Bravo, America!

It's wonderful to feel patriotic again. I had actually forgotten what it felt like, until the night of Barack Obama's election. Joy and peace reigned in the city of Oakland that night, in a way I have never seen it before.
When I decided to write a blog entry about this happiness, though, I found that it was amazingly harder to write about than my complaints and disgust with the previous administration. The darker emotions are such powerful muses that they seem to write about themselves; I hardly have to do any work at all. But happiness, now there's a slippery fish!
I'm sure that our new president will give us plenty of things to complain about, we can't imagine he will please all of us all of the time. So when he does, I'm sure to speak quickly, and hopefully with some eloquence and critical wit. For now, I am just happy to breathe in the autumn air and kick colorful leaves along the curb.
Mostly I'm writing today to say "Bravo, America!" Thank you, thank you, for recognizing a good and intelligent man. Thank you for discerning the subterfuge of some, and the inadequacies of others.
Maybe the film industry played a part in teaching folks how to judge a good performance from a bad one. Then, thank you Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep and Al Pacino, along with those other nameless film professionals who taught us to recognize bad acting when we see it.
May the great creative spirit who goes by many names bless our country, and our planet.

Debate, what debate?

The longer I live, the more fascinated I am with the human mind. I wonder if there aren't some physiological factors that determine the vast differences between opinions and observations. I mean, is it possible that the shape of our ear canals, for example, make words sound different to each of us. . .so much so that they take on different meanings? Our current presidential election campaign is a good field of study in this regard. What makes one person hang rapturously on every memorized cliche that comes out of Sarah Palen's mouth, while another person wonders whether Sarah hasn't begun mocking Tina Fey, and is waiting for everyone to get the joke.
During that so-called debate, for example, I thought she might have been auditioning for Saturday Night Live, (hey, T.F. watch out or yer gunna be out of werk here darn soon).
But seriously folks, it wasn't Saturday Night Live, it was only Thursday, and God knows she wasn't funnin' us. The wise cracking, repetitious, self-determined monologue we heard from Mrs. Palen was only punctuated with peripheral dialog from the moderator and Palen's opponent. She listened to him just enough to pick up the key words that set her off on the next rehearsed, commercial-like message.
As a person who grew up learning to debate in actual forensic competitions, and who has taught and prepared students for the rigors of forensic debate, I was dumbfounded to see that poor facsimile of a debate qualify as part of our process for selecting national leadership. If the debates are truly for the sake of informing the American people, it seems to me that the moderator should have been able to request or direct Governor Palen to answer the question at hand.
Clearly, Senator Biden had prepared to debate a peer. He had given his adversary the highest respect in planning for an exchange of ideas and factual counterpunching. What he was given in return was a person of limited knowledge and experience who was groomed to combat reason with slogans, falsehoods, and innuendo. The press was waiting to catch Biden disrespecting his opponent because she was a woman, but when that woman disrespected him, her bad manners and wise-cracking comebacks were hailed as political accuity.
Of course, I must give her credit for her pre-debate strategy. She did such a brilliant job of preparing the world for a Burns and Allen experience through her television interviews, that all she had to do was stay at her podium repeating campaign slogans to win kudos from the press and Republican viewers across the country.
So I am still wondering if there isn't some physiological component to the vast difference in human comprehension. I know about nature and nurture, but there still seems to be a missing link in determining what makes us look at the same cow and argue about whether it is a black animal with white spots, or a white animal with black spots. At least we agree on the name.

The Trickle Down Theory has married the American Dream

This financial crisis is a consequence of the cold civil war going on in the United States. Just as Ronald Reagan promised when he began deregulation, greed and visions of grandeur trickled down to even neighborhood realtors and bank officers who passed it on to others who believed that they too could be as affluent as those sitcom families of television. The Trickle Down Theory has married the American Dream, and now every working man and woman can know the same type of financial disaster that once was reserved for the wealthy and the would be-wealthy.
The situation with the California budget fiasco is another sign of the cold war we are living through. It's always "Us" against "Them". Left versus Right. Donkeys versus Elephants. Red versus Blue, just like the gangs in the hood. No wonder there is so much violence in our communities. We are at war with ourselves. We don't need to think about Al Qaeda to feel afraid.
It's no wonder that we cannot help the Israelis and Palestinians find peace; we don't know what peace is. This is not a peaceful country. This is a country in which people have trouble sleeping at night. People have trouble digesting their food. Watch, mindfully, the ads on your television screen for one evening (you can even watch them with the sound off). You will come away with a list of medications designed to help (but not cure) every possible malady: hypertension, acid reflux, impotence, bladder spasms, diarrhea, diabetes, headaches, arthritis, allergies, and on and on. You will see an add for a diet system, sure to make you slim, followed by an ad for seductively steaming mashed potatoes laced with gravy as a side dish to glistening crispy fried chicken, lip-smackin' good. Advertising seems to be set up like political time, there needs to be a "rebuttal" to everything. And the one thing that all ads have in common is that the truth of their message is not to be assumed. Let the buyer beware.

Memorial

Your soul is a sunflower
that has grown to such a height,
you can no longer contain it.

As it bursts forth, your sun seeds fall
back into the hearts of loved ones,
to be cherished and tended with care.


A very dear friend died last Saturday. His name is Robert Rice, and he was one of the finest men I’ve ever known. If the word gentleman had not already existed, it would have been invented to describe Robert.
He was enormously talented. He had danced with the Merce Cunningham dance company, and kept dance as a vibrant part of his life. He was an accomplished painter whose work was always rigorous and beautiful. Perhaps his greatest talent, though, was as a teacher. The classroom was an exciting place for Robert. It was a magical blending of energies creating a transformation environment.
It was his courage that made him so good at everything he did. At one point he was having considerable success selling beautiful paintings, but he knew that he had taken his technique as far as he could. It wasn’t teaching him anymore, and he wasn’t excited about the prospect of the next piece. So, he just stopped. “Well, I’m not working like that anymore,” he said to me one day. “I’m going to go in a whole new direction.” And in order to do that, he made a new level of commitment to his work: he rented a little cabin with none of the amenities (electricity, for example), and he lived like a religious hermit for three years. After he’d been in his hermitage for about a year I saw him and he joyfully declared, “Oh, I’m making paintings that are so ugly! You have to see them! I’m really happy with the direction the work is taking.”
As teaching colleagues we met up in a meeting one day and he dropped into a chair beside me. “These people are so challenging,” he said. “I had my class prepared for this morning, and I started out directing them in a certain kind of movement, and they just didn’t want to do it. And I spent hours preparing that class.” I asked how he had handled the situation. “Well, I asked them what they wanted to do, and slowly they created the whole class. I followed their lead.” That ability to listen, receive, respect, and move with the creative energy of the moment is what made Robert such a terrific teacher, and an artist of life, itself.
As a friend, you could talk to him about anything. He was never judgmental, never overbearing. He was always tender, compassionate, and supportive. His spirit will live on in everyone who was lucky enough to know him and learn from him.
You can see his inevitably beautiful work on his website: www.robertriceart.com