Project Boone

24/03/2023

Trump suggested “only a degenerate psychopath that truely [sic] hates the USA!” would consider charging him.

21/03/2023

The Chateau Frontenac in Quebec City is a place of comfort and fantasy.
At the Chateau

I sat in the bar of the Chateau Frontenac, Quebec, Quebec.
A small mahogany table barely touching my freshly creased gray wool trousers,
And on the polished grain table-top a cup of freshly brewed coffee and a pony glass of Kahlua.
I gazed out at the frigid waters of the St. Lawrence far below me.
I had an old world feeling of comfort and privilege.

I felt a large presence just off my left shoulder before I heard the deeply mellifluous tone that asked:
I wonder . . . ?
And I replied as I turned my head, Yes?
Might I sit in that chair?
He was a handsome middle-aged man and although I found it odd,
Since there were several unoccupied tables in the salon,
I instinctively remembered my manners and said,
Of course.

He sat and a burden seemed to lift from his countenance,
Thank you,
He said and ordered a glass of Meukow from a passing waiter.
He sighed, and we sat til the waiter returned, then he began,
You may ask why I sigh.
And I said, No. I would never infringe upon your thoughts.
He studied the snifter of Cognac before saying,
You seem a worldly man, tell me, and he sipped the liquid,
If you would please, what is the difference between a death and a loss?

I said, death was a condition of permanence and a loss could be recovered.
This gave him a moment of deep reflection and he tasted once more of his Brandy.
I wondered if he would soon respond.
There's a man sitting behind me and to the left who told me he comes here every year
On the anniversary of his wife's death. He grieves heavily. Four years after the fact,
And the pain still endures.
He took another taste of his liquor and shifted in his ornate padded armchair.
His demeanor slowly shifted from consternation to bemusement.
I lifted my pony glass and allowed an equally slight amount of liquer to whisper against my lips.

Yes? I replied, thinking there must be more.
Yes, he echoed, my wife left me twelve years ago, but I moved on and I grieve for her
Not a whit.
Isn't she dead to me?

I sipped a bit of coffee which was now at a perfect temperature.
Finally, Yes, I said,
I believe she is.

What is the difference between a death and a loss? What does that mean to you? Do you agree with my friend? If you had someone close to you in life – a wife, a relative, a very close friend and suddenly, for whatever reason, they were gone – does it feel like they died?

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21/03/2023

This essay on living in Portland, Oregon, appeared in The Times-Gazette.
Living in Portland, Oregon

