It's Time to Be Blue over You

 No one wants to hear me criticize railroads.  Everyone has enough on their plates to begin to understand railroads are not what they used to be.  In the American South it is called the "Spaghetti Bowl" in the "Rust Belt."  Like many things railroads once were competitive.  Isn't this the way of the American free market?  The American Dream was the notion that any hard-working, educated, and zealous citizen could forge a life for themselves and their families.  The formula is simple.  America must provide a living wage to its laborers.  If anything is amiss today in our lives, it is that our nation has ceased to provide this for her people.  Somewhere along the line, the government went awry, became empowered for their own benefit, and eventually turned against the common citizenry.  How else can it be explained?  It was a huge campaign to outsource jobs to nations with cheaper labor markets.  Globalization was the catch phrase, and we proceeded to move manufacturing to India and China.  This of itself was the decimation of the meaning of "Made in America," and we have lost sight of the success and grandeur of American made products.  Basically the respect, admiration, and support of a nation's workers has faltered, and much like treason our government has turned against us.  It could not be clearer.  The Cold War ended, but we have been waging another war domestically against our own people.  This is not new to the world, but it is new to America.  I can't remember a time in my life when all levels of government became corrupt.  With the failure of the free market and the reemergence of corporate monopolies, and the exporting of manufacturing to Asia, the thieves turned to the money of the people via government.  Certainly trillions of dollars in debt proves the turn of Congress and the President against the people.  It is not just that they are picking our pockets.  It is that they are not doing the jobs for which they were elected.  That is managing the country.  It is a tall order too.  Foreign policy.  National security.  Justice.  Economics.  Public Health.  Maybe it wasn't a bureaucracy.  Maybe it was the Civil Service doing their jobs for the people.  Elon Musk, with whatever connection he had to our federal government, which was none, stepped into the foreground and raped and pillaged our federal government.  Inexplicably Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense proceeded in a similar vein and has fired the core infrastructure of the American military.  Like Trump, instead of doing their prescribed jobs to build, manage, and help Americans, they have attempted to dismantle our democracy.  Again, this is nothing new.  Maybe Trump was the first sitting President to appoint stooges to major positions basically to eradicate the services and protections government traditionally has provided.  If and when the economy is not supporting American workers, and if wages haven't kept up with the cost of living, these programs are necessary for people to survive.  A glimpse back to the "New Deal" clarifies this necessity.  Today in full view and with foresight and malice our President and his allies are working for someone else.  An impotent, compliant, sycophantic Congress has supported this campaign, and it is treason.  We have a chance to curtail this assault at the upcoming midterm elections.  Please vote BLUE. 

