current notes

Matt at MacHenry's

Matt, back from NYC, has wasted not time getting together with old buddies, and stiking out with new songs. Weatherford's persistant troubadour came out swinging at MacHenry's West Camp Bowie club last night. With Jason and Jeff backing him, it was a brave effort, to mostly family and a few friends. I was so tired I almost did not go, but am glad I did. These worthwhile musicians need support. Ft Worth is a far cry from New York, but it has its scenes and venues, and has always been a launching pad for artists of all stripes. We all know that Matt will make it. To where ever he wants to go. He has made it already in so many minds.

Jeff and Jason


****** ******* ********* ********** *******
Found this on a soldiers' blog. More about Michael Valentine Smith, the Stranger in a
Strange Land,I mentioned introducing Michael J. for his 4 year tag the other night.

M D Fay,s blog


Stranger in a Strange Land

Back in the 60s there was an interesting word that was used regularly, but at the end of the day failed to make it into the progressive lexicon of subsequent decades. The word was grok, as in "to grok something", or "I grok what you're saying". Grok was a word coined by the author Robert Heinlein for his book Stranger in a Strange Land. The main character of this seminal bit of science fiction, Michael Smith, is an earthling who's returned to Earth after having been raised by Martians following the death of his human parents, the first visitors to Mars-think of him as Tarzan, but this time raised by ethereal beings of the most advanced intelligence rather than apes. He returns to Earth with a grab bag of highly evolved skills. For instance, by simply kissing a woman he triggers orgasmic paroxysms that would make Don Juan seem no more skilled than a 14 year old boy with a mouth full of braces on a first date. His greatest apptitude lies in his ability to "grok". A character in the book describes it thusly, "'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed - to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science - and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man." Smith goes as far as to say that even were he falling to a horrible death from a skyscraper he would continue to grok the whole experience up to and including the instant of body shattering corporeal destruction.

I sent this to Fey:

America is a strange land now. I have been thinking about Stranger lately. "Water brother" came to mind, as a friend comes to my place for water, especially good stuff from an ancient acquifier. (sp?) (Snow melt from the last Ice Age we are told.) Mentioned the book it at a meeting the other night, and nobody seemed to have read the book except my friend that gets the water....

Glad I found your blog. Will enjoy reading. Want to check out your art work. If it is as good as your prose, should be very fine. I really like what I have read. Glad you are back with us here. Hate that war with all my guts.... But all wars of course changes lives of the fighters and makes soldiers either better or crazier or.... Talking about it now on public radio Morning Edition. Damn.... I missed Viet Nam by a year or two, protested that madness from this side, but realize that I missed a chance at the transforming experience unique to the experience of war and fighting. Find myself eating a lot of Viet Nam meals at a near by restaurant, playing with the idea of visiting or living there.

My-Lan is the favorite to date. over 106 entrees on the menu. Spring Rolls lile no other. Pho Pho Pho. Six and I eat there all the time!

The show

I have avoided this exhibit, the "Impressionist Gaugin" at the Kimbell. Like what I had seen of these works, practically none, I found out, had left me cold. But as so often, I am wrong in these superficial estimates.

