Escape Route

Inner Space

2011-12-18T11:42:00.000-08:00

An interesting link to a project happening off the PacNW coast Find the link here

Empty Sky

2011-09-10T23:02:00.000-07:00

Jim Churchill-Dicks

Monday

Late for work. Barely light I drive
into the forest to meet my students
and fellow guides, armed with backpacks
ready for the Strawberry Mountains.

Tuesday

At Strawberry Lake, nestled in crowning
mountains, there isn’t a cloud in the sky,
not even a jet stream, just an empty
blue, met by jagged rocky spires.

Up high, we swim in icy water
with barely enough breath to tread above
the surface. We fish with found hooks
and discarded line, try to make fire
with bow drills and friction, and carve
loved ones’ initials into sticks.

Approaching midnight, my friend and I look
up at the stars, the night’s full harvest
of fireflies. Not even airplanes pollute the sky.

Wednesday

We reach the top of Strawberry Mountain,
scaling stone upon orange stone, devoid
of plant life, yet there are thousands
of black butterflies, fluttering up in our faces,
then rising upward--

Thursday

My friend emerges from the store, armed
with plastic sacks of groceries for a picnic
lunch. There is urgency in his face as I
come to help him. His face is ashen.

He tells me about pictures, about something
horribly wrong, planes like meteors falling
from the sky, driving the towers down, pouring
smoke, raining people, the ground collapsing
beneath them.

We look to the bus of hungry children,
expectant and oblivious, more innocent
than we’ve ever seen them
and I think back to the thousands of black
butterflies, ashen paper floating
from an otherwise empty sky.

We Are All Cyborgs

2011-09-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

Blood Cloning

2011-08-14T20:09:00.000-07:00

Imagine the ability to clone the human blood supply...thus creating a limitless supply of blood. And say, in the case of one of my characters whose blood genome is the only substance known to stabilize the nanobot plagues. Such a 'blood offering' could give him a sort of messiah complex. In any case, here is an article that shows a contemporary study to clone blood with embryonic stem cells.

Nanotechnology and Brain Function

2011-08-14T11:13:00.000-07:00

An interesting recent article on a scientific breakthrough using carbon nanotubes to create synthetic neurons and pathways.

New Blog Trajectory

2011-08-14T11:08:00.000-07:00

This blog is moving away from the 'bloggy blog blog' confessional life log, and steering more toward research that interests me; particularly for my novel in-progress.

Magic Waters

2011-04-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

I cannot fly, on thermal paths of the osprey’s sky
nor can I hunt with quickened feathered wing-beats

but I too, have fished in magic waters,
heaved my innards over the side
of my grandfather’s boat
bobbed in the river’s maw
with sweaty pale-faced groans while
my riverboat captain, my grandfather
laughed a booming laugh,
my abandoned rod arched in his meaty
hands, as he reeled in my undeserved harvest,
a ballooning silver salmon
slapping foam against the hull.

We reaped this monumental moment
together. My grandfather clapped my back
and laughed that face-saving laugh,

“At’s alright, Jimmy! You feed ‘em, I’ll catch ‘em!”

and for that, if only for that

I believe.

Joseph of Bethlehem

2010-07-19T15:18:00.000-07:00

My twelve year-old son is conscientious
to soak his injured ankle in the stream.
Returning home to me, he tries so hard
to heal, as if healing were an act of will.

I wasn’t there when they collided, some
grown man and he on some far-away field,
but when I heard, alone in my kitchen,
I fiercely slapped my palm against the door-

Watch how I sink upon my son’s return.
Witness how I cradle his wounded foot.
See how I slowly unwrap his dressing,
his toenails barely grazing my chest.

Look, my boy rests his hand on my shoulder,
my shoulder, as if healing was something
he was born to do.

The Beautiful Creatures featured in the SL Enquirer

2009-05-19T09:30:00.000-07:00

Here is an in-depth review of the Beautiful Creatures featured in the SL Enquirer, one of the preeminent news sources in the Second Life Platform. They like us. They really really like us!

The faint sound of trumpets, approaching the crest of the hill...

2009-05-15T11:46:00.000-07:00

For the entire school year, I have been earnestly praying (yes, praying) for there to be "a new sherriff in town"--- The Honorable Scott Cooper is a judge. My cup runneth over. He is running for a vacant spot on our local school board. Here's what he had to say about our kids yesterday:

"Last night, I attended a meeting of the Crook County School District budget committee. This was the final meeting of the committee before it deliberates on how to cut $3 million to $4.5 million from its $28 million budget. Needless to say, the pain is real. This was brought home to me when I was visiting with a group of high school students recently who very articulately observed: “Everyone is talking about us, but no one is talking TO us.” I took it upon myself to take that message to the school board in my role as citizen (although I very well could have taken it under the Partnership under the banner of civic engagement.) The committee, especially the school board, was oddly reluctant to take on the meeting but finally agreed to do so.

Notwithstanding that, nearly 100 students showed up to speak. By and large they represented not the “jocks and cheerleaders” crowd, most of whom were involved in either a couple major out-of-town sporting events or away serving as camp counselors this week at the sixth grade outdoor school. Instead, those that showed up were but that group of students who perform at the middling level who are typically not heard from. Given the setting, the relative placement within the power structure of the high school of these students and the high level, highly technical, no-quarter-given financial overview with which the superintendent and business manager started the meeting, it must have been terrifying prospect for these kids to line up at the microphone to address their concerns.

But these kids were so motivated out of passion for saving the things they considered important to their lives and futures, that they overcame their fears and testified anyone. It was an awesome display of courage. Tears ran down my cheeks as I watched—not figuratively but literally. I don’t think I could have been more proud of our student body.

Their themes, some delivered passionately, some delivered creatively, some delivered succinctly but all delivered reasonably, responsibility and respectfully (the three R’s that govern student at CCHS) were clear:

They are aware of and concerned about the connection between trade skills learned while in high school and their career potential. These kids are not floating through life assuming the government or Mom and Dad will take care of them once they graduate. Many of them know that college is not in their future, and they know that they need competitive skills if they hope to find jobs and be competitive with a large pool of older workers competing for those same jobs. They rely on their high school to provide those skills from traditional vocational training to computer-aided design to public speaking skills to foreign language to give them the ability to find post-graduation work and they connect the loss of these programs with a diminished future for themselves.

They understand very clearly that they are the upcoming generation of leaders in their communities. They believe that without arenas such as extracurricular activities, school-based community service opportunities and the opportunity to compete on the athletic field that they will not gain the skills they need to provide leadership in their communities when they become young adults.

They understand very deeply and articulate well that success in core classes and the likelihood of their peers attending or completing school correlates directly to the financial stability of the school district and the well being of the entire community. They understand that creative outlets and athletic achievement make for well rounded adults and individuals and better communities. They understand that young people will vote with their feet if their schools are unable to meet their needs.

One girl stirred deep emotions when she explained that she lives in deep poverty and that the only thing that makes her day worthwhile are the two back-to-back drama classes she has in the morning where she can be someone other than herself for two hours each day. And then she added that she knows that when the drama teacher asks her some mornings, “Are You OK?” she’s the one person in her life who really means it. Humbly, she asked the committee not to take away that lifeline from her.

Two girls from FFA gave presentations that were so well polished and so well put together than none of us in this office could pull them off. And they talked about how when they put on their jackets and look in the mirror in their own minds they put on not just an article of clothing but the mantle of role models to other students. Take that away from them, and they simply sink back to obscurity with the rest of the student body.

Two young men from the NJROTC program described how the combination of military discipline and creativity expressed through choir and band class had given them purpose and direction, both in setting life goals and in improving their academic performance. Both have their sites firmly set on career goals of becoming music teachers—something that can’t happen if they don’t have a music program. I know the circumstances in which one of the young men lives. Without the motivation and opportunity that high school provides, his future is challenging.

A THIRD GRADER competently addressed the board and the room of 100 people and explained why her elementary school is special to her and why shutting it down would create discord in her family and her community.

A young man told the board that he couldn’t express in words his concerns. So he played his guitar and sang a song he had written in class expressing his angst over the diminishment of his opportunities.

For three and half hours this went on. It was one of the most compelling things I have ever seen in my public life, primarily because it came from such an unexpected place.

I came away admiring the courage of young people, the awareness that this generation has about how its welfare connects to the welfare of society as a whole and the passion that causes young people to be willing to stand up for something bigger than just themselves. I have administered public hearings for the past 12 years, and I can only wish that the adults in the community had half the skills and approach of these young people.

I can’t wait for the next person to tell me how our kids are underperforming in our schools. If anything, it is the community that is underperforming for its kids."

