Fierce Wolf Howl

Dancing In Heaven: In Memory of Erica Trantham

2011-03-21T09:43:00.009-05:00

Unity In Chicago, the church where I've played music almost every Sunday for the last 4 years, just lost its beloved minister, Erica Trantham. If there is an afterlife, Rev. Erica is surely partying there now. She was a prime example of my old therapist's dictum that "people are complicated." Erica was simultaneously serious and fun-loving, intellectual and silly, spiritual and earthy. Although she led this church for just 5 years, she wisely shepherded both the community and the business through difficult times. And she did it with grace, compassion and a gentle, loving touch that will not soon be forgotten.

Rev. Erica often said that she was "born into Unity" but she took a circuitous route to become a minister. She grew up in a Southern Baptist household, then made her way to New York City in the 1980's to be an actress. On the way, she earned degrees in theatre and entertainment law, taught high school and worked as a "suit" in the programming department of HBO for 12 years. She finally heeded the call to go to ministerial school in her 40's. Erica regularly intimated that her lifestyle in New York was both excessive and spiritually formative. She did what most young people do - pursued personal pleasure and material success. But she also came under the powerful influence of Eric Butterworth, minister of The Unity Center of New York and a legendary icon of the New Thought movement.

From what I gather, Rev. Erica took over the leadership of Unity In Chicago during trying times for the church. Attendance had apparently been falling off and the collective energy of the community was flagging. By the time I was hired to play Sunday services with my close pals Peter Polzak and Sarah Allen, Erica had firmly taken charge. She vigorously championed "light, love and laughter" while admonishing everyone to focus on how they could best use their talents to be "of service" to others.

Erica regularly began her weekly message with a joke, often poking fun at herself or some absurd aspect of religion. Irreverence was part of her personality and it served her well when she did get serious. Erica could be notoriously long-winded. She had so much information to share; sometimes her enthusiasm would lead to multiple digressions, causing some teeth gnashing by those of us who wanted the service to end in a more timely fashion. But unlike too many of her colleagues in the minister business, Rev. Erica never put herself above her congregation. She made it clear that she was struggling right along with us to remember and practice Unity's principles. I believe she saw herself as a conduit for the collected wisdom of previous scholars and teachers. She loved doing research into metaphysical Biblical interpretations and relished the opportunity to reveal the etymology of words often used incorrectly in spriritual parlance. She got a kick out of the "gotcha!" moments uncovered by her studies.

Erica was also a huge ham. From my perspective, ministering is a form of show biz, and Erica played the role to the hilt. One of the high points of her career at Unity was the weekend production of "Always, Patsy Cline". The always fabulous Megon McDonough sang the role of Patsy and Erica played her loud-mouthed Southern friend who narrates the story of their meeting and ensuing lifelong relationship. I was lucky to take part in this labor of love for Rev; she had so much fun with it. And the congregation ate it up.

There is a lot I still don't understand about, Unity but that is not Erica Trantham's fault. I have problems with what I perceive as the "magical thinking" elements of the New Thought philosophy. I'm disturbed by the pseudo-science and the language of "We know..." when applied to aspects of life that are inherently mysterious and unknowable. And, if God is in and around all of us, exactly what entity are they addressing to when they end meditations with "thank you God" (chanted 3 times, of course). But in the few substantive exchanges I shared with her, I felt that Erica respected my point of view. I don't think she ever presumed to have "the answer". This humility was one of Erica's many strengths.

Rev. Erica most impressed me by the way she handled her illness. She was diagnosed with cancer shortly after taking the job at Unity. She took very little time off, only missing a Sunday when it was absolutely necessary. She didn't hide the illness from the community but chose not to make her cancer the subject of her lessons. She didn't preach about her illness and what it "meant"; she focused on her mission to educate and inspire people with Unity's spiritual and practical message.

Rev Erica's final message expressed her gratitude to the congregation for providing the opportunity for her to fulfill her lifelong goal of spiritual leadership of a highly receptive community. She strongly urged those present to support the growth of the church and to bring about positive change in the world through our actions. She said that the greatest gift we could give her would be to continue moving forward in the work that needs to be done. It was a selfless, graceful and impassioned lesson - one of her best.

For me and for so many people whose lives she touched, Sundays just won't be the same. (Rev, if you can hear me, here's a final rendition of Brick House for you.)

Joe Vito: An Appreciation

2010-06-29T16:53:00.004-05:00

Joseph Vitaterna was the name given to him by his parents, but among at least three generations of Chicago musicians he was known simply as Joe. He was like Prince or Madonna in that regard; no last name required.

One doesn’t acquire that kind of recognition easily, especially among working musicians – we’re a tough crowd. Joe Vito was a truly larger than life character, evoking a smile or a chuckle whenever his name was mentioned in conversation. He was much more than an excellent pianist, accompanist, accordionist and arranger. He had a long and very successful career in a business that can eat you alive. Joe accomplished so many things with grace, effortlessness and one of the most wicked wits I’ve ever encountered.

There are a thousand stories. There’s the long collaboration between Joe and violinist Johnny Frigo, his legendary capacity for liquor and long monologues, the many cornball jokes, the high profile gigs with Luciano Pavarotti, the Chicago Symphony, countless theatrical and corporate shows, recordings etc etc.

But I’ll mostly remember the man who treated me with the utmost kindness and professional respect - way more than I ever deserved. Joe hired me to play the memorial concert at Symphony Center for his beloved pal Mr. Frigo – that was a high honor. I played his “return to action” gig after some fairly serious surgery a few years ago. The two of us carpooled up and back to a very goofy duo gig at the Kohler compound in Wisconsin (yes, I did have to drive home). Joe was the most frequent visitor at the Chicago Hilton and Towers when I was working there in the late 80’s with my dear friend Peter Polzak and John’s son Rick Frigo.

Many of us who knew him have favorite Joe lines. Mine was more of an admonition: “Never try to bullshit a bullshitter.” And, of course, the infamous “You don’t know…” followed by a long story.

Joe Vito left us on July 28, 2010. He had long suffered the pain and indignities of cancer. One of his final projects was a recording he’d been working on for a long time with his wife Carole March Vito, an amazing musician and woman in her own right. I’m sure it’ll be outstanding, just the way everything else Joe ever touched was.

In Memory of Victor D'Altorio

2010-04-21T19:21:00.004-05:00

“Wow, great boobs!” I exclaimed.

“Wow, great boobs,” she deadpanned, looking aghast and taking a small step backwards.

“Wow, gr-r-r-reat! boobs!” I growled, eliciting nervous giggles from the room.

“Wow, great boobs,” she countered, crossing her arms over her chest.

Thus began one of my earliest experiences with The Repetition Exercise in class with Victor D’Altorio, an instructor at The Actors’ Center in Chicago. It was the Spring of 1996, and my life was about to be forever catapulted forward by this man, although, of course, I had no idea at the time.

Victor died in November 2009, after an excruciating bout with cancer and some unrelated issues with his back. I didn’t know he was ill nor that he had left this earth until now. I’m stricken with shock and sadness and gratitude. This is my personal eulogy for Victor D’Altorio, actor, director, teacher and mentor to many.

I initially thought that Vic was the most outrageous person I’d ever met. He was adamant about his homosexuality, brutally honest with his judgments and generally blunt in a way that I had never before experienced. At the time I was rather bottled up emotionally, so the contrast between our personalities was disconcerting, to say the least. It was also very refreshing. And life changing.

During my first semester at The Actors Center, I began learning Sanford Meisner’s acting techniques as interpreted by Victor and Eileen Vorbach.* The basics for The Repetition Exercise are this:

Two actors go up onstage. One actor begins by making an observation about his or her partner. The other actor must repeat exactly what the first actor said until something changes. The goal is to freely allow whatever happens in each moment to direct the action between the two people. This is way more difficult than it sounds, because each of us has a variety of blockages – parts of ourselves that we are unwilling to show to the world. The “work”, then, is to progressively get one’s self-consciousness out of the way to allow the reality of the moment to flourish. The rules are simple:

Observe the look, sound and behavior of your partner.
Speak the truth.
Keep your attention on your partner.
Say the first important thing that pops into your mind.
Stay in the moment.

Victor would alternately cajole, wheedle, berate and coddle us to get the results he wanted onstage. As demanding as he was, I can’t remember a class where he neglected to remind us that “this is a process” and that it takes time to develop the ability to respond and behave truthfully in each given moment onstage.

Victor sent me up onstage with the busty would-be actress that day because he thought I’d “be the only one in class brave enough to say it.” Vic encouraged courage and rejected fakery of every kind. He wanted his students to be as real, raw and forthcoming as possible. He stopped many an exercise by yelling “Too safe!”, and sending the mortified pair of actors back to their seats.

The process was often terrifying. There’d be times when I’d be sitting in class trying to will myself into invisibility so that I wouldn’t get called up there to face the heat. Victor would occasionally remind us that no one had yet died while doing the exercise in one of his classes, despite the fact that it often felt as if death was imminent (and perhaps would be welcome at certain moments).

When an actor had a breakthrough of some kind, Vic would say something like: “Good. You opened that door. Now put a brick in there and don’t let it close on you.” He likened the basic human emotions to drinking taps; you need to have all the taps (fear, joy, sadness, anger etc) open and flowing if you want to be an actor. When students were especially resistant, Vic would ask us why we wanted to be actors if we didn’t like exposing our inner selves. Of course, it wasn’t so much dislike as it was our fear of being fully seen that got in our way.

It was in the area of sexuality that Victor was most insistent. He was very good at sussing out the variety and shades of attraction that we so liked to avoid during our improvised little scenes. His sexuality was so out in the open and present; he wanted us to unfold ours in order to be able to use the myriad emotions that get stirred up via our sexual impulses: joy, shame, guilt, fear and so on.

In the Spring of 1998, I was fortunate enough to get cast in a production of Edward Albee’s The American Dream, which Victor directed. The rehearsal process was, for me, an intense extension of the work I’d been doing in classes. It was a challenging and difficult time, but ultimately a very rewarding one. Victor had some unusual methods: at one point he came over and started pounding me on the chest to demonstrate how the behavior of one of the characters should (literally) hit me. I got to work with some great people and the production was, by most accounts, a success. It felt great to be a part of the entire experience.

It is difficult for me to accept that Victor is gone. I hadn’t seen him in many years, but I think of him often. Many of the scenes I witnessed or took part in continue to be present in my consciousness. I have incorporated many of the principles Vic taught into my life as a musical performer and teacher. I truly feel that Vic was the best “therapist” I ever had; his classes had a profoundly liberating affect on me. I also know that he touched many other people in similar ways. He will not be forgotten any time soon.

I don’t know if Victor was buried or cremated, but if he has a headstone I know what it should read. In the spirit of stripping away our fears and social conventions in order to behave truthfully onstage, I’d like to propose a quote from Mr. Meisner himself:

Here lies Victor D’Altorio.

"Fuck polite!"

*The classes at the Actors Center were team taught by Vic and the wonderful Eileen Vorbach, who is thankfully very much alive and kicking actors’ butts as I write this.

Brooklyn Co-Op for Sale

2010-01-23T16:02:00.003-06:00

On a personal note, I'm selling a lovely 1BR apartment in the heart of Brooklyn Heights. Spacious, sunny 8th floor co-op is freshly painted and in a fantastic neighborhood, just steps from the Promenade and from the court district.

A bargain at $399K

Please go HERE for details.

Kucinich (Once Again) Says It All on Health Care

2010-01-21T12:58:00.002-06:00

There's no way I could say it better or more succinctly then Dennis Kucinich:

"Forty-seven million Americans are without health insurance. Why? Because they can't afford it.

And what's Washington's solution? Require people to buy private insurance with the government providing a subsidy to the health insurance companies.

What a pathetic state of affairs that our national government cannot respond to the needs of the people and must first respond to the needs of Wall Street and the health insurance industry and their stock prices.

I am going to continue to fight for single-payer. And I'm going to continue to try to get in the final legislation a provision which will protect the rights of states to be able to move forward with single-payer health care plans of their own.

It is time that we broke the chains, which the health insurance companies have on our political process. It's time that we have a government that we can call our own. And it's time that Congress respond to the needs of the American people first, and recognize that health care is a basic right in a democratic society."

Or watch the video:

Gratitude with Latitude: Giving Thanks for Curmudgeons and Other Realists

2009-11-26T13:58:00.003-06:00

I think by now most of us realize that the historical reality behind the Pilgrim Myth is one of the many horrifying chapters lurking in this country's past. It would probably be best to give thanks on any day other than the one that celebrates the theft and ongoing brutality perpetrated by our Anglo-Saxon founders against the indigenous people of this continent. But I'll save that rant for another day (lucky you).

So how does a non-theistic, peace- and compassion- loving, politically progressive realist come to terms with "Thanksgiving"?

The answer, for me, is to attempt to remember how fortunate I am as much of the time as possible. I can't compress all of my gratitude into a sentence or two; I can't remember all of my blessings at once; I can't will myself into a state of thankfulness on this one day. The reality is that there are so many aspects of my life that inspire gratitude that I can't contain them, nor would I want to do so.

There is a constant ebb and flow of opposites in our lives: good days and bad days, income and expenses, joy and anger, friends and enemies. It is easy to feel grateful when things are going "my way". But remembering my good fortune when things are falling apart is the real challenge and, I would argue, far more important in the big picture. Do we only feel love for our fellow creatures on Christmas or New Year's or (insert holiday of your choice)? Of course not. We need love, gratitude and (I would argue) compassion to be our constant companions, as difficult a goal as that may be.

A couple of years ago I listed many of the things I felt grateful for at that time. Today I am deliberately omitting this ritual. Reciting my private list of "gratitudes" would not be an act of thankfulness on this day, this year. Saying thank you out loud for specific people or things doesn't make me any more or less thankful - right now it would feel cheap and inauthentic to do so.

Much like the rigorously enforced nationalism of the 4th of July, there is a palpable social pressure to perform public pronouncements of gratitude on Thanksgiving Day. I would argue that we'd be far better off to spread the good vibe year-round rather than use it all up at one dinner.

Bill Moyers on the Health Care Public Option

2009-10-11T20:18:00.002-05:00

More and more members of the mainstream media are coming to their senses and starting to report the real story of Max Baucus and his committee. They've been bought and paid for by health insurance company lobbyists and we cannot trust one damn thing they say. What they're offering is not what the majority of the American people want, and what I'd argue, need.

Health Care Is A Human Right

2009-10-01T15:22:00.005-05:00

Today I am inspired by a recent editorial by New York Times columnist Nick Kristof, in which he eloquently (and not for the first time) makes the case for the so-called “public option” in our nation’s pending health care reform legislation. Mr. Kristof and his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, are the Pulitzer prize winning authors of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. I will have more to say about this book in a future post.

Kristof and WuDunn are human rights advocates. In the Times piece, Kristof offers a common sense argument for expansive health care coverage for all Americans:

“Throughout the industrialized world, there are a handful of these areas where governments fill needs better than free markets: fire protection, police work, education, postal service, libraries, health care. The United States goes along with this international trend in every area but one: health care.

The truth is that government, for all its flaws, manages to do some things right, so that today few people doubt the wisdom of public police or firefighters. And the government has a particularly good record in medical care”.

He cites both Medicare and the Veterans Administration as examples of efficient, effective and highly rated government-run health care systems. Kristof continues by gently pointing out the most regressive and egregious problem with our current system:

“But the biggest weakness of private industry is not inefficiency but unfairness. The business model of private insurance has become, in part, to collect premiums from healthy people and reject those likely to get sick — or, if they start out healthy and then get sick, to find a way to cancel their coverage.”

In plain English, the current paradigm can only be described as criminal. Any business that financially benefits from withholding medical care from people who need it, refusing to insure those who are already ill (those pesky pre-existing conditions), or canceling coverage for people who have the audacity to get injured or sick is corrupt, anti-democratic and cynical to the core.

The health insurance industry (backed up to a great extent by the for-profit health care providers and the giant pharmaceutical companies) is engaged in a life-or-death battle to ensure that their morally indefensible business model is preserved. So its no wonder that they will use any means at their disposal to save themselves and protect their billions in profits pilfered from the American populace.

Exhibit A: Max Baucus, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. According the NY Times,

“Mr. Baucus has successfully strong-armed several lobbying groups into muting their criticism of his health care legislation, part of a concerted strategy of reassuring [health insurance industry] interest groups. Even as Mr. Baucus has tamped down criticism, he has continued collecting campaign contributions from industry interests, including drug companies and insurers.”

This week, Chairman Baucus presided over a committee that produced a health care bill that is “an absolute gift” to the insurance industry, according to Wendell Potter, who went on to say that “the bill might as well be called the Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act." You can read the full article HERE.

Mr. Potter, by the way, is a man who knows the industry from the inside. He enjoyed a nearly 20- year career as the chief public relations representative for Humana and Cigna, two of our nation’s largest health insurance companies. After a crisis of conscience in 2007, Wendell Potter is now a senior fellow at the Center for Media and Democracy. He is putting his intimate knowledge of the health insurance industry’s insidious PR strategies to good use combating the misinformation being fed to and spouted by the opponents of substantial health care reform. Here’s his pithy decoding of the arguments being used by these folks to pummel health care reform:

“whenever you hear a politician or pundit use the term "government-run health care" and warn that the creation of a public health insurance option that would compete with private insurers (or heaven forbid, a single-payer system like the one Canada has) will "lead us down the path to socialism," know that the original source of the sound bite most likely was some flack like I used to be.”

I highly recommend that you read the text of a speech Potter recently gave, called How Corporate PR Works to Kill Health Care Reform

...or watch this excellent video:

The battle over health care reform should not be about politics, federal deficits, ideology, “creeping socialism”, or anything other than the simple fact that, as human beings, each of us deserves access to excellent, affordable health care. It is not a privilege, it is a basic human right. This right is not only guaranteed by our constitution but is also an essential part of what it means to stand for liberty and justice for all.

The ongoing public debate often conflates health care reform and health insurance reform. This country must have the kind of reform that will provide equal access to health care for all Americans, regardless of the consequences for the health insurance industry. The days of the hegemony of business interests over the needs of people must end. Americans of all political persuasions, ethnicities, geographical locations, ages, sexual orientations etc need to come together on this. We mustn’t allow ourselves to be bullied, fooled or coerced into accepting a health care policy that doesn’t address the real needs of ALL of us.

Here is a video in which Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, explains the “public option” and debunks the idiotic criticism coming from the health insurance companies:

I have to add a hearty thank you to the public figures who are standing up for justice with regard to health care for all. This list is not inclusive, but these people are heroes in my book:

Quentin Young, M.D., physician, human rights activist, strong proponent of a single payer health care system

Michael Moore, filmmaker, whose film Sicko has galvanized millions of Americans to improve health care in the U. S.

Representative John Conyers, author of H.R. 676, legislation that would establish a single-payer, Medicare for all type of system.

T. R. Reid, author of The Healing of America

Senator Dennis Kucinich, tireless champion of a single payer healthcare system

Ralph Nader, consumer advocate, presidential candidate who crusades for the interests of real people over those of large corporations

Wendell Potter, former Cigna exec now working tirelessly for a better solution to our healthcare crisis

Nick Krystof, author and NY Times columnist who is helping shape public opinion using facts and high ethical standards

Day 10: Enough Is Enough

2009-08-26T20:43:00.001-05:00

OK, I get it. Today’s walk was flat, very much like the kind of terrain I have at home in Chicago. I practiced using duration and pace to “feel the burn” without inclines. We strode about 4.5 miles in approximately 90 minutes. I know that I am not going to devote that kind of time to walking on a daily basis. But if I can do a solid 45 minutes at a good clip 5 days out of 7, that would make me feel very successful.

Today I noticed that the stiffness in my lower back and legs seems to dissipate as I’m walking. I’ve been getting out of bed feeling like an old codger, but once I air it out a bit on the trail things start to loosen up and I move with a kind of fluidity that I’d forgotten was possible. Stretching, especially after walking, helps allay the stiffness too. My calf and lower back muscles still feel sore, but I’m hoping that is a function of the newness of this regimen. Over time maybe those muscle groups will get used to this level of activity and stop complaining.

On the sustenance front, I think I have a good handle on how I want to proceed when I get home. Whether or not I’ll be able to consistently keep a lid on the emotional eating is another story, but I’ve learned that I can live well on substantially less food than I normally take in. I know how to eat healthy foods in healthy amounts; I just have to do it.

Last night the food person here (she’s not a nutritionist so that’s the best I can do) suggested that we make a list of the reasons we want to be healthy going forward. Here’s mine: I want to be able to continue playing music at a high level without pain, to travel, to enjoy my future grandchildren (if any), to do some active volunteer work, to keep my partner happy, to avoid being a burden to my children and to escape the kind of decrepitude that plagued my father.

But otherwise I am bored and ready to go home. I miss my loved ones, I miss my house and my basses. I miss the feeling of playing in a rhythm section. I miss my own bed, my music collection, my books. I’m starting to feel like I’m treading water here; like I’ve gotten what I came for and now its time to return to my life.

DAY 9: Tuesday Full of Nothing

2009-08-26T14:48:00.003-05:00

Resting my body was the order of the day. After breakfast I went to the 3rd floor common room and did some work with my laptop: answered some email, re-wrote a page on my teaching website, placed a couple of CL ads, worked on a Labor Day weekend sale I’m planning for PlayJazzNow. Then I spent some time with my new book, Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, which sparked a lot of controversy about two years ago. I have some vague opinions about the Israeli-Palestine issue but I want to learn more about the history of the region and conflict so that my point of view will have some data to back it up.

After lunch I did some copying of notes from the classes I’ve taken here, worked on a list of behaviors I want to either eliminate or encourage, and started messing around with iCal, the Mac calendar software that I’m hoping will help me get more organized when I get home. Then I took a good long nap, finished hand washing and drying some clothing for the next few days, showered and shaved.

Sometime during the day I discovered that my digital camera somehow fixed itself. I'll take it on my hike tomorrow and try to catch up on the many shots I haven't been able to take here in beautiful Vermont.

