Anyone who knows me well will appreciate how ridiculous it is for me to be writing a piece about flying: never been in an airplane, hope never to be. I dream of flying occasionally, but it's never in a plane; it's always by dint of flapping arms. Since we went to the moon last week (in this space, at least), though, I thought we'd get just a little closer to terra-firma-- but SLOWLY, ssslooowly. I don't know if you've noticed it, but airplanes have been having an increasingly difficult time staying in the air.
It's not always their fault, I get that: bombs, birds, and Russian anti-aircraft missiles--to name just a few things-- all can have their effect on a craft's ability to stay aloft. And I get all of the stats about the safety of flight in general, and certainly when compared with travel by car; nevertheless, it's been a bad few weeks for airplanes, and gravity's winning.
But ever since Daedalus handed Icarus his lovely wings, since Newton got bonked on the noggin by Granny Smith, we've known that if it goes up it's comin' down. The best we can hope is to have some modicum of control over the descent, which come to think of it is probably a pretty good metaphor for the trip through life in general. I guess it's been on my mind more because the usual all-too-human combination of hubris, stupidity and mistake leads to horrifying events like the removal from the sky of the Malaysian Airlines plane we could find. And the fact that Jake leaves next week for 10 days in Israel via El Al airlines to the LZ known as Tel Aviv airport. Oy Vey.
So thinking of flight and planes and stuff led me to this playlist:
Airplane Rusted Root
Airplaneshadows Kiln
Blues From An Airplane Jefferson Airplane
Fat Angel Jefferson Airplane
Aeroplane Red Hot Chili Peppers
Jet Plane Johnny "Guitar" Watson
Leaving On A Jet Plane John Denver
Jet Plane In A Rocking Chair Richard & Linda Thompson
Planes & Satellites Sonia Dada
Steam Powered Aereo Plane John Hartford
Terraplane Blues Rory Block
Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos) Arlo Guthrie
Jet McCartney/Wings
Jet Airliner Paul Pena
Come Fly With Me Frank Sinatra
Expecting To Fly Buffalo Springfield
Fear With Flying Loudon Wainwright
Fly Nick Drake
Fly Steve Winwood
Fly Away Brother Jack McDuff
Flyin' High (In The Friendly Sky) Marvin gaye
Flyin' Shoes Townes Van Zandt
Flying The Beatles
Flying The Faces
Flying Michael Nesmith
Flying High Country Joe & The Fish
Flying Home Duke Robillard & Herb Ellis
Flying On The Ground Is Wrong Buffalo Springfield
Learning To Fly Pink Floyd
Join me, woncha, on Tuesday from noon till two on WOOL FM, 91.5 or wool.fm? It could be fun.
Just happened to hear on VT Public Radio the other day about a controversy about noise at Burlington Int'l Airport. Residents of a nearby neighborhood complained about the noise, it turned out that noise did in fact exceed allowable limits. Fortunately, they were able to reach a fair and equitable solution to the issue: the airport bought an entire neighborhood in order to level it. If a jet flies over a razed neighborhood, does it exceed allowable noise levels...?
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Sunday, July 20, 2014
One Small Step
Sunday, July 20, 2014 marked the 45th anniversary of humans first setting foot on an orb floating in space other than Earth, at least so far as we know. On that July afternoon (Earth time), Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon and spoke one of the best-known (mis) quotes, I think, in human history (excepting, perhaps, McCartney's wrongly-quoted line from "Live And Let Die"), "That's one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for Mankind."
And the jury's still out, I think, on whether or not this was a good thing. The US is, of course, the only country to have landed men there (six times between 1969 and 1972), but we haven't done it since, which is really somewhat surprising. I heard Neil deGrasse Tyson, the new, black, Carl Sagan, on NPR as I was brush-hogging my little section of Earth yesterday, and he said he was 10 years old for that first landing, and figured that it would be a pretty regular occurrence after that, at least a monthly thing.
