100 Days, not 100 Ways

When I have to summarize the current news for my household, generally I just use my perception of history pitted against what is being reported by our media.  It takes several days and a good nights sleep to synthesize this mess.  What is playing out now as we speak and live is a litmus test for rebellion in America.  I have been writing about politics for a long time, and my opinion is that our current president is guilty of treason.  He forcibly should be removed from office.  I have asked myself this question, "Who or what is the appropriate person or committee to accomplish this?"  Because our federal government is divided into three branches, legislative, judicial, and executive, I would think the judicial branch would be responsible.  In short all ready our president was impeached, meaning he was found to have committed grievous crimes against the nation.  It was proven conclusively he and his team were guilty of treasonous things.  Those guilty were charged,  convicted, and imprisoned.  Our president, using executive power, shortly after commuted the sentences of these convicted felons.  More importantly our Attorney General, proven to be an equally unethical and immoral man, pressured federal prosecutors and watchdogs within crucial government agencies to resign.  The Trump administration diligently has been appointing federal judges with lifetime terms.  These judges will shape America's judicial system for decades to come.  These appointments are politically motivated, and they share sentiments with the Trump administration.  When things do not go Trump's way, such as the presidential election in less than one hundred days, these judges become important shaping political bias in the justice system.  Not unlike how George W. Bush won the presidential election in the state of Florida through their court system,  Trump has something similar in mind.  Although SCOTUS recently ruled that states could require their electoral colleges to follow the popular vote, it is not unfeasible for Trump still to win a majority of electoral college votes.  I don't know off the top of my head which states will and won't, but electors simply are friends of politicians appointed by these politicians.  I am certain that Donald Trump won the 2016 election by bribing these electors.  All of that being said Covid 19 seems to be a great mediator.  Many of Trump's faults have been exposed most importantly that he does not care about the American people.  Stirred into the stew has been a civil rights movement which is proving to be a metaphor for rebellion.  I have been writing that some type of revolt would occur in America, mainly because of disproportional distribution of wealth in American society.  Instead police brutality seems to be the catalyst, and that is a good thing.  It resonates vibrantly with the black community, the lynching of their brothers and sisters.  We have a new civil rights movement in 2020, and the litmus test for rebellion is in the Pacific Northwest.  What is happening in Portland put under a microscope is going to foreshadow possible civil or revolutionary war in America.  While it is important that a treasonous president and Attorney General are responsible for attempting to implement martial law in this situation, what is more important is that militias are getting involved.  Unlike troublesome groups like ANTIFA who are showing up at peaceful protests and inciting violence, now local militias are showing up representing Americas own indigenous security voice.  All of the tenants of our effectively written Constitution are in play.  Most younger people will not know about Kent State, the use of our National Guard, and the killing of innocent protestors.  Rest assured that what will transpire in the next one hundred days, whether it be spotty violence and disparate locations, or a full fledged rebellion either by Trump's goons or Black Lives Matter protestors in solidarity with other ethical American factions, this will shape American history for hundreds of years, if we last that long.  When I ask myself the question again who would be responsible for forcibly removing a treasonous president, I think the answer would be Congress.  That effort all ready has been played on the bridge table, and our Attorney General and Senate chose to leave this president in power.  The majority of the blame for what is happening today lies in the hands of an uncaring, inept, and selfish Senate.  They have failed, again when handed the responsibility of determining a treasonous president's fate.  Therefore a mounting number of insurgents has amassed in our federal rule.  If the Senate fails in its duty to honestly and fairly lead America, what body is responsible for their removal.  I believe those concerned are putting their faith in those interested enough to protest our current police brutality.  It is a miniature coup d'etat, and it is in its infancy.  Determination is building, because Washington has proven itself incapable of providing justice for all American people.  One only has to look at any other nation to understand the pattern.  Whether this rebellion will be peaceful or bloody will be determined in the next one hundred days.  Let it be understood that Donald wants nothing more than to be reelected president.  Only with his electing less than four years ago America has seen the destruction of an evil and divisive president with no other intention than overthrowing a democratic republic and becoming its ruler.  America will not allow that to transpire, but will he accept his fate?  How much violence will ensue, how many more lives are lost, and how honesty, integrity, and justice will be restored to American lives is yet to be seen.  It all is in his hands.  It would seem the masses are prepared for war, and Americans ensured right to form a well armed militia to protect themselves from domestic tyranny is ingrained in our Constitution.  We are ready for this war, because the land upon which you live is the last line to be drawn.  Americans have nothing better to do and nothing to lose.  Donald Trump all ready has lost, and when he steps out of the White House, out of the protection of the Secret Service, and back into public life he had better have a plan.  Most fruitfully for the Trump clan it should be evacuation.  All of those properties all over the world should come in handy come January 2021. 

