Yellowfish

In 1979 and 1980, I was working on my masters in English at Eastern Washington University. EWU is not known as a flagship university, but there were some good teachers there and I enjoyed my two years.

Among them was John Keeble, a young author and faculty member. I took his course in literature of the Northwest and learned a thing or two about the notables from my region: William Kittredge, William Stafford, Wallace Stegner, Ursula LeGuin, Ken Kesey, and some lesser knowns such as Native American writer James Welch. Welch was a guest in class and gave a reading and answered questions. It was a great night that I still remember rather well.

Keeble himself had just published a novel called Yellowfish, which wasn’t assigned but which I read. It was released to good reviews and I thought it was a fine novel.

I see in the Sunday Oregonian that Keeble has written a number of other books and articles, and the University of Washington is now re-releasing Yellowfish, a story about smuggling illegal Chinese immigrants into the US over the Canadian border. I’ll root around in the boxes in my basement and see if I still have it. If not I might spring for the $18.95 for old time's sake.

Keeble has a website, but unfortunately no contact link. I have a notion (a Great notion) that he might even remember me, but then I realize I can only remember about four students I’ve had over the last thirty years, and probably none of them by name.

Five, maybe.

Huh?

"I'm like, okay, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door. Show me where the open door is.... And if there is an open door in (20)12 or four years later, and if it's something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door."

Sarah Palin

Facebooked

I thought Facebook was just a vehicle for savage preteen girls to drive unpopular classmates to suicide, so I’ve been surprised in the last few days to receive a few invitations to be someone’s friend. As I recall, the last adult person to actually ask me to be his/her friend was a transgendered student at OIT who had just made the switch from him to her and who thought we had a lot in common. I said I thought it was important to maintain a strictly professional relationship with my students. I got enough problems.

BTW, the new Atlantic has an excellent and rather sad article on transgendered kids and the changing views about how to raise and relate to them. Talk about people with enough problems.

It turns out some of my old friends from jazz-l are Facebooking, and when I said yes to one, a few others invited me over. Some have even said they follow my blog, which is great to hear because I only know of about five people who follow my blog: me, my wife (I give quizzes), a couple of buddies, and a woman in Iceland who occasionally sends me an email comment. For some reason, I keep trying to configure the blog so it’s easier to leave comments, but it keeps reverting to default mode which requires secret handshakes. I do get the occasional email, though.

I have no idea how Facebook works, so I guess I’ll have to create a profile and hang around a little. The only other online community I belong to is Livemocha, which is a language learning site. It has exercises that work a lot like Rosetta Stone, from what I’ve seen of both, but Livemocha is free. You can also make friends with people all over the world, so I can write in Spanish to native speakers and they write back in English to me. I’ve just re-registered after being away for awhile, so I don’t actually have any friends yet. I tend to favor Latin hotties.

I haven’t been part of jazz-l for some years now, but at one time it was a big part of my life. It’s good to see some of the regulars are still around, and now I can put a Face with the name.

Fire away!

Like lots of good liberal Democrats, I own several firearms and enjoy shooting. As I read somewhere, why in the world would we let the Republicans have all the guns?

Yesterday I was in the gun store trading a .357 revolver for a .45 semi-auto. Everybody needs a .45. The store was packed, and all the talk was about Obama. I’d read that there was a run on guns, especially assault rifle-type guns, since the election because owners are afraid he’ll take their guns away. And indeed, the wall on which they hang and display rifles was nearly empty. The gun clerk guy said they hadn’t been this busy since Clinton was elected.

I was tempted to declare myself a Gun Owner for Obama, but judged that keeping my mouth shut was not a political crime of omission under the circumstances. And FWIW, I doubt guns will be very high on the agenda for the new administration. Clinton got off to a terrible start by taking on the gays in the military issue. Obama won’t make the same mistake.

Mister Fashion Person

If I’m a little quiet in the face of these extraordinary circumstances, it’s because of my innate humility (ahem. . . .), and my observation that everything that can and should be said is being said. There is no end of analysis, celebration, and, from the lunatic right, gnashing of teeth.

But let me raise the one question I haven’t seen raised publicly: What was with the dress!?

Yo, Michelle! Me and my psychiatrist, Sharon, agree. You are a magnificently attractive woman with what seemed to be an unerring sense of style, and you wear this dress as your husband claims victory in the most important election of my lifetime?

Where is Mr. Blackwell when we need him?