Why did we stop so completely? Some blame staggering costs; the money that would otherwise be spent on such an ambitious Space Program would be far better spent on terrestrial projects. As a staunch stay-at-home Yankee, I heartily endorse that position, but wonder why, then, we aren't in fact spending that money on those in need. Others blame lack of political will, which kind of goes hand-in-hand with the financial piece, I'm sure. Still others say that we don't have the ability to plan and see through such long-term projects; on the face of it that seems odd: if we could do it back then, why would we have lost the ability? But, then, given the frenetic, decreased-attention-span, 140 characters-at a-time-society (is this a hyphen-heavy post, or what?) we've become, maybe that's true. And of course there are people who insist that we've never really done it at all, that those "landings" all took place on Hollywood soundstages. Whatever the reason, we've certainly folded the lunar tent; it's not unlikely that the next person on the moon will be Chinese. And some people believe that it's too late anyway, that our ever having gone there has screwed the moon up, that the moon we used to know is no longer.
In 1977, I did my first stint as an Acworth resident, for about 8 months. I rented a little timber-framed house on Rte. 123A, really quite a charming place for the most part. During that time I subscribed to (or "took," as old-timers would say) The Keene Sentinel, an afternoon daily newspaper. My paper"boy" was himself an old Yankee, in his seventies, who drove a battered old Jeep Cherokee. One evening, after getting home from work, I walked down the driveway to see if the paper had arrived, at just the time he pulled up to the delivery tube. There was a nearly-full moon that evening, with a large ring around it, which everyone I knew knew meant rain coming soon. We shot the breeze for a few minutes, the paperoldtimer and I, and eventually talk came around to that celestial sight and its forecasting properties. His view? "Yep, time was you could tell the weather from a ring around the moon like that, but ever since we went there, you can't tell nuthin' from it." As my favorite plumber is fond of saying, "Shit luck beats science every time."
Below you'll find a real writer's take on the above anecdote. It's a poem from Alice B. Fogel's collection titled Elemental:
And the jury's still out, I think, on whether or not this was a good thing. The US is, of course, the only country to have landed men there (six times between 1969 and 1972), but we haven't done it since, which is really somewhat surprising. I heard Neil deGrasse Tyson, the new, black, Carl Sagan, on NPR as I was brush-hogging my little section of Earth yesterday, and he said he was 10 years old for that first landing, and figured that it would be a pretty regular occurrence after that, at least a monthly thing.
Why did we stop so completely? Some blame staggering costs; the money that would otherwise be spent on such an ambitious Space Program would be far better spent on terrestrial projects. As a staunch stay-at-home Yankee, I heartily endorse that position, but wonder why, then, we aren't in fact spending that money on those in need. Others blame lack of political will, which kind of goes hand-in-hand with the financial piece, I'm sure. Still others say that we don't have the ability to plan and see through such long-term projects; on the face of it that seems odd: if we could do it back then, why would we have lost the ability? But, then, given the frenetic, decreased-attention-span, 140 characters-at a-time-society (is this a hyphen-heavy post, or what?) we've become, maybe that's true. And of course there are people who insist that we've never really done it at all, that those "landings" all took place on Hollywood soundstages. Whatever the reason, we've certainly folded the lunar tent; it's not unlikely that the next person on the moon will be Chinese. And some people believe that it's too late anyway, that our ever having gone there has screwed the moon up, that the moon we used to know is no longer.
In 1977, I did my first stint as an Acworth resident, for about 8 months. I rented a little timber-framed house on Rte. 123A, really quite a charming place for the most part. During that time I subscribed to (or "took," as old-timers would say) The Keene Sentinel, an afternoon daily newspaper. My paper"boy" was himself an old Yankee, in his seventies, who drove a battered old Jeep Cherokee. One evening, after getting home from work, I walked down the driveway to see if the paper had arrived, at just the time he pulled up to the delivery tube. There was a nearly-full moon that evening, with a large ring around it, which everyone I knew knew meant rain coming soon. We shot the breeze for a few minutes, the paperoldtimer and I, and eventually talk came around to that celestial sight and its forecasting properties. His view? "Yep, time was you could tell the weather from a ring around the moon like that, but ever since we went there, you can't tell nuthin' from it." As my favorite plumber is fond of saying, "Shit luck beats science every time."
