Review: Boz Scaggs

Mountain Winery, Saratoga, CA
7.16.05
I have never been here, despite growing up in this area. My high school bus route dropped some kids off near Carneil and Wardell just down Highway 9. Fabulous venue. Four Year Bender did a short opening set, and they were very pleasant and competent. They are a local band, so maybe some of you have heard them.

About a half hour later, the band (minus Boz) came out, and some woman behind us said "Which one is Boz?" They started with "Lowdown" which was very tasty. The sound level and balance was superb. Boz was so relaxed, everything had a kind of timeless calm to it. The band was real good, not my favorite band, but I've seen Boz so many times over the years, starting as a member of the Steve Miller Blues Band at Fillmore West, it's hard to compare. He's almost as big a chameleon as David Bowie, but more sincere about it. Other songs were "Jo Jo," "Harbor Lights" (real spacy), a couple of songs from 'Dig' which I didn't know, but they went over well. He even gave one of his backup singers, Monet, a solo turn on "Street Life." The crowd loved her. Martha remarked it felt like being at our high school reunion, as far as the age of people at the show. I was so pleased when he started in to "Slow Dancer" but some of the clueless women behind us kept chattering. I guess if it's pre-"Lowdown" they don't get it. He did at least three encores, starting with the oldest song of the night, "Runnin' Blues," which was basically a showcase vehicle for the band to stretch out on. We left during the third encore, "Danger, Breakdown Straight Ahead," since we were warned we might get trapped in the parking lot. If he did "Loan Me a Dime" after that, I won't forgive myself!

I say you owe it to yourself sometime to catch a show there. Perhaps the most intimate and beautiful place I've seen.

RIP: Jeff Himelfarb

I got a call from Alice Spears, who told me that Jeff had died last Saturday of a heart attack. This hit me in a strange, hard sort of way. I had only seen Jeff once in the last decade, and talked to him on the phone a few years ago, but at one point during college, we were very close friends. We did the normal college stuff of staying up all night, discussing politics, the meaning of life, and poetry, especially T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets.

[photo of Doug Turner, Nancy and Jeff from wedding pix]

Adam Gordon, a mutual friend, responded to the news: "The news was a watershed – the last time a contemporary friend died I could respond “he, she, we are so young for ‘X’ to happen”, but this time we are all of the age where nothing should be surprising. Ah well."

I had no information about a funeral or memorial, nor could I have gone to LA to attend one, but nonetheless, it left me with an empty feeling. I feel Jeff deserved something from me, some mention. He was fabulously flawed, like all of us, but was also extremely sincere. When he sat down, and asked "How are you? How have you been?" and laughed nervously, knowing how clichéd it might sound, he really meant it. He really did care.

Gone are the days of staying up late at Jeff and Leon's, listening to "Electric Ladyland," talking politics, or joking about "Less donkeys, more corn."

At his first wedding, where I was involved in the wedding party, I recited some poetry from T. S. Eliot, which had to be slightly edited due to a death in the bride's family, but it seems fitting to close with it here. Goodbye Jeff.

In that open field
If you do not come too close, if you do not come too close,
On a summer midnight, you can hear the music
Of the weak pipe and the little drum
And see them dancing around the bonfire
The association of man and woman
In daunsinge, signifying matrimonie—
A dignified and commodiois sacrament.
Two and two, necessarye coniunction,
Holding eche other by the hand or the arm
Whiche betokeneth concorde. Round and round the fire
Leaping through the flames, or joined in circles,
Rustically solemn or in rustic laughter
Lifting heavy feet in clumsy shoes,
Earth feet, loam feet, lifted in country mirth
Mirth of those long since under earth
Nourishing the corn. Keeping time,
Keeping the rhythm in their dancing
As in their living in the living seasons
The time of the seasons and the constellations
The time of milking and the time of harvest
The time of the coupling of man and woman
And that of beasts. Feet rising and falling.
Eating and drinking. Dung and death.

Dawn points, and another day
Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind
Wrinkles and slides. I am here
Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.

Karl Rove and the Briarpatch

Short, Sharp Shock
In what should come as no surprise, Karl Rove has been implicated in leaking the identity of a CIA agent. I'm not going to spend any time explaining the details, you either want to know about this or you don't. But what I want to do is deliver my knee-jerk response about how the Democrats should handle this, which is the opposite of what they are doing, and will continue to do.

It's hard to blame the Democrats for getting on the bandwagon, and asking Bush to fire Rove. Bush said he would fire anyone who took part in this, and it's certainly what needs to be done, but it's not likely. Karl may resign, in one of those moves designed to protect Bush, but what I think we should do is focus more on Bush's reaction to Rove, not caring if he actually leaves. The whole attitude should be to say:

"See? See what kind of people Bush has in his closest circles?"

