Around Southie, we use militias as beer mats

Great line from Dennis Lehane: "Militias? Ya mean those fucknuts who wear camo, but they drive on state roads & drink city water?"

Goebbels was a college professor, too

Newt Gingrich is an embarrassment to anyone who ever earned a Ph.D.

Mighty music: Trian

My favorite US-based Irish trio: Trian (only competitor: original Chulrua); check out "The Torrid Romance" http://ping.fm/Ff6Up

Dude, you have no Koran!

23-yr-old skateboarder pwns psychotic bigot from "Repent Amarillo": http://ping.fm/gcQIk

Country club fucks like John Boehner are always cowards

John Boehner is a coward (but then we knew that): http://ping.fm/xJ7bF

"Desperate, hungry and angry people"

from Negro League great Buck O'Neill:

"They claim to kill in the name of God. That’s not Christianity. That’s not Judaism. That’s not Islam. That’s a religion of desperate, hungry and angry people. They figure they have nothing. So, they have nothing to lose."

Totally digging the "Francis O'Neill Cylinders" from the Ward archives; thanks for the loan, @Roger Landes!

NOT the real Terry Jones

Not in MY America, Jones! White House wins one: http://ping.fm/djbHQ

"And we're out"

Place is overrun with bimbos and the volume level is rising. Time to bail.

We are all sentient beings.

Numinous moment: at coffeeshop, old hippie brings out a cup of water to his elderly mongrel, who laps happily.

Pirates, Freebooters & Jolly Jack Tars

"Pirates, Freebooters & Jolly Jack Tars": TTU Celtic Ensemble on Talk Like a Pirate Day, 9.19. 7pm! http://ping.fm/VMngB?eid=123714774348085

Awareness of suffering = compassion

From the great teacher Pema Chodron: "Use your personal suffering as the path to compassion for all beings."

WWGD ("What would Gary do?")

Well, he wouldn't fuckin' knuckle under, that's for sure.

"What would Gary do?"

Coping w/ funk: WWGD? "What would Gary (Snyder) do"? My hero: http://ping.fm/VUfWG

"Book"-shops in airports

Odds that an airport "book"-shop will contain actual reading matter that WON'T dissolve brain-cells? < 0

AZ

PHX: Well, it may be ground-zero for state-mandate Know-Nothing fascist intolerance...but the airport's got free wi-fi!

AMS-SW = LBK TX USA TERRA

TTU Musicology hosts AMS-SW chapter meeting Oct 23-24 2010. PLEASE PASS THE WORD! http://ping.fm/BUSbp

Got yer class war right here, you CEO bastards!

For the same reason: so that working-/middle-class money winds up in CEOs & shareholders' pockets. It IS class war: they started it!

NB: the financial elites don't want to "cut" Social Security: they want to *privatize* it--just like Iraq reconstruction, US army, etc.

Memo to the ladies who lunch...

Who wear $1000 worth of "workout" clothes and full war-paint at 8 in the morning, drive $60,000 cars, push $2000 strollers, talk louder than the entire rest of the room:

Do you do anything other than consume? If not, why not?

Healing Power

Was recently reminded of this one, which I hadn't thought of in years. Used to play this tune, transcribed from this performance by the Night Music band, Bootsy Collins, composer/pianist Carla Bley, and the great bassist Steve Swallow.



Y'all hip to Healing Power, baby?

People Get Ready

Greatest song that Curtis Mayfield ever wrote and, with Dan Penn's Dark End of the Street and Sam Cooke's A Change is Gonna Come, a song that helped end segregation in this country.

And, this is the only band situation which Rod Stewart never postured: the mighty Jeff Beck, a true survivor.

And I keeps one in the chamber in case you pondering.

Pristine cloudless sky, cool breeze, 76 degrees on the South Plains. Gassho.

"Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren..."

Jesus was a radical, too:

We believe it is time to shine light on the hypocrisy of politicians and pundits who expound on the freedom of religion for their chosen sects while seeking to tell our Muslim brothers and sisters where they can and cannot worship. Using a political podium to bully a religious community threatens one of our most fundamental freedoms.

Not hatred.

Unexpected bonus: the great Betty "Bebop" Carter on the coffeeshop sound system. http://ping.fm/XG9ZO

Numinous moment

Numinous moment: hundreds of dragonflies, like mythic beasts out of fantasy, sweeping in circles over the suburban lawns.

And the little girls in the Paris Hilton-wannabee sunglasses absorbedly texting while their parents carry their stuff into the dorms.