Scott Cooper

Director of Public Policy,

Partnership To End Poverty

521 SW 6th St.

Redmond, OR 97756

direct dial: (541) 923-9663

cell phone: (541) 420-1998

fax: 541-420-1399

scott@partnershiptoendpoverty.org

www.partnershiptoendpoverty.org

Prineville Students to Present Poetry from The Nature of Words Creative Writing Program

2009-05-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

Darkness and scarcity abound in our district, and yet...check out this article which features our students, as well as the great generosity from a solid local literary festival...

To Ellen Waterston, Margie Robberson and our Writer/Teacher in residence Jamie Houghton, we are forever in your debt.

My Boys-Smith Rock

2009-04-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_k6Ofhl4CdJk/SeoAAG86XII/AAAAAAAAAMU/uz1XHThE0Sw/s400/P1020121.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5326069511185128578" />

When darkness surrounds, hunt for the light. I am the moth to these two flames, and I am blinded by my love for them. This is a darkness I can live with.

The Better to See You With My Dear

2009-02-07T11:18:00.000-08:00

I can't stop giggling. If you're not reading Katie's blog, you are missing out. Here is an example...

And the most important part of the week (from a letter to my friend Beth)

2008-12-16T22:16:00.000-08:00

I lost a treasured former student to an auto wreck last week. She was blossoming, doing so well. She would be 20 on the 5th. I went to her funeral, packed with beautiful studded leather multi-pierced smelling of hand-rolled tobacco angels who loved her and sang raucous irish/punk goodbyes. I don't cry at funerals. I suck at death. Everything is numb and sucked inside of me in mid-inhale, afraid I will break something. But their singing broke me free. Sad, Sad and raucous and beautiful and tragic...

In case you didn't hear about 1/3 of my week last week...

2008-12-16T21:29:00.001-08:00

You Might find this interesting...

http://www.bendbulletin.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081211/NEWS0107/812110432/1041&nav_category=

Torches n' Pitchforks to launch over Thanksgiving Holiday

2008-11-12T20:51:00.000-08:00

Editor’s Note.

As I write this, I am atop Misery Ridge in Central Oregon. It is a gloomy, and overcast afternoon, the first day of November; 11/1. Whenever I see these ones stacked upright together, I am reminded of those picket fences in my idealized college dreams. Today, in this moment however, I think of Three Fingered Jack, hidden by a rare clotting of Autumn-grey clouds.

These “upright ones” also bring me to think of pitchforks; the three pronged, hand-fashioned tools (or weapons) of a medieval peasantry. I imagine crowds stirred up into a fearful and angry frenzy, armed with pitchforks and also with torches- torches blaring together in an angry mob, illuminating and setting fire to every fear that huddles in the darkness.

Torches and pitchforks. How times have not changed! I asked some local students at Crook County High School what images came to mind when they heard of these paired objects. Their responses trickled in, then gathered momentum and force… “Fear, injustice, isolation, Frankenstein’s creature, being judged for what one was not, being outcast, abandoned, being other—”

I wish I was surrounded by a community of young writers like these when I was in high school. They may have been able to help me put words to the weighty heat that was in my chest as I navigated my teen years, groping for a word, any word that would release what I was trying to voice.

As you read the following pages, I offer a warning: take courage with you. For any community that values its children, who wishes them safety and comfort, it can be unsettling to hear what roils in the depths of them as they begin to put new words to their feelings. Caught in the middle stages of metamorphosis between child and adult, they sometimes resemble the creatures and monsters we were taught to fear as children.

Instead, it is my hope that we, as a community of listeners, put down our pitchforks for the moment. Let us dampen our torches that stain the night sky. In that darkness, huddled together for safety and warmth, let us gaze at the stars in wonder, as the pale moon rises to the East. And let us listen closely to what is rustling in the trees. Let us hear the gathering voices of our young, as they discover what is deep and rattling inside their throats. Let us hear them howl with their entire bodies… wet, squirming and outraged at anything and everything that has held their song back until now. Let us hear their howling melodies mingle together into the rising dark, and wonder at the dawn that will inevitably rise in its place.

Let us hope and pray that they greet the morning with their newfound power,

to tell us a story…

Jim Churchill-Dicks

Editor, Torches n’ Pitchforks

2008-10-23T16:50:00.000-07:00

2008-10-23T15:49:00.000-07:00

Smart Billy: Prologue II "A Loss in Translation"

2008-08-30T09:07:00.000-07:00

Smart Billy: Prologue II \"A Loss in Translation\"

A Mentor, A Friend, a Priest, A Brother...

2008-08-12T21:56:00.000-07:00

I had the honor of working with Chris Abani this Summer at the Port Townsend Writer's Conference. His fierce kindness and ferocious generosity have deeply marked me.

In his own mother's words, "You can steel your heart against any kind of trouble, any kind of horror, but the simple act of kindness from a complete stranger will unstitch you…"

So true, I have been unmade, and I hope to never recover from this generosity. Listen to the man...

More Pics

2008-06-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

A Peony for Bill

2008-06-22T18:49:00.000-07:00

Reading my friend Bill's blog again at Poet's Farm, I realize that I have been rushing to such a degree, that Memorial Day has passed me and I am approaching the last week of June. Bill's grandmother grew and sold peonies over Memorial Days past. Today, of my four, one peony on the shaded northern bush is still in bloom.

So in honor of those who are gone, but still in bloom inside of us, as Bill so beautifully said, here are some photos to witness and remember the sunlight and color, as well as a poem reminding me of the redemptive power of having my hands in the soil:

Earth

Through the curtains
I watch my mother planting
flowers; alyssum, indigo
lobelia, the bulbs
of lavender tulips, her
clipped nails christened
in earth.

My sons gallop toward her. She squeals
as they tumble together

laughing.

And Mother,
I remember you spinning
me, round and round
in your arms, me
squealing with delight,
your open smile
my only focus

in a rapidly dizzying world.

And for context sake of the earlier entry- Smart Billy's Prologue

2008-06-19T01:10:00.000-07:00

Smart-Billy
By Jim Churchill-Dicks

PROLOGUE

Witness a man, a 19th century trapper, violently shivering in a snow cave with his dog. The dog has shared her heat with the man, has positioned herself between the man and the cave opening, protecting the man from the elements, because she is a good dog.

But now, just now she is dead, heat escaping her body.

Witness the man, buried and shivering in a snow cave up high, near Heaven’s Gate on Mt. Hood. His dead dog is his only company. Wind howls over the mountain, burning with snow in relentless curtains. For the moment, ignore the impulse to wonder why this trapper is so high upon this lifeless slope. Instead, wonder at his body, his sinewy skeleton loosely draped in blotchy pale skin.

Behold the man, the man whose shivering now stops. He strips away his beaver pelts, delirious and warm. He is chanting with graveled breaths, incomprehensible, swaying forward and back, forward and back. Behold the preconceived syllables of his language. The groaning vowels, the gravelly aspirates, the whiny whistle in each breath.

Behold the man’s pink face, freckled and burning through frizzy shocks of a chest-length, auburn beard. Behold the dried and broken blisters on his sharply cut nose, the wild green eyes, and closer, to his right eye, with broken capillaries slowly pooling with blood, just below the cornea’s surface. Behold the caked mucous at the lashes. The whitened salt-stained lower lid from dried tears—

Gaze into this eye, some reddening cloud that could swallow the moon— Look closer. Behold the muscular green filaments twitching in unison, now growing sluggish, failing, as they begin to give way to the pupil, a growing shadow swirling inward. Lean closer. Hear his whistling whisper in a final plume of breath— then stillness.

Wait. You heard something. Let your mind register it. You are correct. A final word, no, a name escaping the trapper’s rapidly cooling lips—

Billy .

Smart Billy: Chapter One Process Brainstorm

2008-06-19T01:02:00.000-07:00

any feedback you have for me would be grand.

CHAPTER ONE Brainstorm
EAGLE CREEK OREGON, SPRING 1878:

Billy is fifteen. and here should be the Billy sentences, lots of them, of what he does, repetition of billy. Checking traplines, wondering at father’s eleven week absence, fashioning a homemade bear trap, one that will kill its quarry this time, not like last summer, losing his brother, everything falling apart after that, mother catatonic, father leaving, billy running household on own,

(secret: the father putting younger brother out of misery, covering his face, older brother walks in, to brother’s newly strong kicking. Hidden memory. Not until long after, a revelation, father leaving, not out of shame of the older, but out of shame for himself.)

Describe the carrying back of the comatose brother, of the wet powder from earlier, how the boy failed to fire at the bear, the father surviving by batting the butt of the rifle on the bear’s nose.

Billy finding this bear near punchbowl falls, by Tanner butte, indepth fashioning of this mankiller trap, not aboriginal, not a connection to the circle of life, but of revenge, of hatred for an animal, a quest for atonement.