Couldn’t get to sleep, though. Wound up watching bits and pieces of old Frazier and Seinfeld episodes into the wee hours. Guess I’m itching to go home…

DAY 8: Tough Hike / Getting Full / Scheduling

2009-08-24T18:53:00.002-05:00

My 3rd consecutive daily hike was challenging. We went to Plymouth, VT, hometown of Calvin Coolidge, and hiked mostly uphill for the first hour. I tried two new strategies to get through this one:

First, I tried to maintain a consistent breathing pattern by paying a lot of attention to my heart and respiration rates. I slowed my pace way down when we were walking up the long grades so that my pulse and breathing wouldn’t get totally whacked out of control. Then I sped up when the path flattened out or went downhill to keep those vitals from getting too low. Second, I started zigzagging on the steeper inclines, a technique hikers call switching back. This really helped prevent my legs from tiring and creating unnecessary stress on my lungs and heart.

Today I reached the one week point in my stay here. Most remarkably, I got too full at breakfast and couldn’t finish eating my oatmeal. Then, at lunch, I noticed that I felt that I’d had enough when I got about 2/3 through my pasta, veggie and chicken salad. I finished it because it tasted good and I know that it is a long time until dinner, but I actually went past the point of being sated.

OK, this is weird. The amount of food at these two meals is not overwhelming, by any stretch of the imagination. 1600 calories per day is just not a lot of food in my world. Even some of the women were complaining that it was not enough food to satisfy their hunger. So the idea that I would be “full” before finishing these meals is a totally new experience. There was a real disconnect between what my eyes were telling me (“not enough food here, dude!”) and what my innards were saying (“stop, you’re going to make your stomach hurt”). Let’s see what happens over the next few days on this score.

Here’s one answer to the “how am I going to integrate these good behaviors into my life when I get home” question: Scheduling.

I’m in the habit of writing down all kinds of appointments – for gigs, rehearsals, students, stuff for my children, social events etc. In fact, it is challenging for me to remember to do much of anything without there being a notation for it in my calendar. So, what if I were to write in, for example, when I’m going to do my daily walk? How about scheduling in time for practicing, meditating, shopping, meal preparation – all of the stuff I say I want to start including in my life? Maybe I haven’t been doing these things partially because I literally don’t make time for them, despite the fact that most days there is theoretically plenty of “free” time in my schedule.

Maybe it is less a matter of will and more a matter of being better organized. Perhaps I’m not as lazy or self-destructive as I sometimes think.

DAY 7: E-Z Hike in the Rain / No-nonsense Lifestyle Change

2009-08-24T18:51:00.001-05:00

Today’s discovery: going for a hike two days in a row will not kill me. The nature walk today was a mostly flat 4 mile hike up to a small waterfall in a light rain. The humidity was sky high but the overall result was a very doable, fun couple of hours. I was remembering how, back in the proverbial day, I’d walk in any kind of weather, including the dead of winter. If I could get back to that level of dedication (or was it addiction?) I’d be delighted.

Tonight I attended a lecture entitled 30 Years of Nutritional Insanity, given by the man who founded and still runs the spa I’m attending. He likened dieting to a cult where the rules keep changing but the results are pretty much the same – failure. From Atkins to Pritikin to Fit for Life to South Beach to you-name-it, each fad diet has failed to meet the promise of long lasting weight loss and increased quality of life.

The bottom line is no secret or surprise and comes down to two basic strategies: eat real food (not manufactured crap) and move your body regularly. He stressed that it is important not to make things complicated and self-limiting. [I’m reminded of Michael Pollen’s recent dictum: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.] And find some kinds of physical activities that you enjoy and do them most days. That’s it.

Change will be slow and there will be difficulties along the way; those are givens. There are emotional, sociological, interpersonal and economic issues that will try to trip me up. My task is to try to remember these simple things and put them into practice as best I can without self-recriminations when I have a setback.

DAY 6: A Hike, A Massage and Experiencing Grief

2009-08-23T12:25:00.001-05:00

Well, the hiking is getting marginally less taxing. I didn’t feel like I was going to croak on today’s upward inclines. My lower leg muscles still burned a bit but it is mainly my breathing that is still problematic. But its not like I don’t already know that my aerobic health sucks. It has cooled off considerably here but the humidity is still very high. The scuttlebutt among the spa cognoscenti is that the next two days’ worth of nature walks are the easiest of the week. So I’m planning on walking three days in a row; we’ll see how that goes. Tuesday will be the killer Woodstock hike again, so I think I’ll take a (by then well-deserved) day off.

I’ve lost a pound or two; I can tell by the way my clothes are fitting. (No scales for me, thank you.)

I had signed up for a massage yesterday but somehow the massage therapist got confused about her start time, so I got gypped out of my hour on the table. I was able to get it re-scheduled for this afternoon so no harm was done.

After lunch I had a bout of intense grief over the events of this past year. I’ve been reading Michael Chabon’s Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and the reunion of Joe Kavalier and his son touched an emotional nerve in me. It is difficult for me to know exactly “what” I’m sad about right now, but I certainly have plenty of stuff to choose from. Somehow being away from my regular schedule is allowing me to make some space for letting those feelings bubble up. Here, I don’t have the option of numbing myself with food or compulsive working. I have very little to distract me from my inner life, which presents me with the opportunity to experience what is. I’m trying to make the most of this gift of time.

Day 5: Lite Walk, Cooking Class and Steak!

2009-08-23T12:22:00.001-05:00

I didn’t show up for an official hike today, but the “Walk and Cook” class was just that: a 40 minute, 2 mile walk followed by a sit down class with a nutritionist.

This walk was very much like the kind of walks I used to do and imagine I will resume doing when I get home. We walked in the neighborhood of the inn, at a pretty good clip, and the last ten minutes was a fairly steep uphill climb, albeit not in the woods.

I’d never taken a cooking class before today. First the teacher reminded me about the benefits of quinoa, the ancient high-protein grain that does the same things brown rice does, but better. She concocted a tasty entrée salad with the quinoa, black beans, corn, onion and a dressing made with red wine vinegar, lime, olive oil and plenty of cilantro.

Then there was the interesting suggestion to store vegetables visibly on the refrigerator shelves as opposed to out of sight in the crisper drawer. The nutritionist said that there’s been a study showing that people ate something like 200% more veggies if they were visible. I guess that’s worth a try.

I’m thinking that it would also be a good idea to set aside one day a week, say Sunday, to do some cooking for the coming week and freeze things in meal-size containers.

Tonight’s meal was the best so far, possibly because I haven’t been getting the amount of protein (or anything else, for that matter) that my body is used to. We had a delicious marinated top sirloin that tasted like filet mignon. It was a small piece of meat, maybe 3 or 4 ounces, but it was very satisfying with some green beans and rice.

Day 4: Some Pain, Some Gain / Gender Issues

2009-08-21T12:19:00.001-05:00

I chose a beautifully cool, crisp and sunny morning to try Qi Gong. This Chinese stretching/breathing/balancing exercise regimen is the beginner’s version of Tai Chi. Despite getting confused a few times by the combination of ways one is supposed to move simultaneously, I really enjoyed the half hour class. Best of all, it didn’t hurt me like hatha yoga, which I have been avoiding since my last unfortunate encounter left me with a sore back for two weeks.

Today’s hike idyllically followed the contours of a small lake. It really was mostly flat with some rolling hills, a couple of which were plenty challenging for me. But since I really haven’t been walking with any regularity at home, these 4.4 miles at a brisk pace with the couple of hills made a heavy breathing, sweaty mess out of me. When we were through, my legs and lower back vibrated with ache, and I could barely drag myself out of the van when we returned to the inn. But it is rather amazing what a shower and some lunch will do to restore the spirit.

Speaking of food, I am getting some good ideas about creating healthy dishes using many of the ingredients I normally have on hand. I haven’t eaten a slice of bread since I’ve been here, with the exception of the turkey, hummus and veggie sandwich we had for lunch in Woodstock on Tuesday. I’d like to make salad and fruit based dishes more often instead of depending on bread or pasta as the main fallback ingredient. This will require some serious re-thinking, but I am keeping track of the recipes I’ve enjoyed here and hoping to find a strategy for sustaining this way of eating when I get home.

So, why are there so many more women than men here at this hiking spa? I noted the disparity upon my arrival and today got a confirmation from one of the trail guides that the attendees are generally 80-90% female. Is it that there is so much more societal pressure on women to conform to a thin body type? A decent percentage of the women here are not overweight. I’d guess that something less than half are here to raise their level of fitness and to enjoy some time away from their quotidian lives. They’re not necessarily wanting to lose weight per se.

Why don’t more men come here? It seems to me that, in general, men are less likely to spend time and money taking care of themselves. Sure, there’s less stigma attached to being overweight for men than women. But workaholism may be more of a male trait. And when they’re not working, men probably spend more time engaging in activities that don’t involve self-improvement: watching sports, drinking, video gaming, etc. I’m sure this is a harsh over-generalization, but the fact remains that there really are very few men taking advantage of the health-inducing, life-extending activities offered at this spa.

Journey to Wellness (Day 3): Contemplation

2009-08-19T15:18:00.002-05:00

[Dinner last night was actually delicious: baked tilapia with some tangy veggies (red pepper, onion, mushroom), steamed wax beans in some kind of spices, red beans and rice with a little zip to it, apple crisp and cinnamon apple spice tea for dessert.]

I skipped the hike today. I needed to sleep in and I feel like my body is having a bit of a time adjusting to the very low calorie diet we’re, um, enjoying. I did wind up taking a walk down and up the hilly road to the nearest convenience store to purchase new batteries for my camera. It boots up but there is something wrong with the lens electronics. I can view previously shot photos but there’s no image being recorded when I try to take a new picture. Maybe it just needs to dry out more (or I’m just clutching at straws.)

The remaining part of the day was filled with email, reading, a much needed shower and a lot of hunger pangs. I am paying much closer attention to how my body feels here than I do at home, which is a good thing. And I’m wondering how I am going to successfully integrate what I’m learning and (hopefully) habituating here.

It’s one thing to know you have a two hour period each morning for a hike in beautiful surroundings with a group of like-minded people. It’ll be quite another to carve out this time for myself at home in my urban digs, all by myself. The day after I return, for example, is already filled from 10 AM to 11PM with work-related commitments. The following day I am on the road to my church gig at 8:30 AM, and I highly doubt that I am going to want to get up an hour earlier than I absolutely have to so I’ll have time for a 30 minute power walk.

Then there’s the whole matter of food - the planning, shopping and preparing of which has always presented problems. It takes a lot of desire, energy and forethought for me to commit to a certain way of eating, and doing it for myself is a daunting task. It is so easy to slip back into old habits, to get bored with my few default menu options and to give in to food cravings and emotional eating. How to not do that is the question. I’m hoping to discover some possible solutions while I’m here.

Journey to Wellness (Day 2): Plunging Upward

2009-08-18T20:05:00.003-05:00

After tossing and turning a good deal of the night, I decided to skip the 7AM stretch and Qi Gong class. I was up plenty early but I spent the earliest part of the day sipping black hotel room coffee and watching a couple of episodes from the second TV season of This American Life on DVD.

Breakfast was a tiny sliver of honeydew melon, followed by “salsa scrambled eggs” with a dry whole wheat English muffin and a teaspoon of some indeterminate flavor of jam. The coffee was weak and bleak. I may wind up learning how to drink it black here in Vermont.

I chose to go on the nature walk, which is the name they give to the alleged beginner’s level hike. We were going to Mount Tom, which overlooks the town of Woodstock, VT. There are several different locales for these walks, and today’s was described as “mostly flat with gentle, rolling hills.” The ride over there was breathtaking, the road snaking through the mountains alongside a glistening stream.

The first sound we heard as we exited the van was the unmistakable c-r-r-rack of timber being felled. All eyes raised to witness a huge tree coming down in slow motion somewhere up what looked like the trail we were supposed to be following into the woods. The hiking guides wisely decided to take a detour around the tree-felling project, so we fell in behind the lovely little 20 – something Kate, who started clambering up the trail like a bat out of hell.

Those first few minutes of this path re-defined “gentle, rolling hills” for me in a hurry. Without so much as a polite preamble, we were trotting up what must have been a 35% grade. I figured that this must just be a brief ascent that would lead us to the comfy “mostly flat” part, sort of like taking a flight of stairs to get to the second floor. But it went on for what seemed like forever. We’d get to a plateau, only to have to trudge up another several stories around the next bend. Needless to say, I was huffing and chuffing and cursing my ill luck before we’d barely begun.

Fortunately, it didn’t last forever and I wound up having a pretty good time commiserating with a few other laggards. The trail did eventually even out and about a half hour later we came to a lovely man-made pond, which we proceeded to circumnavigate at a relatively leisurely pace.

The disaster du jour occurred on the way back to the trailhead (see how quickly I pick up the lingo?). Somehow, while I was mucking around in my backpack during a short breath-catching pause, I managed to pry open the drinking flap from my second water bottle while it was mostly upside down. Everything got a good drenching, including my digital camera, my street shoes and my sack lunch. But I did enjoy the sensation of dripping water down my shorts and legs as we descended back to the parking lot.

I was absolutely toast on the van ride back to the inn. I somehow managed to make it back to my room, crawled into the shower and then collapsed onto the bed for an afternoon respite. I’d scheduled a Swedish massage for later in the afternoon and am now basking in the glow of that while I await dinnertime. I’m not getting my hopes up for that, however.

Spa-tacular: 11 Day Journey to Wellness

2009-08-18T19:54:00.003-05:00

DAY 1

I have decided to try, once again, to put my feet back on the path of bodily health. Last April I signed up for an 11 day stint at a spa that specializes in fitness and weight loss. The central activity, the meat and potatoes of it, is hiking. And since the locale is the Green Mountains of Vermont, there’s plenty of natural beauty to fill the senses and (presumably) inspire my to keep my feet on the literal path through the wooded hills.

Today I arrived, too late to take part in much of anything. I was taken on a brief tour and had my first onsite meal, which was underwhelming. Then I spent part of the evening watching Supersize Me, the documentary in which the filmmaker puts himself on a diet of nothing but three McDonald’s meals a day for one month. What that does to his health is astonishing. As of this moment, I will never set foot in a fast food place again. Talk about inspiration…

The past year has been particularly stressful, primarily due to my father’s death and the subsequent emotional fallout for me and my family. I am acutely aware how my father neglected his health for so many years and how I don’t want to wind up with the dense pack of diseases he suffered from. Ironically, however, this year has been a time when I’ve done a poor job of exercising and keeping vigilant about what and how much I eat. So I’ll be curious how things will unfold for me here, both physically and emotionally.

Tomorrow – my first hike.

21st Century Bully: Resistance Is Futile

2009-06-29T11:16:00.002-05:00

Friends of mine in the literary community are embroiled in a harsh, long-standing battle of words with a bully, who I will call Mr. X. (I will keep real names out of this discussion in order to avoid fanning the flames of this imbroglio. It is the underlying psychological nature of this conflict that interests me, so names are unnecessary.) Mr. X is a man who demonstrates many of the traits of megalomaniac paranoia. The community has been unable to develop a successful strategy for defusing the conflict, so the question is: What does one do to thwart an online bully?

Mr. X runs an influential website, which he uses to publicize events and to publish gossip and his brand of literary criticism. Both in person and in his voluminous writing, Mr. X engages in a variety of malevolent behaviors, including: the distortion of facts and outright lying, ad hominem attacks and verbal abuse of numerous individuals, procuring web domains for the express purpose of diverting traffic from other legitimate literary sites, scheduling live reading events to conlict with events run by his perceived "adversaries" and organizing boycotts of events or journals that he has disagreements with.

In short, Mr. X does everything in his power to control, exclude and divide members of the local literary community. I hesitate to refer to him as being a member of that community, because the people he abuses are not his peers. He writes lies and injurious gossip about people who are actually writing and publishing their work, while he is essentially a hobbyist. He dabbles in the art form but spends a lot of his time slamming people whose work is far more successful than his own.

According to Random House Dictionary, paranoia is a "mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions and the projection of personal conflicts, which are ascribed to the supposed hostility of others, sometimes progressing to disturbances of consciousness and aggressive acts believed to be performed in self-defense or as a mission."

American Heritage puts it this way: Paranoia is a "psychotic disorder characterized by delusions of persecution with or without grandeur, often strenuously defended with apparent logic and reason." Colloquially, it is an "extreme, irrational distrust of others."

Wikipedia's entry is: "(T)he term paranoid addresses a range of mental conditions...in which the subject is seen to generalize or project fears and anxieties onto the external world, particularly in the form of organized behavior focused on them".

If one reads the content of Mr. X's websites or his comments on other people's blogs, his paranoia is obvious. One after another, he chooses individual writers to be the focus of his delusional attention. He accuses people of excluding him from readings or of sabotaging his efforts to promote his events. He personally attacks people based on their gender, political persuasion and body size, while claiming that other performance events are racist or elitist. All of these behaviors are the result of his projections, for the reality is that no one has done him any harm. He regularly accuses others of perpetrating the deeds he acts out against them.

When people respond to his accusations directly Mr X exhibits a level of violent defensiveness that is overly exaggerated and dramatic. He can reduce a rational complaint or criticism to an imagined personal affront in the turn of a phrase. When folks ignore his gossip mongering he progressively ups the ante by finding a new target, stealing a domain name, urging people to boycott an event or a publishing house and generally finding new ways to alienate members of the creative community from one another. The guy is relentless, and very accomplished as a disseminator of deception.

While Mr. X's actions may not rise to the level of libel, his words and deeds have certainly created an atmosphere of distrust, anger and divisiveness in the community he purports to serve. But the quandary persists: how should the rest of the creative folks protect themselves so that they might get on with their work without fear of a sneak attack from this online bully? This is no playground conflict that can be resolved by parents and teachers; this is real life, where there is no "authority" available to adjudicate, and people's personal and professional reputations are at stake.

I am not directly involved in this "scene", so it may be far too easy for me to offer some possible solutions. Nevertheless, and at the risk of sounding glib or patronizing, here are my ideas:

1) Become non-resistant. Do not pay Mr. X any attention. Let him do or say whatever he wants without responding. Bullies need victims, so take a lesson from Gandhi and don't give him anything to push against. In the words of the Borg, resistance is futile.

2) Kill him with kindness. Invite him with open arms to every event. Cheerfully attend the readings he organizes. If he invites you to read your work at his venue, graciously accept. Write nice things about him, his events, and his website. If he does something offensive, bite your tongue and smile.

3) Court him as your new best friend. Buy him dinner, take him to a ballgame, get him laid (if you can). After you have gained his trust, tactfully suggest that he seek therapeutic help.

4) If all else fails, take him to court. If you can find a lawyer who will take the case, sue him for libel and try shutting down his website. Murder isn't a viable option, but seeking censure is possible.

I believe that finding a way to be in relationship with truly vexing individuals is one of life's huge challenges. Every fiber of one's being wants to resist, to strike back when attacked and to defend oneself in every way possible. Unfortunately, those emotional responses nearly always backfire. I will grant that there are times when one must stand one's ground and fight like hell for what one believes or to protect the safety of loved ones. But when there are long-term consequences and when the options for escape are limited, more sophisticated strategies are called for. Sometimes the situation demands that we act out of our compassion and rationality rather than out of our animal instincts.

Addendum: This post is not specifically about the phenomenon known as "cyberbullying" but there are some good suggestions on strategies for dealing with online bullies HERE.

A Higher Standard? Israel, Palestine and the U.S.

2009-01-06T08:51:00.002-06:00

This morning brought news that the recent Israeli military actions in the Gaza Strip have taken the lives of more than 500 Palestinians, many of them civilians. The rocket and mortar attacks launched by Hamas have killed a small handful of Israelis. In fact, the total number of civilian and Israeli Defense Forces deaths is less than 10. This includes the 3 IDF soldiers who were killed by so-called friendly fire yesterday.

Humanitarian NGOs are universally stating that the living conditions in Gaza are desperate and getting worse. Aid organizations, the United Nations, and the vast majority of governments around the world are condemning the actions of the Israeli government with regard to local access to clean water, sanitation, health care and food. The only government sitting on the sidelines is our own.

Let us leave politics out of this for a moment and examine this situation from a humanitarian perspective. Whatever the stated reasons, the notion that it is morally acceptable for any entity (person, ethnic group, government) to impose this level of death and destruction on any other entity is indefensible. The “scratch” doesn’t fit the “itch” in any way. While Hamas’ incessant lobbing of ordnance across the border cannot be defended, the Israeli government’s response is a wild and heinous over-reaction. The numbers don’t lie. Neither do the comparative living conditions in Gaza and southern Israel.

As an American and a Jew, I am appalled and enraged both by the actions of Israel and the business-as-usual attitude of the Bush administration. The silence of president-elect Obama is equally chilling. Whatever one’s stance regarding our national interests in the middle east may be, the simple fact is that these attacks on Gaza should be opposed by all who value human life and dignity.

The crisis has yet to reach the dimensions of Rwanda or Somalia or Bosnia, but the humanitarian implications of Israel’s actions are no different. Mr. Obama made a huge campaign issue out of his opposition to the war in Iraq. How this situation is any more defensible is beyond comprehension. Where are those brave words now?

The United States prides itself on the principles of democracy, equality and justice invoked by our constitution. We are supposed to hold ourselves to a higher standard of behavior. We are supposed to represent the civilized world. We are not a theocracy, we believe in the rule of law and in humanitarian principles. Have we learned nothing in the past 225 years? Have we no sense of history or decency or empathy? Does self-interested politics have to dominate all of our actions as a nation?

The Jewish people regard themselves as the “chosen people”. Our religion compels us to behave in a moral, just, and principled way. We have a long history of being oppressed and dispossessed. Have we learned nothing in the past 2000 years? Have we no compassion? Is everything allowed in the name of national defense?

What has happened to the higher standards we as Americans (and some of us as Jews) are supposed to uphold? To our shame, we have forgotten. We have allowed our insistence on the hegemony of political and economic power to override our sense of ethics. We have lost our belief in justice and equality. We have sunk so low as to accept that the imposition of our political agenda, no matter how corrupt, represents the greater good.

