TBT 1985: Talking Heads were a fave

Talking Heads: Little Creatures; photo by Wayne Stratz

I have had a series of favorite bands over the years and the band that topped the list when I entered college at Grove City was not there when I graduated from East Stroudsburg. The Talking Heads were one of the bands I dug the most when I was at ESU. I grabbed this from the LP's that still linger in my possession. Ironically this was not one of my favorite LP's by the Talking Heads and it is hard to pick a tune as apparently it is not filled with songs I loved back in the day.

Maybe Road to Nowhere or And She Was.

"The world was moving and she was right there with it..." 

Sounds like what the Jesuit told me that led to my tagline: "The worst sin is to not be aware of being part of an unfolding universe." 

We are part of time and space. As the universe unfolds into new space and time, we unfold along with it. Apparently in 1985 I was unfolding with The Talking Heads. Oh my...

On entering my newest year

In Buffalo. In a sculpture.

I celebrated 50 years with a jazz conert and a campaign to feed the hungry. But time marches on and so does my mind.

I was a decent letter writer back in the day. Over time it stopped. I hear that the post office still sends out such things. I imagine my friends have addresses they might share if I am lacking their current location.

So I had this thought, I will send a letter a week for the next year. Not a note, but a letter, hand written. I'm rusty. Beware my friends; I have memories of nearly getting straight A's in elementary school but being thwarted by some harsh C- marks for penmanship. Over time I developed a half cursive/ half printing scrawl. I think it can be deciphered.

Some letters may include a Stratozpheric card or maybe a suncatcher that seems to need a home. Some may be tucked inside a card that catches my eye or one of the cards sent recently by a friend. Maybe a commission will spark a letter. Some will fly solo inside an envelope. The goal is not to draw cards or give away art. I desire to return to writing letters.

Letter writing is a chance to reflect upon what is happening in my life. Like pizza making it may become a habit, something I am known for.

And who knows, if one of the letters gets a response, a life long correspondence may happen. That would be quite splendid.

 

Stratoz, the suitcase leaves the closet

On Facebook I have friends from elementary school, high school, two colleges, years spent in MA, OR, and IL, from church, work and craft shows... but none from the time I was known as Stratoz. You see, I had to walk away. It took years to leave him behind me and yet, I called myself Stratoz when I started this blog. What you may not know is this, it was Stratoz hit rock bottom.

"After all was said and done

There was nothing left to do

The hardest mile I ever walked

Was the one I walked away from you" 

Kim Richey

But emerging was a bit of a rocky road and I fell back a few times.  Maybe luck kept me from dropping to lower levels of bedrock. OK, luck saved me many a time. But not all the time. A relationship lost. Opportunities missed.

"But I’m alright

Sacked down but I’m still standing

Yeah I’m alright

Little banged up from the fall

But I’m alright

Still shaky from the landing

Yeah I’m alright after all" 

Kim Richey

Stratoz was a young man who came close to letting go of caring for anything. I remember where not caring took me, so when students tell me that they don't care about me, my class, or an assignment; I often respond with, "That's OK with me, as long as you tell me one thing you do care about."

When a friend returned a wise comment with a wise comment, I had to ponder art by Stratoz, so I dug this dusty suitcase out of the closet. It is filled with what I would now call Stratozpheric doodles. Some are relatively recent, others stretch back closer to Stratoz. I doubt anything goes back 32 years, but one day soon, I'll open it and take a journey. I would imagine some of those old designs will ask me to take them into the realm of glass. 

"And every now and then I think about you

Oh every now and then I cross the line" 

Kim Richey

The Pretenders take me to the night Specter beat Edgar

It started with hearing the news that Lou Reed had died and pulling out an old LP by the man (that also took me back to some old memories). But putting it back the next night is why I listened to The Pretenders.

I have only worked on one political campaign. I was fresh out of college. Bob Edgar lost. I was gathered with others who had worked on the campaign. A song came on the radio, and a woman next to me said, "They just don't spit vile like they used to."

I don't think I ever saw that woman again and her name is gone, but I so remember that quote. She needed music that was raw and angry that night.

