Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Cat Stevens on my mind....or "Where do the children play....."

I fall into a familiar routine with the same nagging questions on my mind. How, who, what,where,when and why. How can almost never be answered, because each "how" solution leads to another how question, equally or more complex than the last.

'Who' would be the community in which I load and deliver students inside a big orange cheezebox to their schools, and back home again at night.

'What' would be the devastated neighborhoods in which they dwell, with the abandoned ramshackle houses that at one time were homes, the burnt out hulking shells of abandoned businesses and homes that lurk about the areas, practically screaming 'danger, danger' every day, and the expanses of overgrown weedy lots, with their assorted piles of abandoned garbage, from broken furniture, old worn out tires to garbage bags stuffed with who knows what, and piles of discarded clothes.

'Where' is the areas around the schools , the areas that confront the students everyday while teachers and staff try in a nearly futile fashion to lift the thoughts of their charges above the seediness, to gaze off into a future that leaves the abandonment behind.

The FUTURE is certainly the 'when', but the view of the future is weak to those constantly bombarded on a daily basis with the landscape that confronts them everyday.

'Why' is compounded with myriad answers, but does it really serve a positive purpose to examine the past ?

How does this get solved? Who has the answers to how to fix Detroit? All the political grandstanding, all the underhanded thievery that is still ongoing today, all the lack of respect for human life in the form of rampant murders, all the contempt stemming from the rich history of bigotry and racism that burbles perpetually beneath the surface of nearly every conflict rooted in the hearts and minds, all the disrespect blatantly screaming out from the abandoned raped abodes from neighborhoods past and the all the loyal ostriches that keep their heads tucked safely in the sand, so they can pretend the mountain isn't there....

It always leads me back to 'Where do the children play?'

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Restarting....again?????

Not sure how I keep losing these blogs.....

Somewhere floating about in the middle of cyberspace are about 4 blog sites that I started with good intentions, but lost track of how to get back to where I started. So that is why there are at least 4 that I know of. If I ever find them, I will have to figure out someway to put them all together in one spot, even if I am the only one that ever reads them.

I like the blogs with pictures. And, I read random blogs to get ideas. I have read some pretty good ones. I like that they are shorter thatn a book, but have a lot of meat in them. I am pretty sure my first several aren't going to amount to much until I can get a flow going on. I am seriously thinking of unearthing the diaries I kept from my young life and commiting them to blog form and off the written pages.