Airway

Rules Defined

2011-12-19T20:10:00.002-05:00

I was talking with Esther about this a bit at dinner tonight. She told me I needed to define what I mean by "rules" since that means different things to different people. Some would consider the Ten Commandments the "rules." That's not what I mean. A direct edict from God like the Ten Commandments is pretty hard to miss and pretty hard to argue against unless you want to outright rebel against God. What I'm talking about is to take a concept or principal from scripture and, through a single human interpretation, synthesize a hard and fast rule from it. I believe we are given principals in order to wrestle through the application of them every day we live. The synthesized rule may make sense in a given situation, but it's an application with blinders on - a single simplistic perspective on what may be a complex and multifaceted situation. It may sound like I'm pushing situation ethics here, trying to twist scripture to support whatever I want or want not to do, but I'm not. I'm saying that taking the first interpretation of a scriptural principal that you happen to come across and leaving it at that, never looking or considering or studying any further is lazy at best and possibly very dangerous. I believe we are meant to wrestle our way through the understanding of truth. I don't mean making up our own truth. But I think living by a list of synthesized, one-size-fits-all predetermined rules with a simple black and white flow chart mentality constitutes making up one's own truth.

Rules

2011-12-14T08:49:00.000-05:00

A friend recently shared a frustrating experience with another friend who was foisting some rules of behavior on her that this "friend" thought she should be abiding by. Rules that my friend had no conviction or other reason to follow. This situation made me think of the following.
____________

Another thought on "rules": My observation is that generally speaking, those who focus on a set of rules are hiding behind their list to try to be okay. But no list will ever make you okay with God or anyone else. The list only serves to separate the real you from the facade you present to the world. Your facade relates to others and the real you is isolated and lives alone. And living by a list is a lazy, perfunctory way to live. The rule becomes more important than the person standing in front of you. Real life is organic and messy. Wrestling through it well requires the grace of God for all parties involved. A list of rules requires no grace at all. Indeed, I submit that it is anti-grace. Learning of God precept upon precept, concept upon concept, principal upon principal, is an incredibly good and powerful thing. But the application of God's will (revealed in his Word, not by human edict) in this world through my personal will upon my sphere of influence is effective only by grace, not by list of rules.

Model Trains

2011-11-02T16:08:00.002-04:00

Here is a link to a 5 min. excerpt of a 20 min. video I shot of the huge model train layout at Shell Point, where I work. I used our Kessler Pocket Jib and Pocket Dolly:

http://www.shellpoint.org/train/

So long, Steve.

2011-10-06T11:48:00.002-04:00

Esther and I walked into the Apple store in Estero last night to buy her an iPad and the expert helping us asked if we had heard the news. She flashed up the memorial photo on the iPad we were looking at. She said it had happened about an hour before. It was a bit surreal to be having the fun and excitement of getting the iPad and seeing Esther's eyes get big when she saw what it could do. At the same time I was profoundly sad about the passing of such a legendary figure of our time. There are few people in history whose innovtions have touched as many people in ways that permeate daily life. Like millions of others today, iSad.

Beatles

2011-09-15T08:38:00.002-04:00

I'm playing a wedding Saturday and was asked to do Beatles. (It's on the beach, so maybe that is to be expected.) So I taught myself and have been practicing 13 Beatles songs. I was really never specifically a Beatles fan, though pretty much everything on the planet has been influenced by them."Baby I'm amazed" at the breadth of what these guys came up with. So many completely different sounds and melodies spread through so many songs. It's that staggering output that really sets them apart. And I'm finding they are really fun to play. So I guess in a delay of half a lifetime I am finally "discovering" the Beatles.

Origins

2011-09-14T22:57:00.001-04:00

You used to be able to get a driver's license for your dog, it was so easy. First time I moved from one place to another in Fort Myers I got an address-changed license in 5 min. This time I found it takes tons of documentation just to change your address, let alone get a license. I had to get a new birth certificate since I can't find mine after the move. To get one, you have to know what county you were born in. The internet wasn't much help. The hospital I was born in is now a system with buildings in a bunch of towns. I had to email my uncle in Kansas City to ask him where I was born. I feel badly that I know practically nothing about my family before just a couple of generations back. Shouldn't be a surprise though. I didn't even know where I came from.

Second Time Around

2011-08-18T09:53:00.002-04:00

Second time around situations are becoming a way of life for me. This time involves a sailboat. After finally deciding that the O'day 27 project was just going to be too much to deal with for a variety of reasons, I put it up for sale and after some time a fellow actually came forward and bought it. Within a couple days of that, my old friend Dave Nixon emailed to ask me if I would like to have his 15' Cape Cod Mercury that I had repaired for him five years ago. He hadn't used it in a couple of years and it had sprung a leak and was swamped, floating on it's internal flotation. So, a couple of weeks ago we ran up to Orlando and fetched it out of the lake.

After five years in the water, the last few months mostly under it, the little vessel is in need of some attention once again. A new bottom job is already underway and it will get paint inside and out. Since I plan to keep it on the trailer instead of in the water, I plan to use hard, slick paint on the bottom this time. This little boat is actually "containable" in my life in ways the 27 footer was not. I am pretty sure I'll actually finish this project and get to sail this time.

The reason the boat took on water, we found, was that it had been struck by lightning. There was evidence of the strike at the top and bottom of the mast and a golf ball size hole blown in the hull about 18" from the mast step.

A few more hours with the sander, some fiberglass and epoxy resin, and some paint and the little Merc should be ready for more years of happy sailing. I expect it to look like the photo below taken in '06 right after the last restoration.

To see what I'm looking forward to, check out these links to images posted back when I was sailing it on Sand Lake in Orlando:

http://brokenfeathers.blogspot.com/2006/11/daddys-delight.html

http://brokenfeathers.blogspot.com/2006/11/yet-another.html

http://brokenfeathers.blogspot.com/2006/09/sailboats-are-beautiful-things.html

New Pedal Board

2011-06-16T18:16:00.011-04:00

My old pedal board seemed cool when I made it but several shortcomings made themselves known. When I added a Digitech Vocalist Live 4 to my rig, it became too small. The Live 4 needs to be in the guitar signal chain to get it's reference for figuring out harmonies, so it was becoming a pain to plug it in and unplug it every time. I decided that a new board would not have any hard to reach cavities and I wanted to figure out a way to attach devices without Velcro or anything that would get sticky when it gets hot. I really liked a lot about the Pedal Train products that are available, but the only unit they have big enough to hold what I need is a really big square and I needed more of a wide, shallow rectangle. One could use two of their smaller units end to end, but that kind of defeats the purpose of having everything stay pre-wired unless one welded those two units together. If I had a mig welder I probably would have done that, but not having a way to weld aluminum, I had to think of something else.

I spotted a leftover piece of 12" wire shelving in the garage. I got to thinking this would be nice and light if it could be made stiff enough. Also the wires would make it easy to zip tie things to it. A piece of 1x4 across the font and a piece of 1x2 across the back provide the stiffness, make a nice angle, and provide room underneath. I ground and wire-wheeled the ends of the cross wires so they wouldn't catch on anything. I plan on getting some kind of small keyboard case to haul this around. A case for a 61 key should leave a foot or so at the end for coils of cables and there may be room for a few stands as well.

It's tempting to put too much stuff on a pedal board. But it doesn't take too many cycles of load in/set up/strike/load out to make you want to strip everything down to no more than what you absolutely need and use all the time. Also for me, I became fanatical about weight. At the same time, one wants to find ways to make the set and strike as simple as possible with as many things staying pre-wired as possible. This is the setup I've been using lately. Everything is zip tied in place. No Velcro! No sticky!!

With only the 1x4 in front, the pedals felt a little spongy. A 1x2 across the back stiffened it right up and raised the pedals up a pleasing amount.

Grinding a bit off 2 sides of these 1" washers made them fit down into the openings.

A couple extra washers in front of the 1x4 made for a gap big enough to get a zip tie around the front cross wire.

I got an idea from Pedal Train's design. By raising the front it made room underneath for a power supply, or in my case, the original wall worts on a power strip.

I had a few of these brackets in the garage left over from some project or another. I used them to fasten the 1x2 and also as anchor points for zip ties to hold the wall worts in place.

Configuration 2. After a bit of test driving, I realized I needed to put the most used buttons closest to the front. Also got to messing with the drum machine for the first time in a long time and I think I might try to start incorporating it more after all.

Hipster

2011-06-04T09:53:00.000-04:00

Got my new hip yesterday. Everything has been going well. I was ready for worse than what I've experienced so far. Hard to believe the time has come and it's in. I'm looking forward to putting years of discomfort behind me.

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fascination, or not...

2011-05-11T09:03:00.001-04:00

A thought while riding past a school bus stop:

A boy who doesn't look to the sky when an airplane flies over, I feel sorry for.

A boy who doesn't look up when a motorcycle rumbles by, I worry about.

Life Story

2011-03-13T14:48:00.004-04:00

Well, I haven't posted for a long time. I was recently invited into a Facebook group of people from my high school graduating class. Some are sharing their life stories there and I wrote this for them. Thought I might as well put it here too.
_________________________

My life has had many changes and the story is kinda long, so bear with me. Fasten your seat belt...

I went to a kinda wacky, very conservative (to put it mildly) Christian college called Bob Jones University in Greenville, SC. You have either never heard of it or know it as a really strange place. You would be right. They had a fantastic film major in the late 70's and that was great for me. The rest, well that and why I went there is a long story. Got a master's there as well. Got married to my roommate's girlfriend (another long story).

Came back to DG for a couple years and did some freelance film production. Made a few films in Papua New Guinea and Taiwan/China. Then worked in Detroit for a couple of years for a corporate communications company. Then it was on to Toledo for a couple years doing industrial video production for a small chemical company. Then tried to build a company with a former college friend in Dayton - an opportunity of a lifetime and I gave it all I had for a couple of years. We had the coolest shop in town and made some award-winning shows but it all blew up on us and I was left scrambling.

Took an offer in San Bernardino, CA to work for my best friend from college at a govt. contractor at Norton Air Force base doing film editing. I worked on a monthly news-magazine type show called "Air Force Now," which if you were ever in the Air Force, you probably saw. While there I also edited lots of other films including a couple of classified ones that were seen by every aircrew member in Desert Shield and Desert Storm. I would tell you about them but then I'd have to kill all of you. (Not really. They were common sense training, mostly) I lost that job due to the Graham-Rudman act that, you may remember, cut govt. spending across the board.

I ended up working for a Christian evangelical organization that was based out there at the time called Campus Crusade for Christ. I spent nine years with them and they sent me all over the world shooting stories documenting and promoting their work. In the middle of that time they moved their headquarters to Orlando and we moved with them. After I left them I had my own little one-man-band video company for about five years, working out of my house. I thought the international travel would end but it only increased. It was fascinating to see the world. I think I ended up getting to 34 countries. World travel was never something on my personal agenda, but I enjoyed it very much and it changed me and made me a better person in many ways. But it was very hard on my family to be gone so much. And when I was home I was constantly editing, so even though I was in the house I wasn't available to my family much during those years. It took it's toll.

I was offered a position teaching at a small college in Columbia, SC called Columbia International University teaching the courses of a video production minor in a communications program. My wife thought it would help us for me to have a more structured lifestyle and stop traveling. I did that for six years and thought I'd finish out my career there. I enjoyed the first few years a lot but eventually realized I wasn't cut out for teaching long term. And because it was such a small institution and our department was understaffed, it was still long hours. Also toward the end of that time a perfect storm of very difficult things hit our family and my wife and I hit the rocks. Separation and divorce followed.

I went back to Orlando where a lot of corporate production goes on and where I had many contacts. That went pretty well but eventually I got tired of the free-lance life. Living alone and with no regular co-workers or any kind of regular schedule or rhythm of life of any kind just got kind of unhealthy. I was offered a job in Fort Myers working on a daily TV show for an upscale retirement community with about 2,200 residents - the only show of it's kind as far as we have been able to determine. It sounded like it would be a sleepy, boring gig, but has turned out to be anything but. There are over 100 groups and clubs with things going on all the time. We tell stories about the interesting lives of these people. All kinds of stuff. It keeps us hopping but the three of us who work on it full-time are able to get it done during regular business hours, mostly, something that has never been possible in my life before. I'm making better money than ever (not that I've ever raked it in), have less stress, it's a paradise of an environment, and the people I work with and serve are wonderful. All in all it's a great gig. (You can see the place at shellpoint.org and you can see current-week episodes of our show at shellpoint.net/shellpointtoday) (oh, sometimes I'm one of the on-camera hosts, so you might find that amusing). I've been here three and a half years and have no intention of leaving any time soon.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Esther and I got back together. We had remained in communication throughout our divorce and eventually went through a season of mutual forgiveness for all that had gone on between us. After that we were friends again. During a visit I made up to Columbia to spend some time during Christmas with my grown kids, she and I ended up together quite a bit. A miracle that neither of us expected happened and we reconciled. We were re-married a few months later. That was two years ago. We are doing great now. In fact, though I would not wish the experience on my worst enemy, having gone through what we did, we are in a place that would not have been possible otherwise. I think if we had muddled through we would probably be miserable with each other now. Instead we have such a better understanding of each other and our relationship is better than I ever thought possible. I give God the credit for working a miracle with us.

Throughout all the craziness of our lives we managed to raise two incredible kids. Nathan is 27, married and living in Baltimore. Stacey is 25, still single, and working for a Christian ministry in Minneapolis. Neither has ever given us a minute of grief, they are just fantastic people. How that happened through all the chaos they grew up with, I'm not sure. I think it's a testament to how amazing their mother is.

As you can imagine, I have had some pretty incredible experiences. Nine trips to Russia during the 90's, on every continent except Africa - still want to get there sometime. Shooting video in jungles and war zones. Flying airplanes, riding motorcycles, sailing, scuba diving, playing music, writing a lot. And along the way meeting the most amazing people. It's been a wild ride. I never made much money doing any of it, but what a treasure of experiences and memories I have. I am blessed.

Structure

2010-11-15T16:46:00.001-05:00

A friend and colleague sent me something today about authority and it got me thinking a bit. I’m not much of a structure person naturally, but I’ve learned the hard way that for me, structure is actually very freeing. There are whole swaths of my life now that I don’t have to worry much about because they are so structured I know pretty much exactly what to expect and how to function. That serves the unstructured time I have left very well because there is far less chaos, far more time for unhurried intimacy with others, and far more fertile ground for creative pursuits. Not to mention the blessing of reasonable financial stability. I don’t particularly like structure and authority, but my life is far happier and peaceful with it.

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High Mileage

2010-07-21T17:21:00.000-04:00

My car has been hanging in there for me for a long time. This just happened:

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House Projects

2010-06-23T23:37:00.014-04:00

I've been pretty busy lately. Here are some of my latest projects:

We can canoe in our backyard.

2-part epoxy paint on the garage floor.
(this makes me very happy!)

Complete new multi-stage water treatment system. The well water is chock full of iron and sulfur as it comes out of the ground. It takes some doing to get it cleaned up. The system came in 14 boxes and was a considerable plumbing project to hook up.

Under sink reverse-osmosis system for drinking & cooking water.

We paid to have the new dish washer installed but the guy wasn't too thorough. I had to re-do most of it.

Built a platform to get the new front loading washer and dryer up off the floor to make them easier to use. Also made a place for the kitty litter box underneath. Had to take about a foot out of the dryer duct in the attic to pull the inlet up over the deck of the platform.

This is the piece of duct that came out. It was slightly in need of cleaning!

We paid to have these delivered and installed as well. It had to do with the govt. rebate. Anyway, the guy only did half the job here as well. He didn't want to lift the units onto the platform and went on about liability and other such claptrap. Again, I had to do most of the install work myself.

Added lots of shelving to our bedroom closet.

It came with one course of shelving half way around. There was room for lots more.

Added shelving to closet of one of the front bedrooms that has become my "man cave."
Maybe I should call it the "Dan Cave."

My guitars now have a cozy home.

New handle for screen door on lanai.
Previous set-up was to reach through hole in screen to slide latch.

Hung bird feeders.
(The blackbirds had obviously shown up the day I shot this. They clean it out pretty much in one go.)

If you have good eyes, there are three feeders and a bird bath.
Well, even if you don't have good eyes, they are still there.

The Dan Cave during normal hours of operation.

Here's an unpanorama. Look at the next few shots and imagine yourself turning counter-clockwise.

The shelves and hardware to hang them used to be in my dad's office/library.
They are oak stair tread boards, which I don't think you can even buy anymore.

5 stones are from the stream bed in the Valley of Elah. Look it up!

You can probably tell I was going for sensory overload. Esther doesn't go for this style of decoration. But she gave me this room to do with as I pleased and has admirably not said a word about what I've done. The other guest room is hers to do with as she pleases and I'm keeping my mouth shut.

Speaking of Esther, here she is in her kitchen. We still don't have a stove yet, but she has been feeding me delicious meals nonetheless.

The place is actually starting to look like it is inhabited by humans and not the cardboard box creatures.

We LOVE our lanai and our view! This we feel is God's wonderful gift to us. Many a peaceful moment is spent here almost every day.

Our kitty friends are becoming more and more part of the family. They are great pals.

Garage door opener. This one has a motion sensor that turns the light on when you walk in. Cool. It's also belt driven like a new Harley and very quiet. (not like a Harley)

Where the old tank water heater used to be. (see garage photo way above) I turned the plumbing around into the laundry room on the other side of the wall. Also stubbed out for a future garage sink while I was at it since there was a drain hook up for the pressure relief overflow on the tank (not required for the new one). Getting rid of the tank will make more room for my workbench to go in this alcove in the garage.

