Time Off For Bad Behavior   (2016Dec30)

 

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Friday, December 30, 2016                                               4:07 PM

One very important thing to keep in mind during the next four years is that the damage has already been done—don’t dwell on the idiot entering the White House in January, don’t listen to his stupid tweets, don’t let the media create some sort of question in your mind of whether they have ‘important information’ for you to hear. They’ve got nothing but nervous nattering to offer—and you can know that without their input—nothing good or important is coming out of this debacle.

So have fun. Find things to do that satisfy you. There are just too many idiots out there who still believe they did the right thing by electing that jack-hole—and we just have to wait it out for the next few months, until everyone starts to find out what it’s really like to have a stooge in charge. Until then, don’t make yourself crazy.

I think of it as a vacation. I was very involved in the day-to-day back and forth of the election—one day I’d be sure that everyone could see the pig for what he is, and another day I’d be wondering how he could still be a contender—and wondering how everyone treated him like a respectable candidate, in spite of his constant assholery. Right up until the last minute, I was hoping that this country was still able to tell a pig in a poke.

Well, they weren’t able to. And one of the major factors was the nonsensical, brazenly profit-oriented media, pretending to journalism to sell their filthy ‘air-time’. What a bunch of whores. So—no more watching the news for me. No more worrying about what will happen in Washington—whatever it will be, it’s too late for me to change anything. And if the news ends up with lots to report, I’ll be damned if the media are getting this pair of eyeballs or set of ears for their unholy mix of BS and advertising.

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In other words, by abandoning their good judgement so egregiously, the Trump-voters have created a span of time when men-of-good-will (and women of same) are better off ignoring current events for the foreseeable near-future . Time for us all to go back to the frivolity of youth—when we couldn’t care less about what was on the nightly news, because we were too busy enjoying ourselves. Vacation time. I’m really starting to enjoy it. And if horrors are waiting in the wings, worrying over things until the ax falls is a pure waste of time.

Enjoy the Executive Mansion, you cretinous lard-bucket—I’m gonna enjoy pretending there is no White House, unless and until we get a real mensch back in the building. Or until my neighbors start digging bomb shelters. Either way.

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He’s Only ‘Mostly’ Dead   (2016Dec29)

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Thursday, December 29, 2016                                                   12:01 PM

Here in the future, things are different. I was born in 1956, when the world was a far different place and people didn’t know half of what they now know—so trust me, this is the future. I can’t begin to list the things we have created, the powers we’ve gained, and the secrets we’ve unlocked from the mysterious universe since the year of my birth. In the course of my lifetime, we have reached a destination so far ahead of what 1956 portended that we refer to things with the ‘post-’ prefix.

When we say ‘post-modern’ we refer to our time as being so far past our expectations and imaginings that “The Jetsons”, once a symbol of futurity, has become a quaint icon of the past. Where technology and history once seemed to file along on a set path, we now see our culture virtually explode—and our entire past rendered moot—by the chaotic changes brought about by developments in AI, robotics, astronomy, genetics, and medicine.

Beliefs once valued enough to merit Crusades and Jihads have become side-issues, old toys we are too grown-up and busy to play with any more. The few benighted groups who can’t accept this find themselves desperately throwing bombs into marketplaces in a futile attempt to keep religion relevant. Meanwhile, reasonable people have all new gods and demons to fear—killer asteroids, AI singularities, global toxicity, climate change, habitat loss, ocean acidification, gene-mod blowback, and overpopulation.

Reasonable people have another, more difficult problem to deal with as well—unreasonable people. You see, with technology making us all more productive, more capable of things that once required vast multitudes—each man and woman becomes a power unto themselves. Our old world, that troubled idyll, got along fine with unreasonable people running all over the place—there was plenty of space and there was only so much damage they could do.

But if you put unreasonable people in the cockpit of an airliner, or in charge of an investment bank, or in the Oval Office—the results are terrifying and global. Our civilization has become too powerful to be trusted in the hands of a childish mind—and yet it is the most foolhardy among us who lust for power and riches. The intelligent people are busily making the world more convenient and accessible—and the stupid people are working overtime trying to take advantage of everyone else—it’s a poisonous combination.

As we observe the powerful within the beltway, and in the several state houses, we feel the futility of having rich people working on ‘protecting’ us from rich people—but I’m not sure we recognize the greater irony of having the most unwise among us ‘protecting’ us from common sense and kindness. When I see some of these people on C-SPAN, orating with the skills of a middle-schooler, saying things no high-school graduate could agree with—I am shocked that such buffoons can get themselves elected to public office—and saddened to realize that their constituencies find them acceptable.

What self-respecting person could publicly claim that our problems are caused by the old, the sick, the poor, the immigrant, the refugee—the most powerless and disenfranchised people on this earth? And who could be fool enough to believe that those in power do not bear any responsibility for the lives they control? In a previous century, humanity mourned the fading of religion, saying “God is dead.” Here in our time, we may mourn the fading of truth and admit, “Common Sense is dead.” That will be the legacy of our late election.

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What Is It Good For?   (2016Dec28)

Wednesday, December 28, 2016                                               5:04 PM

There are levels of civilization—there are communities that are more comfortable with brutality than others—and brutality can take many forms. When we look backwards in time, to an age when women were denied their full personhood under the law, we can appreciate the brutality of what was, to the people of that time (including the women), normal daily life. If we look at history we see civilizations that were comfortable with slavery, with debtors’ prisons, with stoning, with so-called honor-killing—and even war.

In many cases, we do not need to research the dim past to find these behaviors—they live among us still. Their very intransigence is often used as a rationalization by those who would suggest that society rules don’t apply uniformly—and may thus be ignored when inconvenient. However, here in the soft underbelly of 21st century, middle-income, suburban New York, we have reached a level of awareness that makes it possible to look at something as old and accepted as war—and say to ourselves that humanity is just a bunch of assholes fighting over thrones while the rest of us endure whatever madness and waste that leads to.

But lest you think I’m all het-up about the stupidity of war, settle back, bub. War is just the stupidest example. In every case of conflict or injustice, we can always see an easy solution—being generous. But this path is unfailingly left idle, while we wear grooves in all the very stupidest alternatives. Why? Well, because you can’t go feeding stray kittens—that’s why. If we’re too generous, we may end up with nothing left for ourselves!

And that is certainly a risk faced by overly-generous individuals. However, the global community could easily provide a comfortable life for every single soul on the planet—if it weren’t for one small detail: Modern civilization, as full of potential as it may be, is also predicated on greed and competition.

We search in vain for ways to make a competitive system a humanitarian system as well—we even run into bloated fat-cats who think universal healthcare is overly generous. Point one—if it weren’t for the selfless humanitarian pioneers in the field of medicine, there wouldn’t be these bloodless Big-Pharma and Insurancing entities, sucking their profits out of the veins of the sick and infirm. Point two—it is more efficient to provide universal public healthcare than it is to squeeze maximum profits from the solvent and let the poor slip between the cracks. While individual profit-centers may suffer, the overall public expense is less when using the charitable option.

And let’s face it—most people don’t want programs giving away free stuff to poor people, because they hate their damn jobs and they resent anyone who gets something out of it, besides themselves. They don’t stop to think that their stingy boss is getting most of the profit from their work—and the boss, besides getting out of working hard, even gets to boss them around. But sure, go ahead and resent poor people, if you think that’s your enemy. And don’t forget to kiss ass at work.

The truth is right in front of us—being generous is the best way to lower violence and suffering—and it is far more effective than coercion or scare-tactics, because once you have a community that feels secure and comfortable, you couldn’t break them out of their living rooms with dynamite. Jobs that pay a lot of money create people who spend a lot of money. Paying big bonuses to hot-shots in upper management doesn’t create any commerce—it depresses it by creating a huge group of non-consumers.

The concentration of wealth among 1% of the population creates the same kind of stagnation that keeping all your money in a safe creates—those bloated, confused billionaires don’t have the slightest fraction of the energy for commerce, for buying and selling, for growing and making, that the same money would find in the hands of large numbers of the working classes. Those billions of dollars might just as well not exist to begin with. And that is all beside the point of the unacceptable injustice of Post-Capitalism—where everyone works harder and harder, getting poorer and poorer—except for the greedy pigs and the corrupt legislators.

And that is my point today—we spend a great deal of time bewailing the horrendous injustices of our Capitalist paradigm (as well we should) but we should spare equal time for considering that this unfairness is not merely wrong and cruel—it is also stupid. It is idiotic to base our lives solely on competing for money—but if you ask any Trump voter, they will assure you that that’s the American way. And by Trump voter, I mean to suggest a stupid person.

We are about to get quite a show from the crowd of leeches that constitute the incoming administration—they’re going to slash and burn every vestige of liberalism they can find. The sad thing about these money-grubbing turds is that they will not be replacing anything they tear down—they will not add one note of grace or gleam of bounty to our lives—they may even destroy themselves as they tear at the delicate fabric of so many reasonable men’s and women’s efforts to form a better union. They offer nothing but spite and bile—and it is a great shame that we did not see them coming, before we were stuck with them.

Mid-Holidays   (2016Dec28)

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Wednesday, December 28, 2016                                               12:38 AM

Okay, I’m getting back on track—we still must wait for Big Sen to come, after New Year’s, before the whole family can be together—and then he will be here only one short week before all three of them fly back home again. I don’t know if I can take it. Having Lil Sen here is like having sunshine being piped into every room of the house. It’ll go hard with me—returning to making-do with mere photo and video feeds, thousands of miles away.

I got a new camcorder for Christmas—yay! It has all the latest low-light tech—and I think even the audio mike is better. You can judge for yourself—I’ve just finished making my first videos with the new equipment. I’m not rocking all that hard at the old eighty-eight—but then again that’s not appropriate when playing for a five-month-old.

