Children's Crusade

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As an ex-public school teacher with a very wide circle of very intelligent friends I've been of two minds about homeschooled kids - or, more specifically, their parents.

There are two types - those who opt out of the public school system for religious reasons.  I'm too liberal not to be biased (go figure - I'm full of contradictions).

And those who opt out for pedagogical reasons.

Now that I'm free of the political considerations imposed by a tax-supported paycheck - and professional courtesy - I can admit that I'm completely sympatico with parents whose kids were simply not served by the strictures the warehousing concepts some schools demand of students and teachers.

Not everyone learns the same way - or in the same order.  Not everything a school district thinks is important is shared by the people inside it.

I hadn't really thought of this until walking back from my JavaNet Window - and stumbled on a group of about 25 home-schooled kids holding an impromptu rally for Barack Obama in the town square, usually a space reserved for the Farmer's Market and fresh produce.

Apparently there was one young lady forbidden from phoning the Obama campaign - so they compromised by letting her organize a rally in Monument Square.

Compromise is at the heart of the American Experience.  Ben Franklin said that "New nations come into the world like "illegitimate" (not his term) children - one part compromise, one part improvise".

It is a wise group of parents that let their kids experience the full measure of our public life letting them freeze their toes off in the central square of the town getting honked at by strangers.

I phoned the local paper and a T.V. station but I don't think any coverage resulted.  Their loss.

I'm sitting in Mousse, having a coffee and thinking about how I wish I could still teach music if teaching could be like what those children were experiencing.  I suppose that my work with the Multi-Age groups really was it - and, pointedly, most of us are now out of the business of working in big time public education.

Big time public education's loss, I think.

Great job, kids.

I think I'll vote for "that one" for president too.

Rainy Market

What a difference a season can make.

Back what seems like an eternity ago I posted from this right here spot about how lovely the Farmer's Market was.

The post is here.

Now, past the one-third point in October, there is a vastly different feel to the Market.  It's rainy, people are layered, with heavy caps, some wearing gloves, some with Bean Boots, all leaning against the push of the wind, all damp with the blowing rain.

Just over half the usual compliment of farmers are selling in the square.  I think it's partly the weather but mostly I think it's the ending of the harvest.  When the Brussels sprouts (I wonder if the Belgians have Portland sprouts?) come in then you know we're near the end of the season.

There is a Harvest Festival this weekend - I'm tempted to be a part of the 5K run they're hosting - but this one involves taking part in a meal at the end of each third of the race - I'm not sure my "level of training" will take the stress - put another way I'm just as liable to lose whatever I eat as hang onto it.

Beer especially.

Working part-time has its liabilities - cash flow, health insurance, that kind of thing - still, when asked I'm able to reply "keeping body and soul together - mostly soul".

This is not a bad state of affairs.  For good or ill I have spent years - over two decades - trying to meet the expectations of other people, with my own needs kind of sandwiched in along the side.  Being able to do so - well, if not wisely - was a modestly lucrative way to support my life.

So, now, with so much more time - and so much less money - I find I am able take time to hear myself, to listen to others.  It's rather like how one's eyes adjust to turning off the lights in a room - you adjust and then detail begins to appear.

I recommended the same trick to my music students - to go outside late, late at night when the sound of business and obnoxious life have died away - your ears begin to hear more and more as the dull roar of classroom machinery - air conditioning, vacuum cleaners, clocks and whatnot - dies away.  You can hear cars in the far distance, crickets, deer in the woods.  

The sound of each individual wave striking the shore.

And finally this bears fruit when looking at the Market.  

So much more is there than was present back when I first started down this path.  People seem more interesting - they way they walk, they way they bend over to ask or answer questions.  The wind blows the tents, some of them threaten to take off flying - a team of helpers hold onto a tent labeled "pastured pork".

More things to see, less to look at - two women with five one-gallon jugs of cider between them, chatting, warm in the middle of the wind and rain.

