a natural drift

Eulogy for the Misfits, the Tenderhearteds

Posted in Observations, People on April 5, 2017 by Vince.Puzick

For all who feel they don’t quite fit
Inspired by and in memory of Chris Winter, 8/6/86 – 4/5/16

Sometimes this world was too large for you. Sometimes, too small.

Too large because it seemed you could not find your place. It didn’t always feel inviting. Didn’t offer an easy chair to kick-back, where you could sink in and be yourself.

Too small because it could not contain what you brought into this space, what you filled it with – your heart, your laughter, your humor, your spirit.

Sometimes, I remember, when you entered the room, what you presented to the world screamed that you were unapproachable, don’t touch, hands-off. Let me be. But on the inside you sought acknowledgement, notice, connection.

On other days, the exterior you presented to the world whispered “Here I am. Notice me” and your interior throbbed with loneliness, sadness, with fatigue from your struggle to be in that world that was, at the same time, too big and too small.

I could feel your state of being when we would hug – even if it was brief – because you would either relax into the embrace, body heavy against my chest, your arms embracing back. Or, on bad days, your grip would be limp, your torso rigid. Those days you needed to be held more but you desired it less.

You had such unbridled creativity and didn’t always know how to channel it. Your fascination with The Stanley Hotel, and by extension, King’s The Shining, was riveting to observe. You knew the architecture, knew the backstory. And that time you built the replica of the Titanic! You knew details about the Titanic that we didn’t. You knew answers to questions we didn’t even know to ask.

Maybe we always struggled with that, knowing which questions to ask.

You didn’t see the world as others do – and you wondered why. You saw this disconnect as something “wrong” with you – rather than seeing it, maybe, as a shortcoming in the world around you.

Sometimes I wondered, we asked, why you couldn’t see the world, see you, as we did. Was that the wrong question? Maybe we needed to ask how you saw the world. Did you see it as too big, one vast ocean? Or too small like the chamber of a heart? How can we fit in this space that seemed sized for somebody else?

You were fiercely independent yet had such close bonds with those you would let in. And when we were in, you were fiercely loyal and loving. Which is why losing you touches us so deeply. We thought that since we were in, we knew you. We had you and you, us.

Strength to fight yet tenderhearted; bold but sheepish; spirit and flesh; engaging but distant.

Oh, how we wanted to bridge that distance.

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dic-tion-ar-y

Posted in Observations, Teaching, Writing on October 1, 2016 by Vince.Puzick

I’ve always been relatively neutral in the hard copy book versus kindle versions debate. I like the feel and touch of paperbacks or hardcovers, but not having those formats is not necessarily a deal breaker for me. I understand the sentimentality of holding a book in one’s hand, maybe marking cool images or commenting on passages in the margin. And I get the convenience of having five or six or ten novels on my Kindle – easily accessible at any point. The highlight and annotation features on the Kindle are great to use. Regardless of format, it’s the content that stimulates my thinking or moves me emotionally.

This past week, though, when I was visiting a second grade class, I was intrigued by the student’s introduction to dictionary work. She was working with a small group of five students and introduced the task to them.The teacher admitted it was a rough intro; we’ve all been there as veteran teachers. You just slightly underestimate kids’ readiness to tackle the learning.

The target word, pulled from the students’ reading, was “horror.” The teacher distributed five copies of the Scholastic Children’s Dictionary and students dug in. The teacher worked with them on header words at the top of each page. When all the students were on the page with the beautiful picture of the horse, she directed their attention to the different entries until they found “horror.”

At one point, a girl in the group said, “This is hard. So many words!”

And it was at that point that my note taking on the class took a turn. I continued to listen and watch, but my attentiveness shifted to reflection rather than observation. She is so right. So many words on that page. And so many pages!

I went back to my elementary days and the fascination with dictionaries. We had dictionary games in fifth and sixth grade. The teacher would give us a word and we would try to guess the definition. Then the students with dictionaries would find the word, read the definition, and we would laugh if we were far off and cheer when somebody was close to the definition.

In all honesty, during my second grade classroom observation, I got a bit sentimental and nostalgic for those hard copy dictionaries. I watched as kids negotiated their way through the thick book, possibly the thickest book they have held in their hands.