I was having lunch with a friend and she asked me why I moved back to Hillsboro after living all around the world. I hesitated, since we’d been talking about various dog breeds before she suddenly threw out that query, and in that hesitant moment she went on, “What’s your favorite place – that you’ve lived?”
“Uh, well . . . .”
“Spain! I’ll bet it was Spain. I want to go there so bad.”
“Spain was nice. But, you know, I really did like living in Portland.”
“Oregon?”
“Mm-hm. I lived there two years in the early ‘70s and immediately fell in love with the city and its people. I was married when I moved there and after two years, I left and she stayed and lives there to this day. Her sister and husband came to visit and they still live there. Her mom and dad moved there. The wife and I taught at different high schools, but in the same district. She taught P.E. and coached the swim team. I taught English and was an assistant coach in both football and baseball. I think we made about $3,000 apiece. It seemed like a fortune.
“We ate out a lot. I ate my first fish ‘n’ chips at a British style pub called The Elephant and Castle and my first real Chinese food from a great place called Far Hung Low’s. Far Hung Low’s was in Portland’s Chinatown which covered much of Burnside St. Burnside was one of America’s first “skid rows”. Burnside is now cleaned up and gentrified, but it was once a haven for out-of-work men. In the ‘30s many men could not get steady jobs so they existed by traveling around going from harvest to harvest. They were called hoboes, or bindle-stiffs. They got from place to place by illegally hopping freight trains – “riding the rails” or even, out of desperation, “riding the rods” which meant crawling under the freight car and hanging on to an iron support rod. Portland was a gathering point for these transients and there was always a “jungle” set up either south or north of the city.
“In the summer, Portland is breathtakingly beautiful. I never got over the sensation of walking north or south on a street and then turning east to be struck by the sight of Mount Hood – seemingly right there in the city. It was huge and on a clear summer day it appeared to be just down the hill on the other side of the Willamette River. I never got over that sensation.
“Portland is known as the “Rose City.” Each May is the rose festival and there is a huge parade and the rose queen to reign over the festivities. Our first year there we rented a house with a large yard and we had roses almost the entire year. The weather, due to the Japanese current that pushes up the Pacific and crests at the coast just 60 miles away from Portland, is very mild, it is often described as being Mediterranean. The average temperature in winter is 41 degrees and in summer it averages 71 degrees. There are extremes at either end, but they are rare. The summer is blue skies, clean air, perfect for outdoor enthusiasts who like to climb mountains or head to the beaches on the coast. But. Here’s the rub – from September to May – it rains. Every day. Nothing drastic, just a daily drizzle. Rain in the morning, clear up at noon and go back to rain a few hours later. If you can handle that, you will also fall in love with Portland. It rained every single football game for both years I coached there. At the end of the first year, my wife and I separated and then divorced. She kept our car. I kept my motorcycle. I rode it every day, rain or no rain. There is usually one week in the winter when there is a little snow. I put on my heavy Belleville style combat boots and rode the bike. When I felt I needed to, I would simply put both feet on the pavement and rode out any uncertainty until I felt I was back in control. Never had an accident.
“Portland was a great place to get involved in small theatre. I became more interested in acting as a young single man and was lucky enough to go from one play to another during my last year in Portland. I met a young ballerina and we decided that when the school year was over we would travel to New York where I would become a famous Broadway star and she would wow the city as its next Prima Ballerina. Things don’t always work out the way they should.
“But my two years in Portland, Oregon were memorable and for the longest time I thought of that wonderful city as my favorite place to have lived.”

