Shutdown and Shut Up

I think a very telling aspect of this “partial” shutdown of government is that all those wonderful folks in Congress are still getting paid. The 800,000 people who are not, apparently, don’t matter. The Tea Party folks call themselves “patriots.” I wonder if they know what that means. They are extorting the American people, they say, for our own good. The health care reform act was passed by both houses and signed into law. Now, guys like Ted Cruz are attempting to hold it hostage because they don’t like it. I’m not sure I like it either, but if I follow their example, I can pick and choose the laws I want to obey.

Well, I kind of do that already, so who am I to talk?

I’m not a Democrat and I’m not a Republican. I think both parties have damaged themselves with this gamesmanship. We (the American people) are mostly annoyed by the situation. This is kind of dangerous and can give rise to other interests gaining listeners (and votes). While that might be a breath of healthy clean air, it also bears watching very closely. People should study the politics of Europe in the late Twenties and Thirties of the last century. Peoples’ disenchantment with the regimes in power had disastrous results.

The only good thing, I think, to come out of this congressional ineptitude is that it is providing a rich, albeit squirmy, wealth of material for cartoonists and humorists. I really wish Mark Twain were alive and writing and Molly Ivins would be having a ball skewering Mr. Cruz.

It would be interesting to discover who the big insurance lobby is supporting during this whacko situation.

Follow the Money

Our illustrious government is trying have have it both ways. What I mean by that is in the 1980s, the Reagan administration knew full well that Saddam Hussein was using chemical weapons, not only on the Iranian army, but also on his own people, the Kurds. This is not conjecture, this is fact. It is also true that the Reagan administration was selling components to the Iraqis that were being used in the manufacture of mustard gas weapons. Recently declassified Pentagon documents confirm that we (and I use that term loosely) also knew about that. The United States condemned the use of chemical weapons, but imposed no sanctions and kept the pipeline of components open and provided battlefield intelligence about how and where to use the weapons against the Iranians.

So. Now we are outraged at the inhumanity of the Syrian regime using sarin on their own people? We are suddenly taking the moral high ground? We have been utterly complicit in a regime’s use of chemical weapons and now we want to attack an idiot because he used chemical weapons and, probably, got the strength of the mixture wrong? Why weren't we outraged when Iraq was the culprit? This dichotomy is how the rest of the world sees us. It's no wonder we might be just a tad unpopular.

I am seriously confused. It really makes me wonder what our government’s true motivations are. My cynicism tells me to take a step back and try to follow the money. All wars are about money, ever since the weapons were fists and stones. Who stands to gain if we launch a bevy of Tomahawks at Syria? I do not know the answer to that question. As far as I can see, everybody loses. Everybody. Well, except the few who won’t. I wonder who they are because they’re calling the shots in this ridiculous and egregious bullshit. I do understand that, should we attack Assad’s regime, the people of Syria will just be in the way and that we will just be adding to the unbelievable body count. And not one, not a single one, of those civilians deserved to die.

Personal Transport

Yesterday, January 29, marked the anniversary of Robert Frost passing from this world. He died in 1963. I was a couple months shy of thirteen. His passing was emotional for me because I loved what he did. His poetry was accessible to me. It was also way beyond me, but the stories he told were right THERE. The depth of his thoughts and vision wouldn't strike me for years, but I suspected something there. I just didn't have enough of a world view to find it. Besides, the world was all about me in those days. Sometimes, it still is and I miss things that I shouldn't miss. In this poem to honor Mr. Frost I've tried to emulate some of that for which he was famous and of which he was the master craftsman. I have no such pretensions. Hope it rings something in you.

Personal Transport

A steaming sip of fragrant tea

rouses mornings wrapped in fog,

walking beside the plumed dog

across a plain of memories,

calling the names of old

acquaintances, some deceased,

somehow puts my heart at ease

and draws me back into the fold.

The dog tugs freely at his leash,

reminding me gently of his need,

so I slow and pay him heed,

and wear the streetlamp halo I’m beneath.

The fog is silver, cold, and mute,

while I am upright, mulling there

adrift inside the familiar where

I cannot recognize my own wet boots

through my vague cosseted history

that ebbs and flows in this swirling fog,

yet dances like a happy dog

against the leash of mystery.

Hippy New Year

I’m sitting in the small community of River Meadows, between Sunriver and La Pine, Oregon, on the last evening of 2012. It’s been a hell of a year. Lots of good stuff, to be sure, but I have experienced more death this year than in any other year in my memory. I may look back on this year as The Year of Dying. I lost people very close to me and there were the very public deaths in the News. Wow. I could embark, here, upon a real downer of a story to post. Part of the situation, I’m sure, is my age. I’m currently sixty-two. People start dying right where I’m at. So, it goes with the territory. But still, I’m kind of a rookie at the personal part of it. The public part of it, mass shootings, stabbings, rapes, species destruction, genetic modification extinctions, all that stuff that drives us all nuts, well, it’s pervasive and has put an ironclad protective shield of dangerous cynicism around my normally airy sense of irony. It’s the Way of the World. It’s Nature. It’s Darwin at Work. It’s not about guns, it’s not about knives, it’s not about video games. It’s about people. If you want to stop the bleeding, heal the culture. Heal the people who are so marginalized and disconnected that they pick up a weapon and scream “Look At Me!”

But life is about choices. For this evening, I choose to leave that stuff under the rug. At least, for now and for the rest of this piece. Okay, so it’s a short piece. Bless all you readers. Bless your families and your loved ones. Bless us all. May the coming year be better than you hope and more than you dream. We all deserve it.

Birthday Babe

It was my mom’s birthday yesterday. She would have been 92 years old. Born in 1920, she witnessed a lot of change, a stunning amount when you think of it. Probably one of the greatest examples she gave me was that she embraced most of it. She watched the advances in aviation through the eyes of my dad, whose long career was all about flying. Advances in medicine became commonplace. She was behind the curve a bit on the social and generational changes, but I think that is just human nature. I’m using myself as an example here. I’ve reached a point where I do not follow popular culture and have no idea what the latest trends are in that made-up social realm. When I see some young hot actor or actress on TV, I have no idea who they are or what has made them hot. Here’s the shocker: I’m just not interested.