Hammond, Leslie, Apache, and Kiowa

Dr. Kemp was kind enough to offer a membership to this group, although I am not a professional organ/Leslie technician.  I have learned what I know from owning a Hammond A-100 and Leslie 142.  I am adept at wiring and soldering, but I have no professional electronics bench with an oscilloscope or expensive meter.  I have novice tools, but I have two, almost three college degrees in music.  Once I was a college lecturer.  After the contributions of this group this is what I have deduced about my HUM.  Firstly, "Is the hum coming from the organ or the Leslie?"  Ground the GG terminals to the amp chassis and if the hum goes away, it is the organ.  The benefit of owning an A series organ is unlike the B or C models, which always I have wanted, the A has its own cabinet and amplification system.  There is wide and diverse opinion about the best use of an A series Hammond.  Often they are used as cheaper alternatives to B and subsequently are chopped, cut down into the more portable B cabinet.  Whether  B is actually portable is debatable.  My overall sentiment about my A-100 was if you want to sustain or increase its value, why wouldn't you keep it stock?  This is what I chose, although this opinion has been met with staunch and almost violent opposition, especially from one Hammond dealer in New Jersey whose facility was damaged in the hurricane a few years ago.  Openly he mocked me for keeping the internal amplifiers and speakers.  I was determined to prove him wrong, and that effort began with figuring out how best to utilize an external Leslie speaker and the internal amplification of the A together.  "Pull the tubes!"  "Disconnect the speakers and add resistors."  Instead I was forced to understand Don Leslie's system for switching between the two systems.  Unlike a 147, the 122 amp is a balanced system.  Call it low impedance.  Call it two channel, not a great description.  The 122 amp receives two signals from the organ console, not one.  It comes from the preamplfier, not the signal level output used to drive a 147.  In some respects the 147 is a better solution.  Certainly it is easier, but because our family owned a spinet first which drove our 145, this was the kit we had.  When we purchased the A-100 our technician set it up as easily as possible.  Therefore the "balanced" capability of the A-100 was ignored.  Some people seem to prefer the 147 and its high impedance signal, possibly because the 122 has a reputation for receiving RF interference.  The 122 will pick up certain radio stations if in close proximity.  There are two "death caps" in female amphenol plug in the 122 which are designed to filter this noise.  Evidently fifty plus years later they drift in value and can leak the 120 volts of AC into the chassis of the amp.  Hence they have been nicknamed "death caps."  We have a plethora of both RF and EMF energy around our house.  RF is just a high frequency of EMF energy.  The low stuff is what really causes problems.  Whence does it come?  It would seem I am a conspirator to even mention such a thing, but my almost three college degrees have allowed me to be able to deduce such a thing.  When an arc forms in your home, and you can get shocked by simple 60 Hz 120 volt wall current without touching either side, then you have an arc forming in the air.  This happens from time to time.  It is not good for any kind of electronic equipment, and certainly not for what could be considered primitive.  Drifting caps and growing dendrites, the stuff of lore.  There is no question in my mind that this energy, which can cause our AC to arc, also makes it dirty.  I have bought and installed Furman power conditioners in my stereo system, my musical instruments, and for my computers.  It has helped considerable, but a line level power filter will not filter static electricity in the air, nor will it eliminate EMF's in the low range.  There are expensive ways to insulated your home for such things, and it is involved.  I would rather not live in a government office building with shielded walls and floors, so I must make due the best way possible.  All of this aside my HUM never was a huge issue until now.  My 122 amp has worked well.  Always there was a bit of hum in the organ and the Leslie, but it was not distracting.  Now it is.  The beauty of choosing to keep an A-100 stock is it can operate independently from an external speaker.  While the A-105 actually is better at this than the 100, both can be used as stand alone organs.  It was not until I had both that I could learn the differences.  What are they?  The 105 is a larger cabinet.  It is deeper and thicker and so its internal amplification sounds louder than the 100.  The enclosure is more efficient as a speaker box.  Once  I tried putting a solid plywood back on my A-100, and promptly the bass pedals began to distort.  I worried about the amps overheating, so I removed it quickly.  Eventually it dawned on me that three twelve inch speakers facing the organist would not suffice as sufficient amplification for a room, hence they are best used as monitors for reinforcement of a Leslie.  They provide a small amount of bass frequency on the organist's feet.  What doesn't make sense is a very good sounding reverb amp hidden there as well.  The solution was adding a 1/4 inch plug to the speaker wire, so you can plug in any speaker you like and place it wherever you like.  Wouldn't this be a good idea for the internal speakers as well, if you happen to have an a series organ?  A better designed, more efficient, better sounding speaker enclosure than a box for a tone generator and a bunch of amps?  I put my reverb speaker on top the Leslie, and I was criticized.  "The top panel of the Leslie is supposed to be free to resonate, so placing a cabinet up here impedes its ability to vibrate."  Everyone has an opinion.  The opinions openly which were solicited for my HUM problem are summarized as such.  Again the beauty of an A series Hammond organ is you have a separate system with which to experiment.  If your Leslie becomes possessed for some reason, flip your MEE switch, IF it is wired correctly for the A-100 and a 122, and the Leslie will be ignored.  In this case the HUM is minimal in the organ sound.  When the switch is in the middle position, which is how I choose to use it giving me tube/spring reverb in addition to the dry Leslie sound, the hum is louder in the Leslie.  I didn't discover this until just the past few days.  While I realize a 57 year old preamp could use a rebuilt, it is not causing me any real problems.  What I have been experiencing I believe is from the Leslie.  What is the easiest thing to change on a tube amp?  Of course the answer is tubes.  I received feedback that HUM was not a product of a bad tube, so why was I looking at them?  One member said that eBay auctions often are places to unload junky tubes.  I got two, and both are the 12au7's in my Leslie 122 amp.  I ride my bike to the local 7/11 and use their tube tester.  It seems like a logical choice.  Check your tubes.  I did, and both are crap.  In no way trying to diagnose a loud hum is a bad thing.  Evaluating your amp and its components certainly is necessary.  My amp has been working fine.  Because this excessive external interference is present, I understand the need for good filtering in both the organ and Leslie.  I am inclined to replace the "death caps" with the X Y safety caps Dr. Kemp suggests.  Of course any failing components should be replaced as well, but we must operate in a linear path.  I am inclined to replace the CE can cap with a new one, because filtering is necessary.  As one member suggests something is causing my tubes to fail.  I believe dirty AC was responsible for killing my Space Generator, seeing as the literature in their repair manual state several specific transistors are responsible for protecting others from "static discharge"  Is like pussy discharge?  Pus.  Static energy, energy that manifests itself through the air or more specifically through space.  Air has nothing to do with it?   In terms of a course of action, don't use the 450v can.  They fail.  Wait for two replacement 12au7 tubes and try them first.  See what happens.  If I still have a hum, replace the can at around $55.00.  Then under the hood assessments must begin.  What other than a full rebuild could be appropriate?   In short.  In one of my first posts a member said "microphonic tube."  Yes I have that, but it is not easily discernable.  When I flip my MEE switch to Main, although there is a minimal amount of HUM, the problem is not there.  It is in the Leslie.  The 122 amp has performed well until this snafu.  I don't think cataclismic events have transpired either.  I think we have dirty 60Hz 120V AC and a boatload of low frequency EMF from the military.  In their arsenal of tools less than five miles away are Apache and Kiowa helicopters, drones, the Compass Call Aerial Command jet, and other various aircraft used for surveillence and gunnery.  Many of these have jamming systems which are designed to disable enemy communications.  From this milleau of classified weaponry, how is a musician to discern their effect on vintage musical instruments?  We can't.  Only can we treat their symptoms.  What doesn't kill you makes you stronger. 

The Flames of Hell

It has been a stressful Sunday.  There are days, usually when you do not get enough sleep, that you can't command your mind to obey.  Lack of sleep conveniently is the first step in torture.  Deprive a human being of sleep, and instantly they become walking zombies.  This almost is as convenient as the 9/11 attacks perpetrated by Saudi Arabia.  Saddam Hussein was the convenient scapegoat for this terrorist event, and Dick Cheney was his champion.  Haliburton wanted that oil in the Middle East, but they settled for the contracts to rebuild Iraq.  America obliterated a country under the leadership of George W. Bush.  His reason was 9/11 at the behest of his Vice President Dick Cheney, but the real reason was revenge for the mockery of his pop, George H.W.  W. used to play with Osama Bin Laden on the playground, and with their oil fortunes in their pockets a vendetta was forged early on.  ISIS was created by George W. Bush when Donald Rumsfeld's strategic attack on Iraq destroying their infrastructure failed.  The United States unwittingly destroyed a nation for nought.  That is why we still are engaged in the longest war of American history.  We still are paying the penance for our mistake.  Until we find contrition, apologize, and leave the Middle East the way Osama Bin Laden asked, our fate will be perpetuated.  Trump should grow a conscience.  The ills of the United States will not end until we withdraw fully from the Middle East leaving the spoils to the indigenous people.  Trump can continue his war against America not so cleverly disguised anymore, or he can grow up and take responsibility.  I think that brother is beyond reproach.  He has proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that his own survival is not important to him.  Fittingly in a text book definition of narcissism he would rather become a martyr for evil rather than seek his own salvation through Christ.  I reckon those motherfuckers are going to have wing ding of a reunion in hell.  Hitler.  Mussolini.  Stalin.  Lenin and the rest.  I guess it is fitting company talking about grabbing the pussy and the fifty virgins rather than enjoying it.  Enjoy your sauna bath with the rest of Z Boys.  Your anus may not stand the test of eternity, but then again you and Lindsey chose your own fate.  

