Oh! Did I tell You About...........

Here is one I don't talk about much. My SO is a wonderful person, but she does have an interesting quirk.

She has never met a story that she can't improve. Literally and literarily, every time she tells a story it changes. Eventually it becomes bigger than life, and I find this incredibly amusing. Once she gets started, I sit back and marvel at how creative her manipulations become. If I have heard the story before, I have a baseline, a benchmark or starting place to mark and measure the width and breadth of her inevitable prevarication.

The funny thing is that she seems to be more solidly grounded in the improved tale than she does the truth. Every retelling drifts further and further from fact towards fabrication. She seems to believe the story and will even swear to its veracity.

Here is an example:
One day the kids borrowed her car for a while. We ran errands in my vehicle and stopped in at Trader Joes. As we parked, we saw her car in the parking lot; the kids were next door at the Wherehouse. She thought it would be funny to move her car. I have a bit of a mean streak and readily agreed, so we did move it several rows over, then went in to Trader Joes. As we were checking out, the kids rushed in looking for us, saw us at the check stand and came over to let us know just how unfunny our prank was. We laughed. End of story. OK...that's what really happened.

Now for the improved version: Everything is the same up until we moved the car. At this point we hide in the bushes and wait to see their reactions, and you wouldn't believe the looks of astonishment on their faces when they come out and find the car missing *laugh out loud and slap thigh for emphasis* "You should have seen the looks on their faces! It was hilarious!" She has even quoted dialogue between them on occasion(I guess the bushes were pretty close.)
A simple change and maybe it does make a better story......she surely does enjoy telling it more.

Anyway, it has created a new hobby for me. When she starts, I just relax and wait to see what new paths our old adventures have taken since the last time. I'm always amused and often amazed at what we have done.

Of course I can only testify about the ones to which I've been an accomplice. The stories that scare me are the ones where I wasn't........ 

Some Days are Golden, Some are Maroon

OK… now I feel like a Maroon.

I am away. On a business trip. A looong way from home.

Business finishes early, but my reservations are cast in financial concrete. Back at the hotel, I wander down to the concierge (that’s what you call the afternoon manager at Best Western when you need to ask him a question) and inquire as to the location of the nearest decent steak house. Being a good concierge and obviously concerned for my expense account, he suggests that the nearest Red Robin might be just the ticket. I counter with the concept that when you stray from a given establishments forte menu item, you are treading on a very slippery slope. Does Red Robin even serve whole meat without feathers? He finally begins to get my drift and does make a reasonable offer. I consider it.

Before dining, I head down to the business center to print tomorrows boarding passes. The computer requests my password. Back to concierge. “Oh, yes! I’ll give you the password, but it won’t do you any good. The Internet is down.” I explain that I have just come down from my room where I checked my e-mail. That Internet was working fine. “Well, we have a different Internet down here and it isn’t working at all!” He’s right. 

Hmmmmm

I abandon the whole steak plan and walk a half-block to Wendy’s for a forbidden cheeseburger with bacon. Maybe his Internet will be fixed when I get back.

Delicious. And 'Ain't Happening'...No printer for you, Kemosabe.....

Back in the room, I stand admiring the In-Room-Spa sized for four. I am traveling alone this trip, more’s the pity, but not wanting the Spa to go unappreciated, I decide to fill it and flounder around by myself. I can turn on the water from the floor, but it is impossible to actually touch the water to say…. oh… feel the temperature or whatever without actually being “in the spa,” so to speak. To avoid obvious later disappointment, I disrobe, and clamber in to check the water. At my age you don’t ‘step’ into a spa…clambering is the most generous description that can legitimately be applied here.

At the risk of giving the whole plot away at this point in the story, let me say that my rental car is a technological WunderKar. The radio doubles as a rearview TV when reversing. And it picks up music from outer space. To start the thing, you simply push a button. When you are finished driving another push of the same button shuts it off…..

Back in the Spa. I am standing buck nekkid, ankle deep in the tepid water of the ‘just clambered into' Spa when hotel phone rings. This strikes me as rather odd because nobody who needs to call me knows exactly where in the Sam Hell I am. 

Again, Hmmm.

I execute the Much Vaunted but Seldom Seen ‘Reverse Clamber’ and slosh my way to the insistent instrument. Hello? 

“Good evening, Sir! This is the Front Desk." 

Hardly ever a welcome call unless expecting a package from UPS or the Pizza Boy. 

"We are attempting to locate the driver of a car in our parking lot which has been sitting with the motor running for several hours. Which vehicle is yours?” 

