It all starts with the guitar. Some folks have guitars hanging around the house for one reason or another and figure that will work just fine for learning. In fact, it’s that guitar hanging around the house that quietly nags at them to learn. That’s how I learned. My grandfather’s guitar was in the closet and I was bored. Fortunately for me, my grandfather’s guitar was a 1939 Gibson L37 archtop acoustic guitar. For most people, that guitar hanging around the house is a POS guitar (known to guitarists in technical terms as a Piece Of Shit guitar). It is really important for the beginner to have a decent instrument. Contrary to what may seem like common sense, the experienced guitarist can make music on almost any piece of crap. The beginner needs something good. So make sure you have a decent guitar.

But Big Daddy, you say, what if I decide to quit? I don’t want to spend a lot of money. Well, first I would tell you that you need to adjust your attitude. What if you want to quit? You’ve failed before you’ve started. Look at all the things you can do! What would make you think you’ll quit? Have some confidence in yourself. Let’s face it, if Toby Keith can play the guitar, anybody can play the guitar. Secondly, I will tell you that cheap guitars have no resale value. Cheap guitars are kind of like herpes. You can’t get rid of them. If you buy a decent guitar, and you decide to quit (because you lost your arm or something), you should be able to get most of your money back (if not more) when you sell the guitar.

So now we have decided that you’re going to get a nice guitar (more on that later), we have to decide what type of guitar to get. There are three basic types of guitars out there to tempt you. You can buy a nylon string classical guitar, a steel string acoustic guitar, or an electric guitar (and amplifier). And some guitar teachers will tell you that which guitar you should buy will depend on what kind of music you want to make, and there is a certain amount of truth in that…later on. But when you first start out, I’d like to suggest you go for the steel string acoustic and I’ll tell you why. Nylon strings are easier to press down for newbies, but the fingerboard is too wide, and there are no fret markers which are a big help to beginners. Also, nylon string classical guitars are mostly for classical music and ethnic music. They don’t sound that great when strummed, and you don’t use guitar picks with them. In other words, they are not very versatile. Electric guitars are great for rock music, and the strings are generally much easier to press down, so your fingers don’t get as sore, BUT unless you have a rock band behind you, or a lot of expensive electronic equipment or software, they sound a little thin. When you strum them the sound is kind of muddy. And so many new players find them unsatisfying after a short while. In addition, money is a real issue here, because to sound decent, they need decent electronics which don’t come that cheap. And the sound is only as good as the amplifier, and there’s more money.

So we’ll assume that you’re going to listen to my advice and get a steel string acoustic. They are versatile guitars. You can play rock on them in an unplugged sort of way. The fingerboards are a nice width, and they have fret markers to help you find where to put your fingers. Your first guitar will probably be an import, because they are cheaper. They make some pretty damn nice guitars in Asia these days, but they are not all equal. Some countries seem to make them better than others. Japan is the best (and most expensive), although China is making some real kick-ass guitars, nearly rivaling American made guitars (which are the best, along with Canadian). After Japan and China, I would say that Korean guitars are quite playable. It is my experience that Indonesian and Malaysian guitars are POS guitars in general. I have yet to find one that is any good. None of these imports will retain much resale value, however.

Try to get a guitar that has a solid top. These will sound better and will improve with age (just like Big Daddy). They cost a bit more, but they are worth it. They have a better resale value as well. The other type of top is laminate (in other words, plywood). You can usually tell by looking at the soundhole. You can see the three layers of wood on a laminate top. When you shop for a guitar, don’t shop for brand names, shop for sound, playability, and construction. There are famous name brands, but not all the bottom of the line models are worthwhile. For example, I would never recommend the Martin X series. Martin is a great company, but these cheaper guitars are not worth the money. An American made guitar worthy of a beginner will set you back at least $600. That’s a lot of money. If you have it, go for it. But a lot of people don’t want to spend that much. You should, however, expect to pay at least $300 for something decent. The guitar company I like to suggest to beginners is a Canadian company called Seagull. Their guitars are made of quality materials and have fine workmanship. They are attractive and have excellent tone. Seagull guitars are played by professionals on stage. They are definitely worth every penny and are cheaper than a lot of the import guitars. You can even get them on Ebay, but I would get it from http://www.elderly.com/, Elderly Instruments. All of their guitars are set up by professional luthiers before they ship them out. A Seagull guitar will set you back about $275. For women, I like to recommend the Seagull Grand model. It is smaller than the most common size guitar, the dreadnought, and easier for them to play.

Once you get your guitar, take it to the music store and have the strings changed to extra-light gauge. Guitars usually come with medium or light gauge strings on them. You will eventually change your own strings, but since you don’t know anything yet, you will need someone to do it for you. The extra-light gauge strings won’t sound as good, but they will be a lot easier on your fingers. Your fingers will hurt at first, but in time, you will develop calluses on your fingers and they won’t hurt. The more you play, the faster you will get those calluses. I also suggest getting an electronic CHROMATIC tuner. That will help you keep your guitar in tune. Guitars go out of tune easily and often.

Now this is going to sound weird, but I don’t especially recommend lessons. I guess you could get a few, to show you how to tune the guitar, but it’s easy enough to teach yourself. Get yourself a book on how to play the guitar to show you how to tune it, and for diagrams of the chords. And while you’re at it, get yourself a songbook for one of your favorite performers. Most songbooks have little chord diagrams above the music line. Since you know the songs already, you know the tune and the rhythm. Guitars are considered percussion instruments. You strum it like a drum. Be creative, too, and write some songs of your own. That way, you’re using the chords you know how to play. Remember, they call it PLAYING the guitar, not working the guitar. So play with it. You’re not going to break it. Experiment a little.

Music is arranged in little groups or systems that we call “keys”. Every key has three main chords. I won’t get into a lot of music theory here, but it’s a good idea to learn the three basic chords in a few keys first. I would say it would be good to learn the keys of C (C,F and G), G (G, C, and D), D (D, G, and A) A (A, D, and E), and E (E, A and B). As you can see, the chords are often in more than one key. We’re talking about learning seven chords here, C, D, E, F, G, A, and B, to start. With those seven chords you can play in several keys. If you can play in several keys, you can play a lot more songs. And I think the best way to learn those chords is by playing those songs from the songbooks. Don’t worry about reading the music. Just follow the words and look at the chord diagrams. You will probably want to learn how to read music a little as you progress, but don’t sweat it now. Learning chords is fun. They make neat sounds. I always liked the minor chords best because they sound so sad. Moreover, you only need two fingers to play the E minor chord.

Once you’ve been playing for a little while and feel more comfortable with the fingerboard, then go out and get an electric if you like. Again, American made are the best, but there are good imports. It is my opinion that the best electric for beginners is the Fender Standard Stratocaster (made in Mexico). These sell for about $400 new, and you can get them used for about $250 to $300. Cheap guitars are harder to play. They often don’t stay in tune all the way up the neck. I have not seen any import worth buying for less than a Fender Strat, so why not get a strat? Behringer makes some very nice little practice amps for well under a hundred bucks. They are small amps with headphone outputs so you can play without annoying anybody else. If you can afford the $300, get a Fender GDEC amp. These have a built in drum machine and bass lines, so you can practice as thought you had a band behind you, a very good learning tool.

So now you know enough to get started. The key to learning to play is to play. Try to make a little time every day. I know how hard that is, but even if you can only play for five minutes (seriously) it will help you a great deal. There is something in that muscle memory thing that allows you to make great progress if you are consistent in practice. The more you play, the better you will get. It’s just a simple numbers thing. And if you keep your playing fun, you will want to practice. Don’t turn it into a job. It’s supposed to be fun. So have fun. Don’t worry about not sounding great at first. Everybody goes through that. Do simple things that sound good. You’ll get there eventually. Remember, Toby Keith.

A couple of years ago I managed to score a couple of tickets to see the Irish comedian Graham Norton at the Coronet Theater in Hollywood. If you’ve never seen Graham Norton, you owe it to yourself to try and watch one of his shows. He had a chat show on BBC 4. BBC 4 is the commercial channel in the United Kingdom. That’s the channel that shows all the reality TV shows and the imports from America. It used to be aired here on BBC America, but now you can catch it on the LOGO channel. The LOGO channel is the channel that is aimed primarily for those with alternative lifestyles. Graham’s lifestyle is about as alternative as it gets. He makes the guys in the Village People seem butch.

