INTERVIEW WITH AN ANGEL

We are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others.

- President Obama

January 12, 2011

Google Images

“THERE IS JUST ONE TEACHER standing in front of 150 Kindergartners with one binder and a pencil. The kids stand a recite what the teacher says. It’s all lecture.” Retired Tuolumne County teacher Geanie Eaton talks about her recent trip to Tanzania. She and a few colleagues had been helicoptered in to a remote village to assist local teachers. “A binder with lessons and a single pencil.”

In place of a holiday letter detailing the history of her family, in her Christmas card, Mrs. Eaton sent a request for school supplies along with a brief summary of her work with teachers in this impoverished nation. “The only hope any of these people have rests with whatever education they can receive.”

I’d worked for Geanie Eaton when I served as the principal at Sullivan Creek School near Sonora, California.  Years later, I was employed as a district level administrator for an up-scale school district in the Sacramento area. I knew my most recent district had pallets of outdated textbooks, culled library books, teacher resources no longer aligned with California standards, pocket charts, globes that were 97% still correct and mathematics materials that allow students to play with numbers in order to better understand them.

“Mathematic manipulatives,” she cried putting her hands on both cheeks as Tim and I unloaded a packed U-haul trailer. “Oh! When I go back this summer, I’ll get to teach the teachers how to use manipulatives. This is wonderful.” She explained: "There is a ratio of one teacher to 150 Kindergartners and one teacher to about 100 first graders. While the teacher speaks, the children simply stand and listen. If a child is helping or asked to demonstrate, the others just stand.”

Google Images

AFTER TIM AND I UNLOADED over four tons of donated materials onto the concrete floor of her barn, she invited us to look at pictures from her trip in 2010. [Photos attached to this post come from Hope for the Nations and other sources, as Geanie did not have copies available for us. The attached pictures are not reflective of the rural school Mrs. Eaton visited.]

Hope for the Nations

She shared a picture of her on the dirt floor of a classroom with dozens of primary students building structures. “The teacher was beside herself when I got on the floor, but ‘this is how children learn,’ I told her.”

Another picture: “The school is built of mud bricks. Bricks of mud. No straw. Just mud. When it rains…” She paused. “The coops for the chickens are more substantial.”

Yet another: a teacher in front of countless children lecturing in English. “In Tanzania, the children have to know English as well as Swahili. They have to know English by the end of the sixth grade or they can’t go further in school.”

(c) CIA.  Yes, that CIA

Mrs. Eaton is campaigning to purchase and ship a 40-foot cargo container filled with school supplies and textbooks. She is looking for donations of materials and monetary donations to cover the anticipated $20,000.00 expenses. Her goal is to return in the summer months to train local teachers on the use of the books and equipment.

Perhaps the most memorable photo was of a 5’3” Mrs. Eaton along with another missionary standing next to one of the village teachers. With the three adults stood a handsome older teen. “He was most cordial,” Geanie reported. “And he only said one thing - but it was in perfect English: ‘It would be good to have materials.’ He had the biggest smile.”


RESOURCES:

Hope for the Nations

www.hopeforthenations.com/ More than a rescue operation, Hope for the Nations (HFTN) works in partnership with local communities and organizations in over 20 countries to provide orphans and vulnerable children with caring homes, health care and education in their communities. Local micro-enterprises and community development projects help to support and finance these efforts. Hope for the Nations makes a difference by starting the process of change: “Today’s Orphans; Tomorrow’s Leaders”

MONETARY DONATIONS:

Contributions in support of Mrs. Eaton’s work in Tanzania with Hope for the Nations may be made through the Sierra Bible Church in Sonora, California. SBC’s contact information is readily available on the web.

LITERACY: AMERICA’S DEFICIT – NOW WHAT?

Part 3 of what, thankfully, is only a three-part series.

THERE ARE STRAIGHT-A CITIZENS among us who read exceedingly well but may not be particularly literate. An individual can read Huckleberry Finn and report exactly what happened. But if the reading does not impact the individual’s perception of poverty or racism or faith or friendship, a strong argument could be made that the reader missed the large part of Sam Clemens’s message.

Can’t we test for this? The principal issue with objective tests to judge reading is the tests’ inability to measure more than yes/no or simple recall and prediction answers. The true test of literacy comes not from recounting what the document says, but revealing what the document does. How does the work inform one’s understanding? How does it move one to action? How does it fit within all of the sources of influence – written and otherwise – to guide one’s decisions, and ultimately one’s life choices? The full impact of the literature may occur decades after the reading of the book.