Braxton Braggs about his Confederacy

When I complain about the United States military industrial complex, more specifically training at Fort Braxton Bragg, pilots buzz my house.  Maybe you have seen a video clip of the son of an outspoken anti-war activist, who explained that as his mother was holding her baby on the roof of their building pilots would buzz her.  Buzzing the tower is what Maverick, in the film Top Gun, liked to do.  It was not met with approval, and I do not think Gen. Mark A. Milley would approve of the strafing of our neighborhood.  Ironically we consist of capable, worthy, diligent military men.  Lieutenant Colonel Scott White, Major Blake Bowles, and Sgt. Aaron Rabensburg form a perimeter around our home.  Why would I feel threatened in any way?  Not that long ago the yard man working on the Rabensburg's lawn was victimized.  A trolling, dark colored, two door Honda targeted his locked equipment trailer.  While he was away from it working in their back yard, thieves crept up, snipped the padlock, and stole his gear.  He is out of business.  Not that long ago a gold colored, enclosed, O.J. like pick up with a heart sticker on the back window also was trolling our neighborhood streets.  Finally I put the sound of its failing muffler to this offending vehicle, because he was attracted to the sound of music coming from my garage at late hours in the evening.  I looked out, and he was sitting in front of my house with that same rumbling muffler.  I had heard this vehicle for several years and knew instinctively it was problematic for our neighborhood.  With a small amount of effort I was able to identify it, and its sound on Edgewater Dr. was the indicator that this person-of-interest was responsible for their vehicle break ins.  I called the police, and dutifully they said they would stop and question the driver of this vehicle.  Since then I only have seen it once on our street.  Thanks to the Fayetteville Police Department for that service.  With such a military presence and now a remote gunner in our midst, I would think "buzzing our neighborhood" taboo.  Low flying aircraft are a part of the military's core of operations.  Camp Lejeune often has said they want to establish a relationship with those living in close proximity to their base, because low flying aircraft are a critical part of their daily routine.  Having lived in "DaVille" most of my life, I am not unfamiliar with the activity at Fort Braxton Bragg.  I think it would be a breath of fresh air to change the name of the nation's largest military installation.  A qualifying reason to do so, is because Fort Bragg is not the same.   Life in the "The Ville" in the 1980's was a different affair.  This was before Base Realignment and Closure decided to make the post the host of Ground Forces Command.  There are many high profile installations at Fort Bragg including the Special Forces and the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School.  The once active Patriot Missile site near Cliffdale Road now is housing for on duty paratroopers.  Drastically things have changed at Fort Bragg, and it bears little resemblance to its former self.  After 9/11 they upgraded the rail weight from 90 pounds per yard to 110.  Evidently munitions are getting heavier, or is it the locomotives?  Fort Bragg could use a new title, and although covert operations are important, why would anyone feel any threat from a more accurate and descriptive title for the post?  I would think the largest military installation in the nation would be the most secure. We do not have a solid rock mountain in which to encase their operational headquarters.  People began to question the amount of dirt that was being taken out of the post in dump trucks.  One only has to look at a Google map to see the underground ammo dumps, and it has become urban legend that munition trains are being loaded underneath the ground.  So what?  Again I would think this place would be the safest in the country, and maybe it is.  Those who live on the fringes outside its gates, along its perimeter, purposely are kept misinformed to ensure national security.  This did not used to be the case.  Fort Bragg once was open to the public.  There were no issues with security, and this was before 9/11, a convenient foreign terrorist assault on America perpetrated by Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salma, also responsible for the assasination of Jamal Khashoggi.  Is it logical as I sit here and write potentially inflammatory opinions that my life is in be in danger?  This is an extreme statement, and considering our ever present garrison of trained Army officers I feel no threat.  What I do resent is low flying aircraft strafing my yard.  I'll say it again.  Today, Sunday, beginning at 6:30 a.m. a low flying possible Cessna aircraft equipped with a muffler trolls our neighborhood.  Fully I understand that pilots practice "touch and goes" at Grannis Field on Sundays.  What better time could there be than the Sabboth?  Most affluent Fayetteville citizens travel to more appealing destinations for their weekends including the beach and the Blue Ridge Mountains.  The fringe population of "DaVille" is  littered with gang bangers, drug dealers, and murderers.  Could there be other more notable residents?  As the strains of Keith Jarret waft through my room and the temperature scorches the earth outside, I recall the garrison commander at Fort Braxton Bragg was relieved of duty, because he failed to mitigate the housing crisis on the post.  What is a garrison anyway?  I didn't know, but now I understand that a garrison is set of troops assigned to defend a particular locale.  It seems this garrison at Fort Bragg, who is assigned to live on post and protect it from within is not so happy about their housing.  The artillery and its accompanying equipment still flow to the Middle East like wine through Sunny Point.  Because I have lost my thread I will say a more appropriate name would cleanse the image of Fort Bragg, a military installation often that perpetuates violent local crime.  United States Military Headquarters Cumberland County comes to mind.  The name Braxton Bragg in no way signifies the importance or specific role of the Army's presence in Cumberland County.  Instead like America's other confederate war monuments this name casts a long lasting shadow on what should be an exemplary and progressive Department of Defense post. 

Turn Off the Boob Toob

Once upon a time there was this thing called "The American Dream."  Back in the day it was a tangible entity, because Communist and thus fascist oppression were real.  Adolph Hitler's genocide against the Jewish faith was a stark reminder that there are those who wish to kill us.  Get up every day and someone hates your for whatever explicable reason.  Call it evil.  Call it the devil.  Whatever.  The days of this "American Dream" are defunct.  America has succumbed to the same ills as every other country that came before her.  It is inevitable.  Corruption for money seems to be the root evil of man.  As I wrote previously that is the easy route.  Raping, pillaging, domineering, and conquering are the easy tasks.  It is a simple pattern of get for one's self and then enjoy the fruits of your labor.  Necessarily this must be based upon the human vessel, because what you acquire and thus consume and enjoy are human attributes.  Whether it is food, drink, or sex these enjoyments are incumbent upon the senses of the human organism.  If you live in an ivory tower, a Trump mansion, or a king's castle possibly you may be exempt from the brutal reality of the demise of the planet earth.  You can pay for your environment the way affluent Americans once did on the gulf coast of Houston, on Long Island, or elsewhere.  The effects of corporate pollution have become so dire, that it is becoming difficult to block out pathogens.  In an eerily similar scenario to literary depictions,  the pandemic of Covid 19 is predicating the type of lifestyle seen in these predictions.  In Logan's Run society lives in a bubble.  In many science fiction films the future existence of the human race is living in a contained bubble with a controlled environment.  Isn't this what is desired, the controlling of the human species by eliminating God's support system and making us dependent upon the have's to provide for us?  It began years ago with the bottling of drinking water.  When did our tap water become so poisoned that it is unsafe in which to bath and to drink.  Ask Pepsico.  With the bottling of water came the mass production of polyester plastic bottles which are consuming the earth.  The lineage all ready is in place for the eventual extinction of the human race.  It just is a matter of time.  With such things a priority in our daily survival, this "American Dream" necessarily takes a back seat.  How can art be considered meaningful when the brutality of life stares you in the face each day you wake?  As I sit here this early afternoon I found the reason for my sadness is not so much that I am lonely.  It is because that this "American Dream" is no longer.  The reality is no one ever is going to help you achieve anything.  Without using the cliche metaphor of "sour grapes," which I have learned to synthesize, isn't it sad that achievement, that artistry, and the necessary evolution of human consciousness and enlightenment is seen as the enemy?  Hitler saw jazz music as music of the devil, because it empowers the individuality of the human vessel.  The autonomous, independent, and self-actualizing vessel of the human being is the greatest threat to evil.  Only the human mind is capable of saving the earth and the human race.  There are no super computers, no machines, or robots who can save the earth.  In most depictions in science fiction plots, cyborg entities which merge with the human vessels end up self destructing.  If the history of man is perused, easily it can be seen that man has a propensity for the same self destruction.  What could be the motivation?  The answer is the game of war, the sheer activity of rape, pillage, domination, and acquirement is more fun than anything else available to the human being.  Let me rephrase.  It is the simplest choice for human existence.  It is why Donald Trump does what he does.  He is not capable of understanding anything more complex, spiritual, intellectual, philosophical, or scientific to make human live worth living.  It only could be about acquiring.  That is the simple choice, and that is what zealot capitalists mostly who support Trump do.  They care not whence the pay off comes, and ironically the majority of it comes from Uncle Sam.  The same zealots who scream, "Socialism" are the ones responsible for the death of our "American Dream."  This American Dream necessarily embodies spirituality, because when a body of people are faced with genocide the idea of God becomes important.  Who else is capable of saving the human race from human iniquity?  God is the only answer, and also God is the answer for whom is capable of condemning  heathens to eternal hellfire.  In this life as we fight the evil of Donald Trump each day as a metaphor for the devil, we should remember that while our suffering seems great, those of us who accept Jesus Christ as our savior will be transplanted from this earth to a new existence, while those who do not will be left to battle it out on the scorched earth.  It is a brutal and true prophesy in the Book of Revelations.  With all of that being said the sadness of American achievement being quashed by evil is deep and disturbing.  When the understanding that no one ever will help you in any way with your goals, your future achievements, and your visions of artistic excellence, truly this is a disappointment.  All of the advice about mustering your own will and changing the dynamic of America on your own.  Who could accomplish such a thing, a sole vessel unto one's self tasked with daily survival in the midst of such grievous odds?  It could be said that true artistic achievements often are created in response to great adversity.  They are the human solutions to human problems.  Blues was an antidote for the oppression of segregation.  It was necessary.  Today when the human vessel has become so taxed, so overstimulated, and so taken for granted, one only has to watch television to see the effects.  Human being no longer are able to formulate any far reaching ideas.  We are like insects frying in a vat of super heated gas created by corporate America to fill the pockets of the controlling oligarchical contingency.  These people exist in temperature-controlled penthouses shielded from the brutal effects of a deteriorating atmosphere and held in high esteem solely because of their monetary influences.  Mitch McConnell comes to mind.  I see no bigger traitor to the American ideal than him.  In any other science fiction novel this cast of characters necessarily would have been assassinated to assure the longevity of our Republic.  In what horrible fantasy are we living?   The  answer is the erroneous election of the most incapable American president in history.  Not only he is incapable of leading the American people, their submission, subservience, and obedience is what tweaks his ego.  He understands nothing more than that like a bite of cheese for an unthinking mouse. 