It's pretty certain that I would have seen all of this back when the weather was warm and summer frocks were everywhere in the Square - somehow I find this a lot more amenable - new things that I've never had time to see when teaching.

Perhaps the greatest gift is time.  That and a good pair of Bean Boots.

Sitting in the window

For good or ill, I spend a lot of time in this window.

It's a pleasant window, the counter behind it is covered with brass - or bronze, some kind of tastefully patina'd metal, with tall bar-stool type chairs, power plugs and ethernet jacks at just the right height.

There are three shows going on at once - one in my head/laptop, one in the shop behind me (and don't think there isn't an occasional twinge of nervousness at what I hear at my back) and the really fun one on the street in front of me.

A rapid-fire exchange in Spanish goes on to my right, a young madman flashes down the slope of Exchange Street on a skateboard.

It was here, using owner Jonathan Gate's house iMacs (one of which is still working) that I saw my first published piece of music online.  A teaching colleague of mine was working the espresso bar that night and I was treated to a cafe mocha with a treble clef and full staff drawn in chocolate syrup on the cap of steamed milk.

It's almost inevitable that I'll see people I know walk by (or some people I'd like to know).  This stretch of Exchange is the home for some fairly swanky (or, more "swankish") shops - but not so much so that a good representative cross section of Portland's denizens can't be observed.

Once a new piece gets written it's a good place to come to do the editing of bowings, dynamics, articulations and other diacritical markings that make a new score playable.  The background music is not too obnoxious - though there was one day I came in here to actually work out some new parts in my head at the same time that a string duet was playing in the window.  That made it a little hard - though I was able to adapt one of my tangos to a duet and they did a very nice job of sight-reading it.

Strange connections get made here - almost like the front door comes from one world and the back door opens onto quite another.  One evening I rudely intruded myself into a discussion of chord tones and dissonance (one of my pet peeves) with someone I later discovered to be Prof. B, one of our tango doyennes and a French professor at an area liberal arts college.

So it's kind of Portland's little Diagon Alley - a place where you meet all kinds of people, since, as anyone can tell you, this town is coffee-mad - and as we end this most lovely of Autumns, we're going to need the caffeination for the winter to come.

...and the vampires got special mention

I don't have the happiest history with sporting events, which history I've written about here.

So when my friend A. suggested I take part in the Reiche International 5k Road Race it didn't take a hard sell.  I've been meaning to move deeper into a skill my father had back after WW II.

He had met another young Native man while serving on the U.S.S. Altamaha in the Pacific.  Dad's friend showed him some running tricks he'd picked up while on the UCLA track team - and years later, when I was 8 or so, Dad showed them to me.

It was in the early Fifties - before I was born - that the film crew for "Jim Thorpe: All-American" came to Bacone College outside of Muskogee - my Dad's junior college home - to film it as the Carlisle Indian Academy.

This was Burt Lancaster's first real starring role and quite a coup for Oklahoma film-making.

So here was a race, using the Bacone's track team to stand in for Carlisle and my dad as part of the background action.

I've seen this race on T.V. when I was a little boy.  Dad didn't watch with me very often, we just didn't have the same taste, but I do remember him sitting beside me for this film, clear as day.

So, in the film the gun goes off and Jim Thorpe (Lancaster) goes flying around the track to demonstrate his obvious prowess to Pop Warner.  There's a whole history right there.

However, when it was filmed it played out differently.

Dad being Dad - and little has changed in the intervening 6 decades - he took off flying at the gun and basically dusted the whole field in the race.  Won it fair and square.

Needless to say the director, Micheal Curtiz (yes, that Micheal Curtiz) called "cut" amid general laughter and appreciative applause.  It fell to him to explain to Dad "kid that was great but you do understand that Burt Lancaster has to win the race, right?"

Oh - so the shot was reset and in the can as you see it in the film.

As a side point the technical director was head of track and field at UCLA (you see where this is going, don't you ...) and he was kind enough to comment on Dad's technique.  This brought up the young man from the Navy and there they were, talking and comparing notes about the war and everything else.