Watching fraternity pods in the grocery-store is funny, but it's also pitifully obvious that they're incapable of feeding themselves. Mom?!?

Bach would have approved

This is very possibly the greatest bass line in the history of popular music. In my "Jif & the Choosy Mothers" (horn band) days, I transcribed an entire set's worth of Motown horn parts and bass lines. It was a stone education.

Ladies & gentlemen, I give you the great, great Wilton Felder:



Selah (and a h/t to my great teacher, Larry "Guitar" Baeder).

The 'Rents have Arrived

Summer must be over: the parents have arrived: overdressed, overcoiffed, driving oversized gas-guzzling cars with out-of-zip-code plates the wrong way on campus roads, buying cheap university-brand knockoff hoodies and ball-caps for their offspring, who are hidden behind Paris Hilton sunglasses and tremulous posturing bravado. The parents look simultaneously possessive and petulant, simultaneously irked that they're not in control of their offspring's situation anymore and scared that they've done an inadequate job of preparing those offspring to take over their own lives.

In Texas, where privilege runs high and a sense of consequences is nil, the quicker the parents leave the better: because it means we can start doing the job of maturing their children which they themselves omitted to complete. Sheesh!

Little bit of Hieland hyperbole, right here

Bill Millin, who piped them ashore at Swords Beach, has died.


He went in with the Special Service Brigade near Caen on D-Day., and in the nightmare of that horrific kill-zone, Lord Lovat, the hereditary chieftain of the Frasers asked him to play. Millin was willing, but cited War Office regulations, which forbade thus exposing pipers as targets. The Fraser replied "Ah, but that’s the English War Office. You and I are both Scottish, and that doesn’t apply.”

He played "Highland Laddie," up and down the beach that day. Later, German gunners who had him their sights said they didn't shoot “because they thought I was crazy.”

No. He wasn't crazy. That's not what they call it, back where I--and the MacGregors and Orrs, the Roundheads and Tories, before me--come from.

I often wonder if the rich men in quiet offices, the demagogues screeching over loudspeakers or Twitter accounts, hundreds or thousands of miles from the firing line, ever consider how little they deserve the courage of the men and women who go into battle.

Aw haw hey, Private. Go well.

Of the seven Silver Star recipients in Afghanistan, four are Hispanic. Hope none of them want to walk down the street in Arizona!

Wheel of karma: turning in key of first office here, after 10 years' occupancy.

Semester looms: newbies on campus driving as if whacked-out on Quaaludes.

Effort = value

From a post about exploiting social networking, the following a jackpot:

• Do good work. Create a good product, have great customer service, etc.
• Listen. What is being said about you is as important, if not more than, what you are saying about you.
• Care. In social media channels where conversations are more intimate, people can really tell if you are paying lip service or paying attention.
• Add value. What you bring to the conversations and communities better be relevant, thoughtful, and of real use to the community members (friends, fans, followers).
• Be real. Authentic, transparent, honest — you know the drill, but are you doing it?

Not a bad set of rules for any work.

Dept of "Thank you Capt. Obvious": venting may make anger worse: http://ping.fm/skWAh

Re/ right-wing "hallowed ground" argument against the Ground Zero mosque: the US Constitution is also hallowed, dammit!

Textbook prices are horribly and unfairly inflated: here's Lifehacker's guide to economy. Worth sharing! http://ping.fm/JbBoQ

Woza Mandela! Woza, Woza!

Johnny Clegg--who went to jail for making biracial music in apartheid South Africa--sings a song for Nelson Mandela:



"It is music and dancing that makes me at peace with the world." --Nelson Mandela

Nkosi sikeleli Afrika

Read, write, think, play, teach, cook, garden, listen: what privileges!

Mike Katz and Bill Whellan. Just...damn! http://ping.fm/smAK1

Dr "glass-half-empty" Coyote

Hate to do it, but when a 16-year-old writes and says "all I really want to do in my life is compose and record music--what are my career options", if you're a responsible respondent, there ain't but about one kind of answer [lightly redacted]:

Sure, I remember you.

The fact of the matter is that there are very, very few full-time jobs to be had playing and composing music for a living. This is why most people who DO make a living in music have one or more parallel streams: arranging, teaching, etc--and many others have full-time non-music jobs.

