It is a simple matter. As down and pessimistic as I have been in 2024, I am still here. I can still see. I can still think. I can still write. If there is a God, he has given me more time to work on the story. I mean not only the story of me but the story of us. I assume you are still here too. So, let’s see where this chapter takes us next.
Filed under Uncategorized
This year, this miserable year of 2024, has been a debacle that I really don’t think most of us deserve. But part of what makes the outcomes of 2024 despicable are the result of the power of stupid people and the evil people who manipulate them.
We have now entered into a time in which the climate change numbers have crossed the red lines into irreversible consequences.
Here is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reveals;
I am a pessimist. I think we are already doomed. It is not that we don’t already have technology to deal with the problem and save life on Earth. We certainly do. But the stupid people in this country put the Pumpkinhead President back in charge of the US government. to be assisted by co-president Elmo Muskmelonhead, you know, that fake technical genius who became the world’s richest man by buying other people’s genius inventions. And they will undo all the progress we have made because they can make more money for their hoards by sticking with the deregulated use of fossil fuels. Our lives mean nothing in the face of vast deregulated profits. Oh, and those profits are also going to be tax-proof. The massive national debt will be paid for by ending our Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid funding. You know, the stuff we have paid into every single year we have worked.
My only accomplishment of 2024 is my published book of poetry. It was published early in the year and I have barely been able to write since. I am suffering from increased arthritis problems, growing blood pressure and diabetic issues, and a serious loss of energy and ability to mentally focus.
My book sales seem to slowly be gaining momentum. I am noticed by more and more readers, especially from those looking for nudist-related literature. But I am also suffering from problems that prohibit me from getting naked and being a nudist.
So, what this all means for me is that I am drawing near the end of my story. It will all go onward without me soon. Or not go on, depending a lot on the whims of stupid people and their Pumpkinhead President.
Filed under Uncategorized
Don’t make the mistake of thinking I have any earthly idea where writing comes from or how it began. I am only talking personal history here, nothing grander or more meaningful. This post is only self-referential hoo-haw, which is a fancy way of interpreting “conceited crap”.
So, the truth is, I am writing about Charles Dickens because he is the author I most want to become. True, I rant on and on about Twain and his humor. And a good deal of my artwork owes everything to Disney, but everything I am good at in writing is based on Dickens.
The first actual Dickens novel that I read was accomplished during my extended illness as a high school sophomore. I read in bed, both at home and in the hospital, from my library copy of The Old Curiosity Shop. I was enthralled by the journey and subsequent tragedy of Little Nell. I thoroughly loathed the villain Daniel Quilp and was roundly thrilled by his well-deserved fatal comeuppance. It was my first encounter with the master of characters. I followed that reading with a biography of Dickens that revealed to me for the first time that his characters were based on real people. Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield was actually Dickens’ own father. Little Nell was the cousin he dearly loved who died in his arms. The crafty Fagin was a caricature of a well-known fence named Soloman, a Jew of infamous reputation, but not without his redeeming quality of caring for the orphaned poor. So it is that I have chosen to make my silly stories about real people in much the same way Dickens did. If you are now worried that since you know me, you may end up in my books, never fear. I change names and splice characters together. You will have to make an effort to recognize yourself. And, besides, nobody reads my books anyway.
I also like the way Dickens uses young characters and follows them over time as they grow and change. Oliver Twist was the first child protagonist in English literature. David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, and Pip in Great Expectations are also like that. David Copperfield, in fact, is Chuck’s own fictionalized self. I fully intend to do the same. It is the reason my books fall into the Young Adult category. I also intend to employ the same kind of gentle, innocent humor that Dickens used. I mean to portray things that are funny in a disarming, absurdist way rather than resorting to attack humor and bad words.
There it is, then, my tribute to Charles Dickens, a writer who makes me be who I am and write what I write. I am not supposed to do Christmas posts because of my avowed religion, but you can consider this to be as close as I can come. The author of A Christmas Carol… it doesn’t get much more Christmassy than that.