Funny how all these things work out, isn't it?

So I come by it legitimately - and not just the running (as those of you who know me well can attest).

The Reiche International also had a costume section - actually I started the race in that group as it was patently obvious that some real greyhounds were going to burn up the street.  I shared it with the Mommy group and all of us were in front of the walkers and little kids.

Oh - as were the fairies, dancers, witches and the vampire family - son, dad and mom (who did a 5 klick walk in a red sheath dress slit up to here - I just happened to notice).

So, all told it was a hoot.  I suspect that, just like my life had changed by working at the Orchard, things will shift over to allow this new activity to bring out even more energy, just like tango has.

We shall see.

Bay City Rollers

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It's hard to write about roller derby.

Don't think it's because of a lack of thoughts.  It's more that my morning coffee hasn't kicked in yet.  And the Moody Blues are just a singer in a rock and roll band - singing really loudly over my shoulder.

Gotta love a good backbeat.

Anyway a tango pal of mine is a member of the "varsity" team of Maine Roller Derby - the MRD Port Authority.  The Junior Varsity is the Calamity Janes.  Either way they're a tough bunch I'd rather have on my side in any bar fight.  Any really good bar fight.  I think, by definition any bar fight you're lucky enough to share with a roller derby team is going to go down in memory as a really good bar fight.

But that's just me.

In the clear light of a Wednesday morning - some two weeks later, comma - in my customary POV at Mousse coffee shop, it seems like a very strange dream.

My good friend C. (Chief the Wonderdog's mommy) joined me, quickly lamenting leaving her camera (she is a formidable photographer) back at home.  Fortunately, if not discreetly, I made it a point to state that I wasn't going to see this many women wailing on each other without having some kind of photographic record.

The Calamity Janes were up against Skate Free of Die, from just over the line in New Hamsha'.

C. had never been to roller derby before - we've all seen it (or think we've seen it) on T.V. and everyone remembers Raquel Welch in Kansas City Bomber (well, I do, anyway).  This was flat track roller derby, with the track laid out on the floor of the Expo with very, very hard-stressed blue tape.

Our guys - gals - whatever - came in from the sides, Indian fashion (OK, I'll let that one pass) to the strains of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (Ennio Morricone probably will never know ...).  Then both sides took the court (or the piste, or whatever) and a demonstration began.

This happened in place, the two teams showing how jammers picked up points by passing the peloton (I don't know how many more sports I can mix up into this).  It was kind of cute, skating in place while also showing the different kinds of legal blocks.

It could also have pretty much been my entire description of the game, since Portland then proceeded to skate the everliving wheels off New Hampshire.

It gave you a chance to experience the beauty, grace, power and sheer majesty of the game because there really was no contest - our girls did us proud.

The players all have great noms-de-guerre; Itsy Bitsy Spider and Sugar Bush were our two most outstanding Jammers for the night but pretty much all the girls got a shot to score points.  Lot's of dramatic makeup, lot's of dramatic grandstanding - a lot of fishnets.

Over in the "end zone" was a large beer garden, the only part of the stands that was really full.  "Rowdy" would have been three shades of understatement - this crowd was liquored up, hyped, over-sexed and very, very well contained by really, really big bouncers in the entrances.  The real highlight of the evening was watching 300 drunks try to do the wave without falling off the back of the bleachers.

My god, it was glorious.

Long story short - we totally sucked out New Hampshire by an incredible tally of 241 to 14.  The only real competitive excitement came when the basketball-style scoreboard passed its designed limit of 199 points and reset Portland's score back to "0".  That's when we showed our class and started cheering for Skate Free or Die to try to catch up with the home team.

Sadly this magnanimous gesture was wasted - Portland still won the game, 241 to 14.  It wasn't even close.

It wasn't even close by a long chalk.

So, what did we learn by going to Maine Roller Derby?

