Or, "...World Enough and Time...." There seems to be a dearth of both, lately. Due to a sudden, self-professed (by the owner of Vermont Custom Cabinetry) "cabinet emergency," I've been thrust into the middle of a nearing-completion frenzy at a rather spacious and possibly specious "cottage" on Lake Sunapee. Hence, I won't be doing a show this week or next, or writing a proper post. I may weigh in on excess and the 1% and just-what-six-mil-gets-you-these-days (still working off last week's hyphen surplus, as you can see) and suchlike later, but not right yet.
I would like to alert you to/remind you of the Grand Opening celebration at Popolo (it's a restaurant, pronounced "pope-uh-low," no "s") in Bellows Falls, VT. this coming Saturday, the 30th. It's a pretty fab place, and there'll be much good music, food and merriment there. Among the highlights will be Travis Adams playing under the nom de keyboard "Suicide Rhodes" from 5-6 in the lounge. Popolo is very fortunate to get him at the conclusion of his most recent world tour which commences on June 29 in Saxtons River, VT. I'm sure he'll be pretty beat from the road ("Mr. Booking Agent, please have mercy/ Don't book the jobs so far apart"), but, trouper that he is, I'm sure he'll rally and provide his usual stellar show.
I hope to see you there sometime during the course of the evening; I'll be there till bedtime, which, really, can come at any time these days.
Until the next time there's time, then....
Monday, June 25, 2012
Monday, June 18, 2012
Meet the new post, same as the old post
See, here's the problem with linking blog posts with radio show themes: If I don't get to do the show, as happened last week (I've still gotta make a living, you know), then, if I still want to use the show theme and playlist, there's likely nothing more I want to--or can--say about it. That's the case this week; same theme and songs as last week, no new stuff to say.
Except that Alice B. Fogel set off yesterday on the latest leg of her solo Appalachian Trail quest, this one from Etna, NH to Gorham, NH, a distance of 150 or so miles and 16-18 days, across the Presidential Range, including Mt. Washington, which bills itself as having the worst weather on Earth. Oy! Momma never told me there'd be days--or weeks-- like this. Needless to say, then, Fran, we weren't at Clearwater this year.
See you tomorrow on the radio, noon till 2; the freshness date still hasn't expired.
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you....
Except that Alice B. Fogel set off yesterday on the latest leg of her solo Appalachian Trail quest, this one from Etna, NH to Gorham, NH, a distance of 150 or so miles and 16-18 days, across the Presidential Range, including Mt. Washington, which bills itself as having the worst weather on Earth. Oy! Momma never told me there'd be days--or weeks-- like this. Needless to say, then, Fran, we weren't at Clearwater this year.
See you tomorrow on the radio, noon till 2; the freshness date still hasn't expired.
Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you....
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Weather or not we're ready, it's here
I've been thinking, again, about the weather. This time, though, I mean the external meteorology, climate change, not the solipsistic this-is-how-it-looks-inside-so-that's-how-I-see-the-outside stuff. I know I've written about things climatic before, at least tangentially, but it's getting harder to deny that we're entering a strange new world unless you're a multi-billionaire already, someone who's made your fortune on environmentally-degrading endeavors and wants still way more money and so you spend barrels of cash on having "experts" plant the seeds in the minds of average people that this whole climate-change thing is a hoax and no, this isn't a run-on sentence, just a lengthy and barely-controlled one.
But really, is there any plausible deniability left? David Letterman started his TV career as a weatherman in Indianapolis and once said that there were hailstones the size of canned hams falling in his broadcast area. I don't guess that's accurate even now, but as Jackson Browne said, "Don't think it won't happen just because it hasn't happened yet." We've had at least 3 hailstorms in the last couple weeks in this area, some quite damaging; I certainly can't remember belonging to the hailstorm-of-the-week-club ever in the past. And in case you're wondering, I got a great deal on hyphens on E-bay recently, so I've got plenty to use willy-nilly (see?).
I know, too, that I mentioned Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle a while ago, so I'm sure I've given you all a chance to reread it. As you'll recall, then, the book's basic premise is that, the US military, grown tired of being mired in swamp after swamp in their various wars, have (that may be a more British verb form there, the "have" rather than "has," "military" for them being a collective noun rather than a single entity, thus "they have" rather than "it has," leading to the awkward-sounding, to our ears, use of the singular v--oh, never mind) commissioned their scientists to come up with something that dries up any mud they might encounter. The result is something called "Ice Nine" (Jerry Garcia named his music publishing company "Ice Nine," for what it's worth). It works great, essentially freeze-drying the water in the mud and allowing their vehicles to ride atop the suddenly hard ground.
The problem, of course, one which no one considered, is that Earth is a closed system and all water on the planet is ultimately connected to all other water. Hence, the entire planet becomes a rime-covered waterless uninhabitable desert. Oops! As Vonnegut describes it: There was the sound like that of the gentle closing of a portal as big as the sky, the great door of heaven being closed softly. It was a grand AH-WHOOM.
I opened my eyes--and all the sea was ice-nine.
The moist green earth was a blue-white pearl.
The sky darkened...the sun...became a sickly yellow ball, tiny and cruel.
The sky was filled with worms. The worms were tornadoes.
When my kids were babies and I'd stop in their rooms to kiss them one more time on my way to bed, I often took the opportunity to apologize to them (they were asleep--I wasn't trying to give them nightmares. What kind of person do you think I am, for chrissakes?) for having brought them into this world. The only reasons, it seems to me, to have kids intentionally are the biologically-encoded drive all organisms have, to propagate to ensure the continuation of the species (hardly necessary in our case, what with seven billion others around to handle that) and ego: the need to ensure a specific genetic line's continuation, or to attempt to ensure one's own immortality, or whatever other socio-psychological theory is currently in vogue about that issue. But I don't think it's 'cause we think we're giving these new beings a slice o' paradise.