EXPERIMENT: OPENING SCENE, BILLY TRYING TO FIT THE PIECES TOGETHER, TO NOT GIVE TOO MUCH AWAY, TO VALUE THE READER’S INTELLIGENCE, TO PIECE TOGETHER WHAT HAS HAPPENED, TO LEAVE SOME TO THE IMAGINATION, TO LEAVE SOME FOR LATER. WHAT ABOUT AN EXPERIMENT- A PROSE SESTINA, IS THERE SUCH A THING? 1 STANZA PER 2 PAGES, END LINE WORDS REPEATED OVER AND OVER IN A PARAGRAPH, 3 PARAGRAPHS PER PAGE SWITCH ORDER AS THE SESTINA SWITCHES.

END WORDS TO CONSIDER:
BILLY
BROTHER, BROTH, BROTHEL, BOTHER
GUN (POWDER?)
BEAR (GOOD, WITH HOMONYMS BEAR[A BURDEN] BARE)
FATHER, FARTHER (Water?)
MOTHER SMOTHER MOTH, OTHER
OPTIONAL, IN PLACE OF GUN: RIVER

Final stanza a realization, the father killing brother? Too soon? We’re setting up for the missionaries to find them, and take them, yes?

Just found this on the net, thought I invented something new. But googled "prose sestina" and found this little nugget:

The Prose Sestina. A narrative of seven paragraphs in which six words recur in each paragraph in the same order as dictated by the rules of a sestina: 123456, 615243, 364125, 532614, 451362, 246531, 652431. The paragraphs are of about the same length, except for the last paragraph, which is half as long as the others. (Ron McFarland)

Still, I was thinking a paragraph per word uttered several times, which would be new, would possibly be impossibly droll, or hypnotic, or shamanic, healing the boy, hurtling him toward revelation, to meaning, or at least hurtling him the hell out of his present circumstance-that may be all the exorcism anyone needs. Who knows? But Billy is in crisis, searching for answers by doing works in a routine, maybe needing to mix up the routine in different order to reassemble the puzzle, as it were. Can I do this with action and gesture and very little else, other than the form? Will the form stick out, like an ill-fitting suit, or will it suit Billy, in his tendencies, his story, what he has been mutely shouting to me for the last five years?

Jesus Billy, what are you trying to say to me? What are you needing me to help you figure out? Go home. Rest. The leaves are whispering in the trees. Go to sleep…

Would that all of my friends be recognized by such kind and generous eyes...

2008-06-16T21:26:00.000-07:00

I am shy when it comes to praise, but I'd like to share an article that one of my Freshman wrote about me in CCHS's inaugural online journalistic enterprise called The Rimrock Echo.

http://my.highschooljournalism.org/or/prineville/cchs/article.cfm?eid=17149&aid=220673

They have also featured two of my poems.

Would that all of my friends be recognized by such kind and generous eyes.

Our Father

2008-06-06T10:21:00.001-07:00

He extended
his routine flight and flew
above our camp, hovered there
in his rescue chopper, that rumbling chariot
as we ran to the lake shore
to greet him, waved and hollered;

an image of God and angels.

He circled behind the trees,
a thundering perimeter,
a whirring proclamation

I am that I am and you are mine!

Today he snowshoes up to a rented
hut. His wife has barred him from his house,
scattered his belongings
into locked up warehouses,
skilled at taking hostages.

Alone,
a thin candle fixed
into a cut away coffee can, he reads
about a boy, a delinquent boy, the toughest
kid on the Big J ranch,
who rode off on a wounded horse,
beaten ugly, a lazy eye, trailing ear,

he reads
about how the ranchers found him in a clearing,
face buried, sobbing into the horse’s chest
whose sad face stood with newborn watchfulness

and our father,
hunched on a rough hewn bench, far
from home, sobs into his massive, perfect hands
in the fading light,

a vision of God and angels.

A Crack of Light

2008-06-06T10:13:00.000-07:00

I remember the salt-stained boulders, encrusted with mussel shells, which flanked the levee to my father’s Coast Guard base, reaching like a prickly arm around the Port Angeles harbor.

I remember delivering casseroles late at night in the pilot’s hangar, being driven through the gates-the guard’s salute because of our officer’s bumper decal. Delivering casseroles to my father as he pulled all-night duty flying his lumbering H-52.

I remember my father, at dawn, dragging his heavy boots across the threshold, peeling his orange flight-suit halfway down, a snake shedding his skin as he chugged milk from the up-turned jug, draining its contents in front of the open refrigerator.

I remember watching him from the crack of light in the swinging kitchen door as he told his wife about his latest search and rescue case, “I lost him,” he whispered in a milky gravel. “Twenty-foot seas, winds at 50 knots, only five feet of rotor-clearance on either side— It was the water’s temperature that killed him.”

His voice was tired, but without emotion, not like when -that same summer, in the middle of the night, when he thought I was asleep in the back seat- he sobbed behind the wheel, a forceful engine choking into gear while listening to the radio, listening to how Thurman Munson –his favorite Yankees catcher- had perished in an airplane crash.

“Augered in—” he cried. “My boy has augered in…” as I watched him through the rear view mirror, the intermittent streetlights staining his warm, wet face.

2008-06-01T12:13:00.000-07:00

It is graduation week here at Crook County High School, but all I can think about is my father, who will make his last flight as a helicopter pilot on the 4th of June; the day of his retirement. He has been a pilot since I was a baby. Over the next couple of entries, I will post some of my archived work about my dad as a pilot.

Letters to You

2008-05-21T19:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Mom,

I miss you. I want you to come back. I hope you can come back early so I can see you. I really miss you Mom, because I love you.

I hope you are having a good trip on your plane and everything. I miss you Mom.

Love,

Jaedon

Dear Mom,

This is what I’ve been doing this week. I’ve been hanging out with Uncle Chris, watching Trin’s baseball games, and I’ve been playing baseball games. My baseball games are fun, because my dad gets to see them. I’ve been hitting good, and sometimes I strike out, but it’s okay, and I miss you Mom. And I was catcher. It was fun.

Love,

Jaedon

P.S. Mom, what is the word sarcastic? Just kidding. Dad already told me that this weekend. Sarcastic is just joking, but it’s not funny. No, wait, just kidding. hyuck hyuck hyuck.

Dear Mom,

I really miss you. I can’t wait until we see each other again. I hope you have a good time in Poland.

I wish you could have been at my baseball game with Chris. It was a really awesome game. It was the best game I ever had. I got to play pitcher and catcher. I walked everybody, but I got them all out from passed balls at home plate. When I was catcher, MacGuire threw an inside, high ball, and I jumped and I caught it. I’m writing a picture book about my game.

Dad got a good price for a catcher’s helmet and chest guard. It will also help Jaedon with catching the ball when Dad throws a hard one at him, because he wouldn’t get hurt.

What is the weather like over there? Is it cold? It was really hot over here over the past couple days. Do you like the people over there? Are they nice to you? Dad told me that you’re going to a really sad place, Auschwitz. I heard of places like that in the book “Number the Stars” That story made me sad. I hope you don’t get too sad.

I love you, Mom

Love,

Trinity

Carol,

I have been full of silence, and full of obligation. Both have been a joyful yoke to carry, but they have been heavier without you. The breeze has been so prevalent here that I swear I can smell the ocean, and as it blows steadily east, across our vast country, I hope it blows all of my unspoken I love you’s to you, over the Atlantic and those remote ice-mountains of Greenland. Let this breeze catch up to your train, and flirt with the curve of your nose, while armed guards from Slovakia grunt for your passport. And let this breeze contain the twice daily waterings of our hanging petunias, oregano and basil, and the goodnight kisses on the musky brows of our sons. Let these be the incense to guide you back home.

Back here has had plenty of baseball, but I was still (mistakenly) doubtful about missing the first half of Trinity’s game for the ‘kindergarteners on parade’ mock Summer Olympics. As it turned out, there were 400 kids. Parents nearly filled the entire stadium. And once the Olympic theme played over the loudspeakers, and as each country of tennis-shoed children made their procession on the track in front of us, my emotions leapt to my throat. That processional, that music, all those little kids, and the cheering.

And the cheering. An entire stadium shouting joy and approval to the participants, and all of the kids on the other side of the track cheering the way for each of the runners.

In the first heat, a kindergartener, in the 50m dash, ran his legs out from under him and flopped onto the ground, scraping his knees, wincing in pain, and the crowd, and the crowd, and the boy rose to his feet, and his face, the determination on his face as he ran, alone on the track the rest of the way, and the crowd, and the crowd-

And that is basically how it was for the rest of the evening. Character and courage being born, innocence preserved, and the joy of just running, and the crowd, the crowd, as Jaedon trudged around the last corner of the 400 meter dash, but when reaching the crowd, behold the crowd, and the shine returning to his face, and the speed, what speed!returned to his legs for the rest of the race, as the crowd, the crowd and the female announcer’s voice, a seasoned teacher with a self-aware humorous tone in that disembodied, god-like Francis-McDormand-from-Fargo voice, exclaiming “Come on! All the way! You can do it!”