Ta da! The new tankless, on-demand water heater. Small, uses less than half the electricity, you never run out of hot water. But there are some gotcha's. I did a lot of research and I believe I have anticipated and addressed the possible disadvantages. I will summarize all by saying, spend the extra to get a German built Stiebel-Eltron for it's superior temp control system and get the biggest one your panel will handle, at least one or two sizes bigger than the recommendation for your house.

While it uses less electricity overall, when it's on, it uses a lot more for the short time a faucet is running. The old heater had one 30 amp, 220v circuit. This one needs two separate 60 amp, 220v circuits. Check out how much heavier #6 wire is than the normal house wiring. It's a fun electrical project as well as a plumbing project!

Each of the two heating vessels needs it's own 220v circuit. If you look close, you can see leads to temp sensors on the inlet and the outlet. Also there is a flow meter. These readings are fed to a microprocessor that uses them to control variable power to the heaters. It works fantastically to keep the temperature consistent, a weakness of other units that use flow switches instead of meters and have on/off switches on the heating elements instead of variable power. The other complaint is that they just don't quite keep up. This model is the Tempra 24, the biggest one that my 200 amp panel can handle. It definitely can keep up!
Okay, more than you wanted to know, I'm sure...

Again, while I was at it, I plumbed extra bypass valves and made up some pipes to enable easy flushing of the unit with vinegar. Calcification of the internals has been a problem for some, though it shouldn't be for us with our water treatment system. The fix is regular vinegar flushes. I'm going to do it just to be safe. If these things don't get gunked up inside with minerals they can last for decades.

The next project:
shelving in the garage and a workbench/shop setup. Already been designed and materials are ready to go.

No Cost Investment

2010-05-03T11:32:00.000-04:00

As I left my neighborhood on my first morning commuting in to work on my motorcycle from our new house, I passed a young, black woman at her crossing-guard post in the school zone, waiting for the kids to show up. My flip-up helmet was still in the "up" position, thus revealing my face. I smiled and gave her a little wave as I passed by. She watched me with a rather blank look on her face. The second morning I did the same thing and got a little smile and a little wave back. Every day since, I have gotten a beaming smile and a confident wave in response to my passing morning greeting.

A wave and a smile cost nothing. No money. No extra time. Virtually no energy. But they are an investment, nonetheless. I really have no idea what the value of the investment is, but I'm confident that there is real value there. I have no idea what that girl's life is like, but I would imagine that it has it's share of difficulties and challenges. To see that face light up every morning certainly is a wonderful payback to me. Who knows what she is thinking about the friendly guy on the red Honda, but I like to think that for a moment every morning she feels a little bit more valued. And to me, that's a high quality investment.

Baby

2009-12-13T21:41:00.000-05:00

We have a new baby at our house. Our cockatiels have successfully procreated!

My Guitar History

2009-10-17T23:45:00.003-04:00

The best I've been able to pin the date, I was no more than 6 years old, probably in Michigan, when I was at a restaurant with my parents at a Holiday Inn. Why I remember it was a Holiday Inn I don't know, but I do remember that it was. There was a bar down a flight of stairs just off this restaurant. I wandered down there while my parents finished eating. It was decorated up with a wine cellar theme with barrel ends hung on the walls and such like. I remember liking the vibe of the room. But what drew me down there was a guy with a hollow-body electric guitar on a little stage playing. It was early and there was nobody else in the bar yet. I guess that's why he didn't mind a little kid coming in to listen. I remember that he smiled really big and was very welcoming. I think he was a black man, but I don't remember that exactly. I do remember his smile. And I remember the SOUND! He had a lot of reverb dialed into his amp and was playing and singing “Guantanamera.” I didn't know that then, but years later when I heard it I remembered that it was the song he had been playing. It was magical! That was the seed. It wouldn't germinate for another six or seven years and a few false starts with the violin, the trumpet, and the piano later, but once it did, it had me for life. I recently had occasion to do some Spanish songs and fulfilled a long-put-off goal of working up a rendition of Guantanamera. The Spanish words are coming very slowly, but it's a special thrill for me to do that song.

Jim, my next door neighbor when I was in 7th grade, got a guitar with his mom's S&H green stamps. It came with a little chord chart and we both learned a few chords the day it arrived. I thought, "I've got to get one of these things!" So I mail ordered a little Barclay for $10 from a Service Merchandise catalog my folks had. (That was back before they had any stores.) I don't know whatever happened to that one. I learned more chords and soon was asked to play for sing-alongs with the Jr. High church youth group along with a few buddies of mine who had also discovered the guitar. (There were an awful lot of us in 1969.) The youth group opportunity gave me more reason to push to learn. I stole a lot of knowledge from my good friend, Larry Robinson, who actually took lessons, much to his annoyance since he worked hard for the money to pay for them.

I soon discovered the limits of that first guitar, so I ordered the best one in the catalog, a bigger Barclay for $50. It wasn't a bad guitar. I bought some fancy chrome tuners for it and installed them myself with my dad's electric drill. Made it look a lot more expensive. I learned a lot on it. Even wrote my first song on it. Sure wish I still had the thing. But I had my sights set on a better instrument.

I was in a Youth for Christ singing group in high school called the Fox Valley Campus Life Singers. My first year in it, Steve Camp was the guitar player. (He went on to record a bunch of contemporary Christian albums.) Steve had a beautiful big blonde Guild that he was going to sell to me for $250. But he took it on an airline trip and checked it as baggage and the neck snapped. Many years later I found out that this is caused by a shock to the headstock end of the instrument and can be avoided by loosening the strings. I always thought somebody had opened the case and done it deliberately, but it can easily happen inside a locked case. Anyway, I bought the leather strap that had been on the Guild from Steve for $3 and it's on my guitar to this day.

I shopped all over the western suburbs of Chicago for a guitar. I was 15 and most of these trips were on my bicycle. In some shops I'd see a Martin locked in a glass case. I figured out they must be special, though I'd never heard of them before. Someone told me I should check Sid Sherman Music in downtown Chicago. I did, and found they had dozens and dozens of Martins hanging on the wall. Seems they were the Chicago area distributor. They had a never-before "clearance" deal going on certain Martins. (In the first few years of the '70s Martin expanded their factory, bought a bunch of new machinery, and cranked up their production building thousands of guitars.) The guy said he'd take my Barclay plus $390 and set me up with a Martin D-18 complete with hardshell case and I'd never be sorry. I had to borrow another hundred bucks from my dad, but I got the Martin and indeed, I've never been sorry. It's now worth at least $2,000. That's what the new ones go for. And the older they get the better they sound. I was told by one guitar shop owner a few years ago that my D-18 was the best sounding one he had ever seen, so it may be worth more. But I'd never be able to sell it now. It's almost like a member of the family. I had Barcus Barry piezo pickup installed in it after about 20 years. It's okay, but a bit weak on the low end. An upgrade may be in order.

But now a few other guitars have been added to the stable. When I started teaching college, I wanted a cheap guitar to leave out in my office, knowing that every other kid who came in would pick up a guitar that happened to be there, so leaving the Martin on a stand was out of the question. I got a Washburn for a hundred bucks on sale from Musician's Friend. It's Chinese made and certainly has limitations, but it's actually not a bad instrument. I enjoy playing it. It's certainly by far the best $100 guitar I've ever come across. Then, after moving to Fort Myers, I happened to be in a small guitar shop called “Real Guitars” looking for a backpack case that would work on my motorcycle. But I picked up a jumbo Guild and fell in love with it. There have been a few special guitars through the years that I happened to pick up in a shop and forever after wished I had bought them. Well, this was another of those situations. Only this time I had a little money and could afford it. So I went back the next day and bought the thing. It's the same color as Steve Camp's guitar I almost bought years ago, so I finally have a big beautiful blonde Guild. Guess it was meant to be after all. It's wonderful. And there is a Peavy Millennium bass I picked up used back when I was doing a bunch of recording after getting tired of trying to get good bass parts out of the on-board bass simulator in my recorder. And it looks like a nylon string Ovation belonging to my Flamenco-playing friend, Mike Anthony, may join my stable permanently. It's been living here for some time now as as a guest. There are a few others I'd like to add. I've wanted a Taylor for a long time. I picked up somebody's jumbo with a Florentine cutaway once and have wanted one just like it ever since. And of course everybody needs a Stratocaster and I've yet to own one. I had a Russtone Shark electric that I bought in Moscow on a lark at the end of a trip over there. That one was really junk. And got me into some trouble with my wife - a story for another day. Then I had a Ty Tabor signature Yamaha RGX-TT that Ty signed for me at a King's X concert. That one was beautiful and wonderful to play. But, alas, both of those electrics went on E-bay, the Ty Tabor signature fetching more than twice what I had paid for it and making a late house payment when things were tight. Thanks Ty! But, man, I hated to sell it. And then there's the 12-string I let go of in high school that has been wanting to be replaced all these years. That's about it. That's “all” I need!

Playing has brought me so much comfort and joy and both simple and exquisite pleasure throughout my life. I have spent far more time playing alone than around or with others. It has been a personal treasure of expression, therapy, creativity, and worship. And it has also been great to play for others to hear in churches, in restaurants, and at various public meetings and private events where I've had opportunity to play myself or with bands or other groups. I'm not a great player, but I'm also not a beginner. I've learned what I know of the guitar more by listening to others, experimenting with it, and just loving it than by any kind of training. Still, I have enough tricks up my sleeve that I've managed to get paying gigs now and again. I love getting paid to play. It's great validation, not to mention the ability to buy stuff, but I really don't do it for the money. I just love to play. I'm so thankful that I've been given enough ability to play music that I love. And I do consider what I have a gift. I really don't know exactly how I've been able to get to where I've gotten to, which is “pretty good” or “hack” depending on one's perspective, but I thank God that I have what I have and I do try to be a good steward: to improve, to look for opportunities to share it, and make as much of it as I can.

Some people look down on the guitar, thinking of it as a simple instrument and not fit for “serious” music. This may come from the fact that the guitar rewards a very small amount of time and effort with the ability to strum a few chords and play songs. The majority of players never get beyond this stage so there are millions of hacks playing very simplistically feeding this notion. That said, strumming a few chords has brought the gift of music and great joy to untold millions and there is nothing wrong with that. It's wonderful that unlike, say, the violin or french horn, one can start to get music out of it almost right away. But it is not a simple instrument. And it has been a part of serious music long before the first keyboard of any type was ever invented. You can never reach the end of the guitar. There are so many different types of guitars and so many sounds to be gotten from each, so many different techniques. There are so many styles of music that are great on guitar and so many songs in every genre. It is an instrument that keeps giving and giving more with every bit of effort you invest. And no matter how masterful you get, there are huge vistas of possibility out there, more than any one person could ever explore. There are virtuoso players all over who have mined treasures of astounding variety out of this niche or that. It's a world too big to take in. It's a wonder. It's a gift. And I'm very grateful for the adventure I've had on my own personal journey and the areas of that world I've been able to visit and be a part of.

So how about you? Do you love that magical sound? Do you want to play guitar? You can! It only takes one thing. You just have to want to bad enough.

PS: a few samples can be found at soundclick.com/danphilgreen

Michael Anthony

2009-10-17T20:02:00.001-04:00

At Salsa's in Fort Myers. Sat in with guitar pal Mike on a few songs. Fun!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone 3Gs

Photo test from iPhone

2009-09-25T21:58:00.001-04:00

Mmm. Will this work

He he! I guess so! Man is this thing cool!

-Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone 3Gs

Fun with my new phone

2009-09-25T11:25:00.001-04:00

My phone has finally caught up with me. Or maybe I with it. The whole time I was in Orlando I had a South Carolina number. While here in Fort Myers, I've had an Orlando number. The last phone, the one that seemed so cool two years ago, bit the dust a couple of weeks ago. Now that the iPhone has come down into the price range of mere mortals I decided to finally take the plunge. WOW! This thing is like stepping into a time machine and zooming ahead. Unbelievable what can be done with it. Like making a blog entry for example. There are apps available for things I'm sure Steve Jobs never imagined. It's easily the most amazing gadget I've ever had. It's even reasonably easy to type on - for a phone anyway. Most technology never quite delivers on it's promises. This little gem goes beyond.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Eat, Eat, Eat some more!!

2009-08-31T19:21:00.005-04:00

A Day on the Water in Fort Myers

2009-08-25T18:43:00.006-04:00

My friend, Dr. Bill, let us use his boat for the day.

Stacey had to jump in to cool off.

Lunch always tastes better when you arrive by boat.

Another visit to the spot where we got married. Stacey was with us for that too.

Took a little tour of the harbor and saw the shrimp boats.

And for dinner. . .

Riding with some new friends

2009-06-07T22:08:00.011-04:00

Ready to go!

The meet-up.

Trying on a 750 Shadow for size.

We cleaned the bike yesterday. I wish you could have seen it!

But it was a great ride and worth getting a little wet. And we missed the really big stuff, believe it or not.

Stacey Time!

2009-04-02T22:31:00.005-04:00

Wedding Redeux

2009-04-02T18:35:00.008-04:00

The map below

2009-03-01T15:14:00.001-05:00

is from a Face Book application I played with. Click on the map and you can zoom in and look around. If I could have all the money that was spent buying me airline tickets and gasoline in my life it would be a tough call, but I think I'd still rather have all the amazing experiences.

Places I've Visited

2009-03-01T15:08:00.004-05:00

Rome, Italy

Willemstad, Curacao

Madang, Papua New Guinea

Budapest, Hungary

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Split, Croatia

Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

St. Petersburg, Russia

Create your own travel map or travel blog

Travel Info at TripAdvisor

Mon - Fri Gig

2009-02-19T20:01:00.011-05:00

Welcome to Shell Point TV.

Home of "Shell Point Today," the only daily TV show
produced by a retirement community. It runs 24/7 on the half hour
via ch. 11 of our cable system to our approx. 2,000 residents.
We've done a lot of work on the studio since August.
Click here to see what it used to look like.

A couple of my good-looking co-workers.
And they are even nicer than they look!

My cubby hole.

Sunday Morning Gig

2009-02-15T15:49:00.005-05:00

For a good while I was directing video at the Village Church at Shell Point every Sunday. Now I'm on a rotation every third Sunday. They have a new HD switcher, one manned JVC HD cam, and three Sony robotic HD cams. The video is for I-mag and also goes live to the in-house cable system which includes the skilled nursing facility and the two assisted living facilities, which was the initial reason for doing TV in the church. They will soon be rebroadcasting the service several times during the week.

Panasonic AV-HS400 Hi Def Switcher

Virtual monitors on one flat panel mean no more mis-matched monitors!

Sony robotic camera controller

Jason & his screens

Peep hole to reality

She's Back!

2009-02-11T20:27:00.014-05:00

"Columbia Christmas" or "finally! family!"

2009-01-06T19:56:00.005-05:00

It had been so long since I had been with my family. Last time was my daughter's college graduation last spring. I got to go up to South Carolina for 10 days to see them. Until about a week and a half before I hadn't even considered that it might be possible. But some programming decisions by my boss meant that we could re-run some things and get our shows done in advance and I realized I could get away and actually use some of the month of vacation time I've accrued. It was good. Very good.

with favorite daughter

and favorite former wife

favorite son and favorite daughter-in-law

favorite son's favorite dog
(closest thing to a grandchild so far)

you wouldn't like me when I'm angry

going places

Happy New Year everybody!

Epoxy by the gallon

2008-12-06T16:00:00.004-05:00

mass production

2008-12-03T23:13:00.003-05:00

Staining coming along nicely. I discovered that Minwax water based "Rosewood" stain makes okoume marine plywood look reasonably close to what was already in the boat, which I think is teak veneer, once both are under a coat of epoxy.

Ready for epoxy coating but it's gotten too late and I'm going to bed. Maybe tomorrow. The exposed faces of these pieces are either going to be inside a cabinet or covered by Formica, thus no stain.

Parts is Parts

2008-11-30T21:12:00.008-05:00

I've been busy making sailboat parts

To the left is the port main bulkhead replacement section. The two similar piece to it's right are the two parts of a fold out table. It folds down from the main bulkhead on a hinge on the bottom as you see it here and the smaller section unfolds from the larger section on a piano hinge if you want a bigger table. This will get white Formica except for the bottom of the main section that will show when the whole thing is stowed up against the bulkhead.

This is a partition/locker for behind the head. The port main bulkhead will form the left end and the V-berth bulkhead will form the right end. The top will sit on a few cleats and be a lid to the area below. The partition part will actually come up about four inches higher than the lid/shelf when installed and will have piece of teak trim on the top edge from the piece it replaces. These pieces get white Formica.

This was just going to be the bulkhead repair project, but once you get into something...
It turns out that most of the lavatory cabinet was rotten and it's a whole lot easier to work on with the bulkhead out. So off I went in that direction. There was a lot of wasted space to the right of the sink above an area where there was a hole in the bulkhead for feet to make the settee/berth on the starboard side long enough for an adult to sleep in. I added a shelf above the foot area. Should be handy for wallet, watch, glasses, etc. I still have to cut the doorway in the face of the cabinet for the storage area under the sink. More white Formica on the cabinet front and door and the counter top. The funny shape piece in the foreground is another bulkhead replacement section. On the starboard side the business end (the top) of the main bulkhead that holds the chainplate was fine but there was some rot on the bottom.

The boat didn't have one of these when I got it. It's a removable piece to fill the hole in the aft end of the V-berth. Lots of sailboats have this feature. It gives the option of either having an area where you can put your feet on the floor and sit up in the V-berth or you can use this piece and have a solid bed all the way across. It makes perfect sense if you see it in a boat.