It was a long apprenticeship, perhaps. Paul Gauguin, born in France, brought up in Peru, merchant marine at 17, married into a Danish business family, became a sunday painter at first, making a killing during the week as a stock broker. He collected the art that inspired him, getting a sizable collection that paid off later, supporting his own art career from re-sales. Left Denmark, and took up with the artists in Paris. He used dark, rich colors naturally, and began to organize his canvases along the lines of Camille Carot, and the Barbezon school, painting out doors, most likely in the company of other artists. His mentor for the first 12 or so years of his painting career became old Camille Pissarro, who was daddy to other artists, and stood in high esteem among a group that included Degas, Cezanne, Monet. He participated, we learn, in five of the eight Salon des Refuses exhibition, that gave Paris and the art world surveys of what the impressionists were up to, in a stiff art world officially dominated by the Acadamy of Fine Arts, who considered those Bohemians undisciplined upstarts. The Salon shows created much controversy and ridicule among the Bourgeoisie, and Gauguin attracted much attention when he showed, in 1881, a very ordinary, rather lumpy nude woman sowing, close-up and personal, but a far cry from the slick, silken goddesses of the Academic manner dating back to Bouchee and Ingres! And an advancement, it turns out, that Degas learned a lesson or two from, receiving the enthusiastic endorsement of one independent critic, Huysman, who practically wrote a doctoral dissertation on the piece... He first showed his sculpture talent in two beautiful marble busts, of his wife and one of his young sons. He did these, they say, while living in a rented apartment owned by a sculptor whose studio was near by. In fact, his original and remarkable sculpture surfaced several times during his long and busy career. The show is revealing, giving such a big display of this artist's under-appreciated beginnings, the blaze of his later work seems to have blinded us to the richness and variety of the many works done in this early period. But after initial critical , but not financial success, he went back to a more lack-luster business career in Copenhagen for a few years, but could not escape his passion for making art. Back in Paris, his marriage in shambles, he could not seem to pick up where he left off, and this prompted a move first to Brittany where a group of painters were transforming art in a new way, emerging was the movement that was later anointed the name Nabis, the "symbolists"! Somewhere in here was a disastrous collision with Vincent Van Gogh, the other great figure, brought about an emotional, intense elevation of the impressionist break-throughs.

Then on to the Caribbean isle of Martinique and finally to Tahiti, where the techniques he acquired transformed into the tropical, mystic paintings his reputation rests on today. The rest is history, you might say, painting away glorious elevated canvases of tropical brilliance while dying of syphilis among the natives, much to the horror of the Christian missionaries who tried to impose Western morality on these sinful naturals.

His philosophic method: "Dream freely and seek the simplest form." and finally he could say: "I have escaped everything that is artificial and conventional. Here I enter into Truth, become one with nature. After the disease of civilization, life in this new world is a return to health."

This was the last day of the show, and I am glad I made it in time, because I do not believe that this large body of unknown work will be put together again in my lifetime.

Surprised by Joy

Love this picture. As good as any done in Tahiti or anywhere.

I have avoided this exhibit, the "Impressionist Gaugin" at the Kimbell. Like what I had seen of these works, practically none, I found out, had left me cold. But as so often, I am wrong in these superficial estimates. I am going to try to compose an essay of my impressions of the impressionist works of the impressionist. Next post. Now must run to get ready to go hear La Boheme. Ah. Culture overloads.... favorite opera, if I have to choose one... so later later later

Thats a dandy line!

Dandelion. The most pervasive of American weeds. One wild flower that blooms almost the year round. Can be found blooming on a warm winter day here in North Texas. We have had a lot warm winter days these past few, but, of course, still our boys in government now say that there is not enough evidence, etc etc. and there is no positive global warming to worry about.... They probably believe what our fundamental Ayatollahs tell them about the end of the world coming soon, and this heat is only the fires of hell down below heating up for sinners after the last judgement. And if you do not want to go there, you know whose ass to kiss. Now, BOY.

Some that want lawns with nothing but their favorite grass to carpet them, consider dandelions a pest. Others, like me, who love nature raw or nearly so, do not mind their cheery distinctive bloom popping up anywhere they want to, or can. The fact is, they like disturbed ground. Ground that has been disturbed for some other use makes a good place for the opportunists that these plants are to come to life. The familiar golden disk of a flower composed of many skinny petals become those balls of seed, tiny white parachutes that wind and breath will disperse. Make a wish, we used to say, and blow. The number of seed left is the number of days it will take for the wish to come true.


Euell Gibbons
, the champion of natural wild foods, wrote the Bible: Stalking the Wild Asparagus, published in 1962. My first edition copy is a bit ear marked, but has sent me out on many searches, and experimented with his recipes over the years. He finds the roots of young plants good to eat peeled and boiled, likes them better than parsnips or salsify, (???). The white crown above the root is might fine boiled, he reports. He even dries the roots and roasts them slowly in the oven, and grinds them for a coffee-like drink. I have not tried this, honestly, but Euell likes it with or without sugar and cream. The harvest should be made before the plant blooms. The green young leaves need blanching for 5 minutes boiling time, then you can treat them with salad dressing. Tasty and nourishing.