To be a full-time musician, you have to have (a) absolutely top-notch chops; (b) a good support network (to tide you over between jobs, or in the event of unforeseen problems--medical, financial, etc; (c) a relentless work ethic--12-14 hours per day; (d) a great deal of patience and fortitude, being prepared to put up with the possibility of years of poverty and/or frustration; and (e) a lot of luck. (a) through (d) are do-able--because they are (mostly) under your own control. (e) is a killer, because it is not. I've been a professor for 10 years. Before that I was in graduate school (Master's and a Doctorate) 12 years. Before that I lived on less than $20,000/year for about 6 years. All through those years I had straight jobs to help pay the rent.

I would encourage you by all means to keep writing, keep recording, keep working on your chops. But unless you are prepared to either be a music teacher, and get the necessary formal schooling that certifies you for that, or else to accept a great deal of uncertainty, unpredictability, and (probably) poverty), I would not advise that you try to make a full-time career in music.

Be advised that there are LOTS of very talented musicians who don't work full-time or exclusively in music: I know psychiatrists, doctors, lawyers, carpenters, auto mechanics, etc who are every bit as talented and make music every bit as good as that created by "full-time musicians." You can do the same.

Probably the most valuable things you can do right now are to (a) keep working on your chops; (b) diversify your skills: learn about marketing, computers, graphic design, contract law, copyright law, etc; (c) work with a lot of different collaborating musicians--expand your horizons and your network of contacts; (d) get out there and gig, in as many different types of circumstances as possible. My wife's nephew has had songs he's written pitched to Avril Lavigne--but he's not counting on that to make his fortune. He's also going to college for music education; also plays drums, guitar, and trumpet; also sight-reads like a whip and sings bass; is also an excellent beat-boxer. The competition is fierce and there are thousands upon thousands of excellent musicians out there.

Good luck.

Dr Coyote

Reading back, it's a big bummer, though not intended to be such. Just cain't lie to the young'uns about possible/impossible it might be.

Updated to add: he wrote back:

Thank you for some practical advice, instead of the "don't do it" I'm getting from everyone else. I will look into some other options, as I really don't want to be poor.

Guess it was the right medicine. One doesn't always know.

Splendid: CO gubenatorial candidate thinks bicycles are a "UN Stealth Campaign"-http://ping.fm/VHkmk

Hatred & opportunism go down to defeat at Ground Zero

Ground Zero, where the Towers fell on 9/11, is--ought to be treated as--as sacred site: a place where we are all to be reminded of the pointless loss and human suffering that hatred and political opportunism can create. It was thus particularly contemptible when Rudy Giuliani, Sarah Palin, and a raft of hateful right-wing nutjob political and media hacks, campaigned against the building of a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero: as if no Muslim suffered and died in the Towers that day! What arrogance!

So I was really, really happy to get this note from the J Street folks who are working to create more effective interfaith dialogue [redacted].

The best part?

The embrace.

Dr Coyote --

Yesterday, J Street New York City supporters and I delivered over 10,000 of your signatures in support of the Islamic Center in Lower Manhattan to a critical hearing of New York City's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

The response by our community to our call to action on this issue was overwhelming and demonstrated that J Street supporters clearly understand that tolerance and religious freedom are not only essential values, but that sacrificing them weakens us in the fight against extremism.

And I've got great news -- despite the outcry against the project, the Commission voted 9-0 to allow it to proceed.

Yesterday, after the vote, Mayor Michael Bloomberg gave a stirring defense of the project and religious freedom on Governor's Island with the Statue of Liberty in the background.

Mayor Bloomberg was joined by a group of interfaith leaders as he gave his remarks in front of the Statue of Liberty:

Every local official I spoke with at the hearing truly appreciated our support for the project.

I also had an emotional moment with the Community Center's lead developer -- Sharif El-Gamal -- who couldn't help but give me a hug, even though we'd never met before!

For those of you that stood with us, thank you so much. Our voices are so needed in the national political debate and within the American Jewish community.

If you would like to support J Street financially, allowing us to keep standing up for our values, click here to make a gift.

Until next time,

- Isaac

Isaac Luria
V.P., Communications and New Media
J Street
August 4, 2010

Give thanks and praise: Beryl Marriott

A damned shame. Beryl Marriott was one of the greatest English-style ceilidh-band pianists. She gave Dave Swarbrick his first fiddle gigs, and she ruled on his great solo discs Swarbrick and Smiddyburn.

We owe her a lot.

Great moments from The Wire

...as if any moments from the The Wire weren't great ones, but still:

I love that the smartest police on the whole team, Clark Peters's masterful Lester Freamon, has the most diverse drinking habits: from one show to another he drinks Jameson, Guinness (in the nitrogen bottle, thereby confirming that Lester knows an American pour sucks), and Red Stripe (Jamaica).

