Saturday, July 24, 2004
THE MELDING
You can hear it in the music of our time; see it in the appearance of those persons who write and perform the music. You can sense this strange power music has over mankind when you see others transported, as it were, by the subtle, . unseen fiber of sounds arranged to form the sequences we call music. It is an art form, and like all such patterns, it is constantly changing. Why can't we, then accept the idea that the music that satisfies one generation is, quite often, is not easily accepted by another. It is a continuing blend of that which has been, what is in existence at the moment and hints of what it might become in the future. It is a melding phase in our artistic nature.
Among the arts, music remains among the portion of our lives in which mankind has been, and continues to be more and more narrow-minded. We seem to decide what is to be excluded and what is to be retained more more readily, and more adamantly, than we do in the other art forms we enjoy. We, rather arbitrarily decide, as individuals, what we like best and usually exclude all that does not seem to meet “right now” requirements center “right now”needs, and, as a result we often miss out on worthy treasures others see in their true light and which they truly appreciate and enjoy. And, there is nothing that tells more about who and what an individual really is than the manner in which he or she sees the world of music in their lives or, tragically, ignore it.
Each generation modifies its music. Some of it cannot be changed, but most of it can be and it moves with our minds and actions and all such changes come about gradually. The mutations are often brought about by snobbishness by the individual's feeling that he ,and he alone, has the correct pattern. Far too often such a person reaches a cetainratin point beyond which he or she cannot go and that is where the narrow-minded-0mided concept of music become ingrained.
I like all kinds of music. True, I accept some toga larger degree than others and there are some modes which I simply do not comprehend and probably never will, such as today's chase ably never will such as present day ”rap” and much of today' heavy metal and acid rock. It will be some time before I can respond to either of those, I am afraid. That, of course, marks me as “narrow” in the judgment of those who say they do fine redeeming values; in such incuch co perhaps hammered o rlap dulcimers.
Much of such delineation come about because of the instrumentation available to perform various typoes of music,. Folk music, of the people ethnic groups, is usually confined to the fiddle, guitar, five-string claw hammer banjo, and possible a lap or hammered dulcimer, a mandolin and string bass.. Newer groups have electrified and added Dobro and arrays of guitar necks piled together and other such gadgetry. The established style has come to be called ”Bluegrass”. Other types of music evolved through multi-language and cultural aberrations, built on that basic sense of deep need of such expression with a host of variations. I have performed in various types from across the spectrum and in each of them it is possible to find some satisfaction as well as in specialized field such as church music and longhair classics. I played hillbilly. I played jazz of the New Orleans, Chicago, Memphis blues and Bayou weepers. I thought that Jazz phase was it,for a time, but big bands came along and changed the national music picture forever. There was tremendous variety of instrumentation which reflected different values in that era and crossovers and odd amalgamations which held for a time and prospered in a money-making, life-sustaining way. They toppled from within economically and became smaller groups.. .trios , quartets, quin-sex-sept and other "tets", doing nostalgia for the most part , then moved into rock . We went through a long phase of show tunes for a time and a star system build on a flood releases and later, albums and personalized CD's became the standard criteria for most music which came to be a blend of recent types.
That's about where we stand at the moment, on the fading edge the star album system a free-for time which has decried melody, meaning or motivation in music.
We will survive it all, however. Much of it is not as bad as it sounds.
