The Once-in-a-While

Daily News

1  I'll handle this.

2  Is it safe to come out of my bunker yet?

3

4

5  What's the word, mockingbird?

6  <crawls out, dusts mud off knees>

7  I apologize to the thousands of fans out there for my virtual hiding since Saturday.

8  I wanna begin this week's OIAWDN (Once-in-a-While
Daily News) to apologize for staying a bit quiet lately. I know how much you wish for AND wait for my rants.

9  Saturday made me proud to be a 'Murican. 

10  The marches not only in 'Murica but around the world impressed me. 

11  What impressed me was the sheer volume of people new to demonstrating getting out there and doing it. 

12  I like that the wimminz made that happen.

13  The number of men going out there alarmed me, but it didn't surprise me, even though it was impressive.

14  We still have men out there who will hold off doing that sort of thing. I can understand that, believe it or not.

15  I have demonstrated, and it can make your life a bit more difficult, from bosses looking at you askance, to people who disagree with your stance getting in your face rudely.

16  And the dissemination of information has never been more mixed up. Disinformation scrambles truth to the point that I want to close my computer and allow whatever happens to happen.

17  Donald Trump doesn't help much. He has received a lot of info over the years from the likes of Alex Jones and Roger Stone, a couple of guys respected by a great many, but who never did much for me. Jones because he comes off as an overexuberant crazy, and Stone because he has dirty tricks, Nixon, and Arlen Specter to explain away, as well as his political career dating back to his rigging of high school elections. And all of THAT can be considered by people to be a "rich man's trick." 

18  At the risk of painting myself into a corner, I have spent years researching the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I started out believing everything I was told. 

19  When I was a little kid, I borrowed a shortened version of the Warren Report, the official investigation of the Kennedy assassination, a document that was put together by the Warren Commission, named after Chief Justice Earl Warren. 

20  I remember reading about how the alleged assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, an ex-marine, and a loner, went to work on the morning of November 11,1963 carrying a large parcel. When fellow workers asked him what he had, he said that he had curtain rods. 

21  According to the Warren report, witnesses saw Oswald go into the building, and thought nothing of it. Evidence showed that Oswald probably went to the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, put his rifle together, and waited as Kennedy's motorcade approached the building. As it turned from Main Street, then to Houston, Oswald got ready. He made himself a sniper's nest in the far corner and waited. 

23  When the motorcade turned left on Elm Street, Oswald took aim. He looked through the scope, watched the motorcade move past the window, and fired off a shot. It missed, and it hit the street, causing a piece of concrete to hit a guy named James Tague on the cheek. 

24  Oswald took aim again, and fired a single bullet that entered the back of Kennedy's head, out his neck, and into Texas Governor John Connally's right wrist, injuring his left leg. Oswald then took careful aim and fired a shot that blew the right portion of the President's head completely off.

25  Oswald then ran down four flights of stairs to the second floor, where he was allegedly seen drinking a Coke by one Roy Truly, the TSBD's building supervisor, and police officer Marrion Baker. Oswald seemed relaxed.

26  I was a reading this, a young kid interested in what happened, reached that piece and stopped. I looked up and thought, "This guy JUST shot the President of the United States, ran down four flights of stairs, and is seen in a break room enjoying a Coke? AND he is completely relaxed?"

27  As they say, that dog don't hunt.

28  From that day on, I read every book I could get on the assassination, AND I read books to see what different people had to say about it. 

29  Over the years, the story unfolded with sinister occurrences, many involving subsequent U.S. Presidents. Gerald Ford was not only on the Warren Committee, he and a guy named Arlen Specter authored the infamous "single-bullet" theory, which made it possible for Oswald to get off all three shots. 

30  Lyndon Baines Johnson became President and in two days reversed Kennedy's plans to withdraw from Vietnam. Richard Nixon resigned when White House tapes of his conversations led directly to the assassination. His own vice-president, Spiro Agnew, found himself in a dairy scandal and was forced to leave office. Nixon then appointed his own successor. Who was his successor?

Gerald Ford. 

31  Much of that can be seen in Oliver Stone's epic film JFK, which, while having a few minor inaccuracies, told the story that I had hunted down after years and years of reading everything I could about the assassination. 