The Railroads are Not Our Friends

 The Cargill fall soybean crop is incoming.  What does this mean for Cumberland County?  The Fayetteville Observer, upon receiving the cancellation of my digital yearly subscription, now is peppering my Facebook news feed with pertinent articles.  These posts were not appearing, when I had a dedicated subscription to the Observer.  I assume they are ad's, but these ads, which I assume will take you to a link to pay for a subscription, are more far reaching and up-to-date than what I was reading on the front page.  Why?  The reporting has improved, and just the headlines connect me to mainstream Fayetteville life.  The other side of this coin is, like every other news agency who broadcasts locally, they never bite the hand that feeds them.  Like television news contributors, they want to keep their jobs.  Slander is not part of this equation.  Our current President is setting the wrong example for most everything mostly by lying.  The media will not come right out and say what entities are responsible for climate change.  They say, "The burning of fossil fuels."  They say, "Carbon Emissions."  They say...  The media is not bold enough to say a commercial jetliner, an Embraer 145 for example, when it flies directly over your home at several thousand feet mass consumes the available oxygen and replaces it with noxious gases.  This is what all aircraft do, and it is not healthy for the Earth.  We love to fly the way we love our Amazon packages, our Uber eats, and our smartphones.  Big Brother likes to gaslight us to believe America could not survive without the railroads.  Warren Buffet, the owner of Burlington Northern Santa Fe, will try to make you believe the same thing, because his extreme wealth depends on it.  The super rich, while they may feign fairness and honesty, are super rich because they exploit the unknowing masses.  In American history they are called Robber Barons.  They can sprinkle money around and wax prophet, host events, and donate small sums to the poor, but the brass tacks are they make their fortunes off of us.  That bottom line will be disguised no matter what, whether it is the origins of PFAS, Climate Change, or mass disease.  The Trump Administrations sole goal is to protect and empower these people.  They are Corporate America.  The amassing of these fortunes has been aided by "The Big Beautiful Bill," which in reality is ugly for most Americans.  When shopping at Sprouts yesterday I paid $18.00 for a gallon of organic grass feed milk, a dozen organic free range eggs, and a loaf of bread.  When I paid and walked out, I could not believe how little was in my bag.  These are staples, and I do believe that human life can sustain from milk and bread.  Inflation is as bad now as it ever has been, and for me that was in the 1980's when Ronald Reagan became President.  President Trump has not delivered on any of his campaign promises.  Conversely he has done the opposite in many cases including starting an unnecessary War with Iran to boost gas prices.  It is a simple formula.  Pull out of the Obama's Nuclear Deal, wait a few years, then decry, "We need to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon!"  There is no doubt in my mind from the President's actions is he working for a foreign interest, not America.  In all likelihood it is Vladimir Putin, because the Russian and Ukrainian mafia bankrolled him when he was in trouble.  He has to pay the piper.  Now they are running him.  It is troubling that many Americans seem to support what he is doing, so we must assume these Americans are Communists or Reds.  Oh, they all ready are Reds.  The sentiment of these MAGA supporters is a bias against unnecessary welfare and aid to foreign immigrants.  They are threatened by migrants, illegal immigrants with different skin colors who are dirt poor, have left their countries in fear of murder, and largely are supporting the American food supply.  As the ex and pardoned right wing zealots who converged on the Capital on January 6th, ICE has been rounding up these migrants for detainment and deportation.  In some cases they have murdered these people in cold blood in the streets.  As this work force continues to dwindle, the quality of American produce suffers.  Even if it is not grown in the U.S., the handlers of this produce are migrants.  Thusly prices for food have risen and quality has dropped severely.  I have not been able to buy fresh lettuce for over half a year.  I have tried bagged lettuce, and I still exhibit symptoms of Cyclospora.  It has not cleared up in over a month.  The struggle to find healthy food has become real in America.  Why does the media tepidly refrain from citing specific sources of problems in America?  The answer is because the media now has become owned by the same people that are causing the problems.  This is Corporate America.  No one in Cumberland County ever will say the military's activity is a large contributor to Global Warming.  When it is 90 degress in Fayetteville in October, there is a reason.  It is no El Nino. It is the military industrial complex which includes supporting players in Corporate America, the largest of which is CSX.  To make matters worse, Fayetteville does not only have one major railroad.  It has three.  Norfolk Southern was wise and stepped back like Dupont and handed the reins to RJ Corman.  Dupont handed the reins to Chemours.  Of course the Aberdeen and Rockfish always has been a contributor to lack of quality of life in Cumberland County.  Because such a large part of their activity occurs at River Terminal serving Hexion, why don't they change their name to the Aberdeen and Fayetteville?  It would be more accurate instead of using Fayetteville as a whore.  A weekend in Fayetteville now is any of these railroads slowly and methodically shunting freight cars between the Milan Yard, the Russel Street Yard, and River Terminal.  They do this 24/7 and extremely slowly trying to disguise their activity.  Anyone with common sense can understand that locomotives operating in the low RPM range create more residual airborne refuse than if they just fly by with a 2 mile long freight manifest.  Then they are gone.  The rebuilt GP-38-3 must be the worst of these vintage locomotives, and while you may not hear it with your ears, you will feel it in your head and on your body.  My left ear screams with tinnitus from both overhead aircraft and local freight trains.  Precision Scheduled Railroading has not helped.  Trump and the Republicans' policies largely have been to deregulate Corporate America destroying any possible oversight or regulation to their activity.  In years past Congress would not have allow three mile long freight trains with remotely controlled prime movers that take several miles to come to a stop and block grade crossing alienating local residents who are expected to be submissive to their schedules.  Congress has failed in the most massive way imaginable, and America is unraveling never to be the same again. 

