Lefty Parent

Three years after my initial foray to Los Angeles in the fall of 1978, I finally found a mentor and the community built around her, which proved to be the first of two anchors that secured me to the city of angels and led to me finally seeing its palm trees and clear blue skies as home. The second anchor was a peer, later my life-partner, Sally, who it so happened, was another protégé of that same mentor.

As an older youth and a young adult, some of my most productive developmental times came when I had a compelling mentor and also a good circle of peers connected with that mentor. I think it is an ideal state for learning, whether the context is in or outside of formal education. To have a mentor at any point is a blessing, but the affect is amplified by having that circle of peers, as it were in academic terms, the “lab” that goes with the “lecture”. The wisdom of sought out authority (the mentor) is best integrated by using it to develop the agency that one can find in a circle of peers. This I see as different than most conventional classroom situations where the teacher administers and the students conform, and do not have the opportunity to become a “circle”, that is a self-governing group exercising power-with (rather than power-over) and choosing to give authority to their common mentor. continue reading »

In 1980, I spent a whirlwind year living with a wild girlfriend who was out of my league, and after it had run its highly developmental course, I was again facing that dilemma – out of work, out of money and with no real place to live, trying to find the path forward in my Los Angeles adventure (and amazingly enough finally eventually finding one). I could have freaked and baled for the Midwest, it could have even destroyed me, but I hung in there and kept breathing, and made it through in one piece, wiser and stronger and ready for the next chapter in my “Left Coast” odyssey.

Though I had thankfully lost my virginity before I came to Los Angeles (so any issues with breaking through that ice would not add to all my other challenges), this girlfriend, that I met as a co-worker at Lone Star Pictures, gave me a heady run in the world of sex, drugs and rock and roll. Though she eventually dumped me, I do owe her a debt of giving me a wild ride (to get that fantasy out of my system), maybe seeing more in me at the time than I saw in myself, buffing up my self-esteem, and thickening my skin for travails to follow. continue reading »

In 1979, I returned to Los Angeles after five months of purgatory with mononucleosis at my parents’ house in Dayton. I had only been in LA for one eventful month the previous fall, before symptoms of that nasty virus exhibited, my illness was diagnosed, and I bid a hasty retreat (determined to return) back to the Midwest to convalesce. Fortune presented me with an opportunity that is one of those moments in ones life that everything that follows depends on. So much so that my two kids today will sometimes note that they owe their existence to their dad winning $4400 on the game show “Password”.

It felt like purgatory because, for my own sense of self-respect and not feeling like a quitter, I knew I had to go back to Los Angeles even though I was very uncomfortable there, hated the place in fact, if I would have been willing to admit that. It seems like most everyone I had encountered there was either scheming or scamming or otherwise had a precarious grip on their life in the city of angels. I had not encountered the solid thoughtful people there, like my “Feminist Aunts” back in Ann Arbor, who were anchored and could help me anchor myself. Of course I had only been there a month or so before I baled with my mono. continue reading »

In 1978 I arrived at LAX on a plane from Denver, the last leg of my journey that began with leaving behind my hometown of Ann Arbor and seemingly all the values and community that encompassed my youth and went with that special college town. I had had a number of compelling adventures in my life so far, most notably eleven weeks of backpacking on my own through Europe, but none more profound than this half-baked plunge as a very little fish into the very huge pond of Los Angeles.