My mother decided, early on, that computers were pretty cool. She got her iPad and became pretty proficient with it in her late 80s. She loved playing word games and Solitare. She also enjoyed email, but grew disgusted with the spam. Haven’t we all?

So happy birthday, Mom. Quantum Physics being what it is, I’m sure you’re still here somewhere and I hope you’re having fun.

Ode to a Freezer

I’ve had an odd relationship with a Hotpoint freezer over the course of my entire life. I think it’s older than I am. That’s pretty good for a freezer. (All together now:) they sure don’t make ‘em like they used to. People are still made, pretty much, the same way we’ve always been made, but if practice really makes perfect, shouldn’t we be farther along as a species? Shouldn’t we know not to make so many people? Every problem we’re facing now as a species can be directly attributed to our overabundance of population. And not one of us is perfect, no matter how much practice has been going on.

But I digress…The freezer has been doing its thing, freezing things and keeping them frozen for over sixty years. My first real memories are of Buffalo, NY. The big ol’ white horizontal thing lived in the utility room just inside the back door because I’m sure that nobody was willing to wrestle it down to the basement. When I lived with my parents for all those years, it was mostly in the garage. It’s horizontal bulk has always been impressive. When I was big enough to peek over its edge I still wasn’t strong enough to release the latch, let alone lift the lid.

When I got bigger, I used to sneak things in there, just to see what would happen: worms, grasshoppers, lightning bugs…I was the perfect (?) little savage. It slowly dawned on me that the results were always strikingly similar and that the spark of life does not survive the interior of a Hotpoint freezer. It was a sobering realization and I stopped sacrificing invertibrate and insect creatures for the sake of my own personal curiosity. But when I caught my first trout, which I had to clean myself, it dawned on me that I could keep the head looking like a head by keeping it in the freezer. My mother resisted this, but I was persistent and eventually got my way. I’m not sure how long that fish head stayed in the freezer where I could look at it. I'm thinking at least two years. I'll bet my mom was glad to see it go when I finally lost interest.

My mother prepared food en masse and froze it so that she could, when she didn't feel like cooking or if we were in a hurry, feed us throughout the week by simply reheating the chunks of ice that came out of the big white box. This was way before the microwave revolution, so it can be firmly avowed that she was always way ahead of her time. The cycle of cooking and freezing continued to the very end. She was careful to instruct the rest of us, particularly my wife Laura, in the freezer’s proper care and use. I still find it odd that a reliable and steady freezing machine would have the name Hotpoint on it. Perhaps realizing that was my introduction to irony.

Today, my mother is gone, but, down in California, the freezer is still freezing to its little heart’s content. Mom and I joked many times that we should just bury her in the thing and be done with it. (I mean, you really could.) When it finally does, as it must, give up its electrical ghost, the true passing of an era will be complete. I'm hoping it will last a good long time yet.

Oh. Forgive me a shameless plug for my new website: www.jamesrichardstewart.com

Ideology is Not the Issue

I am staggering under the weight of this election year. This happens to me every time. I am not a Democrat. I am not a Republican. I grasp tightly to the notion of being Independent. Yes, that may be an illusion, but dammit, it’s my illusion. I vote for people, not an ideology. I try to gauge intent and whether or not a candidate is a good person. I’m consciously naïve in that regard. Character counts. When the poop hits the propeller, I want someone who will leap on the grenade, if need be, just as I hope that I would.

I am appalled at what is happening to my middle class. Both sides point at each other and cry foul. I am also appalled that ANYone would take ANYthing that Ayn Rand wrote and find it useable as a philosophy. That shows me an egregious lack of imagination and a profound disconnect with reality. I don’t find any credence whatsoever in a greed-is-good mindset. By definition, it is the problem, not any kind of solution. Financially, we are being bled like sacrificial lambs. Since the 80s, the greatest money-laundering scheme in the history of the world has been eroding capital from everyday working people. It has not abated, no matter which “party” is in power.

There is no such thing as “the liberal media.” It doesn’t exist. I am so tired of hearing it said: “that liberal media just ignores crucial things.” Folks, it is a CORPORATE MEDIA. Hello? Ask yourself who owns the airwaves. Follow the money. Even when I watch my beloved PBS, I see the underwriters include Big Energy and Big Banking. To me, that’s as close as I can get to defining the enemy.

I reckon the bottom line for me is that the manifestation of greed shows itself in profit at the expense of everyday people. A perfect example is the plight of farmers in Pennsylvania who have methane bubbling up through their wells as a fracking drill operates nearby. The company line is that fracking is just great engineering and that there is no correlation to environmental degradation and that we all must sacrifice for the greater good. Say what? A very pertinent question to ask is how much of that “natural” gas will stay in the community and how much will be sold abroad at an immense profit. There is no common sense to any of it. The scenario repeats itself across the board when you look at Big Energy.

Small Business is the lifeblood of this country. It is the American Dream. I hear that government just needs to “get out of the way” and Small Business will thrive. But the way things work is that if government gets out of the way, it will get out of the way for the giants too, which will allow them to sit their bloated butts on the markets and squeeze cash flow for everyone. That “getting out of the way” will, in my opinion, create a one-way highway that will NOT benefit the mom-and-pop farm or the small grocery it sells to in any significant way. We cannot consume our way to fiscal well-being. That is the big lie.

Any philosophy that encourages profit over the welfare of people and their way of life is egregiously wrong. Period. No amount of rhetoric will heal the oozing wound in our national psyche. Be very suspicious of any talking head that demonizes an opponent with unsubstantiated rumor, innuendo, and fast-and-easy sound bites. Consider the source and how it is portrayed. Who stands to benefit?