This wasn’t the first time I’d been to the Coronet Theater. One year I took my first wife to see the play “Bullshot Crummond” at the Coronet. We got there early because we’d never been there and had no idea how long it would take to get there and park, so we decided to go across the street to get dinner and drinks at a restaurant that looked quite inviting, and ritzy. We came in and the host gave us a funny look and then seated us in sort of an out of the way corner. I wasn’t too surprised at this because we didn’t have reservations or anything, so that’s what you expect at a nice restaurant when you just walk in. They waiter, however, also gave us kind of a funny look when he took our order. While we waited for our dinners, we both had sort of a funny feeling of not really belonging there. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why, but I felt ill at ease. So did my wife (Patrick’s mom). Then finally it hit me. “Have you noticed,” I mentioned to Patricia (my first wife), “that we are the only male-female couple in the restaurant?”

It was true. All the tables accommodated loving couples, all of them of the same gender. We had stumbled into a gay restaurant/bar. That wouldn’t be a big deal nowadays, but back then, in the late seventies, it was a little odd. The service was great, however, and the food was fantastic. It was a shame we would never have felt comfortable enough to go back in those days. When we left, we noticed a lot of gay newspapers and magazines in the racks by the door. I shall always remember the Coronet for that experience, even though it was really at the restaurant across the street. After dinner we went to see the play and it was very funny. All in all, it was one of the good memories from that time in my life. But it has nothing to do with this blog.

Thirty some odd years later, I would come back to the Coronet to see this Graham Norton fellow. Graham is sort of an Irish ex-patriot. He lives in England now and loves to chide the Irish about things. It is not easy being gay in Ireland, or at least it wasn’t. I think things are getting easier now. Graham seldom comes to America, so I was surprised that he was playing in Los Angeles. I made a point of wearing my Manchester United jersey the night we went to see the show. I thought Graham would notice it, and it worked. He did talk to us during the show. He teased us for living by the beach.

I am one of the few Americans who enjoy soccer–football, as the rest of the world calls it, and Man United is my team. As happened so many years before, we arrived (this time my wife, Becky and I) well early, so once again I suggested we go to the restaurant across the street for drinks. It was no longer the same restaurant. And as we were leaving the bar, some guys started to give me a hard time about my Man United Jersey. They were Liverpool fans. This was my first experience of football hooliganism. My next experience would be when we went to a Man United vs. Club America game at the Los Angeles Coliseum. There were whole busloads of people shouting insults at each other. I saw two large groups of people hurling football songs at each other. People get intense when it comes to football. Americans don’t get so emotional about soccer. It takes other things to get Americans angry enough to fight. It takes something like Shakespeare.

This may surprise you but Shakespeare does not belong solely to scholars. In the 19th century, his words were on the lips of ordinary Americans, who, in an era passionate about political oratory and religious sermons, regarded Shakespeare as a source of moral instruction and immortal speeches. On one fateful night in 1849, popular adulation turned violent in a deadly episode recreated by Nigel Cliff in “The Shakespeare Riots,” a new book recently published about the bard of Avon (not the cosmetics line).

During the 1800s America was a new country and was desperately trying to improve her image around the world. People here wanted to appear educated and cultured. We wanted the world to know we were more than a country of crusty frontiersmen and wild Indians. Ragged theatrical companies, performing on riverboats or in local taverns, took their audiences to Venice and Verona, accepting payment in potatoes or bacon if money was scarce. Shakespeare counted for a quarter of all plays performed in the United States in the 19th century, and on the frontier his popularity was second to none.

Edwin Forrest was the premier American Shakespearean actor. According to Mr. Cliff, “His fans wanted a larger-than-life hero who gave them electrifying emotions and stirring sentiment, and Forrest was the genuine article, the fearless, self-reliant republican, the Jacksonian giant from the woods.” In a nation throbbing with a sense of cultural inferiority and overrun by English actors, he represented a new beginning. “Let us support this tender sapling and prove to the pedants of Europe that that our soil is fertile in genius and that her children know how to cherish and reward it,” a New Orleans newspaper wrote after a Forrest appearance.

William Charles Macready was the chief rival of Mr. Forrest. Macready was an English actor who played his parts with a bit more restraint in stark contrast to Forrest’s emotive, physical approach. The world was not big enough for both of them, and when the two, formerly friends, fell out, their quarrel took on international dimensions.

Who owned Shakespeare? Which country deserved to rule the future? Class tensions complicated the picture. Forrest was the darling of the working classes. Sophisticates in Boston and New York preferred Macready. When the two actors turned up in New York at the same time, Macready at the snooty Astor Place Theater, Forrest at the Broadway Theater, the stage was set for violence, and New York’s groundlings delivered it, in rioting that claimed as many as 30 lives.

Who would have thought that Americans would be passionate about Shakespeare? “That fellow Shakespeare could sure spill the real stuff,” one ranch hand said after hearing Julius Caesar’s “dogs of war” speech. “He’s the only poet I ever seen what was fed on raw meat.”

A lot of people shy away from Shakespeare, but I find that usually happens only when people read the plays without giving them a good viewing. Try Mel Gibson’s Hamlet, or Kenneth Branagh’s, although Lawrence Olivier’s Hamlet is good too. Hamlet, by the way, was a total rewrite of an earlier Shakespeare play, Titus Andronicus, which is just terrible. It is recognized by most scholars as being just simply awful. For some reason Anthony Hopkins recently did a film version of this play called “Titus”. It got bad reviews also.

Many people do not realize that the great love story “Romeo and Juliet” was meant to be a play showing (a) the evils of the Roman Catholic Church, and (b) the absolute folly of romantic love which was considered a bad idea that could only lead to unhappiness. The purpose of the play was to convince young people NOT to fall in love. Our attitudes have changed a little since those days, although it would seem that many love affairs end nearly as tragically.

So in honor of the bard, go rent Hamlet, or Hamlet, or Hamlet, or Much Ado About Nothing, or a Midsummer’s Night Dream, or even West Side Story and tip one back for Willy. You can’t go a day without saying one of the words he invented, so give him his due. As the ranch hand said, he could “spill the real stuff.” Let’s show the world that Americans still love Shakespeare. Damn straight. And we’ll beat the crap out of anybody who says we don’t.

Mozart was fairly unknown at the time of his death. How does the writer of all those operas become unknown? Yes, I know he wrote a lot of other beautiful music, but common people knew the operas. Only rich bastards who could afford the private concerts really knew the other stuff. How does the person who wrote “The Marriage of Figaro” become unknown? People today hold onto their fame better, I think, thanks to television. Even people who were only marginally famous for a short time hold onto fame better nowadays. How else could you explain Joey Buttafucco and Loraine Bobbit? But, for example, how does a guy like Nikola Tesla, possibly the greatest scientist of this or any other time, end up dying broke and unknown?

Tesla was born in 1856 in what is now Croatia. He is one of the most important inventors (if not the most important inventor) in history. His influence can be seen anywhere in modern civilization wherever electricity is used. He contributed to the fields of robotics, ballistics, physics, electromagnetism, and nuclear physics. He became famous in 1893 after his demonstration of wireless communication. In other words, forget Marconi; it was Tesla who invented the radio, the credit for which he did not receive until 1947.

When Tesla came to the United States in 1884, he had nothing except a letter of recommendation to Thomas Edison. Tesla went to work for Edison for the princely sum of $18 week. Tesla quickly proved his worth to the Edison company by solving some of Tom’s more difficult design problems. Edison offered Tesla the sum of $50,000 (worth a million today, adjusted for inflation) to redesign the company’s direct current generators. After finishing the task he went to Tom for the cash and Edison told him in true capitalistic fashion that Nick just didn’t understand the American sense of humor. Tesla quit after being refused a raise to $25 a week.

He formed his own company, Tesla Electrical Light and Manufacturing Company, based on using Alternating Current (AC) in contrast to Edison’s Direct Current (DC). Tesla’s investors were so dubious of his ideas that they relieved him of his responsibilities in essence firing him from his own company. Nikola worked as a common laborer for the next few years to raise money until he went to work for George Westinghouse. Westinghouse liked his ideas on Alternating Current. It is interesting to note that this battle between Direct Current and Alternating Current would lead to the electric chair.