32  I have continued researching to this day. 

33  A lot of people already KNOW a lot of this, but there is a younger generation out there who knows precious little. 

34  It isn't easy. But do read what the other person has to say, and then make intelligent decisions.

35  End of rant. 

36  I don't want to get preachy.

37  Moving On, Part One: Whew.

38  It gets tougher and tougher to hammer this stuff out.

39  Not, mind you, because of the research involved. 

40  I researched the top part for a few days and then realized that I had tackled WAY too complex of a topic.

41  I spent years behind a podium telling students not to choose compex topics. If you Google the JFK assassination, you will find yourself with around twelve pages of "theories" and such, and you will also find yourself walking through an enigmatic maze, with mirrors at every turn. End of second rant.

42  Moving On, Part Two: Those of you who HATE grammar "Nazis," I just busted Grammarly again. I had the word "to" before the word "complex" in item 40, above, and Grammarly missed it. It had underlined  the word "complex," assuring me that it "needed an article." The articles, for those of you who have strayed from the wonderful fields of grammar, are "the" "a" and "and." The sentence would have read like this:

I researched the top part for a few days and then realized

that I had tackled WAY to the complex of a topic. 

43  Thanks, Grammarly, for the laughs.

44  And thanks, Trump.

45  "Hi, Heidi! I'm coming!"
           ---I just heard this on some television show. Just now.

46  I adore Heidi trips.

47  I had just finished wiping out the majority of what this originally was, and felt liberated. 

48  I intend to bring further tales of Heidi to you. 

49  I'm thinking aloud. 

50  My first account book (I always disliked the word "diary") was called Thinking Aloud.

51  Homophone. It's okay to think aloud. It's allowed.

52  Meanwhile, I think I'll kick back with some manly movies starring Laurie Laughlin. 

53  #missingchristmasmoviesalready

54  Mr. Sensitivity.

55  Actually, it is sorta selfish. 

56  I'm already worn out by our Commander-in-Chief. 

57  Not gonna lie. 

58  Gottago.

59  Got a full line-up in front of me.

60  Have a GREAT day.

61  See you again.

62  Live life.

63  Love life.

64  Peace.

~H~

fin.

The Once-in-a-While 

Daily News

1  I hope my heroin shipment arrives before Friday.

2  Just kidding.

3  Remember kidding?

4  <chirp,chirp>

5  

6  People used to kid around.

7  Guilt free.

8  Irregardless of what takes place Friday.

9  "Irregardless." Pretty non-standard.

10  It is in the dictionaries, but it's almost as though the dictionaries would rather it weren't.

11  Its structure alone makes it the exact opposite of the word "regardless" if you think about it.

12  <crickets>

13  Just messing with Grammarly once again. 

14  That's a whole nother topic.

15  A whole nother. 

16  Grammarly failed to catch THAT one. 

17  I caught that one once when I used it in front of a class.

18  Never really thought about it, but really, there is no such thing as a "nother." It's not even considered a noun. 

19  Helene and I talked about that the other day.

20  I taught English for centuries, and she used to edit books.

21  I think she said, "That's a whole nother story," and then caught herself.

22  

23  That's my story and I'm sticking to it. 

24  Don't patronize.

25   If I capitalize the word "Patronize" in the sentence, "Don't Patronize!" am I REALLY telling you not to imbibe in Tequila?

26  Ah, it is fun dodging Grammarly bullets! 

27  It's a little game I play when I hammer out this nonsense.

28  English nerds.

29  I swear. 

30  So far, this week's OIAWDN got ticketed five times by the grammar police at Grammarly, even though I deliberately set up more. I can then use that as an excuse when I really DO make a blatant grammar error. 

31  For the record, here are the five:

"irregardless" (twice, and I agree with Grammarly)

"weren't" in item 10. I claim it to be

subjunctive.

"It's" in item 11. (Again, I agree with Grammarly. That's not ignorance of the rule; it's moving too fast on a keyboard! Busted! I would have caught it in editing, so I corrected

it already, but I DID have "It's" originally.).

Not gonna lie.*

"nother" in item 18, but Grammarly dropped the 

ball on "nother" in items 14, 15, and 21.

It caught the two in this item, number 31.

*Actually, I lie all the fooking time, but this time, 

I'm not gonna.

32  And it jumped all over the word "fooking." I clicked on the little red billiard ball that Grammarly provides, and it said,                                    

                          "Did you mean "cooking?"