Everybody who votes in the coming election should pay attention, use their brains, and not vote against their own self interests. Think. Trust yourself. Don’t vote an ideology. Vote for people.

Perplexing Planning

The Republicans would have us believe that their vision for America is the right one, that they are carefully planning our return to greatness as a nation. Planning. Hmm. So, they planned their convention to be in South Florida smack dab in the worst part of hurricane season? Yep. That’s some planning.

And the Democrat’s convention will be in Charlotte, which is also potentially, but somewhat less so, in the teeth of the same season. Again, we have some planning issues. I guess I just don’t understand the thought process here. Maybe I’m being unfair and un-American. We should never kowtow to Nature. That would be cowardly.

Both of these political parties are so busy telling us what they think we want to hear that they have, perhaps, lost their grip on reality. I sincerely hope that the tens-of-thousands of people who will show up in these cities will have safe events.


Ah, reality. Perhaps we should encourage that our candidates, whoever they might be, pay attention to it and not generate more foggy rhetoric designed to make the other side look bad. It kind of reminds me of a knife fight aboard an inflatable life raft in really deep water.

Full Denim Jacket

I recently had lunch with a dear friend. It’s a bi-weekly get together and the talk ranges all over the spectrum of two minds who revel in critical thinking and getting it right. We dabble in physics, technology, sports, literature, life in general, and even politics. We’re both of a mind that politics should be for the people, so there’s lots of common ground. I don’t like talking politics, really, because I don’t really know who I am politically. I guess I’m an Eisenhower republican. At least, I’m comfortable saying that. It is vastly vague, but my friends on both the left and right nod as if they understand what I’m saying. I’m not sure I do, exactly, but I find the label fits me like good boots.

But that’s not what this is about. This is about loss. I wrote a couple weeks ago about it from a very personal place and I guess I’m not done. Some would call the loss I experienced that lunch day as trivial and perhaps it was, but it still broke my heart.

I’ve ridden motorcycles for most of my life, save for a decade, or so, when my kids were young. Fifteen years ago my lovely bride and I bought a Harley and have been grateful ever since. Friends and I have ridden all over Western North America during these last fifteen years and I will jump on and go at the falling of a chapeau. My summer riding jacket was new when I got the bike. It’s a standard Levi jacket, no big deal, but it has traveled with me for sixty-five thousand miles and is now held together with new denim in places, a lot of leather patches, and miles of memories.

I wore the tattered thing into the restaurant and hung it on a peg like a badge of honor. I’m proud of it. It’s been maintained when it could have been just thrown away and replaced. It’s like my own personal flag, much like the “freak flag” David Crosby sang about back in the Seventies. After lunch, I carried it out because I knew the heat of the day had crept in, as promised by the weather guys, and I knew I wasn’t going to wear it on the way back to work. I folded it carefully and put it in my port-side saddle bag. I threw a leg over and remembered that I’d locked the ignition and the keys were in the jacket pocket. Shit O. Deer. (Thank you David James Duncan.) So I got off and rummaged in the bag, pulled out the jacket, and got the keys. I felt a little hurried because lunch had gone on for a while and the sooner I could get back to work, the sooner I could finish my time and head home. I did not refold the jacket as carefully as I had. I just kind of wadded it up and stuffed it in there. The lid of the bag was hard to close and I knew there was quite a bit of strain on both the hinge and the latch. No matter. It would hold.

I finished the work day and headed home. I took the freeway, I-5 north, because I had a stop to make on the way and that was the most direct route. Heading up that hill to Portland, I can blow some of the carbon out and my bike does love a good snort. I can only guess what happened because I never saw it. I’d come up behind a big chip truck who was following two idiots. I dropped a gear and grabbed a big handful. My beautiful black machine flexed and took off like a big tractor shot from a cannon. Exhilaration. I pulled back into the center lane, eased off and settled into the last climb that defines the northern-most lip of the Willamette Valley. Suddenly, there was a mid-sized green car next to me with a pretty girl leaning out the window.

“Your bag is open,” she hollered. I reached behind me and, sure enough, it was. I snapped it shut, gave her a thumbs up and shouted “Thanks!”

Then, there was another car along side with the driver doing a charade that looked like he was pulling a coat around him. I waved and nodded as it dawned on me that he was probably talking about my jacket. Aw jeez.

There was no place to pull over. A truck lane yawned, but that was no good. Traffic was bunched and the next exit was two miles up the road. I decided it best to live through the ordeal and get off there. Sure enough, when I was able to stop, my beloved jacket was long gone. Grimly, I found my way to I-5 south and roared back to retrace my path. I did that twice, a seven-mile loop each time. Nothing. No jacket to be seen. Sick at heart, I rode home and sat with my chin in my hand, grieving. It was just a dumb old tattered Levi jacket I kept telling myself. All things must pass. The feelings brought my mom and dad back into focus and I just felt sad and lost. Enter Philosophy. I vowed to go check again on my way to work in the morning, which I did with the same result.

When there is no real alternative, we all seem to shrug and do whatever we can to deal with loss. We have choices. We can let loss overwhelm us or we can press on. It was a microcosm of what I’d gone through with losing my folks. Not as profound, certainly, but loss is loss and it’s weight was substantial. I’m sure the loss of my folks piggy-backed right aboard with this new setback and added some extra weight. I gave thanks for the pleasure the jacket had given me and more thanks for the memories I would always have from wearing it through heat and cold and dust and torrential wet. I found some comfort there.

I made it through the day and wearily threw my leg over for the ride home. I decided to take the freeway again. What the heck. I just putted up in the slow lane at about fifty-five scanning the breakdown strip. And there it was, twenty-four hours later, crumpled in a blue heap by the side of the road. All the rally pins were gone, broken and scattered by thousands of cars and trucks. The safety-pin-and-beads American flag was twisted and crushed beyond recognition, but the jacket was there and whole and fixable. I yelled “Thank you!” all the way home and even after I got there. It was a blessed feeling and lifted my heart to a lightness that made me downright giddy. Happy? Oh my, yes.