The point is that Lester is the best police on the team because he pays attention to details and never loses patience or gives up. If you can't pay attention to your beer you probably can't pay attention to a wiretap either.

Nice touch.

"Music is the weapon of the future" --Fela Kuti

Fela Kuti said that. In this performance, the great Hugh Masekela, who wrote the song for the magnificent stage show Sarafina!, about the children-led protests of the Soweto Riots, proves it.

I was playing this song, with my brother-in-music Dr Jolt, in Bloomington IN, in Jif & the Choosy Mothers, the night that Nelson Mandela walked out of prison, after twenty-seven years.



As Andy Irvine said, "You all have to sing very very loud, because fascists are very very deaf."

Gandhi said: "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win."

And, to paraphrase the great Emma Goldman, we going to be dancing all the way.

"Engaged and Integrated Scholar"

Requested responses to university Provost's "Engaged and Integrated Scholars" series feature. Surprising how much more honest you can be when you've got tenure:

1. What is your research objective/interest(s)?

Interests:
American and African-American Music, 20th Century Music, Irish traditional music and other folk musics and cultures, improvisation, music and politics, performance practice, historical performance.
Objectives:
To do work as a research scholar which enriches historical understanding, empowers communities, and overcomes cultural boundaries.

2. How do you feel your research impacts the globe?

In my research, I am a proponent of Patrick Geddes's dictum to "Think globally, but act locally". I believe scholars should recognize wider impact and responsibility for their work, not only within their own disciplines, but also as part of wider research communities and, indeed, as part of all communities worldwide. Because my own work is especially engaged with the histories of marginalized, colonized, ostracized, and working-class musics, it also engages issues of politics, race, class, and power and I am particularly aware of my responsibilities in these areas.

3. Where do you get your inspiration?

I am inspired by my own teachers and predecessors, within and beyond the field of musicology, who have modeled for me the combination of rigor, curiosity, insight, sensitivity, and work-ethic which I strive to realize in my own work. My own teachers J. Peter Burkholder, Austin Caswell, Thomas J Mathiesen, Thomas Binkley, and Richard Bauman were giant intellects and inspirations. Beyond musicology, I am inspired by the poetics of Gary Snyder and Peter Mathiessen, the spiritual insights of Dainin Katagiri Roshi and Thomas Merton, and the stunning beauty and emotional depth I have found in many different forms of traditional music. As Bob Dylan said, "traditional music will teach you everything you need to know to live. If you let it."

4. What type(s) of service projects do you enjoy doing?

I am acutely aware of the unusual privilege I enjoy as a a white, male, tenured, heterosexual college professor. That privilege--though hard-earned and many years in coming--obligates me to work to help others. I donate my time writing, teaching, playing, and speaking as much as I possibly can. Possibly the most gratifying service projects of all are those in which, through teaching, I am privileged to help people become participants in the creation of their own artistic lives.

5. What projects are you currently working on?

My primary current research project is a large-scale scholarly monograph on the earliest roots of blackface minstrelsy, the early 19th century street idiom which synthesized African-American and Anglo-Celtic styles to create the first great American popular music. I am also heavily involved in expanding the range and visibility of the work done by my own Vernacular Music Center, and the activities of the Celtic Ensemble, a unique ensemble among North American music conservatory programs.

6. What advice do you have for new faculty members on balancing all of the components of an integrated scholar into their careers (academics, research, service)?

Although I would certainly not think of myself as exemplifying effective integration of al these elements--I am acutely aware of my own limitations and inefficiencies--I have found the following dicta to be practical and useful:

• Cultivate the ability to concentrate closely in short bursts of time. Available time for one's own research is never sufficiently great and it is always prone to interruption; therefore, it is important to be able to muster concentration in shorter bursts.
• Related to the above: identify those patterns in your calendar and schedule in which your concentration is best and most suited for certain types of activities, and protect those times for your own work. I get up at 4:30AM, six days a week, for this reason.
• Develop a physical and a spiritual discipline. Do something outdoors and something physical every day. I bicycle, garden, do yoga and martial arts.
• Invest effort not only in your own work, but also in communicating and collaborating with colleagues, making sure that they know what you are working on. Work a little bit harder and be a little bit friendlier--this pays large dividends.

7. Lastly, please provide us with some background information to help people get to know you. What is your official title, educational background and hometown?