Maybe the sky's not falling, maybe it won't soon be filled with worms of tornadoes, though I bet there are people in this country who'd say it already has been. But it sure seems to me that we're at least dipping our toes into waters we know nothing about. We're changing the sky above us with greenhouse gases and the very ground beneath us with our hydrofracking experiments to feed our fossil fuel dependency which will then put more gases into the atmosphere which will then you get where I'm going. I guess what baffles me most is this: where do the Koch Bros. and all of the other billionaire anti-climate-change propagandists and fanatical, dissembling environmental deregulators think they're gonna go if cataclysmic events caused by our behaviors do happen? Are they so insulated by money and privilege that they think they're somehow immune? Must be, but wow. And what of their children and children's children?
All of this sparked by a few hailstones--what a whackjob I must be. But the music'll be good: lots of weather-related stuff--"Stormy Weather," "Bless the Weather," "Earthquake Weather," "Hail, hail, Rock 'n' Roll," and many "nowhere" songs, 'cause we don't really know where we are anymore and there's nowhere else to go, and Bruce Cockburn's "The Trouble With Normal." Join me Tuesday, noon-till-two, won'tcha? And "Hi," Rybie!
"Pay attention to the open sky/You never know what will be comin' down...."
But really, is there any plausible deniability left? David Letterman started his TV career as a weatherman in Indianapolis and once said that there were hailstones the size of canned hams falling in his broadcast area. I don't guess that's accurate even now, but as Jackson Browne said, "Don't think it won't happen just because it hasn't happened yet." We've had at least 3 hailstorms in the last couple weeks in this area, some quite damaging; I certainly can't remember belonging to the hailstorm-of-the-week-club ever in the past. And in case you're wondering, I got a great deal on hyphens on E-bay recently, so I've got plenty to use willy-nilly (see?).
I know, too, that I mentioned Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle a while ago, so I'm sure I've given you all a chance to reread it. As you'll recall, then, the book's basic premise is that, the US military, grown tired of being mired in swamp after swamp in their various wars, have (that may be a more British verb form there, the "have" rather than "has," "military" for them being a collective noun rather than a single entity, thus "they have" rather than "it has," leading to the awkward-sounding, to our ears, use of the singular v--oh, never mind) commissioned their scientists to come up with something that dries up any mud they might encounter. The result is something called "Ice Nine" (Jerry Garcia named his music publishing company "Ice Nine," for what it's worth). It works great, essentially freeze-drying the water in the mud and allowing their vehicles to ride atop the suddenly hard ground.
The problem, of course, one which no one considered, is that Earth is a closed system and all water on the planet is ultimately connected to all other water. Hence, the entire planet becomes a rime-covered waterless uninhabitable desert. Oops! As Vonnegut describes it: There was the sound like that of the gentle closing of a portal as big as the sky, the great door of heaven being closed softly. It was a grand AH-WHOOM.
I opened my eyes--and all the sea was ice-nine.
The moist green earth was a blue-white pearl.
The sky darkened...the sun...became a sickly yellow ball, tiny and cruel.
The sky was filled with worms. The worms were tornadoes.
When my kids were babies and I'd stop in their rooms to kiss them one more time on my way to bed, I often took the opportunity to apologize to them (they were asleep--I wasn't trying to give them nightmares. What kind of person do you think I am, for chrissakes?) for having brought them into this world. The only reasons, it seems to me, to have kids intentionally are the biologically-encoded drive all organisms have, to propagate to ensure the continuation of the species (hardly necessary in our case, what with seven billion others around to handle that) and ego: the need to ensure a specific genetic line's continuation, or to attempt to ensure one's own immortality, or whatever other socio-psychological theory is currently in vogue about that issue. But I don't think it's 'cause we think we're giving these new beings a slice o' paradise.
Maybe the sky's not falling, maybe it won't soon be filled with worms of tornadoes, though I bet there are people in this country who'd say it already has been. But it sure seems to me that we're at least dipping our toes into waters we know nothing about. We're changing the sky above us with greenhouse gases and the very ground beneath us with our hydrofracking experiments to feed our fossil fuel dependency which will then put more gases into the atmosphere which will then you get where I'm going. I guess what baffles me most is this: where do the Koch Bros. and all of the other billionaire anti-climate-change propagandists and fanatical, dissembling environmental deregulators think they're gonna go if cataclysmic events caused by our behaviors do happen? Are they so insulated by money and privilege that they think they're somehow immune? Must be, but wow. And what of their children and children's children?
All of this sparked by a few hailstones--what a whackjob I must be. But the music'll be good: lots of weather-related stuff--"Stormy Weather," "Bless the Weather," "Earthquake Weather," "Hail, hail, Rock 'n' Roll," and many "nowhere" songs, 'cause we don't really know where we are anymore and there's nowhere else to go, and Bruce Cockburn's "The Trouble With Normal." Join me Tuesday, noon-till-two, won'tcha? And "Hi," Rybie!
"Pay attention to the open sky/You never know what will be comin' down...."
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Hello, I Must Be Going
This week, in a crass attempt to increase readership, there'll be no post. None. I'm not writing anything. There's just no time for either it or a show, what with the trip to take Mariah to Montreal and an investors' dinner at Popolo Monday eve when we return.
So enjoy the week off, re-read and memorize old posts and, as the Ronmey campaing says, "Dog Blses Amercia!"
So enjoy the week off, re-read and memorize old posts and, as the Ronmey campaing says, "Dog Blses Amercia!"
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