When the electric chair was invented, Thomas Edison pushed for it to be run by Alternating Current, which may be surprising since Edison’s electricity ran on Direct Current. Edison felt that the chair, being an instrument of death, would make the public afraid of Alternating Current and lead to the eventual preeminence of Edison’s Direct Current. Edison’s move backfired on him and the public became enthralled with the new lethal furniture and Alternating Current eventually won out, which is what we use today in our homes.

In 1887 Tesla began working on x-ray technology and discovered that the rays could be harmful to humans, although he did not see that the harm was caused by radiation believing it was due to ozone. In 1891, at the World’s Fair, he was able to ignite Vacuum tubes wirelessly, thus proving the possibility of wireless energy transmission. He invented the fluorescent light. He invented the spark plug. In 1897 he demonstrated the first radio controlled robotic boat, believing that there could be a demand for such devices. He set up a laboratory in Colorado where he would prove that the earth was an electrical conductor. He would produce artificial lightning. There, he worked on wireless telecommunication. He would also claim to receive radio messages from both Mars and Jupiter, which came as a series of “clicks”. In 1900, the lab would be torn down and sold in order to pay debts.

This was just the beginning of his money problems. In 1904, the patent for the radio would go to Marconi in a reversal of an earlier decision, so Tessa would receive no more income from that invention. World War One would cause him to lose money for all his European patents. He had a difficult time finding investors because many of his ideas were just to far ahead of his time. Indeed, later in his life, Tessa would come to be seen as a mad scientist by many, and respected scientists largely disregarded his views.

In general, Tessa was opposed to war, and developed a weapon, which he believed would put an end to all war because of its destructive capability. It was a death ray (although he called it a peace ray) or sorts. According to Tessa, it could bring down 10,000 enemy aircraft at a distance of 200 miles or kill an enemy army in its tracks. It was based on taking electrical energy out of the air and using it as a repelling force. He tried to interest the United States War Department in the device and several European countries as well. None of the governments purchased a contract to build the device.

When he was 81, he developed his theory of gravity. He also claimed that Einstein’s theory of relativity was fraught with errors. He did not hold that space was curved. But we will never know about Tesla’s “Dynamic Theory of Gravity”, because he never published it. And his beliefs were considered laughable by serious researchers and scientists. And yet, upon his death at the age of 86 in 1943, all of his papers were seized by the United States government and declared top secret. I find it ironic that before his death the American Institute of Electrical Engineers awarded him the Edison Medal, considering their life-long feud.

Tesla’s personal life was a trifle odd. He developed an obsessive compulsion about the number three. He would walk around the block three times before entering a building and demand three napkins at his place setting. His friends were mostly artists, as opposed to other scientists. He was a very close friend of the American writer, Mark Twain. A life-long bachelor, he believed in genetic engineering and that women would one day become the dominant sex in America. In the future, he said, humanity would be run by “Queen Bees”. He was fluent in Serbian, English, Latin, Italian, Czech, Hungarian, and German. He held bachelor’s degrees in mathematics, physics, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering.

There are many conspiracy theorists who suggest that Tesla also invented technology that is in use today by the government. This technology consists of an “earthquake machine” which, using the electrical current generated by the rotating earth, can cause an earthquake by the touch of a button. Tesla is also credited with creating technology in the area of weather control which conspiracy theorists claim the government is using now. Others claim that he was able to create ways to gain free energy by using the power of gravity and the earth’s rotation thus making fossil fuels unnecessary. This knowledge, according to all theorists, is being suppressed to protect the oil companies. There are even some who claim he experimented with time travel and invisibility and claim he was involved with the infamous Philadelphia Experiment.

It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if he had invented some free form of energy, and that form of energy was somehow squashed by the government. I do find it very interesting that the government seized his papers and materials, although he was a United States citizen. They wouldn’t have done that if there wasn’t something there, I’m sure.

Today, he is quite famous. He has been a character in any number of films. There is a rock band named after him. There is a crater on the far side (appropriately) of the moon named after him. His face use to grace the former Yugoslavia’s currency. Today, in Serbia, there is an airport named after him. And the Tesla Award is the most prestigious award given by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. He has his own Manga comic book in Japan. But on January 5^th, (my birthday, by the way) in 1943, he died of heart failure in a small, cheap hotel room, and his death wasn’t even noticed for three days, until the 8^th.

I guess Nikola Tesla is like all those other amazing people who change the world and then die penniless and forgotten. I wonder what his theory of gravity entailed. I wonder if that was amongst the papers seized by the government and declared “top secret” by J. Edgar Hoover. I don’t know. You would think if there were anything there the government would be using it. But then, who knows, maybe they are.

You can always trust FATE for articles on ghosts, UFOs, Demons, Trolls, Faeries, lost continents, Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, The Jersey Devil, and other cryptozooilogical specimens (I’ve always wanted to opportunity to use that word). I have always been drawn to the regular monthly columns, “My Proof of Survival”, dedicated to stories which “prove” that the soul survives death, and “True Mystic Experiences”, dedicated to, well, true mystic experiences. Whether or not you believe in any of that crap, FATE is entertaining.

Recently, they have added a monthly column on animal communication. It’s sort of a “Dear Abby” for people who want to know what their pets are really thinking. I’m pretty sure that most pets would think that their people are nuts for writing in to a column on animal communications, but I could be wrong. Anyway, people write in explaining that their dog or cat is acting a certain way and could the psychic please explain what the dog or cat is thinking and why they are behaving so. I’m sorry, Paula, but your Bichon Frisé has developed a relationship with the rhodadendron in the corner and no longer feels the need for you company. And please change her kibble.

Somehow it’s a little odd to imagine some person sitting down and taking pen to paper to write to someone in hopes of finding out why the cat seems a little aloof lately. Mind you, I’ve actually called in the services of an animal psychic, too. So it’s not exactly like I’m a total skeptic about the whole thing. I’m guessing here that I just have no reason to put my faith in somebody who works for a pulp magazine and that person’s ability to “read” what is going on in my pets’ minds.

Normally, I would only share my interest in this magazine who truly appreciate how weird a person Big Daddy can be, and that would be all of you. Still, I let most issues of the magazine go by without comment. I wrote the one blog about FATE so that you could all enjoy the phenomenon that is FATE magazine on your own, or not, as is your choice. Yet this issue has an article which I feel compelled to share with you. It is an article of earthshaking importance. This issue has an interview of historical significance, as it is the first time, to my knowledge, that anyone has ever interviewed a snake.

Animal psychic Cathy Malkin-Currea interviews a snake recently adopted by one Phyllis Golds. The snake, a five-foot red-tailed boa constrictor, had been abandoned in an apartment for a month with no food or water. Cathy first tells us that the snake is a female and has expressed a desire to have a name that denotes value and healing. I would wonder why the snake would want any name given it by a human, myself. I won’t bore you with the entire interview here. Besides, then you would have no reason to read FATE. And the more readers FATE has, the more likely it is to remain in publication, allowing me the selfish pleasure of reading it. However, I will give you the highlights.

Cathy asks if snakes think. “Yes, we think. We just don’t think in the same way as humans do. We are wired to be more aware of our senses and learn to think through our senses and trust them. (interesting that a snake would know enough about electrical engineering to provide that metaphor—in fact, interesting that a snake would even USE a metaphor). Therefore we are much more sensitive to our environment than people are. Just by the nature of how we move, we are more in touch with what is around us. Our intelligence is not based on ego, but survival. Humans used to understand this principle as they once lived more like we do. Now humans tend to be led by their ego instead of their heart.” Wow. The snake is apparently a student of human history. The snake seems to understand what we think and what we USED to think, also. Cathy then askes the snake what it thinks.

“As I mentioned, we don’t think in the same way humans do, so it might be hard for you to ‘wrap your brain around’our thought patterns. (Hmmmm…the snake knows about brains. Obviously it also had time to study physiology, too.) …Our thoughts tend to be more or what is needed for basic survival, yet we have plenty of time for meditation and dreams.” Well, it’s hard to think about more than basic survival when you don’t have arms, legs, and thumbs. It’s nice that they meditate, though.