The longer Rove hangs around, the dirtier it looks.

Yeah, it would be nice to see him taken out in handcuffs, but right now, he's more valuable as a symbol of corruption, than if he resigns.

What Would Jefferson Do?

Beware the Originalists!
As everyone knows by now, Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has given George W. Bush her letter of resignation. Most people were expecting that cancer patient and Gilbert and Sullivan wannabe William Rehnquist would be the next one, and that it would not be that big a deal. Renquist has been very right wing, and replacing him with another very right wing judge would not substantially alter the balance of power on the court. But O'Connor, far from a flaming liberal, has often been seen as a swing vote, a relative moderate compared to the (expletives deleted) like Thomas, Scalia, and Rehnquist.

Finally, it is starting to seem real, the possibility that the forces of control and exploitation will run amok in America. It's like some sort of cartoonish nightmare you just don't believe will really come true. Most of the names bandied about in the media are men in their fifties, so Bush looks to impact the future for a long time. At least one, if not two more justices are likely to retire before the reign of W is supposed to end.

So there I was, watching Fox News, which I sometimes like to do just to see what the Evil Empire is up to. Usually I end up screaming at the TV, and can only take so much. The extremely biased Hannity and Colmes show was on, but I started hearing a term I have not heard before: originalist.

You've probably heard the phrase "judicial activist" before, and it's another of those ridiculous terms people bandy about, and expect you to believe them. Usually it's used to describe so-called 'liberal' judges, even though the majority of judges tend to be Republican. Someone from the National Organization of Women was actually referring to some of the more conservative members of the courts as 'judicial activists' and some other talking head started talking about the 'originalist' member's of the court. Dictionary.com describes originalism as

The belief that the U.S. Constitution should be interpreted according to the intent of those who composed and adopted it.

My BS detector circuits immediately activated, and I started googling 'originalist' in the news area, and found the judicial equivalent of religious 'fundamentalist.' Here we find people who seem to draw the line as a struggle between literal readings of the texts of the Constitution, and the wishy-washy liberals who look at the Constitution as a 'living document' that can be twisted into any form they wish. If you look at it their way, hey, I'd be an originalist too! But like most Orwellian doublespeak, once you buy this premise, you're lost.

In Christianity, the term 'fundamentalist' implies one is firmly rooted in basic truth, but in reality, it's more of a practice of selective literalism, reducing what should be a deeply spiritual book to a two dimensional amalgamation of ink and paper. Even the conceit that one is capable of a fundamentalist understanding of the Bible is flawed, and any communication of ideas in print involves levels of personal interpretation to make any sense out of what we read. In the Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot wrote:

Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.

Eliot considered himself a fundamentalist, yet he clearly understood the problem of communicating from one person to another. In the very first page of the Four Quartets, he says:

My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

If it's that hard to communicate with someone in the same time frame, how can we presume to know what was in the mind of 'the framers' over two hundred years ago, not to mention thinking about who wrote the Bible a couple of millenia ago? The real missing term here is 'transcendent.' A document as important as the Constitution (or the Bible for that matter) needs to anticipate future needs, and not just leave us out in the tough-luck cold. It needs to transcend current events. I think this is logical, especially since the Constitution was setup with a very high bar to reach, if you want to make an amendment.

The Framers, as they are often referred to, were revolutionaries at the time, and yet the originalists take their names in vain, almost always to support reactionary views. There will never be an ironclad way to know what they would have thought about gay rights or abortion, but they were definitely pushing the envelope at the time. It's hard to imagine that given another 80 years to evolve, that these same revolutionaries would not have seen their inconsistencies in the original document that were so careful about preserving individual freedoms, yet slaves were only counted as 3/5 of a person. The fact that the Fifteenth Amendment had to be created reflects the originalist point of view, that since slavery existed at the time, it would exist forever unless the Constitution was amended. I'm no historian, but I understand that Jefferson owned slaves, yet opposed the slave trade. I find it hard to believe that the same Jefferson, if born a couple of centuries later, would cleave so tightly to keeping things in the status quo. Sometimes it just takes time for the fog of "the way it's always been done" to clear, and we see the obvious.

Although it's probably too late to wrap up what has been a typical rambling Geoff-rant, here's the point of all this talk about 'originalists:' Because the framers did not specifically mention privacy, or many other specific fruits of the tree of freedom, a Supreme Court packed with these throwbacks will roll back a generation of freedoms with no more than a "if you don't like it, amend the Constitution" in our faces.

The only way to block this from happening is for people in the states that have Republican senators, but a pro-choice majority of voters, to lean heavy on their senators. It's too late to talk about the 2006 elections; the time in now. For those of us here in the 'blue states,' it's frustrating. I guess we can support the movements in the'red states.'