I had been warned! I had seen Andy Warhol’s movie “Heat” laying out in every grotesque detail the worst case scenario of being a nobody wannabe with delusions of grandeur in the City of the Angels. I had heard my fellow Michigander, Bob Seeger’s song “Hollywood Nights” and the Door’s “LA Woman”, and knew that there might be no there there in “tinsel town”. continue reading »

Unschooled and free-schooled kids, required at an earlier age than most to start charting their own life course (at least in terms of educational direction), tend to become more entrepreneurial as adults and less inclined to work for “the man” as they say. I have not seen statistics proving that out, but certainly a lot of anecdotal evidence. It certainly seems to be playing out in my own kids’ lives (both unschooled during normally high school years), with my 23-year-old son Eric a year into a small business venture, and my 19-year-old daughter Emma two years out from finding her first job at a small woman-owned café in the neighborhood. continue reading »

It is rare in our culture when any activity can capture the interest of and entertain both youth and adults, as I believe is the case in this very sophisticated game of obfuscation, divination, and the opportunity to share a laugh or two as well. The game “Balderdash”, the trademarked version of the game I first played as “Dictionary”, is just such an activity, a simple parlor game yet a very sophisticated exercise in word-smithing in the context of cultural awareness. Given that, it is still a game that a sharp pre-teen or older youth can master and go toe to toe with adults. My thirteen-year-old niece insists that we play the game at every family party, and with seven to ten of us participating, we have had a number of memorable sessions. continue reading »

After completing college in 1978, I decided to leave Ann Arbor for Los Angeles in a half-baked scheme to fling myself off the deep end and into adulthood in a big strange city, leaving behind my home town with its close and dear friends, plus ghosts and memories in every neighborhood, park, store and other venue from the 23 years of my young life there. Lacking a really well thought out plan, this one at least made me feel like I was moving forward with my life somehow.

I was readying myself to depart from my comfortable little university town, seemingly every inch of it so familiar to me with memories of one or another experience, good and bad, from my youth. All those tree-lined streets I had walked, barefoot and shirtless on warm summer nights, bundled in down jacket, wool beanie and scarf wrapped round my nose and mouth on pristinely frigid winter days, or in the spring rain, with or without an umbrella. All those parks I had frequented, for little league practice and games as a kid, later late night in their hidden tree groves to surreptitiously share a joint, bottle of wine, or a six-pack of beer with friends. The university buildings I had had classes in or the Graduate Library where I skulked the sub-basements looking for dusty tomes written by dead radicals. The many toy, hobby and other stores I had patronized to buy Avalon Hill board games, slot cars, plastic army men, Beatles and Simon and Garfunkel record albums. The movie theaters I had spent hundreds of hours in watching movies and those iconic blue-lit clocks up high to the side of the big screen assuring me that this particular movie adventure had a ways to go yet. continue reading »

I think many of us adults these days spend a fair amount of time playing computer and other video games as an escape and a stress reliever, yet a number of us complain about youth spending time playing their video and computer games instead of doing homework or “going outside to play”. I wonder if this disconnect exists because while freely acknowledging that our adult lives are very stressful, we aren’t willing to acknowledge that we have created a highly stressful environment for our kids at school, after school and with all those logistically complicated structured activities (sports, classes, etc.) on the weekends. continue reading »

It seems that since I was a kid, American public spaces have become, or at least believed by many parents to have become, dangerous venues for our youth. When I was a youth in my Midwestern college town, I could hop on my bike after school or on the weekend and go where I wished – the playground, the library, the toy store, a friend’s house – and my parents were okay with that. Thirty years later my kids never went any of these places without me or their mom coming along, functioning as security and transportation-captain, and making the excursion more of a planned logistical event than it ever was when I was a kid. continue reading »

An old rule of thumb of folk wisdom that I have adopted wholeheartedly is that, “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander”. I wouldn’t call this conventional wisdom, since applied to folks rather than fowl it challenges the path of least resistance of the patriarchal thread still strongly woven through our cultural trajectory. But I would recommend it as a simple metric for implementing the Golden Rule and promoting a society based on partnership rather than patriarchy.

A simple application of this rule, but metaphorically powerful I think in challenging male supremacy, is the logic of opening doors for other people. When I come to a doorway in a store or at my work just before another man I open the door for him, since I would do so for a woman. Conversely, if a woman gets to the door just before me I am comfortable letting them open it for me, since if the situation were reversed, I would be comfortable opening the door for her. continue reading »