(c) Time Magazine, 2005

Why do stuff that can’t be easily tested? When we engage in deeper thought, when we access some Bloom-like hierarchy in response to what we’ve read, we more fully benefit from the literature contained therein. With an ever increasing set of information and entertainment options – television, movies on demand, the Internet, text messaging, twittering – and a collective decrease in our patience at “getting to the bottom line,” it is understandable that we don’t access those higher level cognitive skills some circumstances – like voting – demand.

But we do so at our own peril. The amazing experiment that is this country’s democracy was arrived at through passionate disagreement, long oratorical debate, reasoned discourse, and finally compromise for a greater good. The disagreement, debate and compromise involved some of the most well read people of the day: our Founding Fathers. When we allow ourselves to evolve away from the skills and thought processes that provided the foundation for our country, we can do no better than to send representatives to Washington who also lack those skills. Today, we may be seeing the result.


NOW WHAT? Support literacy by practicing it. Here are a few ideas:

• Be well read.
• Read often.
• Read good stuff and “trash.”
• Understand that a written work must pass editorial scrutiny for accuracy, story line and marketability. Many other information sources only need to be marketable. (Sometimes they only need to be salacious or juicy.)
• Engage in a conversation with the author, even if it only looks like you’re talking to yourself.
• Balance what the author is saying with the truths you have established throughout your life. See if those truths budge a little bit.
• Upon completing the reading of a book or novel – especially a really good one – take a day or two and reflect on it. (I found myself doing this recently with Garth Stein’s novel The Art of Racing in the Rain, and then Kiyo Sato’s memoir Kiyo’s Story. I was amazed at how the stories continued to unfold after I’d finished the books; how my appreciation deepened and how the circumstances of each altered my point of view about love and patience, loyalty and patriotism.)
• Chat with others – particularly your kids – about what you valued in the work you just read.

For the upcoming generation?

• Let your kids catch you reading.
• Provide children with lots of material across many genres and topics.
• Know that one measure of a good juvenile reader is how much time they spend reading. The answer to the question “Does your child read for pleasure?” is more important than “Is your child learning reading skills?” The former will precede the latter.
• Engage children in discussion about what they’ve read; engage them in questions that demand a bit deeper thought.
• Limit to some extent (sorry, this one is negative) incessant exposure to entertainment that offers only immediate gratification.
• Read together.

IN THE FIRST ENTRY OF THIS SERIES, a question was posed: “If you could pick just one major issue confronting America today, and you were to dedicate 100% of your efforts to its resolution, what would be the issue?”

All of the issues posed are critical. And all can be answered by anyone because, like belly buttons, everybody seems to have an opinion. But if our country is to have a secure and prosperous future, the literate among us will likely provide the best solutions.

The good news is that we can all be literate.


© 2011
Church of the Open Road Press

LITERACY: AMERICA’S DEFICIT – SO WHAT?

Part 2 of what appears to be a three-part series.

READING IS THE FOUNDATION of literacy, along with comprehension. Reading and reading comprehension are, in a sense, tangible. A yes-no answer indicates whether the passage was read. However, when we read simply to find out how to answer a question, the act of reading becomes a mere utility, much like plugging in the iron prior to pressing some shirts.

However, a pressed shirt does not a gentleman make. Literacy is not quite so tangible. Literacy involves many more facets than supplying the correct response to a two-dimensional comprehension question on a fill-in-the-bubble test. Literacy requires what Benjamin Bloom would identify as “Higher Level Thinking” skills. Revised by Anderson and Krathwohl (2001), the hierarchy includes:

• Remembering - Recognizing, listing, describing, identifying, retrieving, naming, locating, finding
• Understanding - Interpreting, summarizing, inferring, paraphrasing, classifying, comparing, explaining, exemplifying
• Applying - Implementing, carrying out, using, executing
• Analyzing - Comparing, organizing, deconstructing, attributing, outlining, finding, structuring, integrating
• Evaluating - Checking, hypothesizing, critiquing, experimenting, judging, testing, detecting, monitoring
• Creating - designing, constructing, planning, producing, inventing, devising, making

IN OUR DAILY LIVES, we are constantly asked to make decisions based upon that which we can remember and move up and down through the taxonomy as required by circumstance: How to get to the store, what to buy once we get there, how to choose from the wide variety of products available, why a product might be more beneficial (either in terms of cost or nutritive quality) than a rival, and what to do with the product or how to prepare the product once we arrive home. In real-world experiences, we climb through Bloom’s hierarchy on a regular basis.