A.L.M. July 23, 2004 [c774wds]
Friday, July 23, 2004
> FER TH' LAN' S SAKE When Spain went that-a-way after terrorists bombed their railway terminal area in Madrid, they dishonored those who died in the cowardly attack. They gave in right away and withdrew their, more or less, token troops from the conflict in Iraq. I don't think the move came as much of a surprise to anyone, including the bulk of the Spanish people and their rulers. Few people thought of their move of three hundred armed men as being sufficient to influence the affairs of the world. It had served rulers well as a valued purpose when they had joined. It was good politics in Spain to sign up with the winner of the Gulf War and to associate with the major nations concerning potential rewards which may accrue to those gathered together firmly in the future. With the first opposition the same Spanish leaders saw it as time to use withdrawal to political advantage, as well. The civic cycle is complete and the only ones who were hurt were the Spanish people. They were hurt far worst than they realized and that moment of troop withdrawal of troops from Iraq. For the first time in many decades it appeared from the people of Spain finally had rulers who had ideals and sincerely wanted to be active citizens with a hand in world affairs, however small. It proved to be more dangerous than anticipated, and when the enemy hit in Madrid it was to home-town political advantage to switch sides. I am reminded of an old Appalachain hillbilly chief's words spoken within my hearing: “In you ain't fer me; you aire agin' me! Don't 'xpect no favors!” In the Terrorist Wars of our time, there can be no neutrals.
The government of Spain has doomed its citizens to be outside and undeserving of any of the larger work Mutual advantages are now all suspect which thus places the nation under increased danger.. The Phillipines now think that same to be a valid one as well, and are in the process of withdrawing their handful of troops from Iraq as well. They are doing so because one of their number was kidnapped and beheaded by Iraqi criminals. On the positive side it appears that several other small nations who are supporting the coalition in Iraq by their steadfast, and firm resolve to stay for the duration of the need. We should be especially thankful for such support from smaller nations and stand ready to assist them in their needs for standing fast as friends in our time of need. Bulgaria, Poland and others are with us in a sincere resolve to sustain the proudly held seeds of greatness in their own lands. a.l.m. July 23, 2004 [c462wds]
Thursday, July 22, 2004
A BIG 'N! Dumb old me. I've always thought tidal waves had something to do with the ocean's tides. Simply “a big 'un” sweeping in over land. Now, I find they don't fit that simplified definition at all, in spite of the fact that I was not the only dummy on the beach to think it was accurate. I find a great many other people still think so. That is especially true of those of us who now live inland and at high elevations and consider tidal waves a problem for low country dwellers, dike builders, sand-pounders and flat landers alone. They have another think coming if they have a lake nearby. I've learned a lot recently. I now know that tidal waves, so called by some for reasons now best forgotten, who made the same assumption I did. They are really caused by earthquake activities of several sorts. And don' t get all too sure of yourself by saying how few earthquakes we have. Statistics show we have several thousand quakes per day, not big ones, mind you, but ”quakes”, none the less. The are the result of chunks and piece of our planet rearranging themselves below below the crust of top of which we live. The natural result of such shifts is some shaking and rearrangements of contours and placement of crust materials.
<> Since more surface of our Earth is covered with water than visible land it is logical that many such quakes will occur in the huge mountain ranges, canyons and depths of the sea - in some places as deep as about six miles. The water above such lands exerts tremendous pressure on the all below and when the base moves, so does the water above it. If the underlying surface rises , for instance, from internal volcanic eruptions the water is force upward and forms a wall of water high in the air. It rushes in all directions as a high wave of water often at speeds of over two hundred miles per hour depending on the velocity of the upward surge. That, then, is what we call a “tidal wave”. If the undersea rupture causes an area of the bottom to fall, the covering of water follows it and leaves a high wall of water above which rushed off in the direction of least resistance. That, too, become a tidal wave and it may seek and find a landfall far off and at high speed. There are countless example of such monstrous waves striking coastal area often with great loss of human life and of geographic features. Entire landscapes have been changed radically by such attacks and often in the most unlikely places. No area is completely immune, it seem, although there are some which have a combination of conditions which incite volcanic activity and, hence, a increased chances of such upheavals. There is, probably, no better way for any of us to convince ourselves of the indomitable power of Nature than to study the effects of water on the site where we happen to live to live. It is not a localized thing, either. I have been surprised to learn just recently that geologists working in the Grand Canyon have come upon sediment materials found only in the Appalachain Mountains here in the Eastern section of the continent. Read the facts about such events as the explosion of Santorini around at about 1500 B.C. to see how repeated waves hundreds of feet high swept over Crete and other isles, roared well up the Egyptian Delta, plummeted Syria and desolated much of the known world at that time and changing the coastlines dramatically. Or you can turn closer to our time in 1893 when Krakatowa let loose in Java. High waves are not uncommon in some areas.. .as much as thirty feet on the north side of the Hawaiian islands and predictable and fine setting for water sports enthusiasts. There is, however, no sporting element if a would be there an Alaskan earthquake that could send a real wall of water southward. The Galveston, Texas disaster in l903 was a terrifying example with hundred foot waves moving at a hundred miles an hour. Don't underestimate tidal waves.