I am Associate Professor of Musicology; I serve as Chair of Musicology, director of the Vernacular Music Center, and director of the Celtic Ensemble. I hold a BA (Music) from the University of Massachusetts, and a Master's in Music (Jazz Studies) and Ph.D. in Musicology, from Indiana University. I was born on the north shore of Massachusetts, in a small town called Marblehead (home of the painting The Spirit of '76), but have lived, worked, and played music in Cambridge MA, Manhattan, Chicago, and New Orleans, as well. My wife Dharmonia (also professor of Musicology at the university) and I lived in southern Indiana for 12 years, and here in Lubbock since 2000, but my heart is still in the foothills and seashores of northern New England.

Learning to really dig it when my own students come up with music/nerd jokes we did back in the day, viz: "International House of Purcell".

"The collective intelligence of a wine flask"

Marc Ambinder nails the Republican "leadership":

The Republicans want to be mayors of crazy-town. They've embraced a fringe and proto-racist isolationist and ignorant conservative populism that has no solutions for fixing anything and the collective intelligence of a wine flask.

No great surprise there. It's the same thing they did in '56 and after in attempting to shut down the Civil Rights movement. Equally stupid as a long-term policy, but in the short term, it led to lynchings, bombings, and a whole lot of needless suffering.

Probably will this time, too.

The world's greatest newspaper and the greatest-ever TV program: the Guardian UK's episode-by-episode guide to The Wire: http://ping.fm/pxdJN

Music is magic

Every kind of awesome. These folks have been married sixty-two years.



All created and uncreated phenomena arise, flourish, and pass away. But love endures.

Jesus, what the FUCK is up with these people?!?

Next to me on regional jet: gray ponytail, earrings, bifocals, Dick (whoremonger) Morris's "Taking Back America" (sic). Another ex-hippie who drank the Tea.

Home. For about 8 hours. Then out again, to O'Flaherty Youth Camp (D/FW)

More evidence that animals are better than humans: http://ping.fm/Re8py

On the road again: Houston, Amsterdam, Terschelling; keynote: "Afro-Celtic Musical Exchange in the Age of Sail"

Five worst EVER: Johnson, Buchanan, Harding, Pierce, and GWB. Way to go, Junior: you finally excelled: at WORST. http://ping.fm/N3mmI

Tom Clancy "Patriot Games": contemptible on every level: exploitative, simplistic, macho, manipulative. Clancy's a fascist; H. Ford a whore.

Boomers! Prayin' for rain!

Only down-side to Germany v. England? That they couldn't BOTH LOSE.

Diggin' the sublime ferocity of Mason Brown & Doug Goodhart, this mawnin': http://ping.fm/ntwxb

How to control an Ulster Scotsman's taste for single-malts: keep 'em sealed--Presbyterian tightfistedness takes care of the rest!

Remembering Ali Akbar Khan, whose last act, on the day he died, was to *teach a lesson*. May I depart with such grace & courage.

Re/ Barton's "apology" to BP: 82% of Texans think Barton was wrong & President right; these are OUR beaches: http://thinkprogress.org/2010/06/23/barton-18-percent-apologize/

On-the-ground wisdom re/ Mullah McChrystal from a remarkable and courageous Afghan blogger: http://ping.fm/yQf1z

Little pub in a storefront or mill building somewhere in the Berkshire hills, patch of ground w/ trees, time to write... Someday, I promise.

Animals are our brothers. We should protect them--not kill them: http://ping.fm/P35kY

Re/ McChrystal:

From the Uniform Code of Military Justice:

"Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct."

90,000 singing "Nkosi sikelele Afrika" at the Big Calabash and I am weeping.

After melodrama of past few days, it's not JUST chauvinism that makes me hope S Africa kicks the merde out of France today. WOZA! Woza woza!

Oh, and BP, who've trotted out a professorial black guy in ads for all you're doing to "make things right"? Just go die, OK?

Diggin' World Cup no end, learning a lot, but (no revelation here) the absurd histrionic flops are wussy in the extreme.

Moved inexpressibly at receiving Father's Day greetings from non-biological young'uns & thinking of Greg Brown: http://ping.fm/IeO3d

Aphorism: the "job" of a teacher, ultimately, is facilitate others in becoming more fully themselves. Hence not a job; more like a privilege.

Reality TV: further evidence that "core American values" are sloth, voyeurism, and stupidity.

I am content.