In our academic or work lives, we are not as readily challenged to think or act beyond the “remembering” or “understanding” levels. We remember how to brew coffee and do so. We may read the morning paper but rarely will converse with it. (Truth be told, my wife would prefer it if I “conversed” with the paper just a little bit less each morning.) We follow the same route to work each day. We arrive at our jobs and function within the defined parameters afforded to us. We may plan a long weekend or a vacation now and then. We may or may not write a will or a living trust depending on how ready we are to examine some hard truths attached thereto.

Those who choose to spend at least a little of their time in the realm of literature may find themselves:

• Understanding the text through conversation with the author, another reader or through introspection;
• Applying what is revealed to their daily lives and thought, or simply further the arc of the story;
• Analyzing what has been revealed through the lens of other written works or their own experiences;
• Evaluating the match between the author’s tenets and the reader’s perception of the truth; and
• Creating something or acting in a particular manner based upon a new universe of reason or possibility.

All of which may seem like glorified academia until life presents a circumstance that is new, unexpected, particularly joyous or particularly tragic. Take this sad national example:

Google Images

After years of relatively stable domestic circumstance, in 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. This unthinkable event plunged the 46-year-old democracy into a crisis unlike any it had ever faced. While the average citizen may have wondered, “What’s next?” the government was catapulted onto Bloom’s highest rung. It had to do more than simply follow the succession process outlined in their constitution; it had to create stability in the minds of the citizenry where stability had crumbled.


SO WHAT? As citizens – in roles that transcend our academic or vocational lives – we are frequently presented with questions that require higher levels of thinking than how to brew that coffee or what to prepare for dinner. While thankfully not as cataclysmic as the loss of a popularly elected leader, they include:

• Who shall represent me? How are the candidate’s values and ethics similar or different from my own?
• What government services are essential to me? What services are essential to others?
• Is the initiative upon which I am to decide a good thing or a bad thing?
• And what about taxes? How much is too much and what am I willing to give up in order to pay less?

When these questions arise, our responses can come from sound bites and 30-second impressions and the last thing someone said to us on the topic. Or those bits of information and opinion can be sieved through questions of our own, discussions with others and reason requiring application of the higher-level cognitive skills that the true answers demand.

Literate folks do the latter.  Our country deserves nothing less from its citizenry.

© 2011
Church of the Open Road Press

LITERACY: AMERICA’S DEFICIT - WHAT?

OVER WHISKEY ONE NIGHT, the following was raised: “If you could pick just one major issue confronting America today, and you were to dedicate 100% of your efforts to its resolution, what would be the issue?”

Almost immediately, a list of concerns was aired:

• The deficit we are leaving to our children;
• The rise of corporate power in our democracy;
• The intractable ways of our dysfunctional Congress;
• The quagmires in both Iraq and Afghanistan;
• The inability to confront climate change;
• The social injustice of poverty;
• The polarization of our populous brought about by the far right and the far left (but mostly by the far right, I must say, admitting my bias)…

A day or two mulling this question brought me to this singular conclusion: The major issue confronting America is our collective inattention to literacy.

When an author writes, he or she is engaged in an act of creativity. When a reader reads, he or she, too, is engaged in a creative act. The act involves making meaning from abstract symbols. It involves gathering data or information and drawing conclusions. It demands a tenacious examination of all of the elements present in order for a defensible solution to be proposed. (A lousy mystery is one where the writer throws in a fact or element right at the end to justify a conclusion. We’ve all read ‘em.) Literacy provides the foundation for making the abstract concrete; it affords us practice with questions for which we can devise answers.

WERE WE A MORE LITERATE SOCIETY, we would understand:

• The value of money and influence (ours or the government’s) over time. We would recognize that there are limits to the good credit can do for us and that there are limits to the things we really need to have. We would embrace the consequences attached to debts we accrue.
• “What’s good for General Motors is good for the US,” is credible only if the ethics driving the business balance what’s good for shareholders with what’s good for the country. We’d know that disconnects between the shareholder and the citizenry are natural and predictable because of that darned “love of money” oracle.
• We vote for people to make policy on our behalf. We’d know that the implementation of autopilot initiatives and ballot box budgeting inhibit representatives’ ability to fulfill their responsibilities, while affording us opportunity to make policy the impacts of which we cannot fully conceptualize.
• There are those who do not “hate our way of life” but are jealous of it; and that there are good people who fervently worship in a different manner. (We’d know this because we’d choose to read the Qur’an, rather than have somebody tell us what’s in it.)
• It is easier to criticize the science than to actually do the science.
• Assisting the poor to self-sufficiency doesn’t take away from us; it contributes to the betterment of all.
• Nothing is absolute. There are aspects of life that can be done independently and for profit. And there are equally important societal functions that are done for all. Police and fire protection, education, the justice system and, perhaps, even health care (think: promote the general welfare) come to mind.