A.L.M. July 22, 2004 [c711wds]
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
POLITICAL GAMES
I have been taken to taken on to task on two occasions recently for making reference to political activities of our time as “games.”
I think it quite proper to equate the various elements of political
realities with other forms of competitive action. The political “game” involves organized teams competing in actions which are intended to be detrimental to the success of the opposition, or, at least, not helpful.
My one questioner want to know what I hoped to achieve by “cheapening” the entire process of our national election of a President of the
United States of America by likening the serious procedure of doing so to a common board game in which chance played a great part in making the final choice. The word ”cheapening” was accented, as you might imagine, and this particular individual seemed to have at her command a fund of information all the way back to Colonial Days dwelt on supposed perfection in politics. Whatever it was I was supposed to have said seems to have infringed somewhat on set, historical precedent. My presentation was said to have been “seriously lacking in the qualities of dignity one should adhere to when discussing our elected leaders.”
The very next day I was taken to task a second time by a gentleman who accused me of “ridiculing the Sports Heroes of our time - now and historical by comparing what they did with a bunch of cheap politicians who would lie, cheat and steal for votes ...men who had not the slightest idea of good sportsmanship might be....”
I have decided that if I can keep those two extremes excited, I'm at just about the right place in talking abut the current political scene. After all, I could have called it a “circus”, a “zoo”, or other such deriding names may of which fit segments of the body politic at times.
To some extent they are both right, but it also points to the seriousness of an accusation that is being made more and more about American voters. That is the contention which insists that,at least, half of us are not at all qualified to be deciding most of the issues which are handed down to us. Our opinion in the form of a “vote”is not always as well founded as we would like people to think it is. We are, to a large extent – some say over fifty percent - functionally illiterate concerning the actual issues which face our nation at any given time.
I have a fear lurking in the back of my head which suggests the percentage chosen might even be a bit too generous. The average American citizen has only a vague idea of everything which underlies the many complex issues facing the nation today. What a comparatively few read and that information another segment of the population sees and hears on radio and TV, films or on the Internet is, at best, sketchy and inadequate as a [primary source of information required by the citizen if he or she is to vote with serious intent.
Those avenues of information provide a guide line. That is true, but just as many who travel find that the destination can often prove to be far different form the paradise promised in the brochure which helped them make the choice.
We worry a great deal about the future of our nation, and it seems right to do so, but unless we start giving more detailed attention to the comparative study of various phases in our national history at all educational levels, we are doomed.
Far too many voters will go to the voting booth in November, in the same attitude they might visit a sales point for lottery tickets. A few of us will make a choice with special care and attention to mathematical averages, the vast majority will call on the political “machine” to make the choices on their behalf, because they don't know how to do it, and another segment of us will mark the ballots, punch chards, pull levers, press buttons, or simply touch pictures of the favorites of the moment as means leading to an end..
To speak of the process as a “game” strikes me as being a rather tame treatment.