With a sinking feeling I confess both Make and Model. 

With a barely concealed squeal of glee, she replies, “Well, Sir, I believe it is yours!” She is delighted because finally she can can quit calling rooms, and now I know why they ask for your auto's curriculum vitae at registration...Information I chose not to provide...... as a security measure, of course.....I stare at the "Keys" to my WunderKar sitting on the dresser, I think about the button on the dash.....Krap!

I start to explain that I am part of the WunderKar test team conducting “Long Term Idling Tests” at Best Western altitudes, but I can tell that her Geezer B.S. Radar is finely tuned and she’s not buying any of it.

I thank her, dry off from the ankles down, dress, sorta…..and slither down stairs, praying there is no thundering crowd to cheer me on the last 20 yards. I'm sure when she disconnected, she shouted "Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a winner!" Funny, I don't feel exactly like a winner.....more like a Maroon.

Oh…the quadruple In-Room-Spa solo act…don’t bother…….it's just no fun by your self, and if you doze off (highly likely at my age), your Kindle gets to test the Submarine Clause in Amazon's warrantee.

Geez....Ida swore I pressed that danged button the second time…….mumble…mutter….mmmmph ........

Hmmm...wonder if the boss will notice I used $80.00 in fuel on a twenty-mile round trip?

p.s. A big tip-o-the-hat to the Manager of the local Guitar Center who graciously allowed me to get a solid 'Guitar Fix' this afternoon playing his $3000 instruments so far from my babies.....There is this one Martin I played, it was like soft butter in my hands, and such a bargan at only $1999........nnaaahh, I dasn't........

Easter Observations

Easter Sunday today...Lent is officially over.

On Good Friday, the youth of my Church presented a shadowbox performance of the crucifixion. Most dramatic to see Jesus arching his back in agony with every blow of the hammer driving the nails through his hands.

Also on Good Friday, I saw a man dressed as Jesus, wearing a thorny crown, blood dripping from his brow, dragging a large cross down the sidewalk near the Rescue Mission. He was accompanied by a Roman Centurion. I appreciated the demonstration of Jesus' sacrifice, but the only folks there to observe have probably had it up to here with sacrifice. They drag their entire lives down the sidewalk every day. He should have been dragging that cross uptown. Those are the people too comfortable to understand.

Maundy Thursday celebrates the Last Supper and Jesus' commandment to love on another. It passed with no foot-washing here this year. I attended MT services in our National Cathedral several years ago quite by accident. I entered the Cathedral to take photos not knowing the service was in progress, when I realized the fact, I decided to stay. During the appropriate part of the service, you get in line, wait your turn, then sit and have your feet washed. If you choose to take a turn at being the washer, simply touch the shoulder of the person who washed your feet. You then kneel, take their place and wash feet until someone takes your place, or until the last person has clean feet!

In my Bible study last year, our Pastor made it quite clear that the word 'feet' in the Bible was most often a euphemism for the genitals......hey.......wait a minute.......

The Strat

I indulged myself this week. I bought a guitar…well to make that statement more accurate, I should say, “I bought another guitar.” This brings my current total up to eight. Very few people that I know truly understand the why of it all, and all of them are keepers of multiple instruments themselves.

I’m not sure I can ‘splain in a way that is meaningful to a layperson, but let me say first of all that I am blessed to have the means to be able to maintain such a collection. That certainly hasn’t always been the case, and I am bright enough to know that it may not be the case tomorrow. I remain humble and thankful.

Well crafted instruments are a wonder, like anything else that is really well made, the quality is obvious to anyone with the knowledge to appreciate it  Although looks can be deceiving, fit and finish, or the feel and smoothness and effortlessness of operation can’t be faked. This is especially true of guitars. A poorly made guitar may well be unplayable at the worst, or simply difficult to play at best, requiring too much effort to form chords and sounding bad even at their best.

This is so unfortunate for people who would like to learn. They are unwilling to spend the money for a good instrument when they are unsure if they have the ability to learn or if they will even stick to it. So they buy a $100 instrument. They end up with a beast that savages their fingertips because the strings are so hard to depress and often quit, happy that they did ‘waste’ a bunch of money. Sad.

If you are a musician you know the feel of a good instrument. One that almost plays itself. If it is a keyboard, every key falls readily to hand and is radiused perfectly. The amount of force required is perfectly balanced…just enough resistance to avoid accidentally depressing a key, and perfect linearity, the volume increasing in correct proportion to effort.

