dog shopping

Posted on by May 29, 2013

We promised our three-year old that we would get a dog.

He’s not the kind of kid who harps on this dog promise.  He excitedly reminds us that we are going to get a dog sometimes, but he really doesn’t push it.

So now, I’m doing a little bit of dog shopping.

Craigslist is a good source but so far I’ve come up dry.

There are lots of CL ads that say “good with kids”…here’s a picture from one of them…

pit bull with baby 2

My thing with a lot of the ads is that I really just don’t know if a pitbull would be the best choice for my family….even if it’s one that a baby could ride around the yard.

Not that I really have anything against pitbulls.  They can be really sweet…compact, muscular, huge powerful jaws.  They are a potentially aggressive and tenacious breed.

Why wouldn’t that be a good fit for a family with little kids and chickens?

Another thing that a large number of the ads say is that the dog that they’re trying to dump on someone else is looking for a “forever friend” to take care of them.

I don’t know that I could put my human friends on the spot and demand that they be a “forever friend” to me.  That’s just too much pressure.

Nobody likes pressure.

One thing that reading all these ads has taught me is that the greatest dogs are the ones that people need to get rid of the most.

I guess that’s what marketing is all about, but dog shopping really gives you a chance to hear some sad stories.

Probably some of the saddest stories are the ones that basically say, “we made a bad choice” and subtly follow that with, “do you want to be a forever friend…(to our bad choice)? ”

I guess that it’s better to try and pawn off an animal than just letting it go in the woods…but what a shame that it doesn’t work out more often for the craigslist folks and their dogs.

I don’t even want to get started on the veiled “small rehoming fee” option (but I guess I will anyway).  Selling your dog might be OK…but it would be nice to just be able to say, “I’m selling this dog I don’t want”.  It would be great to be able to just call it what it is.

I worked for a vet when I was in my late 20’s.  There were so many great dogs that came through that office that needed “forever friends”…I probably would have ended up with fifteen dogs if I’d taken every one that needed a home.

That would have been kind of crazy, though.

You hear a lot about “cat ladies”…you don’t hear as much about “dog men”.

I know that we’ll find a dog one of these days.  I can feel our “forever friend” bounding through the wildflowers, calling to us excitedly as he prepares to join our family for the rest of time.

And if that doesn’t work out, we can always “rehome” him for a small “rehoming fee”.  Maybe we can even make some money on the deal?  You know….just to make sure he’s going to a good home?

Maybe we’ll give one of those pitbulls a shot after all.

What’s the worst that could happen?

( I don’t have permission to use this photo…I don’t know these people…the dog looks nice…the baby is having a blast.  Please don’t sue me.)

Piers

Posted on by May 28, 2013

Sometimes, it’s not only friends who recommend and lead you to good new music.

Ben Harper mentioned Piers Faccini as being someone he enjoyed.

So, trusting Ben Harper’s judgement….I discovered Piers Faccini.

A big time for me is brewing a cup of tea and listening to some slow, maybe depressing music.

I don’t know why that is…maybe I’m genetically predisposed to be looking out over a lonely winter fjord…my reindeer by my side.

This music is the perfect complement to that kind of activity…minus the reindeer, of course.

Check out the link to Pier’s own website…there’s a lot of his artwork on the site, also.

my father took a ride on Hitler’s yacht

Posted on by May 27, 2013

idaho 081

After my father passed away a couple of years ago, we were looking through some of the old photo albums my sister had found.

One of the albums was a bunch of snapshots that he’d collected from when he was serving in the military.

It was filled with pictures of him working on vehicles and goofing around with his other soldier friends.

He was in the Army immediately after the war ended…sent to Germany as part of the occupied forces.

It’s strange to imagine how a young Norwegian farm kid from Montana ended up in Germany…but there he was.

One of the pictures was kind of confusing until I heard some of the back story.

It was a picture of a big boat with swastikas painted on the side.

You don’t see many boats like that these days.

My sister said that it was Hitler’s yacht…and that the service men were able to take rides on it.

I can say that my father was invited to take a ride on Hitler’s yacht…but I’d have to make sure and explain the context, otherwise it might sound funny.