The Second Coming

 I decided to give Beanerittu a second chance, because I was bored and wanted to get out of the house.  It has been at least a year, since I have seen a movie in a theater.  That ridiculous farce was "Deadwood."  I walked out for the exact reasons I walked out of "Digger."  My mother and I conversely did not walk out of "The Shape of Water," but it was torture.  Not to mention my mother was in her late eighties, and the opening scene of the film was a woman masturbating in her bathtub.  We picked the wrong movie, but like America today, almost everything has turned bad.  Whatever you buy or choose to entertain you has a high probability of disappointing you and taking your money for naught.  I will give Beanerittu credit.  They took twenty dollars of my money in less than half an hour.  The movie was eight, and the popcorn and drink were $9.50.  I walked out of "Digger" after twenty minutes, and I wanted to stay.  I wanted to be entertained.  I wanted to see a good movie, and I was rooting for Tom Cruise and Alejandro Inarritu.  Exactly like "The Revenant" the film was a "Failure to Launch," which was better than any of these want to be movies.  Can I blame myself?  I knew what it was going to be, but I was hoping for improvement.  Instead the film making was rank amateur.  Perhaps there was a story there, but I didn't get to it.  It was too painful to watch the exact same camera angle pointed up the characters' noses, the same dull drab colors, with a complete void of cinematic skill.  It was like they were doing it on purpose, and perhaps they were, the whole less is more, or, "Just the Facts, Jack."  The audio was no better, but America has lost touch with any artistic aesthetic including sound and music.  There is not one thing I can think of that made anyone want to subject themselves to this vanity affair.  Get over it, less twenty dollars of my money.  Who knew you could ingest toxins from a squash?  It has happened to me the last two times I have cooked and eaten squash from Food Lion.  Like I posted on Facebook, my good friend Larry Tutt has reiterated that vegetables can kill you.  I didn't know what he was talking about until now.  Cucurbitacin?  This exact scenario proves what I am saying that the world has changed since Covid 19 and Donald Trump, and America has suffered the worst effects.  How can Republican candidates even suggest today's inflation was caused by Joe Biden?  It is because of Covid, tariffs, and the complete failure of a government to even understand what their job is.  It must be the most monumental failure in American history, evil.  It will be blaring in our faces until the mid term elections in November.  One more month of doom and gloom and slander and televised executions.  We must remember that the Republicans have gerrymandered many voting districts in their favor with the aid of the courts.  SCOTUS largely supported this with some unspecified vague legal excuse.  That is the strength, or was the strength of the Republican party, manipulated the details of the law in favor of evil.  I think that is coming to an end, simply because if you look up from your life and pay attention to who is running for elected office, it is a nightmare.  No God fearing American would elect any of these Devil's Rejects.  It is depressing, and I have learned how not to get depressed, but I am depressed about it.  The list of infringements of human civil rights is a litany, so it is pointless to complain.  I think we need to keep, find, or fortify our faith in God.  If it would be anytime for an appearance, it would be NOW. 

Does Death Become Us?