I'll end with the words of John McCain, from a New York Times article:

Of course, Mr. McCain said, President Bush's nominee will be a conservative. "He campaigned for re-election and made no bones about the fact that it would be a conservative nominee," Mr. McCain said. "Elections have consequences."

Stupidity is Universal

"I read the news today, oh boy!"

Today, coordinated terrorist attacks occured in London, and at least 40 innocent people have been murdered. The terrorists are stupid if they think it will have any effect on the UK position in Iraq. In fact, even though the war has been highly unpopular in the UK, I wouldn't be surprised if support for the war increased there in reaction to the senseless violence.

It's also clear how stupid George Bush and his British lap dog Tony Blair were if they thought this war would make us safer. We took our eye off the ball when we gave up looking for Bin Laden, and started fixating on Saddam. We have stoked the fires of jihad for sure.

What we have now are two stupid, vicious opponents, warring with each other while innocents are caught in the crossfire.

Stupidity is endless...

Short and Sweet

[note: this is making the email rounds, and because the Oregonian doesn't seem to archive anything older than 14 days, I can't prove this really happened, but it's still cool!]

FROM THE SUNDAY OREGONIAN'S "SHORT & SWEET" COLUMN:

"Other than telling us how to live, think, marry, pray, vote, invest,
educate our children and, now, die, I think the Republicans have done a
fine job of getting government out of our personal lives."
--Craig Carter

here's a link to another page that does a nice artistic job with these words

Review: Joan Baez, "Come from the Shadows"

Too pure for this cynical age?
I also think this is a great record, and one of the most emotional experiences I get from listening to a song, I get when listening to "The Partisan." I don't normally have heroic fantasies about becoming a Freedom Fighter, but for some reason, the combination of Leonard Cohen's words, the driving beat and the descending note riff, and Joan's voice just moves me to goosebumps, and incipient tears by the time she get to the last verse. Pick this one up if you like Joan. For the cynics among you, it's probably too late.

This album is no longer in print, but can be had in some boxed sets, and songs are available from iTunes.
Complete album info from Baez' web site

Making Content Accessible, by any means necessary

[note to readers who aren't enrolled in the teaching credential program I've been in since September: I thought I'd preserve some of my writings here, if I felt it had any meaning beyond the mind-numbing study of pedagogy. So, about all you should need translated is that a TPE is a "Teacher Performance Expectation," of which there are 13! AAVE is short for African American Vernacular English, or by its less popular name, ebonics. If you think this is worth reading, let me know, and I'll see if I have anything else worthwhile.]

---

By Any Means Necessary

TPE 4 is too wordy to repeat in full here, but the essence is the title: Making Content Accessible. There has been a recent spate of commercials on TV lately for a high-end car that uses a button to start, instead of using a key. The gist of each commercial is that this starter button is hidden and is slowly revealed, in a surrealistic setting. It might be underwater, it might be on a mountaintop, but the goal is to find the button, no matter how far one must go to reach the goal. Once the button is pushed, it just devolves into a routine, forgettable car commercial. The quest for the button is all that remains, at least in my mind.

The button we’re talking about here is the connection between teacher and student. It’s not going to be necessarily something that a teacher parrots out of a manual, and it may lie hidden, but we have to keep searching for it. Because every teacher has a different personality, a different culture, and sometimes different language backgrounds, the connection to the students, who are just as different and unique, will often be an individual one.

When I took my CSET tests, the main test was for Chemistry, but I also passed the general science CSET, which allows me to teach 9th grade integrated science, a course that is being phased out. I figured that most of what I’d be experiencing would be in the chemistry classroom, not in the 9th grade science class, which is somewhat of an afterthought in my teaching goals. But, as the songwriter Robert Hunter once said:

“Once in a while, you get shown the light,
In the strangest of places if you look at it right.”

As it turns out, my experiences this semester that reflect on TPE 4 have come more often in that 9th grade science class than in the chemistry classes I’ve been observing. The chemistry classes are all pretty much the same, the teacher lectures, works problems out on the board, and I’ve not been very involved, unless it’s a lab where I walk around and try to help the students.

But over in the 9th grade science class, during the last period of the day, I have found myself much more involved, and much more challenged. The class is the only one this teacher has, in addition to his other biology classes. Most of the time it feels like some sort of stepchild. Students are often working on a “dry lab” which is nothing more than a worksheet. There is very little student prep, and sometimes the worksheet is copied from a book the students don’t even use. There is very little ‘observation’ going on, so I just help the kids try and figure it out.