33  

34

35  Are you fooking kiddin' me here?

36  Thank goodness for stupidity. Sorry Grammarly. Just cookin' with ya. 

37  Moving On, Part Fookin' One: A lot of people don't realize that today is Revolution and Youth Day in Tunisia.

38  That makes two of us.

39  Moving On, Part Two: So.

40  Friday. 

41  Friday I cover myself in bacon grease, tie myself to my Gregorian metal coffee table, and release weasels to eat me alive. 

42  To those protesting and marching, be safe. I admire your bravery, especially if you are marching in a Pussyhat. 

43  I tried to knit one and pearl two, but my pearls got jammed. 

44

45  You may groan. 

46  Be brave, but stay safe. 

47  Obama, thanks. History will be kind. You're not a bad lad, for an Irishman.

48  

49  Huh? O' Bama? Yer not?

50  Well then. 

51  Fook me, and fook me Lucky Charms!

52  At least I could spell "leprechaun" without lookin'!

53  Gottago.

54  See you again.

55  Live life.

56  Love life.

57  Stay safe.

58  Peace.

~H~

fun.

The Once-in-a-While 

Daily News

1  The other day I began a piece about Martin Luther King, and how his epic work Why We Can't Wait inspired massive changes in education. Particularly interesting was the inclusion of Letter From a Birmingham Jail, which I taught late in my career.

2  I even posted a pdf of it on Facebook for about three seconds when I realized it was January 8, not January 15. How did that happen, you may ask? Well, my excuse is that I was discombobulated. 

3  Deadly flooding, constant warnings of possible evacuations, NFL playoffs, and shifts in temperaments on social media kept me up nights worrying, thinking, and sighing. 

4  I also remembered that the dream fell into the wrong hands. By the time Why We Can't Wait made it to the national education doorstep, it had taken a wrong turn. It became the much-maligned No Child Left Behind disaster, a Bush-funded abomination that introduced the nation to terms like "ramped up," "rolled out," and other dysfunctional nonsense.

5  I won't go into all that was and was wrong with No Child Left Behind, but it frightened me. My recollection of it was that nobody really knew exactly what it wanted to do, but that it had to be put in place swiftly. Huh? There's a plan. Horrid. 

6  It was so bad that it finally got replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2015.

7  There's a reason I decided to retire. Obama gave his farewell speech last night. I had NO idea it was even happening. How discombobulated could a person be? Pretty discombobulated. Great speech, by the way. Makes me cringe to think of where things are now headed. Proud moments by a proud President. History will show that. I don't really know where ESSA is headed, but my guess is that Donald Trump isn't the intended destination. So sad. Here's the skinny on the No Child scam:

8  There was Bush money behind the original NCLB crapola, a horrid concept that began in Colorado. It was sloppy, and it had a clear agenda. It needs to halt now. 

9  In all sincerity, I hope this new generation of teachers can grab it by the horns and change it into something that works at their own schools. That's where the power and hope lie. Teaching kids how to beat tests isn't the best of all worlds. It is, in fact, a train wreck. Having a curriculum that covers as much as possible in each subject, on the other hand, does work. Listen:

10  Most teachers are aware of their own students' needs. When I got my credential back in the Stone Age, the "movement" at the time was that teachers should look at the curriculum, and then cover it by teaching things they know and love, and that they are excited about. 

11  When teachers become enthused, and share ideas, things strengthen. One of my favorite use of staff meetings was when our English department at Evergreen Valley High School had each teacher present one of their favorite lessons. All teachers have them, and they know that they work, because they DO this for a living. So we decided as a department to present our favorite and most successful lessons. Duh. My colleagues amazed me with their imaginations and with their hands-on success stories. I'd like to share one of my own right here, right now. 

12  Every Halloween, I did a mini-unit on ghosts and the supernatural in literature. One of our lit anthologies had a chapter in it dedicated to that genre. The chapter was called The Strange and Eerie in Literature. I loved it. Think of how many pieces of literature have ghosts and spirits in them!

 I also brought in the concept of oral tradition, a concept which most of the students already understood. All of this culminated in students having a day or two of ghost stories to share with one another. They could bring any ghost stories, but I encouraged ghost stories that may have happened to them personally, or to a family member. I also encouraged them to bring ghost stories from different cultures. Every culture has its share of ghost stories, so this always became a day to share tales in the dark.