Burying your parents is quite an undertaking, and it is important.  Family values, like many core moral and ethical postulates in America, have been devalued.  I'll never forget when our next door neighbor, Cassandra Vallery, came over at dinner time and was amazed to see our family sitting around the table eating together.  For many people the ritual of eating together is paramount to good family relations.  Many notable authors and scholars laud the effort of eating together at the dinner table.  Covid 19 changed everything.  This single event, the outbreak of a murderous pathogen, changed the world forever.  Buying online, remote learning, and Uber eats are very beneficial to specific parties.  Can you guess who?  CSX Corp., the major east coast north south railroad posted record profits in the first quarter of 2026 to the tune of more than three billion dollars.  How can a railroad doing the same things they always have done be profiting so much?  If you go trainspotting like many railfans do in earnest, you quickly will discover the majority of what CSX is carrying these days.  Can you guess what?  Because of the combination of internet commerce and the long term influences of having sheltered in place, we have lost many of our traditional American customs.  As the Trump bubble begins to burst, and it is with diesel at six dollars a gallon, slowly reality is returning to Americans along with the stark realization that there is little money flowing in middle and lower classes.  The rich continue to get richer and richer, and because there is little left in the American landscape to rape and pillage, Trump's organization turned their eyes on government and the American people's money.  The once familiar and effective economy of making ends meet with grassroots services like dining and entertainment, have been replaced with huge Ponzi like schemes to amass huge quick fortunes.  These types of fortunes were made during the "Big Short," the financial crisis of 2008.  When Bill Clinton was running for President, one of his campaign promises was that every American should be able to own their on home.  He got elected, so there was merit to that forethought.  Ironically how that promise got translated was into unvetted high interest mortgages, which average Americans proceeded to buy into for homes they could not afford.  Unbeknownst to them these mortgages purposely had clauses written into them that would change the American economy forever.  During 2008 this manipulation came to fruition, and millions of people defaulted on their loans, because the terms were not disclosed to the buyers at signing.  In short their mortgage payments doubled and tripled, and they could not pay.  A handful of Wall Street investors knew what was coming and invested in newly penned financial instruments betting against the American economy.  Of course they won, and the Troubled Assets Relief Fund was born from the pen of George W. Bush.  The TARP money, as it was called, bailed out the auto industry, reputable Wall Street banks and financial institutions that failed, and more.  Billions of dollars disappeared overnight as the stock market crashed again, but Hank Paulson implored the administration not to let that happen.  It would make America lose faith in our own economy.  In two payments, one from President Bush, and one from newly elected President Barack Obama, billions of dollars of tax payer dollars went to pay off these players.  Not only did the failed institutions get money to rebuild, the handful of investors on Wall Street were paid off for their grandiose and treasonous gamble.  This is when America's money disappeared, and to this day it sits in Swiss and Grand Cayman banks not flowing in the common American economy.  Economies will not function unless money is flowing.  That means people need to earn money, and they need to spend it.  It means that everyone has to pay their fair share of taxes like they did before Ronald Reagan became President.  If we should remember anything he did, it was to reduce the seventy percent tax rate on the rich.  This one event single-handedly created Yuppies, young and upwardly mobile Wall Street types, of which our President was the pentacle.  Trickle down economics worked for a while, as these entrepreneurs invested heavily back into their businesses.  Inflation was high, but products were quality and competition was healthy.  I never will forget when Cross Creek Mall in Fayetteville, North Carolina was decorated for Christmas.  Christmas shopping was like a fantasy, and American products, goods, and services were at their height.  Many cast the 1980's as self-indulgent and excessive, but having grown up in this era, fondly I remember the symbolism of the gifts that became a part of our American lives.  Although some may be reluctant to admit it now in 2026 and with the ever increasing acceptance of alternative lifestyles and sexuality, romance was a large determinate of these products.  They fueled courtship, eventual family relationships, children, and retirement.  I stopped working playing piano on cruise ships to return home and aid my parents in their later years.  It became a full time job for me after my father's passing, and I became a full time caregiver for my mother, who made it to the ripe age of almost 93.  In return I was given the family home.  After the upcoming two year anniversary of my mother's death on November 11, 2024, a two year journey of executorship, the coursework of this advanced degree, almost is finished.  Very much like my doctoral coursework for a degree in music composition, and "All But Dissertation," life and music become a strange ever evolving continuation of life and study.  There is no final document.  I may have signed the probate document closing my mother's estate, but her and my lives continue.  As your mother she never will die, and as native Americans and many other indigenous peoples do, they commune with their elders in a spiritual and ritual ceremony passing on the knowledge of previous generations.  My mother and father still speak to me, and I listen.  