AUDI PARTEM ALTERAM: “hear the other side.” When literate, we “get” that the opponent’s point of view is not a threat, it is simply another point of view. When literate, we converse to answer common questions and solve common problems. When literate, we develop the tools necessary to address (dare I say?) all the major issues confronting America.

Societies lacking the logic, reason and thought commonly associated with literacy are mired in conflict, poverty, crime and ignorance. Security, safety and well-being suffer.

Preferring to not go there as a country, I'll put my efforts behind greater literacy for all.

© 2011
Church of the Open Road Press

REVISITING THE “OTHER WOMAN”

THE LAST TWO WEEKS OF DECEMBER, riders enter the icy basement of the touring season. Days are short. Temperatures dip below freezing and sometimes stay there. The motorcycle is mothballed into a dark crevice of the garage, oil drained, tank topped, battery on slow charge. Draped over the revered chrome and paint is a blanket or two – protection from the elements of the darkened shop. Atop the blanket are misplaced tools, waiting to be rehung or recabineted, or a derelict shop rag. Indeed, the mighty motorcycle, singular pride of the owner, has been demoted to little more that a storage shelf.

During these days, and about through the end of February, riders stay inside by the fire with a cup of coffee or a dram of something stronger. They pour over maps and guidebooks. Motorcycle periodicals are read forward, backward and forward again. Local dealers are visited by folks knowing it’s safe to look, even to touch, but unsafe to test ride in icy conditions. Polite salespeople make conversation resigned that this is the season of low commission.

(c) Ducati SpA - USA

I HAD YET TO “CUT THINGS OFF” or “make things right” with the “other woman.” A shipping blanket covers my GSA and, while I think longingly of the open road on that great machine, I still can’t avoid thinking of the little Ducati, her fluid lines and accommodating – even inviting - pillion and how responsive and lithe she might feel in a series of twisting switchbacks or running free along a high straightaway in the forested high country. In idle times, I am serenaded by the throaty report of her Termi exhausts and recall how the Italians understand form, function, color and sound and how these elements always seem to add up to something exotic and sensual. Something out of reach to the likes of me.

Removing a shop rag and a couple of end wrenches from the blanketed BMW, I shake myself into sensibleness and realize I must end it. I must make it down to the Ducati dealer, confront the little GT1000 and tell her that it is never to be.

Driving to the dealer, I expect the 2008 to be off in a corner, a dark place out of the traffic pattern for the dealer. Last time I was down there, I really had to look for her.

“Ducati builds motorcycles for a different market,” the salesman had said. “The retro style on this bike may be what you and I want, but apparently, the Ducatisti are looking for something else.”

“Too bad for them,” I tell him.

“I can make you a deal,” he says.

(c) Ducati SpA - USA

Ducati has discontinued the so-called sport-classic line. The last of the 2009s were marketed as 2010s and most dealers aren’t ordering up examples for show rooms. Now, on the cusp of another new year, the inventory has dwindled and few – very few – new ones are left on dealer floors anywhere. Still, I expect the silver and gray ’08 to be off in a cold corner, much like my BMW at home, waiting for someone to introduce her to one of those byways in the spring.

It won’t be me, however. I’m cutting her off. I’m not going to straddle her broad, comfortable seat, or twist her eager throttle. I’m not going to pull her clutch and shift through her five or six gears. I’m not going to sit there and imagine the songs her exhausts might sing. I’m just going to tell the salesman that she and I need some time. Alone.


I OPEN THE DOOR to the dealership and am immediately recognized. Without rising from the sales desk to shake my hand, I am told, “She’s gone.”

“Gone?”

“Yep, gone.” Now the salesman rises. “Last week.”

I want to walk over to the dark corner of the show room just to make sure.

“Trust me.”

I stop. “How much?”

“You really want to know?”

“No.”

“Just under eighty-five hundred.”