13  I had the added advantage of access to the Theatre at Yerba Buena High School, because I taught drama there. It became easy enough to do an eerie light design, and to usher the students down to the stage using a flashlight. I had a circle of chairs at center stage, but added other areas to sit as well: platforms, mini-stairs, couches, etc. Always a fun day. I found these two photos online; they give a basic idea of what the lighting looked and felt like:

The lighting usually had things like shades of green and blue, and I often used a leaf gobo to create a shadowy effect.

14  When I moved up to Evergreen Valley, a much newer school in the District, it became a little more difficult, because I didn't have any jurisdiction over theatre usage. 

15  I started EV as the Activities' Director, teaching a few English classes as well. I had a master key to the entire school, so it was pretty easy to duplicate what I did over at YB. I could easily access the school's theater whenever I wanted, but I also had to consider the teachers who worked in the building, and I had to respect their classes, and their stage. Fortunately, I knew a few of them, and they allowed me access, as long as my students didn't interrupt their classes. So ghost stories. Always an attraction to everyone.
And they were always fun, and WAY interesting!

16  My tradition continued, and I loved doing that unit every single year, for my entire career. 

17 I encouraged ghost stories from different cultures, and trust me, there are some scary stories that come to us from all over the world. 

18  I had them ask their parents and grandparents if they knew of any stories.

19  This was always done as close to Halloween as I could make it. Theaters are often booked, and often there are shows going up around that time, but I still managed to have those stories going every year, and every year I loved doing them. 

20  So to all the teachers and staff out there giving it their all every day, I can offer only this: make it fun. Easy to say, not so easy to do I trust, but make it fun anyway. Your colleagues and your students can still make education a job filled with joy, creativity, and excitement. And that can allow teachers to spread their wings, and to show others exactly how to do it. 

21  Don't give up the dream.

22  Moving On, Part One: I've decided to move this nonsense into less political areas, because I think we have WAY too much anger going out there since the election.

23  I don't know about anyone else, but my nerves can't take it anymore. 

24  I'm going to try to keep things to myself and not judge.

25  It'll make for a more relaxing go of it. This is more a sidebar than a "Moving On" but it needed to be said. So. Ready for how the ghost stories went down?

26  My tradition of ghost stories during Halloween goes back to my days as a student teacher at Bidwell Junior High School in Chico, California. I didn't have a theater; I had a classroom. 

27  I have utterly no other recollection of any of that because I'm officially a geezer who can't remember stuff. I vaguely remember turning the lights out and having the students share stories. 

28  I had a few classics in my hip pocket, but we did it just for fun. Listening and speaking have always been part of any English curriculum, so I felt I covered it. I remember the students enjoying it. I decided to keep it, making it the oldest individual tradition of my frabjous career.

29  Moving On, Part Two: Let us go back, then, through the mists of time. When I began my teaching career at YB, I did the ghost unit, which eventually resulted a year or two later in a group of students coming to me claiming they had reached a ghost by using a Ouija board. 

30  As a teacher and role model, I scoffed. I had messed with Ouija boards a few times, and always thought they were a tad fake. 

31  So with tongue planted firmly in cheek, I said, "Oh, you reached a ghost, huh? What is the ghost's name?"

32  They looked serious and concerned, and one girl said, "No, we DID reach a ghost, a girl named Heidi!"

33  They wanted to know if I would like to "play" with the Ouija board, and again my senses came into play. "I don't think it's a good idea for me to try to conjure spirits in a classroom at a public school. I'll have to take a rain check. And I'd rather not see any Ouija boards appearing in the building, if you don't mind."

34  Words to that effect. Haughty. 

35  Well, the best way to get students to do something is to tell them that they can't. Quite soon I would catch the same students messing with Ouija boards any time I wasn't looking. 

36  After a bit, I made it clear that if they brought one to school, I was going to take it away. They stopped bringing the boards.

37  But students aren't dumb. Our Theatre always had a stack of manufactured boards sitting out on the edge of the stage so the facility could be used for giving state tests. The boards sat out on the edge of the stage or on a table, and I pretty much ignored them when we weren't doing shows. Sometimes students would sneak out and use them as skim boards. But that was when it was Spring. The testing boards otherwise went ignored, until, of course, I implemented the Ouija ban. So guess what happened?

38  The students soon drew Ouija boards on the boards.

39  Before long I had groups of kids in every nook and cranny of the building giggling and hiding any time I'd come near. There were at least three or four mock Ouija boards in use constantly.

40  I eventually gave up and had further conversations with some of the leaders. "So tell me more about Heidi," I said to no one in particular.