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19/03/2023

Locked in the Library

I have a Facebook acquaintance who recently posted an insane diatribe condemning Biden, his administration and all Democrats in general for “pushing for drag queens being allowed to perform for the children in the school libraries. They support and encourage sexually explicit books talking about little boys . .” Here I break off since my acquaintance goes totally off the rails describing in detail the perversions these drag queens encourage. Frankly, I didn’t think Facebook allowed language like that on their pages. He ended that ferocious paragraph with “and if you don’t believe it’s true then you are grossly uninformed and willfully ignorant.”
Since I have no desire to be uninformed or ignorant, I did a bit of research. I found several entries from last summer, but nothing since August of last year. I discovered that one library in a San Francisco suburb had a flamboyantly dressed man in for Drag Queen Story Hour. A group of Proud Boys descended on the event and I can’t find there has been another one since that time. I found that in NYC, the Department of Education allocated money for performers dressed in drag to come into several public schools and private schools in order to read to the children. I can’t find any information on that subject after August last summer and the article I read in the New York Post cited that most parental reaction was negative.
So, of course, this made me think. I remembered when I was in 5th grade we had a clown come in to read to us. The clown was dressed in a very flamboyant outfit. The clown didn’t stir any urges of any sort within me – I have never had thoughts of becoming a clown. Once the school brought in a guy dressed like a cowboy. He was fun, but dreaming of becoming a cowboy never appealed to me. When my daughter was in 3rd grade Webster school had a gentleman dressed like an indigenous American Indian come in to talk about life as an Indian. I attended that one. It did not encourage my daughter to want to go native, nor has she devoted any time to fighting for the rights of indigenous peoples.
So, I don’t know. Since this is an opinion piece I guess if you’re reading this far you might be curious where I stand on this issue. I do have strong feelings, but they are conflicted. I think that if my grade schooler must be exposed to an alternative life-style I guess I would prefer it be in a controlled manner – like, in the school, and especially if I were allowed to attend, which I would demand. I think I would prefer that over exposure on Tik Tok or on the street somewhere. I also disapprove of NYC’s spending taxpayer money on these events. If the Highland County Public School System is planning anything like this in the future, I’m pretty sure I would attend my first school board meeting to express my opinion. In a heated manner. At the same time, I support our local group of LGBTQ, and I think the festivals and performances they create on occasion is healthy and I think they have the right to express this facet of their personalities.
I responded to my FB friend’s thoughtless fears (he often opines that the Democratic Party has ruined his favorite country beyond all repair), by calmly telling him that I had over 25 years teaching experience in four separate school districts – as an English Teacher – and that his apprehensions are unwarranted. I was the head of the English Department at Laurel Oaks for many years and I knew every book in our library and was responsible for the purchase of many of them and we were careful what we put on our shelves. I found it amusing that the last five years I taught I was allowed to do a unit on the American classic, “Catcher in the Rye.” When I did a book report on “Catcher” when I was a senior at HHS, Mrs. Murphy, who liked me up until my report, labelled me “degenerate” and challenged me to stand and read my report to the class. Which I was thrilled to do.
Now to the subject of this essay: When I was in 4th grade I was in the back of the Kid’s section of the Highland County Library, behind a floor to ceiling bookcase, sitting on the heating register, it was a cold day in January, reading a copy of Kipling’s “Jungle Book.” I was so happy, so engrossed, that I failed to notice someone had turned out the lights. I was on the register in a window nook. The library had closed and unknown to me, I was locked in.
Instead of panicking, I was ecstatic. I had already read most of the books in the Kid’s section and being a 4th grader was barred from reading books in the Adult section. Of course I couldn’t understand that. So, seeing my opportunity, I made haste to the Adult books. The library, at that time, was in the Scott Building.
I stood in that room with the forbidden books all around me. I could see the works of Ernest Hemingway. I had already read one of his short stories and I wanted more. In my mom’s Reader’s Digest, I read an excerpt from Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley.” And there was the book, right next to “The Grapes of Wrath.” I already had a huge book with all the Sherlock Holmes novels and stories by Doyle – but I noticed another volume with his name on it – “The Lost World”. What? What! I walked along the bookshelves, my fingertips touching the endless supply of fiction before me. How could I ever read all this? But I was determined to try. I had hit the Jackpot. I had hit the Motherlode. I was surrounded by gold. I was rich. Rich!
I could tell by the gathering darkness that I was maybe in trouble. I had surely missed dinner and my mom was probably convinced I had been murdered, so I went back to the front desk and called my dad. After, I went to the magazine room and sat in one of the chairs. I was sorely tempted to go back to the forbidden room. I didn’t get it. What was in there that older and wiser people didn’t want me to learn? I knew there was a book called, “Peyton Place” and it was not for kids. I had seen the preview of the movie at the Colony Theatre. Lots of grabbing and kissing and crying and very serious music. Nothing about that movie interested me except for the fact that there was no way I’d ever get to see it. (Frankly, I still haven’t seen that silly movie.) Okay. I didn’t want to read that book. The book I really wanted was “White Fang” by Jack London. I had seen “The Call of the Wild” on TV and couldn’t figure why London’s work wasn’t in the Kid’s section.
My dad finally arrived, along with a man with keys, and I was sprung from the library. The next day I went in and told my beloved head librarian what I had done while locked in and she seemed to know all about it and, I guess, assumed I would use that time to check out the adult books. So we made an agreement. I could go to that room if she was there to go with me. She would approve of the books I selected. She would guide me. The library would make an “exception” in my case. I felt special.
First book I checked out, “White Fang.” Soon after, I wrote my first piece of fiction, a blatant knock-off of White Fang. I asked my teacher and my librarian and others to read it and they seemed to like it. I knew then what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I had no role model, I knew no one who wrote fiction, but I knew I couldn’t stop. Sixty-five years later. And I can’t stop.

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