I am relying on this publisher to get my work into print. I have no way of knowing how much longer I can stay alive since only six incurable diseases, financial hardship, and the cruel winds of fate are all trying to overturn my little metaphorical boat. I have found them to be like a family, concerned about all of the members and willing to go to great lengths to help. I am pinning my literary hopes on them. If my novels don’t get noticed soon and cared about by someone other than me, they may die out shortly after I do. At the rate I am going, I don’t know how many I can push into existence, and I’m fairly sure I will not see all of them in print. But I am trying. This is my legacy, my lifetime of collected wit and wisdom, and it is the most worthy thing about me. So I am trying very hard to promote everything I can to help make the publishing company as a whole to thrive and work. But it is not for this reason only that I promote the work of others.
It is my philosophy of literature and art that good work must be shared. If you haven’t seen my posts about Loish, or William Adolphe Bouguereau, Norman Rockwell, or Maxfield Parrish, you really should look them up. I mean the artists, though I won’t object if you want to find and read my posts, either. Part of my job as a writer and a cartoonist is to make others aware of the good things I have found in life. And good art, good story-telling, good music… those things are some of the very best things that humanity has to offer. It is those creations that are the true purpose of life on Earth. We may not be around as a species very much longer because we are such poor care-takers of the planet, but human culture in all its depth and richness had to exist. It is the real purpose God granted to us.
So I encourage everyone who creates art of any kind… anyone who looks at, reads, or listens to art of any kind, to please share anything and everything you find that is good. The more good there is, the less room there is for evil to exist.
The Photo Paffooney I have provided for today is one I have been sitting on and pondering over for several months now. It isn’t the cloud formation that is troubling, it’s the light. You see, the problem is, it was early morning. The sun was in the east, not far above the horizon. This picture shows two bright lights glowing behind the clouds in the southern sky. So, what were they? Lights that merely hovered there. We are in the zone flown over both by DFW and Love field. These weren’t airplanes. I checked UFO reports continuously. Three times unidentified objects were reported in the Dallas Fort-Worth area. The reports were online, but not covered by local media, newspapers or TV. In fact, they rather swiftly disappeared from You-Tube. So, what does it all mean?
Well, you know I am a nut-case. If you’ve read any of my tinfoil hat posts, you know I think the Roswell incident revolved around at least one crashed ship from another star system. I also think the primary proof that we have that we are not the only intelligent beings in this universe is the very fact that the government has worked so hard to convince us that it is not so. Liars tend to protest too much. And there is an ever-increasing pool of whistle-blowers that have risked everything to come forward with tales of close encounters and government programs to conceal the science we have learned from back-engineered alien space-crafts. You don’t have to believe me. Look up the Disclosure Project and Dr. Steven Greer and Astronaut Edgar Mitchell. Hear it in their own words on You-Tube. I am a kook, but I’m not the only one… and some of them have impressive resumes.
Am I claiming, then, that my picture shows UFO’s from outer space? Of course it doesn’t. It is an unidentified phenomenon that would be easily explained if I just had a few more facts… like the amount of facts I have looked at that make me think that We Are Not Alone.
So, was the purpose of this post merely to remind you that I have an idiotic faith in flying saucers? Not at all. I am in the midst of week of total isolation at home. My family went to Florida for Spring Break to visit my oldest son. I stayed home with the dog (somebody has to feed her and pick up poop). Actually, I am not well enough to travel and I convinced them that it would be okay to go without me. And it is okay too. I may be full of self pity and feeling lonely and blue right now like some sort of fool, but I am not alone. By myself, sure, but not alone. I got to thinking about all the people my life has touched over the years. I have known teachers in four different school districts, people in five different communities, workers at QT where I buy my Big Q cup of Diet Coke every morning, family members by the freight-train-full, cousins, nieces, nephews, uncles, aunts, great aunts, grandparents long gone, and over 2,500 students who sat in my 31 years of classrooms. I guess I know a few people, huh? And none of them have truly left me… not even those who died. As I continue to deteriorate and die… and continue to put my wealth of life experience into silly fictional forms, I realize they are all still with me. It is the only real wealth a human being ever has. I, like you, like all of us, am never alone.