This is where it goes. You can see the slot molded for it. The trifold door goes in the opening starting at the level of the insert and goes up. I removed the ridiculous piece of 1/4" plywood across the opening. The previous owner attached his anchor rope to it! Unbelievable! He must have never anchored in anything but absolute calm. It's amazing that it wasn't ripped right out of there. Quite a few things on this boat were not set up very well.

These were a lot of work: tri-fold doors for the V-berth and for the head. They also took 15 hinges. Fortunately I found an on-line source for stainless steel hinges direct from a manufacturer. Otherwise these would have been way too expensive. They fit up nicely and should work well, but after I got them trial fitted I got to thinking about the finger pinch hazard they poze. Mmmm... May have to rethink this. After all, I'm hoping that this boat will be a grandkid magnet, not a source of pain. Maybe I can come up with a safety system. (btw, no grandkids on the horizon yet. But by the time this boat is ready to sail?...)

The parts such as these that are going to be left with the wood showing are going to first get water based stain (per West System tech support suggestion) to try to match the original interior teak veneer plywood, of which there will still be quite a bit in the boat. I bought three colors hoping to mix up something close. Then the pieces will get a coating of epoxy for water and rot protection. Then marine spar varnish will go over the top of the epoxy. (Epoxy must have UV protection, UV breakdown being it's Achille's heel.)

This is a new base for the 9 gal. aft water tank. It's upside down. The original one was rotten and in a pretty dumb spot. It wasted a lot of area in the starboard locker behind the galley. There was an area under the galley next to the cooler that was completely inaccessible and unusable. I'm moving the tank to that area and, lucky me, the existing hoses all still work. This new base will be epoxied and tabbed to the hull. Also will be coated all sides with epoxy to hopefully not suffer the rot of it's predecessor.

Previous tank location. New location is in the foreground next to the cooler chest, the foam insulation of which is visible to the right. The tank will come to just aft of the galley sink through hull visible in lower left. A former owner put a plywood bulkhead in the locker thus closing off this entire area from use. I removed it. It's a huge amount of cubic space. Plenty of room for an inflatable dingy, a couple of outboard motors, and still room for lots more. This picture was made holding the camera down through the hole in the galley counter top where the stove top would normally drop in.

This is the original galley backsplash. It's removed to get, you guessed it, white Formica. If you hadn't figured it out by now, the galley top is going to be white Formica too. the old reddish brown Formica was just dark and dreary looking. The white should freshen up the galley and the head nicely and make all brighter. It's hard to believe that my little 27 foot boat is about to swallow up two 4x8' sheets of Formica laminate, but planning indicates that I have enough for all the parts but there will be very little left over.

There was a funky smell in the boat when I got it. Not horrible, just mildly annoying. I thought it was in the old cushions but taking them out didn't change anything. I scrubbed the inside of the hull and everything with diluted Clorox bleach. Still the smell was pretty much the same. Now that I've removed basically all the rotten wood from the boat, the smell is almost gone. So if your boat has a musty scent that you can't get rid of, look for some rotting wood. The smell is the least of the problems associated with rot, but I never thought about smell being an issue with it. It is!

Boat Progress at Last

2008-11-26T23:33:00.004-05:00

Main bulkheads as they were when I purchased the boat. Note rot surrounding port side chainplate bolts in upper left of picture. (For you non-sailors, this is the attachment point of the shroud (cable) that holds the mast up. Pretty important that the wood NOT be rotten.) The leak that caused the rot was where the chainplate penetrated the deck - a common problem on most sailboats. On the starboard side, the wood in the upper part of the bulkhead was sound, but the bottom was rotted from a leaking lower shroud attachment point aft of the bulkhead.

Section of port side main bulkhead cut out and hull ground in prep for new fiberglass tabbing.

Same port bulkhead cut out seen from front side.

Starboard side main bulkhead with rotten section cut out. Also the lavatory cabinet has been removed. Some of the parts had rot so I made all new parts for it.

Bulkhead section of 1/2" Okoume marine plywood ($80/4x8 sheet, Lloyds certified, imported from France - quite hard to come by!) trial fitted into place. Rotted section along bottom of rest of bulkhead also being replaced. Epoxy and fiberglass materials showed up today so it shouldn't be long until this is epoxied into place. (Buying the stuff online saves a ton of money.) Per West System tech support's suggestion, I plan to use a water based stain on the bare wood first to try to match the teak veneer original plywood as closely as possible. (You can't put oil based anything under epoxy.) Home Depot has a line of water-based semi-transparent stain (Lowe's didn't have any). It's only available by the gallon but at $20/gal. that's less than oil based stains. The guy there said he could custom color it to match for me. I'm taking some wood samples of the old finish and some scraps of the new bare wood. We'll see how that works out. Then the pieces will be coated entirely with epoxy. Then I will install them in the boat. Later they will get a coat or two of spar varnish for UV protection of the epoxy.

Back online at last

2008-10-09T22:08:00.002-04:00

As of tonight I have an internet connection at home for the first time in just over 13 months. I have been able to check email at work but all social networking sites are blocked there so I've been gone from the blog and the facebook and all that kind of thing. I have much less time for it these days but now that I can take a peek from time to time at home I may show up a bit more often.

Tropical Splendor

2008-09-14T20:13:00.003-04:00

I am blessed to work in an area of extreme beauty. The ibis, egrets, herons, osprey, eagles, manatee, and dolphins are so common around here we take them for granted, not to mention the many varieties of palm trees and unusual plants of all kinds. Not long ago I stepped out the front door of the house I've been living in for the last year. A bush I had brushed past daily without noticing a thing about it suddenly was festooned with these most exotic flowers. I have no idea what they are called, I really should look them up. But I had never seen anything quite like them before. They look like something alien to me with such radical shape and color and texture. Tropical plants can be so extreme. I really need to get hold of a better camera because these photos just don't do these flowers justice.

Welcome to Florida!

Reunion

2008-08-06T21:30:00.004-04:00

This past weekend I was in Wheaton, Illinois at a reunion of the Fox Valley Campus Life Singers, a choral group I was in back in high school. It was a remarkable group both musically and in the relationships we had with each other. I didn't connect all that much with my high school proper and would probably never go to a reunion. I was much more connected with my youth group at church, but this music group was the priority of my life. It was something very special. I found a recording of us about a year ago that somehow had survived 35 years of hot attics and garages. I was able to get it onto a CD and then Googled up our old director and his wife, who was our accompanist, and sent them a copy. A week or so later a volley of emails ensued out of which came the idea to have a reunion. That started a year-long manhunt for about 40 people who had been in the group during a three year span when Sherman and Marti Williams had been directing. I was able to find or account for all but about 6 and about 15 came to the reunion along with some spouses and the Williams. I set up a site on Flickr.com for all the photos and posted the following in the discussion section.
___________________________________

Okay, this is a bit of a report of sorts mainly for the benefit of those of our number who were not able to attend the reunion this last weekend. I'm hoping others will chime in with their thoughts about it.

We met for the first time at my mom's home in Glen Ellyn. They have a big place with a beautifully landscaped back yard and a big pool. Steve Van Oss and his wife Kym put together all the meals and we started right off with a plentiful table of goodies. Various ones showed up as the afternoon progressed and each was greeted with cheers and claps and hugs. There was an awful lot of laughter and many jokes and stories.

One of the most fun things for me was that Jan Maendler Levin made it. For the sake of the record here and for anyone who wasn't getting my email updates as it unfolded, I had tried and tried to find her over the last year without success. About a month ago I was videotaping a story about a genealogy library in the course of my job. I asked the lady there if she would help me find a few people and she enthusiastically agreed. She found a marriage record and we got the name of Jan's husband. Then in another database she found a phone number. I called and left a message about a month ago and after getting no response, assumed it to be yet another dead end. Then Thursday morning I got a call from Jan! She had been in Africa on a mission trip for a month and had just gotten home the night before! When she asked about the reunion I had to tell her “it starts tomorrow!” Then I suggested she do something crazy and try to get a ticket. Her husband encouraged her to do it, she came, and it was amazing! It was just one of the most significant specific answers to prayer I've been involved with for quite a while. I had a lot of people praying for a long time and the answer came 24 hours before the reunion started. I do believe God was having fun with that one! Jan's story of God's grace in her life since high school was just fantastic. What a joy!

We had terrific catered Italian dinner and then it was over to the brand new giant size Wheaton Bible Church to rehearse. We ran through the first song after 35 years and completely shocked ourselves. We sounded amazing! In the new choir practice room of the new building with superb acoustics we cut off at the end all together with great precision, per our training by Sherman years ago, and the sound just swirled around and lingered over our heads in that big room and it was just magical! We just couldn't get over what it sounded like. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that we all had chills from it. It was just more fun than you can imagine.

So, we sang about five different numbers and then chose two to perform at W.B.C. on Sunday morning. After a good run at rehearsing, we gathered around in a circle and each of us had 15 whole minutes to share our life story. Sherman encouraged us to be praying for the person as they shared that they would be able to express the right things from a whole lifetime that would speak to the others and would allow the others to minister to them. Then the person who had just shared would sit in a chair in the middle of the circle and we would all lay hands on that person and pray for them. Usually four or five or six would pray. This was praying full of tears and laughter and verbal agreements and great power. You could feel the Lord meeting with us. Just great, blessed stuff.

After all these years it was amazing how we all were able to just open up and share such deep things with each other. Most of us have gotten beaten up pretty good along the way. We are a broken bunch. Some have been there and back, some of us are still in the midst. But God's hand was so evident in story after story. I was just hoping that we would somehow be able to recapture just a little bit of the magic we all felt in the group back in high school. There was a quality to the way we were with each other way back then that has profoundly impacted my whole life. To this day I can't quite get my mind around what it was or describe it adequately. Well, that magic was back. Not just a little bit, but even fuller and richer than I remember. I thought my heart would burst. I haven't experienced so much concentrated joy in a very, very long time.

Well we cycled between rehearsing, sharing in the circle, and eating meals until it was showtime on Sunday morning. That went splendidly. Then we had a delicious brunch in a private room at the Arrowhead Country Club. After that we went over to Wendy's house which was nearby and the last two shared; Kerry and then Bob Lamson. Then we did some impromptu singing and just hung out. Various ones had to go until just a few of us were left and finally we let Wendy have her house back.

So much was shared in the circle there is no way to get it down here, nor would that be appropriate to have all documented. Many of us have been through terrible ordeals of various kinds. But all testified to God's grace and goodness to us. And the love just poured out in the prayer. What a privilege to be part of a group when such Holy Spirit stuff starts happening. It blessed my socks off.

I think I'll stop here. I'll probably think of more I'll want to write. I hope you will take a minute to share some of your thoughts and perspective here if you were there. Even if you weren't, feel free to respond or maybe share something from back in the day.

You guys will always hold a very special place in my heart. And someday we'll be together in heaven and the party won't ever have to end!

Love to all,

Dan Philgreen

1426 miles, 8 states, 1 diploma

2008-05-07T21:32:00.005-04:00

I did the two birds with one stone thing and combined a trip to Pennsylvania to pick up a 750 Nighthawk I bought from friend Keith Hammack with a stop over in Columbia, SC for my daughter's college graduation. Spreading the 1400+ miles of riding over four days with two more days in the middle made it very doable, but my 50 yr. old tush still got pretty sore. But it was a good ride with perfect weather on a beauty of a machine.

The night before taking off I wired up a 12v receptacle to power the GPS. I had purchased a National Cycle Plexifairing and had it sent up to Keith who installed it for me before I got there. Very nice.
Keith put up a few more images of the prep here.

On my way.

I'm thinking some hard saddle bags will be just the thing.

I stayed one night in Bassett, VA. Keith's grandpa, Maurice Hammack, got me up in this 300hp conversion Cessna 182. It was an awfully heavy airplane and an awfully short grass strip for my meager pilot skills scaled with decades of rust. I didn't do too well but he is a good instructor and kept us safe. Sure was fun to get my hands on a set of wings again at any rate.

The Graduate

The most fun was seeing her open up her present.

A new Nikon for somebody who definitely knows what to do with it.

The whole fam together again. Friend Mark shared the day with us. I just got to thinking that he has the distinction of being considered a very good friend of each of us. There aren't many people of whom that is true as scattered as we all are.

Then it was nap time for everybody.
I'm not as young as I used to was.

The end of best 50 miles of my ride.

A favorite.

Knowing

2008-04-19T16:03:00.000-04:00

Any discussion of origins must at some point drift from the realm of hard science into philosophy. There is simply too much that exists in the realms of pre-history, of which there are no intentionally recorded observations but rather only a spotty fossil record subject to wide interpretation, and in virtually all of the future unknowable to us with any iron clad certainty. Even in the present the complexity of what is directly observable contains vast tracts of the so far unknown and unexplainable. So one's epistemology comes to bear as well as the facts of science.

Science is tangible. We like science a lot. But it is limited. It cannot cover all there is to know. Any 7^th grader should be able to tell you that the scientific method involves the observable and repeatable proof of a theory. The scientific method cannot be used to fathom all knowledge any more than a ruler can be used to measure the quantity of happiness in a child's laughter. It simply does not always apply. To hold the position that one will only believe what is provable through hard science is to choose an epistemology and I submit it is one characterized by intellectual blinders. This is not to in any way discredit hard science. Science is of extreme importance. It is also important to be careful what we call science. It would appear that the scientific method stands inconveniently in the way of a good bit of what likes to hide under the cloak of scientific respectability.

An elementary tenet of science and of the nature of knowledge in general is that one must examine evidence. But, because of the vastness of extant data and the exponentially greater vastness of recorded thought regarding it, it is impossible to take in everything. So we tend to categorize it and of necessity often accept representations of it in order to pass personal judgment.

And now, a rant:
By and large I detest TV preachers. I would like to see an intelligent representation of intelligent design, creationism, and Christianity in the popular marketplace of ideas in our culture but for the most part we have raving simpletons. We generally get infantile thinking, gross distortion, and/or outright misrepresentation. I am disgusted and angered because they do their own cause harm by making it far too easy to dismiss a whole realm of valid thought behind their inept representation of it. I am at a loss to explain why these types of religious people are the ones who end up on TV. It might appear to be some kind of natural selection running in reverse. I'm also cynical enough to entertain the possibility that they may be pawns in some sinister design.

Now back to examining evidence. If one dismisses I.D. (or perhaps further down that line the possibility of the existence of God and creation) based on the representation of Christian television, one is deciding on the basis of something worse than ignorance. Ignorance is the lack of knowledge. When one thinks he has been given insight based on a distracting smokescreen, then one has been deceived. Ignorance is a better state to be in than deception. At least one knows there is something yet to be known rather than to have dismissed the possibility of something valid and moved on. Like a rescue plane having missed seeing the survivors leaving a grid location and checking it off as having been searched never to return.

Believe it or not, there actually are thinking people who hold to intelligent design, and a smaller subset of them who hold to creationism, and a yet smaller subset who hold to the claims of Christianity. One might believe the minds get smaller and the thinking more simplistic on that continuum, but I submit that the required due diligence to get there without intellectual self-deceit actually becomes much greater. I have discovered some deep minds that bear this out. It is just a shame that they are not the TV representation of their views and are largely unknown. I speak of the following Christian apologists: Josh McDowell, author of “Evidence That Demands a Verdict,” volumes 1 and 2, whose title invites you to make up your own mind, Francis Schaeffer, J.P. Moreland, Norman Geisler, Ravi Zacharias, and C.S. Lewis (I refer to his non-fiction which is the bulk of his work, Narnia notwithstanding). Each of these has written numerous books on a level their harshest critics could not dare call simplistic. To categorically dismiss the thinking behind intelligent design without considering ideas on the level presented in these books is to base one's decision on ignorance and by that I mean no insult. I mean the denotative sense of the word: the lack of knowledge. There is much that cannot be known or considered. But to ignore considerations that have been carefully worked through is to gamble one's life and destiny without the benefit of much knowable thought.

I started here speaking of the nature of knowledge. From where I stand I believe it safe to assume that no matter how far hard science goes toward opening our eyes and minds to truth, it will never be enough. We will always have to fall back to a legal position of beyond reasonable doubt. Or a philosophical position such as Acoms Razor: The simplest explanation tends to be the correct one. Or to more esoteric philosophic thinking. In the end some kind of faith will always be involved. By no means do I mean blind faith based on nothing. I mean intelligent faith based on consideration of all that can indeed be empirically known. “A” is, “B” is, and “C” is, therefore “D” must be though I cannot specifically see or prove it. Indeed this kind of thinking is considered proof positive in current science, ex: the astronomical methodology behind the recently discovered new planets, black holes, etc. Even with the most rigorous diligence possible, the final distance of the journey of the intellect will have to walk on that ethereal quantity called faith. To me it is a sublime thought that this state of affairs might possibly be on purpose.

Expelled

2008-04-18T23:46:00.001-04:00

I obviously haven't had the compulsion to write here much lately. I keep saying such things every time I do put something down. I can't say why exactly except that I've been working some really long hours. About 62 of them this week if I counted correctly. Those kinds of working hours and lots of writing don't seem to be compatible in my life. But I had to write tonight.