Filed under Uncategorized
The little red bird that never flies away when the winter comes… is a symbol of who I am. I lasted for 31 years as a public school teacher no matter how hard it got to be, no matter how many brick walls I ran into, and no matter how little respect the world gives me for what I have done. I persisted in a difficult relationship for thirty years because it didn’t matter if she didn’t love me. I loved her and I made a commitment. And no matter how cold the relationship has become, it will continue. I don’t fly away when the snow begins to fall.
Life is hard. Terrible people do terrible things, and they seem to always get what they want and make the huge profits. Good and lovely people who sacrifice their comfort and wealth to help others always seem to be the ones who get kicked whenever they are down. Still, people are basically good. The depths of evil some of them sink to are the exception, not the rule. The heights of behavior and accomplishment are achieved by more people than the depths of the sinkers and the vile. Some people are amazing, inspiring, and the light the majority of us live by.
This world breaks many a soul under the hammer of God, but His forge is also where heroes are created from the truest of steel. There is hardship and pain and disappointment everywhere… constantly. But when you balance it all… life is good.
This is the philosophy I have come to live by. Work hard and take your lumps and wounds with grace and determination. And when it is done, celebrate. You may call me a fool or an idiot. I cannot prove I am not. But in the end, I know what happiness truly is.
Filed under Uncategorized
No, I am not talking about a midget girlfriend today.
I am talking about brevity.
Some of the best writing gets directly to the point.
You have to know how to say exactly what you want to say.
Then say it.
Like, “Tootie is a Cutie.”
And once said, the point made is…
Sheer poetry.
Filed under commentary, goofiness, humor, poetry
The Return of the Pumpkinhead President is a sequel movie I don’t want to live through again. His victory in November leaves me feeling defeated. Not suicidal, but ready to give up.
There is no choice but to give up being a nudist, though. As much as I was enjoying my late entry into the lifestyle I had longed for over a lifetime, my physical health simply makes it impossible anymore.
I also fear giving up writing. My hands don’t work properly while typing, and the creative flow is slowed by too many obstacles in the stream of consciousness. The river of ideas is slowly damning itself up. I only write two or three original blog posts each week. The rest of the time, I rely on what is already written.
I must also move back to Iowa soon. I need to get out of the big city to maintain my grip on life and be back in the place I think of as home before I die. It will mean leaving my wife behind to finish her teaching career, at least for a couple of years. She will rejoin me if I am still alive when she’s done… maybe.
I will have to part with at least some of my doll collection, and probably most of my personal library as well. I’m sure I have over a thousand books in the house here in Dallas. Some I have even not read yet, though less of those than the ones I’ve read twice.
My whole life has to be simplified as I work towards its ending.
Filed under Uncategorized
No, that is not a typo. I only meant “gifts” in pun form. Sometimes you don’t feel much like talking and, after all, the “picture can be worth a thousand words”, especially if the picture moves.
As you can see, I am spending the day with the Ghost of Christmases Past. Have a wonderful holiday, however you may celebrate it. I will offer more goofy stuff by Mickey after the Ghost of Christmases Future gets done with me.
Filed under Uncategorized
On days when I feel sick, like today, I can do things like work on paintable miniature figures for D&D or HO-scale model train layouts at the little table in front of the fake fireplace.
I know it isn’t much. But with body aches and sore throat, it was the best I could do.
Filed under Uncategorized
There was a time when Tarzan was one of the ruling heroes of my boyhood fantasies of power and self-fulfillment. And, while Tarzan was a cartoon show on Saturday morning, comics by Burne Hogarth, movies in the theater in color with Mike Henry, or a weekly series on TV with Ron Ely, he was always Johnny Weissmuller to me. Weissmuller who played both Tarzan and Jungle Jim in the Saturday afternoon black-and-white movies.
I have to admit, I didn’t identify with the character of Tarzan as much as I thought of myself like the character “Boy”, played by Johnny Sheffield in movies like “Tarzan Finds a Son”. It was a significant part of my boyhood to imagine myself being like Boy, free from practically all restraints, able to gad about the dangerous jungle nearly naked with monkey pals and no fear. If I got into trouble by believing my skills were greater than they really were, I would save myself with ingenuity, and, barring that, Tarzan would rescue me. And, believe it or not, sometimes there were fixes that Tarzan got into that he needed me and Cheetah to be creative and get him out of. I knew in my heart that one day real life would be like that, especially once I grew into Tarzan and stopped being just Boy. That idea was in my head so loudly that several times I went to Bingham Park Woods, stripped down, and played Boy in the Jungle.