We learned that fishnets on big mean women are oddly interesting.

We learned that bouncers are there for a reason - safety and rescue, mostly.

We learned that everyone can have a good time just watching people have fun.

We learned that Jim Alberty is slow as molasses on a winter morning when it comes to keeping this blog current.

So, it was a total hoot.  Glad I was there and if I have time (as I tend to work on the weekends) I'm going back.

C. has declared she wants to try out.  

Wow.

From the Orchard to the Pumpkin Patch

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I have to admit that lately my Saturday nights have been most entertaining.  Last week it was Roller Derby - which is a post I'm going to write shortly - and this week it was a mad dash home from work, dropping off a colleague riding along, then layering up to go to the Cumberland Fairgrounds for the return of Pumpkin Fest.

The Fest is the amazing fundraising effort of Camp Sunshine, an NPO that supports a camp for families of seriously ill kids down in Casco.  The last time they had one here in Maine was 2003 in Deering Oaks and folks still talk about it.

So after a hectic day in the Orchard - where I'm now being asked to teach the occasional workshop - the idea of attending such amiable madness was very very appealing.

I know the Cumberland Fairgrounds quite well.  During my 20-year tenure teaching in the town I had many performances for my students there - both the Principal's Own marching band (dodging cow dung during the Saturday Morning Fair Parade) to quick unison chorus concerts in the Exhibition Building.

The W's and I would try to get out on the Friday to sample the Fair, but recently - with their kids getting older - and our own approach to the arrival of Friday evening being more gasp than cheer - we've missed it.

Now they just want to study Italian at the Cambalache Spanish Center.

Still it was fun to park over and greet the former DARE officer from the Cumberland PD - it was nice to be remembered.

The first things to great you coming into the grounds was a small but very vocal patch of jack-o-lanterns - I'm going to abbreviate and call them "Jacks" - behind the registration table.

There was a loud band playing - Entrain, according to their site - that had a happy, kind of semi-sanitized Doctor John kind of sound.  A lot of live drum beats, which set off a lot the kids to bound around and jump.

And there were a lot of little kids there.  Pretty much all of the center of the sulky track was filled with pumpkins - the lighting had started about 45 minutes before.  

There were hundreds and hundreds of children there, walking, some with flashlights, some holding hands with parent, siblings, holding dog leashes - all of them running, then stopping to see particularly happy face, a scary one, a silly - and then wandering on.

Everywhere, the smell of scented votive candles filled the air - and the rich smell of cooking pumpkin.

I would think that walking through fields, avenues and thouroughfares of lit pumpkins would be the kind of bright, magical memory that would stay with kids for a lifetime - if they weren't addicted to such experiences and memories.  I think there is such a thing as too much magic, too much amazement - maybe you should not let magic get to a point where it's expected - expected magic, like expected grace - becomes a dull, faded thing very quickly.

Better to lose your breath unexpectedly.

A battalion of volunteers was whaling on pumpkins, turning out a new face every thirty seconds.  "Toppers", mostly adults, opened the tops, "hullers" scooped the insides out and "facers" gave the gourds their new identities.

The massive effort was also taking place in the shelter of the small-animal barns.  It was there I ran into a former colleague from the Memorial School - a link to my Life 1.5 and a welcome face in the dark.

I wandered around the grounds, looking at the assembled multitudes of pumpkins, totally enchanted - enchanted in a basic, deep magical sense - with the goofy wonder of it all.  

A rich smell, a warm light, biting cold - all combined to make it a rich scene, full of sound ,music, the cries of delighted children and adults.

Overlooking everything was a huge, double-sided wall of pumpkins - each with a heart, carved for a special donation.  It rose like a cascade of frozen, molten light, high over the lava-like flow of color from the other pumpkins on the ground.

It was as if one were walking between the glowing crust of a recent volcanic eruption; perhaps this is how the Devil walks around Hell, impervious to the heat of burning red rocks.