Bob Edgar went on to do some fabulous things outside of politics.

Years later Arlen Specter would gain my respect for being a moderate in a polarized DC.

I had a student that once said, "Why jazz? Can't we listen to rock."

I said, "Sorry, I am no longer an angry young man."

 

Delighted: Alice Munro wins the Nobel Prize for Literature

Back in the day, a biology professor handed me a book of short stories by Raymond Carver. It may have been the first collection of stories I ever read. I was hooked. Two years later, I met Mosaic Woman, who introduced me to many things Canadian.

There was a writer of short stories in that introduction, Alice Munro. Her stories amazed me. Someone once said that Munro did not have to write novels because she could get more into a short story than what is found in many novels.

I have at times searched through fiction settings in libraries and bookstores for stories. I find novels and novels and novels... and then at some point a collection of stories. The pressure must be intense. Forget stories. Write novels. Munro just kept writing stories and that impressed me.

So, I was delighted. An author, who tells stories in short splashes of color and who reminds me of those glorious days of falling into love with Margaret, was on the news. Good news indeed reached my spirit as I commuted this morning.

 

T is for Thanks ~ The A to Z of One Word Messages

Wayne as a young dude
in red jacket

When said simply and from the heart, Thanks, is all that needs to be said.  

Tonight I give thanks that the young Wayne featured above survived this, that, and the other thing to see his life as one that unfolds with God's creation.  Thanks.

Gardening Dude where he teaches 

Jazz Dude at the
Rochester Jazz Festival

Strudel making Dude who carries on
the tradition 

Stained Glass Dude, who digs the color orange

Back in the Day Dude
when Mosaic Woman was not yet Mosaic Woman
but was Margaret

Nature loving Dude with his dad
who took him out west one summer and
then years later
came out to Oregon and walked across a lave bed with him

Meeting Mosaic Woman

 What mattered was the book inside the red pannier

It was 1986 and I may have been lacking direction. I had just earned my BS in Biology and chose to ride my bicycle to the Catskills. Info on 20-30 graduate programs were being examined. I was at home with my parents. I began to tutor at a community college where i had turned my life around a few years earlier. It was in a room attached to the library.

If memory serves me correct, I saw her first in the library, but I knew I would later see her in the tutoring center. I was tutoring science. Mosaic Woman was tutoring philosophy. I remember telling a friend I had seen someone special before I could say I had spoken to her.

In college many a friend had recommended that I Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, so I read it while I camped in the Catskills. There was something in that book that reminded me of something she was tutoring, so one day I asked her if she had read it. Were we at the cafeteria?

How long was that initial conversation? Long enough, for many more would happen.

and here we are... 

at a Christopher Ries exhibit, looking reflective and blue

at a Great Lake, looking jazz festival hip

at the Oregon shore a few years after we met, looking slightly less gray

introducing my students to Julius Sumner Miller

OK, Ted talks are inspiring and PBS's Nova has amazing production, but I had to let my students know how it was done back in the day...

Wordless Wednesday: O is for Oregon 1992

Wordless Wednesday

Fridays in PA---- East Branch of the Monocacy Creek

Back in the Day, Christmas time 1994

Every Wednesday I am to send an e-mail to the four people who are in my spirit group (see here). The first week I turned to a long favorite quote by Buechner. The second week I turned to a verse of scripture that jumped out at me a few days earlier. But, I had no plan and Wednesday was slipping away, so I grabbed Annie Dillard's A Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and found this:

"My God. I look at the Creek"

By 1994 Mosaic Woman and I had ventured through our years in Massachusetts and Oregon. We were living in Illinois and came home to Pennsylvania for Christmas. I took my young nephew for a walk that I had made often as a teenager. We ended up at the East Branch of the Monocacy Creek. I love flowing water.

We need to keep in touch with what we love and over the years I have visited many a place where water runs. My visits these days are too far apart.

I made a list of hopes for 2011. Let me add another. I want to stand and look down at light bouncing off dancing water molecules and say:

"My God. I look at the Creek"