Grandchildren are a little like crystal meth—they make you think you are stronger and steadier than you actually are—and when you walk away, you wonder why you feel like you just got hit by a truck. Who needs a gym membership with a baby around? I’ve been rolling around on the floor like I’m training for the Olympic gymnastics team lately—it’s ridiculous. But I like it.

In fact, there’s nothing I don’t like about this kid—but I suppose that’s pretty obvious.

 

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Lunch and Shopping   (2016Dec23)

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Friday, December 23, 2016                                               1:34 PM

The ladies will be having brunch at PJ’s today—although it may be just lunch—we’ve gotten a late start on the day and everything’s sideways, in the best possible way.

Friday, December 23, 2016                                               4:45 PM

Make it lunch, definitely lunch—they’ve just gone an hour or so ago—and Spence has been through with a vacuum to get all the pine needles. We got a nine-footer this year—and it looks grand, just like the old days—way too big for the room—perfect.

Marie was by for a visit last night—and just before, Great-Nana was by for a look at her latest tree-branch. Sen gets along with everybody—she’s a real charmer. We’re all having the happiest of Christmases—except for the new dad—who is stuck at work until after Christmas—it doesn’t seem fair.

But I guess there’s no getting around the reality of being a restauranteur during the holidays—just like performers, this is their rush season. There should be a second Christmas, an unofficial one—about Jan 3rd or so, for all the people that have to work to make the rest of us happy during the holidays.

I remember enjoying going Christmas shopping on the Friday before Christmas—I used to be skinny and quick and I loved to slip through a crowd of people—crowds can be very intimate. But it’s only fun when you’re young enough to think that everyone else’s head is also dancing with sugar plums—I imagined a Christmassy glow coming off all the busy, noisy people, though I imagine some of them were quite grumpy, without me noticing at the time.

And now the girls are back from lunch and shopping! Hooray!

Russia Holds UN Hostage To State Terrorism   (2016Dec20)

Tuesday, December 20, 2016                                           5:13 PM

It’s time we faced the grimy truth about the gangsterism that passes for government in Russia—they invade, they shoot, they kill, they disrupt, then they lie about it all and point to the USA as the ‘usual suspect’, the popular piñata. All that comes with ‘sovereignty’—countries with thugs in power (and what country lacks them?) need to know that their neighboring governments will turn a blind eye. This is based on the theory that one government cannot know how horribly another government is being annoyed by both rival thugs and those damned bleeding-heart humanitarian busybodies. All this is business as usual—power attracts violence just as surely as money rots the soul.

But the unity of nations—mankind’s greatest hope for a future—is also being held hostage by the Russians. They defile the very concept of unity by vetoing any vote that might impede their greedy, bloody rampages—and the rest of the nations allow this bald-faced hypocrisy on the suspicion that ‘Russia in the UN’ is better than ‘Russia kicked out of the UN’. But the strength and survival of the UN is moot—as soon as you turn it into this joke it has now become.

The UN was forced to modify their resolve to monitor Aleppo’s civilian evacuations, to allow Russians to stop any monitors who approach areas the Russians don’t want seen. It makes the whole thing an evil, twisted joke—and I, for one, am tired of that tiny little shit Putin having the last laugh. Any Russian with an actual soul would have put a bullet in Assad’s head and helped the coalition fight ISIS—but not this wretched excuse for a human being.

To give this asshole’s minions veto-power in the United Nations is Kafkesque-level farce—it insults the United Nations—and the intelligence of any literate observer of world affairs. I grant that we here in America have just chosen a purveyor of evil and malice to our highest office—but the one area in which Trump looks like a boy scout is in naked violence. Perhaps he’s just warming up to the possibilities—and with Pootle as a role model, who knows how far an ambitious puss-bag like him will go?

But as of right now, the level and density of evil coming off the Pootle far outshines the black-light of the Trumpster. He is committing murder, on TV, in front of the whole world, and then he’s going to the UN and saying, “Hey guys, back me up on this.” I say, “Fuck that asshole.”

–O, and Happy Holidays, everyone!

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What Would Spiderman Say?   (2016Dec18)

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Sunday, December 18, 2016                                             3:59 PM

Oh my, I see myself drifting away from the family of man—what is it—am I just getting that old and grouchy—or am I actually insane? Why have I spent sixty years staring at a box of light and noise? Why is it the only people who don’t have money troubles are the ones causing them? How did humanity come to surrender itself to its worst examples?—Ceding power to those who seek it is a guarantee of disaster.

It used to be considered disqualifying for a candidate to openly seek office—he or she was supposed to be forced into it by a concerned citizenry, much like serving jury duty. And those who don’t lust for power give unanimously bad reviews of their experiences of having to wield power—George Washington was famously unwilling to hold office any longer than absolutely necessary. It’s too much responsibility to be comfortable with—that, in itself, marks the craven office-seeker as lacking in at least that one basic component of human decency.

And now we have a supreme example of such folly—the King Clown who snow-jobbed his way into virtually unlimited power, without a hint of responsibility to match that power. What would Spiderman say? I continue to wrestle with the two attacks on my peace of mind—on one hand, an idiotic bullying con-man is about to take office—and on the other hand we have a country so full of people who voted for him. I can’t say anything about the Trump voters without being insulting—but he insulted their intelligence for years and rather than resent it, they love him for it—so I won’t worry about hurt feelings.

I found it odd, during the campaign, when no one could ever stand up and list a bunch of great qualities that Trump would bring to the presidency—that never happened, simple and straightforward though that set-piece has always been for any candidate’s campaign.  About twelve different respected people did that speech repeatedly for Hillary—and while Trump and his campaign spread lies about her, and denied such character references—they never went so far as to say that Trump had any outstanding qualities.

And they still don’t—it’s all about denial with those people—they are too busy defending against accusations to ever claim that any redeeming values reside in the head of their gang. But, in truth, that is understandable—Trump has no outstanding or redeeming qualities, so ‘the full negative’ is really his only option.

But none of that lets the Trump-voter off the hook—these supposed citizens of the ‘Land of the Free’ voted for the moron that promised to build a Big Wall. Let me try to explain this to you pea-brains: a wall is for people who are afraid of the world—not for us, you jack-asses. These losers that have it better than most people but still spread bigotry and resentment against those who have less—shameless, cowardly pigs, the lot of them.

I’m disgusted—I knew that people could be that stupid and self-destructive—but the daunting landscape of millions of such fools, voting for thicker chains for everybody, just to hurt some other resented group—well, it’s broken my heart a little—I thought America had a majority of Americans in it. But no, I was optimistic—America is a land of stupid people who don’t know how good they have it and no longer know what to do with what they have. But that’s okay—their votes have ensured that America will never be what its promise pointed to—so the point is moot.

The GOP was already bringing madness, lies, and soulless hypocrisy to government—Trump is merely a giant-step further down the road to decline. Power without responsibility—a fault to be found both in the junta led by our president-elect, and in those who misused the power of their vote to elect him.

And that is why we lost. Responsible people, people with scruples, are always at a disadvantage in a street fight—and that’s what these thugs were engaged in, while we tried to hold civilized elections. The power of the people always stopped these gangsters before—what is wrong with you people? I guess they don’t make Americans like they used to. Look at this sack of shit that just got himself elected—what the fuck?

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Christmas Retaliation   (2016Dec17)

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Saturday, December 17, 2016                                           2:32 PM

There are only five weeks left—after that the Oval Office will be de facto unoccupied. Sure, there’ll be someone sitting there—and they’ll be causing any number of new problems. Still, there will be no one presiding over the nation, looking out for the public good or concerning himself with our national security.

We’ll miss that—it was frustrating enough having a real president, and have him be stymied wherever and whenever possible by the cowards in Congress—replacing Obama with someone who doesn’t even try… Well, at least we won’t get the agita we would have seen if Hillary had had to take up the fight where Obama left off—all those cowards are still comfortably ensconced.

Congress—ha—just a bunch of pols-who-would-be-trump—I guess that’s what they see in him—he does all the bad things they do, but he has no shame about publicly demonstrating his lack of character. Cowardly Trumps—that’s what Congress is made of—a whole institution full of men who are just as selfish and craven as our president-elect, but with just enough self-awareness to know shame.

But they did alright, really—this whole worm-tongued, alt-reality world of living lies was their idea—they paved the way for the King Clown—and if he steamrollered over a few of them along the way, they still deserve credit, along with the media, for forging this brave new world of Doubt, where nothing is true if you don’t want it to be.

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So, I know what I want for Christmas—President Obama, please follow through on your response to Putin’s hacking (and denial of hacking, as if he were Trump, too). I want you to make that bastard feel it. I want your cyber-warriors to wipe that Russky smirk off his ugly face. President Obama, you’ve been a model of probity and restraint for eight years—you’re the most well-behaved and civil president this country has ever seen—and that’s great.

But there’s only five weeks left until Doofus takes your chair—so, no more mister civilization, Barry—give this guy what for. He’s got it coming, like nobody’s business. That SOB has already gotten away with it—don’t pass up the opportunity to, at least, make him regret he ever fucked with the USA. And so what if you leave a little mess for your replacement to deal with? What’s good for the goose….

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Big Book of Christmas   (2016Dec16)

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Friday, December 16, 2016                                               11:29 PM

I’m trying to post my final Christmas carols before anyone gets here—I expect to be posting far less once the house gets full-up. I have the raw recordings from last night, but editing them will take some time. This always happens to me—I’m about to complete my big project of recording the entire Christmas songbook—and before I finish, I’m already feeling foolish for having bothered. After all, who wants to watch a long piano recital by a half-assed piano-player, no matter the theme of the concert?

But then I remember that family will watch. Poor piano-playing can actually add a homey touch to a video—and these videos are as much baby-albums of all little Seneca’s pictures and videos, as they are piano performances. I haven’t really created a Playlist—I’ve created a deluxe photo album of the first four months of my granddaughter’s existence (with holiday soundtrack included). And that is certainly worth a little effort on my part.