And I remember when I was in grade school, the announcer on the television, in disbelief, in utter joy, asking a question that I am finally able to answer, “Do you believe in miracles?”

Yes.

Love,

Jim

P.S. Sorry for calling Lynn baby over the phone. She really sounded like you.

2008-05-21T19:03:00.000-07:00

The Dimes at Crook County High School Tonight

2008-04-11T18:17:00.000-07:00

These guys are the real deal. They are doing a benefit for our high school's Americana (singer/songwriter) program. Their album, "The Silent Generation" is brilliant, and reminiscent of the Portland influx of Colin Meloy, The Shins, and Death Cab. Still they are uniquely their own, and they are even better in person. A great bunch of guys who gave us a teaser of tonight's concert during 5th period today. A very well-timed upbeat/melancholy event after a very emotional week at CCHS.

They've been featured in many places, including SPIN. Check out the buzz at

http://thedimes.com/index3.html

For L.B.

2008-04-09T21:38:00.000-07:00

Sunday afternoon, one of my favorite students got trampled by a bull in rodeo practice, breaking several ribs and puncturing his lung. We almost lost him Sunday night in the ICU. It is still touch and go, and will be a long slow recovery, but it's looking up. His recovery is being documented by his family at the following site: http://caringbridge.org/visit/loganblasdell

The halls of Crook County High School have been dimmer without his "Howdy, Mr. C-D" every morning.

Letters From the Mountaintop

2008-03-05T11:52:00.000-08:00

Goddard College has a tradition of students writing a letter to themselves at the end of each intensive on-campus residency. While going through some old books of mine, this letter, from my Winter '04 residency, fell out from between the pages. The timing for me is still perfect:

Dear Jim,

Write from your spine, without arrogance or false humility- both are a form of self-hatred.

Write as if you were God when he created the universe-made small afterwards.

Indeed, they will increase- you will decrease.

You are a sincere visitor and you are welcome inside.

Cast away your doubt.

Always remember, people are dying a little bit every day. Bring them life- and fill your time doing the same thing for yourself-

You are a love poet-You bring people back into their bodies again-

Expect originality and magic from yourself.

Love,

Yourself

English Matters

2008-03-05T11:50:00.000-08:00

From Master English Teacher, Jim Burke

"Teaching English has always been a privilege for me. As I write this, school has just finished up and my head still swims with the images of what my students did on their different culminating projects, what they said in their portfolio cover letters, where they reflected on the year. I feel very humbled by the achievement of my students when I consider all they learned. As I watched my students stand up in class and speak at length about different topics, as I watched them stand to speak at the funeral of one of my students, and as I watched former students of mine stand to speak at graduation, I was reminded again and again how important our work is. If you find yourself surrounded by people who do not appreciate this, seek your companions in other departments or online. Spend your days and the coming years with colleagues who feel the pride we should all feel for helping all our students tell their story even as we are writing and revising our own in classrooms across America."

Searching for Benjamin Rush

2008-03-02T21:58:00.000-08:00

From an Anonymous Query from CousinConnect.com: I need to find the connection between my Great Grandmother Jennie Rush Gartman (MO-TX-OR), family has said she was related to signer Benjamin Rush?

My Response:

To the writer of the above query,

Greetings from Oregon. At the risk of sounding presumptuous, it is quite possible that you and I are related. I have no direct answer to your query into the link between Jenny Gartman and Benjamin Rush(I am currently searching for the same link myself.)

If your Jenny is the same ancestor as mine, (she would be my great-great grandmother,) then she settled in St. Helens Oregon with her husband Jasper-a simple yet handsome fellow with a mischievous grin covered by a handlebar moustache (from what I remember of the photograph).

They had three children, I believe: Bill, Neva, and Edna.

Edna (10-26-1903 - 12-23-81) was my great-grandmother, who married Kenneth Preston Howell.

They had three sons, Kenneth, Robert, and Richard (the youngest)

I am Richard's eldest grandson. He is the one who has told me stories of how- when he was a young boy- he was visited by a very old female relative of Jenny's, who claimed that they were related to the great Benjamin Rush. Since he was a young boy with little attention span, he could not recall the lineage that she shared. He only remembered thinking that "she was the oldest woman he had ever seen."

As your query was in 2003, my hope is that you may have found the information you are looking for. I also hope that this further information finds you in good health and in good spirits.

If you have the notion or the time, I would be grateful for any information that you may have found. I am truly excited by the possibility that we may be two travellers searching for the same source of the same tree.

Be well.

Warm Regards,

Jim Churchill-Dicks

Resolution/Revelation

2008-02-22T09:54:00.000-08:00

At a recent teacher’s inservice based on Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach, I was given time to write a resolution to myself–a resolution to have teaching become a sustainable career. All embarrassment of my sentimental gushiness aside, it was a well-timed, (perhaps career-saving) workshop, where I uncovered some important revelations, which I realize are now within my grasp to attain:

I commit to sustain, better yet, to cultivate my life- to dirty my hands in my yard, to prepare my grass to be played on, run on, camped on- to prepare my little plot of earth for fruit trees- plums, apples and pears- to build a strawberry tower, and fill it with bulbous fruit.

I commit to drinking a good red wine with my wife, while we sit and swoon on our back porch that is strung with paper lanterns and hanging flower baskets.

I will play catch with my sons whenever they ask me to. I will see every inning and cheer at every game. I will write to live, and live to write, reclaiming my body on Misery Ridge. I will remember every ridge that I have balanced myself upon and take the time to be silent.

And in that stillness, I will remember a story worth telling; no, beyond telling. I will hone my craft, and show my students the power of their stories. I will show them how to speak for themselves- show them the power of so many other stories, so that some day, in a time of great need, those stories mingled together with their own will have the power to transform their lives for the better.

Ah, Poetry so serious and so pure an artform

2008-02-10T11:44:00.000-08:00

Sweet Jesus, you've got to see this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lktd1OBHVI

For Ron (and for those we lost):

2008-02-06T11:57:00.000-08:00

I’ve just had the distinct pleasure of reconnecting with one of my dear friends from elementary – high school. He had just found out about a mutual friend of ours, named Chris, who died of an accidental drug overdose several years ago.

For those of you who know me well, what I am about to tell you will speak volumes. Ron was one of the key players on our Red Shirted Little League team sponsored by the Rock Creek Tavern. He is one of the autographed names on my stepfather’s baseball which is displayed in a place of honor in his office in Portland. But more importantly, the end of our childhoods spent on that West Union baseball diamond are etched into the fondest memories of my life. Ron even remembers when my father saw my first and last ballgame I’ve ever played, when I struck out in epic whiffing fashion while my father was trying to photograph me in the batter’s box. So in honor of our time together, and in memory of the teammates we lost, (Another of our teammates is in prison) I present the revised version of my story “Son of Abraham” in the next entry.

Bruce Cockburn once sang, “To be held in the heart of a friend is to be a king…” Ron is my friend from long ago, and it is so good to reconnect with him.

Trinity's first "Poetry Jam"

2008-01-29T20:27:00.000-08:00

This was Trinity last Friday, after performing the poem, "The SSSnake Hotel" by Brian "Spike" Moses in front of all the 4th graders and parents. Quite the tuckered out hipster. Am I proud? Am I proud?

Smart Billy: Prologue

2007-12-05T17:06:00.000-08:00

Witness a man, a 19th century trapper, violently shivering in a snow cave with his dog. The dog has shared her heat with the man, has positioned herself between the man and the cave opening, protecting the man from the elements, because she is a good dog.

But now, just now she is dead, heat escaping her body.

Witness the man, buried and shivering in a snow cave up high, near Heaven’s Gate on Mt. Hood. His dead dog is his only company. Wind howls over the mountain, burning with snow in relentless curtains. For the moment, ignore the impulse to wonder why this trapper is so high upon this lifeless slope. Instead, wonder at his body, his sinewy skeleton loosely draped in blotchy pale skin.

Behold the man, the man whose shivering now stops. He strips away his beaver pelts, delirious and warm. He is chanting with graveled breaths, incomprehensible, swaying forward and back, forward and back. Behold the preconceived syllables of his language. The groaning vowels, the gravelly aspirates, the whiny whistle in each breath.

Behold the man’s pink face, freckled and burning through frizzy shocks of a chest-length, auburn beard. Behold the dried and broken blisters on his sharply cut nose, the wild green eyes, and closer, to his right eye, with broken capillaries slowly pooling with blood, just below the cornea’s surface. Behold the caked mucous at the lashes. The whitened salt-stained lower lid from dried tears—

Gaze into his eye, some reddening cloud that could swallow the moon— Look closer. Behold the muscular green filaments twitching in unison, now growing sluggish, failing, as they begin to give way to the pupil, a growing shadow swirling inward. Lean closer. Hear his whistling whisper in a final plume of breath— then stillness.