What I can take away from this, and you can too, is to keep trying, even after your rational mind gives up. Yeah, it’s just a dumb old jacket, but tell my heart that. There is a lesson here that I will be sorting out for a long time to come.

This'n That

This year is shaping up to be quite a year of transition (see previous post). My family has moved from taking care of my mom and dad to taking care of our house, which has been marginally maintained by yours truly. The yard is a disaster. The structure itself is solid, but we’re taking steps this summer and fall to be more proactive on drainage issues and will have concrete work done to accommodate that and to get ready for turning the carport into an actual garage. A garage will be very cool, but to accomplish that we will have to build a new shop. This will be problematic. It is certainly solvable, but won’t come without pain, both financial and physical. My tendons, ligaments, joints, and what little is left of my muscle mass are to be sorely tested, with emphasis on the sorely.

As usual, the issue is time. Making the time to get done what we need to get done is a challenge. Everybody I’ve talked to about how quickly 2012 is going agrees that it is a NASCAR year. The hammer is down and it is flying by. In NASCAR, the COT (Car of Tomorrow) is now the COP (Car of the Present) and they mostly go hard left (hard to imagine with some of the cops I know). If you talk to people on the left they are worried that we could lose our way and turn too hard to the right. If you talk to people on the right, they’re hopeful that we get onto a road course and have to turn to the right. But no matter which way the turns go, we are definitely clipping along at breakneck speed.

My generation is, pretty much, in power (see plutocratic oligarchy). I am older than the current President. I’m confident that this trend will continue. The last two guys are Boomers, just like me, but I’m not sure I have a whole lot in common with either of them. The life that has formed my basic philosophy has been conducted much differently. I’m not exactly devoid of ambition, but my ambitions are completely different from those of Mr. Obama and Mr. Bush. You could argue that mine are more selfish, that I simply want to live my life simply, with as little interference as possible. I never aspired to “public service,” which is a euphemism for politics. Some public servants would label me Joe Six-Pack, but I prefer to call myself Joe Keg. That has nothing to do with philosophy and everything to do with my abdomen.

The Media tells me that this is a crucial election year. Yeah? Well, so were the rest of them and we’re still trying to figure out how to balance this handbasket to hell. I don’t need to expound on multinational corporations and big banking or any of that stuff. You can’t swing a dangling participle without smacking into countless blogs opining about who’s evil, who’s shining with brightness, or who’s just plain stupid. Things get downright gooey when I ask myself: what are my choices? We have lots of sound bites, lots of pontification, and lots of people sincerely telling us how we should vote. I keep looking for leadership. I am still looking.

The Law

     Hmm…I’ve gone from weekly to bi-weekly to monthly to yearly and now to bi-yearly. Clearly, this blogging has fallen off of my radar. I did manage to finish a novel and am deep into the search for an agent, which has been frustrating because I have yet to find one who wants to read my manuscript. But I am nothing, if not stubborn.
     I lost both of my parents this year. Well, they’re not really lost. I know exactly where they are. They are together. My dad died on May 4 and my mom followed on June 28. They were married for seventy-two years. That’s a heck of an accomplishment. There are probably lots of things I could say about our family dynamics and what they meant to me, but I think I’ll stop right here. That stuff will percolate for the rest of my life and might, or might not, exteriorize as I manipulate a keyboard or a pen to express myself. I’m pretty sure it’s already shown itself in the air around my guitar. I’m thinking of the metaphor in Mark Knopfler’s Heavy Fuel. 
     We boomers are at the stage in life when this kind of thing is inevitable. Parents pass and gallstones do too. So do friends, gasses, and friend’s gasses. Passing is what we all do, eventually, even planets. But energy is indestructible. What energy does, ultimately, is change from one form to another. It’s not just a good idea, it’s The Law. We can derive from that whatever comfort we can. The energy in my mother’s eyes when we shared a laugh and, when I’d ask him if he wanted anything, in my father’s voice when he said “a smile.” That energy is still around. It is part of something, most assuredly me, and who knows? Maybe it’s in the wiggle of a new puppy or the lusty cry of a healthy newborn or in the eyes and hearts of a people who are staring down an oppressor. It’s somewhere. That’s not just a good idea, it’s The Law.

A year? What happened?

Yikes. It’s been a year and 12 days since I last posted here. As I attempt to figure that out I can’t come up with a reason. I’ve been writing in fits and spurts, finished a poem, a couple of songs, have been performing (not as much as in the past—see the previous blog entry). Here it is September 16, in the year of our lard 2010. This has been the fastest year on record for me. When I realized that a year had passed since the last blog bit, I was stunned. I remember the night I went through what I wrote about like it was yesterday. And perhaps it was. Time is such a strange invention. It’s like color in that if there is no brain to perceive it, it really doesn’t exist.

This is shaping up to be a very interesting mid-term election year. The Nut Job party is making news. Apparently, people are jumping on the “Masturbation is a Sin” bandwagon. New York will probably ban smoking in Times Square, Central Park, and all the heavily-used public outside areas. I’m just a little confused about that. I quit smoking cigarettes nearly five years ago, but have no beef with people that are still addicted. That’s their business. I just don’t get the ban on smoking outside. Second hand smoke is dangerous, says the Mayor and his council. Say what? Outside? I thought this was a free country. But then I realize that masturbating in public is illegal. I guess smoking is a sin as well. And the Nut Jobs continue, so maybe it is still a free country. It's just getting really weird and I don't mean that in a good Portland way.

Here in Portland it’s raining. “Oh surprise,” you say. I’ve heard a lot of people complaining that we didn’t have a summer this year. Poppycock, I say. We’ve had a lovely summer. It just never showed up until mid-July. We had a few days in the 90s and two, I think, days where it cracked 100. This is the second rainy week we’ve had since July. I think that’s pretty darn good. Maybe people are whining because everything has gone by at such a breakneck pace.