“…It’s my belief (the snake’s) that if humans did acccept that snakes along with all animals had thoughts, feelings, and viewpoints (I wonder who the snake likes in the next election), then people would never treat us so inhumanely.” Wouldn’t it be impossible, by definition, for humans to treat snakes “inhumanely”. However we humans treat snakes, we would, by definition, be treating them humanely. “Having no legs has nothing to do with why humans fear us…we felt we had to let them know that we were a force to be reckoned with. This is why so many stories and myths have been created in our honor.” Just when I thought that the snake was pretty damn eloquent, the snake goes and ends a sentence with a preposition. I guess the snake isn’t as smart as I thought. However, it does seem to have a grasp on our collective folklore. It’s a shame it never got the chance to talk to psychologist Carl Jung.

This is only a small portion of the total interview. It goes on for two more pages. I am sure you are as surprised as I was at how articulate a reptile could be. What would we do without animal communicators, eh? Otherwise, we might never have found out, as this interview indicates, that snakes would prefer to live free in the wild, as opposed to spending their lives in a cage eating feeder mice. Moreover, we might never have known that snakes were such students of the arts and sciences. But then, the snake does say that our belief that we are more intelligent than they is simply, “the construct of the human ego (who would have thought the snake would be Freudian?) and projection.”

So you see, without FATE magazine, we would never know these things. This March 2008 issue also has articles on the beast of Bolivia, laughing ghosts (sure, THEY can laugh, they’re dead), and UFOs over Texas. I can think of at least ONE illegal alien they must have dropped off. He’s in the White House now. Be sure to pick up a copy next time you’re in a Barnes and Noble or a Borders. Trust me, you won’t find FATE in the supermarket. It’s good to know someone is on the cutting edge of the paranormal. But then, I’m pretty paranormal myself.

I remember one puzzle in particular, regarding some pennies, that drove me nuts.  You have twelve pennies, one of which is counterfeit.  The fake coin is either heavier or lighter than a real coin.  You are given a balance scale.  Explain how you can determine which coin is counterfeit, and whether it is heavier or lighter, given only three weighs.  Sounds impossible, doesn’t it?  The book indicated that the average amount of time to reach a solution was twelve hours.  That’s one hour per penny!  There is a solution.  I confess that after several hours of working on the puzzle, I gave up and looked in that back of the book for the answer.

That’s what most of us want.  We just want the answer.  What’s the bottom line?  That’s why watching television is more popular than reading.  We’re lazy.  Or at least, we can be.  As a generation, we’ve grown used to instant gratification.  I mean, look at us.  Everything has to be immediate.  I find myself standing in front of the microwave, waiting for something to cook, and thinking, “Come on!  Hurry up!”  There are hundreds of advertisements for weight loss products that all promise to take the weight off in no time.  And for those who can’t wait two weeks to lose a hundred pounds, there’s liposuction.

Which brings me, as always, to religion.  People want instant spiritual answers too.  On the one hand, you have the evangelical conservative religious right, those fundamentalists who look at the bible (or the Koran, or the Torah, etc.) as absolute fact and history.  Every word in there was inscribed by the hand of the deity.  Therefore, the earth is only 6,000 years old.  And on the other hand, you have those people who take one look at a holy book and immediately dismiss it as being totally irrational.  Therefore, it has nothing important to offer us.

Well, here’s the story on the bible, folks.  It was written by people, over a very, very long time.  The stories contained within were oral history for perhaps thousands of years.  Then they were translated, often picking up the particular opinions and idiosyncrasies of the translators and then they were copied, and re-copied, picking up the particular opinions and idiosyncrasies of the copyists (Jesus couldn’t possibly have meant THAT, could he?  That just wouldn’t make sense!).  Some of the stories in those books were just plain made up.  But that doesn’t mean they’re not true.

We have a different way of looking at the world than people did thousands of years ago.  We see everything empirically.  We expect everything we read to be factual, if it isn’t designated as fiction, in which case, we accept it as only a story, nothing more.  People in the past saw the world as filled with signs and omens.  Everything seemed to have some sort of symbolic significance.  Everything that happened had a physical meaning, but it had a figurative meaning also.  You can’t read the holy books written thousands of years ago with the eyes of modern culture.  The holy books, and by holy books, I mean ALL the holy books, not just the bible, are not books of facts; but they are books of truth.

The ancient Greeks knew that there were no gods living on Olympus.  They knew that the story of Heracles was just a story.  But they also understood that the stories of the gods on Olympus, that the story of Heracles, were meant to teach important lessons about life and being in harmony with life.  Of course, there were some Greeks, usually the poor and uneducated Greeks, who thought that all those stories were fact.  And the government felt it had to support the state religion.  It even killed some, like Socrates, who openly disagreed with it.  But even Plato and Socrates knew there were important lessons in those stories we call mythology.

But understanding the lessons of the holy books requires work, and a lot of it.  In order to understand them, you have to learn something of the times in which they were written.  You have to learn a little about the languages in which they were written.  And then you have to understand that none of the books contain direct answers.  All the holy books are only books of puzzles, puzzles that beg to be solved.  And unlike my puzzle books, there are no answers in the back.  And like my puzzle books, the problems often seem to make no sense, and frequently seem to have no solution.    Take this reading from Luke, Chapter Ten:

After this, the Lord lifted up seventy-two others and sent them two by two before his face into every city and place where he was about to go.  And he said to them, “The harvest is indeed great, but the workers few.  Therefore, pray the Lord of the harvest that he might send workers into his harvest.  Go.  Behold, I am sending you as lambs in the midst of wolves.  Carry no purse, no wallet, no shoes, and greet no one by the way.  Into whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’  And if a child of peace is there, your peace will be resting upon him.  If not, it will return upon you.  Remain in that house, eating and drinking alongside them, for the worker (is) worthy of his pay.  Do not go from house to house.  And into whatever city you enter, and they receive you, eat what is set before you, and heal those who are weak in it, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has approached upon you.’  But into whatever city you enter, and they do not receive you, go out into its streets, (and) say, ‘And the dust of the city, that clinging to us into the feet, we wipe off to you.  But know this, that the kingdom of God has drawn near.’”

“The one hearing you, hears me, and the one who rejects you, rejects me.  And the one who rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”  The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, the demons are subject to us in your name.”  But he said to them, “I was seeing Satan fall like lightning out of heaven.  Behold, I have given you power to tread over snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you, no nothing.  But do not rejoice in this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (literal translation, Luke, Chapter 10)

This piece of text is copied mostly from the Gospel according to Mark.  There is a little material thrown in from a lost gospel called the Q document.  Many scholars also believe that copyists have added a little of their own material as well.  In Mark, Jesus only sends out his twelve homies.  But in the Luke version, he sends out 70, or 72 (depending upon the translation).  Now, just because there are differences in this story in the gospels, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.  I bet if I were to ask you and your family members about what happened at Thanksgiving, I’d get some different stories, and that was just a few months ago.  But you’d probably all agree on who was there and what you ate.

No doubt, Jesus did send some people out to deliver his message.  How many he sent, who knows?  Luke probably chose 72 because there were believed to be 72 nations in the world at that time.  Or he may have chosen 72 because Moses chose 72 elders from among the people.  Numbers always mean something in the bible.  Two was considered the number of adequate witness.  It required two witnesses in court before a person could be convicted of a crime.  The numbers in the gospel accounts could have been chosen simply for their symbolic significance.  But there is a factual reason why he sent them out under the circumstances reported in the gospel.

At that time in Palestine, there were other groups of itinerate teachers besides the Jesus’ buddies. They were the Cynics. Now people often accuse me of being cynical, but the original Cynics were REALLY cynical. They followed the teachings of the ancient Greek, Antisthenes. Antisthenes was a contemporary of Socrates. He was so enamored of Socrates’ teachings that he founded his own school in Cynosarges. He had no use for pomp or pride of the world. Antisthenes wore a cloak and carried a staff and a bag as a sort of a uniform, a badge of his philosophy. This costume became uniform of his followers, but so ostentatiously as to draw from Socrates the rebuke, “I see your pride looking out through the rent of your cloak, O Antisthenes.” These itinerate Cynics also went about teaching the philosophy of Antisthenes (and so indirectly of Socrates).