I realized that with Google and with Siri, I can do a search or simply ask for the definition of a word. On my Kindle, I can click a word and see the definition. As can the students in that second grade class. And all of a sudden I felt a bit of sadness for them.

I loved having that dictionary open on my desk in Mrs. Meyer’s sixth grade class. And not just to find the target word of the day or to seek out the definition of the word she called out. I liked reading the word above the target word and the word after it. I liked to flip a few pages and find some random words to explore.

And I remember being introduced to the Oxford English dictionary in Dr. Boni’s class at Colorado State University and having the same reaction as the young second grade scholar: “So many words!”

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To-do List: Things I Have Never Written About (but maybe should)

Posted in Observations, People, Places, Teaching, Writing on September 28, 2016 by Vince.Puzick

Colorado Springs. I have written about places before – different houses we’ve lived in, places I have hiked or fished. Mesa Verde. Lost Creek Wilderness Area. But I have never written about my hometown with any real focus or commitment. I was born and raised here, have seen the changes that time and people have brought to the city, and have observed how things have stayed the same, too. I’ve wondered about the identify of the place – home of Fort Carson, the Air Force Academy, NORAD, Focus on the Family (a transplant from California). I’ve pondered Penrose Hospital – the first building to rise up over ten stories, my mother’s employer for 40 years, my birthplace. I’ve thought about the neighborhoods – Wood Avenue, Tejon Street with tree-lined homes of doctors, lawyers, and Colorado College professors. Of Roswell, the homes of blue-collar workers from the assembly line who worked with my dad. How Colorado Springs sits at the base of Pikes Peak, America’s mountain, the Colorado 14er furthest to the east. It’s not a mountain town or a town on the prairie. Military town? College town? Tourist destination? Olympic City (I heard that on the TV)?
Baseball. America’s pastime. My boyhood passion. I played in little league baseball starting when I was eight years old and played through high school. I was on the Red Sox, the A’s, the Orioles. We played “homerun derby,” 500, wiffle ball at Bonny Park. We mimicked our heroes – Reggie Jackson, Clemente, Bob Gibson. Me mocked our foes – Pete Rose, Yaz, Wilbur Wood. I played epic one-on-one pitch-and-hit battles with my older, southpaw brother. He struck me out way more often than I got hits off of him. I chased him through the fields surrounding our house, me waving the bat above my head. I was never a good loser. Ten summers of organized ball. Family vacations postponed until August and built around little league schedules – Saturday morning games, afternoon practices. Championships were celebrated. Losses were mourned. Friendships made.
My Mother. I have written relentlessly, filled up reams, about my father. I have only rarely written about my mother. Short bursts of an image of her, a recollection of a conversation, or her devotion to a nursing career. I wrote a poem about her once, “Sestina for the Nuns,” about her work at Penrose Hospital, run by the Sisters of Charity. I have down some notes, and I have certainly pondered her life, but I have not written about her with the same sustained energy and focus that I have about my father. Maybe it is the same as poetry; we are motivated by the pain of the human experience to write poetry more than we are motivated from that place of beauty and peace. Maybe it has been easier to write about the dysfunction of my dad than the strength and consistency of my mother. I have not written about our evening conversation at Penrose Hospital, her first bout with lung cancer, when the loudspeaker said “Visiting hours end in 15 minutes” and I stayed another 45. The staff, her colleagues, understood.
Reluctant Readers. I was a reluctant reader throughout high school. A typical high school boy (some may argue that it doesn’t have to be typical), I was more interested in baseball, backpacking, and eventually beer than in books. I was, still am, a strong reader, but in school I would make my way through the assigned reading and basically call it good. I’d devour Sports Illustrated. Outdoor Life. Field and Stream. It wasn’t until I worked in a factory, White Automotive, after dropping out of college, that I became interested in the written word. And my interest was borne from the impulse to write while working on the assembly line at Whitco. And it wasn’t until I declared myself an English major – due to that interest in writing rather than reading – that I turned the corner as a reader. I was naïve, in fact, when I declared as an English major and came to realize, you know, how much actual reading that academic major required. Add on a minor in history and my nights were spent in Morgan Library on the CSU campus.
Fatherhood. I was 36 years old when my daughter was born. I have written some things about her – poems, mainly, and occasional observances of her life – but I have not written about my own observations about and experiences as a father. For a long part of that time, I was a single father. Jessica’s mother and I were divorced when Jess was about a year old, so I experienced being a parent with shared custody. When Jess entered middle school, she lived with me for all but her 8^th grade year. I haven’t written about the joy of watching her mature. I haven’t written about the conversation in the kitchen that gradually grew heated as it headed to an argument and then, in a memorable moment, turned to provide such a lesson. So here it is: I was standing at the kitchen sink, rinsing that night’s dinner dishes. Jessica was leaning against the doorframe between the kitchen and the dining room. I don’t recall the topic of our conversation, but it was escalating. I finally said to her, “Jess, I am learning what it is like to parent a 16-year old.” She looked across the kitchen at me and said “And I’m learning what it’s like to be 16.” But I haven’t written about that.
Teaching. For nearly 30 years, I have pursued my career in education. The first 15 of those years were in the classroom. I have written a brief article or two about specific strategies or instructional practices, but I have not explored my own philosophies, perspectives, or experiences in the classroom or in my roles outside of the classroom. I haven’t written about the moments that evoked great pride in my students: the student journalists on the Palmer newspaper (The Lever); the scores on the IB exams; the conversations about Song of Solomon, Mary Oliver and Eavan Boland poetry, the narratives we wrote. Mike and Ian emphatically pointing at the book and yelling “Let’s go back to the text! Where’s the evidence?” I haven’t written about those less-than-stellar moments of my teaching – the sarcastic response, the dropped f-bomb, the poorly planned lesson. I haven’t written about the tears shed at the loss of a student due to a heart problem, the ache in my heart hearing about a student suicide, the collective grief over Columbine.
On Keeping a Notebook. Or this one could be called Regrets. I have had maybe two dozen attempts at keeping some sort of a writer’s notebook for a long, long time. Only in the last 5-7 years, though, have I routinely written in one. I have had some great starts in the past, but I could never really settle on what the notebook should “look like” – what should be written, how should that writing sound. None of that matters. Not the way entries look on the page. Not the way they sound. Dated or undated entries. Should it read like a diary or like Lewis and Clark’s journals? Visuals and drawings like da Vinci? None of that matters. Just get stuff down. Instead, I only have memory and recall to draw from. So I should write about writing … I should write about keeping a writer’s notebook to those who are reluctant to do so or not sure why or what or what it should look like. Just show up. Lined or unlined? College-ruled or narrow? It. Does. Not. Matter. Writing does.

