prose poem for mixed media

Combine the following in no particular order (realizing that it will make a difference in the final result which ingredients come first and which next):

Put on comfortable shoes.
Put on a Tom Waits CD; I recommend "Mule Variations" or "Real Gone."
Pour a drink, something with fruit juice; a little tequila wouldn't hurt.
Boil water for little red potatoes. While the potatoes are boiling, snap the ends off a mess of fresh green beans, and throw them in the pot to steam on top of the potatoes.

Nurse the drink.
Read a short story by Heinrich Boll, maybe "The Green Silk Shirt," a sad and heart-wrenching four pages of sensual memory, material deprivation, dreams of satisfaction, and crushing disappointment in the midst of overriding fear. With any luck, each Tom Waits song will conjoin with a visual or tactile or other sensory image to which it provides an articulate, blue soundtrack.

Put the steaming potatoes and beans in a ceramic bowl. Eat them with salt and a spoonful of sour cream, while Waits wails and bass and drums and sax murmur in a room with old, uneven plaster walls painted eggshell white.

Mr. Gutman, part 2

Rev. Susan's sermon Sunday was about making choices. She told a story about a cool sunday school teacher she had in California, an older guy who happened to be a physicist. What she remembered was getting to freeze things with liquid nitrogen, being treated as an intelligent human being capable of making choices, rather than somebody who is born wrong and needs to be made right, and not getting indoctrinated.

It reminded me of Mr. Gutman. I probably learned something about English and social studies in eighth grade, but what I most remember is Mr. Gutman's mischievous grin and dapper herringbone twead jacket around his ample middle. ('Gut' = "good" and "belly" and "courage"; he had all three. Picture an animated, slightly rotund super-hero: Gut-man!) More than anything else, he reminded us that we were talented, bright, capable of doing more than we knew, and responsible for what we said and did, because it made a difference what we said and did.

It would be too humiliating to dredge up all the times I did something foolish and Mr. Gutman called me on it. But just as an example, how about the time the class was talking about Mussolini coming to power in Italy, and Mr. Gutman saw me say 'Wop' under my breath. He didn't miss much. He stopped and asked me how I thought Mike Torni, on the other side of the room, felt about that. We had our desks encircling the room instead of lined up in rows, so everybody could see everybody else, even though I sat with my jock friends and Mike Torni sat with his greaser friends. Thus confronted, I had to think about my unexamined racist world-view.

Have another hit - of fresh air

That's right, Quicksilver Messenger Service, circa 1970, during the height of the psychadelic era, so called, in rock and roll and the larger culture. I heard the song again a couple of years ago, this time a solo acoustic version by Richie Havens out on the commons in Kent, and it was just as arresting and valid in his baritone growl 33 years later.

So I'm driving home from church last Sunday after two cups of coffee and a better-than-usual sermon by our exceptionally bright, insightful minister, Rev. Susan, and needless to say, I have a few things to think about. Rather than turning south on Africa Road and going home on this chilly, damp first day of spring, I turned north and parked Hank, my new/old pickup truck, at the trailhead by Plumb Road. You can see straight down the trail to Alum Creek Reservoir, but I hung a left at the first branch in the hiking trail and just walked to air out my brain.

This is your brain. This is your brain on oxygen. Any questions?

The scenery in March is unspectacular. Of course there are lots of things to look at in rural Delaware County in any season, if you're paying attention, but that wasn't really the point. It had rained most of Saturday, and the trail was muddy, so most of the time I was occupied with finding high ground to walk on, not observing birds and trees and fields on the cusp of spring. It was cold, so it took at least half an hour of traipsing up and down folds in the watershed to get the blood flowing through my freezing fingers. And I wasn't really working out a solution to a specific problem, wrestling with a decision, or meditating on a theme from Emerson, so it wasn't like I was walking purposefully. I just needed to be outside for a while, and I needed to move. So I went for a walk in the woods and felt better.

Shall we construct a chart? Movement is good; being outside is good; movement while outside is sublime. Excuse the expression, but it's like the best drug ever. Mix with your favorite work- or play-related activity, with or without balls, bats, rackets, clubs, pedals, paddles, skis, skates, tools, or other implements of construction, and you've got the cosmic cocktail. As your doctor, I prescribe 20 minutes or more per day, and I guarantee it will change your point of view.