Wait. You heard something. Let your mind register it. You are correct. A final word, no, a name escaping the trapper’s rapidly cooling lips—

Billy.

The Ochoco Review: Summer 2007!

2007-06-20T22:20:00.000-07:00

http://ochocoreview.blogspot.com/

Haven't been writing much lately. Most of my creative gas has been used to get our student work online. Come see it! I bet you won't be disappointed. We even have a section for Spoken Word. And soon we will have a short film which will be featured on the SciFi Channel's website!

The English Teacher's Kid

2007-06-20T22:17:00.000-07:00

A New Freewriting Journal

2007-01-30T13:17:00.000-08:00

Warning! Total garbage. Do not read beyond this point!

1/22/07 9:23 a.m. PST

Blank Page. So many pages to fill. A formal looking book. Sturdy. Austere. I must be mindful with my permission to write freely, without worry of coherence or of posterity. How do I do this, when this is the beginning? The first impression to the invisible reader over my shoulder?

Reader over my shoulder, forgive me. You may find nothing here worth reading. Nothing that matters. Danger. It may take hours away from your life which you will never get back. Believe me. I take your time seriously. I understand that you are dying a little bit every day . I don’t want to waste your time.

Reader over my shoulder, bliss be yours.
Reader over my shoulder. I am tragically uninteresting. My voice is not the one you should sell your soul for, to give away your hours for.

But have you heard the voices of my children? Chirps and giggles, and fights like warring angels. And soul. So much soul. Reader over my shoulder, my wounded shoulder. Go in peace.

1/24/07 9:42 a.m. PST

Active analysis of lethal doses of attention, getting to the root of my swarthy sweat. Attention, attention, body mechanic must play out the story for which white paper is too distracting. Cymbal high hat, warping bass beat, bubbles of attention perforated burst creative impulse- verge of supernova, merge onto a single thread of conscious thought, tiny red ribbon thoroughfare through electric cables spiking, arcing spiderwebs overhead.

Stay on the course of a quiet shy girl’s voice, murmuring in a windstorm; focus: clear, the beats of wind, the beating wind of pigeons scattering at the clap of approaching footsteps.

Focus on the shy girl’s voice, clear the storm. Let gravity obey your fingertips, funneling into you from tip to tip, draw the chaos into you until there is nothing but the flutter of butterfly wings, and the sound of a shy girls voice, singing in delicate spiderwebs, growing more sure in their tensile strength.

1/25/07 9:31 a.m.

Respect equals Respect- Respect: n a value for the other person’s personhood. I-Thou, hallowed sacred other-someone not to be trifled with-to see their gifts, to see the haloes in another dimension of light. Respect- a foreign language that must be learned, syllable by syllable.
I’m dancing around what is singing in my spine, humming there, angry. I have slost this language-the words cleave to my mouth my mind, searching through days where the students, users take over, anarchy, misguided protests locking themselves into a crowded dorm room to honor Martin Luther King Jr.

$10,000 worth of damage to trashed walls and a shattered toilet.

Respect: I-Thou withers inside of me- allowing me to be a casualty. Respect Equals Respect- and I am losing this language. I am losing myself- Hardened, we all are polarized each to our opposite sides, convinced that we are right.

But I am not a user. I am not that selfish. There is a job to be done. I don’t care if you’ve had a hard day. Overused dilemma. Shore yourself up. Get the job done, I’ll cry with you later. Compartmentalize: this is the real world.

See to the children. Pay the bills. Rest when it is time. Do not call in sick.

Get Up…

1/29/07

Outside, students are breaking up the ice that has melted into a polished fan-like sheen outside of my classroom. We are the icy delta of the chronic melt and refreeze of the snow runoff. This is how I damaged my shoulder, nearly three weeks ago: the same ice powdered with a thin skiff of snow. Powdered sugar on whale snot on an iceberg, someone said.

If only it would just snow and stay. It’s January for Chrissake.

We’re listening to the Shins new CD “Wincing the Night Away” Trying to silence the shaking of my classroom with each out-of-rhythm pound into the ice. I’m grateful for these work project students coming to our aide, though difficult to concentrate. Disrupting the house of cards that is my attention span.

Through my peripheral vision, I see one of my students looking out the window, scratching his tightly shorn afro with his fingernails then looking right at me writing, wondering probably how long I will prolong this protracted freewriting torture. He shrugs audibly into the back of his seat. I can’t blame him. It’s impossible to write today.

Now Introducing, The Ochoco Review!

2006-12-12T12:50:00.000-08:00

Collage by Nicholas D. inspired by Sherman Alexie's "Fire as Verb and Noun"

http://ochocoreview.blogspot.com

It's here, finally! The Online Student Literary Journal from Mount Bachelor Academy has just released its inaugural issue, featuring student poetry, flash fiction, nonfiction, reviews, and short films. The work is finished just in time for our December graduation.

Featuring:

Poetry: John A.// Jennifer B.//Michael L. //and Bradley C.

Flash Fiction: "Lucid Dreams" by Glenn E,/ "Backflip-it" by Andrew F, / "The Cliff" by Chris B,

Nonfiction: "The Kid" by Josh L, // "I Remember, I Wish, I Believe" by the Sophomore Class of Mount Bachelor Academy, // and "9/11, Five Years Later" an MBA student collage

Reviews: Megan J. reviews "The Interpreter of Maladies" by Jhumpa Lahiri // John A. reviews "Candide" by Voltaire // Alex P. reviews "The Godfather" by Mario Puzo

Short Films: “Entering, With All of Our Senses”// “The Watchtower: A Parody of American Xenophobia”

Disclaimer: The creative impulses, thoughts, opinions, etc. shared in this online-literary journal do not necessarily represent those of its sponsoring school— Mount Bachelor Academy, or its parent companies, Aspen Education Group, or CRC.

Logistical and content oversight for The Ochoco Review is provided by Lisa Fairman: Special Education Director of Mount Bachelor Academy. The Ochoco Review is a product of the Mount Bachelor Academy English Department.

Additionally, students' last names have been concealed to preserve their confidentiality to the public.

Check it out!

A Direct Quote From One of My Students

2006-12-06T13:47:00.000-08:00

"You're a Master in Fine Arts? Wow, does that mean you know Kung Fu and shit?"

Hmm. Maybe that would be more useful....

Tupelo Press, the final chapter

2006-11-09T15:20:00.000-08:00

Jeffrey Levine from Tupelo Press has sent me another warm-hearted letter, because he is both kind and generous. And alas, my book-length manuscrupt, "Jacob Wrestling" was not selected for publication.So, there you have it. A manuscript whose main theme grapples with the effects of being 'chosen' has yet to be chosen.

"Jacob Wrestling" is still up for the Transcontinental Prize from Pavement Saw Press and the Gerald Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press, but after the results come from these (in the Spring?) I believe that I will put the book up into some special place. After two years of entering beauty contests, it is time to give her a rest.

Many thanks to all of you friends who were supportive of me during this work. That is worth more to me than the heartfelt content of those pages.

Now it's time to create something new...

Love,

Jim C-D

T-minus 3 days and Counting

2006-10-16T14:21:00.001-07:00

My students and I leave for Eastern Europe in three short days. We will explore simplicity, striking out on our own, and meditate on the fragility of life. First a stay in Romanian village, Villae Populi, helping at an orphanage, seeing Bucharest, Ploesti and perhaps Brasav in Transylvania, then take the train to Krakow, Poland. There we will visit Auschwitz, and be still. We will meditate, write, and remember where we have come from and reflect on where we are going.

I think of one of my students who will not be with us. His grandmother was a survivor of Auschwitz. She was going to meet us and her grandson in Krakow. She would have shared her story with us, and with her grandson. It would have been an honor to be a witness to such a story, of a grandmother who survived so much, before, during and after the Holocaust.

My student fell apart on a recent home visit. His girlfriend broke up with him and so, devastated, he got drunk, smoked pot and did coke to excess. His addictions are running rampant, and so he is now getting the help he needs at another placement for the next 50 or so days. He reminds me of one of my students that I lost to a drug overdose. I still haven’t and maybe never will get over losing her.

His voice is growing so strong, his sense of himself in a larger more important story growing equally strong. But his demons, so strong as well. He is the hero of his story, and has all the makings of a tragic hero. We are rooting for him, so personally invested in him now.

I will miss not having him with me overseas. My friend, my little brother. Such an empty spot, so rooted inside of me.
Indeed life is a fragile gift, and I am thankful for it. So full and so fragile, and hopefully so enduring; an undying hymn of praise.