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My (first) Tattoo;

Posted in Observations, People on August 21, 2016 by Vince.Puzick

On the drive to the tattoo parlor (do they still call them “parlors”?) I had my usual second- guessing.

What if it comes out bad? Really bad?
Are tattoos a “need” or a “want”? (As my mother’s voice echoed in my head in chorus with my own voice when I spoke in the past with my daughter about her budgeting practices.)
And ultimately, do I really want to do this?

The answers arrived at each stoplight.

If it comes out bad, really bad, I can wear high socks in the summer and long pants in the winter. (I was not clear on the line between a “bad” tattoo and a “really bad” tattoo; I would know it when I see it.) Since I had decided that the placement would be on my right calf, it would not be blatant. With that placement, it would not be obvious to people when we met. It wasn’t like I was getting it on my cheek where it would scream “Here I am! Look at me!” And since I wouldn’t be able to see it myself without some gymnastic contortions, I could pretend it wasn’t there. Disaster in the form of embarrassment and humiliation could be avoided if it turns out really bad.

Of course tattoos are “a want” and not “a need.” It’s a luxury item. It’s an adornment. It’s a statement, I guess, of some value, belief, some passion or interest that a person has. We can make statements in other ways. Write a blog. Post a FB rant or pic. Buy a t-shirt. Tweet or Snap it. Those expressions are fleeting, though, and the statement would have to be made repeatedly to “stick.”

“Well,” I said to myself at the stoplight at Forge Road and Garden of the Gods Road. “No need to worry about if this statement ‘will stick’; it’s what you would call permanent.”

A need or a want? I was in a place where I could financially afford it. And to answer my mother’s voice rattling around in there, I may have even said out loud in my car: “I’m 59 years old. And she’s not alive to witness it.” [I remember when I got my ear pierced and went over to her apartment. When she noticed the ear ring, she said “Vincent! I told you if you ever got a piercing or a tattoo, you were not welcome in my house!” (She was joking to make a point, sort of, about that.) I looked at her and said “Mom, I’m 35.”] Today, in this day of less stigma about and much greater acceptance of body art, I think she would say something like “you know, some of them come out very beautiful” and she might pause and then add “but some come out bad. Really bad.”

