls the buck to deeper, quickly reddening water that slowly calms once again.

The herds stay for a time, seeming to forget but learning all the same, returning to the rituals of survival.  They can’t waste time, for too soon they will hear,

“Last call,” and the bartender makes them pay up, grab their purses and coats, and head out the door.

DrDan

01/16/14

“Smoke Signals and Drumbeats” [Facebook post from 01-15-2014]

You’ve undoubtedly noticed that I’ve been posting these long diatribes regularly—well, the last few days, at least—and may have asked yourself, “What’s up with that?”  Good question.  I think I’m still trying to answer it for myself, however, and there are several possible explanations, a few that have even come up in responses to my comments.

I guess the most obvious is that I do fancy myself a writer, and writers write.  Inherent in that is publication.  I used to tell my students that even people who keep a “private” diary do so with the subconscious understanding that someone is probably going to read it one day.  That’s basic publication.  That’s why writers write, to share with others.  Whether or not what has been written needs to be shared, or is worth the effort for the reader, is ultimately up to the reader.  Some of you have already stopped reading this, and that’s fine with me.  I am a bit different from some writers in that I very much like feedback.  In fact, I used to share my writing with my students and not tell them I was the author until after they’d given their critiques.  I really like this with poetry, but it’s always good to know how an audience is reacting or what questions they have.  How has what you’ve read affected you?  Why?  So…write back J

Another explanation for my writing here is that I am, as a former student pointed out, still teaching.  (Calm down.  There won’t be a test.)  That’s why these facebook epistles have mostly been rather philosophical prompts for you to consider.  Most writing does that, too—presents an explanation, an observation, a question, or an experience for the reader to consider and maybe help him/her make (some) sense of the world.

Social media have changed a great deal in the last few years.  It’s been around since the first humanoid tried to communicate with his or her fellows.  Picture the Internet as a public smoke signal or big hollow log you can pound on to send a message to someone else…anyone within earshot!  I used to talk on the phone and write letters by the dozen (yep, real put-a-stamp-on-it snail mail).  I once wrote to a friend in Georgia I hadn’t seen in five years and told her I was coming to visit.  I was knocking on her door before her letter telling me not to come hit my mailbox.  We had a nice visit anyway…for about twenty minutes.  IM is much cheaper!

I used to write a blog.  Something tells me they’re not that popular any more, and I haven’t written anything and posted there in over a year…for numerous reasons.  Good ol’ facebook is much more popular and immediate, for good or ill.

I read the snippets posted here about what is going on in your lives, your celebrations and frustrations and simple observations about life and things in general, and I don’t read what doesn’t appeal to me (e.g., cats and games, politics and religion, on-going arguments that read like graffiti).  You do the same, I’m sure.  Feel free to come and go with these, too.

What I am trying to do, I suppose, is provide something more for you and for me.  Please feel free to comment, even just a “Like” is appreciated.  I know; I wish there was a “Dislike” button, too.  When the spirit moves you, I hope you respond with something more.  Ask questions, relate your own experiences and opinions, offer alternatives.  Some of you may have guessed this—it’s a teaching strategy.  Write On.

DrDan

01/15/14

“PE” {Facebook post from 01-14-2014]

Most of my life the letters PE meant Physical Education.  I know lots of people lived their school years in dread of the classes, especially in Junior High (we didn’t have Middle School in the Stone Age).  As an educator over the last 40+ years I’ve been privy to the changes in just what Physical Education has meant, from “the ball of season” to life fitness and health education.  Some of the news stories of the last few months (Alex Rodriguez, for example), have me thinking about PE as short for Performance Enhancement, and not with drugs.  What does “performance enhancement” mean to life in general?  I’ve been trying to enhance my life, particularly in the last year, but I think I’ve been working on my performance enhancement all along.

PE still needs to mean physical fitness.  Believe me, the older we get, the more we appreciate life without aches and pains, if we can remember when that was.  I’m beginning to feel as if my generation of Boomers is going to be the first generation of geriatric Robocops!  Every time I open my email I seem to get a new message from a friend who’s had a knee, shoulder, or hip replaced or some other procedure.  Don’t get me started on heart valves and stents or cosmetic surgeries!  By the time we’re in our 80’s and 90’s, airport screeners are really going to hate us!

We can’t rely on modern medicine to keep us fit, however.  We still need to be able to answer the bell if someone says, “Drop and give me 20!”  One of the nice things about retirement is having the time to go to the gym.  You should join me.

Physical activity is just part of the equation of performance enhancement when we’re talking about making your life better…and it’s more than “stop and smell the roses, too.”  What are you doing to live a full life?  What are you learning?  What are you trying that you haven’t done before?  Here are some suggestions for your Bucket List, even if you’re just in your twenties (see if you can spot the trick questions!):

Participate (even in the audience) in the arts.  Have you been to the ballet?  Opera?  Live theatre?  How about a museum, art or otherwise?  How many books have you read recently?  Do you read the newspaper?  What’s going on in the rest of the world?  In how many countries (and which ones) are US military personnel involved in armed conflict?

How many senators does your state have?  Can you name them?  Republican?  Democrat?  Independent?  Male or female?  Who is the mayor of your town?

What is the nearest star to Earth?  How many constellations can you name?  Why are they called by those names?

Can you name a dozen trees?  Flowers?  Snakes?  Architects?  Composers?  World leaders?  Teachers in your local school system?

Who is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?  Who is considered the smartest person alive today?  What does he/she do?  What is a CFL or LED and why should you care?

Do you know a foreign language?  Even a few words or phrases?

By the way, you didn’t know the answers to some of those questions?  Take the time to look them up!  You’re sitting at your computer.  Go ahead.  We’ll wait.

Come on!  Enhance your performance!!  It isn’t important in the least that you know at what time and on what days half a dozen television programs are aired each week.  When is your next opportunity to vote?  What are the issues?  Who are the candidates?  Where are your gym shoes?

Drop and give me twenty!

Enjoy your life.  Participate in it.

DrDan

01/14/14

"Atomic Structure" [Facebook post from 01-13-2014]

When I first heard about atomic structure (yes, kids, this was very long ago, in a galaxy far, far away), I remember how it sparked my imagination and, at the same time, made such sense out of the world.  I love to see patterns in things—even if I’m terrible at codes and the like—and especially to appreciate how everything is connected.  I took this fascination with systems to all sorts of things: biology, anatomy, astronomy—these are obvious—but this is also one of the reasons I love the English language and its connections to so many other languages.  It is a living thing.  I nodded my head in understanding when I read “The Butterfly Effect,” and when the meteorologists on TV discussed El Nino and the Jet Stream and snowstorms on the other side of the world.

Being able to see the structure at the sub-atomic level that also is expressed cosmologically just blows me away.  Pictures of solar systems are easily an atom with surrounding electrons and other bits and pieces.  Then the solar systems become galaxies swirling in similar gravitational dances that stretch out even farther, into the infinite, like dancers in one big, never-ending ballroom…and the same dance is taking place in my bloodstream and in the petals of a flower and in the air molecules that I am breathing.

You knew I’d come back to poetry, right?  William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence” contains some of my favorite lines:

“To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.”

I do not care in the slightest what your belief system might be, but if you have the intelligence and curiosity to take even a moment to consider what this means, you understand the true meaning of awe.  Those moments, for me, confirm that each of us has a place, even in a world of sand; an essence that continues to exist, even in the heaven of a wild flower; an infinite connectedness that can be grasped in the palm of a hand generations from now; and a presence eternal as Time itself.  Make the most of your moment.  Be connected.

May the Force be with you J

DrDan

01/13/14