By telling his disciples not to wear a cloak and not to take a bag, Jesus was making sure that nobody would confuse his followers for the followers of Antisthenes. He wanted people to know that his followers were teaching a message of love and faith in God. Antisthenes taught a love of wisdom and taught that people must perfect themselves through self-development. Jesus was teaching a message of connection to God and faith in the love of the creator, a very different message. He wanted no confusion. That is why he sent them off with no money and no food, to further contrast them by their poverty.

When he told them to stay at the first house to which they were invited, he wanted to do two things. First, he wanted to give them a stable base of operations from which they could go out and teach and then return. He also wanted to make sure that his followers didn’t go house hopping. Back in those days, there was a certain amount of prestige gained by having a teacher stay at your house. If people knew there was a teacher in town, they would have tripped over each other to offer an invitation. Jesus’ followers would have been sorely tempted to trade up to a nicer house, and this would have damaged the image of the teaching. He also wanted to make sure that people would know where the teachers could be found, if they were needed.

Many people see Jesus’ instructions to depart any village where the people will not listen and to shake the dust from their feet as a bit petulant and vengeful. However, shaking the dust from your feet was a ritual that indicated sorrow that you were not accepted. It was not meant to be a way of showing anger. Moreover, it was Jesus’ way of telling his students not to beat people over the head with the teaching. If they wanted to listen, fine. If they didn’t want to listen, that was okay, too. It’s a shame many of his followers today don’t take the same advice. I wish I had a dime for every Jehovah’s Witness who refused to leave me alone. (I must point out here that I have know many fine Jehovah’s Witnesses who wouldn’t dream of annoying anyone)

But what does this passage hold for us?  Well, we are all being sent out on our own mission in our own way.  And we are to bring peace to those around us.   We are to work for our keep.  We take only what we need and nothing more.  We do not force ourselves on others, or force others to follow in our paths.  We are given authority over evil.  That means we have the power to do no evil.  It is our choice.  We are called upon to heal those who are weak.  The Greek word translated as “heal” more accurately is translated as “comfort”.

In the days before Jesus, the prophet would pass his mantel on to his disciple.  Elijah, for example, passed his job onto Elisha.  Jesus is passing the mantel on to each one of us.  We are the hands of God on earth.  We have the power to heal one another.  We have the power to heal the earth.  We do this by loving one another, by being kind.  It’s just that simple.  In loving one another, we find our own peace.  We are sent out as lambs among wolves, but the wolves have no power over us.  In the story, Jesus reminds his followers not to rejoice that they had power over spirits.  Rejoice, rather, that they had found the path to salvation, to enlightenment.  The only way to understand the teachings of Jesus, was to live them.

Of course, you could dismiss this story out of hand.  You could take an immediate glance at it and decide it never happened.  You could decide that the entire gospel is nothing more than a myth.  That doesn’t make it any the less true.  The German theologian, Paul Tillich, once said that there is no need for an historical Jesus for Christianity to be true.  I don’t think I’d go that far.  I think it seems clear that there was a Jesus.  But the truth in the teachings is there, one way or the other.

You cannot explain spiritual things in a material world.  This is why Zen masters use the koan, the riddle, to explain the mysteries of Zen.  What is the sound of one hand clapping?  It is a sound that cannot be heard with the ear.  It is a sound that can only be perceived by letting go of the body, by letting go of time, and the material world.  Of course, a rationalist would dismiss the koans of the Zen master by simply saying they make no sense.  There are many who have.  And yet, those masters have a sense of peace that no rationalist has.  They understand something the rational thinker does not.

It is a mistake to dismiss religion simply because many of those who believe in a higher power have done and continue to do horrible things, just as it is a mistake to believe that the principles upon which our country was conceived back in 1776 are false because our leaders have failed to live up to them.  Our nation has done horrible things.  That doesn’t render the Declaration of Independence false.  The ideals are still true.  It’s up to each one of us to live up to them.

In the end, all of life is a great puzzle.  We can choose to try to solve it, or not.  One of the things I had to learn about solving brain teasers was that the joy of the puzzle wasn’t in its solution.  Looking up the answer in the back of the book gave me no satisfaction.  Knowing the answer gave me no satisfaction.  The joy of the puzzle is in the attempt to solve it.  In living out the message of Christ, we don’t rejoice in defeating evil, we rejoice in living out the message.  Oh, and the pennies, figure it out yourself.  It’s more fun that way.

We’ve even done a little ghost hunting. We’ve gone to the Whaley House in Old Town San Diego with our EMF detectors and thermometer. As you have no doubt noticed, there are a few pictures in my photo bin of that experience. Are there ghosts in the pictures? Who knows? I would guess probably not, but I’d like there to be. It would be kind of cool to catch a ghost in an image, don’t you think? But I’m not convinced that there is anything in the picture that is ghostly.

I don’t find ghosts too scary, although Becky does. So I find it interesting that she is so fascinated by them. She has read a number of books on the subject. But she wouldn’t want to meet one face to orb, as it were. She didn’t mind going into the Whaley House, or the Drumm Barracks, which is also supposed to be haunted, near our school. But she wouldn’t want to spend the night there. And she has said that she definitely wouldn’t want to go along with the TAPS team to investigate a haunted location, even if she had the chance. I don’t think she’s looking for some kind of affirmation of life after death because her faith in God and heaven and everything seems stronger to me than most people’s.

For me, the jury is out on ghosts. I don’t know what they are. I am convinced that something is going on. I have seen some pretty weird evidence (assuming that the evidence isn’t a complete sham and the people producing it aren’t having us all off). For example, one episode of TAPS showed a video clip of a chair moving across the floor by itself. Now, lets for the moment assume that the Jason and Grant are sincere and that they didn’t fake that shot. Somehow, that chair moved. Now did a ghost do it? I don’t know. Is it possible that one of the team could have telekinetically moved the chair without realizing it? Perhaps. I don’t know. Telekinesis is about as paranormal to most scientific minded people as are ghosts, so that isn’t a much better explanation. One might say that the wind moved the chair, but then one might also be an idiot, too. That doesn’t seem like a reasonable explanation to me. But, clearly, something did happen there. And a true scientist doesn’t dismiss the facts because they don’t conform to current theories. That moving chair has to be explained, as to other ghostly experiences.

There are several different types of hauntings according to most paranormal experts. There are phantoms, apparitions, classic hauntings, graveyard spectres, and etherial revenents. Ghosts are not to be confused with spirits. Although many people see ghosts after consuming spirits. Ghosts are trapped here. Spirits can move back and forth between the earthly realm and the spiritual realm, presumably on some sort of Spiritual Metro or something. Hopefully, they have monthly passes.

Phantoms are ghosts which so closely resemble the living that the living often mistake them for living beings. These are those ghosts that people pick up as hitchhikers and then discover after a few miles that the hitchhiker has mysteriously disappeared from the car. So for all you know, you may be seeing ghosts all the time and simply not know it. That could be disconcerting.

There is no doubt that apparitions are ghosts (as opposed to living things). You would never confuse them with the living. They have a nasty habit of being translucent, for example, that most of us forego. And many times, they cannot be seen at all. There are some fifteen types of apparitions. I won’t go into them all here. They all seem to fall into two basic types. There is one kind of apparition that can interact with the living. And then there are the ones that seem to ignore us all together, which is just plain rude. Those are the ones that seem to repeat the same behavior over and over, such as walking on a staircase or eating the last slice of pizza. Some of these apparitions appear human like. Others appear only as orbs, glowing balls of light that generally only appear in photographs (often taken with cameras with dirty lenses), or as a mist of some kind.

A classic haunting, AKA entity haunting, would be any phantom or apparition that is interactive and tied to a specific location. Graveyard spectres are seen only in graveyards…duh! They generally appear only for a short time after a burial. Etheric revenents are dangerous undead creatures that feed off the energy of living beings. They are the origin of the vampire myth. I’m glad we finally found a rational explanation for that one! We wouldn’t want people seriously considering the existence of vampires.

I don’t really have a problem with believing that the spirit of a person survives death. Hell, my whole religion depends on that idea. But there are certain aspects of ghostlitude that cause me problems. For one thing, why is it that you never hear of exceptionally ancient ghosts. Most ghost stories involve the spirits of people who’ve been dead a relatively short while, a few hundred years at most. There are stories of some ghostly Roman soldiers from Britain, but by and large, most ghosts are not much older than a few hundred years at most. Why aren’t there any ghosts of Neanderthals? Did their energy dissippate in time? Did they not have very advanced souls? There are ghost dogs and horses. Why aren’t there any ghost mammoths or dinosaurs? I mean, maybe there are, but I haven’t read any stories about them.