My parents arrive today for a visit. My mom will be 90 in November and my dad turned 93 last month. It will be great to have them here. This trip is part of my mom’s “bucket list,” something she wanted to do “one more time.” She wanted to come to Oregon and see all of the friends we have here. It’s been great helping to make this happen. There are also mystery guests who have come from as far away as Connecticut and Texas to see her. She will be very surprised and pleased, I think. For this event we also went out and got a big-screen HD-capable TV so my dad would have something to do. I’ll get him out to the Flight Museum in McMinnville on one of the days they’re here. He hasn’t seen the space side yet and I’ve only seen it once, so that will be a treat.

A year? Wow. I’ve been quite the slacker. I’m hopeful that I can step it up a little. Check back next week and see if I’m still awake.

Letting Go of Barnyard Flotsam

What the hell happened? It’s not supposed to be September already. Is it? Didn’t I just put up that last blog unit last week? Wow. If time keeps accelerating for me like it has been and global warming keeps pace, we’ll be under water by the end of the year. Maybe it has something to do with Relativity. Perspective is everything. Am I on the train, or am I watching it go by?

On Sunday I decided to let go of a lifelong fantasy. I declared that I will no longer strive to become a famous musician, that I will no longer spend time working on a “career” in music. I declared it to be a “stupid” fantasy and went to bed curled up in the fetal position.

I always knew I would be a famous musician. I always had a deep faith that it would come to pass. If I just stayed true to the craft and the art of it, things would magically conspire to call an audience and a following to my door. I’d known this since I was four years old. There were times it would seem assured. Intellectually, I recognized the folly of such a fantasy, but I stayed true to it nonetheless. It felt exactly right. It was who I wanted to be. It was who I was going to be. It was who I was.

But you know what? It was complete horseshit. Reality bites. I am not nearly as competent as I pretended to be and needed to be. I’m not even half the player I want to be. I’ve been playing the guitar for forty-seven years, but did I ever really work at it? I’d like to think I did, but if I’d worked harder, I’d be a more accomplished player. This whole aspect of my life needed a good bath and a solid dose of humility. I’d been seduced by the fantasy of it for so long that I was, literally, living in a fantasy world, which, no matter how you slice it, is not a good thing. As Sharon Olds so elegantly said in one of her poems: “I wanted to be some one.” It skewed my entire self image and put me in a house of mirrors where each reflection became farther from the truth of What Is.

Sunday evening Laura and I went to see the Freak Mountain Ramblers and had a blast. They had fun and, therefore, the room did too. Even today it makes me happy just to think about sitting there awash in Happy Feet Music. They are, when I’m in their “room,” my favorite musical ensemble, maybe ever. I love the fact that they can pull it all off, from Jug-band music to Western Swing, to Rock’n Roll, to well, let’s just call it “Modern Jazz.” It is Americana at its absolute best. We are so lucky to live in Portland. It is an undeniably stellar musical town.

So, we’re on the way home and I’m bubbling on about wishing I could just get up in the morning and plug myself into my studio (which doesn’t exist) and work on songs and stuff. Laura asked a very simple question about where the songs would sell and I immediately became defensive and then IT hit me like a ton of copyright forms. It was all crap. My whole notion of what I was going to do someday was a load of malarkey. It was based on a complete fallacy. I had this moment of brilliant clarity, an epiphany of stunning proportion. Poor Laura thought I was mad at her. It had nothing at all to do with her, it was me finally realizing, seeing it without my little rosy haze, that the fantasy I’d held about myself and my place in the musical pantheon I’d created in my mind, was just egregiously wrong. I was absolutely devastated. I had no idea who I was and I was angry with myself for allowing such a twisted vision to become something I’d accepted as a reality.

I have no idea how this will all shake out as things settle. I have let the fantasy go and accepted What Is. Now, What Is, is pretty darn okay, if you ask me. I am a relentlessly adequate guitarist and I will continue my lifelong aspiration to learn as much about playing it as I possibly can. I will embrace the ukulele and, by golly, learn to play “Little Wing” on it (probably on a baritone). I will continue to play out and sing and make people happy with my versions of music, my own and other songwriters. I will do this with an undying love of it, but I will NOT be concerned with anything at all about the “career” side of it. That is dead and gone. I do not require that carrot-on-a-stick to keep me going (donut on a stick?). Good riddance, I say. I had my fifteen minutes of fame a long long time ago and I sure don’t need the ego feed. Mine’s big enough already. I will just sustain myself with the best music I can make. If you happen to hear it someday, I hope you like it.

Productive, Profound, and Profane

There’s just something memorable about the men in an audience singing, with gusto, “my vagina is eight miles wide, absolutely everyone can come inside …” Sure, it’s probably the most memorable song in Storm Large’s tour-de-force “Crazy Enough,” but it’s definitely not the only highlight. She is a special niche artist, what I would call a superstar, who has taken the sting of “not fitting in” to the heart-on-her-sleeve absolutely open-faced Storm sandwich method of method acting. I found her performance riveting, beautiful, joyous, immeasurably sad, and get-the-dictionary-out-for-every-adjective smart. Her mind is mercurial and her on-board editor is a tad slow. That makes for great theater. The more people who experience “Crazy Enough,” the better. It is literature. It shines a very bright light on what it means to be a human being. Here I am. Here we are. Deal with it. The show runs in Portland, at Portland Center Stage, through August 16. After it closes, I really hope it finds it’s way to DVD and makes Storm Large a household name (and a couple tons of money). The world can certainly use a big dose of her. She could make both Richard Pryor and George Carlin blush, but I see that as a good thing. Hello. Deal with it. Let’s start THINKING about what it means to be human. Let’s get rid of a lot of the bullshit that has been slathered on the experience like some kind of weird concrete glue. The potential we share as humans has never needed such a boost as it does now. Let’s smash the dogma with our kharma.