41  "She lived a long time ago, and she often communicates using the numbers one and nine."

42  At the time I knew nothing about numerology, but I tossed it off. Vivid imaginations, I thought. 

43  But quite soon, strange things started happening to me. I recall one day just before hopping on to Highway 680 to head home, I thought about Heidi, glanced to my right, and saw a guy wearing a green jersey with the number nine on it. I blinked, got on the freeway and headed home. 

44  After that, the same sort of thing happened with more frequency. I recall one afternoon walking through a bookstore
and thinking about Heidi. I looked up to see a table with the novel Heidi, by author Johanna Spyri, prominently displayed. It wasn't with any like-genre books though. Nothing huge, but a coincidence.

45  Coincidences. 

46  Before long this pattern repeated. It never freaked me out or anything; in fact, I began to smile each time I would have what I called and still call "Heidi trips."

 I recall going over to the teacher's lounge one day, thinking again about Heidi, getting my mail, returning to the building's Piano Lab, and TELLING a few students that I felt I was about to have a Heidi trip. I opened my mail and found a flyer inside. A  play version of Heidi was playing at another high school. The students smiled, all ears and braces. Still...

47  I also noticed that quite often when I would walk through the Theatre, I might think of Heidi, and a seat would click. I would stop, and then another seat would click. 

48  Of course, that could have simply been the ground settling. Things click all the time. Things go bump in the night. This clicking continued for the remainder of my teaching career, and continues to this very minute.

49  The original students who "reached" Heidi didn't like when I would make a big deal out of these things. They thought I was mocking her, and didn't like her changing to some form of joke. 

Allow me to digress here, with a bit of history. We will return to the Heidi trips in good time. It's a fine wine, and worth the wait.

Meanwhile, here go: 

50  At one time I wanted to build the drama program, which I had originally called The YB Drama Workshop, because I wanted it to include experimental theatre. My first show, for example was called Silents. It was a salute to the art of silent acting, with a Charlie Chaplin character running through it. I had already directed four shows at Mills High School in Millbrae, my old hometown. I came to Silents via A Chorus Line, where the cast recorded idea sessions on a tape. I had the students exchange ideas on tape. 

The challenge was we were to come up with an entire evening of theatre without anyone speaking: all mime. Ultimately, we opened with Styx's The Best of Times from their epic Paradise Theater album playing, a chair an old trunk, and a mirror the only props. I was always fascinated with Charlie Chaplin, because he was one of the first to do it all: he wrote, directed, acted, and scored music for his films, and he invented the now famous little Tramp. 

I chose a quiet and creative student, David Espinosa, to play Chaplin in a show I called Silents, which came out of the idea sessions. Here is what the students came up with, and what eventually played for the audience: 

 A Chaplin character walked on stage holding a red rose, looked around, and wandered off. Cast members then approached the old trunk, taking out hats, scarves, masks and coats, and then they moved to different areas of the stage, all mimes, motionless, and in the moment.  

As they entered, their own ideas played through the sound system, accompanied by the music, so the creation of the idea was narrated to the audience as the players played it. I had a slide of Charlie Chaplin blurred out so that it was a light speck on the black proscenium at house right. We used a slide projector out of focus to achieve the effect, but as the scene unfolded, we brought the picture into focus, and a picture of Chaplin slowly materialized, almost ten feet in height, glancing off silently as the actors posed. Here is the picture, albeit a little crooked for the years:

When the music moved to a louder, faster pace, I strobed the stage and had the performers become keystone cops chasing the Chaplin character everywhere: behind flats, in and out of darkness, and just out of reach of the follow spot.

The "cops" eventually bore down on him at center stage, causing him to pose like a kid watching teevee, and he stared straight out to the audience. The cops, with hats, badges and batons, closed in, lifted him up and carried him offstage. As they moved him, he continued to stare straight at the audience, deadpan, grabbing the red rose as they exited. With that, Charlie Chaplin became the first character in a YB Drama Workshop show. 

A series of scenes done as mini-silent films followed, all student written. The Y.B. Drama Workshop had introduced itself to the world, as small as both were at the time. 

I ended the show with a recitation of Hart Crane's Chaplinesque, read beautifully by a student named Sandra Toole, and the show ended with a lovely exit by the cast to Styx's The Best of Times. 

51  Silents was fun and breezy. It was pretty well received by the audience, and made me establish the potential for experimentation on all the shows. 

