War Trains and the Oppression of the American South

After four years  at Chapel Hill I was ready to get the hell out of Dodge.  Graduating from UNC was the single most difficult thing ever I have achieved.  While I enjoyed working on the masters degree at USC-Columbia, it was nothing like the challenge of undergraduate work at a major academic institution.  Possibly my educational experience during the early l980's could have been more challenging than it is today.  As a certified teacher (although my active certificate long has expired) certainly I can surmise that our academic standards in America are not nearly what they used to be.  I went to high school under a presidential initiative of "The Three R's."  Readin,' Ritin,' and Rithmatic.  If anyone today remembers this belonged to George and Barbara Bush.  During the l980's America was a better place than it is today.  A large part of the decline of civility in America has come with the widespread promotion and implementation of wireless telecommunications.  I have no cell phone.  I'm not sure if even we use this terminology anymore.  A "cell" is a small area that provides wireless telecommunications with a microwave transmitter and receiver.  The frequencies which a "cell phone" uses long have been prohibited for commercial use by the Federal Communications Commission.  It is easy to surmise that federal agencies and commissions aren't what they used to be.  George's son had a lot to do with that.  His presidential initiative was deregulation.  With deregulation came an un-funding of many government agencies whose previous job was to police private corporate America.  Once at a neighborhood meeting in Columbus, Ohio I asked a representative of the Federal Railroad Administration if he was aware of the dangerous effects to the human body of AC Traction.  He didn't know what AC traction was.  It is this kind of ignorance with which we are dealing today in America.  It is one reason why we are so screwed up as a country.  Pay offs.  I don't mean Payola.  If anyone today remembers this, it belonged to radio stations and record companies.  Radio stations accepted bribes in return for promoting particular music.  Nothing has changed.  One only has to turn on the tube and listen to what is being broadcast.  Music today is tepid, selfish, self-righteous, propaganda.  I try occasionally to listen to a current band on television, and ten times out of ten it is the same worthless pop.  I observe the "technique" of the instrumentalists, and immediately it is apparent that it is worthless pop.  Worthless pop really has no technique.  While the players do seem to be able to articulate appropriate notes on their instruments, there is no feeling.  One only has to watch bassist Charlie Haden perform on his instrument, and immediately you will understand what I am saying.  Charlie makes love with his bass.  That really seems "Politically Incorrect" today.  We have become such a tight-assed inhuman race under the tutelage of wireless telecommunication, we wouldn't understand what real pleasure is.  It's almost like the definition of the word "is."  Young people of today like to argue about the validity of historical practices rather than acknowledging and learning about them.  It far is easier to say, "Jazz is anything," rather than taking the time to study it.  I should know, seeing as I have studied it most of my life.  I have taught jazz studies twice at two different universities.  That was when I felt it was important to human life.  Still I do, but you must pick your battles.  I refuse to take flack for knowing things.  If the youth of today or the Republican party decide to refute the validity of jazz music, God, or the danger of wireless microwave communications, so be it.  They will all be dead eventually, and that is what I am hoping for.  I have a newfound disdain for the ignorant, after discovering that the mediocre wealthy rule the world.  The pop musicians of today are the perfect metaphor for about what I am talking.  They miss the point.  Why would you ever have sex if you didn't give it your all?  Some people have discovered that there is nothing worse than bad sex.  Something potentially that can provide you with ecstatic physical and emotional pleasure and doesn't?  It's a huge disappointment.  So is pop music.  Why would I want even to acknowledge a product with no passion?  It is because we have become brainwashed to submit to "The Man."  No longer are we taught to question and to attempt to find answers for ourselves.  We are back in the 80's with the mediocre wealthy trying to fit into a particular group or be popular.  To many this seems to be the crux of their existence.  I missed the bus.  There were quite a few times when I missed the bus at UNC-Chapel Hill. One was undergraduate advisement.  I never was told by anyone that you had to have a faculty advisor sign off on your course choices.  I was the absolute last person on the schedule for my particular advisor, and I had to pencil myself in.  I had to get registered by the deadline.  The other time I wholeheartedly missed the bus was entering my name in the lottery for sophomore dorm housing.  I was not told you needed to do this.  I had no idea that dorm housing was such a prized commodity at UNC.  I ended up staying in the dorm room of former Chancellor Holden Thorp, when he and his roommate's temporary "triple" Marvin was assigned his own dorm room a month into the semester.  Stealthy I slid into their dorm room with its extra bed and lived there with no key for a few weeks.  After a mountain gig one weekend I slept on top of my Fender Rhodes piano in the back of our l964 Volkswagon Beetle.  Needless to say graduating from UNC was the single most difficult thing ever I have achieved.  The most notable thing I ever have achieved is writing four hours of contemporary classical music for the piano.  The second most notable thing I ever have achieved is producing eleven compact discs of produced music, mostly of my own composition.  Why would anyone want to have sex or make love and not give it your best shot?  It is because we have been brainwashed to "lay down" for "the Man."  I missed this bus, and I am glad.  It almost is as important as the Montgomery, Alabama city bus upon which Rosa Parks took her stand on America's anachronistic segregation laws in 1955.  Millennials themselves have missed the bus, and they don't know it yet.  Why would anyone want to play music and not give it their best shot?  It is because success is accomplished not with talent, but with savvy.  The purely human physical and emotional needs to excel instead are replaced with detached cunning.  Instead of using God's chosen tools for human fulfillment, an indifferent, aloof, and emotionally unavailable sentiment is chosen.  Truly it is like "The Walking Dead," and they believe it is hip.  Hip to be square, but hip to be dead?  I guess this is why current video games and television fixate upon mythical monsters such as vampires and werewolves.  We have become a soulless, misguided, Godless society.  It is easier to lay down than to fight.  I truly have missed this bus to the undead, and while emotionally I am suffering like many others, I chose life over my own prostitution.