In other news, the golfing world is entirely unaware that I am actually receiving instruction in this ancient craft. This is probably a good thing because if golfers knew that I was aggressively focused on continuing my relationship with the game, they might hurt themselves. At the very least, they might succumb to despair and slit their egos. Heaven forbid! But yes, it’s true. I have decided that I need to stop whining about being a lousy golfer and move on up to relentlessly mediocre. I take so much pleasure from the few good shots that I hit that I fear I have become a tad greedy and want to experience that joy more often. Maybe I can even get to the point where I have to use my other hand to count my good shots. That would be stellar and an improvement, certainly.

I am also taking up the ukulele. Jake Shimabukuro (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puSkP3uym5k) I’ll never be, but there is just too much fun to be had with this much-maligned little instrument.

Stay tuned. I’ll check in here with more wry observance in the near future. I’m kind of on a roll with my writing and this is a nice voice to relax into sometimes.

Ramblin' Jack Cass

It’s been a long time since I last sat here in this venue and wrote something. I’ve been very musical during this time, but not very writerly. In this interim, we’ve lost Billy Hults, perhaps the greatest washboard player ever and certainly one of the most profound and funny men in the history of profound and funny men. Now, I’m not sure what “cockles” are, but the outpouring of affection from so many people at Billy’s passing has warmed the ones that allegedly have something to do with my heart. It’s an interesting idiom “the cockles of my heart.” I guess it comes from the folds and wrinkles down there in the depths of my emotions.

I’m so glad that I was able to go see Billy when he was still pretty strong and feisty. He looked me in the eye and said “I’m the healthiest man in Hospice.” He was really happy about his beautiful herb garden and was amused at the irony of dying and having more living ease than he’d experienced for most of his life. So many people have said their public goodbyes to Billy in brilliant ways. I think my favorite was Turtle Vandemarr singing “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away” at the first church night following Billy’s death. It was poignant and funny and, oh, so Turtle and right-on. For those of you who don’t know what a “church night” is, it’s most Sundays from 6:00 to 8:00 when the Freak Mountain Ramblers play at the Laurelthirst Public House. It’s on NE Glisan at 30th. I think it’s the coolest gig in Portland, bar none.

We’ve also lost Michael Jackson, Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett, Robert McNamara, Billy Mays, Bob Bogle, Koko Taylor, and a whole host of other folks. We lost one of my heroes, Walter Cronkite, who was an icon all through my growing up years. What all this death means is that life goes on. I didn’t know any of those people. Their passing has been interpreted for me by other writers and reporters. I never had the connection to bone and sinew. I never knew the sound of a gentle and genuine laugh with any of these celebrities. But I did know that with Billy Hults and I shall miss his wise and gentle spirit.

I’m starting to think about poker again, specifically Texas Hold’em tournaments. I’m sure that I’ll be sharing some of my thoughts about that in the future. If I have any real thoughts about it, of course. As nobody ever said: "Vapid is as vapid does."

A couple months ago I decided to sign up for the first guitar lesson I’ve taken since 1964. Mary Flower, the renowned Blues finger-stylist and consummate musician, has graciously consented to put up with me for some lessons. I’m just beginning to get a little bit of comfort with the Piedmont finger-style syncopation. I’ve been playing the guitar all of my life and have had some success with it and more enjoyment than anyone could possibly know. I’ve played in front of thousands of people and have a small, but very gratifying following of people who enjoy my music. I just got tired of feeling like a sham every time I played the Blues. Sure, I knew the notes, sort of, and could play leads, sometimes riveting leads, in the traditional I-IV-V format. But I've always felt like I was just faking it. So, I’m trying to establish a little credibility, even if it’s only with myself. Ultimately, it may just mean that I get to understand a little bit of my vast ignorance, but hey, that would be some progress. If nothing else, I’m all about that.

See you next time. I’ve been thinking a lot about golf. Maybe we’ll go there.

Life O'Star Trek

Part of the $112 Million that the new Star Trek movie made last weekend came out of my pocket. I popped for the IMAX version, which is probably twice as much as a regular theater ticket, so from a marketing standpoint I guess you could say I’ve seen it twice. I went with two great pals, with whom I’ve seen many an opening-day Star Trek flick. As it turns out, I enjoyed myself thoroughly and would even consider seeing it a “third” time.

I’ve been a Star Trek fan since the show debuted in the Sixties. I’ve seen most of the movies. I’ve seen all of the movies with the original cast. I like Patrick Stewart as Captain Picard and Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi is stunning, but I don’t think I went to the theater more than once. I don’t have the emotional attachment to the Next Generation stuff that I do to the original characters. So, that being said, I loved this new movie with the new cast. I think Chris Pine is a completely believable Kirk who burns with competence and emotion. I think he’s taken the role in a much-needed different direction than William Shatner found himself going. Shatner was almost a caricature of himself as Kirk. But of all of the original cast, he is the only one who created a completely different memorable character. Boston Legal’s Denny Crane is a classic TV character and Shatner has to take enormous credit for creating him and putting him into the lexicon. As an actor, Shatner will not always be thought of as Captain Kirk. Even though Shatner defined the role, Chris Pine has created an equal character with all of the contradictions, but without the almost campy wryness that was threatening to overcome the entire franchise.

The trinity of Kirk, Spock, and Bones McCoy is in good hands. Zach Quinto and Karl Urban are true to their characters and bring humor and the needed energy to their younger versions. You can believe these guys when they respond to dire circumstance.

The secondary characters played by Zoe Saldana, Simon Peg, John Cho, and Anton Yelchin are also excellent. Like I said, the campy stuff is gone. These are vital young characters that have somehow arrived and continued without some of the baggage the older versions had developed over the years. The plot vehicle of time travel and parallel universes helped with this too, but it is truly a character-driven series and they pulled it off. It would have been easy to screw it all up, but the production values and the writing did not allow it.