My father didn’t talk a lot about his time in the military.  I remember that he used to tell this one story about a cook that they had in his unit.  He said that the guy had survived the Bataan Death March…and that the Army was “taking care of him”.  I guess this fellow had kind of a “funny” sense of humor…and one of the things that used to really get him laughing was to offer one of the soldiers a tablespoon of hot sauce my Dad called “mexipep” covered in a little bit of gravy.  I guess that this cook got a kick out of seeing the guys sputter and run for a drink of water to put out the fire.

I suppose that there are all sorts of stories from war-time.

Some are huge and heroic…tales of battle and survival.  Some are small and kind of funny.

My father’s heroism came later in his life…but that’s another story for another time.

Looking at his pictures in that album, it hits me ( like it must hit any child of a service man or woman when they get to see photos of their parent serving their country) that these people were young.

They were young men and women… just doing a job.

Some of the jobs were dangerous…some were quiet and steady…but they all added up to something big and important.

You don’t see many yachts in the harbors of the world with swastikas painted on the side these days.

On today’s Memorial Day, I’d have to say, “Thankyou” to all the people serving in the military who made it possible for me to say that.

ugly guitars

Posted on by May 26, 2013

willie-nelson-trigger-guitar-martin-s

One of my favorite scenes in any Indiana Jones movie is the one where he gets an opportunity to pick the Holy Grail.

I think it was in the third movie…Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Anyway, he’s in this cave with the Templar who’s been guarding the Grail for years and Indiana’s Dad is with him.  There’s a couple of Nazis in there with him, too…a full on evil dude Nazi and this woman who was an almost girlfriend until she returned to the dark Nazi side full-time.

This ancient Templar is counseling them about the rules of choosing a chalice and of course the dude Nazi has to go first…he wants all the power the Grail promises.

He chooses the most beautiful and shiny chalice of the bunch and takes a satisfied swig from it…and…he turns into a melting wax head skeleton and that’s it for him.

Indiana is up next….and after much deliberation, he chooses a crude and common looking cup…one that looks like a peasant would use.  He tentatively takes a drink and nothing bad happens…he’s still Indiana Jones.

I remember the Templar said something like, “You have chosen wisely”.

Of course, after Indiana successfully chooses the cup, the Nazi woman takes it and tries to leave the chamber with it and all heck breaks loose. She dies and Indiana almost joins her until his father snaps him out of his enchantment.

That’s exactly how it feels when I’m picking out a guitar.

Maybe not completely…but I’ve learned that sometimes it’s the “ugly guitar” that holds the real power.

It’s funny, but when I go guitar shopping for friends and show some different guitars to them, it’s always the bright and shiny new guitar that they’re drawn to.

And, I suppose, why wouldn’t they be?  New things are better than old used things, right? It’s their money I’m hoping to influence them to spend….the shiny guitar looks a lot better.

Every once in the while, though, I’ll see some diamond in the rough hanging on the guitar store rack.  It might be kind of beat up…might have some finish wear…might look kind of old.  It might have some PATINA.

When I pick it up to play it, this beat up old guitar feels like it wants to jump up off my lap and dance around the room.  The first notes tell me something that the other new guitars can’t say.  This old beater has a story and plays like nothing I’ve ever heard before.

“How about this one?  It’s older…but it’s a great guitar.  How about this guitar?!”

“Nah…I think I’ll stick with this shiny one.”

Nobody ever turns into a melting wax head skeleton, but I want to be able to say at some point, like the Templar in the cave, ” You have chosen wisely”.

We can’t see what something is beyond what it looks like.

Our whole lives are like that…bling trumps character.  First impressions are important, but we need to get to the point where we’re willing to give the “ugly guitar” a chance.

We need to grow into the insight and willingness to look beyond the surface that, hopefully, maturity provides.

After all, nobody wants to turn into a melting wax head, anyway.

image from here.

 

 

the udu defense

Posted on by May 25, 2013

playground-bullying

I’ve spent some time in courtrooms.

I’ve served on a couple of juries….and I’ve watched a couple of courtroom dramas.

I’ve just never been formally charged with anything.

“Formally charged…”  that’s kind of funny.  Actually, I’ve never had any charges in any form brought against me.

I’m clean.

I was thinking about court this morning and the legal system in general…. and I thought that if I ever was in trouble, and found myself being dragged before a judge, that it might be wise to employ a defense that I don’t see used very often in a formal setting.

If I ever found myself in some sort of legal predicament, it makes sense to me that one of the strongest ways I can think of to get out of it all would be…

THE UDU DEFENSE.

