The toxic pattern of ‘English Only’ that the United States, particularly our educational systems, has followed is as brutal as gladiatorial combat.” — Gary Holthaus

It wasn’t so long ago that Gary was at the library along Lauren Pelon providing a wonderful evening of her music and Gary’s words. Some years back Gary had a poetry group that met in Plainview that included Austin’s Betty Benner and Mable Hjelman. I was fortunate enough to later sit in with them and with the Austin Writer’s along with Dean, the town banker, also a good writer.

Gary Holthaus has another book Learning Native Wisdom that is currently an on-line-class at the college that Bruce Heiny facilitates. I’m hoping to find the book.

Another book that is interesting is by Emily White that I picked up some time ago at Barnes and Nobles: Lonely… Learning to Live with Solitude. I’m not exactly living in solitude but I do spend much of my time alone when I’m not working sitting on the couch reading or emailing a few friends and not willing to listen to television.

Last Sunday I spent time with Harold Hansen, another “younger” aging classmate at McDonalds. We were classmates together in school and we were both in Miss Morey’s room. We’ve both aged a bit over the years and Harold does a better job of keeping in touch with people. He also brought some black and white class pictures along; one from Kindergarten and first grade at Shaw School and pictures from fifth and sixth grades at Banfield. We were kind of stuck on most of the names in the Kindergarten photo.

One of my favorite lines from one of Dylan’s songs reads: “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” I’m guessing anyone interested in Dylan has seen the photograph of Dylan and his base player biking down Rochester’s Broadway at Grinders.