Tupelo Press

2006-10-16T14:21:00.000-07:00

Before too long I will hear news about which manuscripts were chosen by Tupelo Press during their open submission period this summer. Last year, I received a lovely and encouraging letter from Jeffrey Levine, and later became a semi-finalist in the ‘05 Dorset Prize competition.

Only time will tell if this is the closest I will ever get to getting the book out into the world. But for now, I must be obedient to the vision, and keep submitting.

BendFilm

2006-10-16T14:18:00.000-07:00

Independent films all day with a friend, we laugh out loud about our recent zombie movie, our latest collaboration. We run into his theater buddies all over town. He is trying to convince me to try out for “The Full Monty” which will audition in March. He tells this to all of the friends we meet. Pressure’s on.

Before oyster shooters in the Deschutes Brewery, C. Thomas Howell walks by, looking at us, amused by our slow celebrity recognition radar. Then at dusk, we huddle next to a patio campfire at an outdoor cigar bar sipping whiskey on the rocks, talking about future creative projects, while sparks crackle and swirl into the unknown sky.

Family Weekend

2006-10-16T14:13:00.000-07:00

We finally found a weekend away, camping at the nearby Prineville Reservoir. Fishing at dusk with no luck, wading in the rapidly cooling reservoir, mud castles, swordfights in the grass under a forest of Juniper trees. Campfires, S’mores and Yahtzee by candlelight. Jaedon, groans like a man who bets and loses on the ponies, while the dice crackle in their plastic cup, “How about a Yahtzee, already?”

Balls

2006-10-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

Trinity has lost interest in throwing the baseball around for several weeks now. It’s all been about football. So this is our game of catch nowadays: Jaedon is my halfback/center. He hikes it, takes handoffs from me, and Trinity runs the receiver patterns that my stepfather taught me when I was Trinity’s age; the buttonhook, the streak, the square-out, the corner-fake-dipsy-do, the long bomb curl…

Trinity has soft hands for his age, his body movement is growing more in synch with where he wants it to go, and Jaedon gleefully tackles the hell out of him on the lawn.
Meanwhile, I still carry Beth’s baseball with me in my backpack.

Reflecting on the therapeutic value of writing

2006-09-18T16:30:00.000-07:00

From my teaching journal, one year ago:

Over the last few weeks I have been reflecting on the text, “Writing as a Way of Healing” by Louise DeSalvo. It has inspired me to use the two units that are most dear to me for my classes. I am concurrently implementing “Character Maps: Navigating toward Personal Transformation” in my Sophomore English Class and “A Master Class in Poetry” for my senior English class. I have been deeply affected by DeSalvo’s text, and have recently been able to put words around why it has given me a haunting sense of déjà vu. The journey she takes her readers on very closely parallels my creative experience during my four semesters in the Goddard MFA Program, and the manuscript that was birthed from it. On page 22, DeSalvo quotes James Pennebaker (in italics) and extrapolates with her response:

To improve health, we must write detailed accounts, linking feelings with events. The more writing succeeds as narrative—by being detailed, organized, compelling, vivid, lucid—the more health and emotional benefits are derived from writing. (DeSalvo, p.22)

This was very true for me in the creative process. My first semester MFA advisor, Kenny Fries, confronted me with the reality that whenever I was taking steps toward a significant emotional truth in my writing, I would veer off into safe, ambiguous and larger than life metaphors, and squander the opportunity for truth telling. “What are you afraid of?" "What are you hiding from?" and "What are you waiting for?” were ferocious mantras continually spoken by Kenny to challenge me.” I was afraid that if I told the truth, it would devour me and everyone around me, and I would alienate everyone I cared about. I wasn’t trusting and didn’t feel safe enough to venture out without guilding the truth into something that could be ‘useful’ for my audience.

In my following semesters, advised by Elena Georgiou (one of the very Hunter students mentioned by DeSalvo in her book (xi) ) my courage to step out of my self-imposed cave led to the most important breakthroughs in my writing (and my emotional well-being) as I diligently worked to be as vivid and lucid as possible, sparing nothing in my writing.

Following my work with Elena, I worked with Laura Fargas for my final semester. During a time where students usually do not produce new work, Laura noticed a ‘gap, or a shadow’ in my manuscript, intuiting that there was something I had not put on the page. Just when I thought I had gone as deep as I could go, Laura helped me to come up with work surrounding my mother; perhaps the most salient in the manuscript.

As Desalvo, and Pennebaker had mentioned, my emotional well-being, rather than being consumed, gave me an empowering perspective over my past. Telling the truth in vivid detail was exhausting but liberating, as DeSalvo recalls how Henry Miller put it (p.?) on how his wounds were in the open air, clean and no longer festering. These were wounds that could heal. This is what I want for my students, as they begin to write their own narratives.

Baseball and The Ochoco Review

2006-09-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

Lately, I’ve been working doggedly on a blog-based online literary journal for Mount Bachelor Academy. Issues with expense and a lack of administrative support had aborted two of my previous attempts this year, with countless hours involved. I am spending countless new hours on this new (free, and less sexy) approach, which will debut in December as The Ochoco Review.

Hopefully it will ramp up enough support from MBA, as well as its Aspen family of boarding schools and wilderness programs, which could in turn create future funding for a more versatile and flash enabled website. Regardless of the outcome or level support, I am toying with the idea of creating an online student journal with submissions from the larger public. I will give this project a year to help gain the much-needed experience to accomplish this.

No updates on the baseball talisman. I am still holding the ball with the quote from Beth Thorpe. It stays with me, and I have no need to move on from it yet.

P.S. The Oakland Raiders piss me off. I wish I could root for another team, but my blood, my blood is no longer red.

Baseball Talisman(s) Weeks 4 & 5

2006-08-21T15:19:00.000-07:00

This week's ball was a joy to carry. I want to keep this baseball with me for several weeks, meditating on the quotes, mantra-like. They were given by Ilya Kaminsky in a workshop. The first:

"Because I found Hitler inside of me..."
Mother Teresa, when asked why she chose a life of service to the poor.

and

"Argument with others is rhetoric. Argument with oneself is poetry."
William Butler Yeats

I will continue with this ball in my backback as a subtle reminder of two quotes that will need to stick with me for the rest of my life.

The one I spin, twirl and carry with me today, however, for week 5, is a recent excerpt from the lovely Elizabeth Thorpe:

I want to write about baseball, like others have and will. There is something about baseball that is incorruptible, no matter how many Barry Bondses break records. No matter how many little kids get baseballs signed because they are the loudest instead of the most polite. No matter how much the players make. The core of baseball, a large core, is solid, made of the finest materials. We are fibers in the string that wraps the core, intertwined in our love and fear and disappointment, in the buildup of details that make history. It matters that my cat was named for Tony Pena. It matters that I watched the victory parade, that I saw the trash cans piled over with styrofoam Dunkin cups on an early morning when we didn't have to drag ourselves out of bed. It matters that one of my most enduring memories from childhood is watching the Red Sox with my mom, the sound of the fans going in the windows, a mixing bowl of popcorn between us. Someday I will be able to write about New England and the Red Sox in a way that will make me feel I finally got it right.

Amen, sista, you're wicked pissa.

I'm beginning to think that I should compile these someday, and title the collection, "Jim Churchill-Dicks and His Balls" Anyone? Anyone?

Baseball Talisman Week 3

2006-08-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

The first quote was in a letter from the great poet, James Wright to his son Franz, who had completed a poem that he could finally send to his father.

"So, you're a poet. Welcome to Hell."

The second is from a letter I sent to E-Rod, one of my talented former students, who was having difficulty finding the time to write anything he was passionate about. I told him that if he didn't have to express something through writing, then he shouldn't have to worry about it. People live completely normal lives without writing, I told him. I told him to live a little. And then I warned:

"But if writing is survival to you-- If it is what keeps you out of trouble... If that creative impulse is what gives meaning and purpose to your life-- then for fuck sake, you'd better write, you little bastard."

Yes, profanity again, mixed with love and worry; my curse. As I spun and twirled this ball around for a week, I wanted to get rid of it. It felt like how I sometimes feel of myself-- beyond redemption.

Trinity and I played a long game of catch with the ball on a hot Saturday afternoon at Davidson Field -the old 1911 ball field half a block away, with those old-school covered bleachers. A stadium that will probably be bulldozed to make way for a much needed community pool. So much for historical preservation, so much for religious relics. We played catch, Trinity and I, on this endangered field, in an endangered moment of catch between father and son, with time against us as Trinity's baby teeth continue to give way to those gorgeously awkward adult chompers.

Trinity has still been afraid of the ball, still frozen in fear by the hard ball. My last baseballs have been of the spongier coach-pitch variety, which have done wonders for Trinity's courage. He has asked me every night to play catch with him in the fading light after an 11 hour work day. What a way to end it.