That’s the maneuver where when the charges are brought against me, and the judge is saying something like “the charges against you are watching illegal Chinese cam shot pre-release American movies on the internet.  Do you understand the charges?“….when that happens, when the judge is coming down on me hard for whatever crime the court has decided I may be guilty of …

I stand to my feet, look the judge in the eye, and say…“YOU DO”.

Worst case scenario it buys me a little time, best case it results in the case being declared a mistrial.

It works for me.

Playground defense…they don’t teach it at law school…we forget it by the time we accept that we need to follow THE LAW to the letter…but it works.

Imagine the pandemonium when, in response to an accusation too horrible to repeat, we calmly stand and say, “YOU DO“.

Those two simple words completely put the issue back in the judge’s court.

The UDU DEFENSE deflects and saves.

The thing about the UDU DEFENSE that’s kind of appealing is that it really doesn’t require any preparation other than developing the willingness to deploy it.

It can be used at any time. When the judge says “How do you plead”, you answer “YOU DO”….when the judge says “Bailiff, RESTRAIN THIS MAN!!!” , you say….”YOU DO”.

When your defense attorney says, “We’re going to get something to eat.  Do you want anything?” you could say something like, “YOU DO”.

Do you see what I’m saying?  It’s a simple system and one without any weakness.

And the beauty of it all is that it really doesn’t require any legal training.  You don’t have to go to law school, you don’t have to have any courtroom experience, you don’t have to worry about whether you ever make partner in somebody else’s whatever…all you have to do is develop the ability to randomly retort “YOU DO” when someone puts you on the spot.

It is an elegantly simple solution.

I do hope that I never have to be in a situation where I have to use my UDU skills.  I don’t want to confront the legal system in any form.

I don’t want to make that kind of history.

But…if the UDU DEFENSE doesn’t seem to be bringing the court to its knees, I could always trot out my ace in the hole…

The IAMRUBBAH RETALIATION.

Don’t mess with me, legal system.  I’ve got you pegged.

 

I want to be parodied, too

Posted on by May 24, 2013

jagger-snl

I was reading an article about the Rolling Stones in… Rolling Stone magazine and it mentioned how Mick Jagger still mugged it up on stage.

That got me thinking about Mick Jagger….which got me thinking about mugging it up…which got me thinking about the difference between being parodied and being made fun of.

I know about mugging it up.

I know about being made fun of, too.  That’s not always a whole lot of fun.  It never happened all that much…but when it did it was kind of a pain in the rear.

But being parodied?  That would be a new experience.

Parodied has some power behind it…like something you did had so much attention grabbing validity that someone couldn’t help but tweak it a little to…make fun of you.

Wait a minute…maybe they aren’t so different after all?

Maybe when someone parodies you, one of your handlers could say that it was hilarious and congratulate you on being noticed.  Having a squadron of brown nosers around would be helpful to deflect some of the confusion that comes when you’re made fun of….er, parodied.

I don’t really know…it might not be such a blessing to be noticed.

I’m noticed right now when I drive that white Jeep around.  I am a presence…I am the mailman.

But nobodies going to parody me…it would be too hard to set it up correctly.  It is something I do where I am noticed…but not known.

As much as possible…for someone who is seen everyday by the whole community…I am incognito.

Maybe that’s for the best.

When a customer gets upset because their mailbox door fell open, it’s probably good that we don’t have a really close relationship.

Anonymity can be a good thing.

So what it comes down to is another one of those “be careful what you pray for” kind of situations.  People make their “deal with the devil” and then bemoan all the bad things that piggy back in with the resulting fame…they complain when they’re well-known enough to be parodied but do everything they can to stay in the public’s attention…even if it’s something obviously desperate and pathetic.

Maybe what I really want is to just get PAID.

The best scenario would be to lay low, do the work…and get paid.  Get paid over and over.  Over and over….many times in a row.

01 I Need a Dollar

Maybe what I want is the Scrooge McDuck ability to body surf on the giant piles of money…but do it in a house that people look at and say, ” I wonder what goes on in there?”.

When our ship comes in…why then all our troubles will be over.

At some point I suppose we’d get tired of looking at that big boat, though.

I still think that the real riches are the ones we carry with us…rich or poor, what’s inside is what lasts…what we carry inside, in our hearts and spirit,  is the only thing that really matters.

But some major jack sure does GREEEEZE SOME WHEELS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

fear the quiet

Posted on by May 23, 2013

quiet-world

I worked at a radio station for a while right before Jenny and I were married.