Just as few words about the completed playlist of: the Big Book of Christmas Music. There is one song missing from the book—“Joy To The World”, strangely enough—somehow the page came loose, and I couldn’t play just the first page, and stop in the middle. It’s not important—I’ll just include it in the next book’s recordings (“Joy To The World” is in every Xmas songbook).

Also, there are a few of these that I don’t play so well. Some pieces use figurations, especially in the left hand, that are difficult for me—I usually avoid them, but this was a clean sweep of the table of contents, from beginning to end, so I did the best I could with the ones I shouldn’t have been playing. The good news is that I won’t be posting these carols ever again, now that I’m sure I’ve done the whole book.

In doing this sight-reading every year, I’m always struck by the carols and songs that are of an earlier popularity—the ones that you can only barely remember hearing before—and then in childhood. There’s really an endless supply of Christmas and holiday music—I was just watching Bill Murray’s “A Very Murray Christmas” (2015) on Netflix yesterday—and that whole musical special was a list of songs I don’t have the music for—great stuff, too. I hadn’t realized there’s this very show-bizzy-type side to Christmas music as well—and Paul Shaffer is fantastic at that stuff. It was excellent fare—for a Christmas Special.

As for the words—this was a big project for me—and close-captioned lyrics would have made the whole thing take ten times the work. If you want to sing along, the lyrics to songs are easily searched online—so, I left it to you, if you want them, they’re out there. I did supply the title at the beginning of each song, so you’ll know what song to do a lyrics-search for.

The entire playlist can be heard here.

But if you want to find a song, here’s the detailed list:

 

Thirteen (13) Christmas Carols – November 21st, 2016

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Nine (9) Christmas Carols – November 23rd, 2016

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Eleven (11) Christmas Carols – November 27th, 2016

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Nine (9) Christmas Carols – November 28th, 2016

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Twelve (12) Christmas Carols – November 29th, 2016

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Thirteen (13) Christmas Carols – December 1st, 2016

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Nine (9) more Christmas Carols – December 1st, 2016

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Twelve (12) Christmas Carols – December 6th, 2016

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Four (4) Christmas Carols – December 12th, 2016

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Nine (9) Christmas Carols – December 12th, 2016

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Seven (7) Christmas Carols – December 12th, 2016

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Twelve (12) Christmas Carols – December 15th, 2016

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Nine (9) Christmas Carols – December 15th, 2016

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Th-th-that’s all, folks!

 

Travel Broadens The Mind   (2016Dec16)

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Friday, December 16, 2016                                               12:35 PM

I’ve often thought of traveling—they say it’s very enlightening, very broadening. But then I think of Paris, where being rude to tourists is a proud tradition, and remember that there are many places where Americans are, at best, tolerated. Tourists are people who have the leisure, and the wealth, to walk away from their own daily lives and go gawk at strangers in far-away places—it is easy to see how that would create resentment among the strangers, who have not enough of either to do the same. Unless we can all be tourists, occasionally, then resentment of tourists will last as long as resentment of the wealthy in general.

To be a tourist is, to a degree, a matter of saying to a community, “I am strange to this place—I may not even speak your language—but I have enough surplus wealth to come here and wander around.” You might as well have a sign around your neck inviting people to squeeze every last coin from your pocket before you leave. If that’s ‘travel’, then I could just as easily walk through a nearby center of poverty—in a Capitalist world, you don’t have to cover a lot of ground to become a stranger. Sharp differences in average-incomes lay cheek-by-jowl, geographically—and those differences make a greater foreign-ness than any change in mere life-style, though it be halfway around the globe.

For many countries and communities, tourism is a life-line, a way for them to stay head-above-water in a world that is out-producing them in other ways. But it strikes me as a false equivalence, a wrong path—in the same way that letting out rooms in your house is an easier income-increase than finding a better job, but it leads to other problems, other expenses, and makes you less likely to go out and find that better job. And, in the meantime, the chances of failing to resent the interloper who provides the new revenue, nice as they might be, are vanishingly small.

Yes, I am a homebody, as you may well have guessed by now. But I admit to the pull of adventure—all healthy young people should seek all the adventure they can find, while they’re still healthy enough and young enough to endure the hardships of having an adventure. That is especially so, since the young learn from experience, and the more varied experience you have, the faster you learn.

But tourism absent of great wealth is relatively new—born of the fifties, when hard-working Americans could take two weeks off—and were paid enough to take their families on a trip. At first it was road trips, camping trips: ‘See the USA in your Chevrolet..’, Rt. 66, Rt. 1 on the coast, and the Grand Canyon. But subsequent generations began to extend that to European excursions and before anyone knew what was happening world tourism had become an industry.

Now, however, the number of Americans who enjoy the security and income that vacationing requires has begun to narrow down to a small sliver of the population. Tourism is returning back to a preserve of the wealthy. Mobility in general is down—where large numbers of working families once re-located from state to state, looking for that fresh spring of economic growth that always included employment, we now have labor surpluses everywhere—and most new businesses needing less labor than they historically would.

In fact, the greatest instance of relocation-for-work was the recent ‘oil’ boom in Oklahoma—but that was mostly fracking. And now that Oklahoma is experiencing major quakes due to fracking, that business is losing employment as fast as it once gained it. America is no longer in motion—we no longer have a reserve of human kinetic energy. And that may help account for the sharp division of our politics and even the calcification of differing perceptions of reality we see in our recent current affairs—we understand each other less, because we mix less with each other than we used to. Perhaps there is an element of enlightenment to travel.

Or perhaps America could only remain a cauldron of growth while its people remained less settled-down than the rest of the world.

Windy Winter Morn   (2016Dec15)

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Thursday, December 15, 2016                                         10:45 AM

This is one of those bitterly cold and gusty mornings that make one appreciate the genius of a house. A really strong wind can make me worry for the integrity of the walls—nature, when sufficiently excited, can make anything man-made seem as flimsy as cardboard. But while the walls continue to stand, a house is a wonder—to stand, safe and warm, and look out upon a world of windy winter, as if watching a movie, is a treat. Before the ubiquity of glass windows and insulation, furnaces and fridges—what an uncomfortable world it must have been.

In cold weather I often remember a snapshot of my teens—I was hitchhiking home from Boston in Winter. There was snow on the ground, there was fresh snow falling, the sun was setting, and I was standing in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from anyone I knew. I was hitchhiking on an on-ramp which no one was taking—basically standing in a snowstorm, underdressed to where even my teenage metabolism was losing the fight with entropy.

It was the first time I became fully aware of the importance of all the stuff in our lives—when a man stands in solitude, with empty hands, before Mother Nature—she licks her lips. I could catch a ride, or—I could freeze to death, covered by falling snow and unnoticed until spring. There was no diner nearby to duck into; I had no friends within walking distance to go visit and use their phone; I had no money and I had no plan. I learned that there are places that are easy to get to, but hard to leave.

I assume someone picked me up, since I am typing this today—but the memory of that experience doesn’t contain the happy, last-minute ending. My memory is of being eternally trapped in an empty winter landscape with no hope of survival. It was an iconic moment for me. One cannot fully appreciate the grandeur of Mother Nature—until she casually tries to kill you.

The Fool card in the Tarot depicts a young man, much as I was then, walking along with his eyes on the stars and one foot over a precipice. The folly of youth, the lack of foresight, is so much a part of humanity that it finds representation in the Tarot—and no one knows how old the Tarot really is. If I were re-designing a modern version of the deck, I’d illustrate the Fool card with a drawing of a kid hitchhiking in a snowstorm.

But the moment was also a lesson. I plan my trips carefully now (not that I take any, really, not anymore). I keep extra stuff in my car (well, I don’t have my own car anymore). At sixty, I’ve learned to be very careful when leaving the house—but I also rarely leave the house—not by choice, that’s just the way things go—but still, it’s ironic. Kinda.

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History Repeats –or- Et Tu, Cooper? (2016Dec14)

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Wednesday, December 14, 2016                                               9:57 AM

History Repeats –or- Et Tu, Cooper?

During my reading of Joseph Henry’s biography, I’ve acquired a sudden interest in the history of New York State. As I researched the reference material, I ran across someone’s comment that there were scant histories of the state, which they found odd, considering its size and importance—and that would appear to remain the case. Amazon is strangely ungenerous when searched for the ‘history of New York State’ specifically.

The first book I came across was “New York” by James Fenimore Cooper. One passage stopped me in my tracks, right off:

“We are not disposed, however, to look for arguments to the debates and discussions of the Convention, in our view often a deceptive and dangerous method of construing a law, since the vote is very frequently given on even conflicting reasons. Different minds arrive at the same results by different processes; and it is no unusual thing for men to deny each other’s premises while they accept their conclusions. We shall look, therefore, solely to the compact itself, as the most certain mode of ascertaining what was done.”

[Cooper, James Fenimore. New York (Kindle Locations 190-193).  . Kindle Edition.]

I couln’t help thinking that nothing has changed in this regard—and that we are careless to overlook it. No matter what excuses or rationales are offered for a given legislation, all that truly matters is its effect. If poor people and prisoners can become ‘profit centers’ using the existing laws, then no amount of blather can forgive the fact that our laws promote a form of Capitalist slavery. If pro-business legislation gives power and security to businesses at the cost of fairness to the people, then such laws are unjust—and all the BS in the world isn’t going to change that.