I almost left this #3 baseball at home on that Saturday, not wanting to corrupt one of the last sacred interchanges of my life, but out of stubborn duty to the commitment I have made, I included this ball too. And on this day, Trinity begged me to throw it as high as I could, and by God, he was catching them effortlessly, squealing with victory at first, then later, acting as if it were all just business as usual. And he was whipping the ball back to me, hard and on target.

Beside home plate was his bat, and his batting helmet, the one I spray painted gold, and added a metal facemask to, to protect that horsy smile. It was there just to be there, like a saddle and blanket to a spooked horse, getting used to the old equipment again.

The week before, we went to his old little league ball field to try our first batting practice since the time he was beaned twice in a row by an errant coach. He got the helmet on, stretched on his batting glove, got toward the batter's box, and proceeded to tell me that he couldn't do it, his head was too itchy...he wasn't ready. For once, I took the soft approach. I was the "baseball whisperer. " I patted him on the helmet, and drove him home.

But on this Saturday afternoon, he eventually asked, "So how about a little batting practice?"
I didn't get my hopes up. I watched him put on his gear, that same helmet, that glove, that bat, and he tentatively strode to the batter's box. He was in. I put on my best poker face, calm and steady. My inner voice whispered, "If you fuck this up, you have no right to be this boy's father." I grabbed a bucket full of soft core balls.

"O.K." I said. " Just stand in the box in your batting stance and watch the ball all the way. Don't worry about having to swing. Just get used to the ball coming to the plate." He nodded slightly.
"This is it" I thought, "Make sure you don't kill your son." I wound up, and threw it six feet outside. The second pitch was the same result. Trinity smirked that sarcastic smirk that I used to see on my father's face when he was a young pilot. "You're gonna have to do better than that, Dad," he chortled. I smiled, shook my head and stuffed another ball into my glove. He giggled a little more and got back into his stance.

I pitched a few good ones in a row, and he took swings at each of them, with growing confidence, timing and fluidity. I had one ball left in the bucket. The one with the quotes.

No shit.

I pitched--

he swung--

he pooped that damned ball right over my head.

What a shot!

Instead of looking where the ball went, I looked at him, jumping up and down, giggling like a dork. He was a frozen animal who had shed his icy skin, cold glass breaking all around him, a newly warm-blooded boy who trusted his father again.

You're damn right that's the way it happened, and I know that it pisses you off.

Sure, it's too perfect, and smacks of an overly-crafted revisionist's smarmy American ending. Well, it is what it is. And we were redeemed in that moment. If that's not artistic enough for you MFA types, then you can go piss off somewhere.

A Celtic Phoenix: What Really Really happened to Jimmy “Sweet Rolls” Sullivan

2006-08-05T14:04:00.000-07:00

"Love left me like a coal upon the floor, Like a half - burned sod!"
Douglas Hyde

Shitdamn, it’s hot in here—slow cooking in this tight-assed whiskey barrel, thick boggy air like where my ancient ancestors were buried, where they remain perfectly preserved in their bronze-peat graveyard. There is CADEYRN’s severed head, turned to me, smiling, his half-moon eyes and that toothless gummy grin, like dirty Al Capone preparing to burn his dirty secrets.

Jesus, it’s hot, Jesus—

you poor bearded fuck, you fell in love with the world- God’s enemy, didn't you? I know just how you feel. Whiskey remnants buzz from these boards, crackle in this heat, dizzy as Hell, I can’t rest my head against these smoldering boards.

Capone, you sonofabitch, you’re probably fanning yourself in that cooled movie theater where you found Mae and I making sloe love in the projection booth while La Boheme flitted to a popcorned crowd below.

Here is my dirty secret: I loved her more than you possibly could have.

But as your goons toss this barrel into the furnace, know this: These shackles blistered into my wrists and ankles—I am dripping out of them, dripping into ashes. There sluices one eyebrow, and then the next—

My nose caves into the tongue your wife adored, she moaned like a pentacostal.
There goes my neck… my spine. I surrender my bowels, my balls, and everything down to my toenails until I am this pile of smoldering ashes—

Now I am coming for you.

Baseball Talisman Week 2

2006-08-01T15:56:00.000-07:00

Here are the two quotes from my new ball. One given to me by one of my students and the other from poet Suji Kwock Kim in her poem "The Tree of Knowledge"

Be who you are and say what you feel
because those who mind don’t matter
and those who matter don’t mind.

Dr. Seuss

O Ghost Brother, Ghost Sister
Silence like nothing but not nothing.
Dream vowel, implaceable O-
Lie to me. Say you forgive me
for being born.

Suji Kwock Kim

Centrum Resolution: (A letter to old and new friends)

2006-07-24T16:05:00.000-07:00

I: What are your favorite poets?
J: Well, I love baseball.
I: Oh. Well who are your favorite poets?
J: Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you said sports…
Ilya and Jim on a Friday evening

Here is my goodbye:

On my first day back at school I found a baseball, hidden in the deep grass beside my classroom. Inscribed are the initials of a student no longer with us. I have been rolling, tossing, spinning the ball in my hand all morning, and have inscribed two quotes that move me.

Centrum Resolution: I will find or buy one baseball every week, and do the same with each. One week at a time, I will play catch with my sons, let the dirt and oil of our hands rub onto it in our act of giving, our game of catch – Mine, now yours, now mine, now yours—

One week at a time, I will carry an inscribed baseball with me wherever I go. It will be my talisman.

So, the two inscriptions of this first found baseball:

One is a quote from the character Jean Valjean, but the other is from our last night together at Centrum, Ilya’s question to Matt and I,

“Look at the stars—
Don’t they make you feel like you are missing something?”

Consider, Ilya, the field
where we all lay flat on our backs
under moonlight, the copper paper
of the madrona trees

and those promiscuous stars, streaking
as we stood upon the sky.

And here is my goodbye, my second baseball quote in the words of Jean Valjean:

“I must go. I stole something. I did. I stole happiness with you. I don’t mind paying.”

Love, Jim

Sunflowers

2006-07-24T16:03:00.000-07:00

Today, on the way to work, I was greeted by an unexpected field of sunflowers, and spoke aloud my poem, Why Jesus Loved Sunflowers:

Their wide pregnant faces, bowed low with seed; prophet heads, awaiting harvest.

My mission in life: be more like John the Baptist, to be a voice crying in the wilderness, preparing the way for those greater than I, those who will rise up from their deathbeds to redeem their world.

(Bi)Polar Bear:

2006-05-27T00:13:00.000-07:00

from A SeaWorld Education Department Resource

1.Adult polar bears have no natural predators. Males occasionally kill other males competing for mates. Males periodically kill females protecting cubs.

2.Cubs less than one year old sometimes are prey to adult male polar bears—

3.Newborn cubs may be cannibalized—

Attempting to hide my profanity. Dates between entries. The gaps between my physical highs and lows. Cave days. I am a dangerous bastard. Exhausted and hungry. I’ve (supposed to have) been living on salad, rice and tuna for weeks now.

I Am The Salad Shooter.

Two months ago, I helped my boss butcher a buffalo. For days, I imagined the meat under the skin of several people I’d talked to. Separating meat from bone always does that to me. Too many senses involved— buffalo blood on my hands, the sticky tallow, the predatory smell—

There is always this loss of innocence, combined with a greed and a fear, stocking up for my family, in case of disaster, in case of misfortune, in case I finally tell some power drunk people what I really think— Clichéd suburban father run amok by fear. My shadow self.

Trinity is hit again. Again with a hardball. This time it is at practice. This time from the coach’s hand. Hit twice in the batter’s box; one ball to each arm. They tell him to keep batting. I am not there to rescue him. He loses trust in adults. Days pass. We play catch on my day off. He ducks even my softest throws.

More days pass. It is practice again. I have to swallow my vomit, push him into the batter’s box for his own good, for his own safety. Aggressiveness in the box means less chance of injury, I think to my self. He doesn’t want to bat. I tell him that he has to. That he will thank me later. I know he will never thank me later.

Trinity says that his hair is so itchy under his helmet, that he can’t bat today. His mouth is dry. I keep nudging him to the plate. Gruffly, because that is what I do when I am afraid, and I have been afraid every day since his birth.

Trinity says in a sad whine that he feels like he is going to fall asleep. I tell him to face his fears, to get in there and to punish the ball. He begins to swing. Stiffly several times, backing out of the box. I praise him for trying to stay in there.

Trinity swings, finally fouls it, and tension is released. He even smiles at the catcher. His next swing pokes the next pitch into left field. Later he fields hits for his teammates, smiling and joking with his coach, but I know that I am not off the hook. I am afraid that I am cannibalizing his love for the game, and for me… and I don’t know any other way.