In the High Hills w/ Dharmonia & good friendS

Zoukfest Day 01: early PM

Trying a slightly different approach this year w/ ZF blog: instead of a long, semi-carefully-composed tome assembled in the early morning, commenting retrospectively on the events of the day before, am going to trying spot-reporting (sorta expanded Twitter feed).

Nice orientation last night--chance to see old friends, some of whom haven't been back to ZF for a number of years. Interesting classes offered--new staff (Will Harmon, Blayne Chastain, Martin Hayes) bringing great new vibe to the mix. Doug Goodhart holds forth, playing agogo, on rhythm as comprising "the figure and the ground", Moira Smiley leads the room through a call-and-response world tour of global vocal styles, Luke Plumb lays it down on mandolin.

Then adjourn to one of the two session pubs for which Zoukfest has engineered a welcome: the Two Fools Tavern, good friends to the music for a long time now, and a local pizza joint. I've said before that, for any regional/local grass-roots arts initiative to flourish, it needs spaces: music houses or pubs in which management understands that the intangible benefits music in their rooms provides are nevertheless quite concrete.

Good food at the Two Fools, management comps the drinks for the players, and before long we're around a long table with Messers Harmon, Hayes, Plumb, and company. Nice evening of Clare-and-other tunes ensues, with one of the nicest aspects of the right kind of festival sessions: the sense that these are old and new friends having a conversation, renewing (or forging) acquaintance, getting to know one another better--and that the music is only a part of the process. The music is better precisely because it is serving this larger purpose. Pleasant evening, we hated to leave, but it's only Sunday--and Monday morning of a festival week is entirely too soon to start out sleep-deprived (we'll save that for Thursday or Friday, when we'll run on caffeine and adrenaline).

Morning classes done: great (small) group in the "Playing for the Sets", but with a good parity of goals & vision; all seem to have "signed on" for the idea of learning to play the tunes better for dancing. A lot of musicians--especially American musicians--learn to play the Irish dance tunes in all kinds of circumstances, and a lot of them--again, especially the Americans--could stand to have more time at actually playing the music for dancing. So the "Playing for the Sets" class is about how to play the music for dancing. In acknowledgment of Mr Hayes's presence and the impact of his family's Tulla Ceili Band upon set-dancing, we're focusing on their sets, and the tunes they played for the Clare Plain and the Clare Lancers, probably the two most widely-played and widely-danced sets. Will probably also pull in the Sliabh Luachra set, just to get some polkas & slides in with the preponderance of Clare reels, and maybe the final figure of the Caledonian, for hornpipes.

Then a great inaugural meeting of Stanley Greenthal's "Feist Breizh" class on Breton music, which both Maestro Doug Goodhart and Dr Coyote are auditing. No doubt each of us could learn these tunes on our own, but when you have free access to somebody with as much knowledge and musicianship in the world of Breton dance tunes as Stanley, you take advantage! And, just speaking for myself, it's a huge, welcome luxury--kinda like going to a spa, only for musicians instead of rich folks--to have somebody else teach you the tunes, when you are usually at the teaching, rather than receiving, end of the experience. Beautiful set of an-dros in a great bouzouki arrangement from Stanley.

Then lunch at the UNM cafeteria, which is a pleasant, well-appointed place with good food, but which we just happen to hit right at the same time as the literal, physical waves of schoolkids who are doing their pre-college summer experiences and elbowing their way past us. Once through that, a pleasant lunch with Will Harmon and Dharmonia, before we head back to the air-conditioned comfort of the SUB to practice, prepare, and generally crank-up for the afternoon's classes: another audit of Professor Doug Goodhart's West Virginia long-bow fiddle class (Dr Coyote will never be a fiddle player, but as a clawhammer banjoist, it's pretty useful to know what the fiddlers want to hear), and then "Playin' in the Band", the Doc's new offering on ensemble approaches to arranging and presentation.

Goin' good so far! Thanks, ZF Board, for making it all happen!

ZF Day 01: Morning

Feels like it oughta be the opening, courier/bullets screen overlay of a Bourne Trilogy flick. But we're here, on the top floor of the UNM Albuquerque Student Union: hard to get to--hafta park and then walk, schlepping stuff, across acres of asphalt parking lot, past the hundreds of school-kids starting first day of pre-college summer experiences--but a very pleasant environment: top floor, nice big open atrium with skylights and lots of natural light, which makes the luthiers displaying (Herb Taylor and GD Armstrong, both old friends of Zoukfest) very happy, comfortable chairs & lots of space for hanging out between classes, even a top-floor terrace. Lisa Wright & Lauren Flanagan powering-up the registration desk which'll be ZF's nerve-center, staff stumbling in seeking coffee, luthiers schlepping dozens of cases and assembling their displays (trust a luthier to have an ingeniously-designed and beautifully-finished display rack).