If these events make you feel sad, ashamed or just plain angry, then make your voice heard. Nothing can be done about the Present Occupant, but we might have a chance to influence the incoming administration. You can do all the usual stuff: write an editorial or op-ed, call your representatives in Washington, talk to your friends, blog. President-elect Obama, to his credit, has made it easy to submit ideas and critical comments HERE.

Let’s hold our government and ourselves to a higher standard.

Letting Myself Breathe

2008-12-30T17:56:00.001-06:00

Every year around the middle of the holiday season I start to feel a vague anxiety grow. Another year is about to turn, its history made; there’s no turning back. As much as I try to avoid it, making a list of New Year’s resolutions feels almost inevitable. I don’t like the idea of becoming a living cliché by succombing to this impulse, but, as they say, resistance is futile.

In recent years I’ve tried to keep the resolutions succinct and pragmatic. I’ve also tried to avoid the imperious voice of doom – I MUST do this or that OR ELSE. That kind of self-admonishment has not worked and I doubt that strategy is ever going to have any success. So this year I’m going to give myself the gift of one suggestion only. Perhaps if I can remember this one idea some of the time I’ll have a little more ease in life than in the past. Its worth a shot, anyway.

In 2009 I am going to try to remember to let myself breathe. I hope to allow myself the occasional indulgence in a pause, a respite, a few seconds off for good behavior. Relaxation is a skill I’ve been rather slow to develop, but I imagine that a break once in awhile might have some benefits. A breath now and then might help lower my stress level; maybe I’d be a more patient person, a more grounded musician, a more effective teacher. If I can remember to take a periodic breather (literally) perhaps my life would improve in ways I can’t even begin to fathom.

I’m looking to ’09 for a little bit of peace that little pieces of inactivity might engender. I’m guessing that sporadic periods of doing nothing might greatly improve the majority of the time when I’m doing something. Is it possible that letting myself breathe (at least some of the time) might lead to more success, more life satisfaction, more (dare I say it?) happiness?

I’m willing to take that on as an experiment this year.

Auto Attack: When Good Cars Go Bad

2008-10-28T10:55:00.000-05:00

Dios mio, dios mio, porque me has abandonado?
- attributed to J.C.

Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
- Murphy's Law

I must have done something terrible to piss off the patron saint of cars, if there is such a creature. Maybe I offended Michelinaeus, the Greek goddess of tires as well. Whatever it was, I must be working off some hellified "carma", because my relationship with my former automotive ally has turned very ugly of late.

Now, I drive a jalopy. There's just no way to sugar coat it. I pilot a '96 Plymouth Voyager with just under 157K on it. My pal Sarah tells me that I'm living on borrowed time with this thing, and I know she's right. And, as they say in Hollywood, she's had a little work done in recent years (the van, not Sarah). The upside is that I pay under $40 in monthly liability insurance and I haven't had to make car payments for several years. The downside is that sometimes I run into a spate of bad luck - like right now, for instance.

It all started a couple of weeks ago when I was on my merry way to a Labor Day picnic. Just after pulling out of my garage I heard a wicked whump from the rear end of the car. It sounded like I had just deposited the rump of the vehicle on the other side of a speed bump. I pulled over and saw that my right rear tire was not only flat but had come entirely off of the rim.

I whipped out a handy can of Fix A Flat, that nasty chemical crap in a can that will allegedly re-inflate a moribund tire. The tire was in such bad shape that the fluid came squirting out of the tire faster than I could pump it in there. So I put the old donut spare on and limped over to my local tire shop.

Then, less than a week later, after playing three gigs on a Sunday, automotive lightning struck twice in the same exact spot, which I thought was impossible. The same tire (actually the new replacement tire) was DOA in my parking spot. By now you know the drill: The Fix A Flat did absolutely nothing (except elicit an admonishment from my tire dude not to use it) and I had to throw the old spare back on there. When I was finished I looked like I had just stepped out of a coal mine.

I had the tire replaced (again) and was driving downtown the following afternoon when I heard a loud flappada-flappada sound coming from the front end of the car. Shit, I couldn't possibly have another flat, could I? I pulled onto the shoulder of the highway, got out and walked around the van. No tire damage. I started to drive back into traffic when I realized that my power steering had gone out. The sound I had heard must have been the belt snapping under the hood. (This would be the third time I've had broken belts in the last six months, possibly a new world record).

The next day I had to drop my daughter off at the el to get to school. Besides the upper body workout I was getting from steering manually everything seemed alright. I dropped her off and then made the fatal mistake of stopping at the bank before going back to the 'hood to drop off the car. I parked in the lot by my Chase branch, did my biz, and came back to discover that the car would not start...in that dead battery kind of way.

With great trepidation, I opened the hood and peered inside. Right away I saw that there were no belts of any kind attached to any of the pulleys. So I called the motor club and eventually got the car towed to my second home (aka the local mechanic). He was very surprised to see me back so soon after we had changed the belts. Something was causing this to keep happening, but it was unclear what it could be.

Fast forward another week or so. I took the car to my local Jiffy Lube for an overdue oil change. While they were working I noticed that the ever-present clacking noise in the engine had become significantly worse. I'd been so preoccupied with other maladies that I hadn't observed this change. Man, it was scary loud. I'd been told that I would sooner or later need the dreaded "ring job" because the noise was most likely an indication of an essentially worn out motor.

There comes a time in the life of every vehicle when enough is enough. The horrifying sound of the engine combined with its rusting body, leaking oil, dead AC and slipping transmission has convinced me that it is time to punt.

Next: New Car Blues

Obama Video Says it All

2008-10-17T11:44:00.000-05:00

Are you the same or have you changed?

Almost Caught in the Web: Chinese Domain Name Scam

2008-10-16T17:39:00.004-05:00

A few days ago I received a rather disturbing email about my jazz website, the full text of which appears below:

Dear CEO,
We are the department of registration service in China. we have something need to confirm with you. We formally received an application on Octomber 10, 2008, One company which self-styled "Tenderich Technologies Limited" are applying to register "playjazznow" as internet brand and CN domain names as below :

www.playjazznow.asia
www.playjazznow.cn
www.playjazznow.com.cn
www.playjazznow.com.hk
www.playjazznow.com.tw
www.playjazznow.hk
www.playjazznow.net.cn
www.playjazznow.org.cn
www.playjazznow.tw

After our initial examination, we found that the internet brand applied for registration are as same as your company's name and trademark. These days we are dealing with it, hope to get the affirmation from your company. If your company has not authorized the aforesaid company to register these, Please contact us as soon as possible.
In addition, we hereby affirm that our time limit for dissent application is ten days. If your company files no dissent within the time limit, we will unconditionally approve the application submitted by "Tenderich Technologies Limited".

Best Regards,
John Wang
Senior consultant

This very sincere sounding email turns out to be a scam; one which I almost fell for. I corresponded with "Mr. Wang" for a couple of days and discovered that the only way I could prevent my trademark from being essentially hijacked would be to purchase the domain names myself. The implication in the original email was that his company would not approve the application submitted by "Tenderich Technologies" if PlayJazzNow.com was in fact registered to me, which, of course, it is.

I started to get suspicious and decided to do a little googling to see if anyone else had any experience with this type of thing. I wound up at this blog, which had a nearly word for word replication of the message I'd received. This is one of the great things about the internet. I realized instantly that I was but one of many people who have been contacted in this manner by some allegedly Chinese company. This company, China Public Domain, does have a legitimate looking website. So perhaps this is a not so subtle marketing tool. When I tooled around the site I did notice that there aren't any prices listed for anything, among other oddities.

In the future I will be even more wary than I already was with regard to the effluvia that winds up in my inbox. I've known for a long time that if something sounds too good to be true it probably isn't. The same might be said for things that sound too dire to be true as well.

Rant: Guilty Until Proven Innocent

2008-09-27T17:28:00.008-05:00

Warning: The content of this post may raise your blood pressure. The story told here is true. No names have been changed to protect anyone.

As someone who frequently works in downtown Chicago and has to schlep large instruments to and from my car, parking occupies a far-too-large space in my consciousness. For those who don't know, the first ten minutes of every gig is spent discussing where everyone parked and how much (if anything) each of us had to pay for the "privilege" of stashing a vehicle in the downtown area for a few hours. Often the most challenging aspect of my work is figuring out where to park and how to gain access to the venue in the most efficient allowable way. Strategies for parking in this town are as mulled over and discussed as presidential politics - actually more so, since there isn't a parking "season".

Sometimes mistakes are made. I put that in the passive tense not only to ridicule Ronald Reagan but also to soften the harsh reality that smacks one in the face when one's car gets towed by Streets and Sanitation. Yes, it happens, to some of us more frequently than others. I have been particularly unlucky in this regard, having somehow missed the "tow zone" signs too many times to count, usually because I'm in a hurry and (I'll admit) reluctant to give up the hunt for street parking and actually put my car in a parking lot. Perhaps it is my version of going on safari. Every once in awhile you get mauled by a lion, or a tow truck, as the case may be.

The tow truck drivers have been known to get a little over-zealous. My car has been forcibly removed from several spots unjustifiably. And whenever you get towed, it's the double whammy: you get a parking ticket ($50-75, depending on the type of alleged violation) AND you have to pay $160 for the tow. Then there's the ignominious task of going down into the bowels of hell to retrieve your vehicle from the auto pound.

But the important point here is that when you get towed you are presumed guilty until proven innocent. It is up to the driver to prove that he was NOT in violation of the law. You are slammed with a fine before you even have a chance to make a phone call, let alone have your day in court. It is no secret that collecting parking fines and towing fees is a major source of revenue for the city; so the chances of getting actual justice in these instances is slim to nil.

About ten days ago I was parked on a downtown street early in the morning. I'd carefully observed the posted signs and had put my car in a loading zone: no parking 8 AM to 6 PM. I returned to the spot at 7:50 to discover that my car was gone, no doubt having been glommed by Attila the Tow Man. Within an hour I was down in Dante's Inferno negotiating all the paperwork needed to reunite me with my old minivan and, of course, forking over $160.

The vehicle had been towed in violation of a "No parking 7-9 AM" regulation that supposedly applies to the street where I had parked. Only... there are NO signs stating that anywhere on that block. I was pretty sure of this but I decided to go back with my digital camera to take a batch of pictures that I could use as evidence to support my case. Friends, there really aren't any posted warnings that one might be towed between 7 and 9 AM. I took photos of the actual spot, and the immediate area surrounding the spot, as well as close-ups of the signs and the address.

For added irony, on the day of my hearing I had parked at a meter and was 5 minutes late getting back to that spot, having paid for 2 hours of parking. As I approached the car I saw both Rita the Meter Maid and the little gift she had left for me on the windshield. Ah, what's another $50 at this point? I drove to the City of Chicago Parking Violations Bureau, or whatever the hell its called, paid to park in a lot (which distressed me to no end) and sat myself down in the dreary hearing room waiting for my case to be called.

It turns out that you don't get your case heard by an actual judge. The guy making the call is an attorney contracted by the city to take care of its parking dirty work. I found him to be a small-minded toady, like a character from a David Mamet play. Captain Bringdown informed me that this hearing is just about the towing; dealing with the $60 ticket is a whole separate matter, which I could pursue on another day if I so chose. He found my evidence irrelevant because, get this, I didn't have photos of the entire block showing that there are no signs regarding the 7-9 AM restrictions. The photos only showed that I was not in violation of the loading zone, not the more global (and invisible) regulations.

Needless to say, I was fit to be tied. The only way to appeal this decision is to file a civil suit against the city, which would eat up who knows how much time require me to pay filing fees. I might even have to hire an attorney. So the deck is stacked entirely against the driver, even if he has truly not violated the law. I plan to pursue a defense against the ticket itself, more on the principal of the thing rather than to save the money. I am presently armed with photos of the entire block; up, down and sideways, plus the aerial views.

Have I mentioned that I hate everything having to do with parking downtown?

Palin Makes Quayle Look Good

2008-09-27T10:27:00.003-05:00

It's hard to believe that anyone could make me feel nostalgic for good ole Danny boy, but...

Nice Ad from wecansolveit.org

2008-09-19T11:40:00.001-05:00

To help get this ad on the air please visit wecansolveit.org

Deepak Chopra on the Appeal of Sarah Palin

2008-09-13T14:49:00.001-05:00

From: Deepak Chopra | Posted: Friday, September 5th, 2008

Sometimes politics has the uncanny effect of mirroring the national psyche even when nobody intended to do that. This is perfectly illustrated by the rousing effect that Gov. Sarah Palin had on the Republican convention in Minneapolis this week. On the surface, she outdoes former Vice President Dan Quayle as an unlikely choice, given her negligent parochial expertise in the complex affairs of governing. Her state of Alaska has less than 700,000 residents, which reduces the job of governor to the scale of running one-tenth of New York City. By comparison, Rudy Giuliani is a towering international figure. Palin's pluck has been admired, and her forthrightness, but her real appeal goes deeper.

She is the reverse of Barack Obama, in essence his shadow, deriding his idealism and exhorting people to obey their worst impulses. In psychological terms the shadow is that part of the psyche that hides out of sight, countering our aspirations, virtue, and vision with qualities we are ashamed to face: anger, fear, revenge, violence, selfishness, and suspicion of "the other." For millions of Americans, Obama triggers those feelings, but they don't want to express them. He is calling for us to reach for our higher selves, and frankly, that stirs up hidden reactions of an unsavory kind. (Just to be perfectly clear, I am not making a verbal play out of the fact that Sen. Obama is black. The shadow is a metaphor widely in use before his arrival on the scene.)

I recognize that psychological analysis of politics is usually not welcome by the public, but I believe such a perspective can be helpful here to understand Palin's message. In her acceptance speech Gov. Palin sent a rousing call to those who want to celebrate their resistance to change and a higher vision.

Look at what she stands for:
--Small town values -- a denial of America's global role, a return to petty, small-minded parochialism.
--Ignorance of world affairs -- a repudiation of the need to repair America's image abroad.
--Family values -- a code for walling out anybody who makes a claim for social justice. Such strangers, being outside the family, don't need to be heeded.
--Rigid stands on guns and abortion -- a scornful repudiation that these issues can be negotiated with those who disagree.
--Patriotism -- the usual fallback in a failed war.
--"Reform" -- an italicized term, since in addition to cleaning out corruption and excessive spending, one also throws out anyone who doesn't fit your ideology.

Palin reinforces the overall message of the reactionary right, which has been in play since 1980, that social justice is liberal-radical, that minorities and immigrants, being different from "us" pure American types, can be ignored, that progressivism takes too much effort and globalism is a foreign threat. The radical right marches under the banners of "I'm all right, Jack," and "Why change? Everything's OK as it is." The irony, of course, is that Gov. Palin is a woman and a reactionary at the same time. She can add mom to apple pie on her resume, while blithely reversing forty years of feminist progress. The irony is superficial; there are millions of women who stand on the side of conservatism, however obviously they are voting against their own good.

The Republicans have won multiple national elections by raising shadow issues based on fear, rejection, hostility to change, and narrow-mindedness. Obama's call for higher ideals in politics can't be seen in a vacuum. The shadow is real; it was bound to respond. Not just conservatives possess a shadow -- we all do. So what comes next is a contest between the two forces of progress and inertia. Will the shadow win again, or has its furtive appeal become exhausted? No one can predict. The best thing about Gov. Palin is that she brought this conflict to light, which makes the upcoming debate honest. It would be a shame to elect another Reagan, whose smiling persona was a stalking horse for the reactionary forces that have brought us to the demoralized state we are in. We deserve to see what we are getting, without disguise.

The Real McCain

2008-09-13T14:46:00.000-05:00

Meanwhile, on the other side of the universe...

Gotta Love Obama (Sometimes)

2008-09-13T14:43:00.001-05:00

Join the WE Campaign

2008-08-28T14:42:00.003-05:00

A few weeks ago Al Gore called upon the leadership and citizens of the U.S. to eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels within 10 years. If we can put a man on the moon in less than a decade from the time the decision was made we can certainly wean ourselves from our petroleum and coal addictions during the next 10 years.

Please visit www.wecansolveit.org for more info.

Sympathy From The Devil

2008-08-19T09:49:00.003-05:00

(For my father, who never played)

In crept the boy,
sat himself down
for the obligatory round of
five card stud with Lucifer.

- you ante up your soul
- you keep the hand you’re dealt
– you can’t win

Them’s the rules, bub.

He laid down his cards and
the ageless angel flashed him
that grim, ironic grin.

Thus blessed,
he stood himself up and

strode out a man.

Quote du Jour

2008-08-11T08:21:00.002-05:00

Our country, right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.

-Carl Schurz, revolutionary, statesman and reformer (1829-1906). There's a beautiful high school named after him in my neighborhood here in Chicago.

From wordsmith.org. If you don't already subscribe to their Word A Day email, you should check it out; its great fun.

In Memory of My Father

2008-08-02T09:34:00.002-05:00

Bernard Harrison (1933-2008)

On Friday August 1 my dad died in Brooklyn. He had turned 75 just a couple of days earlier, during a torturous 3 week stay in the intensive care unit of Long Island College Hospital. I was at his bedside the previous two days and he got to see his grandchildren on Thursday.

The relationship I had with my father was complicated. I imagine that I will be spending the next however-long-it-takes to experience all of the emotions his death engenders. I'm dedicated to facing this grieving period squarely, mainly because of the life of denial he led. Some of the best lessons from him have shown me how not to behave, how not to bottle things up, how not to be afraid to speak the truth.

My thanks to all of my friends, family, colleagues and students who have offered their support during this troubling period. I'm sure I will continue to need your kindness.

Lethal Language

2008-07-26T10:05:00.002-05:00

Gravity wants to bring me down.
- John Mayer

My father has been in intensive care for nearly three weeks. He's very sick, perhaps at death's door. I hope he recovers, of course, but he may die. So this has me thinking about death and dying and all the games we play with words to banish such discomfiting thoughts. Relief, for me, comes in the form of a reality check. I know from experience that pushing away the truth only delays the inevitable and accomplishes essentially nothing.

We are obsessed with death, just as we are obsessed with sex. We euphemize our conception of the end of life and simultaneously use a vocabulary that alludes to it. This two-pronged denial strategy is analogous to our sexual double standard - we both glorify sex in the abstract (through advertising, pornography and other forms of pop culture) and repress our actual sexuality (via ancient taboos inculcated primarily through religious indoctrination). Hmm, sex and death. Sounds like a good subject for a Woody Allen movie.

When someone dies we say that they have passed away, expired, gone over to the other side, dropped their body, made their transition, gone to their maker, returned from whence they came. We imagine that they're in a better place, they're in heaven, with the angels, with god. We hardly ever plainly say that they're dead. We wriggle and squirm at the mere thought of anything related to death - cadavers, funerals, cremation... We've created a death-centered literary and cinematic genre - horror - devoted entirely to scaring the bejeezus out of us, as if we could steel ourselves vicariously for the real thing by reading or watching.

It must be our abject fear of our own mortality, combined with the magical hope that we are somehow immortal, that makes us so squeamish about death. All religions offer the vainglorious carrot of eternal life in one form or another: heaven, salvation, nirvana, the "light" on one hand and hell, Hades, samsara, the inferno on the other. From the fear of death and the promises/warnings about the hereafter streams our obsessive need for rules of behavior. We blithely allow our gods, prophets, governments, bosses and parents to create and enforce those rules. Comply and you go to heaven. Misbehave and spend eternity in hell. It seems like a helluva bad deal to me.

Though we have so many we ways to avoid mentioning death and dying directly, we also use expressions that include aspects of it in everyday speech. Musicians love to speak of a "killer" groove. A great performance or recording is "killin'". When a comedian does well he has "killed" or "knocked 'em dead".

Another quizzical word for me is "execution". It is at once the violent ending of a life and the goal of those of us who have specialized skills. To execute well (for a musician, a visual artist, a ballplayer, a dancer, a doctor) is to have a good technique, to be able to perform deftly. If you can execute, you'll kill. Hopefully this is not true for surgeons. It does suit corporate executives, however. Those people are killin'.

While not specifically a euphemism for death, the word "grave" has interesting multiple meanings. There is a sense of downward pull inherent in it. The dead person is, of course, lowered into a grave (or, more delicately, their "final resting place"). Someone on the brink of death is said to be gravely ill. The musical marking "grave" (pronounced Italian style) means very slow. One can speak gravely, that is, in a low or descending pitched voice. A grave subject is serious or weighty. And we experience "gravity" as the earthward (or downward) force exerted on us.

Maybe it would be better to be more direct with our language. The euphemisms create a false barrier between us and the truth. We may feel the need for that protection sometimes, but denial only works temporarily. Lenny Bruce had a famous routine about ethnic slurs in which he posited that by repeatedly saying those nasty words outloud and not hiding from them, we could eliminate both the illicit pleasure some get from using them and the pain caused to the people being denigrated by them. The same may be true for death. Think it, say it, know it is final. All the candy coating in the world is not going to make it any easier to recognize that dead is dead.

When it is my turn to die, I strongly suspect that I will not be going to a "better place". I don't believe I have an eternal soul that will float up to heaven (or, more likely, down to hell in my case). I'm not riding on the wheel of samsara and I don't expect to be reincarnated as a snail or a bodhisattva. When my neurons stop firing, the entity known as "me" will cease to exist.

This recognition does not make life meaningless for me; on the contrary, knowing that my existence is finite inspires me to do the best I can, right now. If I only get one crack at it I'm going to try to make the most of it, in every way possible.

Fine Art: Wood Sculpture by Connie Berg

2008-07-21T16:20:00.006-05:00

Another serendipitous result from yesterday's eye-and-ear satisfying events: I met a very interesting sculptor from downstate Illinois. Her name is Connie Berg, and she creates wonderful wooden objects using, in her words, discarded "thrown away" pieces, such as parts of antique furniture, old tools, the banister of an old stairway, wooden molds and so on. I have yet to see the pieces in person but I did get to view images of these marvelous creations.

Due to the wonder of modern technology, you can too:

Connie's Wood Sculpture

Inspiring Sunday: Art, Poetry and Music

2008-07-21T10:10:00.004-05:00

Sundays are rarely lively for me, arriving, as they do, at the end of my musician's schedule work week. I make it through my weekly church gig by depending on the talent of the singers I get to accompany (most of them, anyway) and the company of two great musician friends.