Believing is Seeing

The Covid 19 pandemic has exposed most of the short comings of American society and government.  It is uncanny how effective an infectious disease can be realigning the priorities of a nation.  I am sure opponents of public education, the same oligarchs responsible for the original shorting of American education are stewing in their own juices.  Suddenly the well being of our children once again has become a priority.  "Pop" goes my hi-fi system as the airborne electricity in Fayettenam undulates unabashedly.  The frame of our house crackles and pops as the enormous amount of pressure in the air ebbs and flows according to what?  I'm pretty sure Fort Bragg is on TDY.  They are out in the field, sweating, practicing, and playing soldier.  This is whence the heat comes.  No one will say it.  The officer on duty calls Wes Hohenstein each days and says, "It's going to be hot again today."  We have hundreds of vehicles at the Normandy Drop Zone.  Blah. Blah.  He never winces.  He never misses a beat.  He just earns his money and reports the weather with nary a care for the burning of the planet.  It is not normal.  Global Warming is not normal, because twenty years ago it never got this hot 'round these here parts.  What has changed?  Base Realignment and Closure.  Our children's education against the will of oligarchs has become important, because with their education now comes the issue of their mortality.  What more fitting political dilemma could exist except the mortality of our children?  When choosing a president what becomes more important to parents?  Covid 19, whether accidental or intentional, has become the great mediator of American survival.  People are losing their livelihoods.  It won't be long before either a civil or revolutionary war erupt.  People have to live, and to live in America it takes money.  The is predicated by the capitalist system.  Socialism on the other hand seeks equally to provide for everyone.  In a sardonic turn of the screw those openly screaming about the adverse effects of Bernie's democratic socialism will be screaming for Washington to pay their bills.  What a pile of shit to look at each day on television.  We must receive our information from some source, and traditionally newspapers, magazines, radio, and television were our sources.  What has  happened?  Newspapers are dying a vivid paper death.  Magazines all ready died.  Radio was rendered impotent by "them internets," and the conglomeration of cable companies by a small group of owners has reduced television to worthless propaganda.  Talent and thus art left America in a mass exodus championed by David Letterman and Craig Ferguson.  Two of America's most intelligent and trustworthy television personalities abandoned ship at the same time leaving a gaping hole in late night television programming.  While Stephen Colbert gives it the old college try, his talents lie elsewhere.  Being a ventriloquist for Jon Stewart is not his forte.  Like jazz television show hosts need their own personal voice driven from their own upbringing and personal experiences.  Television lacks this like most things in America.  People say what they are told to collect the money.  Truth and honestly play no part in American culture.  All kinds of revolution are taking place, and Trump is doing everything in his power to continue to spin the truth.  "Are you going to believe what you see or what I tell you?" 

Ivy League Influence.

Two things.  One, you can't ignore the military industrial complex.  You just can't.  No matter what you do, how you try, and how well you may disguise its activity, you can't ignore the military industrial complex.  There are too many planes, helicopters, munitions trains, and accompanying jarheads to act like it doesn't exist.  It does.  It is the major hub of the local driver of the economy, when it is working.  Like all socialist entities it just taps the federal bank.  It sucks on the jugular vein of America like the addicted, sociopathic, narcissistic vampire it is.  It is a self-defeating prophesy.  It is unto itself, and largely it is what has bankrupted and destroyed 
our nation.  I am not against the military.  I am against a war economy, and a philosophy of living that trains to kill the enemy on a daily basis.  It is not a healthy way of living.  You can't ignore the military industrial complex.  This is a rant.  It is not a well thought out expression of my clear thoughts, because what we are experiencing every day is the furthest thing from sanity.  We now have this dichotomy.  We have a secondary outbreak of the pandemic, because Trump's followers in a cavalier bacchanal decided to ruffle the feathers of the intellectual community.  In a desperate attempt to extemporize their American freedom, they proved their careless irresponsibility toward their fellow Americans.  This is narcissism at its worst.  This is what America has become.  Only the grown ups are allowed in the meeting, and that meeting should be about whether or not school will and should open in the Fall.  It is a watershed moment.  There is no hedging.  There is no room for mistake.  This decision will affect the future of America for decades to come.  Roy better get it right.  He better consult with the proper professionals, which are difficult to discern, especially while the White House is trying to discredit our nation's top infectious disease specialist.  Who are we to believe?  In tru fashion the weekend evening news interviewed a handful of "top pediatricians" about the reopening of schools in the Fall.  All of them gleefully and in great happiness said they would not hesitate for one moment to allow their own children to go back to school in the Fall.  ???  I am in disbelief.  On the other hand two thirds of polled American parents say they are not in favor of this option.  It should be a parents choice about their on child's health and wellness, not our irresponsible President's choice.  I have not taken the time to process the information, the three options for school in the Fall.  Off the top of my head I don't see any use in a week on, two week off in person system.  What could this achieve?  If you contract the virus during your week on, you have two weeks to incubate or die?  As for learning online, the state of public education all ready is at an all time low.  Our kids aren't learning a fraction of what they should be learning about critical thinking in public school.  The handful of "top pediatricians" were university professors, not practicing doctors.  As such with their secure tenure agreements, they would say whatever is needed to keep their cushy jobs.  That is what academia has become in America, the same as the medical establishment.  They care not for you or your health.  They care about themselves and the children they will in the future bribe into Ivy League schools.  Of course Donald Trump will either pardon them or commute their jail sentences.  Here's the thing.  Maybe we can ignore the racket on the rails, which no longer is just that.  The days of the steam locomotive long are gone, the soothing rhythmic "chuff" of steam escaping from a pioneering, ground-breaking, James Watt invented American icon.  The nostalgia, the sentiment, and the musical connection with the steam locomotive has been smashed into compliance by both General Motors and General Electric.  GE was wise, and like DuPont and Monsanto sold their risky manufacturing to shell companies.  Now we have Wabtech.  They are hard at work trying to capitalize off of the 650 engine, a two stroke turbo-charged monstrosity which should be illegal.  The only reason it isn't is because railroad lawyers have manipulated Washington through the Federal Trade Commission and the Interstate Commerce Commission to allow its use.  Even with this polluting hunk of junk, it can't compete with a military device which uses sound to target its guns.  Acoustical targeting it is called.  One would think such an antiquated, anachronistic, inhuman practice would be illegal.  In steps the world's defense contractors who care not about the average living citizen.  They are more concerned with the annihilation of human kind, because that is what their products achieve.  Mass annihilation.  With trains slogging munitions to and from MOTSP through Pembroke via Leland, there also is another culprit that is more unconstitutional and more invasive.  Every time one of those little planes flies over our house something is amiss.  I feel physical pain in addition to heat.  What could this be?  It is well known that the FBI and CIA uses infrared sensors in small planes to see into your homes.  Add the conspiracy of "5G" to the stew, and there is enough potential electronically produced heat to fry the planet many times over.  As the evening news decries yet another insufferable heat wave that will last for weeks, simply turn your head toward the United States military and their ongoing activity.  Lately when I think a thought, have an honest emotion, or otherwise reject the status quo which is being beset upon my in a myriad of ways, I am met with opposition via the air.  My litmus test?  Tinnitus.  When my left ear relentlessly SCREAMS at me, screams in stereo mocking my civility and my attempts at lucidity, then our military industrial complex is at work frying the planet.  How can the world exist without vegetable oil? 