We had a phrase for what happened when we weren’t paying attention ( or we ran out of song when we put “Low Spark of High Heeled Boys”* on when we needed a bathroom break).

When nothing was happening…nothing was going out on the air and everything was quiet…we called it dead air.

Dead air was a bad thing.  It was probably worse than filling up the time with bad music or even worse commentary.  It was one of the worst things that could happen at the radio station…to have even a momentary lapse in the noise was embarrassing.

Lately, I’ve stopped listening to anything while I’m delivering the mail.

I used to listen to audio books, music…the radio…maybe even some talk radio.  I would listen to anything to fill up the space…listen to anything to fill up the silence.

I think that I must have felt that for the sake of efficiency, I should be learning something every minute.  If I wasn’t learning something, I felt guilty somehow…like if I wasn’t listening to something that had a chance to educate me, that I was slumming or something.

When I was at the radio station, one of my first jobs was “riding the board” during a bunch of different radio shows.  Riding the board only meant that I sat and flipped the correct switches, turned the correct knobs, so that the talk radio would sound right over the air.

It was the glamor of show business in action.

One of the guys that I sat through every day was Rush Limbaugh.

When you have a chance to listen to him sporadically over a long period, say like twenty years or so, you realize what a load of hyped up bile it really all is.

Listening to him now, I realize that it’s the same exact show, only different players.

But the thing about it is…we sometimes treat it like news.  We act as if Glenn Beck or any of the other commentators are the only ones telling us the “truth”…because you know we wouldn’t get the “truth” from the liberal media.

I wonder how altruistic these personalities would be if they weren’t getting paid.  I don’t think that their concern for the public and their concern for the “news” runs so deep that if they weren’t making some deep jack peddling the “truth”…that they’d continue to sell it so hard.

Enough of my little rant…it’s really just, er, urinating in the breeze, anyway.

But that is why it’s such a new-found pleasure to turn off all the noise when I’m delivering the mail.

Without the noise, I do realize that to call it quiet isn’t really accurate.

I hear the wind and the rustling of the mail before I put it in the boxes.

I hear every noise my car makes before it breaks down.

I might hear a hawk.

We live our own news every day.  Our lives are the “news” that really matters….but we act like a good, responsible citizen is going to be up in everybody else’s business all the time. “Don’t you care about the world?”, some might wonder. Sure I do, I’d answer, but in the end I wonder if being able to recite what’s going on everywhere in the world isn’t just a distraction from what might not be going on in our own lives?  We fill our minds with someone else’s tragedy so that we don’t recognize our own failings.

That’s why I love the silence.

I am learning not to fear the quiet.

 

*  “The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys” is a song by a band called Traffic that’s 11 minutes and 40 seconds long.  It was the perfect song to put on if we needed to take a potty break while we were doing a show.

image from here.

…and live like a flower

Posted on by January 25, 2014

cs boys cover

 

I was going to use this song in yesterday’s blog post.

It was my daughter’s eighteenth birthday…and I remembered the line in the song that said “and live like a flower”.

What could be more fitting than that for my little girl?  “Live like a flower…”  sounds pretty nice…and it reminded me of her.

Then I listened to the song again for the first time in 30 years.

IT’S ALL ABOUT LONGING, DESIRE, AND SEXUAL AWAKENING !!!  IT’S ALL ABOUT AN ADULT REVISITING HOW THAT FELT TO FIRST HAVE THOSE STRONG FEELINGS.

IT’S ABOUT GUILTY FEELINGS!!!

NOT ON MY WATCH !!  NOT FOR MY DAUGHTER !!

No sex songs for my daughter’s birthday.

But, revisiting this song reminded me of why I thought it was a great song all those years ago.

Here’s the lyrics:

I’m home again in my old narrow bed
Where I grew tall and my feet hung over the end
The low beam room with the window looking out
On the soft summer garden
Where the boys grew in the trees

Here I grew guilty
And no one was at fault
Frightened by the power in every innocent thought
And the silent understanding passing down
From daughter to daughter
Let the boys grow in the trees

Do you go to them or do you let them come to you
Do you stand in back afraid that you’ll intrude
Deny yourself and hope someone will see
And live like a flower
While the boys grew in the trees

Last night I slept in sheets the colour of fire
Tonight I lie alone again and curse my own desires
Sentenced first to burn and then to freeze
And watch by the window
Where the boys grew in the trees

“Sentenced first to burn and then to freeze”…I love that line.