Yesterday's inspiration came from a couple of events that I was fortunate enough to attend later in the day. First, I was invited to a poetry reading at the Woman Made Gallery, 685 N. Milwaukee here in Chicago. The gallery itself is a wonder - two spacious floors filled with an amazing exhibition entitled Drawing On Experience. If that wasn't enough, I was privileged to hear the work of what must be some of the best contemporary poets, including Ellen Wade Beals, Mary Kathleen Hawley, Allison Joseph, Lauren Levato, Patricia McMillen, Judith Valente and Nina Corwin. I feel quite sheepish that I had previously been unaware of their work, as well as the existence of the gallery. I am now, in the spirit of Jimi Hendrix, experienced.

Last night I visited the newly reopened Jazz Showcase, now located at Printer's Row in the South Loop area. I have been a patron of this world-renowned venue since I moved to Chicago in the mid-70s. I heard one of my favorite contemporary musicians, guitarist/composer John Abercrombie. Mr. Abercrombie has distinguished himself as a writer, improviser and band leader in an era that has seen the ascension of some other great guitarists. As one of the inheritors of Jim Hall's lyricism, he has gone his own way as a stylist quite distinct from Metheny, Scofield, Towner and Frisell.

In recent years I have foolishly denied myself the pleasure of hearing world class jazz played live, a sin I hope to rectify in the next phase of my life. My excuses for this are as indefensible as they have been intractable. I've also been in the dark about the local visual art and poetry scenes for the last couple of decades (at least). Since I rail against ignorance and credulity in other areas of life, I'm going to have to spend some time in my personal penalty box for being so out of it, culturally.

Yesterday I witnessed creation. People are making art, poetry and music that matters - viscerally, intellectually, spiritually. My eyes and ears have been reopened, much to my surprise. And it feels really good.

Go Gore!

2008-07-18T13:20:00.003-05:00

Al Gore - visionary? I guess so. In case you live under a large boulder, yesterday the former VP made a historic speech calling on the U.S. to eliminate the use of fossil fuels within a decade.

Is there the political will to get this done? That's the question. This morning I heard some wonk from the American Enterprise Institute thoroughly dismiss the idea that Gore's proposal is within the realm of possibility. It may not be in the best interests of the oil oligarchy currently in power, but, as Al points out, if we can put a man on the moon in less than ten years, we can certainly find a way to use solar and wind power to achieve a carbon-emission free society much more quickly than the energy industry would like. It will take tremendous technical know-how, money, people...

But mostly it will take great courage for our leaders to put this in motion. Are you listening, Mr. Obama?

Book Report: Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith

2008-07-16T13:51:00.007-05:00

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
--Steven Weinberg

I first visited Nauvoo, IL around 1980. The town looked like the set of Little House on the Prairie, all dirt roads, buggy rides and quaint mid-19th century shops. It all seemed innocent enough, despite the gleaming white temple in the middle of town with the huge, weird statue of an angel standing guard outside. I knew nothing then about the Mormons and assumed they were just another Christian sect, akin to the Lutherans or Presbyterians. I still don't understand how all of these faiths can claim to worship the same god but disagree so vehemently on how to do so, but I suppose that's a topic for another day.

I was in Nauvoo again with my children two summers ago, as part of our driving trip following the path of the Mississippi River. This time the town seemed considerably creepier, and the kids were bored stiff there. So we sauntered around briefly, collected our brick with NAUVOO emblazoned on it, and took off. Had I encountered Jon Krakauer's frightening book Under the Banner of Heaven in the interim I would have stayed as far away from this midwestern Mormon outpost as possible.

Krakauer tells the story of the 1984 murder of Brenda Lafferty and her infant daughter Erica by Ron and Dan Lafferty, two fundamentalist Mormons. But the bulk of the book is taken up with Krakauer's astute and even handed analysis of the faith, its history and its adherents. The question he tries to answer is this: What kind of faith system would encourage two men to believe that it was god's will that they murder two members of their own family?

Very briefly, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (as Mormons are officially known) was begun in 1830 by their first prophet, a man named Joseph Smith. Smith communicated with an angel named Moroni, who revealed the tenets of the new faith to him through a set of magical golden plates. (Incidentally, it is the figure of Moroni which guards the Mormon temple in Nauvoo.) It seems that the main attraction of the new faith was the notion that all individuals can communicate directly with god. Every member of the church is therefore capable of receiving divine revelations. It was one of these revelations, given to Ron Lafferty, that led to the double homicide that Krakauer examines in the book.

There are a couple of controversial points that were revealed to Smith during his tenure as prophet and published by him in The Book of Mormon. First, the LDS church believes that women must be subservient to men in every way. The only way to god for them is through surrender of their liberty, especially to their husbands. "Celestial marriage", what those outside of the faith call polygamy, is but one heinous example of this subjugation. Second, only white men can serve as members of the governing body of 15, consisting of a prophet, his two counselors and the Quorum of Twelve Apostles. No women or non-whites may become members of the elite group that sets all policy and adjudicates all disputes within the church.

Both of these original tenets of the LDS faith have been challenged and, for the time being, set aside by the mainstream church. In fact, it is this deviation from Smith's revelations that has inspired the creation of the fundamentalist Mormon movement, known as FLDS. Members of a group from Eldorado, Texas affiliated with the FLDS were recently in the news regarding allegations of polygamy and child abuse.

As chronicled by Krakauer, this schism between Mormons has often been bitter and has sometimes turned violent. The history of the LDS itself is rather bloody, but that doesn't necessarily distinguish Mormonism from other religions. But the church is very guarded about its past and regularly withholds information and documents that might reflect poorly on the character of Mormons, especially the prophets and other important figures. Smith himself had a rather sordid side, but this aspect of his biography is swept under the proverbial rug by the LDS leadership. "Lying for the faith" is considered a laudatory act by Mormons, and it is practiced regularly by the leadership as well as the lay members of the church.

The FLDS seeks to restore both the racist and sexist components of Mormonism that were extant during the time of Joseph Smith. Krakauer estimates that there are roughly 40,000 people who identify as members of the FLDS, primarily living in isolated communities in the western U.S. This is as frightening to me as the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.

Mainstream Mormons number about 13 million worldwide, according to their official website. The LDS church actively proselytizes and the number of adherents is consequently growing rapidly. The mainstream church downplays the role of "celestial marriage" but the laws are still on the books. Many who have studied the faith believe that the LDS is biding its time until the church becomes so powerful as to be able to demand legislation allowing them to practice their religion as they see fit, at least in areas (like Utah) where Mormons are in the majority.

When people firmly believe that the voices in their heads come from a supreme being who is perfect, omniscient and omnipotent, they can and will do unspeakable things without remorse. It doesn't matter if the supernatural being is "familiar" Jesus or "strange" Allah, the results can be the same. If children are brought up in insular communities, kept ignorant of other ways of living, and indoctrinated into a faith without the ability to question and make personal choices, this creates a very dangerous situation.

The Lafferty murders, chronicled and impeccably researched by Jon Krakauer, are examples of how destructive this kind of blind devotion can be. If you want a good dose of cultural reality (and a scare that will rival any horror movie ever made), read Under the Banner of Heaven.

Declare for Nader, Vote for Obama

2008-07-04T15:05:00.004-05:00

When the pollsters call, tell them you'd vote for Ralph Nader. If you call yourself a progressive (ie you're in favor of progress), then please don't get swept away in the Obama love-fest that has been the story of this campaign so far. The only way we can hope to shift the campaign agenda towards the issues that matter most is to let Nader be heard. Of course he's not going to get elected; he knows and acknowledges that fact. But if he polls at 10% or higher he will be invited to debates (such as the upcoming Google sponsored event) and might even get a crumb's worth of coverage in the MSM (though I'm not holding my breath for that).

Nader is the only candidate with progressive positions on such crucial topics as the environment, military spending, health care, civil liberties, corporate crime, the economy, etc. Obama has been on the reasonable side of these issues but is too willing to be pushed to the so-called p0litical center in order to get elected. He is dead wrong in his support of the FISA legislation. And while he has expressed support for a single payer health care system, he currently favors reform that allows the criminal hegemony of the insurance industry to continue. I haven't heard a peep from him on reducing federal military spending nor any innovative ideas on getting solar, wind and geothermal technologies into the mainstream.

Look, I like the guy. I met Obama when I played a fundraiser for his senatorial bid a few years ago. He struck me then as a straight shooter, someone whose word you can trust. Now I'm not so sure. Will I vote for him in November? You bet I will. But supporting Nader's bid right now is the only conscionable action I can take.

Happy Ironic 4th of July

2008-07-04T00:29:00.005-05:00

The faux-bombing of my neighborhood has begun, so it must be the 4th of July. I am, once again, overwhelmed by the irony of celebrating our nation's independence under the present political circumstances. The erosion of our civil liberties continues unabated, primarily in the guise of increasing national security. The Bush administration is covertly preparing for a war against Iran, against the will of most Americans. The presidential campaigns are studiously avoiding such unglamorous issues as true health care reform, criminal corporate greed, the absurd military budget (public and secret), alternative energy and global warming.

I'm stunned by the blind obeisance being paid to King George with regard to the FISA bill. Our Great Mixed-race Hope even supports this impending legislation, which gives immunity to the telecom industry for the gross violations of our 4th Amendment rights. Joseph Galloway has written an editorial for McClatchy that I wish I'd written. In it he rightly condemns Congress for its lack of will to fight this latest attack on the Bill of Rights.

And the jingoism, false patriotism and flag worship keep on coming. I would really like to feel proud to be an American, the way I imagine it must have felt when WWII ended. I am grateful to live in this country, but can find very little to celebrate when so much of what is done by our government with our tacit approval is so wrong.

For last year's much more thorough rant about Independence Day, please go here.

These Words Are Free

2008-06-27T21:43:00.003-05:00

Writing this blog is a great pleasure. Its the one activity I do solely for self-expression; no restrictions, no deadlines, no predetermined goals. I like using the written word to turn seemingly divergent thoughts into cogent sentences. When executed with integrity, words feel more direct than, say, painting or music. That's what attracts me to it - the specificity.

Blogging is not journaling. The latter has therapeutic value when used as a means of emptying the mind without hesitation. When I've written in a journal without editing, the act of pouring out words has sometimes produced unexpected and revealing results. But I can't imagine inflicting any of that on a reader, privacy issues aside. I want my writing to be personal, but it must have shape, pace and some kind of central theme. The form of the blog gives me the opportunity to organize and massage my ideas so that the finished pieces are (hopefully) readable.

A good friend has been encouraging me to do some commercial writing, by which I mean trading the words I put together for money. The idea is attractive on the one hand. Why not try to earn some cash doing something I really enjoy? But I've already fashioned a career from music, the other art form close to my heart. I generate income from nearly everything I do musically. I play many different kinds of gigs, teach, transcribe, arrange, copy and run a jazz website. About the only things I don't sell are my original compositions.

So I am susceptible to the "art for money" concept. I recently wrote a series of music reviews for jazz.com and have successfully pitched an idea for another dozen track reviews for that website. I admit that it was fun getting paid for having opinions and making the short pieces informative and entertaining. But now that I have garnered this new assignment I'm realizing that what really turns me on about this endeavor is having the liberty to write whatever comes to mind, whenever I feel like it.

Ever self-suspecting, I thought at first that I might be resisting the temptation to write for money out of fear. Maybe I don't have the skills; maybe there's too much risk of rejection. But I now believe that my reluctance stems from my strong desire to keep this means of expression safely optional. I want writing to be something I do for fun. I don't want it to become another task, another responsibility. I never want to feel that I "should" write something. It may not be rational, and it certainly isn't practical; and that in itself feels liberating.

Money is good. Freedom is better.

Obama Disappoints Me

2008-06-24T18:45:00.003-05:00

I wish I'd written this cogent piece on why Ralph Nader's campaign is relevant in 2008. Obama's support for the FISA legislation now pending in the Senate has pushed me over the edge of suspicion regarding his "true" positions on crucial issues. Just how corporate is he going to slide? How far to the right does his campaign feel he needs to move in order to win the election?

I think, as Gregory Kefaury suggests, that Obama ought to take a good long look at Nader's positions on such issues as health care, corporate crime, the war, NAFTA, Israel and Palestine, the environment, and so on. Mr. Nader is right on the money on each of these issues and Obama is way off the mark on too many of them. His heart may be in the right place, but the reality of election politics may very well be corrupting Obama in front of our very eyes.

Chris Hedges also has an excellent piece on Truthdig on the same subject.

R.I.P. George Carlin

2008-06-23T10:38:00.004-05:00

American culture will not be the same without George Carlin pushing the envelope. I don't think any comedian since Lenny Bruce has had so much influence, and not just on his profession. Carlin's courageous and outrageous stance on so-called obscenity, his keen observations on the English language and his high energy silliness have virtually catapulted our pop culture. Think Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Richard Jeni, Eddie Izzard, Richard Pryor, Margaret Cho, The Simpsons, South Park, hip-hop...I could go on and on.

George Carlin is not in a better place. His place was in this world and I, for one, will miss one strong mother of an ally.

"The whole problem with this idea of obscenity and indecency, and all of these things - bad language and whatever - it's all caused by one basic thing, and that is: religious superstition. There's an idea that the human body is somehow evil and bad and there are parts of it that are especially evil and bad, and we should be ashamed. Fear, guilt and shame are built into the attitude toward sex and the body. ... It's reflected in these prohibitions and these taboos that we have."

-George Carlin

Here's a wonderful version of his famous 7 Words You Can't Say on Television routine. If you're "bad word" averse don't watch it.

Al Gore Introduces Barack Obama

2008-06-19T09:08:00.003-05:00

If you haven't yet seen it, here is Mr. Gore's inspiring speech:

Take Action on Health Care

2008-06-10T09:59:00.004-05:00

The California Nurses Association is co-sponsoring a National Day of Action next Thursday, June 19, 2008.

Americans across the nation will demonstrate in favor of guaranteed healthcare and in protest of AHIP, America’s Health Insurance Plans — the insurance industry lobbyists who profit from pain. Their annual convention will be met by thousands of protestors onsite in San Francisco — 12 Noon, Moscone Center West, 4th @ Howard — and simultaneously in cities across the nation.

Please join a broad coalition in advocating for genuine healthcare reform — a “Medicare for All”or single-payer system, such as HR 676.

In Chicago the action will occur at:
CIGNA
525 W. Monroe, Chicago IL
4:30-6:30 PM

Please join patients, nurses, doctors, and your neighbors protesting in memory of the victims of the insurance industry.

June 19, 2008
National Day of Action
Guaranteed, Single-payer Healthcare Now!

Click for a pdf flyer.

R.I.P. R.F.K.

2008-06-04T23:47:00.004-05:00

I'm imagining a world in which Bobby Kennedy was not murdered 40 years ago today. He would have almost certainly defeated Richard Nixon in 1968. How that would have changed the course of our nation's history!

How much devastation and tragedy might have been avoided? How many fewer lives would have been lost in Vietnam? The riots at the '68 convention would not have happened. The civil rights movement would no doubt have moved along much more quickly; perhaps we would have already had women and people of color in the White House. No Watergate, no Ronald Reagan, no Iran-Contra, no Gulf Wars...

Same old story: some wacko easily acquires a gun and singlehandedly sets the political agenda for decades to come.

For me, the hope engendered by the Obama campaign brings with it a sobering fear.

National Health Care Events

2008-05-22T14:30:00.002-05:00

Health Care Now is encouraging all who support single payer a healthcare system (aka Medicare for All) to show up for these upcoming events:

June 19, 2008: Nationwide demonstrations at various headquarters of the nations's largest insurance agencies. Please visit their website for a location near you.

July 30, 2008: National call-in and visitation day to members of Congress. Let's encourage our representatives to support H.R. 676, the Single Payer Healthcare Act.

September 26, 2008: Washington, D.C. A Memorial Vigil to remember individuals who have died because insurance companies refused to pay for the care they needed.

We can all work with our local government entities: county, town, school boards, states, to help them see how much money they would save with H.R. 676 – if they never had to pay the hundreds of millions of dollars for insurance company premiums ever again.

Please get involved.

Don't Just Do Something, Sit There!

2008-05-18T23:27:00.005-05:00

I had another confrontation with holy idiocy today. During this morning's sermon at the church where I work, the minister spoke about the humanitarian crises currently unfolding in China and Myanmar. She claimed not to know where these countries are exactly, and she didn't discuss either event in detail. She didn't announce a special donation that the church would be making to help alleviate the suffering of the survivors, nor did she admonish those present to make donations to Doctors Without Borders or the International Red Cross.

Instead, our pastor spent twenty minutes giving a rambling talk about compassion, somehow induced by the phrase "Our Father" in The Lord's Prayer. Then we closed our eyes and sent "love" through the ether to our brothers and sisters in China and Myanmar (wherever those places might be).

This is where the well-intentioned folk of faith and I part company. The notion that 100 or so people in a room with their eyes closed sending "love" vibrations might do any good for the millions of people affected by the recent events in Asia is simply ludicrous. The minister referenced so-called scientific research "proving" that our thoughts are able to influence inanimate objects such as water. The connection between this dubious science and our collective mental intention to send loving thoughts to people in Asia was lost on me. I have the feeling that the connection was rather tenuous to begin with, but I could be wrong.

Church folk are fond of quoting aphorisms. So here's one that I find appropriate for today's teaching:

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Intentions are not enough. Sending loving thoughts is not enough. Talking about compassion and how we are all "one" is not enough! Right action is required. When New Thought people invoke Buddhism (or its modern teachers like the Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hanh) they too often stop before reaching the most important element of compassion: action. You can encourage people to develop gentle, kind, and loving attitudes all you want. But if you don't inspire the behavior that is necessary to manifest compassion in the world, you have NOT done your job.

Today there was no mention of what we can DO to help alleviate suffering, which I believe is the actual definition of compassion. Thoughts and feelings are transitory; sending "love" to China and Myanmar might make some of us feel better for a few moments, but it accomplishes NOTHING real or of any importance.

Tonight I heard that the U.S. government is sending a puny $500,000 in aid to China. This is an "initial commitment", the spokesperson for the administration said. Considering the we are spending billions of dollars a month in Iraq this humanitarian gesture is tantamount to an insult. But wait - is there any strategic value in sending dollars to aid the victims of the earthquake in Szechuan Province? Is there any oil at stake? No? Then I guess it really isn't in our national interest to help the people there in any meaningful way.

This is why ordinary people like us don't need to be wasting our time worrying about our intentions or sending telepathic love overseas. Take action. Put your energy where your compassion is. Make a donation to an agency that is doing the work of helping to lessen the suffering of our human family in Asia.

DONATE:

Doctors Without Borders
Red Cross
Oxfam

Concert Review: Chicago Sinfonietta at Dominican University

2008-05-11T22:40:00.002-05:00

I am feeling very sorry for a sizable batch of excellent musicians who perform with the Chicago Sinfonietta. I just attended their final concert of the season at Dominican University and it was, with the exception of one piece, dreadful. As a professional musician myself I know how it must feel to have to suffer through a concert as awful as this was.

I arrived too late to be seated for the first number, Beethoven's workhorse Egmont Overture, but I did hear it fairly clearly in the hallway. If I hadn't sat through the remainder of the concert I wouldn't even comment on this particular performance. But since I did witness the rest of this aural debacle I can tell you that the orchestra played every note of the piece just fine... and completely devoid of personality.

For this absence of emotional content I must blame their hapless music director, Paul Freeman. If this man ever had any sense of style or passion for music it was not in evidence this afternoon. I've never heard Beethoven sound so dimensionless. But let's leave this composition alone, since there is so much more to complain about elsewhere on the program.

The next piece, Three Songs For Bluesman and Orchestra, was commissioned by the Sinfonietta. I really hope they didn't pay much for it. The composer is a blues enthusiast (judging from his primary career as a record producer and liner note writer) named Larry Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman composes as if he has not actually heard a symphony orchestra play before. Nor is he apparently aware of the work of any of the so-called Third Stream composers, not to mention the far more sophisticated and successful writing of Duke Ellington. The soloist, blues singer/guitarist John Primer, bravely and affably sang and twanged his way through the muddy waters of this composition. It was a little difficult to tell what Mr. Primer was playing because his acoustic guitars were so poorly amplified in the house P.A. The buzz coming from the speakers was much louder than his instruments, which added an extra dimension of amateurishness to the proceedings.

Relief was finally provided in the form of an electrifying performance from pianist Leon Bates, soloist for George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Mr. Bates grabbed this piece by the throat and never let go. This was the only piece on the program that seemed to rouse the orchestra from its doldrums, despite the somnambulistic baton waving of Mr. Freeman. I only wish that there was more to this music, both compositionally and in duration. I wanted to hear more from Mr. Bates.

The second half of the concert was taken up by a high concept version of the venerable Pictures at an Exhibition. For this performance, the orchestra was situated behind a huge white screen, upon which were projected video images created by astronomer/graphic designer Jose Francisco Salgado. Although some of the individual images were strikingly beautiful, it was unclear to me how the video component was supposed to relate to Mussorgsky's music. The fact that the coordination between the orchestra and the projections came unglued several times didn't help; neither did the framing (pardon the pun) of the video imaging as a "virtual gallery". That concept seemed awfully contrived.

When the piece ended (out of synch with the video, of course) there was a long confused moment in the hall. While the audience dutifully applauded, the screen remained in position, giving new meaning to the term "curtain call". Either someone missed a cue or the screen was stuck. Finally the stage manager ushered Mr. Salgado, the maestro and the very uncomfortable looking concertmaster (who happens to be a colleague of mine) onto the stage. By that time half the audience was heading for the exits, the whole episode having provided a fittingly awkward conclusion to an ill executed multimedia extravaganza.

I wonder what this orchestra would sound like with a conductor who would inspire these musicians to actually play music?