It's Time to Vote Blue or Else

There are a few things on my mind.  With the midterm elections less than a month away and the commencement of early voting, two things could be happening.  I have to remind myself of one, and it is neither easy nor pleasant to do.  In the last few rounds of the election fight, things get dirty.  The mud slinging begins, and slander is rife with Super PAC sponsored television ads.  If we thought the news was predominantly negative, remind yourself what is at stake.  Democrats have a chance of controlling the House of Representatives flipping it blue.  It has not been long since they controlled both houses of Congress, but it seems like ages.  The first two years of Donald Trump's second presidency seem like an eternity, because his administration diligently has tried to dismantle  democracy and establish autocratic dictatorial rule.  This happens by expanding the President's powers, ignoring the courts, and mounting scare and intimidation campaigns against political enemies.  It has been two years of thuggery, and America is tired of being pulled backward into our unpleasant past.  Most Americans are honest, hard working, God fearing people who want a life for themselves and their families.  There is no time to dote on racism, bigotry, and fascism.  Americans are working trying to realize what is left of the American dream.  Those championing Trump's ideals are the super rich, who no longer do anything for a living except move money.  These include huge hedge fund managers.  It is so disturbing that the core grassroots philosophy of Americans, through our unique culture  of Jazz, Rock, cinema, and television has been usurped.  These artistic endeavors, which forged America, are being disguised, hidden, and eradicated.  It is Cancel Culture, and it is racist, because of the monumental and long reaching accomplishments of many African-Americans.  I am involved and interested in these endeavors including the Blues, improvisational Jazz, Gospel organ, R&B, and Soul.  I have made a conscious effort to further my knowledge of these art forms, because when taking the General Exams at The Ohio State University, Dr. Ted McDaniel candidly pointed out my shortcomings.  It didn't seem to matter to him, one of my doctoral committee members, that my degree was in Contemporary Classical Music.  I was involved with Jazz at OSU and won several awards for trumpet performance and composition, but he was not keen on my departure to larger, European-based, classical ensembles and their accompanying musical repertoire.  Thirty years later his words continue to resound in my head urging me to continue my study of music but in the aesthetic of the remainder of American Popular Music.  In this quest for further musical knowledge,  I immersed myself in the emotional and historical side of purely American music.  The Blues, Roots Music, Old Time, Bluegrass, Country, String Band, Civil War, Ragtime, Minstrel, Vaudeville, Broadway, and Americana all have been on the menu.  It is a wide pallet and no wonder one scholar could not know it all.  It is not dissimilar from the history of European art music, with its wide pallet created by different languages, countries, and bloodlines.  Art at its best is being created at the communal level with many interested parties fueling each others' passions.  "It Takes a Village," and America no longer is a village or even remembers what one is.  The Trump Presidencies, instead of reinforcing American solidarity with a resurgence of support of the Civil Rights Movement, have sought to separate cultures, languages, and skin colors, and pit them against each another in violence.  They have fueled civil war among the American people; it is a miracle that full throttle civil war domestically has not emerged.  Maybe it has, and it covertly is being waged by the overtaking of our own governments and the destroying of American principles and processes.  We all should remember DOGE and Elon Musk, as they are responsible for this assault on American agencies, the Civil Service, and the Deep State.  Their metaphor is, "No regulation for the private sector," without which Corporate America has become weaponized against the common man.  It is nothing new.  Ask DuPont about the beginnings of PFAS contamination decades ago and the settling of one lawsuit at a time masking the severity of illness caused by the byproducts of the manufacturing of Teflon.  It has been ongoing since the 1960's.  They, this company, with its negligence and greed, causes death and severe illness in thousands of product-buying American citizens.  Cloaked domestic genocide, the same methodology Donald Trump is using to dismantled a free America.  Are we listening? 

ID.Me!