Then I came to this part:

“A great deal that has been done among us of late, doubtless remains to be undone; but we are accustomed to changes of this nature, and they do not seem to be accompanied by the same danger here as elsewhere. The people have yet to discover that the seeming throes of liberty are nothing but the breath of their masters, the demagogues; and that at the very moment when they are made to appear to have the greatest influence on public affairs, they really exercise the least. Here, in our view, is the great danger to the country—which is governed, in fact, not by its people, as is pretended, but by factions that are themselves controlled most absolutely by the machinations of the designing. A hundred thousand electors, under the present system of caucuses and conventions, are just as much wielded by command as a hundred thousand soldiers in the field; and the wire-pullers behind the scenes can as securely anticipate the obedience of their agents, as the members of the bureaux in any cabinet in Europe can look with confidence to the compliance of their subordinates. Party is the most potent despot of the times. Its very irresponsibility gives it an energy and weight that overshadows the regular action of government. And thus it is, that we hear men, in their places in the national legislature, boasting of their allegiance to its interests and mandates, instead of referring their duties to the country.”

[Cooper, James Fenimore. New York (Kindle Locations 287-296).  . Kindle Edition.]

Déjà vu all over again, huh? Could our King Clown have won the late election if he had not, however contrivedly, attached himself to the Republican party? And how many Republicans, while eschewing Trump’s lack of ethics or character, were nonetheless still staunchly behind his candidacy, because he ‘stood’ for their party? The more things change, the more they stay the same, James old man.

Moreover, one of Trump’s endless empty promises was to abolish this partiality to party over public good, to ‘drain the swamp’—a problem he thoughtlessly claimed to be able to solve, in spite of the fact that Cooper saw its operation way back in the years leading to our Civil War, and attributed it, rightly, to human nature—which is something even Trump cannot ‘solve’.

I purchased two other references from Amazon: “Colonial New York: A History” by Michael Kammen, and “New York State: Peoples, Places, and Priorities: A Concise History with Sources” by Joanne Reitano. I’m looking forward to reading them, especially since I expect their prose to scan somewhat more lightly than that of James Fenimore’s.

There is nothing more exciting to a hopeful writer than to catch the scent of a hitherto-unexploited scenario, full of unfamiliar stories and strange new characters—and the history of the State of New York seems to offer just such a niche. With some notable exceptions, up to and including “Winter’s Tale” by Mark Helprin, I believe it was Cooper himself who last took advantage of the wealth of material inherent in our State’s story.

 

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Fan Mail?   (2016Dec14)

As an unabashed and vocal atheist on social media and elsewhere, I sometimes garner the special attention of evangelicals—I consider it a point of pride that I can sometimes bother them more than the average atheist does.

Ms. Sue B. of White River Junction, VT, out of an abundance of solicitude for my immortal soul, has sent me a letter—well, an envelope, at least. Inside was a typical Jehovah’s Witness flyer, with exhortations about how much God cares for me and how He can make me a better family man. I examined it closely, wondering why a stranger would send me anything by snail-mail (with a Christmas stamp, no less) and have nothing personal to say—and there was a handwritten note added to the inside of the flyer. It said ‘see Psalms 83:18’.

 

Psalms 83 (A Song or Psalm of Asaph.)

 

Keep not thou silence, O God: hold not thy peace, and be not still, O God.

For, lo, thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head.

They have taken crafty counsel against thy people, and consulted against thy hidden ones.

They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance.

For they have consulted together with one consent: they are confederate against thee:

The tabernacles of Edom, and the Ishmaelites; of Moab, and the Hagarites;

Gebal, and Ammon, and Amalek; the Philistines with the inhabitants of Tyre;

Assur also is joined with them: they have holpen the children of Lot. Selah.

Do unto them as unto the Midianites; as to Sisera, as to Jabin, at the brook of Kishon:

Which perished at Endor: they became as dung for the earth.

Make their nobles like Oreb, and like Zeeb: yea, all their princes as Zebah, and as Zalmunna:

Who said, Let us take to ourselves the houses of God in possession.

O my God, make them like a wheel; as the stubble before the wind.

As the fire burneth a wood, and as the flame setteth the mountains on fire;

So persecute them with thy tempest, and make them afraid with thy storm.

Fill their faces with shame; that they may seek thy name, O Lord.

Let them be confounded and troubled for ever; yea, let them be put to shame, and perish:

That men may know that thou, whose name alone is Jehovah, art the most high over all the earth.

 

The eighteenth ‘verse’ is that last line: ‘That men may know…’ The entire Psalm appears to be an exhortation to God to punish the unbelievers, to make us ‘as the dung of the earth’, or as wood burning in a fire—to make us afraid with His storms and fill our faces with shame and let us perish, etc.

Now, I don’t mind so much—that’s an old Book from a rough-and-ready era of history—from religious freedom these folks did not know. But it does strike me as rather snotty—here’s Jehovah, who is supposed omniscient and omnipotent, and then here’s his people, all in his face, telling him what he should do and which of his ‘children’ He should be smiting left and right.

I suspect this Psalm was authored by ‘management’—it has the flavor of an inter-office memo advising the staff not to decorate their desktops with personal items, family photos or potted plants. You know the type—always enhancing their own authority by reminding everyone he or she speaks for the big boss.

I consider it one of the obvious pitfalls of religiosity—if one serves the all-powerful, then one must have power, n’est-ce pas? If religious zealotry makes a person a ‘cop for God’, that person can spend a lifetime regulating the behavior of others, without having to waste an uncomfortable moment examining themselves. It’s literally a cop-out, if you’ll pardon the pun.

But all evangelicals have that velvet-glove thing going on: God loves his itty-bitty childwen—but if you don’t love him back, well, don’t forget to duck, brother. Some parts of the Bible are patently childish, making it clear that it was written long before people had the self-awareness to hear the ‘whine’ in their supplications, or the ‘mine!’ in their fervor.

So, Sue B., whoever you may be, I appreciate your concern for my waywardness—and I don’t much mind the slap on the ass that lies behind it. But you and I aren’t going to get very far, condescending to each other’s apprehension of reality. I chuckle (fondly) at your blindness and you chuckle at mine—we’ll both be fine if we don’t confront each other with ultimatums—that’s where the trouble always starts.

It’s ironic, really—my atheism was born partly from an overabundance of enthusiasm for my childhood faith, Catholicism. I was willing to be a soldier of Christ—hell, I wanted to be a Kamikaze for Christ—and I soaked up every word, every idea that was taught me. But I was a logical little kid, and certain things began to sully my perfect reality. Nuns, for instance, would never miss a trick when delimiting our behavior in CCD classes—but their own behavior seemed to cut a few corners in the service of classroom law-and-order, even going so far as to contradict their own previous reasonings to suit a new scenario of rebuke.

My parents, also, were happy to have me indoctrinated into faith—but if I should criticize anything based on my CCD teachings, it was waved away like a pesky fly—apparently, only those in authority could cite the rules of Christian behavior. My life became the reverse of the Parable of the Talents—I was to ‘render unto the Church what was the Church’s’ and otherwise just shut up and do what I was told.

As the years passed, I learned all kinds of things about history, society and people—I accumulated a mountain of contradictions that disprove the seriousness of people of faith. But all that came later. My original fall from grace was the result of simple observation—grown-ups wanted me to take religion seriously, but they weren’t taking it very seriously, themselves.

It was a more-serious, year-round version of Santa Claus—aimed at kids, but scoffed at between grown-ups. And that condition remains—if you look at the way we live, it’s difficult to claim that most of us are ‘Christians’ in anything more than lip-service. We use Christianity when it suits us—and discard it just as quickly when the going gets tough.

I would gladly live my atheist existence away without once raising my voice against the faithful, but for one thing—I’m a little too OCD about the truth. Faith may be many things—hope, conscience, a dream, an anchor in the storm—but it is most definitely not the truth. Sane people don’t fight and die over the truth—they seek and find it, or they do not—but they don’t fight over it—that’s for opinions.

There is often conflation of argument and fighting (see my previous post on the art of argument) but argument is, in purest form, an investigation after truth—it only becomes a fight when it goes off the rails and becomes a debate, AKA ‘fighting with words’. The religious have the advantage in debate because language grew out of a religious society and inherits a bias towards it, down to the very vocabulary we use—much like misogyny, the assumption of faith is built-in to the fabric of our speech.

Thus, I am always willing to argue the question of God, but I stop short of debating it—uncovering universal truth is impossible enough with a friendly devil’s-advocate—to verbally spar over someone’s adherence to an ancient, easy solution is a complete waste of time.

Two Movie Reviews   (2016Dec13)

Tuesday, December 13, 2016                                           11:30 PM

“Suicide Squad” & “Florence Foster Jenkins”

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“Suicide Squad”:

There was a burst of potentially-watchable movies in my video menu this morning—all kinds of movies—must be the run-off from the summer-movie influx in theaters. It’s strange for those of us who wait for the movie to leave the theater and get onto cable—we see the summer movies in winter, and the holiday movies in summer.

I started with “Suicide Squad”. I’ve pretty much had it with comic book retro-fits—and Suicide Squad is a poor excuse for even a comic book. But I like Will Smith—and I always enjoy it when some hot young actress does a star turn as a psycho-killer, as Margo Robbie does in this. But sometimes the over-arching concept of one team of good guys against a team of bad guys can strain the bounds of credulity—even within the ‘willing suspension’ paradigm.

In this movie, a ‘transdimensional’ witch with seemingly unlimited power, both natural and supernatural, stands against a group of admittedly tough customers—but none of them equipped to face down something from beyond the limits of time and space. Well, there’s one—a reluctant pyrokinetic with supernatural powers of his own.

But the rest of them have to be kept busy fighting minions of the witch, to distract from the fact they can’t possibly fight her. It’s just senseless—and believe me, I’ve swallowed a lot of sci-fi and comic book foolishness in service of maintaining my willing suspension of disbelief—and enjoying the story—but there has to be a minimal coherence to the thing. I need to be accorded that much respect.

Anyway, for a two-hour movie full of nonsense, it went by fairly quickly and painlessly. I gave it a few hours, then I went back.

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“Florence Foster Jenkins”:

I went back earlier this evening for another film, “Florence Foster Jenkins”, starring Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, and Simon Helberg.