Brilliant Mr. Fish cartoon

2008-05-01T23:25:00.002-05:00

A Modest Conservation Contribution

2008-05-01T15:17:00.003-05:00

Today I brought my own brown paper shopping bags to my local food market. I thought it might be weird having the bagger fill up my Trader Joe's and Whole Foods bags at the neighborhood grocery, but she didn't bat an eye when I dumped the bags on the counter. In addition to the ecological impact, I realized a couple of further benefits: I was able to carry $80 worth of groceries in one trip (two bags per hand). Also, the guilt I have felt for using plastic so much was reduced substantially. I use as few clear plastic bags for produce as possible, often limiting the number of, say, green peppers I buy so I don't have to feel like I'm being a nuisance when I check out. My goal is to stop using those altogether if I can think of a way to do so.

For years I have despised those idiotic little plastic bags that have become ubiquitous at supermarkets. When they still offered a choice between paper and plastic I chose the former but it seems like paper was phased out at least five years ago in my area. So I've stored up hundreds of those floppy whites and periodically schlepped them back to the store for alleged recycling. But I knew all along that there had to be a better way. I've just not made the effort to find and implement it until now.

The church where I work on Sundays is selling re-usable shopping bags made and distributed by onebagatatime.com. I clicked on over there and ordered ten bags (they're kind of on the small side) and expect them to be delivered any day. When they are, it's no more plastic OR paper for me at the grocery store.

It is not like I haven't been aware of conservation. When I was in high school in the early 70's (yikes!) I recall using the same paper lunch bag all year, or at least until it was too ragged to hold my PBJ and apple. One of the reasons I chose to only sell downloadable mp3s on my jazz education website is that there is no ecological impact in terms of CDs, printing, paper, shrink wrap or shipping materials. But, for whatever reason, it took the little bag from church to wake me up to this shopping strategy.

Far be it for me to proselytize, but if you're looking for a way to do your part, this is easy. I've been driving less, drinking filtered tap water instead of bottled and recycling; adding reusable grocery bags to the repertoire is no big deal.

MLK: Forty Years Later

2008-04-04T13:42:00.004-05:00

How much progress have we made in the U.S. when the leading progressive presidential candidate has to dis-associate himself from the truth? Chicago, Senator Obama's residence, is still a highly segregated, racially polarized city. 2008 still finds this city and this country with huge income and standard of living gaps between the middle class and the poor (let alone the gaping maw that exists between the wealthy and those living in poverty).

Woe to the jingoists who put patriotism ahead of justice. We can't be so smugly proud of our "progress" when present conditions demonstrate a lasting inequality in income, housing, education, etc. Too bad Mr. Obama can't tell the truth - that his pastor is right on almost all counts. Now, that would truly honor the spirit of Dr. King.

New Study Shows Most Doctors Support National Health Insurance

2008-03-31T17:31:00.003-05:00

Full text of a press release from PNHP (emphasis added by yours truly):

Reflecting a shift in thinking over the past five years among U.S. physicians, a new study shows a solid majority of doctors - 59 percent - now supports national health insurance.

Such plans typically involve a single, federally administered social insurance fund that that guarantees health care coverage for everyone, much like Medicare currently does for seniors. The plans typically eliminate or substantially reduce the role of private insurance companies in the health care financing system, but still allow patients to go the doctors of their choice.

A study published in today's Annals of Internal Medicine, a leading medical journal, reports that a survey conducted last year of 2,193 physicians across the United States showed 59 percent of them "support government legislation to establish national health insurance," while 32 percent oppose it and 9 percent are neutral.

The findings reflect a leap of 10 percentage points in physician support for national health insurance (NHI) since 2002, when a similar survey was conducted. At that time, 49 percent of all physician respondents said they supported NHI and 40 percent opposed it.

Support among doctors for NHI has increased across almost all medical specialties, said Dr. Ronald T. Ackermann, associate director of the Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research at Indiana University's School of Medicine and co-author of the study.

"Across the board, more physicians feel that our fragmented and for-profit insurance system is obstructing good patient care, and a majority now support national insurance as the remedy," he said.

Support for NHI is particularly strong among psychiatrists (83 percent), pediatric sub-specialists (71 percent), emergency medicine physicians (69 percent), general pediatricians (65 percent), general internists (64 percent) and family physicians (60 percent). Fifty-five percent of general surgeons support NHI, roughly doubling their level of support since 2002.

Doctors have often expressed concern about lack of patient access to care due to rising costs and patients' insufficient levels of insurance. An estimated 47 million Americans currently lack health insurance coverage and another 50 million are believed to be underinsured. At the same time, health care costs in the United States are rising at the rate of about 7 percent a year, twice the rate of inflation.

The health care issue continues to rank high among voter concerns in the 2008 elections, placing third in a recent poll after the economy and Iraq.

The current study by the Indiana University researchers is the largest survey ever conducted among doctors on the issue of health care financing reform. It is based on a random sampling of names obtained from the American Medical Association's master list of physicians throughout the country.

In addition to measuring attitudes toward NHI, the survey also asked doctors about their views about "more incremental reform," often interpreted as state- or federal-based programs requiring or "mandating" that consumers buy health insurance from private insurance companies, legislative measures providing tax incentives to businesses to provide coverage for their employees, or similar steps.

Fewer physicians (55%) were in support of "incremental" reform. Moreover, virtually all those opposed to national health insurance also opposed incremental reform to improve access to care. In fact, only 14% of physicians overall oppose national health insurance but support more incremental reforms. Ironically, many medical organizations and most politicians have endorsed only incremental changes.

Dr. Aaron E. Carroll, Director of Indiana University's Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research and lead author of the study, commented: "Many claim to speak for physicians and reflect their views. We asked doctors directly and found that, contrary to conventional wisdom, most doctors support the government creating national health insurance."

Other signs indicate that attitudes among doctors are changing. The nation's largest medical specialty group, the 124,000-member American College of Physicians, endorsed a single-payer national health insurance program for the first time in December.

I Suppose I Should Be Offended...

2008-03-09T15:37:00.005-05:00

...but I'm not. I just read an article about the state of religion in the U.S. Written by SFGate columnist Mark Morford, the piece summarizes the findings of a study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which polled Americans on their religious preferences. This paragraph jumped out at me (emphasis mine):

Which brings us to perhaps the most interesting stat of all, wherein 16 percent of Americans ... don't hook into any religious affiliation whatsoever, thus making them/us the fourth largest "religious" group in America — and growing fast. They are the unaffiliated, the wayward ones, not just agnostics and atheists but also the poets and the grazers and spiritualists, the mystics and the explorers and the cosmically, intellectually, divinely self-determined. (Or maybe they're all just actors and bass players and trust-funded art students. But let's try to be optimistic).

As a full time bass player and atheist, and as an occasional actor I should be looking up this Mr. Morford and challenging him to a duel to defend my honor. But I'm laughing too much to do so.

My Bout with Gout; Why Dieting is Bad for Your Health

2008-02-24T17:49:00.005-06:00

Over the past nine months I have suffered from a mysterious recurring pain in one of my big toes. This is not an ache: it is an intense, debilitating pain that makes all other thoughts and feelings disappear. It has usually lasted for a few days, during which time I have treated it with mega-doses of ibuprofen and rest. Then it recedes, only to reappear suddenly and without obvious cause a few months later.

This last bout was the most difficult to overcome, waking me up at night, making it impossible to wear regular shoes or to walk with any degree of normalcy. In fact, it was so bad that I actually made an appointment with my doc to see what on earth was going on. After a few minutes of squeezing, prodding and asking me a few questions he concluded that I have gout. Gout?! What am I, some kind of red-meat-eating, hard-drinking idiot who doesn't pay any attention to my health? Not at all. As a friend of mine likes to quip, I'm not a vegetarian, I just mostly eat like one. As far as alcohol goes, I may have a drink or two per month, which I don't think makes me AA material.

So I began researching the causes of this annoying illness.

From the Mayo Clinic website:
Gout occurs when urate crystals accumulate around your joint, causing the inflammation and intense pain of a gout attack. Urate crystals can form when you have high levels of uric acid in your blood. Your body produces uric acid when it breaks down purines, substances that are found naturally in your body, as well as in certain foods, such as organ meats, anchovies, herring, asparagus and mushrooms.

Normally, uric acid dissolves in your blood and passes through your kidneys into your urine. But sometimes your body either produces too much uric acid or your kidneys excrete too little uric acid. When this happens, uric acid can build up, forming sharp, needle-like urate crystals in a joint or surrounding tissue that cause pain, inflammation and swelling.

And those sharp crystals commonly invade toes, which is precisely what happened to me. Among the factors that can lead to an excess of uric acid are: genetics (a family history of gout or other forms of arthritis), obesity, untreated hypertension, high consumption of red meat and certain seafoods, heavy alcohol use, and certain medications (chemotherapy drugs, aspirin and diuretics). The only indicator there for me is obesity - it runs in my family and has been the bane of my existence for my whole life. But as I've looked further into the chemistry of gout some other potential causes have become apparent.

Going back as far as my teen years I have been on every imaginable weight loss plan. Carlton Fredericks, Weight Watchers, Atkins, Optifast... you name it, I've tried it. What the strictest of these diets have in common is exactly what I now believe is partially to blame for the onset of gout in my body.

Very low calorie diets cause the body to go into "starvation mode", in which one's body breaks down more muscle than fat and greater quantities of ketones are created. Ketones are a by-product or waste product that appears when your body burns stored fat for energy. The ketones also inhibit uric acid excretion. Persons who go on very low calorie (less than 900 calories per day), actually can cause their uric acid levels to go even higher, which increases the risk of gout.

From About.com's article on diabetes:

Ketosis is a natural process that occurs when fats are converted into energy by the body -- usually when there is not enough glucose (carbohydrates) to provide for the body's energy needs. Instead, the fat is broken down into energy, and "ketone bodies" are the molecular by-products of this metabolic process.

Ketosis may occur during fasting, after an extended period of exercise, or when a high-fat/low carb diet is followed.

So, very low calorie diets cause ketosis, one clear risk factor for developing gout. One of the diets I used about twenty years ago was the Optifast diet (remember when Oprah was pushing this one?). This was a long term fasting plan which consisted of nothing but a liquid protein that, if I remember correctly, was around 800 calories per day. I lost a lot of weight on this plan, of course.

About a decade later, after having re-gained all of that weight, I decided to try the Dr. Atkins diet for the second time in my life (I had been on it for awhile as a teenager). This diet specifically induces ketosis by only allowing the consumption of protein with little or no carbohydrate.

I believe that this history of low calorie, low-carb, ketosis-inducing dieting, along with my hereditary obesity is the main precipitating factor in the onset of my gout. If the world needed more proof that dieting is not only ineffective but also downright dangerous, I think that the link to gout would certainly qualify.

The Kitchen Project - Part 1 (Before)

2008-02-19T21:29:00.009-06:00

I love my Chicago style brick bungalow. It is the kind of house I'd always wanted to own: solidly built in 1927, it's old but in excellent condition. It has strength and character, along with a two-car garage (the best thing about having a home of one's own), a separate entrance I use for my teaching studio, and some wonderful stylistic touches that distinguish it from the many similar homes in Chicago's "bungalow belt."

But I hate my kitchen. It has been the bane of my so-called lifestyle since I moved in several years ago. I like to cook and I have children to cook for. But I've been very frustrated by this kitchen, with its one pathetic wall cabinet, total absence of counter space, a falling apart oven, a leaky refrigerator and a horrid white tile floor that seems to magnify every micron of dust. And that's just for starters.

My kitchen also has an architectural quirk that seems to be common in homes built in this era: The stairs leading up to the attic can only be accessed from one corner of my kitchen, thus rendering that area useless in terms of counter space and wall storage.

Here's a couple of shots of that wretched corner:

This is the evil appliance area, which occupies the only corner:

The doorway/hallway that leads to the dining room:

The pantry and door leading to the mudroom and the great outdoors:

Finally, a view from the dining room entrance:

As you can see, this very small room has 4 (count 'em, four) doorways and only 1 (that's one) usable corner. There has been many a time in the midst of trying to prepare a meal that I've gotten stuck holding the cutting board or a full pot with no place to set it down. I bought that butcher block on wheels so I'd have SOME place to chop vegetables and store some pans but that thing is hardly adequate.

This kitchen has had me muttering obscenities on a regular basis. I blame this room for my borderline high blood pressure and my need for several years of primal scream therapy.

So when my mother, bless her soul, offered to help me pay for a kitchen rehab I could hardly contain my passionate desire to buy a sledgehammer and start the demolition immediately.

Next time: The Plan

Tragedy at N.I.U. - Why 'Why" is the Wrong Question

2008-02-18T09:15:00.004-06:00

Earlier this morning I read a letter from a close friend whose son is s student at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. His son is understandably freaked out and my pal is furious. He wrote to his congressman about the insanely easy availability of guns. His response is the most cogent answer I've yet heard in all the prattling that's been going on in the media since this most recent shooting.

As a society there is NOTHING we can do about the states of mind that might cause an individual to commit seemingly random violence. We cannot monitor everyone's psychological health nor make it illegal to stop taking one's meds. It is not the responsibility of classmates, peers, family or school administrators to keep tabs on people's emotional well being. So 'why' Steven Kazmierczak opened fire on 200 students in a lecture hall at N.I.U. is impossible to answer. It is also a dangerously misguided question.

The question is this: How can this society continue to allow the gun lobby and the 2nd amendment fundamentalists to distort the painfully plain reality that these kinds of weapons are far too easy to acquire? As my friend points out, we now have all kinds of laws that purport to make public safety a high priority. In Illinois, a potential driver has to take classes, pass both a written and a practical driving test to get a certificate, then do 50 hours of practice driving before getting a license to drive. You can get busted for not wearing a seat belt. People are no longer allowed to smoke in public places.

Yet anyone with a few dollars in their pocket can legally purchase a deadly weapon with no training, virtually no delay and without any compelling and certifiable evidence that they should be allowed to possess a device that can do unspeakable harm in a matter of seconds. All of the NRA's arguments notwithstanding, the simple truth is that the easy access to guns is responsible for the current state of terror many Americans are experiencing. This internal threat is just as alarming as the danger posed by state sponsored terrorism and we ought to take it just as seriously.

'Why' is irrelevant. 'How' is the only question that can be answered and it is the crucial one for the safety of all citizens. In societies where there are more guns there are more murders. In countries where there are strict gun control laws fewer people get killed by their fellow citizens. Remember that we are not discussing criminal activity here - just the access to guns that each and every one of us has, whether or not we are sane, competent, intelligent or have a demonstrable need to own a gun.

Here's a question worth considering on a philosophical level: Can a compelling argument be made that, while driving is a "privilege, not a a right", gun ownership is just the opposite: a right allegedly guaranteed to all Americans? Perhaps we need to take another look at that Constitution of ours.

I have a son who is a student at a college in central Illinois. This tragedy could just as easily have occurred at his school; he might have been a victim. I have two other children who will attend college soon. My definition of "homeland security" includes reasonable protection for my children (and yours as well) from people who can purchase and use deadly weapons regardless of their intellectual or emotional stability. The only protection we have is on the "supply side" of the equation. Let's not let the wackos in the NRA dictate gun policy. We need the kind of protection that only strict gun control can provide.

My House Is A Mess

2008-02-06T22:01:00.000-06:00

Things are topsy-turvy over here. I'm in the middle of week three of a kitchen remodeling project. No, I am NOT doing the work myself; I'm not that stupid. I have been taking pictures of the process, which I will post as soon as I can get some time to poke through the dozens of images to find the best of the lot.

I am fortunate to have a second tiny kitchen in the "in-law" apartment in my basement, so I don't have to live on cold soup and take out. But the main floor of my house is like a war zone. There's plastic coverings (some with zippers) over four doorways and heavy paper taped to the floor of my dining room. The furniture that was too difficult to move is wrapped in plastic, giving the room the charming look of a mausoleum.

The last couple of weeks have been intense on the work front as well. I had been spending most of my waking hours on the arranging project I wrote about in my last post. Now I am done with that...not sure if I quit or was fired, perhaps a little of each. The problem was that the music director I was indirectly working for turned out to be, um, let's just say...a problem. Since this is a family column I can't really go into detail, but I feel lucky to be exiting before fisticuffs broke out. I did a good chunk of the work, learned a few things about my limitations and about some of the questions I didn't know to ask before embarking on a job of this type. Well, we won't get fooled again.

OPW 2.0

2008-01-23T23:20:00.000-06:00

I'm working on a very silly project right now. It is so ridiculous that it is making me punchy. Through no fault of my own I somehow got hired to arrange and Finale copy an entire Broadway style musical. For 6th, 7th and 8th graders!

Yes, I am taking show tunes by the likes of Kander and Ebb, Sondheim et al and creating simplified arrangements for a middle school band and chorus to perform in the spring. Not only that, but there's no sheet music for a bunch of the songs, so I've had to transcribe them from CD before getting to work on the arrangements. I've been given the list of instruments to write for, which is just basic information. In addition I've been given a specific range for each player in the band (all 15 or so of them) because many of them are at fairly rudimentary levels of ability. The cardinal sin here (so I gather) is to write parts that are too hard to play.

Oh, I almost forgot. I've been given about three weeks to do all of this. Ideally, this amount of work should be done in eight, but who's complaining?

The good news (you knew there HAD to be some) is that this project will be quite remunerative. This time of year is death for working musicians, so I am grateful to have something better to do than go snow blind staring at my empty date book.

It just so happens that this week work began on my kitchen rehab. So my house looks like some kind of insane science project and I'm trying to get this work done with sawing and hammering as my background music. It is all so delightfully cacophonous!

I have written about doing other people's work before, and this transcribing/arranging/copying job definitely comes under that heading. However, I am getting to use some musical skills that have been in moth balls for awhile, specifically - arranging for band. I've done plenty of arranging for small groups, string quartets and a few big band charts, but it has been some time since I've had to write for such a large ensemble. The orchestration is pretty goofy as well, since the band consists of whoever happens to show up with whatever instrument they play. I won't bore you with the details, but writing for this lopsided group is a challenge.

My mantra thus far has been: Don't do anything interesting! I've got to keep it simple, plus there's just no time to be avant garde. It is music by the pound for sure. I'm just trying to make sure things are correct, in the right place and transposed properly. It will no doubt sound like hash anyway, given the age level, but I'm hoping that won't be my doing.

Incident at Galesburg

2008-01-02T23:11:00.000-06:00

I haven't been feeling well for a few days. So when I left this morning to take my son back to Knox College in Galesburg I had a fleeting thought about taking some ibuprofen with me for the 8 or so hours I'd be spending in the car. Then I forgot all about it.

I delivered Sam safely to his dorm about 4 hours later, where he very subtly sent me on my way in short order. I walked up to the Gizmo snack shack and had myself a delightful cup of dark black fluid (which I hesitate to call coffee). I had almost returned to my car when the sight of an older man wearing a bright red coat caught my eye. At the same instant my left foot started sliding out from under me, causing my ankle to bend in an impossible way. I hit the pavement in a most graceful manner, not knowing what had happened for a few seconds.

The Man in Red came over to help me get up, which I had no desire to do for the moment. Another couple of kind folks came over to inquire if I was alright. Truthfully, I had no idea if I was OK or not. The pain from my ankle was hovering around an 8 but, even worse, I felt like I was about to pass out (and I hate when that happens).

It turned out that the MIR was a doctor, or so he said. He very solicitously helped me hobble the rest of the way to my car. I sat down heavily and tried to catch my breath. I had no idea what to do next. I was supposed to drive 200 miles back to Chicago but the thought of doing that made me want to pass out even more. I spent a few minutes staring stupidly at the steering wheel. It finally dawned on me to call Sam, who was in his dorm about 100 feet away. Oh yeah, this cell phone...I can use it to call for help. Duh.

As I waited for Sam I kept trying to focus on what I should do about this troublesome ankle. Go to the campus health center? Call someone (who?) for help? Drive to a hospital (whereabouts unknown)? I swear, my IQ must plummet by 50 points when I'm hurtin'. It somehow occurred to me that I could call 911 and see what would happen if I explained the situation to someone else. Fortunately I got a reasonable human on the other end of the line. She promptly sent a campus security officer over and I followed him a mile or so to the nearest hospital ER.

It was during the next 90 minutes that I starting wishing that I had grabbed that old ibuprofen bottle earlier. They did put some ice on my ankle as I waited for the ER doc. The nurse took my temperature (huh?) and asked me a few impertinent questions. I asked politely if I might possibly score a couple of ibuprofen for the, uh, swelling and the, um, PAIN. She said she would have to check with the doctor. I guess they don't want just anyone dispensing dangerous controlled substances.

I was wheeled to Radiology by a very nice man named Mark who snapped some risque pics of my naked ankle. When we got back to the ER I inquired once again about the pain meds. It had now been about 2.5 hours since the incident and my ankle was throbbing in a most fun way and had blown up to about 3 times its normal size.

Finally Nurse Ratchet dispensed 800 mg of Motrin, which I hungrily downed. I saw the harried ER doc shortly thereafter. He was 95% sure my ankle was just sprained and not fractured but I won't find out until tomorrow for sure. The radiologist had already left for the day (this is a very small hospital).

They gave me an "air cast" and tried to sell me some crutches. I had my first lucid moment of the afternoon when I remembered that my sister had broken her foot not too long ago and surely had a pair of crutches I could borrow. I probably saved about $700 with that thought. I was dismissed (released, liberated, whatever) and the nice lady who took a sizable wad of cash from me wheeled me out to my car for the trek home. Geez, it's a good thing I didn't injure my right foot or I'd be hold up in a Galesburg motel for the next few days.

Well, so much for my dancing career.

Great Kids!

2007-12-19T09:48:00.000-06:00

As the year draws to a close I want to write a little about my children. I was talking to a friend recently and out popped this thought: My kids are my favorite people to hang out with. Its true! The older they get the more fun they are. Of course there's the old family jokes and the shtick that we do with each other; that's a given. But then there's the stuff that is just purely each one of them as individuals - that is the best! So here's a little public kvelling about each of them, NOT in birth order (because I know that would bug Hannah).

I know I'll be in trouble no matter what order I choose so I'll randomly pick.... Hannah! She's the one on the far right in the picture.