But there is a downside. It doesn't cost a thing, so you won't see ads on TV promising how it will change your life and minimizing the nausea, dry-mouth, and sexual side-effects. Therefore, there's no market incentive to promote going outside and breathing air, and there are billions of dollars to be made persuading you to do something else - take a pill, you'll feel better! And when you take that pill for your allergies, arthritis, anger, anxiety, acid reflux, boredom, bad breath, constipation, diarrhea, depression, erectile dysfunction, flatulence, headache, hair-loss, wrinkles, or whatever, you'll be contributing to the biggest growth industry of the Boomer Era, you guessed it, drugs.

Ooooooooh, have another hit - of fresh air.

Dr. Karl Haas

"Helllllo everyone."

Every night on some NPR station somewhere in America, you could count on hearing the distinguished voice of Dr. Karl Haas introducing his classical music show, "Adventures in Good Music." He died a couple of weeks ago at age 85. I will miss him.

Karl Haas was kind of a throwback among radio personalities - scholarly, German-American, steeped in high culture, kind of a romantic, serious yet fun-loving. There it is: he obviously loved what he was doing and enjoyed sharing it with strangers on the radio.

I don't remember when I first heard his show. It must have been Detroit in the early 70s. WDET was an amazing station back then, with a variety of jazz programs shaped to different periods and styles and tastes. The Metropolitan Opera on Saturday afternoon, with lots of classical programming across the spectrum. And this friendly teaching voice in the early evening talking about his musical topic of the day with intense interest and zest. For the musically illiterate among us, it was an easy way to learn just enough about the history and theory of music to better understand what I already liked and get turned on to stuff I hadn't yet heard. Which is what any good DJ does, yes?

He titled his program about the violin music of Isaac Stern "Leaving No Tone Un-Sterned." My kind of guy. He must have done hundreds of shows over the years, but one of my favorites was his deconstruction of the rondo. Haas could unpack composition so that casual listeners could understand what we were hearing and enjoy it on another level. Turns out the rondo is a club sandwich. Start with bread (major theme), add a slice of turkey (variation), tomato (second variation), and another slice of bread (back to major theme). It's not that complicated, but the form gives Mozart - or any imaginative chef - something to work his particular magic with.

In the winter of 1984, when I was planting trees in South Carolina with a crew of guys from Michigan, sleeping in a little camp trailer parked in the national forest, our boss was a big public radio listener. He owned the trailer and the radio, so we listened to what he listned to. We woke to the Morning Edition theme music every day at 6:00, and we were winding down by the time Karl Haas opened with a Beethoven piano sonata and "Hellllo Everyone" every night at 8:00. Bob Edwards woke us up; Karl Haas tucked us in.

Church of the Saviour Drug Store

Welcome to the architectural tour of beautiful uptown Northeasterville, aka the Dry Capital of the World. It's a small central Swingstate town with a rich history of churchgoing, education, enterprise, and opposition to demon alcohol. Right next to the public library on State Street, you'll see the Anti-Saloon League Museum, once the hub of a publishing empire that protected millions of people from unwholesome habits. Keep going north and you'll see the largest of several Methodist churches in town, a dramatic modern structure thrusting upward between spacious parking lots. Farther up State Street is the even larger campus of St. Paul Catholic Church, with its acres of parking where one of the town's original brick houses once stood in the way of progress.

Looking south on State Street, next to the post office and across from the majestic Episcopal Church, we find the Swingstate National Guard Armory, home of Regiment XXX and the local armed forces recruiting office, always looking to promise a free college education to the town's able-bodied cannon fodder. Up the street a block, I see the wrecking ball has spared the old fascade of the Church of the Saviour, which will soon become the home of the fastest-growing religious organization in Amerika, CVS Drugs. I can't wait to see how tastefully the rest of the CVS drug store is integrated with the pointed steeple and neo-classical porch of the old red brick church at State and Walnut. I'm sure it will be faithful to the nineteenth-century heartland tradition of making money in any way possible in the name of our heritage.