Below you'll find a real writer's take on the above anecdote. It's a poem from Alice B. Fogel's collection titled Elemental:
Objects In Mirror Are
Closer Than They Appear
It’s
hard to tell
that
the face of the moon
is
as much like a man’s
as
god’s. Out yonder,
in
the world without us,
who’s
to say? –
Either
we get in the way,
or
things make use of us.
Half-way
around the globe
from
where they started,
the
static sound of starlings
echoes
off the barn roof.
Spiders
weave in the spokes
of
wheels, and stars
circle
unsuspecting suns.
Little
do we know,
the
world has a talent
for
making itself at home.
Meanwhile,
we paint our self-
portraits
on everything
imaginable,
then hold
them
up like mirrors.
Our
mercurial brushes
grow
longer, our skills
more
acute. Dust clouds
the
vision, tinder
to
the eye. So we burn
trees
to save the forests, burn
air
to fly afar. We do, we say.
We
can. The time
is
close at hand. Time was
(said
a man)
you
could tell the weather from the moon.
That
was before another
broke
the quicksilver distance
and
walked all over it.
Now
you can’t tell a thing.
So there'll be lots of "moon" songs this week, although they barely scratch the surface of possibilities from my collection. Herewith, what I think is my favorite playlist in my 4 year DJ career:
Bad Moon Rising Creedence Clearwater Revival
Banjo Moon Greg Brown
Beautiful Moons Benny Green
Billboard On The Moon (Live) Dirk Hamilton
Blue Moon Dylan
Black Moon Wilco
Blue Moon Beck
Bringing Down The Moon John Stewart
Cajun Moon J.J. Cale
Calling The Moon Dar Williams
Casablanca Moonlight Michael Nesmith
Child Of The Moon Rolling Septuagenarians
Circus On The Moon Bruce Hornsby
Clocks And Spoons John Prine
Shoot The Moonlight Out Garland Jeffreys
Man On The Moon R.E.M.
Armstrong John Stewart
Drunk On The Moon Tom Waits
Every Inch A Moon Dirk Hamilton
Drawing Down The Moon Steve Tibbets
Eldorado To The Moon Michael Nesmith
Fly Me To The Moon Bobby Womack
Goodnight Moon Shivaree
Grapefruit Moon Tom Waits
Hey You (Looking At The Moon) Graham Nash
Here Comes The Moon George Harrison
How High The Moon Emmylou Harris
It's Only A Paper Moon Barney Kessel/Stephane Grappelli
Kiko And The Lavender Moon Los Lobos
Moonage Daydream David Bowie
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress Charlie Haden/ Pat Metheny
Pink Moon Nick Drake
Sun Loves Moon Nick Robertson
Once In A Blue Moon Van Morrison
Moonlight Sonata Ludwig Van Beethoven
I'm sure I've left out some of your favorites but, basically, tough shit-- so I sure hope you'll tune in Tuesday, from noon till two on Wool FM, 91.5, or wool.fm on the webs.
A couple more things: Charlie Haden and Bobby Womack both recently passed, so their songs are both doing double-duty, as songs for the theme and as tributes.
And I saw a bumper sticker yesterday in Alstead on a truck with Vermont plates that said "Guns Don't Kill People:Abortion Clinics Do." I was impressed by that. In 7 short words, 2 assertions, both of which I vehemently disagree with. A-plus for conciseness, at least....
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Creation Myth: Such Are The Days Of Our Lives
As many of you know, I recently spent a week at Chautauqua Institution (you should Google it--it's pretty amazing), my little slice o' heaven here on Earth. I always try to go during "Literary Week," during which Roger Rosenblatt invites 5 of his friends from the writerly world to be interviewed for an hour in front of several thousand people, after which they also read from their work. Hey--I can't let all of my schoolin' go completely to waste.