Hannah is like one of those fantastic pretzels you can buy on the streets of Manhattan: crusty and salty on the outside but soft and sweet in the middle. She has the most deliciously wicked sense of humor and can cut to the heart of an argument like a hot knife through buttah. Everyone says this about their kids (and I'll probably write it about all three...) but Hannah is SO smart. She is school smart and street smart. I know she does not get her meticulous attention to detail from my side of the family.

One of my favorite stories about her comes from several years ago when they were all still in grade school. I was wondering out loud whether or not we should watch a certain R-rated movie that warned of "adult language." Hannah quipped something along the lines of: "Uh, dad, we DO go to public school."

Next I will give you some idea of my son Sam, as I'm confident that Addie won't mind going last. Sam is in his first year of independence at Knox College. I could not be prouder of the kind of young man he is turning out to be. He has always been a keen observer, he has a surprising soft spot for babies, and is a study in contradictions. For example, I believe him to be anti-war and pretty much a pacifist, but he loves shoot-em-up video games, is a big Civil War buff and was hoping to land a part time job as a security guard (and was disappointed to learn that it would have been an unarmed position). Sam loves to debate and is quite good at staking out a position and hanging onto it tenaciously.

Sam is very selective with friends and has a few long-standing good pals. I think this is a positive characteristic: choosing quality over quantity. Memorable Sam story from his grade school graduation: A good friend of his was the class valedictorian (no surprise there). When she gave her speech she thanked a number of her friends, including Sam, adding that he proved to her that "not all men are jerks."

Last but certainly not least is my wonderful youngest daughter Adeline. Adzie constantly surprises me, even more than the other two maniacs. Just when I think I've got her pegged, she comes up with a line or an opinion out of the blue that just floors me. Addie is a gifted visual artist and has a great memory for things seen. She is a most salubrious combination of sweetness and strength. She's the first to volunteer to do something out of kindness (dishes, cleaning up her room) and social responsibility (many hours spent at the Night Ministry, an agency that provides food for the homeless). You don't want to cross Addie, however, because she WILL get even (just kidding, sweetie!).

I have two favorite bits that well describe this girl: The first is an observation by one of the next door neighbor boys, who, imitating Addie, went on a jag about how she "likes puppies and ponies and flowers...and zombies and monsters..." Then there was the famous line, the surrounding story of which escapes me. Addie was talking about someone who the whole gang was not too fond of. Her take was "Let's go hug them....with KNIVES."

My life is made infinitely richer by having these three characters in it. Thanks, kids!

Good News from PNHP

2007-12-05T22:04:00.000-06:00

From a Physicians for a National Health Program press release:

Yesterday the prestigious American College of Physicians (ACP), the nation's second largest medical association (124,000 members), endorsed single payer national health insurance as "one pathway" to universal coverage. This is the first time the group has endorsed single payer and represents a huge step forward in the movement for fundamental health care reform.

The ACP's decision followed a careful evaluation of lessons from other nations' health systems. The central lesson, they said in an article in the Annals of Internal Medicine, is the need for the United States to provide universal health insurance coverage. While the ACP's own proposal is based on a "pluralistic" model, they urged lawmakers to seriously consider a single payer system as one way to provide universal access to health care. They noted that single payer systems have the advantage of being "more equitable, have lower administrative costs, have lower per capita health care expenditures, have higher levels of patient satisfaction, and have higher performance on measures of quality and access than systems using private health insurance."

This is me writing now:

This is a national emergency which none of the presidential candidates are addressing in any kind of meaningful way. The sole exception is Dennis Kucinich, co-author of H.R. 676, a bill that would create a UK/Canadian style single payer system for the U.S. Obama, Clinton and Edwards are squabbling over details regarding some type of insurance-based band aid approach to the wretched state of our health care system. It is all so much hot air, IMHO. It is getting increasingly difficult for me to support any of these front runner candidates; I just wish Kucinich was a more visible, viable candidate.

Snowfall

2007-12-04T22:14:00.000-06:00

SNOWFALL IN THE AFTERNOON

I

The grass is half covered with snow.
It was the sort of snowfall that starts late in the afternoon,
And now the little houses of the grass are growing dark.

II

If I reached my hands down, near the earth,
I could take handfuls of darkness!
A darkness was always there, which we never noticed.

III

As the snow grows heavier, the cornstalks fade farther away,
And the barn moves nearer to the house.
The barn moves all alone in the growing storm.

IV

The barn full of corn, and moving towards us now,
Like a hulk blown toward us in a storm at sea;
All the sailors on deck have been blind for many years.

-Robert Bly (from Silence in the Snowy Fields, 1962)

Kucinich on Health Care

2007-12-04T14:33:00.000-06:00

Dennis Kucinich tore it up at a debate by asking himself a question (and answering it, of course!)

Quote du Jour

2007-12-03T10:29:00.000-06:00

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

-Katherine Mansfield

Life Without Television

2007-11-27T21:57:00.000-06:00

While updating my silly Facebook profile I wrote "never turn the blasted thing on" when confronted with the "favorite TV shows" question. It just doesn't occur to me to watch television, which is an odd thing to be noticing since it has been this way for many years. I figure I watched enough hours of Bonanza, I Love Lucy, The Flintstones, Batman, Captain Kangaroo, My Three Sons, Bewitched, The Addams Family, Star Trek, Mission:Impossible, etc to last a lifetime before I turned 18.

In my 20's I didn't even own a TV. I once non-plussed a salesman who knocked on my door trying to sell me a cable subscription, circa 1981. He looked dubious when I told him I didn't have a TV so I invited him in to inspect my apartment. He left muttering "amazing....no TV." It is a matter of some pride that I have never paid a dime to any cable service for the "privilege" of watching television. That's almost as onerous to me as paying for parking, which is an unfortunate hazard of my profession (at least some of the time).

I suppose I'm no busier than the average American, but I just don't know when I'd find time to plop myself down in front of the tube and actually watch something. I listen to the radio quite a bit, an activity I can combine with other activities such as music copying or household chores. I prefer to get my news from NPR and a few websites and have never been a fan of the network nightly news broadcasts. The only time I use the TV is for DVDs; I do love films and Netflix supplies me with a steady dose of great stuff. But I seldom see more than one or two movies per week.

What's the downside of not being a typical TV viewer? When I was going to commercial acting auditions a few years ago the scripts would sometimes call for an impersonation of a TV character or type. Once I was asked to do a scene in the style of Tim Allen of "Home Improvement". I didn't have a clue what they wanted since I never saw the show. (I didn't get the gig, obviously).

Many years ago I went to a therapist who advised me to watch more television. She felt that I was isolating myself from "the culture" by avoiding television. She thought I'd be happier if I was more, as she put it, "mainstream". In retrospect, this was more a kind of political stance, and one that I strongly oppose. She was by far the least helpful counselor I've ever encountered.

Since I don't work in an office I don't feel a need to keep up with whatever shows people are watching so I can have something to say around the water cooler. My ignorance of reality TV, Dancing with the Stars, 24, The Office, and whatever else is on doesn't hurt me on iota, as far as I can tell. My cultural life is quite full: I'm an avid "consumer" of books, movies, music, visual art, blogs and so on. I don't feel the least bit isolated or alienated from American culture.

A big positive for me is that, for the most part, I don't get assaulted by TV advertising. On the rare occasions when I happen to be in front of a TV somewhere, there's invariably some inane, insulting commercial on that helps me to remember why I got out of the TV habit. Television advertising is horrifying. I can't stand ads on the radio either, which is one reason I listen almost exclusively to public radio.

I know I risk sounding like some weirdo intellectual egghead with my nose stuck up in the air. But I truly don't know what I would eliminate from my present life to make room for watching television. The fact that I don't enjoy TV makes it that much easier not to fret about feeling "left out". I know from experience that I'm not missing much, and even the best shows are no competition for a good book or film. I've seen the stuff that people have raved about in the past 5 years or so (Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Sex and the City, even Queer Eye for the Straight Guy). They were fun to watch once in awhile but I certainly wouldn't plan my week around any of them. Give me a good novel or CD and I'm a happy guy.

Giving Thanks Where Thanks Is Due

2007-11-22T10:10:00.001-06:00

I've just been reading up on the somewhat thorny history of Thanksgiving Day. Despite what our kindergarten teachers led us to believe, the holiday we celebrate here in North America (yes, the Canadians celebrate their version of TD as well) has very little to do with pilgrims and native Americans. Or turkey, for that matter.

It turns out that there is, unfortunately, a strong religious odor attached to the 18th C. version of TD. It wasn't until Lincoln's time that there was national recognition of a "thanksgiving day" and it wasn't until 1941 that the day became a national holiday by law.

Rather than review the data here, I'll leave it to you to do a little research if you're at all interested. Wikipedia's entry is a pretty good starting point.

So, as in years past, I want to give thanks to the people and circumstances that have given me joy, inspiration and a better understanding of the world this past year. I will spare you the personal litany of friends and family members, all of whom make my small life worth living.

Thank you to:

Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christoper Hitchens and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I became aware of their work this year (in the order listed, if you're keeping score) and they have helped me to become articulate about the non-theistic point of view I have had for many years. They've made it clear that I am not alone in finding the concepts of god and religion to be utterly without redeeming value.

Michael Moore, creator of the film SICKO, who has raised the awareness of millions of Americans (including me) about the true nature of our national health care disaster. Again, Moore has helped me articulate what I've felt for a long time (esp as a self-employed person) and has focussed my attention on very specific ways to get involved (such as supporting H.R. 676 and candidates who openly favor a national single payer system).

Al Gore, goofy and pedantic as he can be, for his work on global warming and, in particular, the film An Inconvenient Truth. This has been a good year for raising consciousness (I use the phrase in its most secular meaning). Gore's work is another example of how someone deeply involved in an issue can galvanize millions of others to take an issue seriously. Its about time.

Modern medical technology and the thoughtful, knowledgeable and caring health care workers who have made it possible for those I love to lead longer, healthier lives. But for the grace of modern medical care go I. A special tip of the hat to the makers of buproprion.

The authors Michael Chabon, Philip Roth, Daniel Levitan, Frank McCourt, Nina Shengold, Mary Oliver, Orhan Pamuk, Annie Proulx, James Hollis and Cormac McCarthy (plus others too numerous to mention). Their work has given me many hours of reading and contemplating pleasure.

The music of Dave Holland, Kenny Werner, Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, Michael Brecker, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Victor Wooten, Edgar Meyer, Miles Davis, Ben Allison, Radiohead, Steely Dan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Stravinsky, J.S. Bach, Yo Yo Ma, The Beatles, Megon McDonough, Peter Polzak and, again, other composers and performers too numerous to note. Their art has inspired me to feel, play and, on occasion, compose.

All of the folks who have helped and supported my PlayJazzNow business in its first full year of operation. Jeff Lane, Jim Massoth and Helena Bouchez are the most likely candidates for the business purple heart, if there was such a thing.

Best wishes to all who are reading this for a happy and safe holiday season, however you celebrate it.

Good Quotes for An Atheist

2007-11-19T22:45:00.000-06:00

All the articles of our Christian belief are, when considered rationally, just as impossible, and mendacious and preposterous. Faith however, is completely abreast of the situation. It grips reason by the throat and strangles the beast.

- Martin Luther

What a refreshing moment of clarity! So one does have to kill rationality in oneself to be a christian! Its right there in black and white; straight from the horse's mouth, as it were.

The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.

-Thomas Jefferson

Yup, those Founding Fathers were SO fundamentalist. No wonder we live in a "christian nation". Actually, I'm surprised Jefferson's name hasn't been suppressed by the Current Occupant and those of his unholy ilk.

I don't think there's anything quite as pithy as either of these quotations in Dawkins, Harris or Hitchens, delightful as they all are. I'm glad I stumbled upon these in my quest for truth today. (I mean that quite literally, as you will see in a soon to be written post)

Christopher Hitchens in Chicago

2007-11-12T22:47:00.001-06:00

Tonight I attended an enlightening event at the Spertus Museum of Judaica in downtown Chicago. Brilliant author, scholar and provocateur Christopher Hitchens presented a brief lecture entitled Do Jews Have an Atheist Gene?

First, I must say that Mr. Hitchens is another one of those people who makes me proud to be of Jewish heritage. The man has an amazingly agile intellect; he is intimidatingly well-read and articulate. One must pay attention in his presence and one is well rewarded for doing so. The penalty for not hanging on to every word is being left behind in the dust, wondering what just happened.

I have been reading some of Hitchens' articles from Vanity Fair and Slate online lately, having been something of a fan of his when I had a subscription to The Nation in the 1980's. He famously broke with the Left a few years ago because of his support for the war in Iraq and has publicly sparred with several former comrades, most notably Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn. I've also been watching Hitch on video either giving talks, debating or being interviewed. There's a bunch of good stuff at his website as well as some excellent clips on YouTube.

So it was exciting to be in the same room with this man. I'm not given to the cult of personality, but Hitchens cuts a powerful figure in person. He is witty, charming and very funny. I'll have to break down and buy a copy of his God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. He's the only member of the so-called Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett being the other three) whose book on atheism I have not read.

Hitchens began by making the point that many Jews have not so much repudiated their faith but outgrown it. This resonates with me quite well; I have often thought that one of the problems with Judaism is that it seems so archaic. There's no room in the contemporary world for so many of the quaint yet exacting strictures demanded of practicing Jews. Keeping the Sabbath and the kosher laws spring immediately to mind here. Even before I identified myself among the non-believers I couldn't fathom most of the mumbo-jumbo that passes for devotion in Judaism. Needless to say, we certainly don't have the market cornered on absurd practices and nonsensical rituals.

So just what is it that makes Jews so prevalent among atheists? There is a tradition of skepticism that runs through Judaism; it is the only one of the major world religions that truly encourages intellectual curiosity and revels in dialog and debate. The fact that Spinoza, Freud and Einstein were all Jewish is no accident, according to Hitchens. The Diaspora encouraged Jews to become cosmopolitan, to value education, to become enlightened citizens wherever they landed. It seems that secularism might also be the result of contact with other cultures, languages, races and religions.

It is not surprising, for example, that the majority of well-known American Buddhist and Eastern philosophy teachers began their lives as Jews. I'm thinking here of Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfeld, Steven Levine, Pema Chodron and, of course, Richard Alpert (aka Ram Dass).

Now I wish that I had taken notes during Hitchens' talk and the subsequent Q&A session. I can't recall the other specific points he made on this particular subject. What sticks with me, above all, is Hitchens' fearless intellectual honesty. He is not afraid to commit to an unpopular opinion and he is able to back up his views with solid facts and convincing arguments. While I don't always agree with his conclusions I have tremendous respect for this courageous forthrightness. I aspire to that level of fierce independence and integrity.

REALLY Scary Things

2007-10-31T20:42:00.000-05:00

This Halloween has me pondering the truly frightening aspects of contemporary life in America. Never mind witches, skeletons and goblins; here's a list of some stuff that will truly scare anyone with a brain:

1) Global warming (it may be a cliche, but this is THE issue to keep in mind)

2) Looming war with Iran (don't think so? just wait and see)

3) Health care - yours, mine, millions of uninsured Americans vs. big insurance, big pharma, big hospital conglomerates

4) The recession that's right around the corner (our economists are in denial, for the most part)

5) Religion - especially Islamic and Christian fundamentalism, but all theology is a good scare.

Be glad for scary movies and Halloween - they ain't nothin' compared to the real stuff.

This post was inspired by a clip featuring one of my heroes, Bill Maher:

Pledge Drive Blues: My Love/Hate Relationship with Chicago Public Radio

2007-10-16T10:58:00.000-05:00

Warning: The following post may not be suitable for younger or more sensitive readers (or the rant-phobic).

I confess: I listen to public radio and I am NOT a member. There are several things that drew me to WBEZ (oooh, they don't call it that anymore...) back in the early 80's. First of all, they had many hours of jazz programming, which was not available anywhere else in the Chicago radio spectrum. They were also the local distributor for All Things Considered, which has been referred to as the gateway drug for becoming a public radio junkie. It is, all things considered, a consistently wonderful way to get more accurate unbiased news and some off the wall human interest features that I wouldn't otherwise get to hear.

In recent years I have also been drawn, like many of my fellow listeners, to This American Life, Le Show and even, on occasion, to Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me. I also listen to the venerable and eclectic Fresh Air with Terry Gross. I should probably send WHYY a few hundred dollars for that one! For the last two decades I have been a member (on and off, but mostly on) and have gladly indulged my auditory addiction to 91.5 FM.

As I write this, the station is in the midst of their autumn fund drive. I hate fund drives. I know they're necessary, blah blah blah, I hate 'em anyway. A bunch of whiny on-air wannabees shilling for contributions; demeaning for them and an insulting waste of good airtime for me.
Yesterday I heard one of them use the word "awesome" about a dozen times in a five minute period to describe the programming, the crappy gifts they give out to encourage donations and what kind of person I would be if I would only call and pledge at the dollar-a-day level. Bah, humbug!

There's also a lot of yammering during this drive about "accountability" - how the station is listener-supported and therefore responsive to the community that sustains it. My experience with WBEZ is that this is an empty platitude. Here's why:

This past year the station abandoned their long term commitment to jazz. I'm not saying that the programming was great; to me it was lacking in variety (bring back Neil Tesser!) and their format mandated playing a vocal track every 5 or so selections. However, at least I could count on hearing the most under-represented genre of music - and the one I play and love - on the radio every night. Now it's gone - poof! There was a substantial outcry from jilted jazz listeners but our protests fell on deaf ears. I even had a heated email discussion with the station manager Tory Malatia. It was all to no avail. Now, instead of music we get repeats of shows that have aired during the day (including Worldview, which IMHO shouldn't air at all) plus some unlistenable international news programs.

So, "Chicago Public Radio", I will continue to listen to the shows I like and I will not be sending you any more money, at least for the time being. I know there are hundreds if not thousands of disappointed jazz fans who have to try to tune in the faint and amateurish WDCB to get their on-air jazz fix. Accountability isn't a word to be tossed around lightly, Tory.

I can't wait for this stupid fund drive to be over!

Better Health Care for All

2007-10-15T21:21:00.000-05:00

There is something very wrong with the way we do health care in America. I'm sure this comes as no surprise to you. Unless you are quite wealthy, paying for doctor visits, prescriptions and (worst of all) hospitalizations really hurts.

I have a bare bones (no pun intended) Blue Cross Blue Shield hospitalization plan. With a huge $2500 deductible I pay around $200 a month for just myself, hoping against hope that I will never need to use the policy. In addition, I pay every cent of my visits to the doc, for any lab work I have to have done, for all of my dental and eye care and for my medications. Blue Cross does offer a small discount on prescriptions with my health plan so that does help a little.

Having reached the half century mark, my physician strongly advises that I get a colonoscopy, a test that is one of the most efficacious tools in the high tech arsenal to detect the onset of a very common form of cancer. The only thing stopping me is the $2500 price tag, all of which I will have to pay out of pocket. I'm one of the millions of under-insured Americans. I hesitate to call the doctor when I'm sick, fearing the cost. There have been a couple of instances when I had to decide whether or not to call an ambulance (for chest pains, say) and the primary reason I didn't dial 911 was that I thought I would incur huge, unmanageable expenses that would, in the medium term at the very least, do me more harm than NOT going to the ER.

I am starting to feel ill as I write this.

And what about the 45 million Americans who have NO health coverage? They're even more screwed than I am. The truth is that in the U.S. we spend more on health care than any other industrialized nation ($2.6 trillion in 2006, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) YET we rank 37th among all the countries in the world in terms of health system performance (so says the World Health Organization). Here's a fact that never ceases to amaze me:

The United States is the only "advanced" country (whatever that means) in the world that DOES NOT have universal health care.

How can that possibly be? What prevents us from seeing the most obvious solution to what is unquestioningly recognized as the most significant domestic issue facing us as a nation?

Health care is a human right. Everyone should be able to receive high quality, affordable health care services. The only way we can repair our badly broken system is to take health care OUT of the hands of profit driven health care providers and insurance companies. We will not be re-inventing the wheel by any stretch of the imagination if we simply establish a Single Payer National Health policy. A public agency, such as the very efficient one that runs Medicare, could be expanded to create a just, equitable and affordable system for ALL Americans.

There is a bill pending in the House of Representatives right now that creates just such a system. It is called H.R. 676. Very simply, it puts into place a mechanism that would ensure that:

1) Every resident of the U.S. is covered regardless of income, job status, age or health status.

2) Everyone may choose their own doctor without worrying about co-payments, deductibles or premiums.

3) All health care services are fully covered, including hospital stays, doctor visits, prescription medications, long-term care and mental health care.

Sounds idyllic doesn't it? Well, it is far from a utopian dream. There are systems just like this in place in many other of the world's "advanced" nations, including the U.K., France and Canada.

Don't let Fred Thompson and other morons of his ilk win this one. The interests of all of us normal folks must outweigh the interests of the for-profit health care industry - the HMOs, the health insurance companies, and the giant pharmaceutical companies who's marketing budgets far outstrip the amount they spend on research and development. We really do have to take this to the streets if we want to begin to heal one of the sickest aspects of our society.

Contact HealthCare-NOW to get involved.

Get OUT!

2007-10-10T09:09:00.000-05:00

I just learned of Richard Dawkins' new effort to make atheists and atheism more visible. It is called the OUT campaign. The big red A that now adorns this blog is a symbol of my support for the concept as well as a personal statement that I identify as a non-theist.

In case you live under a rock, Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist who wrote the seminal best selling book The God Delusion. He and my other hero Sam Harris (author of The End of Faith) are in large part responsible for the increased visibility of non-theism (or rationalist thinking or the "bright" philosophy or whatever you want to call it).

This information came to me through a blog I've been frequenting lately called The Atheist Revolution, which I highly recommend. The author is a very active reader and blogs regularly about all the various political, social and personal aspects of atheism. What I'm beginning to realize is that I am far from alone in my disbelief in supernatural beings. There are substantially more agnostics, skeptics, freethinkers and atheists than I have been led to believe. Just ignorance and my part - combined with the saturation of information in the media about the unfortunate pervasiveness of religious fundamentalism of all stripes.