“That, that bitch.”

“Wh- what?”

“She sold for two grand less than retail?”  I am incredulous.

He shakes his head: “Three grand.”

I slump into the chrome-legged customer chair at the sales desk, and hang my head, muttering.

After a time, the salesman says, rather pointedly, “You gonna buy something today?”


NORMALLY, despondency is cured by a couple of hours riding some back road. But today, the outside temperature is 38. A covering of tule fog tells me that 38 is all it will get to be. I sit in the cab of my pickup wondering about what might have been. Condensation fogs the windows. It takes nearly five minutes for the glass to clear and during that time I determine I’ll take the long way home.

Traveling east on Auburn Boulevard, I pass the usual businesses – the muffler shop, the pancake house, the topless “gentleman’s” club, the Triumph dealer.

The Triumph dealer!

I wheel in.

(c) TriumphUK

In the window - looking like an earthy, late-sixties counter-culture lass, one dressed in well-worn khaki and flannel, rugged, yet steeped in a mellowness perhaps the result of several cannabis-fueled summer evenings singing by a roaring Humboldt County beach campfire – an old-looking new Bonneville. The T-100 model. Nineteen inch front wheel. Pea-shooter pipes. Tank, a luscious cream over chocolate with hand-painted coach lines.

With both feet lightly planted on the showroom floor, I lift the bike off her sidestand, pull in the clutch and twist the throttle. I wonder what she’ll sing to me on the road.

© 2011
Church of the Open Road Press

UNTITLED HOLIDAY

ABOUT MID-NOVEMBER, when what we call “cold” in Northern California sets in and we’ve pulled from the cedar chest the woolen shirts and extra blankets for their properties of comfort, we had a holiday. It wasn’t one marked on the calendar.

The local paper predicted that the first big storm of the season would slip down from the Gulf of Alaska, and, like clockwork, it did. Coincident to that, family had lost a member, one who’d been hurting for some time. In the days before the advent of the storm, we’d gathered in the city to say our farewells. We would all return to our respective homes resuming lives that were, at once, a little bit richer and a little bit poorer.

Then came that polar burst from the Gulf. It started with a gathering overcast – one that fully insulated the earth from the sun. The temperature dipped and a drizzle developed, prompting use of the intermittent setting for windshield wipers while driving up the Interstate. As the storm matured, the rain became steady and darkness fell without sunset.

Down to the city, after services but before parting, someone mentioned that perhaps they could come to our section – maybe visit for an evening. And they did.

I think that suggestion sowed the seeds of holiday.


LIKE THOSE WOOLEN COATS and blankets, a bracing stew is a favorite essential of late autumn evenings cloistered in fog and mizzly precipitation. Cubes of beef and lamb are rolled in a flour mixture, browned in a skillet, and set to steep in a bath of bouillon and water. At the opportune time, chunks of carrot, celery, turnip, bell pepper and potato are added. The mixture simmers and the house is filled with a tantalizing aroma that boldly declares: this winter may be bitter, but we’ll beat it.

Such as this was cooking when, with a gentle rap on the door and a chorus of welcoming barks from the dogs, folks arrived.

Warm apple pie had been pulled from the oven to be replaced by biscuits made with too much baking powder.

“No guarantees,” the self-anointed chef said as he slipped them in.


A DANCING ROW OF FLAME from a pressed-wood log tickled the metal edge of the only-on-occasion-used fireplace. With red wine, we toasted the departed. Then we toasted each other. We sat and ate at a table not big enough to accommodate our number. We bumped elbows and off-handedly drank from our tablemate’s cup. The sorrow of loss quickly dissolved: first with a titter, then a barb, then laughter. One spoke. Then we all spoke. Then we all laughed some more. Most had second helpings of the stew. The batch of biscuits did not see the end of the meal.

“Save room for pie!”

Another bottle had been uncorked and a third – perhaps even a fourth – waited.


IT BECAME ONE A MOMENT that could never last but would always linger. By late in the evening, folks headed home: To Texas, to Maryland, to parts unknown – and some only back to the city an hour or two down the Interstate.

Those of us who’d hosted sat for a long spell – fairly quiet – wrapped in warmth. The dishes would wait.

As they left, somebody had said: “We must do this again.”

“And soon,” said another.

“Yes, soon,” said another, “because there are no guarantees.”

It had indeed been a holiday –one in which no gifts were exchanged.

Except for the gift of family.