I don't know - but it was really pretty.

Fortunately I had the good sense to know when I was done with the moment, and headed home.  Today the pumpkins all get mulched and used at Pineland Farms.

Nothing goes to waste, not pumpkins, not magic, not ideas and certainly, certainly not people.

OK - magic can do that.

Steel That Goes Left, Steel That Goes Right-Pt. 2

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Ghost rails.  Not a "ghost train", which is a fairly popular form of literature, but ghost rails, which once were there, led somewhere and sadly are no longer there.

Proof of the transitory nature of reality - even the one that is just outside our doors, experienced like I'm experiencing the laundromat I'm typing in - lies in the picture at right.

The Union Train station is gone - the Union Square Plaza, Portland's most useful shopping mall - is in its place.  Only one track is left from all the lines that headed West - even the ballast on the right of way is coming undone, loose and gravelly.  

This is where I came out after meeting with our Brothers of the Underpass.  I had been walking on an active rail line to this point.  Now I was encountering leftover places - places that had could be put to no use anymore, places just sitting and mouldering.

I enjoyed it.  Perhaps the very fluidity leading to their abandonment would bring something new and unexpected in their place.  At the very last the bridges, rocks and trees were an impromptu canvas for all kind of new artworks - not only spray paint tags but improvised sculptures of rocks and rails, intentional or not.

So I did get a lazy, low-flying eagle-eye view of traffic at the end of Park Street, where the rebuilt McDonald's rears its caloric head.  The legality of my POV wasn't exactly clear and I was certain a carload of Portland's finest would catch me up and drag me off for trespassing.

I worry about a lot of things.  None of them important, that's how I keep up such a large number.

The bridge also overlooks Hadlock Field, home of Portland's own Sea Dogs - and a huge new toy that's been calling out to me during each of the twenty or more years I've lived in Portland - namely the iron truss bridge for the Back Bay spur line.

It actually has a very thin catwalk.  You almost have to cross from tie to tie in order to stay upright.  This makes it a little nerve-wracking.  It also makes it fun.

Very quickly the rails lead you into an urban jungle, rails overgrown and almost invisible with grass, vines and even small trees.

There is a path running along the side - people obviously use it as a shortcut - I can imagine bicycles racing down the path starting at Deering Oaks, continuing behind the Ballpark.

Groundskeepers work on the field - even two weeks after the Sea Dogs were knocked out of the playoffs.  You can see the guts of the lighthouse that rises for homeruns by the hometeam.

I-295 closes in on your left.  You can almost reach around the bushes and touch the cars going by at turnpike speeds.  

Then Fitzpatrick Stadium, home of the Portland High School football team, out in force running scrimmages for both varsity (in the stadium) and junior varsity (on the practice field of Deering Oaks).  I managed to get some shots of both, particularly some special teams practice for kickoffs.

You can see downtown - City Hall and the brick facade of Portland High School itself from the rails.  It's a strange vantage point, one that you don't see unless you undertake such galavanting about.

The contrast affected me deeply - how odd to see and feel such energy; the highway, the new rails, the city and all of the students working out all in the moment, all heading forward.

And, at the same time, the passing, rusting rails.  They weren't passenger rails but freight.  The line would continue across Forest, the town's main East/West artery, behind the post office and through the now-developing Bayside area.  It must have been busy and it must have been important - enough so for a two-track bridge to carry it across Park Street.

Simple observation tells me that a lot has changed - even in the twenty years of my residence here, a lot has changed.

Maybe, just maybe, this rings so deeply with me because I have changed.  Taking my new job, writing new music and living my life with a new depth - all might make me more sensitive to transitions, to seeing things as past, present and future.

The Cherokee language has several ways of expressing an experience of time that is continuous.  Perhaps this expresses itself in my interest in the layers of life around me.

Well, the rails end and so did my walk.  There is one more side to the city I have to walk, along the water to the old bridge by the bean factory.  I'm very curious as to what it will lead me to.