The corner I usually sit in is easily classified as a ‘loser corner.’ Most of the kids just tune out, and do nothing, often wearing headphones to listen to music, as the teacher rarely seems to notice these things. I have tried to make connections with the kids, on different levels, and it would be silly to think I’m always successful. A student named Jay, who is rarely even in class, has been far beyond my attempts so far in establishing a rapport. One of the kids has an iPod like mine, so we talk about that once in a while. I was trying to explain the term ‘epicenter’ to them, and used the analogy that ‘San Francisco is the epicenter of cool,’ which they didn’t seem to get, until one of them half-jokingly said, “you mean, like San Francisco is the epicenter of gay people?” While he finally got the point of what an epicenter was, the conversation couldn’t stop there, as I felt it important to try and disabuse him of this idea that gays only lived in San Francisco.

One of the kids said he’d heard that if you go to prison, you turn gay. Another kid, who usually spends most of his time doodling, said no, that his dad was in prison, and that wasn’t true. I was impressed that he felt he could share this with me. We continued on with the worksheet, and I was able to help them see what they needed to do.

This is only a taste of what I will face as a teacher, and there will always be some sort of bridge I will need to cross to make the content accessible, and maybe with a little trust, the students will walk a little in my direction across that bridge as well.

I think anyone that knows me knows I don’t like to say too many nice things to people, lest they think I’m trying to impress them, but there is something Dr. Cooks said early in the semester that has stuck with me. The class was discussing ebonics, and the whole controversy, and while I don’t think I saw eye to eye with Dr. Cooks on every point, this is a pretty close approximation of what he said:

“Am I saying that you need to learn ebonics to teach? No, but if you find yourself in a classroom in Oakland, and most of the students come from homes where the primary discourse is AAVE, then maybe you ought to become more familiar with AAVE yourself. You’ve got to do whatever you can to help your students.”

This was something I could relate to. The idea wasn’t to just parrot some politically correct designer of curriculum, but to be aware of whatever environment I was in, and use whatever tools I could to reach the students, to make the content more accessible.

On a recent community visit to the Mission District, we visited a community organization called Mission Dignity. They help youth in the community, regardless of whether or not they have documented status. For example, they help a gang member with his schoolwork, and this gang member leaves his schoolbooks at the center, so he doesn’t get in trouble with the gang. The center coordinator, Emilio, gave us a little tour of the facility after he had spent some time talking to us, and proudly took us to the famous poster of Malcolm X, with the words “By any means necessary” boldly printed. I remember when Malcolm X was around, and how in the minds of most white people, those words seemed like threats of violence. But here, the context was love, and a desire to help youth reach their goals, in any possible way.

We all need to make the content accessible to our students “By any means necessary,” and do whatever we can to help our students.

Review: We Five, "You Were on My Mind/Make Someone Happy"

Great Music, Lousy CD transfer

I was so excited to receive this CD, mainly for the first album, which I used to own on vinyl, but also to hear their versions of Get Together and High Flyin' Bird, songs I'm somewhat a 'collector' of. I'm not criticising the original studio recording, but I've heard plenty of archival music that's been cleaned up, and brought back to life in a quality manner. This thing just sounds like the publisher was out to make a buck, and spend as little money as possible making it sound better. The hiss is instantly noticeable, and something unnecessary in today's world of digital filters and so on. Having said that, I'm not sure what to tell people who really want to have this. There's still lots of great music, you just need to get used to hiss and crappy sound. Be forewarned I guess about anything this label puts out.

Amazon Link

It's All Too Complicated Now

"Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living." - T. S. Eliot, from "East Coker"

The Iraqi election is kind of a watershed moment, no matter what goes down in the future. A friend of mine wrote to me suggesting I blog about the election, since he felt little was being said about the people killed that day. George W. Bush is no doubt proud that as many people voted as it seems they did. This would make many people hope for the results of the election to somehow turn sour, and repudiate Bush's pushes. It's kind of the old 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' mindset. Never mind that the enemy of your enemy might just still be your enemy, and simply wants something out of the deal for him, the hell with you.

Lost of course is the fact that our President lied to us in order to do a first strike on a crippled country. Sure, I have no doubt that Saddam Hussein wouldn't hesitate to stick it to us if he had a chance, but we were up his butt so far, he never had a chance. The other "Axes of Evil," Iran and North Korea, are much more of a threat, but they are also not pushovers in a military sense. So, when we run out of Grenada's and Panama's and Iraq's to liberate, who's next?

I honestly wish the Iraqi people the best, and hope they find what they're looking for, and that we can bring our troops home as soon as possible. It's starting to look like the Shiites are winning the tally, and fears of another Iran, duly elected 'democratically,' are starting to keep people in Washington DC awake at night. Hoping that Iraq crashes and burns, just to stick it to George W. Bush is not something I'm going to do, as much as I want to see that little monkey squirm. George will trip over his own shoelaces eventually.