In a guitar that is just right for you it is similar. The spacing of the strings is just right, not too close together, not too far apart. The effort required to form chords or play discrete notes is the same where ever you are on the neck. The strings require only a light touch to hold depressed…no death grip required….. and the intonation is correct from top to bottom  and end to end of the neck.  The strings will easily bend to alter pitch when you ask them to, but stay well behaved otherwise. The sound will be pure and clean, with no buzzing of string against random fret, and enduring sustain that leaves you marveling at the sound.

My guitars? I have one that is sized to travel, an easy carry-on, small but with surprising presence, a joy to play but inexpensive enough to not hurt so much if lost, stolen or destroyed. I have three 6-string acoustics. The first and my oldest is a nylon stringed pure acoustic on permanent loan to my youngest daughter. The second is a steel stringed acoustic electric that I keep tuned to an open G for Hawaiian Slack Key practice. The third is a concert quality steel stringed acoustic-electric for gigs. I have two 12-string acoustics, the first of which is a real beast that I have had for too many decades. It is pretty much unplayable with terrible intonation and finger killing action. I keep it for sentimental reasons. The second is the first guitar I bought after I quit drinking five years ago as a reward. It is a beautiful acoustic electric with buttery action. I love its full sound and often gig with it. The last two are also my newest, pure electrics, fine quality professional instruments, one for rhythm and the newest one for leads and rhythm. It is indeed a joy to hold and behold. Playing it is like driving a Ferrari. You don’t hold it, you wear it, and you don’t play it, you think it. It is happiest when it is playing with you and it shows……

Deja Vu All Over Again

I learned something again.

I mean that in all possible ways: another learning experience, a re-learning of something, knowledge once known but lost, a learning of something new, having an epiphany, or any other way you care to parse it.

I am fascinated by how our knowledge of a subject colors our view. When I was first learning to land an airplane, the single thing that grabbed my attention was exactly how quickly the world was getting bigger in the windscreen. The view was mesmerizing. What? I'm supposed to be doing something here? As I became more and more familiar with the process, I learned to make the decisions and perform the actions required to ensure that the arrival was less than earth-shaking.

When I began to play a musical instrument, my first pieces had only two or three notes, then they began increasing in complexity as my skills and knowledge increased.

My point is this: when I first see something unfamiliar, I am often so overwhelmed by the event that it is impossible for me to really absorb the details. When my experience increases, I begin to see things in a different light. I can start to appreciate the nuance and subtlies in greater depth.

This leads to other questions. When do you know enough? Is there always a deeper layer of understanding, always more to learn if you are willing to invest the time? I think perhaps there is.

I had a small epiphany of my own last night. I was transcribling (Not a typo…well, it began as a typo until I saw the truth of it) some music.....the Halelujah Chorus (and believe me, that is some music), anyway, as I was entering the notes for the organ part in my MIDI staff, I could hear the pitches at the same time. I knew on a logical level that the grouped notes formed chords and chord inversions, but listening to them caused me to think about them in a different way.

In my novice naivety, I had always assumed that the keyboardist read every note and figured out which finger went where each time. What I suddenly saw was that each chord could be read as a word, the notes analogous to the letters, and performed by the fingers as a unit as easily as we pronounce a word after we have learned to speak. Wow.

We don’t learn to speak in full sentences, and we don’t learn to play in complete passages. My first instrument was the Cornet, followed by the Saxophone, both instruments that normally form only one note at a time. When I learned guitar, I learned chords, but I learned them individually as hand and finger positions, not as discrete notes. The big deal is thus: if I know a chord, say a C major, and I need to play a C6, unless I have learned the C6 I can’t do it. I have no clue which note(s) I am playing in my chord is(are) the one(s) that need to be modified to change the chord. I just know that when I do this it makes a C.

So…one thing I have not done is to really learn to play melody lines on my guitar. I can read music Ok, I just never took the time to learn where to find the notes on the guitar, There are a lot of places to find the same note on the fret board – some are more useful than others.  I’m taking the time now…crap….if I was only half a century or so younger…this would be so much easier!

The Gift of Storytelling

I met a young lady the other day. I was in one of my favorite restaurants, enjoying my lunch and reading an e-book on my kindle. The young lady in question is on staff at the restaurant. She asked how I liked my e-reader, and a brief conversation ensued. Turns out that she is an aspiring author, but it goes deeper than that. The lady is tee-totally in LOVE with writing and all things writerly.