Gene Roddenberry created a series of fables, if you will, that examined a multitude of ethical questions and philosophies. These were presented obviously and the outcomes were almost never in doubt or ambiguous. The new actors have imbued the franchise with a new energy and subtle character changes, which has ignited the potential to create sweeping epics, whose stories may enlighten the human experience in ways that transcend what Star Trek has previously given us. Philosophy and ethics may be artfully revealed rather than simply stated. There is room for darkness and a deeper examination of the human spirit. Villains and heroes alike are complete beings and not just cardboard cutouts. The intrinsic friendships that carry much of the emotional weight throughout the series have new potential for growth and increased depth.

It’s a lot to hope for, but after the first episode in this incarnation, it certainly seems possible.

Good Friend Gone

I lost a very good friend this week. Bob passed on last Sunday of a nasty, aggressive, and virulent cancer. He was diagnosed at the end of January and he died at the end of March. That is the fast track to oblivion. From what I’ve been told, his pain was immense. It must have been absolutely astonishing because the man I knew was single-minded when the chips were down. He was a winner and he was a fighter. The onslaught he experienced must have been completely overwhelming.

He and I had not been in close contact for many years. I thought of him often, but don’t know if he thought of me with the same regularity. I’ve never met his children. I knew his first wife, but not his beloved new widow. We talked a few times over those years. I called him when he had cancer the first time because mortality was suddenly a very real thing. He survived that and was able to recover his robust life, resuming his love of the culture of competitive ocean canoe paddling. When we spoke it was like we’d talked the day before, like I was calling to borrow a hammer, or something.

We were very close in high school. There was a group of us who became like brothers, but without the sibling rivalry. We hung out together, we dated together, we smoked together, we tripped together, and grew into young men together. I can honestly say that I would not have survived the 60s had it not been for those guys.

Bob was a huge part of that. He was never intimidated by my sheer force of personality. He tolerated it, enjoying it most of the time, but was always the first to call bullshit when I went too far. He helped me define the limits I needed to function properly in the world. He helped me learn how to share feelings in constructive ways. But when I lost it, when I went off the cliff and got angry and crazy and destructive he always forgave me. Every. Single. Time. He figured out how to prevent me from tearing myself up with guilt. He was a Very Good Friend.

Bob, too, had his own destructive streak in those days. We were all barely in control. What saved us was that we loved each other and supported each other. We called Bob “Wildman.” He was a very skilled driver. He had to be. Some of those rides down to San Clemente High School, through Dana Point, still raise the hair on the back of my neck. In those days, Dana Point was just a sleepy little beach town. There was no giant marina. Before the jetty was built there was a kelp bed, a pier, and, when it was breaking, some of the most amazing waves on the planet. “Killer Dana.” In reality, they were big soft pillows, but they were really fun to ride. And speaking of rides, I’m sure there are people who still remember Bob’s yellow Karmann Ghia and the strange places it would appear doing sixty miles-per-hour, with passengers whose hair stood straight up and whose eyes were as big as stop signs. Like so many things, though, when the jetty was built, all that disappeared. A way of life quietly snuck off to be pushed aside somewhere else.

I’m going to miss knowing that Bob is in the world. He lives on, of course, in the stories I have, the stories his tight-knit family has, the stories his kids will remember and share. His mother is still alive. This is the second son she’s lost to that cancer. My heart goes out to her and to his wife and children. And to all of his paddling buddies and to everybody who will miss his quick laugh and his gently sardonic view of the world.

This is when I realize that life is, indeed, too short. Welcome to the birth of philosophy. How can I reconcile my own mortality with a very close friend’s death? I’ll play guitar, write, and discover, maybe, how I feel by running these sentences together.

I can only hope.

No Humans, No Nothing

A deep, almost unbearable sadness has transfixed me this evening. It came over me as I played with Toulouse, games we play every day. It started with me thinking of how I’ll miss him when he’s grown old and gone, or when Jessica moves away into another phase of her life. Toulouse was doing his predictable dog things, keeping the toy from me, growling as if to warn me away but watching me with hope to continue the game. I was filled with affection for him in particular and for dogs and all non-human creatures in general. And then I thought, what if there were no humans to feel and show that affection? What if we were gone from the earth? There would be no poetry. There would be no ears to interpret sound patterns as music. There would be nobody to stare out over a grand vista and feel the power of it, to rise to touch the face of wonder and to feel profoundly grateful for the privilege of being able to simply breathe the miracle of air. There would be no imagination.

This human experience has certainly put the planet’s ability to sustain warm-blooded life in jeopardy. Greed and rapacious human behavior have put everything at risk. The dark side of human nature is producing endless war as the dangerous hybrid of corporate economics and exclusionary ideology grope toward some kind of have and have-not world order. That’s been around forever. It is upon the Dark Side that poetry, music, and enlightened thought crash like waves against an impossible cliff.

If humans were not here, the Dark Side would vanish, as would all that stands against it. There would be no need to uplift the human spirit. The rest of Life would go about it’s business without the slightest hint of worry. We are the creators of Art and the only appreciators of it. If we were gone wolves would live in symbiosis with the deer and elk. Salmon would still have a heck of a time getting around the dams, but they wouldn’t be fished to near extinction. The oceans would heal, as would every thing else. Plastic would become part of evolution. Climate would shift and dance like it has since the dawn of time. And there would be no time, none whatsoever. There would only be cycles of vast complex relationships. There would be nothing to define, categorize, or understand them. Things would just be. Events would never be analyzed.

This made me profoundly sad. Both cruelty and kindness would be gone from the world. All we bring to the moveable feast is our ability to interpret it to express it to each other. We are unique in that regard and our passing would still be insignificant to the rest of the creatures here. We would not be missed. Dogs would still be dogs for as long as they could survive. Perhaps we have taken a path that is doomed to ultimate loneliness. Perhaps we could have nurtured better relationships with the other species. That is one of the reasons that I will always pay attention to dogs and believe they are worth spending time with. Through relationships with animals I can understand my own animalistic nature. Even if it becomes simply wondering about my relationship with Everything Else. It is difficult to understand a world where we are not here to attempt to understand it.