There was a French film on Netflix recently, “Marguerite” (2015), with a similar story—a moneyed matron of the arts is surrounded by sycophants who never tell her that she has a terrible singing voice—a secret carefully kept by a mad-cap retinue, using carefully-curated venues and selectively-bribed music critics to maintain the illusion until the catastrophe of a large, uncontrolled, public performance threatens to expose the entire charade.

Both films claim some basis in historical fact—but the French film is set at the turn of the century and the American film is set in 1940s New York. This leads me to wonder if rich woman are historically misled about their true abilities—and, if so, why? But beyond that question, there’s the tone of such a movie. In the case of “Florence Foster Jenkins”, much like “Marguerite”, there’s a contradiction between the hilarity of bad singing and the tragedy of a person being lied to by everyone around that person—supposed friends and lovers who, whether through kindness or avarice are, nonetheless, doing the poor woman no favors.

Even the surprising tenderness that Hugh Grant brings to his role as FFJ’s husband cannot render this story a happy one—or a particularly funny one, since the impending slip-on-a-banana-peel is always the looming exposure and destruction of the woman’s sense-of-self. Meryl Streep brings humor to the character, but for me, the set-up is more suitable for a psychological horror-thriller, such as ‘Gaslight’, than for any light-hearted costume-comedy.

No one could fault the technical efforts, or the performances of the cast, in this film—but I guess I’m just too squeamish to enjoy laughing at someone who insists on making music badly—perhaps it cuts a little too close to home for me. Yes, that’s probably it—I see a little too much of my own musical strivings in the story of “Florence Foster Jenkins”.

Christmas Caroling   (2016Dec13)

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Tuesday, December 13, 2016                                           11:43 AM

Every year I post YouTube videos of myself playing Christmas Carols on the piano, occasionally singing along. I don’t do it because I play them so well—I just do it to celebrate the season. Also, singing Christmas Carols is one of my earliest childhood memories of a happy activity—sing-alongs, to me, are one of the greatest pleasures in life and, when it’s carols being sung, it just doesn’t get any better.

Caroling is one of the few times I can feel that great feeling from my youth—that God is in his heaven and all’s well with the world. The average carol only lasts a few minutes, but for that short span, I can almost believe—it’s very cozy. Usually, I don’t allow myself the indulgence—day-to-day life is only made more difficult by subscribing to wishful thinking—but Christmas only comes once a year, so what the hell. A little fantasy never hurt anyone.

This year I somehow decided to get very serious about the caroling videos—recording the songbooks from first song to last, so that I don’t have to wonder which ones I’ve done or which ones I’ve left out. I sometimes get serious about my YouTube videos—like with this one trio of Brahms Intermezzi I recorded last year, or the various Bach suites and partitas for keyboard. But my amateur-level piano technique doesn’t really stand up to serious scrutiny, so the projects usually fall apart before I’m finished recording the whole mess.

I’m getting more tenacious in my old age though, I guess—I’m closing in on the full Big Book of Christmas Songs—with today’s posting of twenty more carols, I’ve reached the ‘S’s—so, alphabetically, I’m almost to the finish line. And I am eager to finish this largest and most traditional of my Christmas Carol songbooks, because then I move on to the more popular-song Christmas music songbooks—and they’re a lot more fun/familiar and easier to play. Also, for all subsequent books, I plan to skip any carol already included from a previous book’s videos.

Time, as always, is chivvying me on—less than two weeks until Christmas, and these videos seem to take more time and effort with every post. I always over-do the Carol-playing—so, as the holidays go on, I get more troubled by back-strain, hand-tremors, and weakening eyesight (some music publishers are criminal in their demands on sight-readers—such tiny print). I reach a point where I’m actually conserving my strength for the live Christmas caroling—when a roomful of people are expecting me to accompany actual singing.

In the final result, by New Year’s Eve, I am more than happy to put the carol books away for another year—a full-month’s immersion in any genre is usually enough for me. But I wouldn’t give up my Christmas carols for all the tea in China.

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ttfn.

 

Trump Made You His Chump   (2016Dec13)

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Tuesday, December 13, 2016                                           10:40 AM

Are you happy now? Trump is playing ‘opposites day’ with his cabinet picks; the strong business ties between him and Russia are being revealed along with Russian interference in the election (how does it feel to know you voted just the way Putin hoped you would?); racist incidences rise in celebration of his electoral college win—and misogynist legislation is being drawn up as fast as those bible-thumpers can type.

You’ve been made a fool of, Trump-voter—and you’re celebrating it. Yes, you ruined the nice lady’s plans—and you kept the Democrats out of the White House—but you failed to get a Republican to replace them, and elected a Russian puppet instead. Good work—yeah, throw that party.

I have to live with whatever madness and stupidity goes on for the next four years—but at least I don’t have to feel responsible for making it happen. I voted for the person that knew how to do the job—the person that Putin is afraid of. Sure, I lost—but I won’t be ashamed to say who I voted for, for the rest of my life. When the full story of how you’ve been duped (and so easily—as if you were an idiot or something) is written into history, they’ll be no alt-right alternative-news source to contradict it.

And if you voted for Trump because he was the GOP candidate, you’re among the prize-winning suckers of this past election—Trump is a far greater threat to Republicans than to liberals or socialists. With him at the head of your parade, the Republican party will share in his inevitable disgrace. Having your party’s candidate win the election doesn’t do you much good if he gets impeached before he’s served a full year in office—and I hope you’re not dreaming that he won’t do anything impeachable for the first year—he’d have to be competent to manage avoiding that.

I don’t think he can even spell ‘competent’—but then, you voted for him, so you probably can’t spell it, either. You may resent people who understand what’s going on, but if you’re going to make your own decisions, they really ought to be based on more than resentment.

You’re feeling good right now, because your side won the election—but winning the election doesn’t make your side right—and that is especially true when you consider Trump lost the popular vote. Of course, he lies and says he won the popular vote—but he lies every time he opens that sphincter in his face. Hell, he probably thinks he’s good-looking—that’s how delusional your champion is.

I despise that sack of crap—I truly do—he’s a traitor, an imbecile, a cheat, a con-artist, and a pervert. But he doesn’t bother me half as much as you people who saw him, heard him, and still thought it was safe to put him in charge of your lives. With that many idiots voting, this country is fucked no matter who gets to be president.

Sweet Decorations   (2016Dec12)

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Monday, December 12, 2016                                           11:48 AM

I like a Christmas tree—who doesn’t love a Christmas tree? For many holiday homes, the tree and the colored lights outside the house comprise the totality of decoration for the season. Since we all lead busy lives, it would be petty to expect anything more from the average home. And one could easily make the case that having a felled tree in the living room for a month should be enough seasonal spirit for anybody. And climbing a ladder around the outside of the house to string the lights, especially if snow has arrived, is no small chore either.

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But some folks don’t stop there—seasonal tchotchkes, embroidered hangings and runners, sleigh-bells on the door to announce visitors, tiny china crèches—or Santa-sleighs with the full eight caribou—one’s house can be liberally sprinkled with panoply of Xmas-alia. My favorite—and you don’t see them all that often nowadays—is the sprig of mistletoe hanging from an arch. Nothing combines fun, romance, and extreme awkwardness like hanging mistletoe.

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I blame their rarity on the lack of outlets for the product—when you buy a tree, you can usually get wreaths, sprigs of holly, boughs of pine for the mantle, etc.—but very few spots carry mistletoe. There are no mistletoe farms to match the many fir farms that supply the holiday’s chiefest need—perhaps their rarity limits mistletoe to the upper-incomes’ homes—I don’t know. But IMHO it speaks poorly of the American spirit that a ‘kissing’ decoration has become a fading tradition.

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All of this is from my grown-up perspective—the only decoration that impressed me, as a boy, were candy-dishes. The most popular decoration, for grandmas and such, are the fine-china bowls of assorted hard candies in primary colors—very festive, very gay—and while, if polled, kids could unanimously tell you that is their least favorite candy, even children are delighted by the colorful sight—and there is candy in that bowl, and any candy is better than no candy.

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But a real grandma—those magical grandmas that know how to make kids’ eye dance—will augment the pretty candy with good candy: sour balls, taffy, jelly beans—and holy of holies, chocolate. Of course, the furniture will take a hit—not to mention some parents’ best outfits—and the sugar-rush will only enhance the present-anticipation hysteria—but a party’s a party, right?

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As a child I judged holiday home decorations by the amount and variety of the candy bowls—the rest was just background noise to my sugar-seeking senses. Our health-conscious society frowns upon candy, as a general rule—but it is a mistake to overlook the love affair between children and candy, especially on festive occasions. Kids will sing along with the carols, they’ll eat the big holiday feast at the big table, they’ll be excited about Santa coming—but it’s not really a party without the treasure-hoard of childhood—candy.

Now, money is the candy of the grown-up world—and just as children love to eat candy, grown-ups love to spend money. This is a dangerous time of year for me—mid-December. I’ve already done my basic Christmas shopping, but these few days before Christmas I’m always tempted to get a little something extra, something special. If I’m not careful, I’ll hope onto Amazon.com and drop a few hundred bucks—for stuff that, likely as not, won’t be delivered until after New Year’s.

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Impulse purchases are problematic for many people—but my memory problems make me even more vulnerable—I can’t tell you how many books I own two copies of. And if some little gift strikes me as perfect for a certain friend or relation, it’s like as not that I think so—because I gave them the same thing last year. Then I get in that quandary of trying to re-apportion gifts to people they weren’t meant for—‘the thought that counts’, my foot!

How I mourn the days when kids’ favorite gift was the one from Uncle Chris—I used to really get into Christmas and, since I never really grew-up, I had a good eye for children’s gifts. But years of incapacity have made my participation in the festivities a faded memory—and that’s just as well, since I still can’t do Christmas the way I used to. If I mess up on presents now, everyone is very understanding—but boy how I wish they didn’t have to be.