We have a second day off from work and school. The ice and potential snow is far from a blizzard, but sometimes the mere presence of snow can aid the death that stalks on silent cat feet.
My novel, still in the process of publication, called Snow Babies, has a central problem that concerns a blizzard. The primary threat, or possibly antagonist, of the story is a deadly blizzard that descends on a small Iowa town. In the midst of blizzard, whether they are actually hallucinations, ghosts, or banshee-like harbingers of death, are a number of snow babies. I call them snow babies. The Japanese call them yuki onna. They are spirits of the snow that can both lure people to their demise and help to save them for brighter things in their later lives.
I can’t actually speak about who or what the real life ones stalking about the suburbs of Dallas actually are. Lives are at stake in my world right now. I have to deal with some serious depression and mental challenges right now. The foretold consequences include things worse than death. I can no more name them than the owner of a glassware factory can afford to take up throwing stones. Things will shatter that I am trying desperately to protect. One thing that will definitely help is the passing of the snowstorm. Just like in my book, people are forced together in the areas of love and warmth that they depend on to survive. The snow babies themselves are, as you can see by my paffooney illustration, naked children bleached snow At this post is not meant for you. It is done for me. It is a statement of resolve and personal refusal to accept that what comes is due to fate alone… that no one can ever change an outcome. No story-teller ever believes that is the case.
So, here is a post from the snow. I was born during a blizzard. I have always known that the snow will come for me in the end. And it is very cold now where I live. More snow is in the forecast. But I will never give up trying to be warm.
My life is rather fragile at this point. I have recently been ill with a virus. For me, as a COPD sufferer, that can be fatal. My lungs will easily clog and become a serious case of pneumonia. A virus like that will probably be the death of me. I don’t have the money it takes to go to the emergency room. Medical costs have perched my finances over the edge of the chasm of bankruptcy. Caught on a couple of tree roots, my ability to pay for anything dangles over the abyss. The next emergency will be my last… a conscious decision. Man, my blog is a real hoot so far, huh?
But as cold and rainy weather moves in… I am at peace. I have been at war all my life long. I have fought the war against ignorance by being a school teacher. I have fought to make a life for my family, and though financial security is not a part of that, I can testify that my three kids are creative and wonderful people that will survive and make me proud. And my written work, novels and this very blog, are complete enough to secure my legacy of ideas, beliefs, and wisdom to be passed on.
Now, I know that this all sounds like a depressed person saying goodbye. In some ways that is what it is. But it is not something to be worried over. I am not depressed. I am on medication to prevent debilitating depression. I have helped members of my family overcome depression. I am a warrior, and I know how to strike back against the darkness. I will not take my own life. I am, in fact, very good at survival. Thirty-two years ago I beat malignant melanoma. I have six incurable diseases that I have successfully juggled and dealt with for years. There is no humiliating thing or gruesome test that doctors haven’t either inflicted upon me or allowed me to narrowly avoid. I may continue to struggle on for many years. If I am saying goodbye in this post, it is only a just-in-case goodbye. It is really more of a statement that I believe I have achieved what a person needs to achieve in life to be successful. I have completed a quest. When I was a gawky doofus of an Iowegian teenager, I made a vow to be a wizard. I wanted to learn and share wisdom. I believe I have done so. I am wise enough to know that no man lives forever, and with all the factors arrayed against me, I know what comes next. So, I apologize for no humor in this post. But the Toy Soldier Paffooney in this post inspires me. The forced march continues… and it will not end until the soldiers can no longer put one more foot forward.
I know that you are probably immediately listing all the reasons that my title is totally wacky monkey-thinking in your head. And if you want to lay into me in the comments, you are more than welcome. But the reality is that teachers have to develop the mindset that all kids can learn and all people have value… no matter what. That can be hard to accept when you factor in how corrupted, warped, and badly-taught so many people have turned out to be. It honestly seems, sometimes, that when faced with the facts of how people act… being violent, or greedy, self-centered, thoughtless, un-caring, and willfully stupid… that they really don’t even have value to others if you kill them, let them rot, and try to use them as fertilizer. The plants you fertilize with that stuff will come up deformed.