If you would like the lovely big red A for your site, you can grab it HERE.

Late

2007-10-04T00:08:00.000-05:00

I experienced deep ignominy tonight, as well as a "first" in my musical career.

I'm fortunate enough to be the main bass substitute for a very successful, high profile Broadway show here in Chicago (I prefer to keep the name under wraps for the time being). It's a great gig: lots of fun to play, great money, good people in the pit; all in all very groovy.

Today (Wednesday) there were two shows; these happen to be the last two of a week-long run I've had while the regular bassist is on vacation. I played the first show and left the theater to go for a power walk downtown. Then I planned to move my car to a spot closer to the theater so I could more easily get my basses struck and to my vehicle without hoofing it too far. I picked up some take out food and moved my car to a nice rock star spot. Everything was going according to plan.

There's a lot of time between shows on these two show days. So I had brought my iBook to work because I had some music copying to do. I went to the tea shop that has free WiFi around the corner from the theater, bought some horrifyingly bad tea and sat down to work. All throughout this extended break I kept an eye on the time. I like to get back to the pit at least fifteen minutes before the downbeat. All my instruments were out and ready to go, but I like to do a careful tuning and maybe warm up for a few minutes before the show.

At around 7:30 I was starting to think about wrapping up my work on the laptop and meandering over to the show. It took me another ten minutes to find a good spot to stop. Right around then, say 7:40, I got a call on my cell from the contractor (who also plays the gig). He asked me if I could get to the theater right away, which I thought was a little odd. Normally nobody wigs out if the musicians are not present that early. I'm thinking 8 o'clock show, everything's mellow. Maybe we're having a band meeting or it's someone's birthday (they're big on celebrations down there - any excuse for eating cake).

I'm literally around the corner from the theater. As I step into the alley on my way to the stage door my phone rings again - same dude. I'm thinking, huh, what's going on? He asks me how soon I'm going to arrive and I tell him that I'm in the alley (the subtext for me was: keep your shirt on, pal, I'll be right there). I asked him if everything was OK and he said: "The show has started! It's a 7:30 show..."

I almost fell down. I ran the rest of the way to the stage door, bolted downstairs, and made my way to the pit with a sickening feeling in my gut. I could hear the second part of the overture/ prelude over the loudspeakers. I grabbed a bass and flipped through the score to the correct page - I could barely breathe, let alone find my place! I jumped in, wishing I could be invisible.

In my nearly thirty years in the business I had never before missed the downbeat of a show. This was unthinkable. I was imagining that this is the end of my association with this show, not to mention my career in the theater altogether. I managed to play the act without further mishap. But my heart was pounding and I felt just awful.

It turned out that one of the keyboard players covered for me and that nobody "important" noticed I was AWOL for the first five minutes of the show. The conductor, contractor and other musicians made light of it so it seems like... no harm done, except to my reputation and my pride.

Just call me the late Bill Harrison.

...and Another Thing

2007-10-01T09:16:00.000-05:00

The speaker I referred to in my previous post advocated another "technique" that made my blood boil. She advised people to ignore current events such as the war in Iraq. "Turn off CNN, Fox News... just don't pay attention"; this way you won't become "depressed" because horrible, miserable things are happening in the world. What kind of lunatic, selfish, ignoble person would recommend keeping yourself isolated from knowledge of what's occurring in the world around you?

To stay informed is not the same as obsessing about these events. It is possible to become unduly immersed in politics, but I daresay people are way more distracted (opiated?) by sports, religion and the cult of personality that surrounds us.

Knowledge is power. Keeping yourself "free" from the events of the world is an excellent formula for allowing culture and political life to be given over to morons, zealots and the corrupt. Wait - I'm describing what's already happened!

How dare anyone in a position to motivate and influence people advocate this kind of self-involved intellectual isolation. She ought to be ashamed of herself. But, I suppose if inquiry and the ability to analyze reality were part of her skill set she wouldn't be so deluded about the power of god, either.

Teaching or Infomercial?

2007-09-30T19:34:00.000-05:00

This morning I sat through yet another alleged spiritual teaching at the church where I play every Sunday. I will withhold the name of the speaker because I don't wish to create any kind of negative vibe with respect to the church, its attendees or my band-mates. Suffice it to say that today's speaker is a bigwig in the New Thought movement.

Let me start by saying that some of the concepts I generally hear espoused in this "prosperity" church are benign enough. The idea that there can be positive transformation in individuals and in society based upon raising consciousness through study, developing compassion, creativity, love, forgiveness and kindness makes good sense to me. I embrace progress, ethical behavior and generally spreading the good vibe in every possible way. But some of the ideas I hear strike me as overly simplistic; some lean heavily on what I call god-dependence; and some of the talk (especially today's "word") is downright insulting.

Today I was told that "I don't know who I am" because I'm an atheist. I'm supposed to be depressed, cynical and poverty stricken because I don't believe in a supreme being who knows all and sees all. Well, sorry; I'm neither sad nor poor nor ungrateful nor unethical. I simply don't have the evidence I would need to believe that there is some "it" out there to whom I must be devoted. I could be wrong, but I feel fine taking my chances by trying my best to behave ethically and to cultivate in myself the qualities that I feel will promote the greater good for myself and others.

Our evangelist proclaimed that every child comes into the world "with god" and it is only our society and educational system that drums godliness out of our progeny. That is exactly the opposite of what I observe and believe. Children come into the world without the need for some imaginary being that requires their obeisance in order for them to lead happy and prosperous lives. The prevalence of religion in our culture, along with depression, anxiety, poverty and misery should be proof enough that "giving it up" to some supreme being is no panacea. In fact, just the opposite may well be true. When people get strong enough in themselves to know that their happiness does NOT depend on anyone or anything outside of themselves they do not need to praise jesus or allah or any other "supreme" being.

The opening line of the advertising for this speaker reads:

No need to work hard, just be spiritually smart!

Let me get this straight: I just attend your seminar, buy your books and/or CDs, follow the 21 day plan and, bingo! all will be well? Talk about magical thinking. My experience as a sentient being tells me that progress in ANY area of my life requires work, hard work. It doesn't have to be unpleasant, though the task of, say, working through one's psychological terrain can certainly put one through some interesting emotional states. For example, becoming a competent musician requires many, many hours of focused work. I can't think of a single endeavor that is worth pursuing that doesn't involve hard work no matter how "spiritually smart" one becomes. I'm not sure what that phrase is even supposed to mean, even after hearing the "teaching" this morning.

The people I've met at this church seem to be pleasant, intelligent, peace-loving, good-humored folk. They really appreciate our music and that feels really good to me. They've been treated to some great musical performances, including today's gospel choir which killed, and they seem to know when it IS really good. The minister often speaks in ways that resonate well with me, though I do have issues with "christ consciousness" as a positive state of mind. In short, I like this gig; it doesn't really pay enough to do it if I didn't enjoy the experience.

But I just don't get how otherwise seemingly intelligent people can listen to some of the stuff we heard today and not see it as pandering and, yes, demeaning. That's a strong word, I realize. There was no hard sell today, like there was from the idiot who spoke the previous week (I can't waste pixels on that dude). But it was clear to me from the start that the underlying goal of the "teaching" was to get as many congregants as possible to attend the afternoon workshop. I'm sure some good might come from the things this person has to say. She certainly has a "motivational" personality and some of that energy might rub off on attendees. There may be some good advice on how to change one's habits in her seminar. I just wish I didn't have to hear how I'm god's favorite child and how devotion to him/her/it will be my salvation. I already possess the internal wherewithal to do the WORK I need to do to keep moving in the right direction.

Book Report: Michael Chabon

2007-09-25T09:16:00.000-05:00

I'm adding Michael Chabon's name to my list of reasons to be proud of my Jewish heritage. I just finished reading his The Yiddish Policeman's Union, a truly wonderful literary novel. The book is one part thriller, one part ironic love story and two parts Yiddish lesson. The book is Jewish, however, in the same way that Joyce's books are Irish - you don't have to be "in" to get it but some of the meaning (and especially the humor) is deeply cultural.

I heard yesterday that my other favorite Jewish novelist, Philip Roth, has published a new book. Between reading that and catching up with some of Chabon's earlier work, I'm going to be one busy man.

Hidden Agenda

2007-09-17T21:32:00.000-05:00

There's a song on a lovely new CD by singer/songwriter Alain Quinn called Hidden Agenda. I listened to it today and it got me thinking...(always dangerous, I know). The protagonist of the song protests the "deep dark secrets" that are part of her lover's "little power trip". She claims "I know what you're thinking"; that his "dirty lies...gonna wear me out."

Yeah, we've all been in THIS movie at one time or another. When we are in the throes of love or passion (not the same thing, BTW), our projections onto another person can make it very tricky to observe the reality of what is transpiring in the relationship we create between us. Needless to say, it feels terrible to have been duped by the psychological games another might play on us. But I think the real hidden agenda is the one we hide from ourselves.

It is only in farsighted retrospect that I have come to begin to understand the part my unconscious desires and strategies have played in the relationships that have shaped my adult life. While I was in the middle of "it", whatever it was, I was almost entirely unaware of the powerful, murky tides that were tossing me around. This was most true when I was "sure" that I was 100% in command of my faculties. It has generally been so much easier to see, analyze and (of course) judge the actions of the other person.

The real truth is that we humans have precious little awareness of the deep forces that move us to behave the ways we do. So much so that, as far as I can figure, the main work that we must do to get healthy is to shine the light of consciousness into these figurative mental/emotional corners. To paraphrase Carl Jung, we must endeavor to make the unconscious conscious. This is the only way we can ever hope to free ourselves from the ravages of repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

This task is not solely an intellectual pursuit. The unconscious mind is a complex labyrinth; it is layered, subtle, violent, spiritual, unreasonable... These parts of ourselves are impossible to grab onto once and for all. Things keep changing; the soul's longings change over time and with experience. And it is entirely too easy to get suckered into believing that "this time will be different". Pete Townsend got it wrong: we WILL get fooled again - if we choose to stay in the dark.

The first task is to acknowledge that this IS our primary task - to seek to know ourselves. Damn Dr. Phil and his ilk. Changing behavior is NOT a matter of willpower or being "sensible" or accepting Jesus or whatever the panacea du jour might be. The work is INNER work; it is difficult and scary and slow. But it must be done.

When I become aware that my unconscious is filled with hidden agendas - all operating simultaneously and on various levels - I can begin to stop blaming others for how they are harming me. I can start to see how I set up situations that cause certain things to happen (again and again); I am able to observe how I collude with others in creating unhealthy outcomes. From this awareness flows compassion, kindness, forgiveness and the kind of peace that comes from letting go of the need to judge others.

The Apple Holiday

2007-09-15T16:07:00.000-05:00

So it's Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. There's some kind of irony in this holiday coming so close on the heels of the 9/11 anniversary, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Something about the U.S.'s unwavering support of Israel and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, mixed up with being a secular humanist stuck in my Jewish body...

Despite having given up on religion, many of us secularized Jews still do our habitual rituals around the holidays. My sister says it's a "tribal" thing and I think there is something to that explanation. But I do find some of the knee-jerk stuff around the holidays rather irksome. Sitting through a seder just makes my skin crawl nowadays, for instance. I also have a strong aversion for hypocrisy, which seems to underlie my Jewish holiday despondence.

It's not all gloom and doom, though. My kids, who are half-Jewish (or semi-Semites, as I like to say), have nicknamed the holidays according to the foods served. So Passover is the matzoh and charoseth holiday, the latter substance being a melange of apples, nuts and wine pulverized in a blender and used to symbolize the mortar used by our enslaved forbears to build the Egyptian cities. There's never been any outward discussion of matzoh balls' symbolic meaning as bricks, but I do think that would work, considering how they sometimes feel in one's stomach. Chanukah is the latkes holiday, of course. And R.H. is the apple and honey holiday.

I have a Jewish friend who has a big problem with non-observant "cultural-only" Jews. She calls them "lox and bagels Jews". I suppose I understand her point of view, but there are so many different ways to be Jewish, it seems. The Orthodox don't even recognize those outside their sects as Jews; they are as insular as the most ardent fundamentalists of any faith (though I have yet to hear of a Hasidic suicide bomber). For me, a little tolerance mixed in with one's beliefs (whatever they happen to be) adds considerable credibility to the individuals who practice it.

And if pride in sharing a heritage with the likes of Albert Einstein, Itzhak Perlman, Philip Roth and Sandy Koufax makes me culturally Jewish, then OK, pass the bagels, please.

Megon McDonough video

2007-09-03T12:54:00.000-05:00

I am proud to be a part of a series of recent projects with the incredible Megon McDonough, which includes a CD, a DVD and a live show called Her Way. The full DVD of the show, which we recorded six weeks ago, is not available yet, but you can see clips of the show here. There are even some shots of the bass player (that would be me).

Number of Uninsured Swells 2.2 Million to 47 Million

2007-08-28T14:17:00.000-05:00

Here's the latest bad news about health care in America from Physicians for a National Health Program:

15,000 Doctors: "Single Payer National Health Insurance is the Only Solution"

Download state by state figures HERE

Census Bureau Data HERE

The U.S. Census Bureau released data today showing that the number of uninsured Americans jumped by 2.2 million in 2006 to 47.0 million people, with nearly all the increase (2.03 million) concentrated among middle-class Americans earning over $50,000 per year, according to an analysis by Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). Strikingly, 1.4 million of the newly uninsured were in families making over $75,000 per year. An additional 600,000 were in families earning $50,000 to $75,000 per year. (The median household income in 2006 was $48,200).

"Middle income Americans are now experiencing the human suffering that comes with being uninsured. It makes any illness a potential economic and social catastrophe," said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

Physicians for a National Health Program also noted the following:

The 2.18 million rise in the number of uninsured is the biggest jump reported by the Census Bureau since 1992.

There are now more uninsured in the U.S. (47.0 million) than at any time since passage of Medicare/Medicaid in the mid-1960's.

93% of the increase is among middle and high income families:

Of the 2.18 million increase:

1.398 million (64% of the increase) was in >$75k family income

An additional 633,000 (29% of the increase) was among $50-$75k group

Among full time workers, the number of uninsured increased by 1.230 million (56.4% of the increase).

In Massachusetts, often cited as a model for health reform, the number of uninsured increased from 583,000 in 2005 (9.2 percent) to 657,000 in 2006 (10.4 percent of the population).

The divergence between poverty and uninsurance is relatively new and striking. Until recently, as poverty went down uninsurance fell. That has changed.

The number of uninsured children has fallen only 17 percent since SCHIP was enacted in 1997 from 10.74 million (adjusted to be comparable to current figures) to 8.66 million. The number of uninsured children rose by 611,000 between 2005 and 2006.

The doctors' group said that the only solution to the rising number of uninsured and underinsured is a single-payer national health insurance program, publicly financed but delivered by private doctors and hospitals. Such a program could save more than $400 billion annually in administrative waste, enough to provide high-quality coverage to all and halt the erosion of the current private system.

"We can no longer afford the waste and inefficiency, the high overhead and outrageous executive salaries of the private insurance industry" said Dr. Don McCanne, senior health policy fellow for PNHP. "Only reforms that end our reliance on defective private coverage and assure guaranteed coverage for all will work."

"The experience of other industrialized nations teaches us that high-quality, comprehensive care can be provided to all our citizens," said Dr. Quentin Young, National Coordinator of Physicians for a National Health Program. "A single-payer national health insurance system has emerged as the only solution to the nation's health system debacle."

Petty Frustration in the Music Biz

2007-08-26T21:31:00.000-05:00

There was no just cause for me to be short-tempered with the parking ticket attendant on my way out of Navy Pier this evening. But I gave him a hard time in classic "kick the dog" mode. I was venting my pent up anger from the four hour gig I had just suffered through plus the four hour gig the previous night.

frustration:

1) a feeling of dissatisfaction, often accompanied by anxiety or depression, resulting from unfulfilled needs or unresolved problems.

2) The condition that results when an impulse or an action is thwarted by an external or an internal force.

I was ready to tear what's left of my hair out because a certain musician who had turned up on both of these gigs drives me insane with his playing. It is difficult to describe to civilians, but you musicians will know what I mean when I tell you what this man does to frustrate me: he plays way too loud, doesn't listen and, worst of all, rushes like a mo'fo' constantly.

There is nothing I can do to make the music feel good because this guy is always phrasing way out in front of the beat. There were excellent drummers on both these gigs but there's only so much commiseration we can share via stolen looks and musical telepathy. We basically have to tune this guy out. Oh, by the way, he's a rhythm section player (I don't want to get too specific here).

As a consequence, I have to try to NOT listen to this musician, which is antithetical to the nature of playing music, especially in a small group. Adding to the maddening level of non-musicality is the unfortunate fact that I happen to like this man very much personally. If I didn't like him so much it would somehow be easier to loathe trying to create a groove on the same bandstand with him.

The final straw for me is the feeling of pettiness that goes along with the frustration. What right do I have to complain or to feel anything other than grateful to be doing this work? I'm not digging ditches or, worse, slogging away in some anonymous cubicle. I'm playing music, fer crissake! And being very well paid for my time and effort. And yet...with the knowledge of how good it can feel to be in that groovy zone with players who are all on the same wavelength, it IS difficult and weird and unfulfilling to be in this situation. I DO feel like my intentions are being thwarted; that I'm being prevented from functioning at the highest level I'm capable of.

I would have liked to explain the whole thing to that nebbish parking dude, but I just didn't have it in me. I did manage a lame apology. With any luck my blood pressure will return to normal before tomorrow morning.

Stormy Memories

2007-08-23T16:21:00.000-05:00

Thunk! What the hell was that??

It sounded like the roof had just blown off the sun porch where I've been tapping away at my iMac for the past couple of hours. Heart thumping, I leaped over to the side window, which seemed closest to the the origin of the rude noise. There was a piece of two-by-four (which I recognized as part of the rear dormer of my attic) on the ground between my house and the neighbor's, and a chunk of one of my downspouts leaning against the other house.

In that moment I looked up and to the right and saw that it had begun to storm like crazy. I don't know how long it had been raining and blowing like this but I just noticed it for the first time. I've never seen sheets of heavy rain blow sideways as it was now doing. Thunder, lightning, treacherous sounding wind... it was really coming down!

Which is all rather odd, because earlier this morning I was recounting the story of the only hurricane I've ever witnessed to a friend in an email. It has been very rainy here in Chicago the last several days. Hot, muggy and rainy - yech. You know what they say: it's not the heat, it's the stupidity. Anyway, all this rain had got me thinking about the hurricane from my youth:

We were on a family vacation in Miami in August, 1964. We were staying in a beach front hotel right on the ocean. That night we heard that a hurricane (I just looked it up - it was Hurricane Cleo), was going to blow through.

I remember my father putting mattresses up against the window. I don't recall where we slept but I do remember the sounds, the darkness and the aftermath the following morning. The storm was surprisingly LOUD; I had been in thunderstorms before - who hasn't, unless you live in the desert. But this hurricane made wind and rain that was truly scary; I wasn't sure that our little room wasn't going to be whisked away, Wizard of Oz style.

The following morning was quite spooky. The sky was a unique shade of dark gray and the air smelled funny, as if things had been stirred up from the bottom of some cosmic pot. The beach was overrun with downed coconuts, a few of which my sister and I collected. I remember having a tough time opening those things, as we didn't know how to do it and I doubt we had the proper tools (whatever they may be - I still have no idea how to crack open a coconut).

The lobby of the hotel we were staying at was in a separate building and the roof had been partially blown off. I think I remember that a large chandelier had been downed by the wind but I may have made that up, memory being such a creative thing. But I do recall seeing a few empty soda bottles up in the rafters of the lobby roof. They must have been left there by the construction crew.

As long as I'm safely indoors I find the sound of a thunderstorm comforting. Even if it gets a little violent I feel a sense of security in the whirling wind and the rain pelting the roof . My bedroom is in the attic of my house so I really get to experience all the elements in close proximity. An occasional outburst of thunder will bring a quickening of the pulse but, for the most part, I love the rhythms tapped out on my roof when it pours.

Right now there's an overcast lull, but I'm hoping the storm will roar again later tonight.

First Take on the Blog as Art

2007-08-05T19:57:00.000-05:00

I admit that I've come late to this blogging party. But now that I've had a little bit of a chance to hang out in Ye Olde Blogosphere as a reader I have this obvious insight into the obvious: There's a lot of crap out there that is NOT worth reading. Brilliant deduction, eh? I don't know what I was expecting... maybe only people who really have something to say write weblogs; maybe the chaff falls away at some point; perhaps dullards get tired of trying to think of something interesting to tap out on their keyboards eventually.... Or maybe I intuited all along that I would be as disappointed as I feel and was just delaying the inevitable. It really is just like non-virtual life: one has to wade through a whole lot of junk to find anything remotely valuable or insightful.

This seems particularly true in the tiny jazz music niche of the blogging world. I have found precious little writing on this subject that holds my interest for more than a few seconds. I haven't given up yet; I know there are jazz oriented blogs extant that I've not discovered or perused. But damn little of what I HAVE come across is worth its weight in pixels.

I have read some interesting political blogs. There's some great stuff on non-theism and various social causes that interest me. I realize that jazz is a marginalized art form in our culture, unfortunately, but I was really hoping to find some artistic comradeship in that area.

I will do some more digging and report back here if and when I find something of note.

Health Care for All of Us

2007-08-01T09:47:00.000-05:00

I know that I am not smart enough to pen a cogent argument for a national single-payer health care system. But after having seen Michael Moore's most recent (and least politically polarizing) film Sicko I am galvanized to support the concept even more than I have in the past.