But Dandelion Wine is of major interest to those that love the hard stuff. My Uncle Maury would get a big bottle of the home made when he visited his long time girl friend in Washington DC every year. She was very sophisticated and hip for the 30's and earlier. Uncle Maury was a life long bachelor, as was Boo. Boo, my aunt, Maury's sister, who kept house, would make it into a gelatin desert, deep golden brown, and with a taste I never warmed up to. She was the best cook I ever encountered. I spent lots of time at their house next door to ours. Her kitchen was my play pen on long Concord afternoons.

Here is Euell's formula for Dandelion Wine:

1 gallon of dandelion flowers picked on a dry day
put in a two gallon crock and pour over:
2 gallons of boiling water

Cover and let steep for 3 days.

Strain through jelly cloth, squeezing out all the juice. In a kettle with the liquid, add
1 small ginger root, pared and peeled,
3 oranges, peels and juice and 1 lemon. add:
3 pounds of sugar

Boil for 20 minutes, then return the brew to the crock.
When barely lukewarm, float a piece of rye bread spread with 1/2 cake of yeast on top. Cover with cloth and keep in a warm room for six days.
Now this is important: strain and pour this into a gallon jug, corking it loosely with a wad of cotton. Keep in a dark place for 3 weeks, then carefully decant into a bottle and cap tightly.

"Don't touch until Christmas."

Good luck.

Seven-thirty Tuesday Morning

OK. Spring has officially arrived! It is cold today. Cool. Warm by yankee standards. It is blizzard across the North. I was heartened by the
Salon


report of our president's Cleveland pep talk for the war. I guess a 36 percent approval rate is a call to action. He reported on some successes that were overlooked by most of the press. After all, Fox can only do so much! People that love Seinfeld re-runs sometimes do not stay for the news. So slanted I just slide right off like the high pitched roofs so popular in tract architecture these days.

But at the end of the q&a, time for lunch, Bush cleaverly asked: "Doesn't anyone work in this town????" Some wag pointed out that since the Bush term began, unimployment has risen in double digits in the Cleveland area.

The columbine in bloom was in Austin. At Lady Bird's Wildflower Center. You do not see much of that here, too few "undisturbed for a long time" areas, where they grow and bloom. Locally, Ft Worth Nature Center is a good place for endangered flowers.

Working with TJ. Yesterday we took out a faux marble bathtub, complicated with an elaborate installation that had to come down carefully, piece by piece. It weighed a ton, and old me had a hard time getting it moved. TJ is as strong as an ox, but not me. The home owner has two strapping high-schooling sons, and they will be recruited to get it out, I believe. It is back to Zack's today.

Rain

This was the scene described on the previous blog everybody a bit distracted, Josh and Serge gazing out of the photo, while Kevin is enjoying his smoke. Then, while waiting on the Classic Case performance, we head to the wonderfully funky Boiling Pot., for refreshment. Kevin gets the crawdads. Did they not spell them cray-fish? at one time? I seem to remember uncovering these little lobster looking things in NC from under rocks in the brooks. They did not look like the Louisiana crustacea from the bayous of the New Orleans region. They came brilliant red and dumped on the table steaming.


border="0" alt="" />

Time and Space fragments

March 5th:

I cannot find the up-lode image button any more. I wanted to throw out some random thoughts about the recent hunting accident involvelving the only Vice President we have. A heart beat away from the president,gulp!,they used to say. (maybe it was Bush insurance against assissination!) When Ronnie called giving me the news that Chaney had peppered some judge or lawyer on a hunting , I was hoping it was Justice Scalia. I know that probably is not the way to spell his name. But I am spelling impared, if you want to know the truth. Mama, the school marm, would beat the spelling words into me for the Friday test. She would sound out the words very carefully,I guess, ignoring the fact that English is particularly a non phonetic language when it comes to spelling. SEP-AH-RATE...




March 16th, Austin:

IT IS THURSDAY, AND I AM IN AUSTIN. Came down yesterday mainly to hear my Tarheel friend's current band, Classic Case, perform at the SXSW mess going on. Got hold of Serge and Kevin, who has a central located business address, Strike Productions, more like a house that is arraqnged like a loft. Pictures will come later. Serge and I made our way down through busy down town, and thanks to electronic miracles in this wired-for-sound city, negociated tricky traffic with KEVIN in one ear, and Serge offering suggestions, until we see my friend waving frantically on the next corner. (Lack of traffic lets me cut across a couple of lanes to negociate....) I am directed onto a surprisingly quiet shady street with old solid stand-alone houses. A peaceful island right in things American......