A.L.M. July 19, 2004. [c720wds]
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
BAR NONE Starting January1st you will find a change taking place in the appearance of the bar code diagram who get with about everything you buy. It will become larger. Just a tad, however, so don't fret about it. Thirty year ago we had organized groups fighting the advent of the tiny mark, but common sense won out, in our view, at least, and what has since become well known as “the American Universal Bar Code” was developed along with computers and associated software required. It has been going along well since 1970 at which time the Europeans decided they wanted to emulate it. Since that time,when European nations planning a sort of European Union insisted that a new line must be be added to the code diagram and modifications made to handle it in related computers and software. I think, perhaps, our use of the word “Universal” in the original name irked Europeans a little bit - sounding somewhat of world-wide application -and much of the bickering reminds us of our own strange abberations during the frightful days of the “Y2K” era as we approached the dreaded new century in which we now live rather comfortably.. Since its inception the code has been, more or less, there ...present all the time all the time, keeping our grocer's shelves stocked and making prices more uniform, but largely ignored by shoppers. There has been a running battle of a sort ever since 1977 when the European nations gathering together to form a European Union, set up a system based on ours but insisting that an additional bar be added to the diagram. They wanted a line to tell from which of the countries represented the product originated. The idea made sense from the start, but we have been against acceptance since 1977. Last month Europe won. Rightfully so, too, and starting January lst the bar code with tell you where the product originated. “The European Article Numbering Code” will be our standard, Ours was not so “universal” after all. The new bar is already in use in most foreign countries and all new an scanners must read the13-bar code. It does not call for any immediate change in existing codes on shelves, because the new 13-bar scanners can read the old fashioned 12 bar code imprints. This relatively small gimmick has been of major importance to our commercial world and has heled us attain capabilities in supplying the needs of our enlarged economy with new efficiency and speed. Doesn't it strike you as being odd that any suggestions of such changes so often meet with opposition - this one a “Thirty Years War of Words” about adding a beneficial bar?. It may be that is one way of “testing” the actual validity of a suggested idea, but it sure slows us all up in the long haul. A.L.M. July 19, 2004 [c488wds]
Monday, July 19, 2004
THINGS TO DO WITHOUT The only way you can rid yourself of unwanted encumbrances is to find ways to erase them from your daily routine. That is a not so easy to, in spite of the advice you so frequently come across saying how easy it is to change such things. It takes some real work and a measure of self-discipline which is often the basic cause of it all.
It is right in tune with one of the latest television fads: “Makeovers.”Change things you don't like; modify those things you feel are cluttering your life Tired of shoveling snow in winter and cutting too much grass in summer? Consider downsizing your home. Thousands of couples do it every year and find they can rid themselves of scores of those pesky little chores have been performing with almost religious intensity in exchange for the privilege of maintaining rooms they haven't needed since the kids grew up and left and Aunt Sophie, who used to “visit” for a month at a time, ran off to Florida. That's an accepted way to get rid of your local problems , if you have money to do so ...move to Florida, Haw ii or a mountain peak somewhere far, far away and start over again.. To me it would be too rapid. I'm a home-body and take part of it with me wherever I go. I'd like to have TV programming without so many commercials. I see in the latest statistics that one group of stations, considering shortening their commercial load, admit they have been doing twenty minutes of ads in one hour of air time. If they admit to one hour we can estimate the time spent might actually be more (“We can't baby-sit local times sales!”}. We forget that the commonly accepted amount of commercial time in radio for years was three minutes at the max . For a fifteen minute show thirty-second commercial openings and closings were allowed plus two. one-minute commercials. That came to an end as pro programming gave way to cheaper disk-jockey laxity then with radios talk show it became even more difficult to tell when progamming ended and commercials began. If over-commercialization bugs you, don't watch those shows which offend you. If you can't bring yourself to be one of the first persons ever to do that, at least, don't complain about it. Your voiced disapproval, or worse, your written disapproval, only makes the matter worse because it shows, without proof of contradiction, that you,indeed, do watch the show regularly. It is,on that basis renewals are inked ...telling how many watched it- not how many liked it. We are beset with a problem very much the same as that we face in choosing the “best” movie. The