The Origins of Jass

Christianity and its human vessel were created for a reason.  Who knew that evil, the serpent, the Devil would coexist with God and attempt to fleece man?  If we read the Bible it is all there, but Bible reading is passe.  God is passe.  We as a nation have little way to discern right and wrong, honesty, and deceit, or good and evil.  This is the way the Devil wants it.  How are we to know the difference?  If critical thinking is the only process upon which is relied to makes decisions, especially moral decisions, than what assures us we have made the correct choice?  The answer is God has provided us with a system, a human system which is intertwined with creative and artistic sensibility.  It is an engine, a machine of emotional feelings, instincts, and reactions.  These perceptions and thus reactions are physiological, biological, and organic.  They originate in the processes of the body and are a core part or should be of our human existence.  The trouble is the human race as a whole has been lead away from our consciences for a reason.  If we have no gut reaction upon which to rely than Donald Trump and his administration can lie directly to our faces like Big Brother.  That is what Big Brother is, a falsification of reality to suit the "party."  Why was it banging around in my brain today that Communism all ready has overtaken the American political process.  It is a simple paradigm.  Agree with  "The Party," and your needs will be met.  "The Party."  All you have to do is agree with the  predominant social and political rhetoric, and the socialist system will provide for your needs.  "The Party."  Truth no longer is a matter of importance.  Justice, honesty, and good no longer play a part in human existence.  The reason is simple, and the the reason simply is because it is much simpler only to seek to gain and spend.  If the core of your existence only is to pillage, imperialize, collect, and spend than life is simple.  There is no need for intelligence, thinking, philosophizing, or creativity.  Only we seek to conquer and put heads on stakes as a symbol of our championship.  Life is simple.  Seek and conquer.  Do not think.  Do not create.  Do not quest for beauty, serenity, and spiritual fulfillment.  When are needs are met, then we stare directly into the void, the abyss, the darkness.  Then it is required with our human mind and souls a way to fill this void with human ingenuity, accomplishment, and good.  This is not about what I wished to write today, but my mind is clouded.  Anyone who doubt climate change or global warming only has to walk outside.  Our scorched earth means it is difficult to exist outside without pain and suffering, like the pain and suffering of being forced to pick cotton against your will.  As I have been studying the history of Jazz and necessarily the other forms of indigenous American music, several things have come to light.  One is I would be inclined to call Jazz America's finest folk music.  In a simple definition, folk music means music championed by the folks, folks being not academic or highly educated scholars of music.  Surely we are aware that the human mind is capable of genius in all people, because our founding fathers recognized the need to state such in our Constitution.  All men are created equal.  It is a simple sentence, and life in America would be simpler today if this sentence were reiterated more often.  Jazz was music created by the folks, so my premise largely is correct.  Jazz is America's greatest folk music, but then I must include and consider the other forms of America's great musics, Country, Bluegrass, and what has been considered Folk music for years, the protest music of our Civil Rights Movement.  Is jazz better than these?  I say emphatically, "No."  That would be short-sighted and callow.  The power and integrity of Bluegrass is irrefutable, but this form of American music largely is undefined and thus recognized until much later than its true origins.  Bill Monroe, while credited with creating Bluegrass, is not its father just as W.C. Handy is not the Father of the Blues.  As I watched Wynton Marsalis describe the blues in his recent YouTube tutorial, I was surprised when he cited W.C. Handy as the "Father of the Blues."  Few American including myself know anything about this man, except that he wrote the song, "Saint Louis Blues" which later was morphed into the "Saint Louis Blues March" played by Glenn Miller's band.  Let's qualify.  The first designation in American music history is the difference between composed music, music that is planned and written down on paper, and music which is created, learned and purveyed by an aural tradition.  "By ear."  Let me say that again.  "By ear."  No music.  Nothing written down on paper.  Learned by hearing with the ears, mind, body, and soul.  It is possible to hear with the human skin, and easily this is explained by unborn babies being educated before they develop ears.  The skin, the largest human organ, may be the best hearing device the human being possesses.  Before our corrupt and "Party-lining" medical establishement saw fit, "Otoacoustic" meant this specifically, hearing with the skin.  It stands to reason understanding that feeling or tactile sensations simply are waves understood by the dermis.  Without delving into human anatomy, American music must be classified this way, and it makes the understanding of American music history easier.  Louis Armstrong at first did not read music, he played what he heard, knew, and developed in his own mind and soul.  This is an extraordinary concept, and that which makes this man so notable in American musical evolution.  The majority of what Louis Armstrong performed did not come off a page.   It came out of his soul largely through his ears and mind.  The same is true of blues music, except in the case of the Father of the Blues, a title bestowed upon himself not unlike "The Creator of Jazz," Jelly Roll Morton.  In trying to understand this complicated and diverse chronology of musical evolution in America, qualifying the difference between "composed" music and music in the "aural" tradition is key.  W.C. Handy has been cast "The Father of the Blues" only because he may have been the first to write it down on paper, or less effectively dilute it into something that can be understood by the masses.  This is a twelve bar form with a chord progression of the tonic, subdominant, and dominant which move in logical and cadential way providing a convenient song form for blues performers.  This rather simplistic form, which often is cited as the definition of the blues, is far from its true definition.  While W.C. Handy was authoratative about the blues and its origins, I feel it is inappropriate to bestow this title upon him.  It is an academic accolade, and that is America's tradition.  W.C. Handy certainly provided no semen for the inception of the resulting organic entity of the Blues.  Instead he may be considered a scholar of the Blues.  Because you are the first to document an art form on paper such as Gunther Schuller did for African tribal drumming does not mean you are its father.  This is a ludicrous title.  As America rethinks her African roots and its improper diversions, this is one.  W.C. Handy and Jelly Roll Morton are designated such, because they saw fit to write down their findings.  In the case of Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe accolades should be attributed to him for his pioneering effort at transcribing the aural polyphony of the New Orleans horn section in Early or Hot Jazz.  He was the first to write down the organic counterpoint between trumpet, clarinet, and trombone in early New Orleans jazz bands.  Mr. Marsalis effectively describes how the Blues and the fervor of worship in the black church combine in a swinging of traditional Sousa marches.  These marches, which have been well-studied, are complete and musical entities comparable to European orchestral forms.  They effectively pioneer a more American form of musical expression integrating customs and traditions of a relatively pioneering new nation.  The combining of these elements, slave traditions, worship, Sporting Houses, Blues, Ragtime, and Minstrel Shows resulted in a new form of American music, Jass.  When the "ass" in Jass became recognized and was deemed profane, easily the term was sanitized as "Jazz." 

Covid Shutdown via Food Poisoning

Every article I read on wikipedia concerning infections of any kind, fungal, bacterial, and viral start the same way.  "Infections are on the rise."  They are becoming more and more prevalent, and they are becoming resistant to traditional antibiotic therapies.  That means medications once which were effective in treating infections no longer are.  My gut instinct tells me one thing.  If the same crooked pharmaceutical companies which are hawking addictive opiates are making our over-the-counter medications, it stands to reason that not only are we being duped into addiction, we are being duped into purchasing phony, ineffective, over-the-counter drugs.  I have used every over-the-counter fungal medication, and none of them are working.  I don't think it is because the fungus suddenly has grown wings and has become super fungus.  I think it is because the stuff that is in these medications is a ruse.  The quality of alcohol in America suffers from the same consequences.  Instead of using high quality natural resources, pure cane sugar and naturally grown corn, distilleries are using GMO seeds purchased from Monsanto.  Yuck.  Cheap whiskey.  It's no wonder that fungal infections in human beings are on the rise.  Candida feeds on sugar, and alcohol mainly is sugar.  We are being poisoned. 