And why are ghosts always dressed, and why do they have props? The Drumm Barracks is supposed to have the ghost of a little boy that can be heard bouncing a ball against the walls in the hallway. I have no particular problem believing in a ghost boy, but a ghost ball? What did the ball ever do to anybody? Why didn’t it get to pass on into the great ball beyond? And those famous ghosts that ride horses…why do the horses have to hang around? Moreover, I can understand the ghost of a person, a spirit, but what about the clothes? Why do ghosts always seem to wear clothes from the appropriate historical period? The spirit may hang around, but the clothes wouldn’t, it seems to me.

Most ghostly happenings have rational explanations. That is why we love Ghosthunters. Grant and Jason go in trying to disprove the haunting. They do their best to debunk all the ghostly evidence. After one of their investigations, all that remains is what cannot be explained by any natural phenomenon. Orbs, for example, which are often touted as proof of a ghostly apparition, are really most often reflection of light on the lens of the camera or insects reflecting back light. People only ever see the orbs in photos. I have yet to hear any ghost investigator say, “Whoa! Look at that orb!”

Many people claim to have seen the ghost of some old hag while in bed. The usual claim is that the subject was lying in bed when s/he suddenly felt a heaviness and was unable to move. The subject then claims to see some old hag at the foot of the bed. The experience passes. Meanwhile, the subject is peeing his or her pants. This, actually, strange as it sounds, is quite explainable. It is a medical condition known as…”the hag experience.” It is caused by the brain waking up before the body does. Hence, you are unable to move. The old hag is a hallucination. This has been clinically verified. So that old hag isn’t a ghost at all.

Faces and other shapes that are seen in photos are often the result of something the shrinks call “matrixing”. That is the condition that causes one to be unable to escape the image of Keanu Reeves. Seriously, people like to know what shit is, so when we see a shape of some kind, our brain likes to assign the image to something we already know, like a face. We like to see faces. We recognize faces. It’s kind of like looking at clouds and seeing bunnies and horsies and 1961 Les Paul Gold Tops in them.

Many other ghostly experiences can be explained by large electromagnetic fields. Of course, paranormal investigators like to tie ghostly apparitions to big electromagnetic fields. But it has been shown that strong electromagnetic fields can cause emotional distress in people. They can cause the feeling of not being alone, of being watched. A large EMF can cause hallucinations. This is why photographic and video evidence is so important. Again, assuming that there is no evidence tampering, such evidence is not subject to hallucinations. The same can be said for digital voice recordings of ghostly voices that can not been heard at normal auditory frequencies. I have heard my share of them and they do sound spooky. Although, to be totally honest and rational, most of those sounds are unintelligible to me. Once somebody says, “Listen closely…the ghost is saying Glen Beck is an idiot…”, you can make it out. But by then, just like those famous optical illusions of the beautiful woman and the old hag, once you see one, it’s hard to see the other. Once somebody tells you what the ghost is saying, that’s what you tend to hear. Still, it cannot be denied that SOMETHING is on the recording, whatever it is saying.

So what causes ghostly apparitions and sounds? I have no clue. Perhaps there is a perfectly rational explanation we just don’t yet understand. Perhaps there’s some kind of quantum physical time loop happening going on. Maybe there is some way in which events are imprinted on energy fields and replay like a bad video recording. Perhaps ghosts are interdimensional visitors of some kind. Perhaps ghosts are really space aliens. I do find the subject interesting. I do want to know what is going on in these haunted houses. And it is fun to visit “haunted” sites with the expectation of seeing or hearing something strange. Just beware of hitchhiking ghosts! (bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!)*

I remember well being called to my counselor’s office back when I was a senior in high school.  I thought I was in trouble.  I couldn’t imagine being in trouble with Mr. Milling.  Mr. Milling looked rather like a tall, thin walrus.  He had a great mustache.  Anyway, Mr. Milling never got angry with anybody.  So I couldn’t imagine what I might have done.  It was with great relief then, when I sat in his office and he told me he wanted to go over my tests.  I don’t even remember taking any tests.  However, he assured me I had, and he was going to tell me what were my best choices for a path through life.

He told me—and I quote here, because I remember exactly what he said, that, “God had created me to be a teacher.”  That’s what he said.  They used to talk about God in school back in those days.  Actually, they still do, but that’s another story.  Anyway, he said my purpose in life was to be a teacher.  Well, back in 1973, I was fairly sure there was no way in hell that I was ever going to be a teacher.  I had nothing against teachers.  Some of my favorite people were teachers.  Of course, your average teenager has a limited pool of people from whom to choose, so that was not so very unlikely.

I thought to myself, “Oh, you silly man.  Why would I want to be a teacher?”   But I didn’t say that.  I simply told him that I had plans to make it big in the theater, or in music, so teaching would not be in the cards for me, thank you very much and have a nice day.  It was a short discussion.  I went back to my music class and promptly put the whole interview out of my mind.

Fast forward about six years.  Time and circumstances bring you to interesting places.  As it turned out, I didn’t become a teacher.  I didn’t become a famous actor or musician either—but then you know that.  No, along the way I got married, had a couple of sons, got a regular J-O-B, working as a store manager for a variety store, otherwise known as a dime store.  I was miserable.  I worked 60 to 84 hours per week for miserable pay.  We were always broke.  I had dropped out of college after a year because I was being offered such a “good” job.  And, after all, I did have responsibilities.  ‘

But then I hurt my back on the job.  I herniated a couple of discs.  I had to take off work for six weeks.  So while I was off work, they fired me.  I was not surprised.  This was the unwritten company policy.  People with injuries only ever cost the company more money over time.  So people who were hurt were fired, for one reason or another.  Now this is a long and interesting story in and of itself, but not for here and not for now.  Suffice it to say that I was off work due to my injury for a little over a year.  During that time, I went back to college.

At first, I just started taking courses to satisfy my general education requirements.  By the time I was ready to declare my major, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a poet.  That’s because the want ads are full of good full-time positions for poets.  Yeah, right.  Hey, I never said I got any smarter.  Anyway, I spent a lot of time studying literature.  It wasn’t long before I figured out that I would have to get a job teaching at a university if I wanted to write poetry seriously.  And my sister, a dean, told me that the best way to do that was to get my degree in linguistics since I could always get a job teaching English as a second language.  There was always a demand for ESL teachers.  The college that hired me would no doubt have me teach literature also.

So that’s what I did.  I majored in linguistics, while taking an equal number of units in literature.  In addition, I took an equal number of units in Spanish, because Bank of America (for whom I worked at the time) would pay for my college as long as I took Spanish classes.  This seemed good to me, since I had no other life at the time.  I finally graduated from college in 1985, and soon afterwards, saw an ad in the paper for Los Angeles Unified School District.  They needed elementary school teachers.

I thought, why not?  The pay was better than Bank of America—and there were fewer hours (all you teachers reading this can stop laughing any time now).  So I got a job teaching first grade in Wilmington.  It only took a year for me to figure out that this was what I was meant to do.  I felt with all my being that this was my place in the universe.  Maybe I could make the world a little better, one kid at a time, by helping kids make their dreams come true.  I gave up a fellowship at UCLA, got my clear teaching credential, and never looked back.  And I’m glad I did.  So I’m a teacher.  And I’ve been doing it a little while.  So let me tell you something about teaching.

A teacher is only worth a damn if that teacher knows and listens to his or her students.  They used to teach us in teacher school that all children want to learn.  Well, that’s a load of crap.  You remember school.  Did YOU want to learn long division?  It’s not completely untrue.  Children do want to learn.  They just don’t want to learn what we’re teaching.  In order to be a good teacher you have to get to know your students.  You have to learn what it is the student wants.  Then you have to help that student get it.