But the Doctor I have pictured here, the Second Doctor played by Patrick Troughton always seemed to find Earth people delightful. Alien people too, for that matter, unless they were soulless mobile hate receptacles in robotic trash cans like the Daleks, or mindless machines powered by stolen human brains like the Cybermen. There is, indeed, music in every soul, even if some of it is a little bit discordant and awkward. And people are not born evil. The classic study done on Brazilian street kids showed that even with no resources to share and living empty, hopeless lives, the children helped one another, comforted one another, and refused to exploit one another. As a teacher you get to know every type that there is. And there are stupid kids (deprived of essential resources necessary to learning), and evil kids (lashing out at others for the pain inflicted upon them), and needy kids (who can never get enough of anything you might offer and always demand more, MORE, MORE!) Sometimes they drive you insane and make you want to resign and leave the country to go count penguins in Antarctica. But the Doctor is right. No matter what has been done to them, if you get to know them, and treat them as individual people rather than as problems… they are delightful!
So let me show you a few old drawings of people.
Cute people like Andrew here.
Or possibly stupid and goofy people who never get things right.
Or long-dead people who made their contributions long ago, and sacrificed everything to make our lives different… if not better.
Or young people who live and learn and hopefully love…
And try really hard at whatever they do… whether they have talent or not.
And hope and dream and play and laugh…
And sometimes hate… (but hopefully not too much)…
And can probably tell that I really like to draw people…
Because God made them all for a reason…
even if we will never find out what that reason is.
Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain from Disney’s Fantasia
The old faun
In musical terms, Allegro Non Troppo means fast tempo, but not too fast. So, I recently discovered that Allegro Non Troppo is one of many rare and obscure old movies which I am passionate about that can be found in its entirety on YouTube. I will include the YouTube link at the end of this post, and I sincerely recommend that if you have never seen this movie, you watch the whole thing at least once. No matter how many cringes or winces or blushes it causes, this is a movie of many bizarre parts that you really need to take in as a whole. It ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime, the atrociously ugly to the lyrically beautiful, from the brilliant classical score being played by a mistreated band of old ladies with orchestral instruments to a gorilla running amok, from Debussy to Ravel, from an artist released from his cage to single-handedly draw the animation, to a satire rich with baudy humor making fun of no less a work of animation than Prisney’s… I mean Disney’s Fantasia. The dark elements are there. The light-hearted, lilting comedy is there. The fairy tale delicacy and technicolor dreaming is all there.
And why should this be important to me? Especially now that I am retired from a long and fruitful teaching career? Well, I have history with this movie. I saw it first in college. I was an English major, but I took every film as literature class I could fit into my silly schedule. As an undergrad, I was determined to be a cartoonist for a career. I took classes seriously and aced most of them, but I was at college to intellectually play around. I didn’t take the prescribed courses to be an English teacher. That had to wait for the more responsible me to come along in grad school for that. I saw both Fantasia and Allegro Non Troppo during one of the play-time years. Much as the old satyr in Claude Debussy’s Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune, I was enamored with sensory experience. I took my first girlfriend to see Disney’s Fantasia, and she later turned down the opportunity to see Allegro Non Troppo with me. Good sense on her part, but the beginning of the end of our relationship. Just as Fantasia has the part in it where Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring describes evolution from the beginning of the Earth to the end of the dinosaurs, Allegro Non Troppo uses Ravel’s Bolero to describe the evolution of life on a weird planet from germs in a discarded Coke bottle to the inevitable coming of the malevolent monkey who is ultimately us. And, of course, the satire would not be complete without some off-set for Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice. As near as I can figure it out, the apprentice, played by Mickey Mouse, becomes the snake from the Garden of Eden in Allegro Non Troppo. When the snake is unable to get Adam and Eve to eat the apple, he makes the mistake of eating the apple himself. He learns the hard way that, no matter how clever, even diabolically clever, you think you are, you are not really in control of anything in life. Every would-be wizard in the world has to understand that he is powerless without hard experience. And what a boring world full of naked people this would be if there were never any apprentices in it foolish enough to actually become wizards. Of course, I haven’t really talked about the most heart-twisting part of Allegro Non Troppo… the sad cat wandering the ruins of his former home, or the most laugh-aloud part with the super-tidy little lady-bee trying to eat a blossom, but being interrupted by a couple of picnickers.