A few thoughts as I wait for the fun to begin

I just watched the documentary film Why We Fight. This may not have been the best choice to pass a few hours before election returns start coming in. I have the DVD because it’s one of many I bought over the summer before I had surgery so I’d have a stockpile of materials to entertain and engage. I didn’t get to this one until today.

I can only say I highly recommend it, even if, like me, you’re inclined to think “I already mostly know all that stuff and why get myself depressed by dwelling on it?” Sometimes the right book or film forces us to know something in a way that’s far more profound than the way in which we knew it before.

I have three major hopes for an Obama administration if we’re lucky enough to have one when I go to bed tonight: one is that we’ll begin to turn away from our militaristic, imperial behavior which seeks to project American power abroad under the guise of spreading democracy to the rest of the world. Although this is now known as the Bush Doctrine, as the film makes clear the general idea goes back at least to the 1950s and led President Eisenhower to coin the phrase and warn against the military-industrial complex in his farewell speech to the nation.

Two is that Obama will reject the idea of the Unitary Presidency, the bedrock of the Bush administration and the brainchild of Dick Cheney. Most people don’t even know that under Bush, the whole concept of checks and balances was abandoned in favor of a president with nearly unlimited powers to set foreign and domestic policy, and the Bush Administration was largely successful in achieving that goal. Certainly one of the greatest tests of character is to willingly give up power, and it remains to be seen whether it will even be a goal for Barack. It hardly rose to the surface as a campaign issue.

And three is that we develop a system of universal, affordable health care, with access to health care considered as a basic right of citizenship, not as a commodity to be bought and sold. Most of the rest of the world is there, and it’s long past time that we catch up.

I think all of these hopes are realistic even in a time of financial crisis and the various foreign policy crises which will erupt as soon as the next president takes the oath of office.

So these are a few thoughts as I wait for polls to start closing on the East Coast and early returns to start coming in. For all I know, at least one of the networks has already projected a winner, but I’ll wait a few more hours before I start watching the coverage.

The news from here

With only tonight left before election day, I feel a little lucky that Mary and I spent part of our evening at a City Council meeting at which we were an agenda item. It took my mind off things and reminded me that whoever is elected tomorrow, a lot of what determines my quality of life happens below the level of national and international affairs.

This all stems from a long-standing dispute with a very difficult neighbor—let’s call him “Walter”—who has objected to some improvements we’ve made in the right-of-way which separates our properties. For over a year now, he’s placed complaints against us on the city council agenda, only to withdraw them at the last minute. Although it’s been stressful overall, I admit I’ve enjoyed outmaneuvering him at each juncture, despite his retaining an attorney.

If things go as we expect, “Walter” now gets to expand a driveway, which won’t solve the problems he’s said he has with driving up to his house, particularly in winter, and we have his written promise to drop his complaints, actually an appeal of a decision by the city manager which went our way. This initially made “Walter” so mad he was over at our house making threats against me, and I had to call the police to tell him to stay away. Since then he occasionally throws something at our house. Once, he rolled an old tire filled with mud and water down onto our patio.

If you’ve seen the film, There Will Be Blood, that’s “Walter.” He’s kind of pathetic, but I’ve always believed he’s dangerous.

Since much of this was public record, the local paper picked up the story on Sunday and ran a somewhat distorted overview. I declined to comment, in the same way I generally decline to swat at hornets which don’t seem intent on stinging me at the moment. Today, I watched a succession of cars drive by and even up his driveway to look things over. Some people might be surprised that the paper would carry such a non-story, but I remember several years ago when they ran the headline, “Big Storm Misses Basin!”

Tonight a big storm might actually hit the basin, as winter weather is arriving. We’re home from the council meeting, and I’m planning to watch the Saturday Night Live pre-election special in a little while. SNL, as everyone my age is quick to point out, isn’t a very good program anymore, but Tina Fey has done a lot to get me through some of my anticipatory despair with her locked-on imitation of Sarah Palin.

And then, the election tomorrow, and about this time tomorrow evening, I’ll be settling in to watch returns and probably stay up much of the night, as I have in past years. Last- minute analyses still give Obama the edge but with a lot of commentators seeing ways that McCain could win. I don’t think anybody knows anything at this late stage. I can see a squeaker for McCain or a landslide for Obama, or anything in between. In any case, it will keep me occupied and entertained for several days.

I don’t envy our next president, whoever it turns out to be. Me, I’ve got “Walter” off my back, at least for now, and my snow shovel set out.