My wife used to take mandolin lessons.  She took lessons for a good two years.  And she never really got anywhere with it.  She did learn to play a little.  But she never made any progress.  And she always sounded like a beginner.  This is because her teacher (whom I admire very much, by the way) never listened to what she wanted.  What she wanted was to be able to play along with me when I played guitar.  She wanted to be able to chord along with me and sing.  What he gave her were mandolin solos written out for her in notation (standard TAB, for those who know).  Of course, she didn’t play the mandolin, so she thought he was doing the right thing.  But the solos didn’t really speak to what she wanted to do.  She practiced a little.  But she never made any progress.  She made little progress because she wasn’t moved to practice with all her heart.  It wasn’t fun.  So she didn’t put her heart in it.

Eventually, she gave up practicing.  She knew she wasn’t making any progress.  But she thought the problem was hers.  She didn’t know any better.  She didn’t know there was any other way to learn.  If she wasn’t learning, it had to be her fault.  And it wasn’t.

Now, had he given her some simple chord charts for songs she already knew and loved and showed her how to strum along, she would have gotten more excited about the whole thing, I’m sure.  And in time, no doubt, she would have asked to learn some of those mandolin solos he was pushing at her in the beginning.    The point is, there can be no set curriculum in any subject.  You have to see where the student is and what the student wants.

This brings me to kung fu.  It took a while, didn’t it?  I started to practice kung fu about the same time I started teaching for the school district.  And after about ten years, I became an instructor.  Back around 2001 or 2002, I injured myself again and had to take some time off from kung fu, but I’m back to teaching now.  And in those years I was away from the kung fu club, I learned that great secret about teaching.  Now I know why so many people who start kung fu, quit.

Most guys will tell you that it’s because kung fu is too hard, that most people can’t hack it.  That is not true.  People want to believe that because it means that if you’re still doing it, you must be some kind of elite superior person or something.  Nonsense.  If I can do it, anybody can do it.  That’s the simple truth.  The reason most people quit is because we, the kung fu teachers, are not listening to them.

For example, some really just want a form of exercise that isn’t boring.  Exercise bikes and elliptical machines just don’t do it for them.  And they hate jogging.  So they take kung fu.  They don’t really want to learn how to beat anybody up.  They are not expecting to have to defend themselves.  That’s why God made guns.  They just want to come into the club a few times a week and get a good workout.  So those teachers who spend their time trying to make sure these people do every movement absolutely perfectly are wasting their time and annoying the students.  They don’t care if they do the movements perfectly.  They don’t really care if they make any progress.  They just want to sweat.  The good teacher will leave those students alone and let them do their thing.

And then there are other students who really want to learn to fight.  They don’t want to learn any of the weapons, because nobody walks around with a spear or a broadsword anymore.  These folks want to learn self defense.  They don’t want to learn mysterious channeling of internal energy.  They don’t want to learn a lot of advanced forms or katas.  They just want to learn what to do if somebody tries to hurt them.

And then you have the students who, like  good catholics, love the art and tradition of the martial arts style.  They don’t plan on getting in any fights.  But they love the beauty of the movements.  They want to learn every form, every weapon, every technique, and they want to do it right.   These people could just as easily be civil war re-enactors.  They pay attention to every detail.

There are a few students who want to learn because they want to have power over others.  They study hard and try to be very good at what they do.  They want to become masters.  They want to become teachers.  I believe it is important to recognize these students and WEED THEM OUT.  No one who wants to have power over others should be taught a martial art.

I have always said that nobody who wants to be a leader should be allowed to be one.  Those people are only interested in power, and that’s not good for anybody.  All our leaders should be like Cincinattus.  They should step in, do their job and lead, and then get the hell out and go back to their farms.  The only people worth being leaders are the people who don’t want to lead.  And maybe it’s the same with teachers.

I never wanted to be a teacher.  It just happened.  I certainly don’t go into work every day planning on teaching the kids.  No.  I go into work.  And it just so happens that there are some kids in front of me who don’t know what nouns are.  So I show them.  And they learn.  And the ones who want more, I give it to them.  And the others, I give what they need.  And in the meantime, we try to have as much fun as we can.  I never wanted to be a teacher.  It’s a difficult job.  But somebody has to do it.

When we look at the television industry, we might be tempted to consider ourselves, the viewers, to be the consumers. But this is not so! We are not the consumers. We are the workers. How do you figure that, Big Daddy, you ask, as well you might? Well, the television isn’t getting any money from us, for one thing. Their money doesn’t come from the people watching. Their money comes from the advertisers. You see, television isn’t selling programs (and that’s good, because I wouldn’t buy any of them). Television is selling viewership. Television guarantees to the advertisers that a certain number of people will be watching a given program. The advertisers then purchase the program.

So the advertisers are the consumers. What television is selling is our viewership; therefore we are the workers. The other way to tell that we are the workers is that watching television is no fun. At least watching the ads isn’t fun. That’s why we try to get out of watching the ads by doing other stuff while the ads are on, such as using the bathroom or making a snack. And this is why television is so bad.

You see, they don’t really care if we like the programs or not. They are not trying to interest us in the programs. They are trying to interest the advertisers. For us, all they care about is that they get our attention, which they do every time they put something lurid are bizarre on the screen. We watch television the same way we watch an automobile accident, with that same kind of fascination. Once they have our attention, then the advertisers can sell us shit.

The television’s job is to produce programs as cheaply as possible so that they can make a big profit, like any other factory. If they could outsource our viewing to another country, I’m sure they would, but they can’t. Advertisements, on the other hand, have big budgets. Nearly as much work goes into producing most ads as goes into a big budget Hollywood movie. That’s because they need to make the commercial entertaining so we will watch it, and watch it the ten or twenty times we need to watch it in order to be suitably brainwashed. A lot of money goes into those commercials, including research that allows them to make a commercial that will still sink in even if you see it in fast forward mode while you’re speeding on to the next bit of the program you Tivo’d.

Another way to know that we are the workers in the television industry is to note how much we work. The way that capitalism dealt with the labor unions’ insistence on an eight hour work day was to find ways that the same amount of work could be done in fewer hours. That’s how we got the assembly line. As most of us have noted, the number of commercials per hour in television has steadily increased. Late night, I’m sure you have noticed there are often seven minutes of commercials for every four minutes of program. It’s enough to drive you crazy.

Moreover, the duration of each commercial is getting shorter and shorter. At one time, the average commercial was one minute in length. Now it’s much shorter, often even less than 15 seconds. That way they can get more and more commercials in a shorter period of time. Commercials are what the networks are selling. So for each hour of television we are getting less and less program and more and more commercial. In other words, they are making us work harder, longer hours. And we don’t even get paid!

So if you wonder why the news media makes such a big deal about stupid little things that politicians say and why they spend so much time trying to scare us, it’s because they want us to watch their news so we see the ads. And we do. They just need us to do our job. The news industry took a big hit back in the Reagan years when the FCC ruled that reporting the news fell under the same category as any other programming, thus relieving the networks from the responsibility of having to keep the public informed. In other words, new programs now have to make the same profit as any other program. When I was a kid, the two big political conventions were all that was on television those nights. Now, the conventions are banished to cable networks, which still show ads during the coverage.

Even the film industry isn’t immune from this. Increasingly product placement has become a bigger and bigger part of film making, along with all merchandise associated with the film. Now I’m not trying to paint television as the great evil or anything. But this is why the programming is so bad. Still, it’s amazing how much you discover when you stop watching television. For example, there are these strange things called books with which we were familiar while children, but with which, as adults, we spend less and less time. And as a reminder to those of you  who spend more time reading than watching the tube, get back to work!

From the very beginning, it would seem, we hated government, not just big government, but any government. The colonists left England because they either didn’t want to be told what church they could attend, or they wanted opportunities that were only available to the wealthiest class of people back home. Of course, once they got here, they immediately started to dictate which church you could attend, and began to limit the opportunities of others. That shouldn’t really seem so odd. After all, the children of child abusers usually become child abusers themselves. It’s the only model they have.

We even fought our own government in the early days of our federal government. Americans were forced to fire on Americans in Shay’s Rebellion. Americans have always resented government. It seems to be in our blood. The rest of the world doesn’t really have any problem with government. For most of them, government has been pretty good, overall (with the exception of some nasty people who ran Germany for a short while). Europeans look at our dislike for government and think we’re nuts. In Europe, the idea is that government is supposed to take care of the people. Here, we seem to feel that government should stay out of our way.