proper standard of judgment is not how money people paid to see the movie, but how many people went to see it.. The more money that comes in makes the picture get better and better under the present plan. And, be honest with yourself. You may say you hate commercial telephone calls at meal time. Tally up the score. How many such calls have you answered this past week? How, about the past two weeks, or the entire month? If it is still a big round “o” you a typical of people who make this complaint which allows them make use of a long word them have come to know - “telemarketers”. So much misery is make believe. What them don't like about calls at that specific time - usually they say as ”dinner”time, which is called “supper” in many average homes which occurs at times when some members of the family eat their evening meal together by chance. What is being interrupted by such telemarketers calls in not dinner – but the fact that the family members are watching Vanna White touch letters and solve puzzles while they happen to be eating. Another favorite this we say we'd like to do without is ever-rising debt. It can be cut way down, if you throw away, burn or shred all of your credit cards. One by one, you can get any of them under control but you have to work at it. “Abbracadabba” no longer suffices. A.L.M. July 18, 2004 [c713wds]
Sunday, July 18, 2004
> NEW WAY OF WORK I find it difficult to equate readily with the apparent desperate plight in which many people seem to think they are in this general matter of what they call “the economy”. The vast majority seem to feel themselves to be underpaid. Now, during Election Time, they blame it on whomever happens to be President. The point which always comes through clean and clear to me is that, in the vast majority of cases which are detailed in all their misery for me to read and to sympathize with, I suppose, are actually getting at least twice as much per pay period than I ever received. Time-after-time, their minimum per week pay is more than I was paid per month. You can say: “Well, these are different times!” The two eras are not that different. In terms of specific salary amounts, you'll have to admit that the man who makes eleven dollars an hour as a security guard in not too put upon; or what about the case of the young girl, getting a bit less per hour, who finds it woefully difficult to keep up with her debts which, after have made every budgetary cut she can possibly be expected to make, includes her being four months in arrears in an 8-thousand dollar credit card debt accumulation. There are both union workers, by the way, so that knocks that handy and over-used argument in the head. The guard has not had a raise in three years but no one says he deserves one, either. The girl needs some financial guidance at the most elementary level, it would appear . To see such cases touted in our media as being the fault of our President is disgraceful and disquieting. Occasionally we see genuine humor in an advertising ploy. One, which I understand is being prepared at the agency level at this moment, consists of providing the celebrated “Maytag Serviceman” with a helper. The somewhat unique plight of this under-worked technician is that he finds himself ministering unto a product line which never fails and does not require such repair services. He has a job doing nothing which is chronicled on the TV spot series by “Maytag.” I like the series and it is very interesting to hear that the agency handling the production of those TV spots is, at the present time, adding an apprentice. The serviceman will now undertake to to train an apprentice to take over his job. “Maytag” has touched on a sensitive nerve in our national system with this do-less worker being given a helper... someone to take over such duties as he has had all these years. No doubt the idea came from the furor created by Donald Trump's noisy entrance into TV programming last year. Teaching someone else how to do nothing well is quite a challenge. I sorry I do not, know the real names of the two actors who have filled the role thus far - the original who was a minor film star of yesterday, I'm sure, and the relatively new one who has been doing the job well. They deserve praise and recognition for depicting a character who is all too common among us. It is made to seem comical in the commercial application, but, in real life non-working job holder are far from being funny. In the labor field we have too many titles left over from a previous economic era. Such established “slots”are filled rather than staffed. The nature of the work to be done has changed radically over the past decade or so. The very nature of jobs now being done have mutated with the computerized regeneration of the business and commercial world. Old standard of what a person's “worth”on the labor market might be are totally skewed and, in many cases, unresolved as the very nature of the work to be done is changing. Our educational system, unfortunately, has not kept pace with technical change. We have been training young people for work which no longer exists. We are rapidly learning the value of replacing anew rather than repairing, patching, re-painting or laminating concepts, ideas and basis principles. The nature of work changes. The work ethic remains constant. A.L.M. July 17, 2004 [c713wds]
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