52  I did a couple of other shows, including Philip King's See How They Run, which I was in when I was in high school (I played a Russian spy) and in college, where I played Lionel Toop, the Vicar. This followed with a grudgingly hard show, M*A*S*H*, which fellow director from Oak Grove Gary Berg called "ambitious." 

53  I'll come clean here. The script for M*A*S*H* was terrible. I paid for the rights to do it, but watched the film of M*A*S*H* and converted it to the stage. It was a much better script. 

54  In theatre, you just don't do that. 

55  A few years later I decided to do a show that would again be a series of skits written by students. I called it Biscuits, because it had a lot of roles. 

56

57  End of digression. Begin Heidi trips. Wait for it. 

58  My brain again goes fuzzy, but I recall that we had lots of great scenes going, but I wanted to have an opening scene that would work. I also had a wonderful student named Paul Long who loved working on the show, helping with everything, and being around making everything work. 

59  One day, his mom came into the Theatre asking to talk with me. She was concerned that Paul was spending so much time at the Theatre. She asked me if he had a big part in the Show, and I said, "Well, he plays a huge part in the Show..." and that was enough for her. She thanked me, and departed. 

60  Later that day I was talking with Jason Lane, one of my most creative students, and informed him of what had happened. "I need to get Paul into a great scene," I said. Paul was tall and thin. We thought and thought.

61  Jason then said, "Abraham Lincoln."

62  "Abraham Lincoln?" I said.

63  "Paul could be Abraham Lincoln. Did you ever see Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln in Disneyland?" I had. 

64  "Let's set it up like that! We could dress Paul as Abraham Lincoln and have it lit similar to Disneyland so when the audience comes in, all they see is Abraham Lincoln staring at them. Then we could have two stagehands come out and pretend they are working on him, tool boxes, that sort of thing. 

"We could have a voice come on the microphone saying, 'Ladies and Gentlemen, Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln will begin in five minutes.' 

"Then we could have the stagehands say things like, 'FIVE MINUTES??? We can't get this guy working in five minutes!!! Quick, close him up.' 

65  I thought maybe the guy could drop his screwdriver, but the point is, they depart leaving Abraham Lincoln. We tossed the idea around with these sorts of ideas:  As he stands up, we could have all sorts of things go wrong, with him grabbing his tie, making weird noises, and moving all sorts of crazy ways, and then returning to his stern demeanor. He could even moon-walk off stage to Billy Jean.

66  I loved it. I thought all sorts of ideas on the way home. We could project "The Yerba Buena Drama Workshop presents" on one slide, and "Biscuits" on a second. 

67  I got home, and my wife Helene had some comedy show on. I started telling her about the afternoon, went into the kitchen to make some hamburgers, and kept talking her ear off about the day. 

68  In the middle of cooking I looked at my teevee.

69  I saw the face of Abraham Lincoln. 

70  The camera panned back. It was Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln. Two mechanics stood next to Lincoln, and worked on him. 

71  A voice said, "Ladies and Gentlemen, Great Moments With Mr. Lincoln will begin in five minutes."

72  I was astounded! Then the improv guy in me figured it's not THAT far-fetched. I had seen ideas workshopped that had similar things done on comedy shows, so I just wanted to see what sorts of gags they had. One that I particularly liked was when Lincoln sat down, his shoe took off on him, like a little car. 

73  We laughed and enjoyed it. 

74  They rolled the credits, with cast, crew, grips and all, and as the credits rolled, one of the credits rolled to the name Heidi. 

75  No last name. 

76  

77  When I was editing this, Caitlin was watching an old show called Project Runway. One of the judges was Heidi Klum. The name Heidi came up all day long. Sometimes words they would say would happen right after I typed them here. We got home and put it on again. At one point, my computer slowed down so that I could type only one letter at a time. This sort of stuff has always happened any time I write about Heidi. Coincidence. Coincidence. Coincidence. They happen, but they always increase when I write Heidi stories. 

78   Yesterday a good friend of mine, Debbie Allustiarti, posted this incredible guitarist doing an astounding version of...Billy Jean. 

79  This morning I had the teevee on, and they talked about a new Martin Scorsese film coming out this week. It is called... Silence. 

80  Gottago.

81  Hope you enjoyed this stuff. Always fun.

82  But I gottago.

83  See you again. 

84  Live life.

85  Love life.

86  Peace.

~H~

fin.