I just came from seeing the Ben Stein movie “Expelled.” Some friends treated me to dinner and a movie by way of thanking me for helping with some video editing on a personal project. I was completely blind-sided having paid no attention to what's at the movie theater for some time. I had heard nothing whatsoever of this film. Basically it is an expose of the blinding fear of most of western science with regard to honest inquiry about evolution and intelligent design. It presents indisputable facts about the experiences of several highly qualified scientists who were summarily fired from prestigious positions for writing about, mentioning, or simply giving a nod to the possibility of intelligent design. The totalitarian thought police are without doubt on patrol in American academia and they are carrying big clubs of power, money, and influence. But it is amazing how some very simple questions that any high school student might ask so revealed Emperor Evolution to be parading about the hallowed halls of elite science with no clothes. And the denuding made it all the more evident that his head is indeed stuck well up his... Oh, was that my out loud voice? Sorry. I should stop. It's just so embarrassing for them. But no less than atheism poster boy Richard Dawkins, seemingly brilliant just by way of his dashing good looks, charm, erudition, and delightful accent, nevertheless paints himself right into a corner on camera in front of God and everybody, er, okay... in front of everybody, then concedes the possibility that the origin of the first living cells on earth might have been injection by some outside alien force. WHAT??!! Talk about laughing out loud! I was so tickled I could hardly contain myself. Very entertaining stuff! That one moment is worth the price of admission. And there are others. There are explanations so full of faith that it's mind boggling that supposedly intelligent people do not recognize it as such.

Well, wherever you come down on the debate between pure evolution and intelligent design there is little doubt that science as we have come to know it is not about unbiased inquiry in search of truth. Ben's film goes a long way toward shedding light on this state of affairs. The whole thing begs the question, “What are you so afraid of?” If big science were a character in a novel or a movie, one would instinctively know that the shiftiness and vindictiveness indicates there is something to hide.

It's just preciously ironic that none other than Al Gore has made famous the phrase, “An Inconvenient Truth.” I came away thinking that truth is pretty much always quite inconvenient. That is, if it is actually true. Truth, if it proves my preconceived theories, prejudices, predilections, values, and lifestyle to be in error, demands that I make a change. The change is not always in the way of glorious freedom of soul. Enlightenment may mean an awakening of conscience, a call to responsibility or sacrifice, and general denial of one's selfish ways. Confronting truth without then choosing to lie to one's self is the ultimate in inconvenience. But I'll stop far short of hoping our scientists will risk tenure, grant money, prestige, and reputation to the light of truth. I would just like to see a little honest holding to the actual scientific method instead of blithering subservience to the wishy washy tenets of the great prophet Darwin. And maybe the balls, er, guts to follow the evidence where it actually leads instead of where one hopes it to go.

Ha! I'm sounding an awful lot like the rhetoric of some of our scientists who rail at creationists, don't I? My evolutionist friend, you may not have been to church lately, but you are by any rational definition a member of a religion. So how about lets all forget about religion and go after truth. And by truth I don't mean what you tell me is true or what I tell you is true. I mean what is actually true. You may need to refer to a dictionary.

Ben Stein's film ought to make our culture wake up and demand some reform to a scientific community under the tyrannical control of religious zealots who claim their faith isn't religion but rather facts no longer under debate. (The Flat Earth Society would be proud.) But unfortunately we are by and large not a culture of thinkers. We take the word of professorial looking guys in natty suits who tell us what is undeniable fact as long as their accent sounds like they're really smart. So I fear that “Expelled” probably won't have much impact on the big picture. But at least there's a voice crying in the wilderness. For those who have ears to hear, let them hear.

At Work

2008-03-14T21:06:00.005-04:00

So here's a look at where I spend many, many hours these days. The studio is not something you would expect to find at your average old folks' home. Neither is the daily show we produce there. But then, Shell Point Retirement Community is not your average old folks' home.

And here are my ironically very young co-workers in this land of retirees. Zach on the left was a student of mine at CIU. Rochelle schedules the shoots and when the stories run, writes the scripts for the anchors (of which she is one), and checks our work every day for errors. She's a sweetheart and loads of fun. Sorry guys, she's already married. Lee on the right shoots and edits as do Zach and I on three Macs running Final Cut Pro. We will soon all be hooked up with an Apple X-Serve and a 7 terrabyte X-Serve Raid for you Apple aficionados. Interestingly, Zach grew up in Thailand and Lee lived there for a while.

We shoot a lot in the studio and a lot on location all around the properties. There are regular segments that are on every day and various features that run every week or two and some less regular than that. An anchor hosts the show every day. Eventually you may be able to watch it on the web, but, unfortunately, not yet. It's closed circuit only to the 2,000 people living here in 1,200 or so living units in several neighborhoods. It runs on the half hour, 24/7, with new episodes starting at midnight. Yes, that does indeed take a lot of work.

So these are the three people I spend far more time with than anybody else these days. It's a good thing we all like each other. I've gotten to spend a bit of time with Rochelle's husband, Mike, as well and he's a great guy. And Zach's wife, Rachel, and Lee's Alyson - all so nice. I'm old enough to be their father but that doesn't seem to be something they or I think about much. They are just good friends and colleagues and I'm blessed to have them in my life.

Two Olds, One New

2008-03-06T19:28:00.002-05:00

I've been playing the guitar for almost 40 years. I've been making my living with a movie or video camera for close to 30 years. But today those two old and familiar worlds bumped into each other in a new way for the first time. It's so odd when I think about it that I can't believe it took so long to happen. One of the other guys on my crew went around shooting some video coverage of the event the other night and shot some video of me playing. Today I saw myself playing on video for the first time ever. It was a bit surreal. I got to thinking about the cultures that believe a camera can steal one's soul. A singularly completely new experience out of two so very old ones.

Another Debut

2008-03-05T20:48:00.004-05:00

Last night here at the retirement community where I work on a daily TV show they had a big dining event with a "New York at Night" theme. There was supposed to be a "Central Park" area set up outside the main dining room and I was scheduled to be the "musician in the park" playing my guitar. After weeks of glorious weather here the skies threatened rain late in the day so all the outside elements moved into a social hall adjacent to the main dining room. I was not at all sure how my folk-centric, guitar music would play among the geriatric crowd. Ten or fifteen years from now this place will be full of children of the '70s like me and it will be the perfect venue. With some fear and trembling I started playing last night and to my surprise some folks came up to tell me how much they enjoyed it. A few even turned their chairs around and sat there watching and listening for quite a few songs. My associates on the staff passed on a bunch more positive comments so I guess I did okay.

I wasn't sure I was going to be able to play at all. A week ago I sprained my hand really badly. Or it might be my wrist. In any case, my left hand had no grip at all for days and it hurt a lot. I tried to baby it all week and took a couple of Advil every 6 hours. Last night I was able to play everything without any real problem. Today it's been tingling a lot so I better lay off for another week or so.

I'm so glad I finally got the JamMan looper last year. It's proven to be a key part of my being able to make an evening of this kind of thing workable. It is all I hoped it would be and much more. Not to mention how inspiring it is to be able to noodle around with multiple parts at the same time when wood shedding. I heartily recommend a looper to any guitar player. It's by far the best, most rewarding piece of music gear I've ever gotten hold of aside from my actual instrument.

So Long, So Far

2008-03-02T23:00:00.003-05:00

I've been pretty busy with work lately so the song writing and recording has slowed way down. But once in a while one just comes along anyway. I like the tune of this one about as much as any of mine. It stays in my head so I guess that's a good sign that it's got some stick. I have sometimes pondered the fact that there is so much that you can never go back to. Everything changes and sometimes to the point that it doesn't exist anymore. Eventually you can't go back home. Home becomes something else, or someone else. But sometimes you can't go back there either. I've really tried to come up with some happy songs. I suppose it's not yet time. Or maybe I'm a one trick pony and it's just not in me. At least this one ends with a glimmer of something. Maybe something remotely like hope?

So Long and So Far

So long and so far away from home
That now there is no road can lead me back there
The many years that I was bid to roam
And friends I loved were left behind way back where

The longing and the ache to belong
The what and why and where
And who I was is simply gone

Press ahead
For the way behind is blocked to all return
Take away the value
That is there for only those who stop and learn

Sunrise comes again and gives you one more day
Drink the beauty in
And smile and laugh and pray

On the Water

2008-03-02T22:34:00.007-05:00

Today was beautiful in Southwest Florida. I was having a rough day. For a very long time every day was a rough day. Now some days are okay. But today wasn't one. I decided I needed to do something to take advantage of this amazing day and maybe it would help to get out.

So after doing the TV duty at the church this morning and cooking and eating another meal alone, I got the little jon boat ready to go and headed out to a little island not far from where I am living and working. My thought was to sit there by the channel in the river where all the boat traffic from the Fort Myers area to and from the Gulf passes by and just watch boats. A lot of the water around here is very shallow and boats must stay in the dredged channels. It ends up kinda like a boat freeway, absurdly crowded at times.

I saw a few million dollars worth of power boats, which did little for me, and some beautiful sailboats that I enjoyed seeing under way. But something quite magic happened. There was a “manatee zone, go slow” sign less than a hundred feet from where I was sitting with the usual osprey nest on top of it.

A couple of osprey showed up there soon after I did. One was acting a bit strange and at first I thought there was something wrong with it's wing. Then I realized these were young and today they were learning to fly. They would awkwardly flap their wings and climb on top of each other. One would get up on the back of the other, spread it's wings, and then raise it's feet and levitate up into the breeze. They did quite well once in the air but the takeoffs and landings were a little hairy. It seems the process has a bit in common with people learning to fly airplanes: It's mostly about the takeoff and landing. I had a front row seat to a great show. I tried to use my binoculars as a telephoto lens for my point and shoot camera. It didn't work very well but here's a photo anyway.

On the way home I saw a pair of eagles flying around and then landing in a tree. Sorry, no photo. The water got a bit rough at that point and my hands were busy driving the boat. Then I saw a few dolphins. They are very hard to photograph as they often appear for just a moment and then they're gone. Unless you're on a really big boat. Then you can sometimes get shots like this.

They like to play in the wakes of big boats.

So I got to see some beautiful stuff today. It helped pass the afternoon and took the edge off the ache in my chest.

Long Time No Blog

2008-02-24T19:03:00.007-05:00

This blog has gone so stale. After such a strong run for two years it seems strange. I don't have any internet connection where I am living now and the cost of getting one is more than I want to get involved with at this point in my situation. I can check email at work and essential things like my bank account, but things like social networking sites are blocked so even after working hours I can't get into this blog or read anybody else's. There are a few places I can get myself to in order to get unfettered access, such as where I am sitting at the moment, but it's just not part of my daily routine. Also the new job has proven to require very long hours so I really haven't had the wherewithal to keep up with this as I have in the past.

Besides work, a few things have entered my life that I thought I'd throw out here. I am living in a house with a dock that is on a canal adjoining the Caloosahatchee River a few miles from where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. It was supposed to be very temporary for just a few months but now it looks like I can probably stay for the next year or so. Being here without a boat to get out on the water seemed almost unconscionable. So I did something about it. I bought an old sailboat. Cheap. It has some significant problems that need fixing before it can be sailed safely. And many more things that need doing to make it anything approaching nice. I'm actually wondering if I have bit off more than I can chew but we'll see. I won't go into all the details here, but here are a few pictures.

It's a 1975 O'day 27 foot masthead sloop. It has six feet of standing headroom inside and is set up to sleep five people.

This weekend I went down to Marco Island, about an hour south of here, to visit my aunt Vivian and her husband Wendell at the condo they have rented for a month each winter for the last four years. My cousin Randy and his family were down for the weekend. Randy is just a few years younger than me but married late and now finds himself a greying middle aged guy with two toddlers. He hasn't had a full night's sleep since his two year old was born. In fact, it sounds like he hasn't had more than an hour at a stretch since then. Let's just say I am so thankful mine are in their twenties. The crying wail of a terrible two coupled with long-term sleep deprivation is a game for young parents. Randy had never been on an airboat and somehow rallied the energy to want to take a ride out in the everglades. I got to go along and the craziest thing about the ride were these pelicans that would land on the boat and get right in your face. They must be used to getting fed something but I'm not sure what.

My bike has been basically dead for the last year. I finally got a line on what was wrong with it and found some rare new-old stock parts from a place in Wisconsin. Once again the internet made possible an otherwise impossible resurrection. I got it going again just in time for a visit from friend and former student Keith Hammack and his father-in-law, Joe. They flew into Orlando last week, rented two Harleys, and have been riding all over the southern half of Florida including a few days in the Keys. Today we took a very nice ride together up and down the length of Sanibel and Captiva islands. Keith got some great shots with his big gun Nikon D200 - an amazing camera system. If you like these there's more from their trip here:

http://laurenandkeith.blogspot.com/2008/02/day-six.html

http://laurenandkeith.blogspot.com/2008/02/dans-place.html

A few shots I took of them with Keith's camera are here:

http://laurenandkeith.blogspot.com/2008/02/day-five.html

The rest of Keith's blog is pretty much all pictures of his baby girl. Lot's of 'em. And they are some of the most amazing baby pictures you'll ever see. Not just a few. You will be blown away by how many superlative images there are. Never seen anything like the collection. And it grows almost daily. With quality that just doesn't stop. Truly remarkable.

It's been a year and 22 days since the divorce was final. It's been a traumatic walk but life has settled a bit emotionally over the months. I still have some very difficult moments but overall I'm doing okay. The job keeps me very busy and when I'm working I'm okay. I have plenty of things to keep my free time busy as well. But I would like some kind of resolution to my life beyond what exists now. What I get from God is to just wait. For what I have no idea. But I wait and I trust and I hope.

Working the New Job

2007-10-12T01:00:00.000-04:00

I've obviously set the blogging aside for a while. I've been busy with the new job in Fort Myers. It looks like this will work out to be a normal working hours kind of thing once I get established but I've been putting in a lot of extra time trying to climb the various learning curves and get things set up. Also I've been trying to get myself personally "established." I hesitate to use the word "settled" as I'm in temporary quarters so it doesn't lend to feeling settled exactly. But it is very nice, to be sure. Kind of like being in a very large and very nice hotel suite. Fabulous, but you just don't feel like really unpacking or hanging pictures on the wall. Why put your socks in the drawer when you know you're going right out the door soon? But at least it's a LARGE temporary space. I'm going up to Orlando tomorrow to rent a truck and fetch all my stuff in storage there. Another long day doing something I hope not to have to do again for a good long time. So, look forward to another gap in blog posting.

Beauty on the Wing

2007-10-01T21:12:00.000-04:00

The new job has been going well. I've been busy with it and dealing with my new life here, getting things together so I can get along in my temporary quarters for a while. I've also done a good bit of Google Earth research and driving around to get a feel for the area. There are some really nice places in this corner of Florida.

I happened upon a few pictures of the exact Sea Rey I flew on August 27. Isn't she a pretty thing? I figured out later that it was brand new and being such it had to be flown for 40 hours in the immediate area of it's initial FAA sign off. The factory was highly involved in this particular airplane's assembly and the 40 hours had to be logged locally before the new owner could come fly it home to Georgia or wherever. So, my flight helped burn some of that time.

There is a saying that "looks good flies good." Or, as I am fond of saying, an airplane is the ultimate in form-follows-function beauty. There are a few ugly airplanes that fly well and a few pretty ones that don't, but generally "looks good flies good" holds true. There are many great looking airplanes but I think this Sea Rey is just spectacularly attractive. From most angles that is. There are a few that are not flattering. It's the same with even the most attractive of people. And some are photogenic but look plain in real life and for some it's the opposite. The difference between 2-D and 3-D can send the advantage either way. In a photo or with bare eyes, to me the Sea Rey is a looker.

There are many wonderfully beautiful things in this world, the most exquisite made directly by God's hands. As for things made by human hands, for me airplanes edge out even fine art. Maybe it's because of the additional beauty their form allows one to experience as well as see. Sculptures and paintings can be fantastic, but they can't pick you up and take you to the clouds.

Moving On

2007-09-26T15:37:00.001-04:00

Moving on
down that long and winding road
I stopped for a while
now it's time to pull out once again

One foot in front
of the other is the only way to start
put some miles behind
pack up the heavy broken pieces of my heart

Night seems so long
wondering, wandering, blind and wrong
but the sun keeps rising on each new day
with a promise and a song

Moving on
down that long and winding road
I stopped for a while
now it's time to pull out once again

So Many Years

2007-09-26T15:35:00.000-04:00

I loved you for so many years
After so long, how am I to just let go?
I loved you through so many fears
Touching so deep I didn't know how to let you know

Time dulls the ache and thoughts fill with today
but the memories never fade away
Decades of accumulation leave no doubt
I could forget thousands and still never run out

I loved you for so many years
After so long, how am I to just let go?
I loved you through so many fears
Touching so deep I didn't know how to let you know

Did we walk away from all the worst or the best?
We passed most around, then failed the test
I hope you find a place of peace and love and rest
I hope your soul will be happy and blessed

I loved you for so many years
After so long, how am I to just let go?
I loved you through so many tears
Touching so deep I didn't know how to let you know

I loved you for so many years
After so long, how am I to just let go?

Pithy

2007-09-19T17:36:00.000-04:00

One can be angry that the rose bush has thorns,
or delighted that the thorn bush has roses.

Things are seldom as they seem.
They are usually worse. And also better.

Half Life

2007-09-19T17:08:00.000-04:00

She couldn't have really loved me
for how could she have treated me so?
But she knew she did
and I should have
For she thought I surely didn't love her
for how could I have treated her so?
But I knew I did

Where did all the hurt come from?
How did it swallow up the joy?
Why couldn't we beat it?