I am he proud recipient of a North Carolina Real ID.  While the Real ID has been around for a decade, after a little research I discovered while not required to vote, it does qualify as a federal confirmation of your citizen status.  Because ICE, under the second Trump presidency, has morphed into a lot of exiled Proud Boy storm troopers killing at will, a federally recognized  ID could go a long way to protect you.  This is because like ID.me, an online verification system also used for federal programs such as the IRS, the process involved in acquiring said ID is more stringent than engaging in social media.  Both IDs had specific requirements, and these requirements meant you had to do the little tap dance around your personal documents.  For me this was a good idea.  Although I have been meticulous in my organization and archiving of my family's heirlooms, and also have applied the same standards to my own affairs, I knew where my Birth Certificate and Social Security cards were.  Also know where the car titles are, the deed to the house, my parent's death certificates, my complete musical equipment inventory, my lengthy list of passwords, and more.  They have changed places several times, and the acquiring of a safe necessitated those changes.  Being the executor of my mother's will, I was balancing two life histories.  After two years finally I have all but settled her estate, and with that closure came the discarding of years of paperwork.  Because your short term memories are turned into long term memories with sleep, what I have done in the recent past fails to register immediately.  I have to work on it for a bit.  After making myself do this, usually I am pleasantly surprised to find what I am looking for.  In this case for the North Carolina Real ID, it took four different documents.  Your Birth Certificate, in my case a 64 year old piece of paper, my original Social Security card, and two documents verifying your residence or domicile in North Carolina.  For me that was a property tax bill and my home owner's insurance policy.  All of these had to be taken to the local DMV after making an appointment online.  This surprisingly was easy, so I had a week to prepare.  Once at the DMV you are in the same boat as everyone else.  There are many walk in's needing various thing, but with said appointment you are able to step ahead of the line and sign in.  I waited at least half an hour.  They took a new photo, which I wanted, scanned my documents, and told me the new ID card (in this case a new driver's license with a star on it) would arrive in the mail in 14 days.  It did, and never was I so proud to receive it.  It is a little work of art, a departure from a ten year old N.C. Driver's License.  I feel bonafide.  The ID.me was more complicated.  They wanted the same documents, but there is no local office to which to go.  It was confirmed via video chat.  I had never done this before, only set up a Skype for my mother to attend her PEO meetings online during the Covid lock down.  I was able to do this pretty easily, and whether  you know it or not, you computer's built in microphone and speakers allow you do to this easily.  This also means Big Brother can watch and listen to you at will like now.  The idea of taking iPhone pictures of your documents is ludicrous at best.  Cell phone networks are notoriously insecure and monitored continuously by the NSA.  It would not be a good idea to use your infernal phone for anything other than casual texts and conversation.  Big Tech has pushed us in a different direction literally undoing all of the safe guards Americans have been privy to since the Cold War.  Like everything else, our own nation and leaders have sold us out.  Since Donald Trump has been President, our country has turned on us.  