My second-guessing about “a want” was answered by the time I reached 30th Street.

The second-guessing question that remained, “do I really want this,” moved back and forth from the back of my mind to the front of my mind for the whole trip. The other questions were actually easier, so as they pushed their way to the front of my mind, I answered them. I had about seven minutes until I reached Redemption Tattoo Shop on west Colorado Avenue.

I had debated on whether I “really want to do this” for several years. My daughter, Jessica, who got her first ink on the day she turned 18, was now in a place where she rolled her eyes whenever I showed her a sketch of a tattoo idea or even mentioned it. She had heard it for years. Jannetta was the same way. If Jessica and Jannetta were in the same room and I mentioned my ideas or even my desire to get a tattoo, they would roll their eyes in perfect synchronization. They didn’t know why I had any hesitation; they attributed it to the anticipated pain of the needle. They attributed my lack of conviction to the whole idea of body art in any form. I didn’t even know why. Fears of really bad tattoos. Fears of not being able to go to my deceased mother’s apartment.

I had cried wolf before. Told them of my plans. I posted status updates on Facebook seeking recommendations for artists and parlors (or shops). People responded with names and locations but I never took that step of actually, you know, going to the shop.

For months, ok — years, I sketched out designs. I had random images that I had roughed out in my mind and on paper. I had images from the internet that I thought would be cool. I reached the decision that I would get a tattoo inspired by my passion for fly fishing. Yeah, that would be it. Some of the fly fishing guides that I hung out with had some cool fish and river and nature designs. I started to sketch out some ideas. I considered using a line from Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” or the line from Emmylou Harris, “I am standing by the river; I’ll be standing here forever.”

Jessica rolled her eyes. Jannetta gave me a look and asked me to pass the chicken.

To make matters worse, I started to see people’s tattoos of a simple yet sophisticated punctuation mark: the semicolon. I always have liked the semicolon. I didn’t know so many others shared my passion for it! Then I read about Project ;

Project Semicolon’s vision is to increase awareness and initiate honest conversation about suicide, mental health, and addiction. I sought out more information. And the need for this conversation is not lost on me. I have been in recovery from my own addictions for a little over 30 years. When I was 19, and again when I was 26 and only hours before I entered my own period of recovery, I had what they would call suicidal ideation. The recovery rooms have seats filled with those who have battled similar suicidal thoughts and fought wars with their own self-harm. If those battles aren’t tough enough, we usually fight them in silence and in isolation. We feel alone.

I have had very close friends, and friends of family members, and former high school students who have committed suicide. I have loved ones who, through some periods of their lives, battle the thought everyday. I won’t share their story here out of respect for the families and friends; it is their story to tell, in so many ways, and it is for them to decide the time to initiate any public conversations about their experiences.

I have come to hate it when people in recovery rooms say “I was going to suicide but I didn’t have the guts for it. I was too chicken.” We need to change the language. “I was going to suicide but for some reason, I still held onto an inkling of hope, a spark, something or some Higher Power kept me moving forward. I had enough courage to go on.”

So I decided on Monday morning, August 15, to get the semicolon tattoo. Tuesday morning, I messaged my friend (who also came highly recommended), Josh Heney, at Redemption Tattoo Company my idea for the image. He responded a little later, and I tweaked the design.

I had put the fly fishing idea and moved ahead with the semicolon project. I didn’t tell anybody I was going on Friday afternoon. I texted Jessica and Jannetta the mock-up of the art work that I designed myself. They expressed enthusiasm for the image, and I am sure they rolled their eyes that I would ever get it done.

As I turned right from 31st Street on to Colorado Avenue and saw the shop’s sign, I was confident in my decision. Josh showed me his design and then put the pattern on my right calf. I studied it in the mirror and we were ready to roll.

For the next 75 minutes or so, I lay face down, motionless, and speechless. I was not going to move and I did not want to talk to the artist at work. It’s my first tattoo — do not distract him with some sort of idle chit-chat! At one point, his fellow artist walked through, stopped and observed. “That’s cool. A different approach to the semicolon design.” I felt inspired.