The toxic waste of pain left behind
has a half life
Now it's only half as bad as it was
and it will eventually be half as bad as it is now
and someday half as bad as that
But it will never be completely gone

Shell Point

2007-09-08T00:23:00.001-04:00

I have come to Ft. Myers, Florida to take a job as the TV Production Manager for Shell Point Retirement Community. They do a daily, 30 minute magazine style TV show that goes closed circuit to all the units where approximately 2,000 people live. I was asked to take this job by the executive in charge of marketing, a man I have known as an acquaintance for many years. They really wanted me to come and asked me to just try it for a few months to see if it was for me - kind of a reverse probationary period. I couldn't think of any good reason not to take them up on the offer. I wasn't at all sure about it at first as I had my sights set elsewhere, but God slammed the other door shut and kept showing me things about this opportunity that just couldn't be ignored. My stuff is in storage in Orlando and I'm set for this to be a trial run, but already it seems that this is one of those “God things” and I think it's where I'm supposed to be. They set me up temporarily in an amazing house on the property that I can stay in until the end of the year if I choose. It has a bunch of furniture that I can take with me to wherever is next. After living in 110 sq. ft. for the last year I hardly know what to do with this whole big place to myself. The setting is a bit overwhelming, but I like it! Can't get too used to it though. I will not be able to afford such a view when it comes time to secure a more permanent residence. But for the time being, I'm trying to just soak it in. Thank you Lord.

bang bang

2007-09-08T00:08:00.000-04:00

Today I met two Mexican farmers and had a nice chat about 200 acres of zucchini and got an invitation to come back to their farm any time. But it could have gone worse. In a bit of questionable wisdom I started out the encounter trespassing at dusk and after dark actually had two shotgun shells fired for the benefit of my warning. Fortunately they were really nice guys and didn't mind when I explained why I was nosing around.

In Ft. Myers

2007-09-06T04:08:00.000-04:00

I'm in Ft. Myers for an indeterminate stay. Yes, I know it's 4:00 in the morning. And yes, I'm exhausted. I'll explain when I get a chance.

Back at Enigma

2007-09-01T02:44:00.000-04:00

I played three more nights at the Enigma restaurant this week. Unfortunately the only picture taken during all six days was by a friend with a phone camera. It was from one night when I was outside on the patio where it was quite dim and the image is barely discernible. Lack of photographic documentation notwithstanding, It went even better than last week and I made the same amount of money again. I've pretty much made back all the money I have spent on musical gear since, well, since high school I think. It doesn't take into account all the time I have spent learning how to do what I had to know how to do in order to make someone want to pay me to do it. But all that doing was something I wanted to do for my own enjoyment so it really doesn't count in the equation now does it? Anyway, it was all great and I can't believe I have made so much money in the last two weeks doing something I have wanted to do for so long and something I ended up enjoying so much. It made me think about the possibility of doing it every week. That opportunity was actually offered to me, but for reasons I'll get around to sharing here in the not-too-distant future, I will likely not be able to take advantage of it. I would like to get back and I plan to do so, but after four hours a night three nights in a row for two weeks in a row, I actually started to develop a blister at the edge of the callus on my left index finger. It was pretty sore this morning. It's already getting better but I don't know if I could take quite that much on a regular basis. I'm afraid my fingers or my love for playing or possibly both might suffer. Doing it once in a while would be perfect and that's what I hope to be able to do.

Seaplane Take 2

2007-08-28T00:29:00.000-04:00

In my obsessive-compulsive style I came home from my first seaplane ride and started researching about similar designs and came upon the Sea Rey. It is very close to the Aventura II in many ways but has been around longer and is more refined. Also there are about 350 of them flying vs. about 150 Aventura II's. Another 150 or so kits have been sold so are assumedly in some stage of building. It is a bit surprising but when comparing apples and apples with similarly equipped airplanes, the cost of the two types is very close.

The refinements are in areas like real Stits fabric covering on the wings and tail feathers instead of pre-sewn sock-type coverings. The ailerons are controlled by torque tubes instead of Teleflex push-pull cables and they are balanced with counterweights. It just looks and feels and flies more like a real airplane and less like an ultralight. The low speed end of the performance envelope is virtually identical but the cleaner wing gives the Sea Rey an advantage of about 10 -15 mph on the top end. In an airplane this slow, that is a pretty substantial percentage. On the negative side, the covering process takes a couple of hundred hours vs. about 25 for the Aventura. The cockpit is a bit smaller but still an inch wider than a Cessna 172 and very comfortable. You lay back more in the seats.

A very nice advantage is that the Sea Rey has standard split canopy doors that slide open or shut even in flight vs. the Aventura's doors that must be either closed or removed prior to flight because they swing forward. I read one story of a Sea Rey adventure where a cabin cruiser went by in front of the plane on the water making a very large wake. They saw it coming and simply slid the doors closed before the wake came up over the bow and over the canopy like they were going through a car wash. An Aventura pilot with the doors off would have gotten soaked. So, there's a lot of little things to consider in airplane design.

Okay, so I noticed that Progressive Aerodyne, the manufacturer of the Sea Rey, happens to be right here in Orlando. I just had to take advantage of my good fortune of being right in the same city so I got up this morning, called over there and arranged for a tour. I met Kerry Richter who showed me around and told me lots of interesting things about the kits and the airplanes. There were several of them available to look at. Then he asked if I'd like to go fly! Would I ?!!! So off we went to the airstrip where yet two more Sea Reys sat in a hanger. There are about a half dozen others based at that strip. There are a whole bunch of these things based around Orlando! There is one on Dave Nixon's lake but until this week I didn't know what it was. We later stopped by the Apopka airport where Progressive Aerodyne plans to move by the end of the year, and went inside a large hanger to see three or four more! I lost count! That's a very good indicator that this is a good airplane.

We taxied out and I asked something about the decision to go with a tapered wing, which happens to be beautiful, especially when one gets a view of the planform of the airplane, such as when it's in a steep bank. Kerry phrased his answer in terms of “I thought that less mass at the tips would be better and visibility would be better...” etc., and I realized that I was sitting next to the designer of the plane! I hadn't put that together. He has about 6,000 hours, about 5,500 of which were in seaplanes and about 3,500 of which were in Sea Reys! This man really knows his airplane and has been working steadily at tweaking and improving it for years.

We took off and being as we were in Florida, there was a lake, a few ponds, and a canal very handily nearby. Kerry did a dramatic military-style banking approach and set her down on a smooth pond. Wow! I experienced that smooth water rush! Yeow!!! He demonstrated high speed step taxiing and some tight turns that would have flipped any conventional plane on floats. He took us over to a little canal and landed on it. It was a place that would be pretty much impossible to get to any other way except maybe by airboat. It was a tiny little strip of water. I was thinking as we settled into it how alien it would feel to be anywhere near it in any normal plane with wheels or any larger float plane or seaplane for that matter. But the little Sea Rey is like a magic carpet. It can go just about anywhere.

Then we popped over to Lake Apopka which was also very smooth this morning. He gave me the airplane and completely hands-off talked me through a landing. It was so easy and I greased the first one on with no problem at all. The second was a little sloppier but I did about a half dozen in a row. I just took off, climbed to fifty feet or so and then made another landing again and again across the lake. What a blast! We saw alligators all over the place. Around one bend there must have been about thirty of them all having a gator convention. Possibly it was a homeowners association meeting.

I got to fly it around a bit more and then drop the wheels, make a conventional traffic pattern behind a Cessna, and then land on the paved strip. I couldn't believe how I could just fly the thing. It is so stable and easy. Just a delightful little bird that delivers an absolutely fantastic combination of air and water sport all at the same time. The flying part makes it more fun than any boat and the boat part makes it more fun than other planes. There is just nothing like water flying. And this beautiful little plane delivers an awesome experience for the buck. I'm a big believer in the aesthetic tenet that form follows function and the Sea Rey gives an amazing breadth of functionality along with generous doses of visual poetry. I'm in love!

50 + 1 day

2007-08-24T19:08:00.000-04:00

Unbelievable! I just saw a promo ad on TV for a Woodstock retrospective show. The sponsor is AARP! I am not making this up! A blurb from one interview: "...we were popping acid. Today I'm popping antacid."

Pro!

2007-08-24T18:21:00.000-04:00

On my 50^th birthday yesterday I was able to accomplish two goals I've had for myself for a number of years. The first was to experience flying a seaplane. The other milestone was that I can now claim in the denotative (if not connotative) sense of the word to be a professional musician! The denotative sense being that someone is willing to pay me money to play. I finished my premier 3-night run at the Enigma restaurant in Satellite Beach, Florida and walked away with a check twice as large as the best I had hoped for. Not quite up to my best day rate for camera work but not too far behind! And better than some of the cheapie camera jobs I've taken this last year. I also left with the proprietor's invitation to come back and play whenever my schedule allows. Pretty cool. I'm not sure how much I'll be able to do it, but I plan to go back.

Almost all of my experience playing in public before had been in church. I'd often thought about how different playing in church is from professional performing even without regard to content or musical styles. In church the audience stays more or less the same and one plays different music every week, often with barely adequate rehearsal and sometimes less. In most other performance environments, the musician plays more or less the same repertoire and the audience changes. I always thought I'd like to have a go at the latter mode and see what it's like to be able to get far beyond executing the song to the point of concentrating mostly on emoting and connecting with the audience. I've seen a good many church musicians who can do it all in a church context, but I've never been good enough to get it all together to the fine edge I'm talking about in just one rehearsal. So far it's been a really enjoyable experience. And a paycheck ain't at all bad either. Maybe you can teach an old dog some new tricks after all.

50

2007-08-23T16:34:00.001-04:00

The big five-oh has finally hit me. I feel fine but it does make one pause to wonder where all the years could possibly have gone. But everyone knows all this so I'll speak of something more interesting. This morning I had a little time and went out to a small airstrip I had passed every time I went out to the condo. I love little airports so I just wanted to go nose around a bit. As it happens it is the home office/factory/test facility for Aero Adventure aircraft, makers of several kit airplanes the featured one of which is the Aventura II. It is a strut-braced, two seat Kevlar hull seaplane. The guys there welcomed me warmly and showed me all around and told me all about the airplane. There is an instructor on-site there, an ex-career air force, airline, has-flown-everything old salt. His name is Bob and he's a really nice fellow. They give demonstration flights for a certain sum of dollars the mention of which brought my normal knee-jerk response of “I can't afford it.” Then I got to thinking, “Hey, it's my birthday!” With that I decided I needed to supply myself with a birthday present. So out went Bob and I to the demonstration airplane. After a bit of briefing on the simple systems, we fired up the 100hp Rotax 912ULS engine and did the customary checks. A short dash of about 150 feet down the pavement was followed by quick levitation. It doesn't take much room to get this thing into the air. It's a nice, roomy airplane with great visibility. Very easy to fly. Even with no doors it was considerably quieter than I was expecting. A few minutes flying got us over to a little lake and then the real fun began. I have all my life wanted to experience water flying and this morning I finally got my first taste. The wind was up a bit and the water was getting choppy. Bob said the look of the water told him we had at least 15 knots wind. That was not making him happy as this thing is absolutely the best toy on the planet on smooth water. But he was game and we made a couple of landings. I didn't think it was too rough. It's really something to be flying along in a plane one second and then motoring along in a boat the next. I can see how it could become quite the addiction. Back in the air I tried some different maneuvers to get a feel for the ship and then made the approach and landing back at the strip. There was a pretty good crosswind but I managed. Bob seemed to be impressed that I did so well after so many years out of the saddle. Guess it was all those “wasted” nights on the X-Plane simulator. I won't go into a big pilot report here as that is available elsewhere if you are really interested in this airplane. But I must say I was impressed by a lot of what this design has to offer. So here we go again, another kit airplane on my short list of candidates. And I do believe that was the best birthday present I ever bought myself.

The one I flew is the red, white, and blue one in this shot.

Letting Go

2007-08-21T15:29:00.001-04:00

It seems that on numerous fronts, in the immediate past and even more immediate present, I have been learning about letting go. It must be a very important lesson because it seems God keeps hammering and hammering on it with me. It can be an unhappy lesson to experience, to be sure. But then, it has other facets. I had all but given up on trying to find a guitar playing gig at a restaurant and certainly had lost all momentum in that direction. Then over this last weekend an opportunity just dropped into my lap. The owner of a new and so far seemingly successful restaurant down at the beach had by chance heard me play at a party many months ago and wants me to come perform. I start a three night run tonight, 6:00 - 10:00pm. We'll see how it goes. I'm looking forward to really enjoying this. If you happen to be in the environs of Satellite Beach, Florida the next three nights, It's called the "Enigma," right on A1A. (note: The restaurant is actually an upgrade of sorts. The proprietors had a smaller place called the "Enigma Cafe" for six years that was in the same area. They closed that down about a year ago to develop the new place.)

Happy Ending Internship

2007-08-18T13:14:00.000-04:00

I finally made it out to see Steve Saint at I-TEC yesterday. As it happened it was the last day for an intern from LeTourneau University who had been there all summer working on a system that modifies an aircraft. That's all I will say in the way of description because it looks like a patent will be sought for it. They were going to try flying the latest version after numerous modifications and since I was standing there Steve asked me to grab their video camera and document it in keeping with the I-TEC “five minute rule” (If you are standing around there for more than five minutes, you get put to work!)

The mission almost got scrubbed because of some wind conditions. But then they decided to push ahead and I ended up shooting the first flights of an extremely successful prototype. The wind ended up helping to prove the value of the system. My convertible got pressed into duty to do some running alongside shots utilizing a closed runway that was being used for the testing. It all just came together yesterday afternoon and everyone was elated that the goals for the project had been achieved.

It was all the more fun because the student, Jonathan, was able to be there for it on the last day before he had to leave to go back to school. And he got a ride in his invention with video of it to boot. This kid, a mechanical engineering student who was a sophomore last year, continued on the work this summer after being a part of a class that had worked on it for two semesters last year. His basically single-handed persistence solving the remaining problems saw it through to a glorious success in the air yesterday. And God orchestrated my showing up there at precisely the right time to lend a hand in documenting it all. What great fun! Steve was so happy he insisted on a celebration so the whole I-TEC family that happened to be around went to Sonny's for a big bar-b-q dinner last night. What a wonderful boost to Jonathan's ambitions for engineering. We were all so happy for him.

And the project, well, it has great promise to revolutionize this particular niche of aviation with significant impact on it's utility for missions applications.

Personality

2007-08-18T12:21:00.001-04:00

Keith has more pictures of his new daughter up today. It's true that his fancy camera is only slightly less new than his baby girl, but methinks the volume and quality of his images has much more to do with being captivated by her beauty and profoundly taken by the experience of being her father than it has to do with playing with a new toy.

It's truly amazing how such a brand new person can exhibit such a range and depth of personality. It's neither nature or nurture, it's a miracle of God's creativity to make each human being a fathomless well of unique personhood right out of the gate. I stand in awe of the faith of people who can honestly believe it is all a result of random chance.

Blind

2007-08-11T14:59:00.000-04:00

Not me. You. I'm out at Doug's condo at the beach, sitting here on the seventh floor balcony looking out at the beautiful ocean on a gorgeous day. From up here I can see out for many miles. It's a 180 degree panorama of blue-green water all the way to the horizon of half the world. The curvature of the earth is very obvious. It's peaceful and awe-inspiring at the same time. I was just wishing I could show it to you. But, alas, my camera is broken. I'm hoping to be able to replace it before too long. Maybe next time you'll get a picture.

Lily

2007-08-05T08:02:00.000-04:00

Keen to face reality
my young friend came to ask of me
to buy or not
what should I do?
what do you think
if it were you?

Get that motorcycle, man
seize the day while you still can
so he did and off we rode
collecting treasured memories

Straining to know the best right thing
to settle or stay on the wing
he loved her so but it's so big
to decide now about the ring

Marry the girl I'd want to say
don't let such sweet love slip away
and finally that's what he did
and rode into a brand new day

Dealing with reality
the give and take
elusively the key to all
the stuff of life
of navigating joy and strife
for good or ill
like stone to knife
can wear even a young man down

They pushed on and soon were led
such amazement lay ahead
a precious gift to them was given
a wonder from the hand of heaven

Lily came into their world
A tiny, radiant, magic girl
Never was more beauty graced
in such a tiny glowing face

Dad and mommy they became
and so much more came with the name
richness to savor, joy untamed
the world will never be the same

Muse Snooze

2007-08-01T00:03:00.000-04:00

The muse has been catching up on some sleep lately it seems. Actually I have been writing like a maniac the last couple of days but it's been email and not anything to be shared here. I usually write here because I feel like I just have to or I will burst. There just hasn't been anything for a while. I lost a lot of days with my dental problem - just trying to survive the pain. That's finally on the mend now. For a couple weeks it seems I didn't sleep more than two or three hours at a time. As soon as the ibuprofen started to wear off I'd be up moaning and groaning. A few nights ago I was finally able to sleep through the night and did so for 17 hours. I guess I was tired. So, sleep on muse. You probably need the rest too.

Dry Socket

2007-07-29T16:34:00.000-04:00

SUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I dearly hope and pray you never have to experience one.

It Shows

2007-07-29T15:55:00.000-04:00

I bought some shrimp today from an old lady in Sam's. She was wearing a white coat and a white food service hat. I asked for a half pound. She said they only sell it by the pound but you can freeze it. She said, “That's what I do. I'm alone too.”

2007-07-28T15:25:00.001-04:00

A long time ago I was given the opportunity to travel the world and have since believed that no westerner can be truly educated or grateful until he or she has traveled widely. I've now added to that the belief that no person can truly live life fully until after being broken and reduced to nothing. I'm not sure if its the process after which there is value or if its the nothingness that reveals the valuable which was obscured before by all that was opposite of the nothing. Wouldn't it be ironic if nothing is really everything? Maybe the ascetics had it right. If I live long enough to find out I'll let you know.