One big difference for this is the nature of our country compared with the nations of Europe at the time our country began. We had a sparse population. There were fewer than 300,000 people living in American when we became a country. Europe was crowded, at least in the urban centers. Where there are large numbers of people, you need to have lots of regulations. This is because people bother other people. Your neighbors are close by and you can’t do shit that bothers them. People in Europe saw new religions as a threat to the established order. We didn’t really have an established order. Our country was founded with disdain for an established order. We could do that. We didn’t have that many people. You could stay out of other people’s way. Nobody cares what you do when you’re miles away from anybody else.

Our country grew rapidly because there were no regulations. And while we did become a wealthy nation in general (not everybody did so well—ask the Indians and the slaves, along with scads of poor whites), it was done so with a total disregard for the rights and well being of others. Just ask the Chinese workers who came here to help build the railroad. A lot of people became rich by fucking over other people who didn’t have the resources to stand up for themselves and their rights.

But poor people have a way of multiplying. Eventually, the poor people grew strong enough to demand their rights. And in guaranteeing those rights, the government, which was created to “promote the general welfare”, regulations had to be put into place. The wealthy business owners objected to this, of course. And so the Pinkertons, and other, official, law enforcement agencies were brought in to try to put an end to the labor movement, and women’s suffrage, and any other movement that, you guessed it, threatened the established order. We had become Europe. But of course we became Europe. We now had all the trappings of Europe. We had our own aristocracy, and aristocracy of money, instead of nobility.

Although we had all the trappings of our European fathers (and mothers), we still had the American disdain for government. And yet the only protection the little guy has is from government. There are many in our country who would try to do away with all the protections put in place by FDR in the 30s. Some say we should do away with social security and let people invest their money the way they want, without government interference. Well, my wife and I have already lost about twenty grand from our retirement accounts in just the past two weeks. Imagine if everybody’s retirement plans were based solely on investments. It’s true that many government retirement plans are invested in the market and have lost money, but the average social security recipient is going to receive his or her monthly pension regardless of what happened in the market. Of that much, they can be sure, for now at least.

Businesses cry out (especially small businesses, and I understand why) at all the regulations that protect workers on the job. Those protections cost money and make it hard to make a profit at all. But without those protections, workers are in danger of significant threats to life and limb. As long as there is money to be made, businesses are willing to put people’s health and well being at risk.

Now I know that there are many small business owners who would never consider putting their employees at risk. But there are plenty more that would, and that’s why we need regulations. I guess my point is that we are no longer the small country we once were. We no longer have limitless resources. And, with the kind of population we now have, what we do to the environment really matters. We are a lot more like Europe than we used to be. We have huge urban centers now. Almost 81% of the population of the United States live in an urban center. In 1790, 95% of the population lived in the countryside. Only 5% lived in cities. We are not the same nation we once were. That’s why we need regulations.

So in the end, we have to overcome our intense hatred of government. When you have lots of people, you need government, and we have lots of people now. When you have lots of people that live in cities, you need government. I hear McCain and Palin say over and over again that they are opposed to government. They want to get government out of our lives. And a part of me likes that idea, in the same way that children want mom and dad out of their lives. But children need mom and dad in their lives to make sure they don’t do stupid shit. Nobody likes being told what to do or what not to do. But sometimes it’s necessary.

FDR got us out of the depression because he used government to step in and put people to work. Yes, it was the war that eventually got the U.S. out of the great depression, but thanks to the New Deal, FDR did finally bring the GNP of the U.S. back up to where it was before the market crash of 1929 by 1936. FDR was not willing to create the kind of deficits necessary to totally get us out of the depression until the war made in unavoidable. Either way, it was government that saved our parents’ and grandparents’ asses back in the great depression. And it will be government that saves us now, as long as government makes the right decisions.

Two things, I think, have become clear. One, we have to quit thinking of the kind of country we once were. We are not that country anymore. We can’t move forward as long as we keep looking back. And two, we have to quit thinking of the government as the bad guy. The government is only the bad guy when we put the wrong people in power. And to my mind, the wrong people are the ones who keep putting the interests of the minority, the 1% who own 30% of the wealth of the nation ahead of the other 99% of the people that live here. And I’m not sure there is anybody speaking for those 99% at all. As Ralph Nader so correctly claims, both the democrats and the republicans represent that 1%. The rest of the free world has government in their lives. And they don’t mind.

I suspect that out of this current economic crisis we will see the eventual coming of a totally new system. I suspect that what we are seeing is the collapse of capitalism, just as we saw the collapse of communism. Neither system works anymore. And what we will end up with is some kind of mixture of limited capitalism and socialism. It is up to us to make sure that the rights of individual continue to be respected. And it could well be that those people who want to have the opportunity to make their riches, those opportunities that were once available in this country, this shining city on the hill, will have to go someplace else that is, like America was, sparsely populated. You go where there is nothing and build something. Perhaps they will colonize Mars. Who knows?

But we will become like the rest of the democratic world. We will become like Germany, like Ireland, like France, like the rest of the European Union. Government will become more involved in business and in our private lives. There will be more regulations and higher taxes. It may come soon, or after a terrible new depression, but it will happen. The only question that remains is how many of our rights will we still have? Will we be like England, or will we be like China? Personally, I vote for England, where government is considered your friend. I may have to pay higher taxes, but at least I won’t have to worry about starving or not having a roof over my head.

I was fortunate enough to teach her in fourth grade also. I used to change grade levels a lot. She had an older sister, Gina. I used to worry about her because she was a little more wild than Natalie. During that year I was allowed to start an after school Kung Fu Club. I thought it would teach the kids a little discipline and make them proud of themselves. Natalie was one of the first kids to join that club and she worked so hard. She dutifully practiced everyday and at the end of the year she performed the set Moi Fa Kuen (plum flower fist) in front of the whole school. She had a different teacher for fifth grade, and then she went on to the middle school. I often thought of her and hoped she was doing well.

Today I was visited by some students from last year. They got off school early today and instead of going off and hanging with their friends they came to my school to say hello to me and tell me how they were doing. It was very good to see them. First came Jonathan. I taught Jonathan two years ago and was very touched when he asked me to be his sponsor for first communion. For those of you who don’t know, that is a big honor in Latino culture. I was very touched. I carry a picture of Jonathan on my key fob and I get the occasional greeting card from him. I remember him at his birthday and Christmas and try to stay in touch but of course we are both very busy.

Next came Alicia and her sister. They were charming girls who were very good. Alicia was always very bright and was used to be told so. I had to really kick her butt to turn her into a writer. She was okay when I got her, but she had the potential to be really, really good and I used to let her know it. She used to have to re-write those essays over and over again until they finally measured up to her abilities to write. What a great little writer she was.

Over the years I have heard from many of my former students. I have one who became a children’s author after graduating from Texas A&M. I have a couple of graduates from Georgetown. She told me that she became a writer because I used to read to them every afternoon. She had some hard times but she never gave up, because she said she remembered how my wife and I had run the Los Angeles Marathon several times and how I had told them to never give up no matter how hard things were. Some have gone into teaching (the fools).

Every now and then I get a kid, like Jose Manzano, or Robert Brewster, who were always in trouble. I must have spent hours with their parents just trying to get those kids to do the minimum I required from them. I suspended them. I took away privileges. I always felt like I failed them somehow. And yet, for some reason, now they are nearly adults, they come back to see me over and over. I don’t understand why. I would have guessed that they hated me. I would have hated me. I just didn’t want to see them fail, that’s all. Some of my former students are now the parents of my current students. That’s what happens when you spend your whole career at the same school. Life is funny that way. It makes you feel pretty old.

Oh…Natalie. A few years ago this tall lanky girl walked up to me in the staff lounge. I really almost didn’t recognize her. Natalie had come to visit and to invite me to her college graduation. She was earning her Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature. She had continued in the martial arts and had become a third degree black belt in a Korean Art. She told me it was really important to her that I be there, so how could I say no? I wouldn’t have missed it. I was so proud of her that day and she looked so lovely up there as she received her diploma. I did not for one moment regret taking the day off to watch her reach that milestone. Of course, I had to go and get her a nice graduation gift, the obligatory pen and pencil set. But I also gave her something else. I gave her this book. It was a little old and yellowed. And the illustrations were maybe a little rough. But she didn’t mind. She got a big smile on her face. She was happy to receive it. It was called, “Little Bear’s Dream”.

Sometimes it’s good to be a teacher.