Class session I (0900-1015) looms. We're glad to be here!

From the belly of the mercantile beast (South Plains Mall)--I love *not* buying shit.

Enough with the goddamned ash-cloud!

The Buddha taught that, having taken the Bodhisattva vow, we are all exiles. A good lesson, perpetually re-learned.

Limerick: 5 recitals yesterday, 6 today, 6 tomorrow, meetings Thursday. Gonna wind up with both ears in one socket!!

Gone beyond

My mother died in March. At the time, the exigencies of dealing with her deterioration (48 hour trip to New England, return to Lubbock, only to have her decease 2 days later), the memorial service and accompanying family complexities, a hellacious semester with multiple personnel and budgetary melt-downs, and my own crisis-moment tendency to go into emergency-coping mode, meant that I didn't do much conscious mourning.

I was moved by the open sorrow expressed by my siblings, especially by my brothers--two remarkable, admirable men--and their spouses, which quartet had been primarily responsible for her care in the wake of my step-father's death last summer, and her subsequent and very swift descent into Alzheimer's. I could weep for them, and their sorrow--but not so much for her.

But, as I said to another friend at the time, "my relationship with my mother was sort of classically fucked-up", and it was--mostly due to the absolutely horrific legacy of family dysfunction to which both my parents were subjected as children. My mother was too unhappy, too damaged, to be an especially effective parent, despite the fact that she manifestly loved her kids. And she fucked me over, over and over again, in the area of my vocation to music. There are reasons I was in therapy for 12 years, and she--and the legacy of my monstrous grandmother--were two major ones.

Here's my own brief articulation, from eight years ago:

These Wooded Hills

These wooded hills and rocky shores
are the
memory of my childhood;

whipped by salt Atlantic waves,
traced by crumbling dry stone walls;
marked by cowshit and the cry of gulls,

gouged by retreating glaciers of a last Ice Age;
and the faint whispering voices
of old wars, old words, old violence, old victories.

Granite, oak, slate, and pine;
topsoil's topography ripped away,

leaving the bones.

So I was pretty damned grateful when Dharmonia wrote this, which expressed pure, open, Bodhisattva mourning for Bobby Smith Thomas in a way couldn't. And then I could weep for her:

While driving to a funeral

Bobby is gone, gone, gone beyond
Gate gate paragate
Parasamgate bodhi svaha
Her son at the wheel driving east
Rain is lashing at the windshield,
spraying up from the passing trucks
and while thinking of how we pass
from life into death, around us
life continues its circus
in the sheeting rain, driving wind
Massachusetts bumper stickers:
Obama is still President,
My Other Car is still a Broom,
Jesus Saves and the Yankees still suck
This my home state, and now, and now
One last journey to the North Shore
At least for reasons tied to blood
And bone, and the love of this man
And the others who share that blood

And how strangely appropriate
The blinding rain and shrieking wind
To sagas stories and plot lines
To complicated webs of past,
To layers of pride and of doubt
To all the love and the anger
Kneaded into the famous bread
And those who came to adulthood
In the eye of this hurricane
Each making their own peace with her
She was not my mother, and yes
I saw the complicated side
But I loved her for bringing him
Into the world in the first place,
And for what she wanted to be,
And for the things she tried to be,
And was, when clarity could cut
Through what had been handed to her.
A friend of mine once said to me
“One can be a difficult parent
And still be a great friend,” and
She was that to me, and it is
A terrible thing to witness
A heart beating in the shambles
That Alzheimer’s leaves in its wake--
So you will understand, when I
Saw the ashes mixed with earth, why
I spoke the mantra “gone beyond”

Gate gate paragate
Parasamgate bodhi svaha

the doorless doors of the Pure Land
do not require us to bring
All of our Stuff along with us
No eyes no ears no nose no mouth
No junk no faults no garbage, but
Just the cloudless blue sky of mind.

I am grateful that I have such loving people in my life. I need them.

Gassho.