And the timing couldn't be more appropriate. While our elected representatives dismantle Social Security, cut Medicare and Medicaid, and make the world safe for the pharmaceutical industry, the rising tide that's supposed to lift all boats is a profitable flow of medicine to cure everything that's wrong with everybody. This is the new religion. Am I the last to notice? The drug company is watching out for our health, just like the military is defending us from foreign threats. It combines the modern belief in progress through technology with the patriotic trust that the leaders who make the laws and the captains of industry who lead them by the nose know better than you and I what's best for you and me. How fitting that instead of just tearing down the entire Church of the Saviour United Methodist, they decided to save the front so the brand new CVS blends in nicely with the streetscape of our safe, secure, home town.

Oh yeah, and kids, don't do drugs.

a lunatic dialogue for one player

Gven Golly and I went to a play the other night. One of Gven's fellow-students at the Yoga Factory in Northeasterville is Christina Kirk, a theater professor at Fundamethodist College who created a one-woman show called "Conversations with Judith Malina." Maybe you know of Malina and The Living Theater, which she founded with Julian Beck in 1947. It was new to me. Excerpts follow:

"Why these conversations, now? because all theatre is political, because I am afraid...guilty...ashamed...grieving...lying, because I need to cross a precarious bridge, because we're all caught in the illusion, we're all tired of waiting, we're losing the space between, we all need a lollipop every four seconds; because it's all so boring...there isn't a lot of time left...there is screaming...there is lack of screaming...there are bags of flesh; because the oblique angle needs a voice, the obtuse and acute angles are right, and the shimmering paradox may not be enough."

That gives you a taste of what it was like. Small theater, intimate space, cognoscenti present. Challenging to understand with the critical, editorial left-brain. The conversation comes across as a monologue by Kirk in which she acts as the voice, "often fragmented, occasionally altered, sometimes whole," of Suiye Ayla, William Saroyan, Anodea Judith, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Sexton, William Shakespeare, Garcia Lorca, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, the Chordettes, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Lao Tsu, and Rumi. Pretty wild crowd. I thought I heard William Blake's ghost, but I was wrong.

We ran into some friends and high-tailed it to the Old Mohawk for beer and appetizers to deconstruct Kirk's "Conversations" but didn't get far in that attempt. Professor Gorm knew the literary references but not the chakra theory, I knew the chakra theory but not the literary references, so we talked about basketball, more my speed.

Mr. Gutman

Everyone should have a teacher like Mr. Gutman some time in their school life.

Prompted by a friend's question about mentors, I called Detroit directory assistance last night, found his number, and called Mr. Gutman. It was the right thing to do. He answered the phone, I stammered my name and why I was calling. "Are you the Mark Gutman who used to teach in Garden City? You won't remember me, but..."

He did remember me, and we talked for half an hour about other kids from his eighth-grade social studies class, other teachers he worked with at the junior high school, and Mr. Singer the principal (I learned the difference between a principal and a principle because Mr. Gutman called Mr. Singer his "princie pal"!). He was as gracious as could be, and his phone voice sounded exactly like the cool twenty-something teacher in the blue-collar suburb whose charisma and respect won over all of us - the smart kids, the shy kids, the jocks, the good girls, the bad girls, the greasers, the lonely kids.

Mr. Gutman was especially interested in whether I had kept in touch with my friends from Garden City after moving to Southfield (no), and he encouraged me to search for them on classmates.com. Did I marry a girl from Garden City? (no) Turns out he moved to Southfield around the time I did, and he lived near 12-Mile and Evergreen, less than a mile from me. Turns out I moved to Ohio for graduate school and eventually got into publishing, and now I'm a textbook editor in social studies. He called it a coincidence.

He's retired now - it's been 40 years - after serving as high school principal, and he plays golf with Mr. Estelle, who was assistant principal and Good Cop under Bad Cop Mr. Singer. I remarked that to my 13-year-old mind, he and Mr. Singer seemed like rivals. Gutman acknowledged that Singer was "tough as nails" but helped him get into administration, which is what he wanted to do. Mentoring goes both ways and happens in the unlikeliest packages.