Radio History

It amazingly is good news S.C.O.T.U.S. is doing the right thing.  P.O.T.U.S. on the other hand...  His evening news hour television ad's for his re-election ominously wreak of Big Brother.  Their tone is dark, foreboding, and a bit dictatorial.  For any millennial who has not read George Orwell's novel, "19984,"  2020 has become the year of reckoning.  We anticipated 2012, a date indigenous America cultures adopted as the end of the world, with angst, but 2012 came and went.  It took six years for the real drama to unfold.  It is here now, 2020.  Luckily and amazingly the Supreme Court of the United States is doing the right thing.  Like most republicans they probably feel like they are on a sinking ship.  Although these rulings today are important for the future of our country, what I wanted to address was the short comings of the compact disc.  As I type this word on my Querty keyboard, I wondered what was the difference between the word "disc" and disk.  Evidently a new word was coined which denotes specifically a compact disc digital recording vessel.  Physically it qualifies as a "disk," but when audio media is associated creating a vessel for the playback of audio, words or music, it becomes "disc."  Minidisc.  So be it.  In the last few evenings while I have been archiving cassette tapes I recorded while working on a doctorate in composition at OSU, I realized while enjoying the integrity of these mostly concert performances that a CD, a compact disc, isn't the best vessel for listening to recorded media.  For me having worked on cruise ships for over a decade, CD's were indispensable.  The reasons are obvious to the consumer.  First they are much smaller and less heavy than LP's.  Second the audio encoded on them should be professionally rendered.  That means low or no noise and excellent sound quality.  What we all have discovered is that in the music business it is a crap shoot.  For classical enthusiasts specific orchestras, conductors, and therefore discs constitute the most desirable music listening experiences.  For example Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra will yield a satisfying listening experience.  Let me clarify.  As I study the Ken Burns series "Jazz" I am formulating hypothesis in my mind about the origins of American music.  I have no aspiration that eventually I will be able to teach a music history class at the collegiate level.  That is not an unreasonable vocational prospectus.  I am not falling for that bait again, the possibility of finding a college teaching job.  Mildly I chased that snipe in my twenties, and I won't waste my time on it again.  What I do is for my own well being, and like many business merchants I met while living in Columbia, South Carolina I would like to be more familiar with my own nation's lineage.  It is not an easy affair just understanding America's own music history.  This is what Ken Burns attempted and accomplished with his video series.  Not only is the history of jazz deciphered, music created mostly by African-Americans, but country music has been addressed and its substantial influences on cultural America.  What is startling to me is the line of demarcation between them.  It is like the same types of civil evolution were occurring simultaneously, one in the white world and one in the black world.  Wow!  That is segregation whether it was intended to be that or not.  It just happened that way.  I have studied jazz history before and learned most of what I know from George William Knowles.  Bubba with his stubborness openly voiced his opposition to "singers" and "guitar players."  I carried his sentiment with me most of the rest of my life.  I even carried it up to Cowtown, where it influenced my responses during my General Exams.  When asked to lay out a timeline for the history of jazz in America, I excluded vocalists.  It was not until twenty-five years later I realized the importance of jazz singing and its affect upon the musical development of North America.  Everything I am learning, and there is a lot of it, is a valid metaphor for American life.  Most of it has been shelved, rendered defunct, or openly rejected as the authentic roots of American life.  Consider that jazz music is the least popular musical form in America.  There are reasons for all of it, and I am trying to get to the bottom.  Meanwhile Rahsaan Roland Kirk is playing in the background.  Here is a jazz musician as I understand it that was blind and played many instruments, notably a straight alto saxophone.  He was an eclectic performer of the Avant-garde, the most current style of jazz still unrecognized as America's most distinct art form.  I mean all of jazz, but during its century long evolution there were many chapters which easily define North America's struggle to become an upstanding nation.  The definition of "upstanding" is subjective, and America's history is pitted with cultural and racial wounds.  There is no way to quantify "upstanding" without spirituality.  As such God and religion were a crucial part of America's doctrines.  That has been lost today, and sorely we are in need of the second coming of Jesus Christ.  America has been erroneously defined in terms of monetary profits.  Who has the most wins, but in the substantial tradition of the building of America from the ground up from the toil and sweat of pioneering land workers this does not fly.  If Donald Trump was forced to create his own existence with no money to spend on products, could he succeed?  Could he build shelter, grow food, and make medicine?  That is the question that will remain no matter how much money is amassed in Grand Caymen and Swiss banks.  At some point the value of this money will dissipate.  It all ready has, because when the federal government needs money merely they print it.  What value has this paper?  The true value of American money is being able to back it with goods and services, and that is not cable television and wireless internet.  The value system of America is has become so skewed we have no idea of what is important to human life.  Take for example the compact disc.  Here is a digital product which costs pennies to manufacture, and in the long run it has proven to be worth little more.  CDs still have value, but their influence upon American culture have been limited.  Why?  The answer is because they are not a tangible human creation.  They are, but when defined in terms of a human result dropping a plastic disc into a a mechanism with a laser that reads zeros and ones...  Well that is not very human.  The ultimate reality and demise of compact discs lies in this mechanism.  In my home CD and DVDs skip.  The vibration in the air created by low-flying aircraft and rumbling freight trains makes the music and video skip.  CDs in my household have lost value as play back sources.  Instead they have become archival sitting on a shelf preserving America's important and great artistic music.  The irony has become that only now have I realized this shortcoming.  Futilely while trying to keep these discs from skipping, I have realized that a CD, a simple serial list of music to be played in a chosen order, is not natural.  Instead A and B "sides" of an album or cassette provide a better stage for the presentation of entertainment.  Always there is an Act l and Act ll.  In classical orchestral music often there are movements, sections of music, that differintiate from one another.  It is not usual to have a sequential list of music played, unless the curator is extremely skilled at how to pick a set.  Picking a set is akin to programming a list of music that has a natural ebb and flow, tension and release, and variety of content.  In most liklihood this has been lost.  The place to turn for guidance is radio, and radio in America is a shadow of its former self.  Something that was integral to the building of America now is an aging unused dinosaur replaced with the accessibility and low cost of internet streaming.  The audio quality is nowhere near the same in internet streaming.  This was the beauty of radio that both FM and AM sound quality lost nothing in its transmission.  The warmth, beauty, and sonic quality of the original music was  preserved and broadcast to the listerners just like a live performance.  Live performance is a thing of the past especially now that Covid 19 has reared its ugly head.  The absence of radio, real radio from America, leaves an unfillable hole in our cultural heritage.  It is worthy that the internet has attempted to fill this void, and I am grateful, but America's golden years of radio, television, and music are gone.  Their history is there for our own enlightenment. 