This year's group was comprised of Tom Brokaw, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, Jules Feiffer (I didn't even know he was still alive, and he was fabulous, especially given that he's 85), and Paul Muldoon. During the conversation with "Liz," as Rosenblatt called Ms. Strout, the question arose, since writers, consciously or no, draw so much material from the "facts" of their lives, how many of those "facts" may be wrong. How much of what we remember about our lives, how much of what we know to be true, really happened that way or, indeed, happened at all?
What we remember of our lives may, in fact, be fiction: Life as a novel, if you will. And a novel whose main character may be based on fact, but perhaps fictionalized my the author, if in fact we're writing our lives ourselves. It seems a little weird to think of it that way, but I've certainly experienced it. As I sit here writing this I can look up at a picture from the Bellows Falls Times of me sitting on the arm of my great-grandmother's chair. The photo appeared in early August of 1961, as I was about to observe my 8th birthday and Arabelle her 94th, both on August 12. Until I dredged that clipping up a few years ago, I would have sworn to, and indeed marveled at to classes I taught, the fact that I used to sit on the lap of someone born during the Civil War. Close, but no cigar, General Grant: turns out she was born in 1867, then, not 1865, as I had always remembered it.
There's no great harm in that mistake, of course, but it does make me pause to consider what other things I "know" that may be wrong. Mis-remembering the year my great-grandmother was born doesn't change the essential truth of my life in any material way that I can see, but are there other facts or stories that do? I've personally, seen and read in ostensibly non-fiction articles, instances when other people have very different recollections of events than I, or others who were there, do.
But we all know, don't we, that there's a difference between truth and Truth? That's what makes novels, "fiction," superior to me to nonfiction, to "the facts." Truth is made up of so much more than fact: it's comprised of facts, or at least of "truthy" things, as Colbert might have it, but also our processing of those facts, mixed with emotions, sensations, feelings, intuition. The result of such processing, ideally, leads us to an understanding of the great commonality which grows out of particular experience and unites us all in our collective humanity. For instance, the fact that I misspoke the year of my great-grandmother's birth does not take away from the larger point I was trying to make, that the past is NOT way back there, but right here, still affecting all of us. Often, commonly-accepted facts actually get in the way of the Truth, as we see again and again, perhaps most glaringly in the fairly recent past in the justification for invading Iraq. As Thoreau said, "Read not The Times, read the Eternities."
Anyway, among the songs it's a fact that I'll be choosing from:
A Bedtime Story Danny O'Keefe
Boomer's Story Ry Cooder
Every Picture Tells A Story Rod Stewart
Farewell To Storyville Danny O'Keefe
Love Story Harry Nilsson
Love Story Stephen Stills
Philadelphia Story Wild Colonials
The Story Brandi Carlisle
The Story In Your Eyes Moody Blues
A Story Within A Story Pat Metheny
This Story In Me Tanita Tikaram
What's The Story? Grant Geissman
Deeper Truth Ben Arnold
Give Me Some Truth John Lennon
We Meet, We Part, We Remember The Holmes Brothers
All Of Your Stories Jesse Winchester
Five Short Stories Weather Report
Hand Me Down All Stories Robin Holcomb
Hard Luck Stories Richard & Linda Thompson
New York Stories Grant Geissman
Short Stories Leo Kottke
(Someone's Been) Telling You Stories Dan Fogelberg
Stories We Could Tell John Sebastian
Stories Don't End Dawes
Ugly Stories Josh Rouse
Wond'rous Stories Yes
Low On Memory Mike Andrews
Memory Motel Rolling Septuagenarians
Memories Van Morrison
Hope you can join me, and we can compare notes afterward about what really happened, on Tuesday from noon til two on the fabulous WOOL FM, 91.5, or at www.wool.fm on the webs.