Nostalgic in all the wrong ways: blowout-preventer edition

The Deepwater Horizon spill--probably the most catastrophic environmental disaster of the past 50 years, excepting possibly Chernobyl--was apparently caused by failure of one of these:

This is a blowout-preventer, a massive hydraulic-powered valve used for sealing an oil well and regulating the flow. They are

When I read, two days ago, that the spill was caused by one of these failing, a mile down, I was chilled. I used to repair these, for Cactus Drilling Company in Midland, TX, in 1979-80.

A blowout-preventer is subjected to huge pressures, as well as to highly corrosive acids, salts, and other outflow from a well. It doesn't come up as only crude: there are all kinds of other substances in such a flow. So the blowout-preventer can only be used for a relatively short period of time, before the well has to be temporarily shut down and the preventer replaced.

They used to come into the repair yard where I worked, with the huge rubber gaskets in rags and most of the heavy-duty lead-based sealing paint corroded off (for scale's sake, the BOP pictured above is a "small", and is substantially taller than a man). We'd sand- and water-blast them, paint them with an acid-based paint-remover (which you had to keep off your skin, as it would burn you), break-loose the giant bolts that seal them: bolts as big as my arm, often rusted solid--I still have a big dent on my right shin from where a 12-foot "cheater pipe"--additional lever arm--shattered while we were trying to open a bolt.

Then we'd take them completely apart, wash all the components in an acid bath and discard any that seemed unrepairable, replace the parts and gaskets, re-paint 'em, and stick them on a hydraulic test-bed, where we'd crank up to a pressure as high as 1 ton per square inch (we were supposed to stand outside the steel-reinforced room as we did this, but often didn't). Then, when we'd confirmed that the repairs were complete and safety-secure, we'd call the truckers and they'd come pick up the BOP, to store in the yard until re-used.

When I read, two days ago, that the spill had been caused by a BOP failure, Dharmonia said "yeah, I read that a while ago but I didn't want to tell you"--which was smart, because when I saw it, I nearly fainted.

I would not want to be one of the crew who might have sent that particular piece back out to the platform.

Eleven guys died. BP and Halliburton (Dick Cheney's butt-buddies--the same people who betrayed American soldiers in the Iraq theatre on a daily basis) may well have killed the Gulf Coast--permanently.

Some corporate crime ought to carry capital penalties.

Checkin AM @ NYC for long day til evening SNN flight. Thank Universe for cheap Prez club booze & wireless!

You miserable racist fucks--GET OUT OF MY HOME TOWN!

NY weekly shows Obamas as 'Sanford and Son' actors

A weekly newspaper photo depicting President Barack Obama and his wife as characters from the TV sitcom "Sanford and Son" was intended as political satire and not a racist commentary, the publisher said Wednesday.

Phillip Sciarello, publisher and part owner of the Smithtown Messenger on New York's Long Island, defended the decision to publish the photo, but added the newspaper would run a retraction in its next edition for anyone who might have been offended.

Phillip Sciarello, you dirty little cowardly punk, my direct patrilineal ancestor founded this town. My great-great-great-great-etc grandfather was an illegal immigrant, a miscegenator, a political radical, and a warrior, and his offspring fathered children with black mothers and, eventually, granted them all their freedom.

And he would have chewed you up and spit you out like the worthless little piece of trash you are. Claudius Smith, the "Terror of the Ramapo," wouldn't have bothered to hang you in your chimney--a waste of good rope--but he would have horsewhipped your gutless little ass on Main Street. I'm only sorry that I'm 2,000 miles away.

Get your racist garbage, and your racist garbage self, out of my town.

Missing my CE guys, a bit. Even missing the 9pm Wed sectional. Gettin' soft in my old age, I reckon.

Spring 2010 Ireland seminar Google map/intinerary: join the band! http://ping.fm/41hyD

IAH en route to NYC & SNN.

My hero, Gary Snyder

I hope, when the time comes for me to die, that I will have lived a life this valuable:



Gassho.

Malcolm/Jean-Paul: "By any means necessary." http://ping.fm/E8rQ0

BB Tour (with replaceable SIMS card--Ireland hooray!) is pretty awesome; thanks, @glenrhunt!

New BBerry Tour: reminded of Fam Guy episode: Old Guy says of lightbulb: "when I saw this at 1927 World Expo, I almost crapped my pants!"

Charlie Ives's band

Further to the General's comment, below--it must've sounded something like this:

I R a music major

Dear God, this is painfully accurate:

h/t to the Sarge.

re/ petition to REMOVE the "Tornado of Ideas" sculpture because it includes non-conservative books, news-flash: CENSORSHIP IS COWARDICE.

Solidarity forever! The people united will never be defeated! One Big Union!