But the thing is, this movie is a timely subject for me. Not only did I, just yesterday, rediscover it, but it still has the same meaning for me now as it did when I first saw it. Then I was an aspiring young artist who loved this movie because it approached ideas non-consecutively, just as I approached my learning years… rambling here and there, finding first a bitter-sweet something, and then a sad beauty behind everything in life. And it is where I am again now, in a poor-health enforced retirement… divorced from teacher’s schedules and time itself. Able to do as I please, and aspiring once again to commit great acts of art.
At Mother’s breakfast table we were always encouraged to talk about stuff. That was a given. It was how families operated in the 60’s and 70’s. Mom and Dad not only listened to the mindless drivel coming out of the childish mouths of me, my two sisters, and my stinky little brother, but they also tended to hold forth about things they wished to teach us. We learned Methodist-Church-flavored Christianity and Eisenhower-Republican values. Ike had been president when I was born and got most of the credit for the post-war boom in the economy. We were middle-class people with solid middle-class values.
And then I had the bad sense to grow up and start thinking for myself. Nixon had let me down big-time when I was in high school. I had defended him against my McGovern-leaning loony liberal friends. My best friend was a preacher’s kid, a Methodist preacher’s kid. His father actually believed in progressive nonsense about sex-education for children and helping to feed the poor. And then Nixon turned out to be a liar, a coverer-upper, a cheat, and a bad-word-user. I suspect, though my Dad never admitted it, that he may have voted for Carter over Ford. It was my first time voting, and it actually felt good to use my vote to strike back at the party that betrayed my trust.
Religion, too. In the late seventies a man named Carl Sagan put on a TV show called Cosmos. The man bedazzled my father and I with Science. He taught us that every molecule of us was composed of atoms that could only have been forged in the cosmic furnaces in the centers of stars. He showed us how spectroscopy of the stars could show us what they were made of. He showed us the meaning of Einstein’s special Theory of Relativity. He pulled the universe together for us in a way that could not be undone. And he did it without calling upon the name and blessings of God. But he pointed out that we are connected to everything in the universe and everything is connected to us. To me, that seemed to define God. My religion was changing from Christianity to Saganism. Of course, Mom heard that as “paganism”. Breakfast table talking changed into early morning arguments. We didn’t exactly throw chairs at each other, but some pretty heated and pretty large ideas went flying through the air. Religion and politics became the banned topics at the breakfast table.
So that brings me to the Paffooney points for today. This blog has turned into a place where a disobedient son, a horrible sort of “free-thinker” type of radical hippie pinko goofball, can talk about the loony-liberal progressive ideas that have taken over his good-little Eisenhower-Republican little-boy mind. I spent the last post talking existentially about my religious beliefs. My conservative, old-fashioned friends and family call me an atheist now, but I truly believe in God. It’s just, I recognize the factors behind Christian myths. I bow to the wisdom of Scientists like Sagan, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Stephen Hawking… as well as hippie psychologists like Alan Watts… and literary heroes like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S, Lewis.
I am proud to be an Iowegian (a Mickian word for being from Iowa), yet my birth-State produces gawd-awful Tea Party politicians like Steve King and Joni Ernst. The stuff that comes out of their mouths doesn’t even make good fertilizer. But they are comedy gold. Will Rogers would have pointed out that the jokes will write themselves. All the humorist would have to do is consult the front page of the newspaper. I also live in Texas where the debate over secession from the United States still goes on with new Governor Greg Abbott, a man who is a Rick Perry clone, except that he hasn’t bothered to put on glasses as much to make him smarter. And Texans are looking forward to the next Republican president in 2016. Both Rick Perry and Ted Cruz are running. That doubles Texas’ chances, right? With Global Warming not being accepted as a real thing, the need for giving all our money to the Koch brothers and the Walton family being recognized by both parties in Congress, and looming war with foreign nations that have the bad sense to be “Muslim in nature”, the future looks kinda bleak. But it is a great time to be a humorist, and I am guessing I won’t be doing very much talking at the breakfast table for a while.