Ouch

2007-07-25T02:53:00.000-04:00

So the broken tooth came out and it felt a whole lot better. I followed all the directions for avoiding a dry socket very carefully. But when it's a molar on the bottom your chances are 20 percent that it's gonna get ya anyway. And I'm in the 20. It hurt like a bad dog. Unfortunately I realized it was getting bad on Friday afternoon. My friend's office closes at noon on Friday and I couldn't get him on his cell. I gutted it out through an agonizing weekend downing massive amounts of ibuprofen and Tylenol hoping for a prescription for something much stronger on Monday. When I finally got a call back from Steve Monday afternoon, he informed me that unfortunately he can no longer call in a prescription across state lines. He would have liked to have me on an antibiotic. But it was getting a little better by then and he thought I had probably turned the corner. It is getting better. Now it's just uncomfortably painful instead of paralyzingly painful. So maybe it will go away pretty soon. It's amazing how such a little thing can hurt you so much and take away a chunk of your life.

Baseball been berry, berry good...

2007-07-23T00:08:00.000-04:00

but not to me. I've told this to so many people it felt like I had written it down but it seems I never have before. So here it is.

A while back I tried to figure out why I disliked baseball so much. It is odd because most men, young and old, seem to enjoy playing and/or watching it or it's surrogate, softball. But as long as I can remember I have loathed it. Then it hit me. For many, if not most, American boys and men, baseball is associated with fun and challenge, with self esteem and the satisfaction of a job well done, with popularity and the admiration of girls. And perhaps most of all with teamwork and camaraderie. And then at some point is added the richness of tradition and history. With all that going for it, no wonder it is the “Great American Pastime.”

And all of the above are the reasons I don't like it. First, I come from a line of men who saw games such as baseball as, well, as games. And games were not something all that meaningful to invest a lot of time and effort in. The fact that every news cast every night of the week has a segment devoted to games has always seemed absurd to me. Not so much that it's about something people enjoy, but because the content is always one of two things: “Well, we played well and got the job done and it feels great to win!” or “Well, we've gotta work on our defensive/offensive/throwing/catching game and get out there next time and get the job done.” It's never news. It's the same words coming out of player's and coach's and commentator's heads every single time. Only the kind of ball and the names change. Who wins or looses or whatever happens has no impact on anything really, except selling tickets and hats and crap to the rabid fans who seem to think it's important for some baffling reason. (Okay, okay, don't hate me - I'm just being passionate about my lack of passion.)

With a rare exception or two, none of the men in my family on either side for at least three generations have really given a hoot about team sports. Growing up there was never a game on TV. Ever. I knew nothing of these sports. I had no exposure. I didn't know the rules or the star players or the history or anything. It's not that we didn't like to have fun, it's just that when it came time for that, my dad and I were much more interested in going out and flying an airplane or riding a motorcycle or getting out some lumber and power saws and building something. I enjoyed bicycling and running (until my flat feet put me off that), swimming and water skiing and racing go carts or motorcycles - individual sporting activities and pretty much anything that involved burning gasoline.

But nothing that had a ball. I couldn't throw or catch any kind of ball with any kind of skill whatsoever. As a result, when forced to play games with balls in grade school gym class, it took very little time for everyone to know I stunk. So I was always picked last, or almost last, when teams were chosen up. There were usually a couple of girls chosen after me, a shred of dignity I clung to. I would mess up the catch, throw short or inaccurately, strike out, never make the basket, run the wrong way with the football when I finally got my hands on it. All in all, I would make a fool of myself anytime I had a ball in my hands. So, ball sports became associated with humiliation, rejection, loneliness, and girls laughing at me. And the slowness of baseball in particular added the worst dimension; sheer boredom. It was dreadfully boring to play and absolutely deadly dull to watch. Football was just one notch better because there actually was a little strategy to it, but still not worth the time or effort as far as I was concerned.

So, my context for sports growing up was a virtual lack of context. And when something is so important to most boys and they have a huge head start knowing about it and doing it, it can be very difficult for a kid to catch up. Distinctly below-average skills doom all efforts from the start. So, I followed what I still think is some very wise advise that I gathered up somewhere long, long ago: I didn't waste my time on things I was bad at and didn't enjoy and instead found things that I was pretty good at and did enjoy. I can (well, at least could when I was younger) do some pretty athletic things and had good coordination at them. Motocross riding, water or snow skiing, sailing, scuba diving, playing the guitar - these require coordination but it is entirely different than ball-handling coordination. Hey, I can fly an airplane upside down, can you? Which brings up another point: I would rather invest my time and effort learning to do something that not everybody else does. Something unusual. I just think that's more fun.

But if the ball thing is your cup of tea, then more power to ya. Enjoy. I'll make you a deal: don't laugh at me and I won't laugh at you.

The Minors

2007-07-19T21:24:00.000-04:00

If you read my blog way back you may remember my loathing for the game of baseball. (mmmm... Can't find the post. Maybe I just thought it.) Today I shot a minor league game in Viera, Florida for the Mid Atlantic Sports Network (whoever they are!). There is a new pitcher on the Washington Nationals team fresh out of college. His name is Ross Detwiler. I interviewed him and shook his hand. At some point in the future, when he is more famous, you may think that is really cool. I don't think Ross is a minor anymore as he's got to be 21, but now that he's not, he's a minor. Anyway, he was their third draft pick, if I remember correctly, and received a signing bonus of $1.5 million. He was the story today. It was his first start in a professional game. There were precisely 0 fans in attendance. The minor leagues are more minor than I anticipated. I was told that this was the “Gulf Coast League,” which apparently is the most minorest of the minors. I don't know how much of that $1.5 million will be amortized per throw during those two innings today, but I'll bet it's safe to say that each pitch earned him more than I made spending the day making pictures of him.

In contrast, most of the rest of the guys on minor league teams make something like $25,000 per year and they pretty much live on buses for the duration of the season. It's dues-paying big time. Many languish there. I was told that if you don't get called up within the first two years, you're pretty much through. This fellow today will likely be called up to the big league in short order.

I made a few observations today. One, in addition to the other things I dislike about baseball that I wrote about some time ago, is that it is played in direct sun in the heat of the day. In Florida in July this means it's HOT!!! I imagine that this game will be the great pastime of Hell! And they do it wearing long pants! Possibly they are fire retardant.

I noticed that few, if any, of these new young players chew tobacco. Perhaps they are more intelligent than the big league players, however, they do spit. They all do. Constantly. So if you want to be a baseball player, better work on your spitting technique. One must do it with a certain style. Speaking of style, you will also have to work on the baseball player look of disdain. The game is similar to poker in that you must never let anyone see what you are really feeling. The players can all do this look like they don't care about you or anything else. The sport is sportin' a 'tude. Well that's about half the time. If somebody makes a home run then they are all smiles and yells and high fives and it's like somebody just won a million dollars. Oh yeah... But then, that look of disdain may be them all thinking about that $1.5 million vs. the puny check they are getting every month. And the fact that I and the other three photographers there today were only interested in Mr. Golden Boy and they were just getting in the way of the good angles. Reference my post about the value of attention.

My last and probably most important tip if you want to be a baseball player is this: LEARN SPANISH! I don't care what color you are, if you want to have any idea what is going on on the field, in the clubhouse, overhearing coaches, operating the Gatorade jug, whatever, you will be completely lost if you don't know Spanish! I mean, I knew there were a lot of great Hispanic players, but I didn't know that the language had taken over the Great American Pastime completely even as it has started to take Orlando after totally consuming Miami. I guess it was dangerous to send spring training down here.

Hasta manyana, adios!

Rainbows

2007-07-18T23:29:00.001-04:00

Traveling to the city of my heartbreak
I weep again
My body keeps driving
but my heart is laid out on the ground
My prayers spill out until there is nothing left
Empty, quiet, still
Nothing
The route makes a turn
I don't notice that the rain has stopped
Over my shoulder I catch a glimpse
I turn and yes, it is a rainbow
Just a part of one and a bit faint, but it's there
chasing along behind
Is that for me? I hope so
I ask for guidance as the city lay ahead
It turns out not as I expect
Except that I have learned to expect
that nothing will be as expected
Guidance for now is certain
The direction of the future?
Maybe

Weeks later, I leave the city of my heartbreak
perhaps for the last time
I stop to check the load
It starts to rain as I pull onto the interstate
I push a button and randomly Libera fills my ears
with the Song of Enchantment
Out my side window
through drops that run down the glass like tears
a brilliant rainbow!
It shines and shines
and moves out in front of my car
leading me on for miles and miles
The wind blows the tears from my windows
Another squall, then the bow becomes complete
filling the sky
I'm still under a dark ceiling of black
But up ahead, blue sky and fluffy white clouds
The kind that make me want to soar up to them
Is the promise for me?
Never again such destruction?
I can only hope

I am reminded of something Winston Churchill said following the victory at El Alameinin North Africa, London, 10 November 1942:
"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end.
But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

A Friend in the Business

2007-07-16T19:15:00.000-04:00

I was thinking I might be able to head out to Ocala after I got back and ask Steve Saint to pull my tooth jungle dentist style. I figured that could save me a pile of money and I've been needing to go out and see Steve anyway. But the pain was getting unbearable and I decided I just couldn't wait that long. I thought I might be able to stop in to see my dentist friend in Orangeburg on the way out of town today. The only time available was 10:30 this morning and I couldn't deal with the trailer tire and the dump before then, so it was a separate trip. The dental assistant who took the x-ray said it should be a surgical extraction but he was calling it a simple extraction, which is a whole lot cheaper. She shook her head wondering why he would do such a thing. The tooth could have been saved with a lot of time, work, and money. He told me that far back molar actually does very little chewing work so it really wasn't worth saving. It took a whole lot of elbow grease, but he got the sucker out. He actually had to take a break to rest his arm two or three times. When it finally came out his forearm was pumped up like he'd been lifting weights, which he does regularly at Gold's Gym. I didn't feel anything but pressure. When he started shooting my jaw up with Novocain it was heaven! He kept shooting and shooting till I couldn't feel a thing. I didn't mind the tug-of-war with my jaw at all. He told me afterward that most guys would have put me under for something like that and most of this kind of thing he refers to an oral surgeon. He also happens to be the guy who trained Steve Saint in his jungle dentistry skills and he said Steve wouldn't have been able to handle this one. From my end, it really was less of an ordeal than I expected and $138 out the door was the whole bill. Once in a while it's nice to have a friend in the business. He told me I shouldn't be changing trailer tires out in the heat and unloading a trailer at the dump today. I didn't feel much like doing that either by the time I got back up to Columbia. So, I'm stuck here one more day. The phone rang and I have a gig for Thursday which I should make it back for. I hope. At this point I don't care about much else. The pain went away with the molar.

Pounding

2007-07-14T23:08:00.000-04:00

“...hammering on a nail that just won't go in."

Kings X

I rode my bike back up to South Carolina to fetch my car and to run a couple of trailer loads of trash left at my friend's barn to the dump, thus finishing out the last chore left for me to take care of here. It was supposed to take just a few days. That was eight days ago. A little mistake my daughter made putting up the top of my convertible turned into one of those “for want of a nail the shoe was lost...” situations that compounded into my car sitting in the shop for five days. The monetary damage wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been and it's on the road again, but there won't be any music in my car for a while. Nobody else here has a car with a trailer hitch so the dump runs had to wait. Finally, today I could get at it. The dump is about a 45 minute drive from where the trash is. The first run went well and they didn't even charge me. The nice lady there accepted my story that I used to be a resident of the county and that was good enough for her. So, back for the second load. It was going to be close to get all the way back there before they closed. A couple of miles from the barn with the next load one of the tires on the old trailer blew out. It was completely shredded. The sidewalls looked like they had shattered all the way around. So, I made a call to my Monday afternoon gig guy telling him I was going to still be stuck here a few more days. I spent the next several hours dealing with it. I won't bore you with the details but my friend Sam who owns the barn and I were able to get it off the road and back to his place. Monday I'll have to get some tires for that trailer, make the run, then maybe I can finally get back to Orlando. By the way, the trailer I'm referring to isn't mine. It's another one that lives at the barn that will hold about twice as much trash as mine.

I have never in my life had to spend so much time and money or drive so many miles to try to throw some junk away. And I just realized there's a metaphor there but I really don't feel like going into that. I did as much as I could this evening before starting into my wait until Monday morning. I was tired, hot, hungry, and my tooth that needs pulling was sending searing pain through my jaw. I finally stopped and got some pills to try to take the edge off it. A few nights ago, while sleeping on the floor in front of my friend's fireplace, I had one of those dreams that makes you move in your sleep. I made a lunge that plowed my forehead at the edge of my right orbit into the edge of the raised brick hearth. I woke up very quickly to my head feeling like a cracked egg shell. That was hurting me tonight as well. Once the drugs finally started to kick in, I felt like I could do something about the hunger. I stopped and consumed yet another hamburger by myself. Eating alone is so depressing. That's probably why I've dropped to 182 pounds. Anyway, I was feeling crappy and frustrated and like I'd been beating my head against a brick wall. Wait a minute... yeah. My friend's kids were playing video games where I have been sleeping, so I found a quiet corner in another room and just lay down on the floor in misery.

I had dozed off when my phone rang. It was my former student, riding buddy, and good friend Keith. His wife just had a little girl about an hour ago. They named her Lily; the first child of her generation. Made a grandpa and grandma out of his parents. I smiled a deep down smile thinking about the experiences he has ahead of him. There is nothing quite like the relationship between a daddy and his little girl, which I told him, of course. After the congratulations and blessings I said goodbye so he could continue the list of calls he needed to make. I called my own little girl and left a message for her. I'm feeling better about life now. But I wish my son was finished with dental school instead of just working on getting into it. My tooth still hurts.

Critters

2007-07-13T00:05:00.000-04:00

My old cockatiel hen once again got the yen to be a momma and laid a clutch of eggs. This has happened several other times in years past. They aren't fertile so will never hatch but I let her sit on them for a week or so before disposing of them. They are cute little miniature things. This time instead of putting them down the garbage disposal I decided they might be a nice treat for one of the critters that comes by the back yard just about every night and so I just set them out on the ground by some bushes. Within an hour or so that morning, the scrawniest, mangiest raccoon I have ever seen ambled by. He looked so skinny and hungry it appeared he was having a hard time walking. Something was hanging from his mouth like someone in a stupor.

I grew up in a suburb of Chicago. While the urban sprawl of that city doesn't generally make for a great wildlife experience for a kid growing up, some very wise person many years ago saw to it that a number of forest preserves were established throughout that area and they are the jewels of the region. Our house happened to be a few blocks away from one such preserve which became an almost sacred place to me eventually. It was the best place ever to ride a bicycle and in later years a wonderful refuge to get alone and walk and think. It was also home to a lot of raccoons. These were no country critters. They weren't the adorable little masked bandits. These were the downtown street thugs of the raccoon world. They knew precisely what nights were trash nights and they were the Mongol hoard of garbage. They would come, sometimes several at a time, tip over the garbage cans and proceed to pull out everything inside onto the ground, gorging on anything edible. With an endless, ready supply of nourishment several times every week, these animals grew to huge proportions. They were more like small bears than coons. And they were as fearless as bears. Confronting them on the patio would yield a pause and a look as if to say, “Yeah, what do you want? Can't you see we're busy?” They would leave only when you would start after them with a broom or whatever.

One season the coons were really out of control. For some reason their birth rate had soared. They were driving my father crazy. Once or twice I shot one with my .22 rifle. It was dicey because we were in the village limits and it was illegal to discharge a firearm. But a house makes a pretty good silencer. I would stand in the middle of the family room and having opened a window earlier, would have someone turn on the floodlights when the coons showed up. But the field of fire was very limited by the window opening, so getting a shot was difficult.

My father died suddenly that year and the mess the coons made was just too much for my mother. Something had to be done. A friend of theirs learned of the problem and brought by the solution: a live trap and a Benjamin air rifle. The coons crawled into the trap night after night and we had a dawn execution every morning for about a week and a half. The carcasses came in handy. There was a swampy, empty lot across the street with a stand of trees and bushes. Some ner-do-wells had hauled some plywood and old furniture in there and were using it for a dope den. I put the dead coons in and under the furniture and sheets of plywood and whatever. I figured the stench of rotting carrion would make the place a little less cozy. We never saw anybody over there again.

Okay, well enough of that. The coon that ambled by the other morning wasn't one of the Chicago coon mafia. He was this pathetic creature who really could have used a few eggs for breakfast. But he passed six feet away at most and didn't see them.

Within an hour as I sat by the patio door reading and drinking coffee, a rather small female possum ambled by, sniffing around as she went, looking for something to eat. I knew it was a female because she was very pregnant, her belly full of babies almost dragging on the ground under her. She also looked like those eggs would have done her some good. But she also passed them by so close that I couldn't believe she didn't see them. So near yet so far.

So this is going to seem like a really tacked-on moral of the story, but I swear it's exactly what I thought at that moment. I suppose it's because I was reading my Bible and was really getting some food for my soul from it. I thought about how many times I go into my day walking right past my Bible. Most days I actually read from one of several devotional books I get a lot from. But even then the Bible itself gets passed by some days. When I do read it, the spiritual nourishment is usually palpable. But so often I neglect it. It's a pity. It's right there, available, and I pass by.

I don't want to be the scrawny critter.

Lost Luggage

2007-06-26T19:32:00.000-04:00

When I was in college there was a skit on Saturday Night Live one time about “The Island of Lost Luggage.” It was hilarious. But when it really happens, especially to a frightened person in a strange city, it's far from funny.