1438 Bidwell Avenue.  Circa 1958

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

ON THE HIGH LONESOME – HOW ROADS GET ON THE LIST

If you let one get away, you’ll always be one behind.

- Sage advice from somebody’s uncle,

though likely not about scenic by-ways.

WARREN, A FRIEND FROM THE BAY AREA, called the other night. “Say,” he began. “I was thinking of you the other day. I was in Likely (Modoc County) and took the road over to Eagleville.”

“Up to the Surprise Valley?” I asked.

This he confirmed and added: “Lots of Canadian geese in the stubble. And some Great Blues in the standing ponds.”

I’d passed near that section this summer, returning from Wyoming. Stopped in Likely for a Coke and had seen the road of which Warren spoke. A bit saddle weary at the time, I said to myself, next time I’m up this way.

When our conversation concluded, I reached for my California Atlas and Gazetteer, looked up the route and thought, what if there is no ‘next time?’


NORTHEASTERN CALIFORNIA exists as if were separate and apart from the rest of the state. It exists as if frozen in time. Outside of pickup trucks, farm implements and some stretches of paved road, Modoc County is wonderfully romantic window into nineteenth century life.

Driving up 395 several years back, I detoured into Cedarville, capital of the Surprise Valley. I consumed a pizza and two beers at open mic night – fellow played a pretty fair honky-tonk while a young gal in tight jeans sang western songs. All for about fourteen bucks. In the morning, I was unable to finish the “Ranch Hand” breakfast at the café across the street. I paid cash to the proprietor of the four-room motel a $42 room, thinking he might not take American Express.

(c) New Day Academy

OUT ON THE HIGH LONESOME, the air is clear and sweet, perfumed by sage in the spring and summer and hearty wood smoke in the fall and winter. The peaks of the Warners some years never lose their snow, the melt of which provides irrigation for vast expanses of hay, wheat and cattle.

Every vehicle on the road is a truck, with Chevys seeming to predominate. Most are aged with finishes baked to a shineless patina by long days operating under an intense sun. Every truck is driven by a rancher whose broad-brimmed hat is not a fashion statement: rather, a necessity. Every pickup box carries a cattle dog, antsily pacing its confines, waiting for the trigger word so it can leap out and herd something.

photo credit: San Francisco Chronicle

But for every rancher in a truck, there’re two or three commuting on horseback.







WARREN'S TRIP to Eagleville occurred this past November. “Got dark real early. Setting sun kinda turned the snow pink. I’m not sure I saw everything there was to see once I crossed the pass after about 4:30.”

Years back, I recalled the summer sun setting well past nine with alpenglow on the Warners lasting until ten. I sat out behind the motel with a Rocky Patel cigar I’d packed and watched those mountains fade to black.


TODAY IT RAINS. The forecast calls for about a week of this type of weather. I’d not taken Warren’s road into the Surprise Valley last summer. Thinking of his gleeful descriptions of winter waterfowl and pink, fading sunlight, I sat thumbing through the Gazetteer. I pictured what I may have missed and cursed myself for not having availed myself of that mere 30-mile detour into a history lost yet still apparent.

Opening the garage door, I straddle the GSA. I twist the throttle grip and pinch my knees against the BMW’s cold tank. I remember how long it’s been since we engaged in a really long road trip, the bike and me. Leaning forward, face almost touching the instrument cluster, I whisper: April, May at the latest, Likely to Eagleville below the Warners. Okay?  Yeah, I promise. I pat the tank and dismount.

That’s how roads get on the list.

photo credit: centralmodocrivercenter.org

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

BOOKS FOR TOTS (instead of toys)

BETWEEN ABOUT THE END OF OCTOBER AND CHRISTMAS, we are often asked to contribute to Toys for Tots drives. The California Highway Patrol sponsors one. Your local Chevy dealer sponsors one. Even big, bad motorcycle groups conduct toy runs. The results are lots of – but never enough – trinkets for the less well off. Ever wonder just what becomes of those gifts, when the battery dies, when the flimsy plastic fitting wears out, or just when the excitement of its newness runs its course? Household clutter comes to mind, as does the word landfill.

With that bias in mind, the Church of the Open Road offers a modest proposal: It is a verifiable fact that young readers are more successful than non-readers. School folks know that in impoverished areas, students struggle with literacy more frequently than kids from well-off communities. Since early exposure to literature is a key to success as a reader and therefore, success in school, it follows that a book is a gift with far more potential for good than almost anything else one can receive.