Education Versus Schooling

The Chemours plant in Cumberland Country is owned by the Chinese.  When Dupont decided to unload some of their plants that produce PFAS as a byproduct, who stepped up to the plate?  DAK Americas in Fayetteville was owned by a Mexican Conglomerate.  Foreign ownership of domestic interests once was scarce.  Now the United States President is making no apology for turning against the American people and stealing their money.  When you drove by the DAK facility on Cedar Creek Road, there were few cars in the parking lot.  They were supposed to be making plastic bottles or the ingredients needed to make plastic bottles.  Polyester.  Why were they owned by Mexicans?  The Florida East Coast Railroad is owned by a Mexican conglomerate.  What is the basis for this ownership and managing of American industry by foreign countries?  My theory is simple.  Drugs and drug smuggling.  Why would the Chinese make any effort not to harm the American people?  We still have PFAS, and they just keep changing the name of the chemicals and saying they are not carcinogenic.  It is like Americans are living in a third world nation, and now our own government has turned against us.  It is common, so perhaps it was inevitable that America would succumb to the same ill.  Will we see this transgression to fruition, a regression to autocracy and fascism?  ICE is killing people in the streets in the name of illegal immigration.  Perhaps the most dangerous enemies Americans have is our own corporate structure.  Global warming and climate change are man made.  It is so easy to discern the causes, but we turn a blind eye.  What is killing our coral reefs by heating the ocean like a pot of boiling water?  Azipods.  We would rather cruise on mammoth cruise ships than save the Earth.  If America is forty trillion dollars in debt, then whence does the money come, the money that the Trump Organization continues to embezzle?  They just print it in the mint, and the value of this American dollar is poor.  As an aside and in my own life, the more I improve the home I inherited to be desirable, the more lonely I become, the more empty it seems.  It is a brutal dichotomy.  Continue to care for and love the property I own, so it maintains its value, and the more disconnected it becomes from our family history.  I work diligently to balance this transition retaining the integral historical elements, and improving it for future use.  I didn't expect this result.  The house seems empty, because there is no one but me in it.  I cleaned the back yard, the patio, and the side of the house.  Virginia creeper, saw greenbrier, an grape vine had overtaken the hydrangeas, gardenias, and pittosporum.  My jasmine vine commandeered two crepe myrtles.  It didn't take long to get it all cleaned up, and I have a small tomato garden.  Still, it is empty.  There is no one but me to enjoy it.  It is brutal when I mow the grass in the backyard.  No one there.  No parents.  No siblings.  No kids.  Just a few birds and a squirrel or two.  I've never known this kind of loneliness, but I am okay.  I have to turn my feelings off and use my mind to task myself with busy work.  The house next door is under contract, and the asking price was $450,000.00.  "Holy shite, Batman!"  The yard is a fraction of the size of mine, and it is ugly.  They do have a nice view, of my yard.  Perhaps this is why I continue to work on the house and the yard, but it also is an investment of love.  The unbearable summer heat wave most likely is being caused by Miliary Ocean Terminal Sunny Point and training in the field at Fort Liberty.  I moved the router in my kitchen.  It was installed by Brightspeed, and I cannot complain about their service.  I am getting a "land" line (although it is through fiber optic internet) and WiFi for $70.00 a month.  It is a good deal, and I have the same number my family has had for decades.  We are in a pointless war that will make the rest of the world loath us for two decades to come.  It is a war proliferated by the Defense Industry, simply so they can make more money.  Use up all the munitions and surprise!  We have to buy more.  It is so elementary.  Another Viet Nam, simply to make money for the war mongers, the Defense Industry.  It is a game of strategy happening over our heads, the tech war game.  I have some simple goals.  Where best can I use my NOS Onkyo six CD changer?  Which room of the house?  Where best can I use my NOS Sony cassette players?  When will I be able to produce my own music again in a MIDI studio?  When will I begin to play the drums with my fingers again?  Where will the 88 note keyboard be, so I can do this music work?  I am getting closer.  When June was living I had my music studio in the master bedroom of the house.  That is where I liked it.  Then the "Haymount Strangler" began to rent next door.  He was normal for two years, recently divorced and juggling a new love interest and her two young daughters.  They moved in and out twice.  The last time it became apparent to them that my music studio on the back side of the house was in close proximity to their proscenium den.  Even a nominal amount of volume of music would disturb them.  Seeing as I was in the privacy of my own home, and with a large amount of insulation, I felt no guilt.  Instead I felt disdain for squatters living in a rental, thus they received Chick Corea's "Early Circle" at about 100 decibels for an hour.  It was not long before they moved out again the second time.  The young couple on the other side with a newborn baby, also discovered that my music bothered them.  Even if I donned headphones, the simply existence of my study and production of music annoyed him.  He grew not to like me.  Necessarily they moved up the food chain and bought their own half a million dollar house on Pugh Street.  It was a step up and I am glad for them.  Their parents moved in.  The issue with lack of privacy is paramount, especially when you are a musician.  I have curtailed my 3:00 am music parties in my living room, although for whatever reason this doesn't seem to bother them.  It is the subliminal messaging that screws with them.  I drastically have altered my lifestyle to try to be polite.  It will be interesting when the new people move in next door with a fifteen month old baby.  I figure these children are receiving good genes via Nature versus Nurture.  They will be musically literate.