Today I had a long layover between two flights. I walked around the airport a bit. There was a lady sitting on the end of a row of seats near the baggage claim. At first she looked a bit familiar but, no, I didn't know her. She just looked a little like somebody I knew. Then I noticed that she started crying and then she lay down across several of the seats and started sobbing. I felt like I had to do something so I walked over and said, “Are you all right?,” which is what one says in such a situation but is ridiculous because she obviously wasn't. She said, “No. I've been waiting for my luggage for five hours!” in a decidedly foreign accent that I couldn't quite place. I said, “I am so sorry.” I asked if she had checked with the lost baggage office which she had. I offered my phone which she didn't need. I mentioned a few other ideas all of which she had tried or there were reasons they wouldn't do in the situation. After a while I finally said, “I wish there was some way I could help you but I can't think of anything.” I decided she just needed someone nearby who she knew cared about her plight so I just sat there a couple seats away. Near enough to be there but not close enough to be a threat.

After sitting there a while I decided there was some praying that needed to be done including asking that this poor woman's bag would show up. Within a few minutes the conveyor started rumbling again with a new load of bags from another flight. The woman got up to go look them over. Then she came up from behind me with suitcase in tow and a smile on her face. She stopped and said in her thick accent, “Thank you for your moral support.” I said “Ah, so there it is! Good! Well God bless you” and she was on her way.

So I guess that's why I was put there in that in-between city for those couple of hours today. Hours I thought would be wasted. It's curious to me how some prayers can be answered just like that. Quickly, simply. All neat and tidy with a nice little happy ending. Then there are the others. Things that are of such enormously greater import than a lost suitcase full of clothing. And the answer doesn't come. And it seems the matter has been set aside or completely ignored. I know that's not the case, but it can feel that way. Another flight arrives. Surely this is finally it. You wait at the conveyor belt and watch as other's receive what they are waiting for and go about their lives. But the belt stops again. And still nothing. Each time the loss feels deeper and more hopeless. God has his own ways and his own timing. He is dependable, but certainly not predictable. Each situation is handled on a case by case basis and you just can't ever pin him down. And sometimes that is excruciatingly difficult.

Best Quote

2007-06-17T18:19:00.000-04:00

I've had this perhaps all-time favorite quote for some time. In today's passage from "My Utmost for His Highest," I came across it again and realized it was from Oswald Chambers. Here it is with a sentence of lead-in:

"Stop having a measuring rod for other people. There is always one fact more in every man's case about which we know nothing."

Every day I try to relate to people with this in mind. I also claim it for myself. My first name happens to mean in Hebrew, "God is my judge."

7,000

2007-06-17T18:07:00.000-04:00

Wow. As of today there have been 7,000 peeks at my random and ephemeral thoughts that would have otherwise registered for only a fleeting moment in my mind's eye, then just drained away into the ether. Blogging is pretty cool.

Holidays

2007-06-17T16:31:00.000-04:00

I've always pretty much wanted to minimize holidays. I said it was because I was resisting the commercialization of everything and the retailers screaming about my responsibility to buy stuff for everybody. It seemed every time I turned around there was some new special day invented by Hallmark. I've always much preferred to give a gift or say something to someone I love because I felt it at the moment. And the effect is better when they aren't expecting it. When you do it on a holiday the doing is more like a chore with a deadline and the getting is expected and therefore doesn't count for very much. Even Christmas was marred when I got old enough to be useful in the light -hanging and tree set-up department. My parents always got a real tree and they had this perfectly awful stand that required countless trips under the branches and into the needles to endlessly loosen and tighten bolts in attempt to get the tree straight enough for my mother's satisfaction. I would think about how I was going to have to undo all the work in just a few weeks - a real Scrooge when it came to decorations. So I suppose the bottom line of my eschewing the calender mandated days has been selfishness.

There is that commandment number four to consider: "Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy." I've tried to do that. I have been in church on most of the Sundays of my entire life. But the commandment isn't quite hard and fast. Like killing in war, there are some exceptions to the rule. Jesus spoke of the reasonable thing to pull your son or ox out of a well if he should happen to fall in there on a Sabbath day. (Luke 14)

(an aside: Having worked most of my life in the creative process vs. making widgets or pushing paper or some other 9 to 5 pursuit, I have had my ox in the well on perhaps many more occasions than normal people. Creative fields are deadly to predictable, controllable schedules. While a wonderful and worthwhile way to nourish one's soul and those of others, after a lifetime of doing so I have come to the opinion that the creative process is a dreadful way to make a living.)

And there is Jesus healing on the Sabbath several times (ex: John chapter 9) directly forcing the issue of the Jewish leadership of his day being so legalistic and repressive about the number of steps in a sabbath day's journey, etc. at the expense of compassion for human beings. When he was chastised for letting his disciples do a bit of work to get something to eat on the Sabbath he said that the day was made for man and not man for the Sabbath (Mark 2:27). And then Romans 14 says that some men consider some days special and others consider all of them the same and let each man be convinced in his own mind. So I've been convinced in my own mind that every day being the same makes more sense; that I should be considerate and loving and honoring of God and others every day, not just on special ones.

But it seems I'm a hypocrite. Even with my bent toward eschewing holidays, I do remember fondly mother's days and father's days, etc., leaving the church at noon on a Sunday and the family gathering at the house or some restaurant to honor my dad or to be honored by my own little family. Basically it was just an excuse to get together and celebrate family and for that it was great. So holidays were kind of a love/hate thing.

I dread holidays more than ever now. I go to church by myself on a day like today and it's worth the effort to do so. But then comes the really hard part: walking out the door by myself as I see others gather with their families to head off to dinner together or whatnot. I'm filled with memories of being part of that as I head off alone into an alone afternoon and an alone evening and another week alone. And I have to buck up and take it. It does pass and I know it will but I know it's coming and I dread it. I've skipped church on a few holidays this year to avoid it. But sitting at home isn't much better. The sharp emotional hit at a more concentrated point in time is replaced by a general malaise accompanied by a good bit of sitting and staring at walls or the trees out back or whatever.

So, as much as I try for them not to, holidays matter. In fact, my lifelong attitude about them has no doubt greatly influenced the circumstances that now require me to experience them by myself.

PS: Both my kids called me this afternoon. That was really nice.

Tired

2007-06-11T14:10:00.000-04:00

After trying unsuccessfully to stop dozing off and giving myself whiplash as I was hurrying up and waiting for hours on a job yesterday, I was thinking about being tired. Then I started into this poem which sounds very pessimistic but was really quite a lot of fun to write. And it kept me awake.

Tired

Worn down by work
worn down by strife
tired of the murk
I'm tired of life
tired of trying
peace to keep
too tired to play
too tired to sleep
tired of giving it my best
of trying hard to pass the test
of enthusiastic bounce and zest
trying to smile as others jest
striving to be a gracious guest
of vigilance and guarding lest
I tip the cards close to my vest
of slogging through the endless quest
the extra mile at one's behest
and swatting vainly at the pest
of spending to feather the nest
of what was fine and then got messed
the sun is sinking in the west
just leave me be and let me rest

Revision

2007-06-11T14:07:00.000-04:00

I was working on a song a while back but I had two melodies and then two titles and finally I figured out that I had two different songs all mixed up. Some additional lyrics and a bit of sorting and I think I got the two of them separated.

Strangely Familiar

strangely familiar looks back at me
questioning eyes
what do they see?
two roads diverged in a wood
far down one before me stood
a man who had been set apart
is this the end or just the start?

strangely familiar
familiar stranger
too old or too new?
do I know you?

deep or shallow?
trash or prize?
the scope is hard to recognize
ambiguous his state of mind
sorting too little and too late
the hidden path is hard to find
a time has come to stop and wait

strangely familiar
familiar stranger
too old or too new?
do I know you?

Wilderness Solitude

Sunny and gritty
hot dry wind
empty vistas with no end
quietly welcome each new day
one step at a time will find the way
to deal with all that has me vexed
and move along to what comes next

wilderness solitude
wilderness solitude
...wilderness
...solitude

Listen to silence
loud and clear
ponder the weight of what I hear
life was moving way too fast
headlong into a desert vast
no telling how long it will last
one day it will be in the past

wilderness solitude
wilderness solitude

the cedar chips again

2007-06-09T22:36:00.000-04:00

A while back I talked about moving "stuff" and likened it to cedar chips. I just spent the last five days traveling up to Columbia, going through all the family possessions in storage for the last year and a half or so in our friend's barn, parsing out what was my stuff, and giving away or throwing out everything that would cost more to store than to buy again some day as well as all kinds of obsolete files and assorted other junk. Several trailer loads are ready for the dump. (and there were already several loads culled out when we moved out of the house) Then all that simply couldn't be parted with was loaded up into a 16 foot yellow Penske rental truck.

--- And here I will pause and say a REALLY, REALLY BIG THANK YOU!!! to my former students Adam Erickson, Jon Duren, and Aaron Jolly who, without my asking, insisted on coming to my aid. YOU GUYS ROCK! And thanks to Rod and Allison for your hospitality. And last but not least, my daughter Stacey who stuck with me for the long haul and provided the best moral support a dad could ever want. ---

The guys really did help me tremendously, moving all the heavy stuff and generally making everything go faster. Ever since I schlepped all that stuff up the long flight of stairs to the barn's loft I have dreaded the day when I would have to carry it all back down. The guys did the lion's share of that and my back, right hip, and left foot are eternally grateful. Seriously, my hip has been giving some trouble again and I seriously doubt I would have been able to negotiate those stairs many more times than I ended up having to.

So, all got into the 8x16 foot truck, albeit with a good bit of airspace above the load. And a canoe, acetylene welding rig, and air compressor that would have other places to live. But I still worried a good bit during the eight hour trip to Orlando if I would be able to shoehorn it into my 5x9x12 foot high storage unit. I had built two levels of lofts in it turning 45 square feet of floor space into 135, but the top two feet were already packed with boxes of stuff from my office at the school which had been stored at a friend's office. (I just helped him move his company a week ago and he no longer has surplus space.)

I got to Orlando and went straight to the storage facility pulling in at 8:00pm. The gate is locked at 10:00 so I had two hours. I got an awful lot done in that amount of time and got to the point where I could see how it was all going to go. I had a plan and it felt good. After 10:00 I took some stuff to the house where it was to go and then dropped the canoe and the little motor and boat stuff at Dave's house on the lake. He was there but sleeping so I was werry, werry qwiet. Got to bed at a decent hour and slept well.

Today everything was safely stowed and the truck returned by 8:00pm. All went in like an engineering project. I don't think a car cubing machine could have gotten it any more compact. The space is 540 cubic feet. It's crammed tight to the ceiling. I had enough room left over for maybe one or two more boxes. That's it. All archive video on VHS, etc. is in my room at the house to be transfered to DVD and originals tossed. (That was about six boxes worth. I had already tossed four or five boxes of tapes at the barn that had no archival value.) Went out and bought myself a good meal to celebrate. Now I'm back at the house ready to get a good night's sleep and be at a camera gig starting at 8:00am tomorrow. I have seven days of work in a row.

I'm about as de-junked and organized as I've ever been in my life. I know where every single thing is. It's quite extraordinary. And a little weird to have every earthly possession from a lifetime of accumulation reduced to such a finite known volume.

So, the last nagging thing left hanging, the barn full of junk, has been dealt with. I'm officially out of South Carolina. I have Florida plates on the vehicles, a Florida license in my pocket, and will soon have an area 407 (or more probably 321) cell phone number.

And life goes on...

Orlando Folk Scene

2007-06-02T02:29:00.001-04:00

Sunday night I went to a weekly folk music circle that was recommended to me. It has been going on for something like ten years more or less. It's an interesting format. Everybody sits in a circle and one person plays a song, then the person to his or her left plays a song, and you go around and around clockwise all evening. You can play along and back each other up and/or sing harmony if it's a song you happen to know. I played a good bit with the other folks and they even nodded my way to take a solo now and then. I've been in some similar jam type situations where everybody is trying to play over the top of everybody else and it's just an annoying cacauphony. But this was different. People only seemed to play when they had something to contribute and always behind the person whose turn it was and always with effort to enhance that person's performance. Everybody was friendly and kind and supportive of everybody else, encouraging the beginners and praising specific things about more accomplished performances and offering suggestions for this or that. It's a good place to try out new songs on people who will listen and give feedback. Ability is all over the map from raw beginners to some lifetime experienced musicians. The personalities are all over the map as well. All in all a nice group showed up and a few real characters. I'm told it's different every time.

Today was Friday. I was working all week helping my friend move his company from downtown Orlando up to a new office in Lake Mary. I did a lot of unwiring and rewiring of video equipment in racks and editing systems, making shelves, and mounting brackets and whiteboards and such. Anyway, I took a look at my "Friends of Florida Folk" magazine to see if anything might be going on tonight and saw a "first Friday of the month" open mic at a church up in the north part of the city. By the time I had everything dealt with that had to be done, I got there about two hours after it started. But I still watched several people and small groups play and last thing I even did a little looped instrumental thing and two of my new songs. They were very well received. I got lots of requests form folks to be sure to come back and an invitation to come to another popular open mic night. Also a woman who was one of the featured musicians at the Faux Festival, and kind of a fixture in the Orlando folk scene, sought me out afterward and wanted a card and said something about lining up musicians for something or other.

My songs came out very comfortably and I was able to use the JamMan to good effect as I'd always hoped I would be able to - for the instrumental and then just to loop a verse of rythm part at the end of a song while I did a solo over it for the ending. It worked great! For this I just plugged in my Baggs pre, then the Korg PX-2 for a touch of effects to sweeten the guitar tone, then the JamMan and then into the house system. It took about 1 minute. I felt I was really able to emote to the twenty or so people who were still there at the end and I was able to play and sing about as good as I ever can at home alone, so that's a big step. I'm starting to get comfortable. It makes such a huge difference to play to an audience who actually want to listen and who like what you are doing. I don't think I'll ever play in a bar again! I think I'm going to try to hit as many of these open mic nights as I can. Already I saw some familiar faces from Saturday. Some people seem to make the rounds but I understand each one has it's own regulars and it's own flavor. I'm starting to get a feel for the quality norm of the players and their music at these open mics as compared to the musicians that get featured to play whole concerts or sets at various events. I think I've got a good shot at some of the latter. Especially after how it went over tonight. But then, those folks had endured a few truly torturous performances not long before so I suppose that put me in a good light. Several other folks besides the woman I mentioned above talked to me and encouraged me to play at more events. I enjoyed myself and I think I'm going to do more of this kind of thing!

But not for a while. You may notice the blog go quiet here for a while. I have to do some hard traveling next week. It looks like two round trips to Columbia and back to move stuff. Then the next week I have a five day camera job. And the week after that it looks like there may be another trip. (By plane!) No telling how much I'll be able to get on line if at all during all of it. But I should have a story or two when it's over!

Faux Festival

2007-05-27T16:54:00.000-04:00

Last month, at the recommendation of my friend, I set up a myspace page not thinking anything much would come of it. Then, last week, I got a friend request from a fellow named Bill who does folk music with his wife all over the state of Florida. He mentioned a festival happening in a few days that they were going to play at. Well, I went yesterday to the Florida Faux Festival. I learned that The Florida Folk Festival normally happens Memorial Day Weekend up in White Springs and has been going on since 1953. Alas, this year the smoke from brush fires caused the festival to be cancelled at the last minute. Actually, it has now been rescheduled for November. A folky named Stu Hall organized a sort of alternate festival in Orlando in only three days time. It wasn't to exactly replace the historic festival and would not be nearly so large, so it was called the "Faux" festival. I spent the day there yesterday and discovered that a whole world of folk music goes on all over Florida. There is a state organization and several regional ones, including central Florida, dedicated to folk music. I got hold of one of their publications that lists dozens of folk gatherings at many different kinds of places, a good many right here in the Orlando area.

I heard and met some wonderful musicians who are passionate about it. I have been doing my thing in a vacuum for so long I was quite amazed that so many of these people existed. Looking around at the audience during some of the performances I noticed that most of the folks were at least my age and many older. Children of the '60s and '70s. They say that, all other things being equal, your favorite music is whatever was on the radio when you were in high school. And for these people, that was the golden era of folk music - of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul and Mary, James Taylor, Joni Mitchel, Carol King, John Denver, Simon and Garfunkel, Neil Young, Crosby Stills and Nash, and on and on. Was it folk music then or pop? The two were the same because folk music was such a popular form. The evolution moved toward rock and on to other forms but some of us are still stuck in the '70s. There are a lot more of us than I thought. And it looks like there's a good chance I might get connected with some of them and we'll share some music. Maybe there really is an audience besides people who just want to drink and dance. There was a lot of intense listening going on yesterday. And some wonderful sounds and stories.

quiet blog

2007-05-23T02:45:00.000-04:00

Been working a good bit lately. Lots of set up and strike work at the huge Orange County, FL convention center. And lots of walking on the hard concrete floors. My feet ache. More tomorrow. Been trying to get back to recording. I have a backlog of new songs to get down. But I've been fiddling and twiddling with my guitar rig. Replaced a damaged pot in a preamp. L.R. Baggs sent me the replacement for free. Great company. Modified the same unit with an on/off switch so I don't have to pull the input cable out to turn it off. And some more stuff to let me control more with my feet. One just can't ever seem to have too many foot switches. Now I just need some more gigs to use it all for. Oh yeah. One more thing. I've been watching a couple of guitar training videos about DADGAD. I'm starting to get it. What a whole new world of great sounds. I may never come back.