Inside I meet Christian again, his partner. We try to get a cab to Beauty Bar on wild wild 6th Street, but one is not forth-coming. So K drives us across town in the Honda. After some inquiries, find Josh just unloading for the gig. We chat and catch up. I shoot a picture for his Mom and posterity. It is in the back yard behind the bar and it is easier just to look over the fence than to get signed up on the guest list. a couple of bands procede, and Kevin wants to drink and eat so we go across the street to this bar that specializes in sea food and brew...... The Boiling Pot, complete with paper table clothes rolled into place by the hostess and waiters. There was a dixie-cup with crayons for any artistic expression on the table cloths. Serge and Kevin had brew, Keving ordered crawdads, whose steaming bodies were dumped in front of him, and the waitress tied a bib on. K pronounced them undercooked, but I liked them hot, spicy and slimy.

Back at the music:

(It is beginning to rain) Pay five for parking. Even the bands cannot find such. Unloading in the jammed alley. Classic Case has come from Lafayette LA. where they gigged yesterday. How these bands do the traveling is beyond me. Youth and energy. Until they become so famous and rich.... Maybe their time has come, as Austin is packed with companies signing bands at this SXSW phenom. Such a boiling pot of country, rock, pop, punk, hip-hop, swirling dizzily along the streets and avenues, venues galor, thousands cheering, mass clamoring for music music music. Classic Case is thick layered rock, with influences of metal punk art rock... but manage to be creative and original, and have won many fans in the US and the UK. Josh's former band, Beloved, died or natural causes last fall, (the drummer got married!) and was put to rest with a big show in Winston Salem, the farewell out now on DVD, Kiss it Goodbye"

Josh comes from a musical family I have known for some 30 years. The Peele's, especially, are all natural musicans, his mom, Ginger sings like an angel, her two sisters and brother John, drummer and singer, we all thought would continue a musical life. There dad had beautiful voice too. Ginger married Michael, one of the biggest and most knowledgable fans of rock and pop you can find anywhere. Josh has a twin brother who has a band and plays a lot, but not on the hectic road. Beloved started when the boys were still in high school, so the story I got goes, while working at the local supermarket. They remained faithfull to the Christian Faith, they grew up in, and the band, though fiercely heavy sound-wise, played in Christian venues from one end of the country to the other. I heard them at the Ft Worth and Dallas "Door" clubs: no smoking, no alcohol..... all ages. But one generation back, the Ocean View United Methodist on Oak Island, NC, would get a moment of shear beauty and magic each Christmas in the late 70's, when Ginger, Joy, and sometimes Big John, would sing "Little Drummer Boy" with "cute little John" doing the tapping on the plaintive tambour. Such sweet harmony would make the Angel's jelouse!

This trip has brought me out of the doldrums, not surprisingly. More later when I can get some photo's up somewhere!!!!!

Birds of a feather

Maggie Langdon once said that artists are useful friends. If you have something, anything just about, you want to get rid of, an artist will take it and do something with it, or keep it around until they can find another artist to take it. Like artists will swap, too, and pass on stuff rather than send to the land-fill. Sixto gave me a wonderful thing several years back. This carefully made armature for a sword-fish made with sturdy wire, red marble eyes, and then half covered with paper machee, (which has dissolved since, the rains of yesteryear.) A project he had tired of. I hung it first over the door, but then it came down during a repair session and remained on the ledge outside my front stoop. This spring, I noticed a nest in it's lower abdomen, and tiny tiny egg. The most likely suspect would be a Bewick's Wren. We have plenty, and they will build in the most surprising places. Like an unfinished place above my kitchen! Indoors is considered fair game, and the birds fly in and they fly out after a bit of frantic exploration. Sometimes guided by a waving broom. But this one would have to be very small as the openings in the mesh armature are hardly more than an inch wide.

Well, I am not a careful scientist, and in extracting the little egg to get a measurement, I dropped the fragile thing, broke into pieces. But. Already, a hole had been drilled in the bottom and it was just a fragile shell, 1/2 inch in length!!!! Probably ants.