It has been more than a semester now that I have not been a teacher. I am missing it mightily. I even miss the yelling and screaming, the name-calling and the crazy-eyed threats against life and limb. And that’s just me. I miss what the kids always did too. This was driven home to me as I tried to move my middle child from one school to another. We were hoping to get a bit of a break on his placement. He is a gifted child with a penchant for bizarre and long-lasting obsessions. He has a talent for building huge, monumental structures in Minecraft. He is very computer-nerd and history-wonk. (Yes, I know those are not pure predicate adjectives, but I am a retired English teacher and just don’t care any more.) I was hoping they could overlook his burnout/blowout eighth-grade brain meltdown from the previous year and give him the chance to be a ninth grader for at least half a year. No. Arbitrary rules must be obeyed. (That isn’t even how she said it. More like, arbitrary rules MUST be obeyed). That meant of course that he has to continue to repeat the mindless indoctrination of year number 9, (eight numbered grades plus K), (And Pre-K, come to think of it.) Make that year number 10. No high school yet, though he is more than mature enough, intelligent enough, motivated enough, and sweet-natured enough. We are not loving and forgiving people. We are strict and by-the-book people! Forgive me, Lord. I am writing my own book. (In more ways than one.)
This is what we are doing wrong in Education;
1. We are putting people in boxes. (Little people. Kids mostly. We are calling those boxes things like ADHD, Special Education, trouble-maker, learning disabled, emotionally disturbed, disobedient, truant, and “in need of alternative education”… here meaning kid-prison.)
2. We are sealing those boxes with heavy-duty red tape. (Read special or remedial classes as waste-baskets for keeping the rabble and the riff-raff out of the good teachers’ hair.)
3. We are routinely handing those boxes to the box-bangers and package manglers. (The semi-incompetent teachers who have discipline problems because in teacher college nobody tells you what to do with the kid who sits in the corner and sings to himself instead of paying attention, or the girl who gets out of her seat every time the teacher turns his back to go flitting around the room like a bumble bee going flower to flower (except that it is a more hormonal attraction and goes boy to boy); or the competent teacher like me who incurs the principal’s disfavor for having classes that always make noise and are given such classes in boxes as a punishment because that kind of principal is too limited in intelligence to understand that those kinds of boxes are not really a punishment if you merely take a moment to examine the treasures they contain.)
4. We keep the boxes air-tight so that no oxygen or light gets in. (To suffocate learners under piles of worksheets and endless drill and practice is murder. We are killing the precious learners with boring stuff and teaching them to be zombies who all act alike and hate learning because their brains are rotted masses of goo.)
This is what we must do instead;
1. Open the boxes up again and thoroughly mix the contents. (The rich suburban parents will resent the heck out of having their precious honors student sitting in class next to the poor black kid from the projects, but studies show that both kinds of learners do better when they are mixed together.)
2. Notice, we don’t need two any more, because learners are already distributed to different and diverse boxes based on what they individually need and want to learn about and have talent for. Groups should be more like the Shakespeare-loving group or the talkative-socializing group or the Tinker-toy builders group or the vampire-literature-writing group and less like groups of kids all the same color or all the same culture or all the same age.
3. All the teachers need to be trained to handle all the possible… no, make that probable problems that may come up in the classroom. Every classroom needs a proven veteran teacher and an enthusiastic young apprentice teacher. Neither one should have to face the evil hordes alone. And most important of all, any teacher who doesn’t love working with kids (and doesn’t love the kids in a way that will not lead to a prison term) needs be utilized in some way other than as a classroom teacher.
4. Every classroom is a laboratory and every teacher is a creative and daring mad-scientist-type intent on trying new things and only re-doing things that really work well. Forget this nonsense about standard curriculum goals and common core curriculum. Those are only buzz words for suffocating learners and being too lazy to think on your feet in the middle of the every-day classroom battle in the on-going War on Ignorance.
Now you see… I have all the answers and I know everything. The only mystery is… why don’t more people listen to me?