Trump and Putin, Sittin’ In A Tree   (2016Dec11)

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Sunday, December 11, 2016                                             5:52 PM

The CIA finds evidence that Putin’s machine deliberately meddled in the election—and Trump says they’re wrong. Now, my first reaction is, as always, to laugh at how predictable and transparent Trump’s reactions are—and how asinine. Then I remember that I’m no great fan of the CIA. But then I remember that if I have to choose my sources, I’ll take CIA accusations over Russian denials anytime.

Besides, there’s no question that snot-nose, Assange, got his dope from somebody—and Russians are the only group that think geopolitics is a game of chess. For me, the primary question is why. Why would an unfriendly power try to trick us into electing Trump? And here we get to the reason for Trump’s knee-jerk assessment of an agency’s findings, without having the patience to even attend their briefings—or the experience to know anything about the CIA, come to that.

The Russians expect that the election of Trump to the presidency will be a severe blow to the United States—and while Putin is a cold-blooded scumbag, I am forced to agree with him. But Trump was just the side-benefit—stopping Hillary was his real objective—Putin was scared to death that he’d end up being double-teamed by Merkel and Clinton, and getting de-balled like a steer. The American voter has saved Putin from meeting any coherent resistance from the United States in the near future—and with little trouble, he’ll probably find some patch-of-dirt that he can tempt Trump to get bogged down in—it’s not like Trump understands how his job works.

Oh, and Putin—if you’re having any trouble reaching Trump, you can call this friggin a-hole at the NBC production offices of his hit reality TV show—I shit you not—while he’s presiding over the nation.

Losing The Argument   (2016Dec10)

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Saturday, December 10, 2016                                           9:56 PM

Have you ever argued with someone who is wrong? Have you noticed that they are just as sure of being right as you are, even though they are wrong? And here’s the funniest thing of all—when we realize that we’ve been arguing for the wrong side, when we suddenly see the other side of the argument as correct—oh, what a symphony of confusion, embarrassment, and frustration we go through, how we choke on the gall of it. Some people get so upset that they just stalk off, pissed. I always make a point of swallowing that mistake and facing up to being the idiot that lost the argument.

We all are the idiot, eventually, at one time or another. There’s little use in pretending we are the one person who’s always right—that person doesn’t exist. And I firmly believe the most important part of an argument is not letting the argument itself become the point of conflict. In truth, when I lose an argument to someone, I eventually come to accept that I have learned something I didn’t know. I may never have the grace to be grateful for that, but I concede to myself that I should be.

Don’t get me wrong—I love to win an argument. But my motives are based on my belief that I’m thinking clearly about a problem, avoiding the temptation to ‘bend’ things in favor of my personal preferences—or my desire to be the ‘winner’ of the argument. I force myself to concede the other’s point, when a point is valid—sportsmanship is as important in argument as it is in sports—perhaps more so.

When arguing, it is good to cite reliable sources for one’s information. And that becomes a problem in the modern world—when something like ‘Fox News’ becomes a source for false information, the argument quickly devolves into a sub-argument about the validity of one’s sources. The reverse is also true—when an asshole like Trump tries to invalidate actual sources, such as The New York Times.

Trump is the champion of the dull and the easily-swayed—and he has spawned a whole counter-culture of people who imagine their own truth, outside of the popular, ‘observable’ variety. They believe in argument shorn of either sportsmanship or sources—argument where denying facts need only be shouted louder and longer than the opponent’s words to become ‘fact’, where talking about something else is the answer to uncomfortable, undeniable facts. Kelly Conway has made a career of this kind of argument, if you can call her rantings argument.

I’m sorry, KellyAnne, but if your mind is incapable of conceding anything said by your opponent, you’re not really arguing—you’re cheerleading. That’s all well and good at a ballgame, but it gets rather threadbare and feeble when it comes up against real life. Every time you ‘win’ an argument on TV, you’re making the whole country that much stupider—and for what? Let me tell you—I wasn’t always this way—I had a penchant for willful contrariness myself, once upon a time—but you can only juggle logic for so long before it bites you in the ass. I found that out—and you will too. Time is the great teacher.

Afterword: I nearly forgot my main point—which is this: You can have arguments all day long, but unless someone wins, it’s all a big waste of time. And if you haven’t changed a person’s mind, you haven’t won the argument. Even if you did succeed in making them feel hurt or sad or angry, you’ve still wasted your time. Miracles do happen—a person might change your mind, instead—and even that—even losing the argument (and maybe learning something) is time better spent than simply arguing with no end.

The Fog Clears   (2016Dec10)

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Saturday, December 10, 2016                                           1:34 PM

I think I’m starting to see it now. The typical Trump supporter thinks he’s won an argument with the world—proving once and for all that being smart, being open-minded, and being inclusive—that’s all for weak sissies who don’t understand how the world really works. There are a lot of Facebook comments that start out, “You liberals can all just sit down, now, and let the real men take over….”

And conviction is a wonderful thing—I can be pretty mule-headed myself. But I like to be sure I’m in the right, before I draw a line in the sand, or before I stop listening to the opposition. Simply being convinced that you’re right, without any foundation—that’s more like being crazy on purpose. Rationalizing frustration, confusing anger with a solution—these things can appear to be cogent choices, if we don’t look too far inside ourselves.

Emotion speaks louder than intellect—that’s why there’s that expression, ‘the still, small voice of reason’. You have to listen to your innermost self to know what you really think, apart from how you feel. But introspection is not a very popular pastime.

The question now becomes: when this inexperienced, ignorant poser starts to screw up everything he touches (and his cabinet choices, even before the inauguration, are just the appetizer) will those who voted for him realize their mistake, or will they rationalize again, finding yet more excuses for their poor choice?

A friend called me a conservative the other day—I never thought I’d see that. But after consideration, perhaps the pro-Trump people are the true liberal air-heads—allowing their imaginations to so strongly influence their perception of reality. The only difference is that real liberals want to empower the disenfranchised—Trump-libs are only out to empower themselves. But even if they ‘woke up’ tomorrow, and truly saw what they had done—it’s too late now—the votes have been counted. Is self-disenfranchisement even a word?

A Major Influence   (2016Dec09)

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Friday, December 09, 2016                                               2:51 PM

Just because George Winston is the greatest single influence on my piano efforts, there’s no reason to blame him for what I post. I’ve listened incessantly to his recordings—but that is true of at least a hundred other artists—still, I don’t know the man. I don’t know what he’s doing—I’ve always just tried to sound ‘as good’ as he does—knowing full well that a great deal of the appeal to his recordings is the ground-breaking sound-engineering, capturing the lushness of a great concert piano, played by a master.

But I believe we approach these piano-things from opposite ends—he is a talented musician who practically founded the New Age movement, by bringing a geometric, yet non-baroque, technique to lyricism. I was drawn to his music because of my mathematical bent, and tried to lever my lacking abilities through the use of similar stylings—a far more superficial pecking at the borders of musicality. My goal remains to somehow sound ‘as good’ as George Winston, someday.

I don’t expect to achieve it—George Winston is the goods—and he’s as comfortable with classical as with folk, blues, or rock-n-roll—and has his own unique style, into the bargain. But why should I set small goals for myself?

 

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This Country Will Self-Destruct In Five, Four….   (2016Dec09)

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Friday, December 09, 2016                                               10:08 AM

But what really bothers me is the end of the-world-as-I-know-it. Between the loss of habitats, shrinking species diversity, toxins and pesticides, we may well be able to kill ourselves off, even before we reach overpopulation, extreme global warming, or killing the oceans. Also, Capitalism has become a Frankenstein’s Monster—created by us, but too strong now to be defeated, even by the whole village carrying pitchforks. And then we go lobotomize ourselves, and elect a scoop of shit to the Oval Office—that was the wrong move. I know, I know—it’s too late now. But, ma-a-a-a-n, was that the wrong move.

The real question is—does having even the slightest hope for the future depend on a bad president? And the answer is definitely no. Trump, by himself, is a harmless, doddering idiot. But with the entire globe on the precipice—make that innumerable precipices—a Trump presidency is kind of gilding the lily. What, you couldn’t wait a few decades for things to go blooey—you want to see it right now? Well, if that’s what you were thinking—you got your wish.

It reminds me of a story that got a lot of attention when I was younger—in the midst of the civil rights movement, when a legal fight gave African-American kids the right to use the public pool in one southern town, the response was to fill the town pool with cement. That was the racists, blatantly cutting off their own noses to spite their faces. And we are living through something similar now—President Obama has ‘besmirched’ the presidency, so the idiot-half of the country has elected to fill the White House with cement.

Not that Drumpf was running against a non-white candidate—but he was running against a woman—and racism and misogyny are just two sides of the same bigotry sandwich. And Trump is just a tiny speck of betrayal and stupidity, compared to the decades of it that led up to the present.

Our problems go so much deeper than a Trump presidency—our problems are rooted in the historical chain of events that led to his candidacy—the rot of riches, the fiduciary mugging of college students, the neglect of our most precious resource—the very world we live and breathe in, and the voluntary insertion of millions of heads up millions of asses, begun by reality TV and brought to fruition by Twitter. The list of bad-turns American society has made goes on and on.

The smart youngsters of this world are looking for the next big thing—they look at America and they see an empire drowning in its own decay. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that being the greatest superpower for seven decades has brought on the ‘absolute corruption’ of the old adage. And we must admit that America was never the land of hearts and flowers that its cheerleaders would have us see it as. America, the idea, was great—is great—but America, the place, is full of people: rich, thoughtless people, poor, bitter people, ignorant, hateful people, and a few good eggs.

You don’t, as a nation, ‘come back’ from a President Trump—he is more than a problem that ‘popped up’—he is a symptom of a deep, deep sickness that has matured over decades. You cut your losses and go looking for a new beginning, somewhere else or somehow else. The ‘light of the world’, if it is to be re-ignited, is not going to flare back to life in this country—it’ll happen somewhere else. We are too busy hugging our past, and hugging what we have left, and hunkering down against an increasingly threatening government and corporate system. This is what the inevitable decline of an empire looks like.