When I drew up the design, I started with the semicolon. That’s the whole point. And then I thought of my own passion for and interest in writing. In fact, when I was 19 and battling my own depressive and suicidal thoughts, I would go home at midnight from the factory where I worked and I would write –poems, short stories, one-act plays. The writing, as far as writing goes, sucked. But it allowed me to get my story down, to get my story out, to begin to create a voice.

semicolon

As I shifted to lean on my forearms, I thought of my own friends, family, and former students who have been impacted by suicide, mental health issues, and addiction. I thought of those who have not yet found a solution that they either don’t know exists or don’t believe they deserve.

And to them, I say, you are the writer, your life is your story.

Your story is not over; _________________.

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The Power of Modeling

Posted in People, Teaching, Writing with tags modeling, teaching, writing on September 28, 2015 by Vince.Puzick

I’ve written six 500-word (or so) memoirs this past month and a half. That’s due, in part, because of my love of the genre, but primarily these memoirs were composed as part of the instructional process as I guided two classes of high school sophomores (their triptych memoir as discussed in the Kirby’s article “Contemporary Memoir: A 21st Century Genre Ideal for Teens”) and four classes of seniors through the process of composing their own memoirs.

Modeling is a powerful practice in the writing classroom — if not in all classrooms. I wanted students to hear my thinking processes as I grappled with the same assignment in front of them. My modeling moved from the initial brainstorming to uncover potential memoir topics (I used a couple of different strategies — “Stones in the River” and “Map My Neighborhood” — to approach the assignment) to drafting and revising the essay, and cleaning it up with some editing strategies. We did Peter Elbow’s “looping” strategy to get to the heart of the reflection of the memoir — why is this memory even significant? At each step of the way, using the document camera, my students listened as I thought through my own writing.

As an aside, one of the examples of instructional modeling I have experienced as a student was on the South Platte River with my friend and fishing guide, Steve. As he taught me the techniques for putting a dry fly on the water so that it floated naturally to entice fish, he modeled the casting motion, watched as I attempted the same, and guided my “revision” process standing there side-by-side. He didn’t “tell me” how to cast. He showed me. He didn’t demonstrate and walk away. He demonstrated then responded to my attempts with guidance, praise, and (because he’s my friend) some good natured kidding.

One discovery I made in this instructional practice is that I need to be careful as I talk through my process. I want students to maintain ownership over their own papers, so I want them to mimic the thinking and decision-making process. I model the thinking so they can follow a similar process to make decisions about their own writing. One of my favorite questions I pose to myself and, later, pose to my students begins “What if…?”

“What if I develop this potential topic with some details and see what I discover; is it meaty enough to pursue?”
“What if I craft these two sentences into one?”
“What if I break this paragraph into a couple of paragraphs to change the pace and emphasis? (Yes, that would mean that I may have a one-sentence paragraph.)”

So I wrote one in each of my classes. Why? Why didn’t I just fudge it and show subsequent classes the brainstormings and drafts that I did in the earlier class periods? Simple. The product at the end of the brainstorming session is only as valuable as the process to develop it. I liken it to downloading a PDF of a powerpoint from the Internet rather than actually being at the presentation where the powerpoint was used. Sure, I have a product — but I don’t hear the nuance, hear the thinking behind the slides, the inflection of voice, the speaker’s laugh or the asides.

Students benefit from hearing the thinking behind the arrows moving their eyes around the brainstorming; they need the reasons why things are scratched out and written over in the draft; they need to hear how the ideas originally in the last paragraph end up being presented earlier and throughout the essay instead of lumped together at the end. They need to hear me grapple with a decision, struggle with a revision, rethink where I was going as I head where the memoir needs to go.

While none of this may seem particularly new or groundbreaking, as I worked through the process with students, it became clear how powerful modeling is to give guidance, to stimulate thinking, and, ultimately, to release responsibility for their own work.

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Posted in Teaching on September 6, 2015 by Vince.Puzick

Challenge yourself! 15 things to try out this school year @sylviaduckworth @austin_gagier8 #edchat #edtech pic.twitter.com/Km9wGpowpZ

— MindShift (@MindShiftKQED) September 5, 2015

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Lit as Protest

Posted in Teaching, Writing on September 6, 2015 by Vince.Puzick

All #literature is protest. You can’t name a single #novel that isn’t protest. RICHARD WRIGHT pic.twitter.com/tTxo3PjgyA

— Jon Winokur (@AdviceToWriters) September 5, 2015

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The Memoirist at the High School Reunion: Part 1

Posted in People, Writing on August 23, 2015 by Vince.Puzick

Mining for gold. Drinking from a firehose. Kid in a candy shop.