The thing about a lot of these songwriters is I think that we forget what fine craftsmen some of them are.

When we think of Dolly Parton, we think about breasts and amusement parks…and, wait a minute…wasn’t she in a bunch of movies, too?

When we think of Carly Simon, I think that sometimes we think of her marriage to James Taylor…or how she looks…or any thing that draws our attention away from the songwriting.

Jackson Browne wailed on Daryl Hannah…and wrote a bunch of great, sensitive, insightful songs, too.

Artists court fame.  There’s no great revelation in that thought…you have to have some level of fame to get paid.  We need to be recognized.  But I think the only way that your personal life doesn’t eventually take center stage is to remain anonymous.

Maybe the only thing that does is reduce the scale of the misdirection of attention.  Maybe then you only have a small circle of friends talking about how “you’re a crummy tipper”…and forgetting that you painted the only anonymous Sistine Chapel that will ever exist on this earth?  Same dance…only it’s a bathroom instead of a ballroom.

I really don’t know…but I do know that this is a beautiful song…that would have been innocently inappropriate for my little girl’s birthday.

Daddy needs to listen to the songs before he posts.

 

birthday

Posted on by May 21, 2013

100_2474

01 Track 1

It’s 4:30 in the morning.

At 5:30, I’m going to wake my wife up so she can make some blueberry muffins and decorate the kitchen.

No…it’s not some perverse chauvinistic demand.  I don’t make her wake up early everyday so that she can make me some muffins. It’s not like that.

Today is a special day.  Today is our first baby’s birthday.

Today our first baby turns eighteen.

I don’t know if a parent ever completely makes the jump from “first baby” thoughts to “now we have a grownup daughter”.  I think that in my mind, she’ll always be little…at least in some corner of my mind, I’ll hold on to those memories like my life depended on it.

“Like my life depended on it…”  That’s kind of an odd and strong way to put it…but when you get down to it, I guess my life really does depend on all the good memories my family has given me.

When we brought her home from the hospital for the first time, it felt like she might break when we put her into her thrift store car seat for the first time.

It was terrifying and exciting.

How do you handle a baby?  How do you handle your baby?  She was the first baby I’d ever held that I wasn’t going to be handing back to the parents when I was finished holding her.

We were the parents.  There wasn’t anyone who we would ever hand her off to.

And now…she’s eighteen.

In some states, that means that she’s a grownup…

When we put her into her car seat in that old Plymouth Valiant, it was only that single moment that we were thinking about.  You can plan…and suppose…and expect…and maybe even fear a little before a baby is born…but when your child finally arrives and you’re holding her for the first time, it’s only that single moment that you’re aware of.

Now, eighteen years later, “that single moment” and all the other single moments fill a deep pool.  We have a lot of good memories.

There isn’t a lot more to say than that.

I love Jenny and I love our children.

They make me who I am.

Today our first baby turns eighteen.

Happy Birthday, Zoe!

You better turn off Yo Yo before you play this one….

01 Birthday

 

 

kenny rankin in the mole hole

Posted on by May 20, 2013

I had a friend at camp who carved out a place to stay underneath the camp library.

He dug it out of the earth…and some rough sawn lumber and a used mattress later, he had one of the few private “cabins” on the property.

Smart idea.

Anyway, it was called the “mole hole”.

Kenny Rankin never made a personal appearance in the “mole hole”..but that was where I first heard him, playing on an old boom box.

Revelatory is a word that gets thrown around too easily sometimes, but in this case it probably applied.  I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone sing quite like this.

There are people who do anything they can to be a star.  Any gimmick is a potential option for them.  You can tell that it’s not really about the music…it’s about the marketing.

Unfortunately, the real artists seem to be few and far between some days.

Kenny Rankin was one of those “real artists”.  Just a guy and his guitar…and sometimes a full orchestra to back him up.  That’s all he needed to produce some really beautiful music.

I heard a lot of great music sitting outside the mole hole…even made some myself, or so I thought at the time….and it’s still a good thing to get a chance to hear some Kenny Rankin.

That’s the amazing thing about friendships….the good music that I’ve been introduced to by my friends is pretty priceless.

Mole Hole….Kenny Rankin…all the other musicians I wouldn’t have known about….Thankyou, my friends, for that!