Good night.

Freedom Anniversary

Just to close a thread from the last blog, this screen adaptation of “In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead” does not include Clete Purcel. And it just struck me that the name ‘Clete’ can be construed, in a high-school American Lit sort of way, as a place our hero Dave can tie himself to so that he doesn’t fall off the world.

Yesterday marked the end of the third year since I’ve had a cigarette. I celebrated with the usual two-mile run/walk through my neighborhood. I’m still packing more than 230 pounds around and last night my left knee area let me know about it. I’m not feeling pain in the joint itself, but I’m feeling a general weakness in that area. So this morning I didn’t run at all, I just walked the two miles. So far today, my knee feels darned okay.

Three years of no cigarettes is an event for me. The hard parts of the whole ongoing effort seem to come in at multiples of three. I was ravenous at three days, vulnerable at three weeks, and very wary at three months, eighteen months, and so on. At this anniversary I just warned myself to be careful and to remember that cigarettes are insidious little bastards that would like nothing better than to sleaze their way back into my life with false promises of ease and enhanced contemplation skills. They’ve done their best to kill me and would leap at the opportunity to continue that slow, measured destruction.

I have learned to separate my cigar experience from my cigarette experience. I can smoke a cigar, not inhale the smoke, and not have another for weeks, even months. It has become a nice, if infrequent, hobby. There is no craving involved. I like that.

But it is still very true that I am a recovering nicotine addict and I always will be. I smoked multiple cigarettes every day for many years. I started inhaling the smoke on the first day of trout season when I was sixteen and didn’t stop, really, until three years ago. That is forty years (do the arithmetic). That is a long, long time. I’m just extremely fortunate that I’m healing well. So far, I have no lung or system issues from my lifetime of smoking. I’ve heard that it takes seven years for all of your cells to replace themselves, so I’m not quite half-way to that blessed milestone. One day at a time. I will continue to count my blessings each and every day. The only real issue I face now is that after I quit, I put on thirty-five pounds and it’s still hanging (literally) around. That’s why I’ve added jogging to my daily routine. Hopefully, it will help me jettison some of this load and my knees will abide more easily.

It’s time to put an egg in my shoe (and beat it). Until next time, so long.

Rambling Through Friday the 13th

Ah, Friday the Thirteenth. I find it remarkable that there is an actual phobia name for fear of this day: paraskavedekatriaphobia. It’s kind of an Italian superstition that Friday is an unlucky day and that 13 is an unlucky number. Put them together and it’s a double-whammy. My favorite myth for this superstition comes from the old Norse. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:

“The actual origin of the superstition, though, appears also to be a tale in Norse mythology. Friday is named for Frigga, the free-spirited goddess of love and fertility. When Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity, Frigga was banished in shame to a mountaintop and labeled a witch. It was believed that every Friday, the spiteful goddess convened a meeting with eleven other witches, plus the devil - a gathering of thirteen - and plotted ill turns of fate for the coming week. For many centuries in Scandinavia, Friday was known as "Witches' Sabbath."”

Personally, I’ve always liked memories of free-spirited goddesses of love and fertility. They remind me of my youth. But Friday falls on the thirteenth of the month three times this year: today, coming again next month, and then in November. I cannot recall any grim incidents in my life that landed on a Friday the 13th, but maybe my memory has become selective. I can’t say one way or the other. I do remember that during my sailing days, we never initiated a long trip on a Friday. Sailors are notoriously superstitious and I guess we were no exception.

We went and saw a play last night at the Artist’s Repertory Theater: “The Seafarer.” (How’s that for a segue?) An ensemble cast created an Irish working-class drama with some nice comedy relief. It had quite a few hallmarks of that world. The devil himself was a character. He’d come to collect the soul of another character. It was also a play about alcoholics. Every character was a drunk. In that sense it was very bleak, but the overall slice-of-life look at humanity offered some hope and the devil became, almost, a sympathetic character. God was definitely in control and his love for us “insects” came through on that Christmas morning.

The cast was good. I thought that the first act was a little stiff, but they really got the rhythm right in Act II. I was able to completely suspend my disbelief for almost the entire second act. I mean, it was all good, but those guys really nailed it in the second half. Not that I really know anything at all about play-acting, but I was impressed.

In the last eight months I’ve seen three plays: “Sometimes a Great Notion” (with a couple of the same actors from last night), “Bucky” (about Buckminster Fuller), and “The Seafarer.” I’m very open to seeing more. I think I like plays better than I like movies. That’s a general statement, really. There are movies I will really enjoy, but I don’t go just out-of-hand. The hype has to capture my imagination. I really enjoyed the Tolkien adaptations, once I convinced myself to let go of the books and keep them completely separate from the cinema experience. I loved Will Smith in “Ali.” And I will certainly go see “In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead” It’s an adaptation of the very first James Lee Burke novel I read. Since then, I’ve read everything by Mr. Burke that I can get my hands on. He is the best writer of Place that I’ve ever encountered. His Dave Robicheaux novels are living entities. You can smell that Bayou Teche country. His recent novel “The Tin Roof Blowdown,” is a visceral account of what happened to that country when the double-shotgun blast of Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast.

I’m very interested in who’s been cast to play Dave’s best pal Clete Purcel, who is one of my favorite characters in all of literature. Tommy Lee Jones has been cast to play Dave, which works for me. But the only guy we can come up with to play Clete is John Goodman and that’s not exactly right. I don’t know. If I was an actor, I would eat broken glass to get to play Clete Purcel. Both Clete and Dave are guys whose lives are redemption-in-progress affairs. They are two people whom I would very much like to have on my side in any kind of trouble. Every James Lee Burke novel I’ve read has been a moveable feast. I’m just really glad that he continues to write. He’s taken the Hard-Boiled genre and created literature with it. It makes me very glad, indeed.