The Return of the Humanities

There is some tangible reason, why I am waiting to do wiring repair in our second attic.  Our attic ventilation fan burned out a long time ago, and when I smelled the burning we called the fire department.  This man in full fire fighting gear crawled into the small opening above our staircase into this attic and pulled the burning culprit from its metal frame before it burned down our house.  The registered temperature was 450 degrees.  Although I was not here the replacement of this fan and its sibling was a big deal.  The electrical company had to call the roofing company which in turn had to oversee the installation of new housings in our roof.  It has been a nightmare, because their roof was a substandard product anyway.  Always we have had leaks especially around the chimney.  Not long ago we had the entire situation remedied.  We got a new roof from a quality company.  They repositioned some of the bathroom outlet pipes to make sealing the chimney easier.  (By the way I am having to wear plastic protective eye protection to keep the microdust out of my contact lenses in the second story bedroom.)  There is a low pressure trough at Wilmington over the Atlantic Ocean near the mouth of the Cape Fear River.  They are saying it might become a tropical storm.  It is there because Fort Bragg is sending munitions to Military Ocean Terminal Sunny Point on route to the Middle East.  That is why it is hot and humid.  That is why black microdust is flowing through my bedroom walls.  Again I would ask, "Why is the United States military in the Middle East?"  The longest war in the history of North America, and no one knows why.  Most of these military personnel will vote for Trump and Pence, that is if we judge from the signs in their yards.  As Commander in Chief he is keeping their plates full, their not working wives, and their many kids.  Expensive homes in our neighborhood on a working man's salary with no college degree.  I guess you would vote for this man too for what he is providing you.  In Plandemic.com, the movie, Judy states that Covid 19 in the lungs looks exactly like COPD.  They can't tell the difference.  If Covid 19 is listed as the diagnosis in comes the money.  I am beginning to think that it may not be a virus per say.  I am beginning to think it is just toxins in our air.  A virus is a convenient solution, especially if a certain doctor owns the patents to the drug needed for an antidote.  I am just happy to be recovering from several years of severe illness with no health insurance.  Also I am happy to be rediscovering music I encountered working on my DMA in music composition at Ohio State University.  I went to Cowtown in 1991 and stayed in Columbus for ten years.  It was the most fruitful and enjoyable musical tenure in my life after a few years of incubation.  The initiation period was not pleasant getting used to the Midwest.  They did not like Southerners.  After acclimating finally and finding a worthy companion I settled into a productive musical groove producing over ten CD's worth of original material.  It took Jeff Lorber forty years to receive his Grammy.  It will take that long for my material to come to fruition.  I have faith in it and patience.  I have nothing else to do.  While I am being lead back into the trap of doing music for a living, its great reward and spiritual healing, I am will not fall for that gag again.  The wonderful feeling and happiness of music, the community, the spirituality, the emotional fulfillment it can provide, also it can take away quickly and brutally.  Anything that you come to love, want, and appreciate, it will be attempted to take away from you.  This is how humanity works, and it is unfortunate.  This is the human species at work, Donald Trump, manipulators with no moral compass, no understanding of God, and not Christian ethos.  It is frightening staring the devil in the face.  Certainly it is frightening knowing that evil has overtaken North America, our country.  No one is looking out for you.  While Black Lives Matter is busy pulling down confederate monuments, we should be remembering the Holocaust in full detail.  The monuments are not there to remind us of our oppression, they are there to remind us of our freedom from the existence of this oppression.  As such they should be retooled as subservient, compliant, defeated fascists put in their places by the love, not the wrath of God.  It is appropriate that America is getting face lift, and we need it.  It is and has been a stinking, rotting, cesspool of recurrent racism propagated by ignorant, zealot, small-minded humans.  This is what Americans need to understand on a daily basis.  As a musician I tend to sway toward artistry, but in all honesty if monuments should be placed around the country who should they be?  Why war heroes?  I must pause for a moment to answer my first question.  Why am I delaying the electrical work in our second attic?  The answer is because there is too much static electricity in our home for me to be crawling around on my belly in the dark unwrapping wires that have been taped for fifty-seven years.  I must find the correct circuit breaker, turn it off, test the live current, and connect new wires to the cluster.  Pass.  Pass.  Pass for the moment.  I do not need an invisible menace threatening my life, one of which I have no control, and one that is in the hands of CSX.  It can wait for the moment.  The answer to whose statues should be placed around America?  George Gershwin of course.  John Coltrane.  Duke Ellington.  Louis Armstrong.  Ben Franklin.  Why does America ignore and scorn those responsible for her own cultural development?  It is beyond comprehension.  War heros.  While freeing slaves was a watershed event in American history, it is understandable that this violent and malevolent event should not be a metaphor for America.  It was a beginning.  What transpired as a result, in light of continual resentment and resistance from the American south, should be the legacy and the future of our nation.  These things of integrity, the humanities which influence our cultural existences are what are important to the human race. 

The GE Genocide

CSX is back at it, unabated, uninhibited, and scorching our earth like the spewing dragon it is.  After a brief and needed respite from heavy railroading  shareholders must be paid.  Wall Street.  The Stock Market.  Pay shareholders.  Shareholders.  Who is important in America?  Shareholders?  Make money for shareholders.  Who does the work?  My ears once again are screaming, tinnitus in my left ear.  I can feel my heart beat heavy in my head.  The infrasound is rampant.  The evening news stated it was a violent Fourth of July weekend.  In Charlotte alone there were forty gunshots victims in area emergency rooms.  There is nowhere to escape.  As General Electric saw fit near Columbine High School there were three moly mines.  Their great plan was boring a great tunnel underneath the mountains, the Continental Divide no less, and building a slow-moving conveyor belt to move the material to its refinery.  Low frequency AC drives power this conveyor, and the electrical processing equipment to power the drives also is under the ground.  Is this a novel idea like the novel Coronavirus?  Novel is not the appropriate term.  Ask the residents of Taos, New Mexico in their fifteen years of misery who was responsible for their "hum?"  Conspiracy theories abounded.  Aliens.  The DOD.  The Pentagon.  NORAD.  Eventually the determination was "mining equipment."  It was GE, and it was their invention of a miles long conveyor belt underneath the ground which caused the hum.  More specifically the hum is caused by processed electricity, alternating current manipulated by a computer with its frequency lowered into the infrasonic range.  The electricity, which is processed in inverters, hums feverishly as it is contained and and released.  If it were freed in all of its glory in high volume and at higher frequencies like more traditional forms of alternating current it would not complain, but the demons, caged, penned, contained scream as they exit the vessel.  They hum.  All of the electricity, volumes of it, undulating, pulsating, vibrating, pent up and nozzled out in so few cycles per second.  It contests.  It complains.  It says, "This is not right!"  The same processing equipment is on CSX diesel electric locomotives.  The SD-40-2 is the biggest culprit.  It hums and probably was the biggest hummer in history.  It's too bad nobody got off.  Instead we suffer.  With the GEVOlution of GE the humming is not as prevalent, but it still is there.  The EPA did require Tier 4 standards, so the GEVO was born.  The problem is when carbon emissions are lessened other emissions rise.  What could be more important than carbon emissions, for instance electromagnetic emissions?  While I am not knowledgeable about radio transmitters, I am certain that alternating current, AC power circulating in wound coils through a stater, rotating, pulling a magnet would qualify as a source of electromagnetic energy.  Fully I understand as I was taught by a physicist on the Serenade of the Seas, that electromagnetism is a duality.  There is electricity and there is magnetism.  They exist on perpendicular poles.  Heat and vibration are their byproducts.  Electricity, alternating current and magnetism producing heat and vibration.  That does not sound like an appealing scenario.  While an AC drive technically may not qualify as a low frequency radio wave transmitter, I think it is.  The effects it wreaks on our environment are substantial.  Sound waves at low frequency from a constantly turning prime mover, about 1050 rpm, producing a 17 Hz infrasound wave.  Is that right?  Add to it this.  What is the effect?  A violent Fourth of July weekend and for no apparent reason. 

The Donald's Friends.