Today, I am driving home from Bend. It’s raining like Hell, while I am trying to find rest; find my balanced self. I miss God more than I miss red meat. The blood, the sticky tallow, the predatory smell— I wish I could find God in one of those hundreds of churches that squat on every other city block in Central Oregon. Maybe I would find peace and quiet in one of those empty sanctuaries now, since their people are all holding picket signs in front of the theaters playing "The DaVinci Code."

I wish I had the time to make a sign protesting those signs. It would read,

“Jesus is on vacation. Why weren’t you invited?” or "The Passion Part 2: Dawn of the Dead"

But today, the only spiritual platitude that melts its way into me is on the bumper of a VW bus in front of me, splashing a rainbow of spray onto my windshield. It is a quote from my favorite movie, simply put—

“The Dude Abides…”

and abide I shall...

Seeing and Believing

2006-05-08T09:54:00.000-07:00

Villae Populi, Romania: One year ago, on a pillowed green hillside overlooking a rural orphanage, our students were encouraged to think of an abstract — service— and to make it specific through their actions and observations. For the rest of the week we cuddled with babies, we played soccer on a makeshift field with the youth of the orphanage, and we worked to hand-pour a concrete bridge.

For me, there is one particular moment. Late afternoon, sun baking streaks of wet cement on our burning arms, we have poured our final concrete pillars into their metal reinforcement skeletons. A group of visiting Carmelite nuns begin to walk across the solid part of our bridge in a single file line, floating swans in their flowing white garments resembling that of Mother Theresa. The last nun in line strays from her group, lingers by me, and with both of her thin, ebony hands, cups my face to look me in the eye. She smiles. “Good Teacher” I hear her say, but her lips do not move; she hasn’t uttered a word.

An invocation. An undeserved harvest. More than the title of an educator of children. Her hands, soft and strong, bestow an anointing, as though I were divine. As divine as these lost children of Villae Populi, seeing instead, the face of the one she serves in each of them,

and now in me,

on that humble bridge, crossing an even humbler stream.

With Love, From the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

2006-05-03T16:57:00.000-07:00

Ashland Oregon:

At the Angus Bowman Theater with my students, watching The Diary of Anne Frank. I watch one student of mine, thoroughly absorbed in the performance. His grandmother was a survivor of Auschwitz.

It is the silence that frightens us most—

Afterward, rendered without words, we somberly follow the steps down to Lithia Park. Girls from another school, make catcalls to our boys, their heels clomping the wooden steps in unison behind us, like soldiers marching by a cramped, sacred hiding place.

The Natural

2006-04-24T20:52:00.000-07:00

Blood is pulsing in my ears: ram, ram, ram,

Trinity is at home plate and is hit by a wild pitch which is way too fast for Little League Minors, -you heard it fffffffft toward Trinity's face, 'luckily' hitting his hand instead. “Part of the bat” the umpire yells, after lifting Trinity from the ground, checking for broken bones "Strike One" They couldn't let him take a base. Tears on his face, he’s given a choice to sit out, for an unshameful out, or get back into the batter's box. He flexes his hand, crying, looks back at me. I am clutching the chain link backstop. I want to scoop him up, take him home.

He connects to my sad eyes, and, why? gets back into the batter's box and, instead of cowering like me, swings like hell at two more pitches. He gimps back to the dugout, half-triumphant, chin still trembling, as both sides of the stands cheer loudly, on their feet, screaming whistles for the courage of the smallest kid on the field, pint-sized hero of the moment. This one will go down in history.

After the game, I sit him down, and while rubbing his hand, whisper something into his ear, something he may remember someday, for a story only he is able to tell...

PULLED FROM THE RUBBLE

2006-04-17T11:22:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend of April 7-9, I had the privilege of traveling to Seattle to participate in the “Film, Faith and Justice” forum, sponsored by The Other Journal. It was a transformational series of keynote presentations, panel discussions, and documentaries culled from the Human Rights Watch traveling film festival.

What moved me most was exploring the interplay between justice and forgiveness, and how they are distinguished from a reactive worldview of justice based on atonement and revenge. What began this exploration was a documentary entitled Pulled From the Rubble, by Margaret Loescher. Here is the official film description:

In August 2003, Gil Loescher went to Baghdad on a humanitarian research trip. He and his colleagues were in a meeting with the head of the United Nations in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello, when a truck full of explosives was driven into the side of the building. Gil was the only survivor from the most devastated section of the building. All of the other people in the meeting died. Through poignantly honest narration, and observational scenes of high emotion, his daughter records the family’s recovery during the months after the bombing. Filming becomes her way of dealing with the suddenness of the family’s changed reality, and a way of re-visiting the haunting images of the bomb site—a place of both horror and hope.
Film’s website http://www.pulledfromtherubble.com

One image buries itself into me, hidden there, a sacred stained glass image:

How after the explosion, shards of glass pierced deep into his flesh. Weeks passed, old skin sluffed to make way for the new. Shards of glass, burrowed closer to the surface, week by week, layer by layer, expelling the shards of glass, a sliver at a time, redeeming them from his body.

His daughter Margaret sees, through the camera’s smooth glass eye, an image

“…at once Hell and hope… a death place and a birth place.”

Smith Rock Diaries

2006-03-28T12:54:00.000-08:00

On the shoulders of Misery Ridge, overlooking the famed Monkey Face, there is a trace of either skunk or reefer. Up high, I am high-- but not that kind of high. Looking down, every thing is brown below. The water, dark green, olive-drab, is not yet reflected by a springtime sun. The fields below, last week, were burning. Today, a John Deere tractor is plowing under the ash. Spring is coming.

Black Butte's bald head in the distance is still a snowy skullcap. The rest of the Cascades are draped in windswept snow-filled clouds, still holding on with their last fingers, still icy.

Finally, I am getting back out into the wild, finding sanctuary, wheezing for oxygen, blood pistoning through my body, rapid fire. And I am beginning to remember heights from a long time ago; sacred heights in California, Washington, British Columbia. Today, standing on this Smith Rock precipice, I am beginning to remember how tall I used to feel, how high, raised upon the shoulders of sacred rocks, able to see further, like on the sturdy shoulders of my father--

This is my palace. This sanctuary. These rocks tower like any cathedral spires I've seen--

A whisper from the wind. Simple, no words, but truly some language, a chilled breath, breezing where it will. The syncopated rhythm of the wind.

Maybe there will be nothing to write from beyond Malibu, that British Columbia shoreline, mountains swelling up from salty inlets, sharply carved by ice for thousands of years, and swollen inside of me, calling out, carving out my past, on a reconnaissance mission to find something I may have misplaced, something I could have lost, even if it is merely the illusion of something I thought I had, but never had. Should I look into this well, once so stocked with treasures, to find them all evaporated--receded?

Oh, who cares? Who cares if I have anything to say anymore? I know how I feel, at this moment, and I know how it will shift into the next. 'Tis the season between seasons, the holding on, the letting go, the hope for a new tomorrow, the surrender of what lies behind. All make for temperamental weather. I know the lack of knowing in my journey. There is no need-- to ramble about it any further.

And there is my liberation. No more need to be important. Except to my sons, my wife, my family, my friends. But in the end, not even to them. Liberation and Grief. I am the small speck of an unimportant soul, someone who sneaks into the party unnoticed and uninvited.

So be it. Now I can write--

Prologue: Out of Silence

2006-03-12T21:50:00.000-08:00

A blank page--

Not necessarily waiting to be filled.
I remember not being able to write for the six months after my first son was born.

I was stained into silence.

The air we breathed together, and the light--weighed in far too sacred for the commemoration of words; empty, ignorant words like Peter's on the mountain with the newly transfigured Christ.

And lately, there are the breaking of unholy, oppressive silences. The pent up; distressed words- words for myself and for others- that must rise up- so they do not die stillborn inside. These are words that I have scarcely even begun to notice, because it is an immense and dizzy world, and I am just waking up to it. My latest writing project, a book of poems entitled Jacob Wrestling, dips its toes into both of these silent territories. One of the longer poems, entitled "From These Stones" can currently be found in the online journal The Other Journal (http://www.theotherjournal.com/) while the title poem "Jacob Wrestling" is forthcoming in Fire Magazine out of the U.K. There may be a future for this little book, although it has served a full and healing purpose simply in the crafting of it. So why have I entered the blog community? Just this. I have been greatly served by the weblog of a dear friend (see Mercurial Dreams link) and from the consequent rabbit hole of links toward deep-thinking/feeling people with an artistry for communicating their experiences. One more voice to the chorus then. And more links that daily cleanse me of my middle-class suburban decay. In this blog you will most likely find the sacred wed to the profane, as I am both a sacred and profane individual. And ignorant. And luminous...

Good Night Nobody...

Goodnight noises everywhere,

Jim Churchill-Dicks