So, what if, instead of a plastic toy requiring a battery or, perhaps, what if along with a plastic toy requiring a battery, the less-well-off in our communities received a brand new book? (And idea doesn’t just have to go for kids.) Here are a few thoughts on the benefits:

• Reading is an act of creativity. While a battery-powered toy prompts the child to watch what the toy does, a book prompts the child to create images based upon the stimulus of print. Unlike television or film or any of a number of other popular distractions, while a book is a creation of the author, the reader engages in a creative act by reading.
• Reading takes the reader places. While a computer game allows the player to travel through fantastic animation (and vanquish all who get in the way), a book can take a child around the world allowing him or her exposure to cultures and climates far different (and perhaps more fantastic) than their own.
• A good book never wears out. With a battery-powered toy, once the battery dies (on or about December 27th) unless the battery is replaced, the toy becomes less toy-like. A book can be opened and closed time and time again. It can be read and reread, sometimes the second reading reveals more than the first.
• Literature is easily recyclable. When the joystick busts or the player has finally outsmarted the game creator, the product is thrown away. It goes to the dump or, if we’re lucky, goes to a place where its toxins and heavy metals can be safely recovered. A book is recycled simply by handing it to the next person.

MOST FOLKS on the Church of the Open Road's shopping list, by now, know they’ll be receiving a bag o’ books for Christmas. Each of the books will be a copy of something I’ve read and with which I’ve been particularly impressed over the past 12 months. The collection may include some light, contemporary or classic fiction, perhaps an atlas or other resource, and, quite likely, a memoir or non-fiction work that broadened my understanding of our culture or the human condition.

The Church would like to think that each carefully selected book will be appreciated, but if not, the good news is that the book can be re-gifted to someone who may find worth or insight in the author’s work.


WHAT CAN YOU DO? Think about the best half-dozen books you’ve read over the past twelve months and consider passing copies to folks on your list this holiday season.

And for the kids across town? Think about the books you loved as a child and give copies of those. Some child you’ll never meet may grab your insight and your love of literature. And maybe they’ll have a better chance because of it.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

HEY JULIAN, WIKI LEAK THIS!

MY POSTINGS MAY NOT HAVE ANY INTELLIGENT VALUE, but what if there’s intelligence value? I wonder this because, on the domain server which hosts mine and a zillion other blogs, one can keep track of traffic by clicking on a button labeled “Stats.” I did this and discovered that the Church of the Open Road has been accessed by readers around the world, including India, Great Britain, Romania, Russia, China and other countries we've only recently heard about - given their existence was behind the iron curtain not so very long ago.

This got me to thinking – never a good proposition. If my stuff could be, you know, leaked to, I don’t know, somebody somewhere somehow, perhaps I’d get discovered! Fame would be mine (along with the associated riches) and the rest would be history!

Having attended three or four writers’ conferences, participated in a semi-local writers’ critique group and hooked up with the Sacramento chapter of the California Writers’ Club, I find that many fledgling and many successful writers, early on, develop a web page. We are told that this is a good way to “get your name in front of people” and “show off your work.” I checked into some of these web pages and found to my surprise that the excitement each creates varies based upon the author’s ability to, well, create excitement. (Not an easy task, to be sure. I am reminded that the Pontiac Motor Division was unable to “create excitement” for the final thirty-five years of its existence.)

That said, I’ve also spent some time looking over the cables that Wiki-Leaks has made public and guess what? Their content ain’t all that exciting either. Still, they’ve created quite a stir.


SO HERE’S MY REQUEST: Julian, baby, please leak the content of the Church of the Open Road website as follows:

• The entries tagged “Motorcycle Day Trips” or tagged with a State Route number, if you could leak those to Clement Salvadori or any of the staff at Rider Magazine, I’d appreciate it. I’m sure they would find that the wit and insight in my work, brought out in me by the "spirituo-chemistry" of riding so many miles of open road, would fit nicely with their editorial content. I can imagine even more issues flying off the shelves of newsstands world wide, just because Mr. Brilliant is now a regular.
• The entries tagged “Great Potty Stops,” please route to the editors of magazines catering to parents of little kids or magazines catering to husbands of wives. Both of these demographic groups certainly could use a potty stop resource as they find themselves travelling here and there accompanied by family members – the majority of whom can never find a loo when called upon to do so.
• Those entries that regard finding a political middle ground, please leak to our human brethren in the Middle East. Perhaps they will learn that at least some Americans respect and appreciate the cultural and religious diversity planned into this world we share. Maybe a dialog might develop. Also, consider leaking these entries to Congress so they’ll understand that not everyone who votes is of one fringe or another. Perhaps they’ll decide they don’t have to be, either.
• Finally, those referencing new life, death or God, please leak directly to the Almighty. I know, the Church of the Open Road may not look like a church when viewed through the omnipotent eyes of a deity, but perhaps some of the thoughts are redemptive. God knows I don’t attend a traditional service often, if at all, but I’d like Him or Her to know that I readily acknowledge a greater spirit than my own. Frequently this spirit visits me when I’m in the saddle heading somewhere. I’d like God to know this.