As in the previous essay about Heroes of Yesteryear, I learned important things from Johnny Weissmuller on Saturday TV. He taught me that all you really needed, even in the darkest jungles of Africa, was confidence and courage. You could stand up to any deadly danger without the protection of any armor, practically naked, in fact, if only you had that heroic goodness of heart. The little boy I was then still believes that whole-heartedly even in the aging body of an old man.
So, Tarzan continues to live in my memory, a part of me, an essential part of my education. He is me and I am he. But only in my mind. Me in a loincloth, swinging on a vine now… and probably going splat like an overripe melon on the jungle floor… well, that is too ridiculous to even imagine being real anymore. Yet he lives on in me. And he battles the metaphorical leopard-people of modern life through me. Unarmored. Confident. And unafraid.
Catch a Falling Star 
A Mr. Holland Moment
Life is making music. We hum, we sing to ourselves, movie music plays in our head as the soundtrack to our daily life. At least, it does if we stop for a moment and dare to listen. We make music in many different ways. Some play guitar. Some are piano players. And some of us are only player pianos. Some of us make music by writing a themed paragraph like this one. Others make an engine sing in the automotive shop. Still others plant gardens and make flowers or tomatoes grow. I chose teaching kids to read and write. The music still swells in my ears four years after retiring.
The 1995 movie, Mr. Holland’s Opus, is about a musician who thinks he is going to write a magnificent classical orchestra opus while teaching music at a public high school to bring in money and allow him time to compose and be with his young wife as they start a new family.
But teaching is not, of course, what he thought it was. He has to learn the hard way that it is not an easy thing to open up the closed little clam shells that are the minds of students and put music in. You have to learn who they are as people first. You have to learn to care about what goes on in their lives, and how the world around them makes them feel… and react to what you have to teach. Mr. Holland has to learn to pull them into music appreciation using rock and roll and music they like to listen to, teaching them to understand the sparkles and beats and elements that make it up and can be found in all music throughout their lives. They can even begin to find those things in classical music, and appreciate why it has taken hold of our attention for centuries.
And teaching is not easy. You have to make sacrifices. Big dreams, such as a magnum opus called “An American Symphony”, have to be put on the shelf until later. You have children, and you find that parenting isn’t easy either. Mr. Holland’s son is deaf and can never actually hear the music that his father writes from the center of his soul. And the issue of the importance of what you have to teach becomes something you have to fight for. Budget cuts and lack of funding cripples teachers in every field, especially if you teach the arts. Principals don’t often appreciate the value of the life lessons you have to give. Being in high school band doesn’t get you a high paying job later.
But in the end, at the climax of the movie, the students all come back to honor Mr. Holland. They provide a public performance of his magnum opus, his life’s work. And the movie ends with a feeling that it was all worth it, because what he built was eternal, and will be there long after the last note of his music is completely forgotten. It is in the lives and loves and memories of his students, and they will pass it on.
But this post isn’t a movie review. This post is about my movie, my music. I was a teacher in the same way Mr. Holland was. I learned the same lessons about being a teacher as he did. I had the same struggles to learn to reach kids. And my Mr. Holland moment wasn’t anywhere near as big and as loud as Mr. Holland’s. His was performed on a stage in front of the whole school and alumni. His won Richard Dreyfus an Academy Award for Best Actor. But his was only fictional.
Mine was real. It happened in a portable building on the Naaman Forest High School campus. The students and the teacher in the classroom next door threw a surprise party for me. They made a lot of food to share, almost all of which I couldn’t eat because of diabetes. And they told me how much they would miss me, and that they would never forget me. And I had promised myself I would never cry about having to retire. But I broke my promise. In fact, I am crying now ten years later. But they are not tears of sadness. My masterwork has now reached its last, bitter-sweet notes. The crescendos have all faded. But the music of our lives will still keep playing. And not even death can silence it completely.
Leave a comment
Filed under artwork, autobiography, commentary, happiness, insight, kids, movie review, teaching
Tagged as education, learning, music, music-education, teachers, teaching