Misdirection is the key—just as Trump gets the media to talk about flag-burning, when that is the last thing we need think about, we mislead ourselves by focusing on Trump himself as the problem. He is not the problem, he’s a symptom—his ascendancy is due to millions upon millions of Americans who are too lost to see him for what he is. Forget Trump—you want a mission? Go after whatever it is that makes us so self-destructive.

This nation is polka-dotted with high-ticket research and development laboratories—working night and day to find the secrets of science and technology. Where are the equivalent number of researchers working on social justice or humanitarian aims? This nation is blanketed by media—corporate powers that have taken hostage the journalism that protected democracy. Where are the new journalists who will report facts, without a leash? And how come the terrorists never go after the lobbyists? Do they respect them as allies in the war on freedom? And how the hell do lobbyists sleep at night, or look themselves in the mirror?

In the words of an old comic strip, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Christmas Is Nice   (2016Dec05)

Sunday, December 04, 2016                                                       2:57 PM

I have to write something nice to post. I’ve started to get some conflict between my gruesome, acidic rants and the videos (of baby-granddaughter and the Xmas-carols) that go with them. I don’t want cute photos of our little Seneca to be stuck beside my venomous diatribes and gloomy Eeyore-isms. So, if I don’t write something pleasant, I have no post to put the new videos in.

Monday, December 05, 2016                                                     8:46 PM

Christmas Music sweeps a broad path—it isn’t a genre—it’s more of a filter applied to every genre. It has the sanctity of church music and the jollity of Santa Claus, the grandeur of Hallelujah and the intimacy of a newborn’s cradle, it has angels in heaven and Elvis in a Blue Hawaii—there are very few things that can’t be squooshed into a Christmas Song, when you get right down to it—including silver bells, one’s two front teeth, and Grandma’s vehicular demise.

I like to be chronological about my annual return to the Christmas-music pile. (When we were younger, I made a point of putting them back in the library bookshelf every January, but lately, they just sit in a dusty pile by the piano until December comes round again—it’s like: why make your bed, if you’re just going to sing it again next December?)

So I start with the carol books—songbooks that focus on the ancient and traditional standards. By the time I work my way up to Irving Berlin and Jose Feliciano, that stuff sounds downright snappy, compared to stuff that was written contemporaneously with Gregorian Chants—or hymns written by Martin Luther himself (does that guy have to do everything for you Protestants? Write a hymn, dammit.)

This year, I’m recording Christmas Carols for YouTube videos like it was my job or something. I guess I hear a skull chuckling at my elbow—and this is my way of setting myself up for absent Xmases. But it’s a good thing I started early this year, in November—here it is December 5th and I’m only half-way through the first book of songs.

I have about five different caroling books—and if I get that far, I have some George Winston sheet music, too. I feel like Winston’s “December” Album is the last modern-day addition to the Xmas-music repertoire. That, and Lennon’s “War Is Over”, and Joni Mitchell’s “River”, represent the furthest reaches of Xmas-music evolution for my generation—younger people could probably cite more recent ‘classics’, but such would be dross to these fuddy-duddy ears.

The rare instrumental Xmas-tunes are my favorites—but they are unanimously difficult on the piano—Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker excerpts, Handel’s Messiah excerpts, Leroy Anderson’s “Sleigh Bells”, March of the Wooden Soldiers—you name it: if it has no lyrics, it’s a bitch to play. But I get a little better every year. Come to think of it, if my other musical efforts were seasonal, I’d probably be making better progress with them as well. I should have an era a month, from Elizabethan to Swing—that would probably be fun. Hmmm.

But December is taken—and I am on a mission. In future years my carol-playing may become worse, but it’s highly unlikely that it will ever get better than it is now—so the video archive of all of it will make a repeat of the same thing unnecessary next year and in years to come. Maybe next year I can try for the whole Nutcracker, or the entire Messiah (which would be tricky without a full chorus, but there are arrangements…)

Someday, I’d also like to do a good recording of Tchaikovsky’s The Seasons, all twelve months—it’s not official Christmas music, but there’s something about the winter months that’s very seasonal—and it does end with December, after a November ‘sleigh-ride’. Plus the fact that it ‘circumnavigates’ the year makes it kind of New-Years-ey, too. It’s Xmas-ey to me, anyhow.

I’m reminded of my good fortune in being an amateur musician—while doing these books from front to back, I find some of the fun is fading and it’s becoming a bit of a chore. Music is all fun and games until you’re committed to doing a pre-determined set-list, one after the other, easy or hard, like it or not. It’s a whole different animal—and I’m not even performing.

Friday, December 02, 2016                                               9:21 AM

Living Today   (2016Dec02)

If my health were a small child, I would give it my sternest look and say, “I’m very disappointed in you.” Our bodies are a miracle of moving parts, of chemical balance, of evolutionary design—I should be grateful that mine works at all. Bodies are fancy British sports-cars—genius engineering, incredible performance—but get some moisture in the fuel line, a little air in the brake line, a slight under-pressure in the tires—and, suddenly, it’s all hobbled, wobbly and life-threatening.

I’m feeling tremendously empowered today—for a rarity, my body is mobile and my mind relatively clear. That is a glaring contrast to the last few days, when I had so-many-more-than-usual pings and ratchets, I felt ready for the junkyard. But this is something healthy people (and I remember, once, being one) do not have the capacity to appreciate—to wake up in the morning with a clear mind and a body that does what you tell it to—such incredible power—such potential for this day.

I love to write. I bitch about ‘who cares?’; ‘is anyone listening?’; ‘do I have anything to say?’; and so forth, but the truth is I do this because it feels good. Sometimes I go off the rails—but I don’t post everything I type—I give myself liberty to write whatever-the-hell, and then I decide whether it’s fit for public exposure. Like most people, my privacy is important to me—and I try to respect the privacy of others—but that means I’ll never be good writer. Actually, the desire to keep myself to myself is just half of it—I’m also a lousy liar—and a good story-teller has to be comfortable telling stories.

But I don’t need to be good at something to enjoy the hell out of it—take my piano-playing for example—horrible stuff—but you can see that I’m very into it. And I write the same way. I’ll just be sitting around or watching TV and I’ll be struck, out of nowhere, by a notion that propels me to the keyboard—it’s almost inconvenient, except that there’s a thrill that comes with the compulsion.

I suppose it’s an obvious adaptation to the lack of people to talk to—or maybe it simply reveals that I prefer to do all the talking. You have to admit, I do have plenty to say—whether or not it’s worth saying, aside—I really crank it out—I can’t shut up. But there are people wandering the street-corners of New York City that could make the same claim—and they’re actually collecting change—maybe they’ve got more on the ball than I do.

The trouble is that writing is an industry, music is an industry. It is virtually impossible for me to enjoy my hobbies without the thought sneaking in, unwelcome, that other people make money this way—it’s like trying not to think of a purple elephant. I fucking hate money. I’m lucky my wife handles all of it—it makes my skin crawl. But whose head would not be turned by the thought of all the glittering prizes, the fabulous wealth, of the successful—rarer than power-ball winners though they may be?

Shows like American Idol or America’s Got Talent whisper to us that the point of enjoying the arts is to win. Better that more people enjoyed the arts as I do, for their own sake. The talented would still shine out, would still be plucked into the heavens—but the rest of us could just be comfortable with the immense pleasure that amateur artistic pursuits offer us.

To be of less-than-professional training and ability is a very modern concept—a few generations ago, gathering around the piano and singing was as natural as sitting down to watch TV together. And writing correspondence was as much a part of an evening as saying one’s bedtime prayers—volumes of such source material inform our historians. Maybe that’s why we bloggers are so legion—letter-writing is gone out of style—and we’ve all taken to writing letters to Ulysses’ ‘Noman’.

It’s an ironic concept—I’ve learned to use all these social-media apps, WordPress, Facebook, YouTube—and all these graphics and audio editing software suites—just so I can approximate the 19th century habit of playing piano in the living room and writing letters to distant friends.

History With A Grain Of Salt   (2016Dec03)

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Saturday, December 03, 2016                                           1:41 PM

I’ve just watched the first five episodes of Oliver Stone’s “The Untold History of the United States” on Netflix. The thrust of his re-telling of our modern history begins with an analysis of Russia’s virtually lone struggle against Germany, transforming what we think of as the main events of World War II into relatively minor clashes—in terms of land-area fought over, scale of destruction, length of time, and number of lives lost and persons wounded—and the stats certainly make that much plain. The Western Front was smaller, shorter, and less bloody in many respects—even with the Pacific War thrown in, ‘our’ War involved about a tenth of the size and horror of the struggle between Hitler and Stalin.

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As he continues to explore the question of Truman’s decision to use the bomb, he frames it as more a demonstration for the Soviets than a body-blow to Japan. Stone suggests that the end of the Nazis enabled Russia to turn and join the US, as agreed, in fighting Japan, months afterward—and that their announcement of their intent to do so—came at about the same time as the two nuclear blasts—and was a great shock to an already-battered Japan. Thus, he presents the possibility that Russia, and not our new A-bomb, was responsible for Japan’s surrender, as well as Germany’s.

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His revisionism also puts America squarely in the docket, to blame for nuclear proliferation, the military-industrial complex, and the entire Cold War that followed—and we must admit that the USA, being suddenly omnipotent (and not having their country reduced to rubble by the fighting, as was the case almost everywhere else) became the prime superpower—and had all the problems and corruptions that absolute power is known to herald.

Oliver Stone does have a habit of mentioning Stalin’s atrocities in asides, often, as if afraid someone will accuse him of glossing over them (which the asides almost accomplish, ironically). But while Stone presents a new perspective and a clarification of several old false assumptions—and highlights some overlooked or hidden aspects that radically change the context of certain events—he is still dealing with the problem of ‘history as general summary’.