Here it is the first week of July, 2020, and the day after the American national holiday, The Fourth of July.  It was a difficult weekend.  Unsurprisingly it is scorching hot.  CSX chose to contribute to the Fourth of July festivities by manufacturing a large percentage of this heat.  For citizens of America it was not helpful.  When I began paying attention to CSX twenty-three years ago, its parent was John Snow.  Briefly Mr. Snow was appointed the Secretary of the Treasury in Washington, DC, but that did not last.  CSX-T was his creation.  It is a railroad conglomerate which merged the Chesapeake Bay system with Seaboard Coastline.  In short it gobbled up rights to the east coast north/south rail corridor which runs parallel to Interstate 95.  This best can be understood if one thinks about the "Juice Train," Tropicana's shining animal which transports freshly picked Florida oranges to its processing facility in New Jersey.  Once it ran four times a week, and it was easy to spot.  It was a dedicated train with only refrigerated railroad cars carrying the bountiful harvest of freshly grown Florida oranges.  Is it ironic that their processing facility is in New Jersey?  There are Youtube videos showing the actual journey through the eyes of a train engineer.  I have no beef with Tropicana, but a continually running freight train which dominates the eastern seaboard of the United States...  That is something to which to pay attention.  Add Amtrack passenger trains, which in most probability have been lessened because of the Covid 19 outbreak and CSX normal freight operations.  The reason why America does not have a high speed rail passenger network, is because this nearly century old rail infrastructure is owned and controlled by CSX.  John Snow long ago passed the torch and sold his creation for great profit.  Recently Hunter Harrison, a Canadian railroad magnate was brought in further to monetize CSX earnings.  Evidently his track record at reforming Canadian railroads was substantial enough to merit his lucrative contract.  Stock prices soared, CSX futures, and the company made a lot of money from the sale of their stocks.  All of this came from the hiring of Hunter Harrison.  Ironically he died on the job.  While his methodology of "Precision Railroading" did get transplanted to CSX and America, his ace in the hole was short lived.  Now a majority stake in CSX is owned by a Hedge Fund, the same high risk financial instrument which brought down Wall Street in the financial crisis of 2008.  Hedge Funds are not good things for the country.  They are get rich quick schemes for their owners.  They pool mortgages and sell them to investors.  It all began when past president Bill Clinton ran under a campaign slogan, "I feel everyone should be able to own their own home."  Rapidly not vetted high risk loans were divvied out to everyone who decided they could and should own a $250,000.00 house.  One Wall Street physician saw fit to read these mortgages and discovered that over time most of the owners of these mortgages would default and be forced into bankruptcy. Written into the risky loans were provisions that would hike the payments after a certain number of years unbeknownst to their holders.  Their payments doubled and tripled, and many were forced into foreclosure.  Happy times.  Still these Hedge Funds are operating with impunity.  Certainly a Hedge Fund owner is qualified to oversee the operations of one of the nation's larges Class A railroads.  Their offering for the national holiday celebrating the freedom of the colonies from oppressive British rule is railroading in full force.  Why not?  Affluent people visit their beach properties on weekends and holidays.  No ones hangs around Fayettenam.  Certainly it felt like that a virtual ghost town of eerie, foreboding, evil intent.  Oh, that was our President spewing lies, inciting racial rhetoric, and otherwise sealing the fate of his re-election campaign in the fall.  My question is:  Why did CSX choose to use the holiday weekend for itself?  Not unlike Christmas several years ago when for two weeks straight the Milan Yard on North Street was host to two idling Dash 8 locomotives.  Merry Christmas to you!  Shall we assemble a bevy of diesel transfer trucks, park them in the same lot, and let them run unabated to cool their drivers?  "My what a conscientious effort." Let's only think about our own well-being.  On the 4th magically both ES44ACH locomotives were perched running in a high notch at the CSX Milan Yard.  Glory.  It sure was hot this past weekend.  I wonder why?  Is it because vegetable oil likes its heat?  Of course that is more important than celebrating American independence.  Perhaps CSX feels this is what independence is, the freedom to use our country's ammenities for its own monetary profit.  Surely as American citizens were are to believe that somehow this revenue makes its way back into our American economy?  I think not.  Like the rest of it it is distrubuted to Donald's friends. 

In the Heat of the Moment

It is the 4th of July and all is quiet on the Van Story front.  I am sure it the hottest day of the year thus far.  We have had nineties in the past few week, and it has been oppressive outside.  No moving air and unpleasant.  You could manage.  CSX has been active this entire week earning their revenue servicing the Cargill vegetable oil plant on the Cape Fear River.  It would seem they have a dedicated mule on steroids, an ES44ACH which does the dirty work for the second largest privately-owned company in America.  I don't have a beef with Cargill.  They are not owned by a Mexican conglomerate like DAK Americas.  The trouble is making vegetable oil requires HEAT.  I remember reading that hot temperatures outside make their life easier either for transporting the finished oil or heating the soybeans in the vats.  I started driving around that plant a few years ago just to see what the process was.  They were so paranoid they erected a fence and gate enclosing a public road which went through their plant.  I really was trainspotting, something a handful of hobbyists do.  After they built the subdivision across the street and adjacent to the CSX mainline railroad tracks, CSX also came in and built a chain link fence to keep playing children off of their tracks.  I am positive that when the realtor sold these homes there was no mention made of the train activity.  There is a long line of trees meant to disguise the Cargill siding.  Since then they have cleaned up the tracks and put new ballast down.  The other subdivision along the Cape Fear River flooded recently without a hurricane.  Several years ago there was a televised City Council meeting where builders were petitioning the city to grant permits to build this subdivision.  I am positive no mention was made of potential flooding in a watershed area, the Cape Fear River basin.  I am positive those people living in the subdivision of Monclair were not aware that the Aberdeen & Rockfish tracks ran through their neighborhood.  Perhaps they did.  It only was when hazardous material tank cars showed up and were left sitting there that there became an issue.  Usually the EPA or some regulatory agency polices this activity.  Change gears.  When they showed Mount Rushmore last night on the evening news, I almost felt sick to my stomach.  It was startling how inappropriate this monument is.  There is a reckoning happening, and I agree with it.  The rich white men took this county for themselves.  They took it from native Americans killing many of them and their families.  It seems to me that the conquering European white man is on the decline.  The roots of America are not in Europe, although its influence is welcome.  If America had to fight a Revolutionary War to free themselves from an oppressive British rule, then one would think they would embrace the knowledge and wisdom of the Native American.  Could Christopher Columbus have survived without the friendship of Native Americans?  The reason why white supremacists only can recognize a colorless palette, a bland, tepid, soulless pile of dough, is beyond me.  It must be they are intimidated and frightened by color.  We'll call it, "Afraid of the Dark."  Trump supporters are, "Afraid of the Dark!"  Seeing these clearly European faces on a mountain in the Dakotas....  it was unsettling.  It felt like they sailed over, set up shop, and gave nary a thought for those who all ready lived here.  Heathens I believe they would call them, because they wore animal skins and rode horses.  Many Americans, including Texas ranchers, enjoy this lifestyle, the Western lifestyle.  Leather, wood, Colt .45's, and lassos.  I myself find it an appropriate model for quality living.  Why pollute the air with carbon emissions if you could just ride an indigenous animal?  The names come flooding in.  Nelson Rockafeller.  Andrew Carnagie.  J.P. Morgan.  What would have America been without them, but also what would have America been without African-Americans?  Is it possible jazz could have been born without blacks?  According to Ken Burns the academy, or music teachers and scholars in the east, readily were anticipating the new American music.  It did come, but it came in an oblique direction. Is it coincidental that Aaron Copland and Charles Ives often are cited as America's purest composers, artists who studied the American landscape and created a musical voice for our country.  I love "Appalachian Spring," and I listen to it often, but that is not the only voice of America. On the opposite end of the continuum is Charles Ives, and insurance salesman who adopted the ideals of the Second Viennese School.  There are not many mainstream Americans who choose this aesthetic to represent their country.  Why?  We must ask the "Russian Five."  The man of Russia was Petyr Tchaikovsky and appropriately so.  He is one of my favorite composers, because he is so prolific.  There is so much work, and all of it is exemplary.  Several years ago the Fayetteville Symphony, under the direction of Farad Fakouri, played this work in its entireity outside at Festial Park for the Fourth of July celebration.  There were cannons provided by Fort Bragg, real howitzers which were brought in to augment the performance.  It was very moving, because in Tchaikovsky's writing one can hear logic and beauty.  There is no nebulous finger wiggling.  There is no fodder.  Staunchly he understands form and content in music, and you can hear it unfold in a great exposition of human expression.  Isn't it ironic that America uses a piece of music by a Russian composer to represent it patriotism?  Not really.  America has been unusually fertile soil for freedom and creativity.  That has changed, and now we are in a trench, a white, tepid, soulless ball of dough which has no yeast.  It may rise a little, enogh to get an erection for a few minutes, but it will not sustain.  Sustenence is created by soul which is created by spirituality.  America has implemented an "erradicate God" campaign, and now there is nowhere to go except down.  Many people are realizing this.   America has begun the process of reclaiming herself in spite of the white rulers.  It is disappointing that heterosexuality took a hit in the process.