Whatever idiom used, when you fancy yourself to be a memoirist, going to a high school reunion is not just a trip down memory lane. It’s not mere reminiscing, this conversation over finger foods; it’s priming the pump. It’s kindling for the fire. It’s prewriting.

I spent about eight hours with folks from my high school’s graduating class, the class of 1975 from William J. Palmer High School, this past weekend. From teammates on the baseball team, to the academically motivated kids I passed in the hallways but didn’t really share many classes, to the band kids, smoker kids, kids who climbed on rocks — the 100+ or so who made it to the 40th reunion mingled and shared stories of the past and current stories of their present.

In more than a couple of conversations, I started questions with “Do you remember …” which must be some sort of memoirist mantra. The memoirist is cursed; remembering isn’t just about the memory filtered by time and distance and shaped by other experiences. The memory isn’t just about recalling the facts — or something resembling the facts. As Mary Karr said in her Paris Review interview “More important than remembering the facts, I have to poke at my own innards.” It’s about finding some meaning in the remembered experience, some emotional truth in the facts.

I’d ask “do you remember …” in part to confirm that the experience did, indeed, happen but also to see and hear the emotion behind their recollection. Did they cringe or grin? Grimace in disbelief at the “man, we’re lucky to be alive” memory? I didn’t look at their response to be a mirror of my own recollection (it couldn’t be!) but as a way to access my own response, my own emotion to that memory.

Members of Palmer High's 1975 baseball team. Missing some key guys, though!

So the memoirist at the high school reunion gets to hear different perspectives around shared experiences — which are not shared memories. A bunch of boys were sitting in the booth in the back of the Bon Pharmacy enjoying cherry cokes (when they actually had to mix the cherry syrup with the Coca-Cola at the fountain) when Dave P (maybe 13 or 14 at the time) snagged that housefly right out of the air and then, for twenty-five cents, swallowed it down. Taken separately, that event is just evidence of the strangeness of teen boys; in the bigger context of my life around Bonny Park, it speaks of a time and of relationships that were impactful. Similarly, we were all at Gerry Berry Stadium when Tony S, paralyzed from the waist down in a car accident several months before graduation, received his diploma, pushed across the stage in a wheelchair. Yes, the scene was emotional. But it is an event in a larger memory landscape that has meaning, that shapes me, that is part of the arc from the booth at the pharmacy to graduating from high school.

Mary Karr says “With memoir, you have the events and manufacture or hopefully deduce the concept.” I have the events — and a headful of notes about more.

So if memoirs are beyond the “what” of remembering; it is the “why” of remembering. What is worth writing about? And why is it worthy of that time, energy, and emotion?

I’ll need to get back to you.

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About Family, Family History, and Proximity

Posted in Observations, People on March 24, 2015 by Vince.Puzick

My childhood home was at the north end of Colorado Springs. Not the Historic Northend as some of the new street signs read. Further north than that. Where Cascade Avenue basically came to an end cutting through fields of yucca and prickly pear cactus and few trees. The north end. Nothing really historic or glamorous about it. Just the outskirts of town.

I grew up bordered by my father’s family. Aunt Millie. Aunt Mary. And when I was still a baby, Grandpa Nick and Grandma Eva. Aunt Dorothy — who had married my Uncle Steve. For some reason, a reason I hope to discover or at least hypothesize in this current writing project, all of the Puzick clan stuck together and carved out a little niche of four households barely a half a mile apart. Not only within walking distance, but, if the wind was blowing right, within shouting distance of each other.

Not so with my mother’s family. She and her siblings — two brothers — spread out from their South Dakota and Wyoming childhood homes and pursued their independently from one another. Reunions with them seemed special because the times together were infrequent. Cousins were born and got so much bigger since the last time we saw each other. Little kids grew into teens then adults.

So we had this great and immediate proximity to the Puzick side of the family. Not so much with the Wertenberger side, my mother’s side. And so with this proximity we knew the Puzick story. The coal mining side. The immigrant Serbian side. The German side was distant. Less intimate. Overshadowed.