Mr. Assange, I know you’re likely to have some time on your hands, but I also know you possess great technological skill.  It would be a shame if those talents went to waste.  Thanks for giving this request some thought. Know that it won’t get you into any deeper crap than you may already find yourself, but it may help me get discovered. And that just might benefit all of mankind.

Or not.

© 2010
Church of the Open Road Press

THE TWO SEASONS

[LATE NOVEMBER, 2002] Winter has descended on the Great Central Valley. I know because baseball ended about a month ago, at my hand, and that motorcycle excursions are less pleasant because of daggers of cold that seem to pinpoint fingertips wrapped around rubber grips. The sun seems to be absorbed by a pewter colored sky and leaves us no shadow. Jax, the pound-puppy Aussie dog burrows to the furthest corner of what used to be Sadie the Boxer's house. It's dark when one leaves for work and dark when one returns. Rather than smoking ribs next to a pecan wood fire, I brown beef and lamb and prepare a hearty stew. My hand is wrapped around a Black Butte Porter – a meal in itself and "early to bed" seems particularly sage advice. Oh, and did I mention? Baseball is over.


YESTERDAY, while my wife corrected papers or planned a quilt, I straddled the Beemer for a ride along the sensuous levee roads of Sutter, Yolo and Sacramento counties. I'd hoped to find the confluence of the Feather and the Sacramento where the clarity of the Sierran river mixes with the dogged labors of the artery that both feeds and drains the valley. No such luck. That pewter gray sky and the absolute stillness of the water in late November gave no clue as to the point of commingle-age. I had to be satisfied with the red leaves of the vines that dipped into the waters and the bright, broad gold leaves of some sort of bank tree I'd like you to think I could identify.

The "little" BMW handles these winding levee roads as if God had invented road purely for this motorbike. [Back in ’02, I was riding an R 1100 R “naked” Beemer. No windshield or fairing for protection from the elements.] Only occasionally did I think of my icy fingertips. More often I thought of Dusty Baker and how he'd not have this kind of enjoyment on his Harley. Of course, Dusty's in Chicago, now. And it's my fault.


THEY SAY THERE ARE NO SEASONS in California. I say there are two. Baseball and winter.

I just dropped two sliced and peeled turnips into the stew pot along with other vegetables. The house is beginning to have that comfort smell that isn’t present past mid-spring. I don't like turnips in my stew, however. Always try to pick them out when I eat. They look like potatoes, though and sometimes, I am dismayed by the texture and tang of the “potato” I have speared.


HERE'S THE DEAL: Bottom of the seventh. Sixth game. I'd purchased a less-than-moderately price bottle of champagne because, as I told Jax quietly, WE'REGONNAWINTHEWORLDSERIES!!! The wine was chilling, and at five to nothing, only nine outs to go, I thought I'd dust off a couple of flutes and place them on the front edge of the refrigerator shelf. You know. Kinda casual. Real quiet. Which I did.

Then, Dusty replaces Ortiz with Felix. I feel a little knot.

Sure enough: SWWAACCKKK! Three runs.

I want to pull the champagne flutes out of the fridge, but I already know it's too late: just like Linus doubting the Great Pumpkin for an instant.

NOW DUSTY'S in Chicago. Somebody from the South State has the trophy. (At least it's not the Dodgers.) Kent and Bell are likely gone. Those damned glasses are shoved to the back of the shelf -- I refuse to touch them -- and I'll be long dead before the Giants even see the playoffs again.

Yes. We have descended into the darkness that is winter. Long cold nights. Brief doses of late afternoon sunshine. An occasional ride along a levee or a fog-shrouded by-way. Hearty broth-based meals from a crock-pot. Husky beers. And no runs scored.

This one's on me.

© 2002
Church of the Open Road Press