Right now there is a bill pending in the House (H.R. 676) that would create approximately the same kind of national health care system found in Canada, France and the U.K. As one Newsweek commentator puts it, you can think of it like "Medicare for all". This bill, by the way, is co-sponsored by Dennis Kucinich, the only Democratic presidential candidate who explicitly supports a single payer system. As a Chicagoan I know it's never a good idea to "back no losers" so I sent the Obama campaign a letter questioning the candidate's stance on health care. I got this pretty good response back:

Promoting affordable and accessible health care is a priority of mine in the U.S. Senate. Health care should be a right for everyone, not a privilege for a few. The U.S. is one of the wealthiest nations in the world, yet more than 45 million Americans are uninsured. This is unacceptable. Addressing this problem should be a top priority for our Federal government. I am constantly disappointed by the lack of positive discussion and action on health care issues in Washington. Too many Americans are working hard but cannot afford their health care bills. Too many employers are finding it difficult to offer the coverage their employees need. Day to day, this is an enormous problem, let alone when a personal crisis hits.

I am certainly supportive of the goal of universal health care in the U.S. As you may know, I have called for universal health care by 2012. This call for coverage does not translate into a call for a single-payer system. Although I personally see great merit in a single-payer health care system, given the current political climate I believe that building upon and strengthening our employer-based system will provide a better chance of creating consensus and achieving the goal of universal health care. Regardless, I view federal subsidies to expand coverage for uninsured individuals, controlling the costs of premiums and copays for those with coverage, increased focus on preventive health programs and quality improvement, and health IT implementation as a few of the key tenets of any successful health care reform plan.

It'd be nice if Obama had a more principled and less "practical" stance on this issue, but there's no arguing with the relative popularity of Barack vs. Dennis. So, there you have it.

It seems to me that this change is going to come from Congress, cajoled by the huddled, under-insured masses. Please urge your representatives to support and co-sponsor H.R. 676 if they are not doing so already.

For more info on an American single payer health care system, please visit:

Physicians for a National Health Care System

SickoCure

HealthCare-NOW

I Have Been Tagged

2007-07-31T12:12:00.000-05:00

My so-called friend Helena Bouchez has tagged me. I will try to be a good sport and play by the rules, which are:

The Rules

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Bill's Eight Things:

1. I tend to overthink things....like this list.

2. When I was a kid, I played the accordion (and liked it).

3. I am street dyslexic. I cannot mentally distinguish between certain streets here in Chicago. I always confuse Touhy and Devon, for example. I have trouble with Wellington and Diversey too.

4. I have no tolerance for grandiose or pretentious people. King George, Dr. Phil, Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson come to mind.

5. No matter how much I try, I just cannot bring myself to like: music with banjos or bagpipes, fireworks, television, marshmallows or smooth jazz (I think the last two items may be synonymous).

6. I am a New Warrior. My animal name is Fierce Wolf.

7. In a parallel universe I am 6'2", 210 #, play second base for the Mets, drive a Miata, and can afford to own all the CDs, DVDs and books I want. Oh, yeah, and the hippest women find me irresistible.

8. The funniest, most interesting people I know are my own children.

Next tagging victims:

Baby Z
Jason Heath
Fred Simon
Susan Joy
Linda Clifford

I know I'm supposed to tag eight people, but I can't think of any others who are online. So sue me.

Open Letter from Art Lauer

2007-07-28T12:56:00.000-05:00

A final piece of writing from my friend, composer Art Lauer, who died June 7th.

Having undergone a series of misfortunes beginning on July 4th, 2006, and which continue to this day, I must admit that ever-present friend Irony is comically complete. I smile with the corners of my mouth down.

Unusually fortunate, I have never been ill in seventy-three previous years. This causes deep consideration of what has and is yet occurring. The months have made me acutely aware of not only our capacity for empathy and sensitivity to others. It also brought to light that in more ordinary conditions we conceal that capacity - from even ourselves. I have many, many friends. They have been that for many years already, yet neither I nor they have been entirely aware of the depth it entailed. They have responded to all with an exhibition of their feelings of love and respect beyond measure. Add to those many from over the years, the many who responded in my immediate local venue and the result is overcoming, and yet it continues. As many have heard me say that, in a way, the disease has been worth having.

And so I dwell on beginnings, not endings. Whatever lives in my own heart, my entire scope of possibility is theirs as much as mine. If only we were always able to express our innermost feelings as they have been at this time, how altered - and decidedly better a world this might be. If there is such a thing as sin, it may be our reticence to allow others into our deepest being. For me, it is a supreme joy to know and be known. There are no thank yous for what I received each day and night.

- Art Lauer (July 31, 1932 - June 7, 2007)

Another Fun Gig

2007-07-27T23:02:00.000-05:00

This is rare - two noteworthy (ouch) gigs in one month!

The night before last I played a last minute, thrown together gig at a beach-side park on the south side of Chicago. Our little band was subbing for a group whose leader had just suffered a heart attack, which is a helluva way to score a gig. This was a peculiar kind of job called a "trust fund" engagement.

If I understand it correctly (and that's a large if), several decades ago the musicians union established the Music Performance Trust Fund. This fund was a response by the American Federation of Musicians (our national organization) to the huge loss of jobs suffered in our industry by the advent of the phonograph record. Used to be that every radio show, TV show, theatre and corner tavern had live musicians of some sort. When recorded music became the norm lots of working class musicians had to scramble to either find other kinds of music gigs or get a new line of work. The MPTF is partially (or completely, I'm not certain) funded by the recording industry. The fund co-sponsors events for civic groups, non-profits, schools and other non-commercial outlets. The events are always, to my knowledge, admission free.

In this case the job was co-sponsored by the Chicago Park District. We were playing in a beach house pavilion at a pretty spiffy park right on the lakefront at 63rd Street, just off the famous Lake Shore Drive. The only bad news is that these gigs pay very little - way below our normal scale. But we do them to be good citizens and also, hopefully, for fun.

And this one was really fun. One of the best things about the freelance music biz is that I get to hang with people I've known for years. It's not like an office job because the cast of characters keeps changing. Sometimes I won't see a musician for a year or two or five but when we get together to play it is often magic - it's as if we never stopped playing together. So the other evening I got to see three folks I rarely get to play music with. Everyone was in a groovy mood, the handful of listeners we had seemed to be enjoying themselves and I must say that we sounded pretty darn good. I was playing my Lakland fretless bass, which I've been using more and more, and it was the right bass to bring for this outdoor gig.

If this keeps up, I'm going to start expecting gigs to be a good time. This, of course, goes against one of my core principles of survival: If you keep your expectations low then there's a decent chance you might be pleasantly surprised on occasion. Hey, it could happen...

Brief Rant: "Awesome!"

2007-07-24T09:52:00.000-05:00

awesome

adjective:

1.	inspiring awe: an awesome sight.

2.	showing or characterized by awe.

3. expressing awe: stood in awesome silence before the ancient ruins.

From the root noun awe:

1. an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like: in awe of God; in awe of great political figures.

2. A mixed emotion of reverence, respect, dread, and wonder inspired by authority, genius, great beauty, sublimity, or might: We felt awe when contemplating the works of Bach. The observers were in awe of the destructive power of the new weapon.

My favorite use of the word was by oceanographer/filmmaker Jacques Cousteau who used to describe the undersea world by saying, in his thick French accent, "Eet is awww-some."

I hate to sound like an old curmudgeon, but the slang use of "awesome" drives me crazy. This word is too powerful to waste on the mundane, as this culture is now wont to do. Can we think of another way to express our delight or approval of an everyday event?

Back in the day we used the word "cool" for mild approbations. It worked nicely, I thought. "Cool" connotes casual acceptability combined with a certain hipness. "Dope" came and went pretty fast but I thought that had enough comic iconoclastic panache for this purpose. "Awesome" has stuck around WAY too long, and to me, it never felt or sounded right.

"Awesome" should be reserved for those rare, unforgettable, mind-blowing experiences like standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, setting foot on the moon and falling in love. Think sublime, reverent, earth-shaking.

So I hereby challenge the awesome-dependent among us to come up with a more suitable expression for things that are good, nice, pleasant. alright, generally OK. Let me know what you come up with. That'd be really awesome.

The Human Shadow

2007-07-23T15:09:00.000-05:00

It has become clear to me that, because I have been emphasizing the idyllic dimension of people while underplaying the "shadow," some have been lulled into a highfalutin image of themselves and of myself which matches neither the reality of their being nor of mine, and brooks contradictions in how they handle situations. Anyone volunteering to embody the archetype representing people's higher self will have to choose between artfully concealing one's shadow and, when discovered, justifying it hypocritically, or alternatively, exposing oneself to scrutiny and criticism by all. Should one have the honesty and courage to confront one's shortcomings, one will better understand people's problems through seeing oneself in others and others in oneself, thus affording real help to those who also need to transmute their shadow elements.

-Sufi master Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Great Gig and An Ambush

2007-07-22T14:20:00.001-05:00

Last night I had the great pleasure of performing with the amazing Megon McDonough, singer, songwriter and actress par excellence. We played a concert at Unity Church in Chicago's Rogers Park neighborhood, which was also a live video shoot of Megon's new show entitled Her Way. The music was arranged by my longtime friend, mentor and musical partner Peter Polzak and it was quite wonderful.

I rarely say anything much about most of the gigs I play but this one was one of the most memorable in my career. I got to play with Dizzy Gillespie when I did some Midwest dates with the Woody Herman Band and I also played a gig with Ray Charles once. This show was a lot more fun than either of those events.

In Her Way, Megon channels some of the great jazz and pop singers, from Ella to Edith Piaf to Joni Mitchell to Bonnie Raitt, with quite a few others in between. She's always dead-on, never campy or disrespectful. If you haven't heard this woman sing you owe yourself that pleasure.

After the show I retired to the green room to allow the large crowd to disperse before returning to the stage to dismantle my gear. I was also protecting myself from the presence of a former lover who exited from our relationship in a, shall we say, very hurtful and disrespectful way. I knew L was in the crowd and I simply did not wish to have any interaction with her.

So I was relaxing in the green room with Nick, the drummer on the gig. After about ten minutes there was a knock at the door and we foolishly called out a cheery "come in", never suspecting that L would actually seek me out. Well, of course it was she - wanting to say "hi" to me. I was a bit stunned. I grunted a "what's up" without making eye contact and Nick, great pal that he is, ushered L out of the room with a hearty "hey, let's go get a drink".

Now, I have made it very clear to this woman that I do NOT want to ever see, talk, or have anything to do with her ever, EVER again. So why on earth did she think it would be OK to come back after the show to chat, or whatever the hell she had in mind? I will never be able to fathom this kind of behavior. She stabbed me in the back a couple of years ago and now she thinks everything is alright and we can just forget that all happened? Uh, no, I don't think so.

I'm not holding a grudge and I'm not actively angry about it but I believe it is well within my rights to want to be left alone. I don't want to be reminded of any of the pain and suffering that experience caused me. Had I been in the room alone I doubt I'd have said "come in"; but if I did have to deal with her privately I don't know that I could have been polite. Anyway, props to Nick for saving me from having to say something I might have regretted. After all, we were still in a church!

This run-in could have ruined the evening for me, and in past years I might have let it do just that. But the show was so much fun and the reaction of the audience was so positive that, despite being shaken by the ambush, I left the venue with a nice sense of accomplishment and the feeling that Her Way might be a very successful sit down or road show somewhere along the line. I feel very fortunate to be involved with this project.

Wildlife Tour

2007-07-14T23:33:00.000-05:00

We were on time for the Bison-tenial.

Had a day off from driving today because we made like tourists and signed on to a guided tour primarily focused on the Upper Loop of the park. We were in a 20 seater van with huge windows being driven around for about 8 hours. So I'm a bit visually over-stimulated.

The idea of this tour was to go where the animals hang out and view them. We did see bison (not buffalo, technically), mule deer, elk, coyotes, bald eaglets, osprey but no bears. And, sadly but not unexpectedly, no wolves. I'll have to come back in the winter to see canis lupus at their best. We also saw some incredible views, learned about the great fire of 1988 and its aftermath, and got to compare the flora of a couple of different areas of Yellowstone.

This is a shot of Orange Mound (I think that's the name), which is a non-thermal formation in the northern half of the park. The colors are made by lichen which actually stain the white rock these remarkable colors.

I didn't realize how big a role the Grand Canyon and the 250 plus waterfalls play in Yellowstone. I guess, like most Americans, I thought this park is all about geysers; I was wrong. There is SO much to see and experience here that I'm rather overwhelmed (but you couldn't tell that...nah).

Here's a magnificent vista we were luck enough to view late in the afternoon today:

GPS and Hail

2007-07-14T11:38:00.000-05:00

There's a great aerial photo of the Grand Prismatic Spring in the book Earth From Above. So Addie wanted us to have a look - and it was well worth stopping. Descriptions and pictures (even professional ones) don't do the colors justice. Don't even mention the smell!

We spent a more leisurely day investigating geothermal formations in the park yesterday. A lot of these geyser-ish sights are way more impressive than Old Faithful in terms of colors, smell, level of activity and other-worldliness.
If I ever figure out how to post video I'll put up some moving pictures of these things.

We also drove Grand Canyon loop through what felt like rush hour traffic. We managed a one mile hike with the payoff of this great view of the Lower Falls. The relatively steep climb nearly landed one or two of us (ahem) in the local ER but we lived to blog the tale, luckily.

More Yellowstone weather: On our way out of the park in the evening we got clobbered by a hailstorm that came out of absolutely nowhere. It began with two big thunks on the windshield and went from zero to sixty almost instantly. The temperature plummeted from the mid 80's to 52 in a matter of minutes. And then, just as suddenly, it was over. We drove out into West Yellowstone in lovely sunshine.

Around Every Turn A New Wonder

2007-07-12T23:40:00.000-05:00

It is almost too much magnificence to take in, this Yellowstone National Park. The things I read and heard about its size, weather, and beauty are all true. It lives up to the hype, like so few things in life. As Hannah pointed out, in the first hour we were in the park we experienced: a grizzly bear calmly munching, uh, something by the side of the road, a fire in the back of some poor shlub's van, bright sun, overcast skies, a sun shower, heavy rainfall, temperatures ranging from 62-87 F, mountains, huge Lake Yellowstone, ravines, open meadows, forest. The place is indescribably complex and wonderful.

We spent a few too many hours in the car, which made the Old Faithful experience late in the afternoon not quite as thrilling as it might have been. This was partly due to my driving malfunction early in the day; somehow we left Worland this morning going in the wrong direction. The mistake cost us an hour or so of driving time, but we did get to drive through a canyon that knocked us all out which we would have otherwise missed. Since Yellowstone is so huge, there is a lot of driving just getting from an entrance to anywhere. We entered the park on the east side, through Cody, Wyoming. We drove around the eastern half of the lake then turned west to Geyser Country. Between the sheer distance, the wacky weather and the folks who like to stop dead in the middle of the road to observe wildlife it took a good long time to get to Old Faithful. Of course we got there just minutes after an eruption so we had to cool it for 90 minutes waiting for the next one. The dude is punctual, though. Quite a performer.

Then we drove to the town of West Yellowstone, Montana, checked into the lovely and very reasonable City Center Motel, ordered in some mediocre pizza (yes, being from Chicago we are pizza snobs) and generally fell out. We have requests to return to Geyserland tomorrow to see the Grand Prismatic Spring, the "paint pots" and the baby geysers surrounding Big Daddy O.F.

Mt. Rushbore

2007-07-11T22:34:00.000-05:00

Yep, it was just like I remembered it from 1973 - a bunch of heads carved out of a mountaintop way up there. Can you say tourist trap? We luckily drove only an hour or so out of our way to spend ten minutes at the national monument which really IS much ado about nothing. Sure, incredible technology for its time and all that. But the question must be asked: why? So now the kids can say they've been to Mt. Rushmore (and they can take their kids there to be underwhelmed sometime in the distant future).

The exciting thing is that we're now only about 2 hours from the Eastern entrance of Yellowstone. Here's a lovely picture of the sky last night in Wall, SD:

This afternoon we wended our way through the Big Horn Mountains on our way to the western part of the state. For folks who live in Flatland USA driving through this contoured landscape was breathtaking. We're becoming visual gluttons!

The Bad and the Beautiful

2007-07-10T22:59:00.000-05:00

Wall, SD: We spent the better part of the day driving, but the effort paid off. The Badlands of South Dakota are eerie, otherworldly and magnificent. I snapped so many pictures that it was difficult to pick just one to post. I was last here around 1973 and we didn't do much more than drive through the "loop", which is the main road to and from I 90 that traverses the national park. Today we got out several times, clambered around, saw a film about the geology and history of the area and got a more complete feel for the landscape.

Here's Sam, Addie and Hannah in the heart of the Badlands. Tomorrow, on to Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone!

On the Road Again

2007-07-09T22:45:00.001-05:00

Jackson, MN - Your intrepid reporter checks in this evening from a lovely Super 8 Motel (free wireless internet from every room!) just off I-90 in southwestern Minnesota. I'm on the first leg of a driving vacation from Chicago to Yellowstone with my three teens. I'll add pictures to these posts when I'm not quite as fried as I am at the moment.

We made 480 miles today, after having left at the crack of midday (11AM). We've already proved the old saw that "half the fun is getting there" by having lunch at Culver's, listening to Sam croon Civil War songs in the car, and laughing til it hurts over the extremely crunchy garlic bread at dinner (don't ask - you had to be there). Now we're tucked in for the night with great expectations of arriving at the Badlands of South Dakota on the morrow.

-30-

Why I Hate the 4th of July

2007-07-04T07:14:00.000-05:00

The idea of Independence Day as a commemoration of the noble words set down in the Declaration of Independence has my full support. My disgust with the holiday is fueled by the ways we Americans have chosen to celebrate the creation of that document and the distortions of the basic values set forth therein that we have allowed. The 4th of July is like christmas without Santa; it's vacuous and irritating to those of us who actually look for meaning behind the symbolism, words and activities associated with the holiday.

Just to indicate how much this annoys me, I'll begin with the word "holiday", which is derived from "holy day". What on earth is "holy" about this anniversary (or christmas, for that matter)? The 4th of July serves as a reminder to me of all the things that are WRONG with the good ol' US of A. Call me the anti-christ if you like (I'll accept it as a term of endearment) but today I'm focused on the ills of patriotism, nationalism, oppression, imperialism, jingoism, demagoguery, theocracy and commercialism. How's that for curmudgeonly?

To be clear: I love my country, but I often dislike the actions taken by our government and the prevailing political, social, economic and (particularly) religious beliefs we espouse as a nation. The Declaration of Independence is, for the most part, an honorable and worthy expression created, it seems to me, out of intense frustration and desperation by a committee of remarkable men. In case you need a reminder, here's how the D of C begins (emphasis mine):

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

This is not the time or space for a long political rant (hey, I gotta go buy a Chevy and get home in time to start the grill...) but suffice it to say, that, in my opinion, we are currently living under the rule of a despot who we have somehow permitted to abuse and usurp our rights and to lead us into an unjust and wholly unnecessary war. Getting well rid of the present King George can't happen soon enough for me. But I'm rambling slightly off topic here...

Here, then, are my specific gripes about this over-hyped day:

Fireworks and firecrackers: Folks, what could possibly be more symbolic of our love affair with military might than these idiotic displays? Even my peacenik family and friends are somehow able to overlook this glorification of "might makes right" that is one of the unfortunate hallmarks of this nation. ("And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air...") That's a helluva way to celebrate life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Yeah, let's go watch a rousing display of faux bombs and rockets while our soldiers continue to kill and be killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nice irony. Congratulations, fellow Americans.

Flag Waving and Jingoism: Look, the stars and stripes do make for a lovely little tapestry that well symbolizes the "united" nature of our states. But beyond that, how and why have we imbued this hunk of cloth with all of this quasi-religious power? This undeserved fervor is not the exclusive fault of the die-hard, redneck, stereotypical flag-wavers. The youth movement in the 1960's and 70's added an egregious measure to the power of the S and S by staging flag burnings. To me, all the flag worship is a painful reminder of the jingoistic nature of unbridled patriotism that is way too common in our beloved country. The enforcement of the "America: Love It or Leave It" point of view really makes me ill.

Commercialism, consumerism, waste: Again, think christmas or, better yet, the day after Thanksgiving. 'Nuff said?

One nation, under god: Finally, the all too pervasive thrall that christianity illegitimately holds over this country is never more fully expressed than on July 4th. The United States is NOT a christian nation, no matter how many times that idea is espoused. We are NOT a theocracy, although the present administration and the so-called "religious right" would have us believe and behave otherwise. Nothing infuriates me more than this allegation. There is no "one nation, under god". Our Constitution explicitly and unequivocally excludes all religious beliefs.

I have thusfar left out my usual complaints about the noise and danger of fireworks. In my neighborhood the 4th is an excuse for setting off cherry bombs and M80s at all hours of the day and night, starting around June 15 and ending early in August (if we're lucky). My kids are probably risking their fingers and hands as I write this. There is something admittedly primal and exhilarating about explosions, but it seems to me that this infantile fascination is something to grow out of at some point, like peeing in one's pants and eating with one's fingers. Oh, and like believing in some supernatural being who is watching over us.

The End of a Beautiful Friendship

2007-07-03T07:18:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you just need to move on. This sad scenario has just played itself out in my life. [If you're not up to speed please reference Ethics 101 and Things Fall Apart for the sordid details]

I find it necessary to sever my long-standing relationship with my friend E. I do it without blame, for the purpose of removing myself from a co-dependent situation. I accept full responsibility for the part I've played in creating this sick state of affairs. For many years I have allowed this friend to dictate the terms of our friendship, to control my responses to her sometimes highly neurotic behavior, and to put my needs and desires totally in the background. At this point in my life, I cannot and will not subject myself to the pain, shame and ugliness that this kind of interpersonal relationship causes me. Of course, there were a LOT of good things about our friendship for the past 30 years, as I am not a masochist.

But this wolf must howl in objection to the habits we have created. Our interactions have deteriorated into a maelstrom of mutual mistrust, miscommunication and dangerous assumptions. The acrimony ends now; time to disengage before it really gets out of hand.

The final time we saw each other we recorded the great jazz ballad For All We Know. The irony of the lyrics do not escape me:

For all we know we may never meet again
Before you go make this moment sweet again
We wont say good night until the last minute
Ill hold out my hand and my heart will be in it

For all we know this may only be a dream
We come and go like a ripple on a stream
So love me tonight; tomorrow was made for some
Tomorrow may never come for all we know

Goodbye my friend.