I had a nest of at least three Wrens hatch in that unfinished spot in the kitchen. That was back in the days before the dogs, and I had a cat or two around. When the babies began the pfledge thing, they would sometimes fall from the nest, and I witnessed the murder of one of them, Di, the black one with the white diamond on her forehead, reached the flopping thing before I did, and killed it, as cats are wont to do. AH. Nature, red in tooth and claw.

From my window, I can watch the cardinals and chickadees, the titmouse's and sparrows taking turns at the feeder and bird bath. They share it reluctantly with the squirrels who love the pumpkin and sunflower seed in the wild bird mix I put out for them. It is fun watching the cardinals, as the red papa bird will not tolerate other birds on the feeder, except in that magic mating season. He will give his darker, more subdued amour a seed, putting it in the beak for her convenience. They fly away happy to build their nest for the year. Some years the most spectacular pair show up, the Painted Buntings with their beautiful colors. At least the male has these iridescent ruby reds, emerald greens and sapphire blues. Almost as if a tropical bird got stranded up here before the last ice age, and managed to adapt, colors and all!!! His mate is duller than the sparrows.

Sometimes Mr or Mrs Roadrunner will bob around to see what is happening. These unlikely things give you a good idea what a raptor dinasaur must have been like. Of all the grown nesting birds, the things have survived out here in spite of the fire ants. I never hear a Bob-White anymore. Chief suspect: You guessed it. (I hardly ever find scorpions anymore either. The ethnic cleansers of the "lower" orders, those fire ants from the south...)

............

Maybe, just maybe, I will be on my way to Austin tomorrow, to see friends and hear a band Josh Moore has joined. His Mom has the most beautiful voice of any singer I know, famous or un-famous. These are Tar Heels, Winston Salem Tarheels, at that. North Carolina has about as many musicians per capita as Texas!!! Just a bit quiter, more thoughtful, less showy. More Wren than Painted Bunting! But if you take the time, musicians like Doc Watson or Baby James Taylor deliver just as surely. Hurrah! the "Old North State forever" we used to sing.... sometimes called a valley of contempt twixt two great mounds of conceit. (Reference: hot-head South Carolina, and Virginia full of snooty snobs. Tenneesee, across the western mountains used to be us, so we mesh better westward.)

re-birth

Here pops up bright gold Paralena and Verbena.

It is that time again. The spring flowers starting up. Recent rains here in North Texas have done their thing. "The drought of March is pierced to the roote" abated, now, the rains "bathed ev'ry vain and root in sweet liquor", well, somewhat and "Spring the wood anew.... (sing cuckoo!)" Weather reports and season changes from Chaucer and company....circa 1300 AD. The Paralena will bloom till fall, depending on the rain, and the purple verbena will show up all the way to December. One of our dependable sources of lavender blue in the grassy margins and fields here among the Cross Timbers and prairies....

Spring is a mixed blessing. We have already been under a tornado watch, and storms with hail were in the forecast. They went north and east of us, but more are in the near prospectus. Killer tornados and golfball hail ripped up Southern Illinois yesterday, they just announced. One death. Life is uncertain in the big tornado alley in the Spring. Depressions and head-aches. Sinus season.

Computer back up, all unbacked files gone, and things in cold disarray. My best instinct is to put the sucker up on e-Bay or at least ad in the local, or Craiglist it. The iMac G-5, the wonder of wonders just like the G-4 before it, is superseded by the iMac Intel Duo. I want it. BAD. But will wait. If you want my iMac G-5, I am asking 850. Recent spells, colds that don't go away, scary allergies, have affected my mental state. Coupled with the horrible state of our government, the loathing of our leaders, the terrible mess our misguided venture in Iraq, the horrors of Dafur, the scary scenarios unfolding in Iran and North Korea... No wonder it affects the states of people's minds..

Like the Spring, I am back on line and will try to post something positive every day. Working with TJ keeps me fit. At least getting rid of some couch-potato flab which has crept onto my old bod recently. Maybe I can tackle some hikes in the mountains and canyons soon. That, and a promised two month tour in Mexico next winter, makes me get up in the morning.