And the richness of a family tapestry cannot be fully seen in the threads of one texture. And so this writing project is the other thread. to be continued …

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So you’re a native! So what …

Posted in Observations, People, Places on February 4, 2015 by Vince.Puzick

I was having breakfast a few weeks ago with a new friend who recently moved to Colorado Springs, and during the conversation I said “I’m a native.”

“You’re the second or third person I’ve talked with in the last few weeks that pretty quickly points out that you’re a native of Colorado Springs. Why is that?”

It’s an interesting question. In our very mobile population, it is almost expected that people will move to different parts of the country or, living in a city with five military bases such as Colorado Springs, different parts of the world. When I ask, I’m usually expecting the answer to “where are you from” to be something other than Colorado Springs.

So from my friend’s response, my blurting out that “I’m a native” must seem, what, a little prideful? Does it come across as creating difference – “you’re new, I’m a native”? — and therefore maybe a little arrogant?

I have pondered why it is important to express, blurt out even, that I am a native of Colorado Springs.

Perhaps it is out of nostalgia. I remember when … the north end was not even “The Old North End.” The north end of Colorado Springs was basically north of Uintah Street, or maybe even north of Fillmore. The north end ended where Nevada Avenue merges onto I-25. Rockrimmon was simply the site of the old Pikeview coal mine and, more when I was growing up, high school woodsies and keggers.

Penrose Main on Cascade Avenue was simply Penrose. The 13-story red and white building was the only Penrose Hospital in town. And Penrose was a visible and meaningful landmark in the town. Until the Holly Sugar building was built in the early 1960’s, Penrose rose up out of the tree-lined streets of the north end like a beacon. One could always orient one’s self by finding where he was in relation to Penrose Hospital. And when it is your place of birth, it grounds one in familiarity, foundation, reassurance. Coupled with the fact that I was born there, Penrose was also where my mother was trained and as a nurse and then employed for some 40+ years.

The Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo breakfast was a small town event. So was the 4^th of July gathering in Memorial Park. The population throughout the 1960’s was only around 90,000 residents. Today, the 4^th of July event draws more people than that to the Park.

I remember when the Manitou Incline actually had a train car that pulled people the mile up. Those were saner, simpler times. And Jones Park was a hiking and backpacking experience where you would not see another hiker (and mountain bikes were not even invented) for the entire weekend.

Does it just come down to nostalgia? Maybe it is just due to the fact that I am getting older faster and reminiscing more often and more deeply. The old and familiar of Colorado Springs still serves as my anchor despite the changes. I love walking down Tejon Street despite the loss of Michelle’s ice cream, Lorig’s cowboy boots and hats, Hibbard’s pneumatic tubes where your payments zoomed out of sight and where the elevator was tended by an elevator man. I love the presence of the Fine Arts Center even though I do not take advantage of the richness of it as often as I should. Despite my own liberal leanings, I think NORAD is awesome, the Academy is beautiful, and Fort Carson (where my uncle worked) is pretty cool.

But maybe my blurting out “I’m a native” is also about roots and place, about the rootedness in where you “grew up.” When I told my friends in California, after living there for all of the 1980’s, that I was moving back to Colorado Springs, they thought I was crazy. (I’m sure it was, ironically, native Californians who mostly responded with this disbelief.)

But there is something about waking up with the sun-reddened granite of the Pikes Peak summit greeting you on fall mornings that lingers bone deep. (It is also knowing “Pikes Peak” has no possessive apostrophe and being OK with that despite being an English teacher.) It’s knowing the effect of the chinook winds, that today’s snow may be gone by sunset tomorrow. Or even later today.

It’s knowing that despite living in the most conservative of all counties in Colorado, we weathered Proposition 2 twenty years ago. It means we can enjoy a rich arts community even if it feels tiny at times. It means despite our growth, we can enjoy nature experiences within our city limits and wilderness experiences within an hour’s drive.

So, yeah, I blurt out that I am a Colorado Springs native. It’s a statement that says welcome to what I have known for many years, and it serves as the segue into the near-apology of “I know, things could be better here.” Maybe it’s a bit protective of a life that once was and is not the reality today. Maybe it is an invitation that says let’s continue to create a space together that has all the closeness of a small town but the richness that 400,000 people may bring.

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