I asked if she participated in NaNoWriMo 

http://www.nanowrimo.org/ 

(if you are not familiar, this is an organized challenge, open to anyone who cares to play. The month of November is designated ‘National Novel Writing Month,’ and the goal is to write a novel of at least 50,000 words between the beginning and the end of the month.

She admitted to having won (you win by completing the task) 4 times, and last year doing a double……yep, 100,000 words! I certainly admire her ambition and sticktoitiveness. She has a website and a blog and she is all about writing. All about Writing. I read several of her blog entries, the comments and replies to comments many from friends and supporters, other writers offering encouragement. All about writing. I attempted to have a meaningful conversation. After all, I'm an avid reader, but I quickly realized that my experience as a reader did not qualify me to speak with any knowledge about the craft of writing.

Now, I love to read, always have, and I obviously enjoy writing or this meager blog would not exist, but I’m not in LOVE with writing. But…there exists a whole community of folks out there who are. Many also love to read, but their passion, yea their addiction, is writing. If they aren’t writing they aren’t happy. They study writing and writers. They attempt to master the craft of storytelling. They are fascinated with plots and characters, genres and styles…..and how and where to get published. They are fascinated with being authors.

I have no hard facts to back this up, but based on my knowledge of superstars in other endeavors, for every really successful artist or athlete there are literally thousands of individuals who want to be just as successful, rich or famous. And, as fame and success rarely alight on beginners, so must aspirants often support themselves by doing something other than painting, playing second base (or second fiddle) or writing. Hence the staff position at the restaurant. A filler job until the novel takes off.

This underscores for me just how lucky I am. I could not put together 50,000 words that anyone would pay to read if my life depended on it. The only subject I can paint well is a house, but it will look best if someone with a better eye picks the color. I could never hit major league pitching or drive a golf ball 300 yards. I can, however, design things mechanical, things that function and do their jobs with efficiency and beauty. I can imagine the way a thing needs to be made and then build it or communicate my design to those who can build it, I LOVE doing it and I get PAID to do it.

I didn’t sign a 25 Million Dollar, 6 year contract. I won’t read my works to throngs of admirers, or sign copies to become treasured heirlooms. I won’t be chatting with Dave or Conan on late night television. But I will go home at the end of my day knowing that I enjoyed my job today…knowing that I used my God-given talent to do something special. I’ll be pleased with what I have done today and I’ll look forward to tomorrow’s challenges. I am a lucky man.

So write on, dear friend. Let your passion guide you and put everything you have into what you LOVE to do. Do what pleases you with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might, and the Universe will find a way to reward you. Be Happy.

A Little Melancholy

I was listening to the news today. I don’t really advise it. As my old friend Sam Clemmons once said, “Those who don’t read the news are uninformed, those who do are misinformed.”

Any road, the discussion I was eavesdropping on revolved around the nuclear issue in general, and Iran and Israel in particular. The question seemed to be whether or not Israel’s eminent action to interrupt Iran’s Nuclear Programme would result in War, Cyber or Shooting, and if Iran would target sites in the US for terrorist attacks in retribution.

That got me thinking about my family, how war would affect them, be it a shooting war, an economic war, cyber war or whatever. Seems to me that we are so fragile right now, teetering on the edge of the abyss, it won’t take very much to seriously disrupt our way of life.

As I thought about these things, my mind did a zoom out in space and time. As I got farther and farther from ground zero. I saw other families in other places at other times. I had a bit of an epiphany as I realized that there really was no difference between me and mine and you and yours no matter where, or for that matter, when you are.

You don’t love your kids and grandkids any more or any less than I do. Their futures are or were or will be every bit as promising as mine, yet, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t make any difference. They will either live to be full of years and full of memories, or tragedy will overtake.

Live in a quiet little town in Alabama. Save and build your entire life, then one day a tornado reduces all to zero. Time to start over. Then ten months later, go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200 as another random act of Nature clears the works of man from the Alabama countryside.

It has always been this way and always will be.

From Dust you came, and to Dust you shall return.

Can you picture a family living in a small town on the coast of Italy? It is August of ’79, and people are involved, as people usually are, in the mundane activities of everyday life. The kids are running through the house yelling, mom is getting ready to do the laundry. The small earthquakes have been rumbling for a few days. When the eruption begins in earnest, a cloud of super-heated gas rushes down the nearby mountain at a speed that defies the imagination. The strong quake that signals the start of the eruption frightens the children, who rush to their mother, just in time to die together. The year? 79 A.D. The town? Pompeii

Love those you care about with everything you have. Savor each moment and treasure every sunrise. Live each day as though it is your last. 

One day you’ll be right.