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His review, for example, leaves out the details of China’s suffering and transformation, its revolution and great famine. The British role in the man-made starvation in India during World War II, resulting in a genocide greater than the Nazis’, was overlooked as well (see Howard Fast’s “The Pledge”). An historical review, by its nature, leaves out more than it puts in.

His view of the last seventy years may be clearer-eyed, less American-centric—but it is still an impossible task to pick and choose the stand-out events of world history over so large a span of time, without putting one’s own ‘centrism’ into the picking. Still, Stone’s gruesome view of modern American history is, unfortunately, solidly-grounded in facts and records, shorn of the ‘spin’ which events are often given in their own time, and which tend to continue to stand as fact, absent an Oliver Stone.

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The show, ultimately, is a flat statement to Americans that being ‘the world’s greatest superpower’ and being ‘the good guys’ are, almost by definition, mutually exclusive concepts. He almost makes us embarrassed that we don’t see something so obvious. Our laser focus on the high-points of American History, and our brushing aside of all the many sins: the original genocide of the natives, the kidnapping and slavery of the Africans, the dehumanization of ethnic and racial minorities, the industrialism that spawned sweat shops, child labor, tenements, and all the rapacity of Capitalism—we wave these things aside and point to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Emancipation Proclamation. Don’t look over there—look here—o, pretty!

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Most of history is a horror—and American history no exception. If you think about our greatest moments—the Bill of Rights, Women’s Suffrage, the Civil Rights Act, etc.—they are all merely points at which those in power finally conceded, for this specific case, for that specific group, that people should not be used and abused like farm animals. Points on the Timeline when those in authority declare, “Oh, did that hurt? I’ll stop now.” It’s almost funny that we have these tremendous struggles, usually over the question, “Why should I treat you like a human being?” It’s as if, when someone gets a little power, the rest of us have to turn as one and shout at them, “Hey, right and wrong still apply, douchebag!”

I suppose the great lesson of history is that victory is a sort of lobotomy—it convinces the victor that force is effective. And with force must come control. And with too much control comes the need for struggles anew, and a new victor, and on it goes.

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In sum, I was reluctant to watch another rehash of the last seventy years of world conflict—but I was not disappointed in my hope that Oliver Stone wouldn’t have bothered to make this series without some surprising and new information—and observations that really change the context for lay-historians like myself. I love this sort of thing, because you can’t really change the accepted view of history without adding in some new data—and this series exposes many overlooked, obscured, and newly-discovered bits of information, and makes connections that seem obvious once made—making one wonder why Oliver Stone had to do it, all this time later. But I’m glad he did.

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The subject guarantees that viewing will be somewhat daunting, and hardly inspiring—but looking ourselves straight in the mirror is ultimately a very healthy thing, if uncomfortable. I can’t help reflecting, however, that if Oliver Stone can take the old story and re-tell it as something almost unrecognizable—then I suppose someone else could do the same to his. When studying history, one must never neglect the grain of salt.

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Pete has Left the Building   (2016Dec07)

Wednesday, December 07, 2016                           3:00 PM

Pete has Left the Building. Ladies and gentlemen, the legendary, the incomparable—Pete Cianflone!! The Buds-Up Symphony Hall-Space welcomes you to return to us soon and—have a safe drive home now.

What a day—Pete came by (as you may have surmised) and brought with him an old drawing of mine—Joanna Binkley wanting to return it for safekeeping—for which I thank her. It’s great to see an artifact from the steady-hand-and-sharp-eye days of yore. I was pretty good, while it lasted.

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And I had something to show Pete—Bea Kruchkow forwarded an archival copy of Newsweek—from 1989—a ‘look back’ at 1969 (then, a ‘whole’ twenty years ago). Time sure is funny. Funny—ha-ha, not funny like fire.

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So anyway, after girding our hairy-purple loins, we set forth to do battle upon the field of sound. First we did a selection of Spirituals that are traditionally connected with Christmastime—and for good measure, threw in two popular songs of Xmas as well.

We did two rounds, or maybe three, of improvisation—I can’t remember. One of them is very loosely based on the Swanky Modes tune, “Any Ordinary Man” (from “Tapeheads” (1988)). Movie-credits soundtracks often have something catchy about them that makes me go straight from the end of the movie to the piano, to try and find the melody of what I just heard. That was the case, yesterday, with Tapeheads—but I soon realized, after finding the notes, that this was one of those energetic songs that I’d have a hard time keeping up with. But Pete had never heard the song—and I’m not exactly a natural-born blues-player—so it’s a toss-up whether you want to call it a bad cover, or just a different piece of music.

Pete and I were happy with all of it, so that’s all that matters. Poor Bear has had an uncomfortable head-cold for three days now—why is it impossible for the holidays to pass without colds? Spence has been renovating the attic room and the cellar, preparing for our royal visitation later this month—all must be just so, ya know. It’s quite something to have an infant come into a house that hasn’t seen one in years—I’ve started noticing dust where I was hitherto dust-blind.

It’s a sign of just how busy life can be—the Buds-Up ensemble has nothing to show for last November. We try to gather once a month, but even that tiny schedule can be impossible to keep to, in this hurrying, rattling time-stream. Still, I’m pleased enough that we had such a good time, today—I think it makes up for the gap—and I hope people enjoy these as much as we enjoyed playing them.

It’s been a busy day—rarely on any December 7th do I fail to stop and think about the ‘day of infamy’. A Japanese Prime Minister visited Pearl Harbor last week—the first-ever Japanese State Visit to the site—and this is the 75th anniversary of the start of the War. There are many Pearl-Harbor-themed movies on TV today—I guess I’ll go watch some of my favorites.

My Dad was a war-movie fan—we used to watch John Wayne movies on TV in the living room—my Dad was a Marine in Korea. Watching war movies is the closest I’ve ever been to actual murder among men—I don’t mind, I tell you. I respect the hell out of veterans like my Dad—but I don’t feel bad about living an un-blooded life. I suspect I would have made a lousy soldier anyway.

December 7th is special though—there’s something awesome about an entire globe in conflict—it may have been evil and stupid and lots of other things—but it was ‘awesome’, in the literal sense of the word, without the implication of admiration young people give the word today. It fills one with awe.

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Working Area   (2016Dec01)

 

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Thursday, December 01, 2016                                         10:25 AM

I’d recommend Haydn—particularly the piano works. Tell your digital concierge, “Play Haydn keyboard sonatas.”—and you’re good for several hours of peaceful working- or reading- music.

If the raw sunlight gets in your eye-line, tape a piece of colored construction paper on your window—the room stays lit, but you don’t get that one headache-inducing reflection in your field of vision. And it looks cheery—like a child’s art project—but you have to replace it once a year because construction paper fades and becomes very dreary-looking, in the end.

As a smoker, I’ve taken to confining myself to two rooms of the house—here in the front room, where I work, and my bedroom, where I watch TV and read. If the doors are kept faithfully closed, the rest of the house doesn’t reek of smoking—but it must be noted that I often open the front door for front-room ventilation, and I have a window-fan on exhaust in the bedroom, year-round (yes, it does get a little chilly in winter).

I’ve also surrendered to the smokeless ashtray—it’s stupid and noisy and uses too many batteries and is a pain to empty every time it’s full—but if you use one, it will demonstrate that most of the smoke in a smoke-filled room comes from the cigarette smoldering in the ashtray, not from the smoker’s exhalations. And studies have shown that smoldering butts give off the dirtiest second-hand smoke—much more unhealthy than ‘smoked’ smoke, and more of it.

Grapes, celery sticks, and baby carrots make the best working snacks—you can eat all you want and it won’t do the kind of damage that chips, crackers, or candy can do. Also, for smokers, hot tea provides a bit of steam-cleaning for the lungs—and drinking tea all day won’t fry your nervous system like coffee. There is something about tannic acid that makes tea bother my digestion more than coffee—but only if I’m really chugging it down, cup after cup. Moderation in all things, as they say.

Don’t multitask. Do what you’re doing and leave the rest for later—it may seem slower, but in truth, when each task is focused on, it gets done better and quicker—and if you go from one to the next without pause, the overall time-use is less than if you hop from one thing to another all day long—the hopping around makes you feel busy, but you’re actually wasting time interrupting yourself. And focusing on a task reduces the number of errors.

Enjoy your work—it is a choice. Even the most menial tasks can become a game in your mind. Indeed, the more menial jobs lend themselves to mind-games better than complicated ones. Insisting to yourself that you hate what you’re doing is counterproductive—and a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Stop when you’re tired. This is certainly something you don’t always have a choice about, but when the choice is available, take it. Nobody ever did great work while running on fumes. I often found that tasks that take an hour in overtime can be done in five minutes when approached fresh the next morning. Answers that play hide-and-seek in the darkness of fatigue will stand out clear as day in the clarity of morning.

Even in the middle of the day, pausing to refresh can do wonders for your productivity—much more so than dutifully slogging on. Short breaks are like remembering to breathe—something else you should try to do. But here is where ‘multitasking’ can actually be useful—if you get stuck on one project, and you have something else to work on that will take your mind off it, that can be as good as a break.

Get a comfortable chair—if your workplace won’t give you one, steal one. I remember one workplace where the office manager was a real stickler about furniture—I would steal a good chair from another room. Every night she had the janitor put the chair back where it came from—and every morning I stole it again. Improvise, adapt, and overcome, as the Corps likes to say.

Don’t get ahead of yourself—whenever I do that, I always skip a step. People used to ask me why I always walked with my eyes on the ground—and I would answer that I didn’t like to step in dog-poo. Ah the good old days, when picking up after our pets was considered beneath us. Still, there are things to  trip on, slide on, and stumble over—watch where you’re going.

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Well—who knew I had so much free advice to give. And you know what they say—free advice is worth every penny you paid for it.

 

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