Night is Stealing

2007-05-17T03:35:00.000-04:00

Night is stealing on
the day's long gone
but I can't get me into bed

I keep going on
try to catch the song
slowly swirling in my head

It can't wait until tomorrow
then it will be gone
never to appear again

I have to chase it now

run it down somehow
the fleeting to contain

Stopping by Woods on a Sultry Evening

2007-05-15T14:41:00.000-04:00

An ode to the fast approaching Florida summer:

stopping by woods on a sultry evening
twinkling lights on a ship that's leaving
thick the jungle, foliage weaving
soggy shores and pavement steaming

in the snow so far away
they hear the call to come and play
to sun and sand they make their way
then wait in lines and walk all day

CHORUS:
hot the nights and hotter days
sticky air and burning rays
melanoma threatening but
for lotion scented coconut

wear out the plastic card that pays
the irritating parking fee
heavy atmosphere that lays
a blanket of humidity

for weeks or months the snowbirds stay
and often do get in the way
the locals gripe and grind their axes
but, hey, those folks pay our state taxes!

(Chorus again)

A gator glides up to say "hi"
your swim suit will never dry
come on kids! bring ma and pa!
welcome to Florida!

Back in the Saddle

2007-05-13T17:28:00.000-04:00

This morning I did something I haven't had opportunity to do in several years. My old pal Warren called me up early last week and asked if I could play guitar at his church Sunday. I went to the rehearsal Wednesday and this morning played three services. All came together very well and I really enjoyed playing in church again. Warren wants to get their talent pool a bit deeper so players can rotate and only have to play once a month or so. That would suit me just fine. I had been hoping such an opportunity would come along again. Worship is just never better for me than with a guitar in my hands.

consumer alert

2007-05-07T13:40:00.000-04:00

A quote for the day from Dave Barry:

"I would estimate that 58 percent of all serious household accidents result from consumers assaulting packaging designed to improve consumer safety."

A Convenient Lie

2007-05-07T03:45:00.000-04:00

Well, as I've always cynically said like so many others, if you want to know what's going on, follow the money. And the whole global warming religion is about a whole big pile o' money. People who want to get or keep a piece of the pie are trying to control what you think. The scientific community is NOT unanimous about global warming but the economics of research funding are tending to silence the voices of the dissenters and as is all too often the case, politics is riding roughshod all over the scientific method and truth in general. In any case, we haven't been getting the other side of the story for which to me the evidence is far more compelling.

I've wondered if we even have temperature records old enough to have any meaning at all for plotting trends. One may have to look back far before recorded history to really make sense of it all. But it would seem that the data we do have when taken together objectively does show trends that if anything run completely opposite to global warming theory.

With all the hysteria about global warming I have been wondering why we have not heard one peep out of the media with regard to the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by volcanoes as compared to cars and factories. That fact alone has made me think that the media and the masses really have little interest in reality, but rather only in a predetermined agenda. Tonight I watched a British documentary called "The Great Global Warming Swindle." (You can watch a video stream of it at the link. It's worth an hour and fourteen minutes of your time to be informed.) It DOES talk about volcanoes which, as I suspected, put out more C02 than all human activity. What I didn't know is that animals and bacteria account for a whole lot more than that - 150 gigatons per year compared to 6.5 gigatons from all human sources. But wait, dying and rotting vegatation accounts for more than that and all of the above combined is a small fraction of the real culprit of C02 production: the oceans. And speaking of the oceans, the documentary explains the temperature memory effect of the deep oceans being in the magnitude of hundreds to thousands of years. Things the oceans are doing today are the result of things that happened long before the industrial revolution and perhaps before the planet was even populated by humanity. And all of the above is trumped by the real controller of our climate; something that has the power to dry up the oceans if not for our precise placement in space: the sun. Duh! Remember that graphic from your science textbook showing how many earths would fit inside the sun? If the earth is a marshmallow, our influence on it's climate is a few specks of dirt and the sun is the campfire. We think far too highly of our influence. If every human made all the radical lifestyle changes the naysayers would like to see happen, if we stopped operating every car and truck, if we shut down the power plants, I don't think the earth would hiccup one way or the other. The only real change would be a redistribution of wealth and power among various groups of humans, which I believe is what this is really all about.

The insidious thing about untruth is that it can taint large quantities of truth and use it in the service of it's deceitful agenda. Al Gore's film uses a beautifully produced graphic to show the relationship between C02 volume and global temperature. The relationship is there. It is true. What Al fails to tell us, or perhaps he didn't know, is that the cause/effect relationship is the reverse of what he infers. The fact is that C02 level has followed temperature level. It has consistently lagged behind. It is a result of climate change, not the cause of it. Though possibly (but not necessarily) well-intentioned, It would seem that our ex-vice-president is either not very thorough or not all that terribly smart or a liar. But hey, everybody wants to believe the guy who created the internet, right?

I believe we should be good stewards of what we have been given. I don't throw gum wrappers on the ground. I think it's wrong to litter. It's reprehensible to be wantonly wasteful. But I also believe the earth is to serve mankind, not the other way around. "The Great Global Warming Swindle" points to the biggest losers if Al's believers get their way: the third world. The worst pollution that kills the most people is cooking fire smoke inside the dwellings of those who have no electricity. One third of the world's population would be a whole lot healthier if they had a power plant nearby.

So, Mr. Gore, "the debate is over," eh? You might read a bit from someone who is actually a thinking person. Andrew Marshall is a 19 year old university student. Take a look at what he has written and compiled here. The conclusion of his very thorough treatise includes this:

"It seems worrisome that politicians are all too eager to grab onto this man-made myth of global warming in order to make us afraid and guilty. Guilty enough to want to change it, and afraid enough to give up our freedoms and undergo massive financial expenses in order to do so. So this lie, being pushed by big money and big governments, is a convenient lie for those who want to exert control and collect money. However, it’s inconvenient for the mass amount of people who are already experiencing the problems of a widening wage-gap and fading middle class."

The rich always want to balance the budget on the backs of the middle class. After all, we're just too stupid to know any better.

Gig 1

2007-05-06T01:16:00.000-04:00

Well, I finally did it. I played a gig by myself doing folk music and other throwbacks from the 70's. And I'm mostly feeling good about the way it went. I prepared a set list but ended up mixing it up a good bit depending on what was going on and how many folks were around at the moment. Also, I thought the coffee shop was open until 11:00 but in fact it closed at 10:00, so some songs I was saving for the end never happened. My friend Kirk who told me about the place stopped in for a while after his evening responsibilities. Another friend, Mike, came too. I was really appreciative of the support from those guys. When nobody was left except Mike and while Jake and Sam were cleaning up, I cranked the amp way up and for a big finish did Bread's "Guitar Man" complete with close to note-for-note solos over top of the Jam Man looping away. It was a good thing to end on, though not quite what I had planned.

I got some good feedback from the guys there about what they thought worked well for their context and what didn't. And I got $7 in my tip jar! The first money I've ever earned in my life playing guitar! Almost enough to pay for 1/2 a set of strings! Looks like its going to take a lot of gigs to break even on my gear. Good thing I'm not in it for the money.

So here's the set list as best as I remember. I know the order isn't quite accurate, but pretty close:

5/5/07 House Blend Cafe, Ocoee, Florida

LONGING (instrumental with looper)
DELAYED REACTION (instrumental with looper)
YOUR EYES (w/tracks)
TIME OF YOUR LIFE (w/tracks)
JUST YOU AND ME (w/tracks)
BORDERLINE (w/tracks)
WAIT OF THE WORLD (w/tracks)
HEART OF GOLD (with harmonica)
TAKES A LITTLE TIME (with harmonica)
YOU'VE GOT A FRIEND
MEMORIES (w/tracks)
BROKEN FEATHERS
DAYLIGHT AGAIN
SPOON RIVER
STILL CAN'T SAY GOODBYE
GLIMMER
LULABY
MAKE LOVE STAY
CAT'S IN THE CRADLE
EVERYTHING I OWN
AUBRY
FIELDS OF GOLD
CRY A RIVER
TO AUTUMN
MISSING YOU
GUITAR MAN

Relativity

2007-05-04T01:31:00.000-04:00

On April 10^th I happened to hear the Star Date radio spot. They often have some interesting astronomical tidbit of popular interest to share. On that particular day the moon was in the position of it's orbit where it crosses the orbit of the earth around the sun, this time in front. They started out saying we were heading toward the moon, which for a moment in time was true, though by the time we got to that point in space, about three and a half hours later, the moon would be out of the way. Long gone in one way of thinking, though actually no further away nor closer to the earth than ever.

The piece went on to say that the earth (and the moon with it) moves around the sun at about 66,000 miles per hour. “But that's just one of our planet’s many motions through space.” Our entire solar system orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy at about 500,000 miles per hour. And one revolution takes about 200 million years or would have if all is actually that old. But wait, the Milky Way is moving toward the Andromeda galaxy. And both together are moving toward “a dense cluster of hundreds of galaxies called the Great Attractor.” And all of the above may together be moving somewhere else in a way we aren't able to perceive. So what direction are we really going? And how fast? The relative movements are so complicated that it may be impossible to calculate. In any case both the vector and the velocity are constantly changing as the various types of motion interact with one another.

Our feelings and relationships are similarly relative. They are added and subtracted and multiplied and divided among each other and the vectors are constantly combined. What we like, what annoys, what is pleasant and what is painful all tend to be relative to something else. A horrible tragedy to one person is a relief to another. A thing of no consideration one day is a thing of great value another in the context of contrast with something else. Our loves and hates and the intensity of them is mainly due to how they relate to some other previous experience. The same circumstance or relationship that is just fine to one person may be intolerable to another.

How to sort it out? Who can do it? Nothing stands alone. Everything has a context and that context is inside another context which is inside another.

Our perspectives make things that are the same appear different. A jet plane going 500 miles per hour at 100 feet appears to be moving extremely fast to those in it and those observing on the ground. The same jet going the same speed at 30,000 feet appears to be barely moving.

How in the world can anyone agree on anything? Our basis for knowing seems to have more variables than is possible to calculate. I suppose this is why finding common ground for thinking and understanding is so precious. And when we find in another person a perspective and a mindset that is similar to our own it is very attractive. There's a little bit of peace amid the confusion. So birds of a feather flock together. We just have no idea what direction we are really going or how fast we are going there except as it simply relates to something that is very close to us. That is at the same time truth on one local level and an illusion on a broader one.

The fact that the unfathomable complexity of the system exists and the fact that the immutable laws of entropy exist points me to the inescapable conclusion that an intelligent designer exists who encompasses all. In that I find the only possible link to sanity beyond willingly accepting the illusion. Faith in the Uncaused Cause is the only way to navigate the chaos.

The Economy of Pain

2007-05-02T13:12:00.002-04:00

Lately I've been thinking about the value of pain. It seems to me there is an economy of which it is a central element.

Way back when I was a sophomore in high school, I made a new friend whose father had died the year before. One time he happened to be telling me about his relationship to a young lady, a mutual friend I had become acquainted with at about the same time. She had been close to him throughout the previous several years and walked with him through his loss and grief. They were friends with no romantic interest and had never dated as far as I ever knew. But I observed a closeness between them; a tenderness that I knew was very special. He told me “We've been through a lot together.” At that moment I dialed into something about shared pain. It can yield a depth of relationship that is precious. I found myself longing to be bonded to friends with that kind of closeness. I've likened it many times to the war veterans who meet years later for reunions. They survived something horrible together and though they would never wish the experience on anyone, when they sit together quietly drinking coffee, a scene that any observer would pass and think absolutely nothing of, they share a connection and understanding that is deep and rich and unsharable with anyone who had not been there back in the day. Shared pain welds a bond between souls that is of extremely high value.

Pain yields appreciation. Through contrast the relief at the end of it or any good situation that comes along after it is made all the more sweet. A thing I might have taken for granted that may have indeed been completely wasted on me causes my heart to well up in gratitude when I know what it was to be without it, to have known the wanting, to have been hungry and destitute. So pain can be viewed like a savings account. The bitterness of it contains the promise of future sweetness in comparative proportion.

Like money, pain has transferable value. A painful experience doesn't necessarily have to be shared at the same place and time to yield connection. A mother who lost a baby years before can empathize with a mother who has just gone through such a loss and provide comfort that nobody else can. The threshold between being alone and not can be crossed using the currency of pain earned at an earlier time.

It seems masochistic sometimes when certain situations or music or whatever cause me to feel my pain in an intensely amplified way that I would allow myself to be exposed to such. One might counsel another to stay away. But I find myself wanting to expose my chest and let it hammer on my heart. I more often than not embrace it and let it pummel me. Somehow it makes me feel like I'm still alive and human. I sense the value in it though I so desperately wish it wasn't there and would go away.

I remember when I got the shocking news that my father had died suddenly. I was in Detroit and immediately got in my vehicle and drove home to Chicago. During the hours of that night alone on the freeway I made a decision to not fight the grief but let it have it's way with me. I embraced it. I wept and sobbed and swam in the loss. I believe I grieved well and got to a healthier, more stable place and much sooner than I would have otherwise.

So I acknowledge the currency of pain. I don't like the earning of it. It is a bitter wage. It often feels wanton, out of control, very arbitrary and unfair. I hate it, struggle against it, and want it to be over. But I trust that it is not a waste. It has lasting value. I trust that one day I will look back with the conviction that I would not have traded it for anything in the world.

Booked

2007-05-02T13:12:00.001-04:00

Well, after many months of thinking about it, preparing my rig, and putting out feelers, I finally have a gig booked for playing my guitar. A friend of mine put me on to a little coffee shop in Ocoee called House Blend Cafe. I'm going to be playing there this Saturday night (5/5/07) starting at 8:00 pm.

houseblendcafe.com

oops, this link was bad. I just fixed it.

Busy Week

2007-05-02T13:11:00.000-04:00

Last week I did two overlapping jobs in an eight day stretch. The first was a corporate show and I did 30 hours in four days. The second was so many hours I lost track. It was interviews and documentary footage for a set of videos on high school evangelistic ministry. The client was the guy who started and directed Student Venture, the high school ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ for many years. We were shooting stories surrounding a campus ministry at a high school that has been remarkably effective with some really unusual stories.

We ran two cameras most of the time and the interviews went on for hours at a time. That kind of thing really burns through the tape. We shot 46 hours of tape in seven days. It was brutal. That is a record for any shoot I've ever had anything to do with. Long runs at interviews were interspersed by relentless running from setup to setup doing b-roll material. Our client really got the bang for his buck squeezing so much into every day.

A young man prayed to receive Christ right in front of my rolling camera. That was quite an experience. It happened to me once before in 1989 in Manila. We interviewed an atheist and a recently converted atheist and a slew of kids with interesting testimonies. I shot some cool car to car footage out of the back of my convertible. We did some crazy stuff in restaurants, a grocery store, and all around a high school. We did basketball, volleyball, soccer, wrestling, and a bunch of general horsing around and lots of reality style bites of life following people around walking and talking, eating, waking up, doing chores, fixing a car engine.

It was very hard work, but a lot of good things are going to come out of it. It will be some time before editing is even started on this material but the plan is that it will find it's way into a number of different finished products eventually.

A really crazy thing happened as we were interviewing a high school principal in his office. He was interrupted by the police showing up needing to talk to him. We later found out that they were there to arrest a student who had been calling people at the school leaving death threats. They found that he had made a list of 125 people he wanted to kill. It's an absolutely insane time we live in. The need for outreach like this one on campuses has never been greater.

The young staff guy who is the point man for the ministry at that school is a man of very deep qualities. I admire him a lot. The very last night of the shoot we made a personal connection. He invited me to his church. There just might be a new close friend there.

Extrusion

2007-05-02T13:08:00.000-04:00

Most of us have experience with extrusion thanks to Play-Doh. If your parents sprung for the deluxe kit your supply of the stuff came with a little plastic plunger device. You stuffed the chamber full of your favorite color of Play-Doh, pushed the plunger down, and out squirted a line of Doh with the cross section of a star or an I-beam or a dowel. The shape of the extrusion is defined by the shape of the hole in the “die” through which the raw material is squeezed. That little machine probably launched the careers of many a factory process engineer. Many useful things are made in a similar way out of food, plastic, and metal. Snack food and pasta can be made into interesting shapes. Plastic and copper pipe are made this way as is aluminum framework for storm doors and screen rooms, sailboat masts, and all kinds of bracketry. Countless parts and pieces that add structural strength and convenience and sometimes even beauty to our lives are made possible by extrusion.

I was thinking about brokenness. I've come to the place of belief that it seems everyone who follows after God for any length of time eventually comes to: only broken vessels can really be used. I think it has to do with the fact that God created humans with the capability of moral choice that we must become broken to be of any use. Of course this is counterintuitive, but completely fitting with God's high value of humility and abhorrence with pride that is the huge theme throughout all of the Bible. Broken hearts, broken souls, and broken lives have cracks and fissures and holes. It is through these holes that the raw material of love is squeezed into useful forms. It's interesting that in industry the hole is in a “die.” Like that particular part of the apparatus must die to itself. It's own structural integrity must be compromised by the hole in the middle of it in order for the transformed raw material to flow through it.

There is Love for You

2007-04-19T18:52:00.000-04:00

to every lost and broken soul
that only can dream of being whole
for every dream that has vanished from your sight
to every heart weeping in the night

please try to wait just a little bit more
the dawn will change the view
each day is new
and there is love for you

to those beaten down who have no hope
who live at the end of the rope
to every heart that is breaking fresh each day
for hundreds of tries but there's no way

please try to wait just a little bit more
the dawn will change the view
each day is new
and there is love for you

Wilderness Solitude

2007-04-15T21:10:00.000-04:00

Strangely familiar
looks back at me
question eyes, what do they see?
two roads diverged in a wood
far down one before me stood
a man who had been set apart
is this the end or just the start?

wilderness solitude
wilderness solitude

deep or shallow
trash or prize
the scope is hard to recognize
ambiguous his state of mind
sorting too little and too late
hidden path is hard to find
a time has come to stop and wait

wilderness solitude
wilderness solitude