Okay, I know it is a fool’s pursuit. You try to create epigrammatic quotes, sayings, and tidbits of wisdom to post on Facebook and then you hope people will click on “like” and “share”. You hope it goes viral. It is a striving after wind to paraphrase Ecclesiastes. But I do it anyway. After all, isn’t everything a writer does striving after wind? The chances of reaching a larger audience and touching a great many hearts are microscopically insignificant. I have reached a point in my writing career where I am actually, finally able to reach readers. People really do read my blog, my Facebook pages, and occasionally, my novels. I actually do score one or two hits on the heart of a reader once in a while. Is it worth it? Will I ever make any money at it? Yes… followed by probably not. I have managed to leave a footprint on the internet, something that was not possible during all those years of writing and drawing and then storing the work away in boxes and portfolios in the bedroom closets. If you want to see the shape of that footprint, do a Google image search on the words “Beyer Paffooney“. The spread of pictures and links is as impressive as that of real artists and writers (and by real I mean those who are well enough known to actually make some money at it.) Today’s Paffooney is a teacher-meme that should be syrupy cute enough to attract a like or two. I have no illusions about being a master of this new art-form, but I have investigated and studied it just enough to make feeble novice attempts. And so what if no one ever notices? I am posting my heart and wit and wisdom online in ways that will make some of it last beyond the scope of my physical life. Therein lies at least a portion of my immortality.
Here’s a link for the “Google Beyer Paffooney” thing;
A while back I gave you an overview of my writing plan and called it the Magician’s Spyglass. My magic, of course, is story-telling, and the spyglass is a metaphor for looking at the long view ahead. But I have also recently been thinking about the purpose of my writing and where I need to go in sailing my fictional ship with pink sails.
Here is where I’ve been, the view over the aft rail. I have my novel Snow Babies contractually obligated with PDMI Publishing to be published (though the time in the future when it sees print seems to be drifting farther and farther forward.) The novel Superchicken is finished, and the publisher accepted submission, but they have not yet made a decision on its possible publication. The Bicycle-Wheel Genius is completed and being seriously edited by me. The Magical Miss Morgan is completed, edited, and about to be submitted to the YA novel-writing contest that I last participated in with Snow Babies. I am currently writing two new novels, Stardusters and Lizard Men, a science fiction novel about planetary destruction and renewal, as well as using the energy and creativity of youth as a natural resource. And When the Captain Came Calling, a novel about the origins of the Norwall Pirates, that boys’ club of liars that forms the center of most of my Norwall books. So, there is that. I am still sailing straight ahead into stormy seas with my writing. But I am not wearing an eye-patch over both eyes. I am looking at the rough seas and squalling storm clouds dead ahead.
So, as Prognosticator, I must gage the winds, evaluate the white-caps, and take a sounding or two. I have these problems to overcome. I am limited in funding because of poor health, mounting medical expenses, a large tax burden, and a steady retirement income that may be threatened by a Texas Republican trend to cut everything out of public schools, even teacher pensions. This State will never ask billionaires and oilmen to foot their fair share of the bills. They would much rather take away education money because, after all, you need to keep the masses stupid if you are going to continue to farm them like hogs and cattle for every dollar you can squeeze out of them. Stupid people vote Republican, and so are the cherished commodity that Texan Empires are built upon.
The environment is changing for the worse. With COPD and severe allergies brought on by the exposure to farm chemicals in my teen years, I have trouble breathing fresh Texas air (made up of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, butane, and other by-products of fracking and refining). I also have experienced seven Dallas-area earthquakes in the last two years that directly result from fracking in the oil shale beneath our feet. Soon our drinking water should be flammable, judging by the Pennsylvania experience. Global warming has given us record heat-waves and drought in the last decade, though all the officials in this State are insisting it is all in my head. I was imagining the heat two summers ago when we had 99 days of temperatures over 100 in a row. So there is the reason my Stardusters novel is about environmental Armageddon.
The likelihood that I am ever going to make more money writing and drawing than I spend on the endeavor is increasingly small as the publishing industry continues to change and continues to benefit the booksellers like Amazon more and individual content creators less. I will need to write a post or two on that before one of my six incurable diseases kills me.
I must continue to write about artists and writers that influence and engage me. That is lifeblood to me, a commodity that I may soon be short of; I need to write about how I create the stories that I am writing. I also need to chronicle the life I have lived as a teacher and an educator, because the valuable lessons I have learned as a teacher and a mentor to the young will all be lost if I do not do everything I can to pass them on. That is the primary reason that my teacher-story, The Magical Miss Morgan, now exists. These are all things that I am now predicting I must write about. The water is churning and navigation is becoming more difficult… so onward we sail until I can shout, “Land Ho!”
J
Catch a Falling Star 