But if I'm not me, who am?
This year's group was comprised of Tom Brokaw, Margaret Atwood, Elizabeth Strout, Jules Feiffer (I didn't even know he was still alive, and he was fabulous, especially given that he's 85), and Paul Muldoon. During the conversation with "Liz," as Rosenblatt called Ms. Strout, the question arose, since writers, consciously or no, draw so much material from the "facts" of their lives, how many of those "facts" may be wrong. How much of what we remember about our lives, how much of what we know to be true, really happened that way or, indeed, happened at all?
What we remember of our lives may, in fact, be fiction: Life as a novel, if you will. And a novel whose main character may be based on fact, but perhaps fictionalized my the author, if in fact we're writing our lives ourselves. It seems a little weird to think of it that way, but I've certainly experienced it. As I sit here writing this I can look up at a picture from the Bellows Falls Times of me sitting on the arm of my great-grandmother's chair. The photo appeared in early August of 1961, as I was about to observe my 8th birthday and Arabelle her 94th, both on August 12. Until I dredged that clipping up a few years ago, I would have sworn to, and indeed marveled at to classes I taught, the fact that I used to sit on the lap of someone born during the Civil War. Close, but no cigar, General Grant: turns out she was born in 1867, then, not 1865, as I had always remembered it.
There's no great harm in that mistake, of course, but it does make me pause to consider what other things I "know" that may be wrong. Mis-remembering the year my great-grandmother was born doesn't change the essential truth of my life in any material way that I can see, but are there other facts or stories that do? I've personally, seen and read in ostensibly non-fiction articles, instances when other people have very different recollections of events than I, or others who were there, do.
But we all know, don't we, that there's a difference between truth and Truth? That's what makes novels, "fiction," superior to me to nonfiction, to "the facts." Truth is made up of so much more than fact: it's comprised of facts, or at least of "truthy" things, as Colbert might have it, but also our processing of those facts, mixed with emotions, sensations, feelings, intuition. The result of such processing, ideally, leads us to an understanding of the great commonality which grows out of particular experience and unites us all in our collective humanity. For instance, the fact that I misspoke the year of my great-grandmother's birth does not take away from the larger point I was trying to make, that the past is NOT way back there, but right here, still affecting all of us. Often, commonly-accepted facts actually get in the way of the Truth, as we see again and again, perhaps most glaringly in the fairly recent past in the justification for invading Iraq. As Thoreau said, "Read not The Times, read the Eternities."
Anyway, among the songs it's a fact that I'll be choosing from:
A Bedtime Story Danny O'Keefe
Boomer's Story Ry Cooder
Every Picture Tells A Story Rod Stewart
Farewell To Storyville Danny O'Keefe
Love Story Harry Nilsson
Love Story Stephen Stills
Philadelphia Story Wild Colonials
The Story Brandi Carlisle
The Story In Your Eyes Moody Blues
A Story Within A Story Pat Metheny
This Story In Me Tanita Tikaram
What's The Story? Grant Geissman
Deeper Truth Ben Arnold
Give Me Some Truth John Lennon
We Meet, We Part, We Remember The Holmes Brothers
All Of Your Stories Jesse Winchester
Five Short Stories Weather Report
Hand Me Down All Stories Robin Holcomb
Hard Luck Stories Richard & Linda Thompson
New York Stories Grant Geissman
Short Stories Leo Kottke
(Someone's Been) Telling You Stories Dan Fogelberg
Stories We Could Tell John Sebastian
Stories Don't End Dawes
Ugly Stories Josh Rouse
Wond'rous Stories Yes
Low On Memory Mike Andrews
Memory Motel Rolling Septuagenarians
Memories Van Morrison
Hope you can join me, and we can compare notes afterward about what really happened, on Tuesday from noon til two on the fabulous WOOL FM, 91.5, or at www.wool.fm on the webs.
But if I'm not me, who am?
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